The Week in Pictures: February 09 – February 15, 2016

A fatal train crash in Bavaria, Germany, last week left 11 dead, with another 82 injured, 20 of them in serious condition. Occurring on a blind bend of single-track line near the spa town of Bad Aibling, the two commuter trains collided head-on at a closing speed of over 100mph and neither driver braked before impact. An investigation into why safety mechanisms, particularly the automatic braking systems, failed to prevent the crash was launched. Both drivers were killed in the accident.

The first Primary in the race for the White House took place in New Hampshire, USA, last week with both parties going to the polls. For the Democrats Bernie Sanders took a hugely convincing win against Hillary Clinton getting 60.4% to her 38%, whilst across the aisle for the Republicans Donald Trump, pushed back into second place in the Iowa Caucus, was triumphant getting 35.3%, double his nearest rival. Both non-establishment candidates thus carry momentum with them into South Carolina.

Antonin Scalia, long time hardline conservative Supreme Court Justice, died last week at the age of 79, prompting a fierce partisan political row. Whilst his replacement may be nominated by the sitting President, Barack Obama, the Republican party’s Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell said it should be the next President that should nominate a replacement and obstructionist tactics seem likely to be employed to prevent any replacement being confirmed prior to the November election.

In sports Liverpool demolished the hapless Aston Villa 6-0 in the English Premier League last week with Sturridge, Milner, Can, Origi, Clyne and Toure all scoring against the boys from Birmingham, who remain welded to the bottom place in the league, whilst Liverpool move up to 8th place, the question is can they make it into the top 5 with just 13 games to go? You’ll have to read our daily news page to find out, but in the meantime here’s a look at the big stories we covered over the last week.

1. The Denver Broncos have beaten the favorites Carolina Panthers in Super Bowl 50, but is the greatest QB ever done?

A “just once more” kinda thing… (Photo: AP)

2. Eli Manning’s hilarious face in Super Bowl 50 blew up the internet, but we explain why was that.

Analyzing instead of cheering (Photo: USA Today)

3. Premier League just making fun of bettors and experts of football facts sometimes this season.

Nothing seems to make sense anymore (Photo: Twitter @PremierLeague)

Meanwhile scientists from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory announced last week they had detected the faint ripple in the universe created by the distant impact of two black holes some one hundred years after they were predicted to exist by Albert Einstein. Their success was heralded by the wider scientific community as a breakthrough moment in history with the new field of astronomic detection allowing a far greater understanding of the universe and stellar impact events.