Edgerton’s iconic images would be difficult enough to create today, even with computers on hand to open and close the shutter and fire the flash. But Edgerton took his pictures in the days of analogue, recording them on a motion picture camera converted to shoot at previously impossible speeds, and lighting them with an electric flash he invented himself. Intricate geometries happening so fast the human eye is incapable of comprehending them were suddenly captured for all to marvel at.

“He captured wonderful, captivating images that transcend the boundaries between science, art and entertainment,” says Colin Harding, a curator at the UK’s National Media Museum in Bradford.

To decades of students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) he was known as ‘Doc’. To the pioneering underwater explorer Jacques Cousteau, who collaborated with him, ‘Papa Flash’. Edgerton was born in 1903 in Nebraska, and became passionate about two things – photography and electricity. He was taught how to use a camera by his uncle, and worked for a local power company before being accepted as a student at MIT.

During an experiment using a rudimentary computer, Edgerton found the overheating warning lights (blinking at 60 times a second) seemed to freeze the moving parts of its motor as if they were standing still.

In a blow to Israel's economy, U.S. and many European air carriers halted flights to the country citing security worries after a militant rocket from Gaza hit a house near Ben Gurion airport. Israel urged a re-think, saying its airspace was safe.

Making an unannounced, one-day visit, Kerry was due to see Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, signaling an intensification of efforts to end the bloodshed.

Israel launched its offensive on July 8 to halt missile salvoes by Hamas Islamists, who were struggling under the weight of an Israeli-Egyptian economic blockade and angered by a crackdown on their supporters in the nearby occupied West Bank.

After failing to halt the militant barrage through days of aerial bombardment, Israel sent ground troops into Gaza last Thursday, looking to knock out Hamas's missile stores and destroy a vast, underground network of tunnels.

Some 643 Palestinians, many of them children and civilians have died in the conflagration, including a seven-year-old hit by a shell in southern Gaza early Wednesday, a medic said.

Some 29 Israeli soldiers have been killed, including a tank officer shot by a Palestinian sniper overnight. Two civilians have been slain by rocket fire. The military says one of its soldiers is also missing and believes he might be dead. Hamas says it has captured him, but has not released his picture.

Clouds of black smoke hung over the densely populated Mediterranean enclave, with the regular thud of artillery and tank shells filling the air.

"We are meeting resistance around the tunnels ... they are constantly trying to attack us around and in the tunnels. That is the trend," said Israeli military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Peter Lerner.

He said 30 militant gunman had been killed overnight, bringing the total to 210 since the offensive started.

Hamas's armed wing, the Izz el-Deen Al-Qassam, said its fighters had detonated an anti-personnel bomb as an Israeli army patrol passed, killing several troops. There was no immediate confirmation from Israel.

The remains of 50 victims are expected to arrive in the Netherlands on Wednesday, Ukrainian officials said.

The arrival will mark a homecoming for many of the victims. Most of the 298 people on board the plane were from the Netherlands, which has declared Wednesday a national day of mourning.

At least two aircraft -- a Dutch and an Australian jet -- will be transferring the remains Wednesday. It was not clear how many bodies will be on each plane. Dutch royals, government officials and families of the passengers will be at the tarmac when the remains arrive. After a solemn ceremony, the bodies will be taken to a military facility for forensic testing.

But Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said it could take weeks or even months to identify the remains.

Some bodies unaccounted for

Officials gave conflicting reports about how many bodies were on the train that traveled from the crash site in rebel-held eastern Ukraine to the Ukrainian-controlled city of Kharkiv on Tuesday.

Malaysian official Mohd Sakri, who traveled on the train with the remains, said there were 282 corpses and 87 body parts aboard -- the same tally Ukrainian officials earlier gave to describe the remains recovered from the crash site.

But Dutch investigators only confirmed there were at least 200 bodies transported from the crash site, according to Jan Tuinder, head of the Dutch delegation

Another Dutch official said investigators were still going through the train cars and it was possible all the crash victims were on the train.

But as of Monday, at least bodies of 16 people were still unaccounted for. Their remains may still be scattered across a debris field spanning several miles.

Bodies landed near orphans

The massive debris field means many residents are traumatized from the ghastly scene.

Children at an orphanage in Rozsypne village were playing outside when the plane exploded. They saw the body of one boy hit the earth.

One of their teachers, Valentina, remembers their horror.

"These are dead bodies!" they screamed, Valentina said.

She points to a large divot in the grass where a woman's body had landed -- not far from where the children were playing.

The industry watchdog Ofcom found fewer than one in seven households installed the feature, which is offered by BT, Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin Media.

The filters block pornographic websites, as well as pages promoting self-harm or drug taking.

The default option was implemented at the behest of the UK government.

In July 2013, Prime Minister David Cameron announced the major UK internet service providers (ISPs) had agreed to offer "unavoidable choice" parental control filters, which block legal pornography and other adult subjects "by default".

New subscribers are offered the filter at the point of sign-up, and must actively choose to disable the parental control service.

However, the Ofcom report found users had overwhelmingly opted-out of the filter.

Of the four main ISPs, all of whom now offer a filter at the point of sign-up, TalkTalk was the only company to persuade more than 10% of people to subscribe.

The percentage of customers taking up the option for each service provider are as follows:

Virgin Media - 4% BT - 5% Sky - 8% TalkTalk - 36%

All new subscribers to the ISPs were offered the "unavoidable choice" option, with the exception of Virgin Media, which only presented the feature to 35% of customers. While BT and Sky launched filter services towards the end of 2013, TalkTalk's HomeSafe option has been in place since May 2011.

Virgin Media launched its filter, Web Safe, in February 2014, past the deadline set by the UK government. Virgin shortfall

The report also found that around 65% of new Virgin Media customers were not being offered the choice of family-friendly network level filtering, "primarily as a result of actions taken by installation engineers".

"The majority of new Virgin Media installations involve an engineer visit. Virgin Media believes that in many cases the engineer runs the broadband activation process and bypasses or ignores the filtering choice," Ofcom said.

"It has recognised that this is a failure in process and indicated it is taking steps to address this gap."

Tom Mockridge, Virgin Media's chief executive, said: "Ofcom's report clearly highlighted where Virgin Media has fallen short in meeting our original commitments.

The man died in Yumen city, Gansu province, on 16 July.

A total of 151 people have been placed under observation, Xinhua news agency says. Authorities have isolated a part of the city centre and three sections of Chijin town which is an hour away.

The man was believed to have caught the infection after contact with a marmot.

Marmots are large, squirrel-type rodents that live in mountainous areas.

The victim is reported to be a 38-year-old man who had fed a dead marmot to his dog.

The deputy head of the hospital where the man died told reporters that the victim had arrived with an increased heart-rate and seemed to be slipping into shock. The hospital has since been quarantined. Grey line The plague

• The plague is one of the oldest identifiable diseases known to man

• Plague is spread from one rodent to another by fleas, and to humans either by the bite of infected fleas or when handling infected hosts

• Recent outbreaks have shown that plague may reappear in areas that have long been free of the disease

• Plague can be treated with antibiotics such as streptomycin and tetracycline

• Madagascar recently recorded 60 deaths from plague

Source: World Health Organization

Grey line

It is not clear from reports how big the four quarantine zones are. Ten checkpoints have been set up around Yumen and Chijin.

Those in quarantine all had contact with the man, Xinhua said. None was showing signs of infection, it said.

Officials have told reporters that the group could be released after nine days of quarantine if no further cases of plague appeared among them.

Yumen is a small city in western Gansu province, which borders Xinjiang. The last reported case of bubonic plague in the city was in 1977, Xinhua said.

Gansu has seen at least five cases of the plague in the last 10 years, according to the agency. Bubonic plague, known as the Black Death when it killed an estimated 25 million people in Europe during the Middle Ages, is now rare.

It is a bacterial disease mainly affecting wild rodents that is spread by fleas. Humans bitten by infected fleas can then develop bubonic plague.

Once bacteria infects the lungs, human-to-human transmission of pneumonic plague can occur through coughing.

A public review into the three person IVF technique has been broadly supportive, says the Department of Health.

But a number of technical and scientific details need to be finalised before the plans go before Parliament.

The move would be restricted to mitochondrial disease, affecting one in 6,500 UK babies born each year.

This may lead to muscle weakness, blindness, and heart failure.

Using the parents' sperm and eggs plus an additional egg from a donor woman should prevent such conditions, say scientists at Newcastle University. Approval details

An expert scientific panel has already suggested there is no evidence the procedure is unsafe but has asked for a number of further investigations to be carried out.

The government expects other details to be finalised in the next few months before the plans are legalised.

A public consultation received nearly 2,000 responses. Ministers agreed that the regulatory body the Human Fertilisation Embryology Authority would consider each application from parents on a case-by-case basis.

And any children born using the procedure would not be able to find out the identity of the mitochondrial donor.

Mitochondria are tiny, biological "power stations" that provide energy to nearly every cell of the body.

As mitochondria are passed down from mother to child, using an extra egg from a donor woman could give the child healthy mitochondria.

'No excuse'

However, it would also result in babies having DNA from two parents and a tiny amount (1%) from the donor as mitochondria have their own DNA.

Opponents say it is unethical and could set the UK on a "slippery slope" to designer babies.

Dr Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust, said: "There is broad public support for making mitochondrial replacement therapy available to patients.

"There is now no excuse for the Government not to table regulations for debate as soon as Parliament returns this autumn, so that the HFEA can licence clinics to treat affected families without delay once it is satisfied that any risks are acceptable."

Sarah Norcross, director of the Progress Educational Trust, said: 'While we welcome the Government's decisions, we are disappointed by the time it has taken to reach this point in the process.

Salvage crews refloated the ship last week so they can move it from its resting place off Giglio Island to the Italian port of Genoa to be dismantled.

On Wednesday morning, the rusting hulk set off into open waters under tow.

Attacked to its sides are the huge steel hollow boxes, or sponsons, that were pumped full of compressed air to give the ship buoyancy.

It's been more than 2½ years since the ship ran aground off Giglio Island with more than 4,200 passengers aboard, killing 32 people in a disaster that drew global attention. The vessel will be towed -- slowly and carefully -- approximately 240 kilometers (150 miles) to Genoa, where it will be broken up. A convoy of 17 boats will travel along with it.

The ship is expected to arrive in Genoa on Sunday. It'll take about two years to dismantle the massive cruise liner.

Environmental concerns prompted the decision to undertake the expensive and difficult process of refloating the Costa Concordia rather than taking it apart on site.

Since the wreck two years ago, 24 metric tons of debris -- including furniture, dishes, food, personal effects and ship parts -- have been recovered from the seabed.

Joseph Wood's execution is scheduled for 23 July.

He argued the state's refusal to name the drugs' maker violated his rights. On Saturday an appeals court agreed, halting the execution.

The case comes as states are having trouble obtaining lethal injection drugs amid a European export ban.

Wood was convicted of the 1989 murders of his estranged girlfriend Debra Dietz and her father Eugene Dietz.

In communications with his lawyers this year, Arizona officials said they would use a two-drug combination of midazolam and hydromorphone to put him to death.

But they declined to provide further identifying information, including the name of the drug's manufacturer, citing a state confidentiality law aimed at protecting the drug makers from reprisal.

In June, Wood sued the state, arguing the refusal to provide the information violated his right under the first amendment to the US constitution to petition the government for a redress of grievances, and asking for the execution be halted.

A US district court based in Arizona ruled against him. But on Saturday the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals barred the state from executing him until it provided the name and origin of the drugs to be used in his execution and the qualifications of the executioners.

"Wood has raised serious questions on the merits as to the positive role that access to lethal-injection drug information and executioner qualifications will have in the public debate on methods of execution," the judges wrote.

"We conclude that Wood has raised serious questions as to whether a first amendment right, in the context of a public execution, attaches to the specific information he requests." Export bans

The state of Arizona appealed to the US Supreme Court, the nation's highest, which on Tuesday ruled the execution could go ahead.

In the past several years there has been what the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals described as a "seismic shift" in America's lethal injection system, as states have struggled to find the drugs they had long used to put convicts to death.

In 2010, the sole US manufacturer of sodium thiopental, a sedative used in lethal injections, stopped producing it. States switched to pentobarbital, also a sedative, but its Danish manufacturer Lundbeck began tightly restricting its distribution to prevent it being used in executions.

The company's shares are up 17 percent for the year, nearly three times the performance of the benchmark Standard & Poor's 500 stock index over the same time. Yet the company remains one of the most significantly underweighted stocks among large cap fund managers, according to a Goldman Sachs report.

Part of the reason for a lack of portfolio manager enthusiasm is that Apple Inc no longer seems to be the hot growth company of old, fund managers say. It has not introduced a truly new device since the iPad in 2010. In 2012, it began paying a dividend, typically a sign of a company whose days of rapid growth are behind it.

Apple reports results for its fiscal third quarter on Tuesday, July 22. Wall Street is expecting revenue of $38 billion in the June quarter, up about 7.5 percent from a year earlier. The company will also provide a forecast for the current quarter: on average, analysts are estimating revenue in the quarter will grow 8 percent to $40.4 billion.

The company's profits come mainly from its line of iPhones, which faces more competition from Samsung and a coterie of up-and-coming Chinese companies such as Huawei and Xiaomi, smartphone makers that are grabbing market share - particularly in Asia - with reasonably priced yet capable devices.

"The company has been in a new-product slump for a while here, and although it's still growing, it's becoming more of a value play than a growth play at this point," said Skip Aylesworth, a co-manager of the Hennessy Technology fund.

Aylesworth has owned Apple shares for 12 of the past 15 years but does not hold any now because the company does not have any new products that can bring about sustainable high growth rates, he said.

"(Apple's) growth doesn't look that exciting when we can buy into a company that is growing 15 to 25 percent," he said. Aylesworth noted he has positions in companies such as SanDisk and Netflix, both of whose revenue has grow by 10 percent or more in their most recent quarters.

Apple is the largest holding in the $622 million Buffalo Growth Fund, where co-portfolio manager Chris Carter said the company's smartphone business should provide sustainable profit increases.

But Carter said Apple's slowed growth in recent years is a factor "potentially scaring off some growth managers," while its dividend may not be enough to attract value managers.

"We are reaching a point of implosion, if we have not already reached it," said Judge Dana Leigh Marks of San Francisco, who has been deciding immigration cases since 1987 and is president of the National Association of Immigration Judges.

The problem, according to judges, lawyers and immigration groups, is the sheer number of cases clogging the courts, due in part to beefed-up law enforcement at the southwestern U.S. border with Mexico.

U.S. immigration courts have a backlog of 375,373 cases, almost 50,000 more than they faced two years ago, according to Justice Department figures.

Marks, one of the 243 judges presiding over 59 immigration courts in the United States, is setting hearing dates as far off as 2018. It now typically takes three to five years for cases to clear the system, judges and lawyers said.

On a recent Wednesday at a crowded immigration court in Arlington, Virginia, a judge was setting February 2017 asylum hearings for juveniles.

Some of the children who appear in court suffer from debilitating illnesses or are scarred from traumas experienced during the journey north, from rape and other injuries to hunger and forced labor by human smugglers.

"It's like conducting death-penalty cases in a traffic court," said Marks, referring to the high volume of cases and often weighty decisions judges face over whether to return children to crime-infested homelands.

The court overload is rising in part because of a flood of unaccompanied minors from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. Fleeing poverty and violence, many risk the trip alone, often trying to reunite with families in the United States.

Unless the flow of migrants from Central America subsides, the U.S. government estimates about 90,000 children will arrive this year, growing to 150,000 next year.

Obama has asked Congress to fund the hiring of 75 more immigration judges and instructed the immigration courts to prioritize children's cases.

Saying his decision was a close call, U.S. District Judge Paul Grewal in San Jose, California, ruled on Monday night that Google must face breach of contract and fraud claims by users of Android-powered devices who had downloaded at least one Android application through Google Play.

Other parts of the lawsuit were dismissed, including claims brought on behalf of account users who switched to non-Android devices from Android devices after Google had changed its privacy policy in 2012 to allow the commingling.

"Like Rocky rising from Apollo's uppercut in the 14th round, plaintiffs' complaint has sustained much damage but just manages to stand," Grewal wrote in a 28-page decision, referring to the film series starring Sylvester Stallone as the boxer Rocky Balboa. Grewal had dismissed two earlier versions of the lawsuit.

Google is based in Mountain View, California, and operates its namesake Internet search engine. It did not immediately respond on Tuesday to a request for comment.

Mark Gardy and Joseph Sabella, lawyers for the plaintiffs, did not immediately respond to similar requests.

The lawsuit arose after Google on March 1, 2012 scrapped a variety of privacy policies for different products, and created a single, unified policy letting it merge user data generated through platforms such as Gmail, Google Maps and YouTube.

Users complained that Google made this change without their consent and with no way to opt out, in a bid to better compete for ad revenue against Facebook Inc and other social media companies "where all of a consumer's personal information is available in one site."

They said this jeopardized their privacy by exposing names, email addresses and geographic locations, increasing the threat of harassment or identity theft by third parties.

That's according to an annual survey from the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) released Tuesday.

Social media companies are the fourth-lowest scoring with consumers after Internet service providers, subscription television companies and airlines. The industry has a score of 71 on a 100 point scale.

Facebook and LinkedIn ranked the lowest of the seven companies surveyed. Twitter didn't fare much better.

But the news is not all bad for social media. All three companies are making consumers happier than they did a year ago: 4.4% happier to be exact, ACSI reports.

"I'm surprised at the movement at the bottom of the industry," ACSI Director David VanAmburg said. "But it remains to be seen if these scores can hold as social media continues to monetize its users."

Facebook gained 8% to 67 (but that increase was before news hit that the giant social network manipulated the News Feeds of users as part of a psychological experiment).

LinkedIn also saw an 8% increase for a score of 67 – its highest to date.

Twitter also scored a new high, up 6% to 69.

Pinterest, on the other hand, had the highest score of any social media company. Its customer satisfaction was up 6% in the past year.