News Headlines - 30 December 2015

▽Homes evacuated and power cuts as Storm Frank hits UK - BBC News

Storm Frank has battered parts of England, Scotland and Northern Ireland leaving more severe floods in its wake.

▽UK house prices: 4.5% rise in 2015 sparks calls for policy intervention | The Guardian

Policymakers are facing renewed calls to intervene in Britain’s frothy housing market after Nationwide building society said prices rose by 4.5% this year, taking the average UK house price to nearly ￡200,000.

▽Puerto Rico to default on $37 million bond payments - Americas - Stripes

Puerto Rico Gov. Alejandro Garcia Padilla said the commonwealth will default on about $37 million in bond payments due Jan. 1, escalating a conflict with investors as the island seeks to restructure its $70 billion debt burden.

▽Bill Cosby charged with indecent assault - BBC News

Prosecutors in the US have charged comedian Bill Cosby with aggravated indecent assault over an alleged incident in 2004.

▽Kurosawa's Japan Revisited by Pico Iyer | The New York Review of Books

Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru (1952) was the first film I saw after I moved to Japan in 1987... But when I watched the film again recently, after half a lifetime in Japan, I was taken aback at how very un-Japanese it seemed: in the broadness of its satire, in the zaniness of its switches from one genre to another, in the almost violent simplicity of its message and story.