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Wikinews:Audio Wikinews/News Briefs/Workspace/archive/May9-15

May 9, 2010
This is the heading for the May 9 show. All files and conversations for this show will take place here. With today being Mother's Day, I'm not sure what my schedule will look like, and, to be honest, mom comes before the show. If I can get a show out, I will, but I'm not going to force myself either.

If, however, someone gets briefs written then I could at least amend the day's stories into the May 10 show, or do just do both shows on Monday (though, I'd rather not). Turtlestack (talk) 02:04, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

No show today
Turtlestack (talk) 03:11, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

May 10, 2010
This is the heading for the May 10 show. All files and conversations for this show will take place here. Today's cut-off time is 22:30 UTC. I will be logged in around 20:00 UTC. If you want to add links to the stories you wish to read / write, please do so.

7.2 magnitude earthquake hits Indonesia

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Football: Chelsea beat Wigan to win fourth Premier League title
'''Oops, I forgot to do this one. Not sure how that slipped my attention.'''

Landmine blast in Chattisgarh, India kills eight

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Russia celebrates Victory Day

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Multiple explosions in Russian coal mine, eleven dead

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Oakland A's pitcher Dallas Braden throws perfect game

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UK elections: Gordon Brown offers resignation to secure Labour-Liberal coalition

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Australian rules football: Traralgon remain only undefeated team after five rounds of 2010 Gippland Football League season

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On this day in history
In 1893, The Supreme Court of the United States rules in Nix v. Hedden that a tomato is a vegetable, not a fruit under the Tariff Act of 1883.

The Tariff Act required a tax to be paid on imported vegetables, but not fruit and the case was an attempt by the Nix family to recover back duties paid under protest to Edward L. Hedden, the Collector of the Port of New York.

Botanically, a tomato is a fruit, however, the court unanimously ruled in favor of the defendant stating that the Tariff Act used the ordinary meaning of the words "fruit" and "vegetable" – where a tomato is classified as a vegetable – not the technical botanical meaning.

Nix has been cited in three Supreme Court decisions as a precedent for court interpretation of common meanings, especially dictionary definitions and in 2005, supporters in the New Jersey legislature cited Nix as a basis for a bill designating the tomato as the official state vegetable.

May 11, 2010
This is the heading for the May 11 show. All files and conversations for this show will take place here. Today's cut-off time is 22:30 UTC. I will be logged in around 20:00 UTC. If you want to add links to the stories you wish to read / write, please do so.

UK elections: David Cameron becomes Prime Minister
Since there is unlikely to be more than these 2 stories going live today, I'm going to push them into tomorrow's show since I really don't like doing just 2 stories at 3 min of total show. Turtlestack (talk) 22:21, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Show canceled due to too little news to report for a show. Turtlestack (talk) 22:21, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

'''Nevermind, I did a show. My dinner wasn't going to be done soon enough because I cant bake a potato in under an hour :)''' Turtlestack (talk) 23:32, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

On this day in history
In the year 330, Byzantium is renamed Nova Roma during a dedication ceremony, but it is more popularly referred to as Constantinople. Why'd they change it? I can't say. People just liked it better that way.

May 12, 2010
This is the heading for the May 12 show. All files and conversations for this show will take place here. Today's cut-off time is 22:30 UTC. I will be logged in around 20:00 UTC. If you want to add links to the stories you wish to read / write, please do so.

 * I'm going to be a bit late with the show today.

At least fourteen dead in Pakistan after drone strikes

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US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pledges support for Afghanistan

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Over 100 dead in Libyan plane crash

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Explosives investigation at US Embassy in Chile; Pakistani detained

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New Albertan Lieutenant Governor takes office

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On this day in history
In 1884, the Czech composer Bedrich Smetana, died in an asylum in Prague.

Smetana was seen as a pioneer in the development of a musical style which became closely identified with his country's aspirations to independent statehood and he is widely regarded in his homeland as the father of Czech music. Internationally he is best known for his opera The Bartered Bride, and for the symphonic cycle "My Fatherland" which portrays the history, legends and landscape of the composer's native land.

Smetana was naturally gifted as a pianist, and gave his first public performance at the age of six and wrote his first piece of nationalistic music during the 1848 Prague uprising, in which he briefly participated.

During the liberal political climate in his country during the 1860's, he threw himself into the musical life of Prague, primarily as a champion of the new genre of Czech opera. His first two operas, The Brandenburgers in Bohemia and The Bartered Bride premiered in 1866, the latter achieving great popularity.

That same year, he became Prague's new Provisional Theatre principal conductor, but the years of his conductorship were marked by controversy. Factions within the city's musical establishment considered his identification with the progressive ideas of Franz Liszt and Richard Wagner at odds to the development of a distinctively Czech opera style.

Smetana soon became ill and a throat infection was followed by a rash and an apparent blockage to the ears which soon rendered him deaf in both ears. A press announcement stated that Smetana had "become ill as a result of nervous strain caused by certain people recently. Soon after, he reluctantly accepted an annual pension of 1,200 gulden and resigned as principal conductor due to his health problems.

It was after this event in his life which he had begun a cycle of six symphonic poems called "My Fatherland" as well as other major works which cemented his reputation as the principal exponent of Czech national music.

However, in 1879, Smetana had written to a friend revealing fears of the onset of madness. By the winter of 1882–83 he was experiencing depression, insomnia, and hallucinations, together with giddiness, cramp and a temporary loss of speech. In October 1883 his behavior at a private reception in Prague disturbed his friends and by the middle of February 1884 he had ceased to be coherent, and was periodically violent. On 23 April his family, unable to nurse him any longer, removed him to the Katerinky Lunatic Asylum in Prague, where he died on 12 May 1884.

According to musicologist John Tyrrell, Smetana's close identification with Czech nationalism, and the tragic circumstances of his last years, have tended to affect the objectivity with which his work has been assessed, particularly in his native land.

Though even in his own homeland the general public was slow to recognize Smetana, he had been twice married, lost three daughters in infancy, and eventually went mad, he laid the groundwork for the flowering of Czech music, paving the way for the even more famous Antonín Dvorák.

May 13, 2010
This is the heading for the May 13 show. All files and conversations for this show will take place here. Today's cut-off time is 20:00 UTC. If you want to add links to the stories you wish to read / write, please do so.

'''It's after 22:30 UTC and I'm not accepting any new stories for today. All stories which are published before the end of the day will be on tomorrow's show.''' Turtlestack (talk) 22:46, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

El Salvador suspended from world football by FIFA

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Canadian track and field coach Charlie Francis dies at age 61

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Madagascar’s leader Andry Rajoelina ‘will not run in polls’

 * using previous articles Madagascar political rivals agree to unity government deal, Madagascar's former opposition leader sworn in as president and Madagascar leader names army officer as prime minister as background to get listeners up to speed on the events.
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Airport named after late Nigerian President Umaru Yar’Adua

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Five hundred Euro note withdrawn from sale in UK

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Russia agrees to construct Turkish nuclear reactor

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KKE: Interview with the Greek Communist Party

 * will add a promo for Iain Macdonald's interview for listeners to visit wikinews.org to read the interview.

On this day in history
The Great Comet of 1861 is discovered by John Tebbutt of Windsor, New South Wales, Australia.

The comet of 1861 interacted with the Earth in an almost unprecedented way. For two days, when the comet was at its closest, the Earth was actually within the comet's tail, and streams of cometary material converging towards the distant nucleus could be seen. By day the comet's gas and dust even obscured the Sun.

By the middle of August the comet was no longer visible to the naked eye, but it was visible in telescopes until May 1862. Measurements made at the time observed it had an elliptical orbit with a period of about 400 years, which would indicate a previous appearance from about the middle of the 15th century, and will make a return in the 23rd century.

As of 1992 this Great Comet had traveled more than 100 AU from the Sun, making it even further away than dwarf planet Eris. It will come to aphelion around 2063.

Comets have been observed since ancient times and have historically been considered bad omens but in reality, they are mostly a loose collections of ice, dust, and small rocky particles, ranging from a few hundred meters to tens of kilometers across. When a comet is close enough to the Sun, it displays a thin, fuzzy, temporary atmosphere called a coma, and sometimes also has a tail. These phenomenon are the result of the solar radiation and the solar wind interacting with the comet nucleus.

As of May 2009, there are a reported 3,648 known comets and this number is steadily increasing. However, this represents only a tiny fraction of the total potential comet population: the reservoir of comet-like bodies in the outer solar system may number one trillion. The number visible to the naked eye averages roughly one per year, though many of these are faint and unspectacular.

May 14, 2010
This is the heading for the May 14 show. All files and conversations for this show will take place here. Today's cut-off time is 22:30 UTC. I will be logged in around 20:00 UTC. If you want to add links to the stories you wish to read / write, please do so.

Huh. So nearly every story is from Russia (what, did someone just get a Moscow Times subscription? lol) and nearly every story has a key player whose name rhymes with "awelkjasdflaWEKFUHDWF" ;) This ought to be a fun one to record.

'''I'm not going to take on any more stories today. This is already a big show and I need to start recording it now.''' Turtlestack (talk) 21:59, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Violence in Bangkok prompts closure of US embassy in Thailand

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Nigerian ex-governor James Ibori arrested in Dubai

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Russian meeting with Hamas provokes criticism from Israel

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India's Anand defends chess world championship title against Bulgarian challenger Topalov

 * completed brief personal note : we need more stories about chess :)

US Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan meets with senators on Capitol Hill

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Officials: Plot to kill Indonesian president foiled

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At least 21 dead after coal mine explosion in Chinese mine

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Moscow Metro attack suspects killed by police

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Russian citizen jailed for sending military intelligence to US

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Eight killed in Dagestan, Russia after ambush

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Interim Kyrgyz government retakes buildings after violent protests

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Iraq electroral commission: No fraud found in vote recount

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On this day in history
To honor the final flight of the Space Shuttle Atlantis, which lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida this afternoon, on this day in history, in 1973, Skylab was launched aboard a modified Saturn V rocket and became the United States' first space station, and the second space station visited by a human crew. The 100-ton space station was in Earth's orbit from 1973 to 1979 and it was visited by crews three times in 1973 and 1974.

Skylab came into existence due to NASA budget cutbacks during the Apollo missions and NASA's plans for further lunar exploration were canceled but the plans for a scientific, Earth-orbiting mission remained. Skylab took form on 8 August 1969, when the McDonnell Douglas Corporation received a contract to convert two existing stages of the Saturn IV rocket into an Orbital Workshop configuration. The Orbital Workshop was renamed "Skylab" as a result of a NASA contest. The orbiter would be coupled with the Apollo Telescope Mount, which was a solar observatory.

Yet, when Skylab was launched, she suffered severe damage during launch.

 * Audio credit The Internet Archive

What had happened was that debris from a lost micrometeoroid shield pinned the remaining solar panel to the side of the station, preventing its deployment and thus leaving the station with a huge power deficit.

The station had to undergo extensive repairs and a spacewalk by the first Skylab crew, which launched 11 days later on 25 May 1973 did an initial flyby of the station to assess the damage.

 * Audio credit The Internet Archive

If the crew were to fail to repair Skylab in time, the plastic insulation inside the station would have melted, releasing poisonous gas and making Skylab completely uninhabitable. However, after numerous spacewalks and coordinating with engineers on the ground, NASA put together a plan to get the station operational.

 * Audio credit The Internet Archive

The crew stayed in orbit with Skylab for 28 days and two additional missions followed on 28 July 1973 and 16 November 1973 with mission durations of 59 and 84 days, respectively. The last Skylab crew returned to the Earth on 8 February 1974.

Skylab orbited Earth 2,476 times during the 171 days and 13 hours of its occupation during the three manned Skylab missions. Astronauts performed ten spacewalks totaling 42 hours 16 minutes. Skylab logged about 2,000 hours of scientific and medical experiments, including eight solar experiments and the Sun's coronal holes were discovered because of these efforts. Many of the experiments conducted investigated the astronauts' adaptation to extended periods of microgravity and each Skylab mission set a record for the amount of time astronauts spent in space.

Skylab was abandoned by human crews in February 1974 because there were no more launch vehicles available to actually reach the station until the Space Shuttle was launched in 1981 and so Skylab was left in a parking orbit that was expected to last at least eight years.

However, before the Shuttle ever went into operation, increased solar activity heated the outer layers of the Earth's atmosphere and thereby increased drag on Skylab, leading to an early re-entry. NASA realigned the station via computer and Skylab's re-entry occurred on 11 July 1979 in an area covering portions of the Indian Ocean and Western Australia.

Debris was found all through this region including The Shire of Esperance which fined the United States $400 for littering, a fine which remained unpaid for 30 years. The fine was paid in April 2009, when radio show host Scott Barley of Highway Radio raised the funds from his morning show listeners and paid the fine on behalf of NASA.

May 15, 2010
This is the heading for the May 14 show. All files and conversations for this show will take place here. Today's cut-off time is 22:30 UTC. I will be logged in around 20:00 UTC. If you want to add links to the stories you wish to read / write, please do so.

'''I'm going to do the show with the stories below. Any new stories that come in will be on tomorrows show.'''

Google mistakenly collects private data from Wi-Fi networks

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IMF approves US$1.13 billion loan to Pakistan

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California governor Schwarzenegger presents new budget plan

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VI Congress of Mayors and Councilors of the O'Higgins Region takes place in Pichilemu, Chile

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Spanish judge suspended over abuse of power charges

 * added "Garzón formally declared the acts of repression committed by the Franco regime to be crimes against humanity, and accounted them in more than one hundred thousand killings during and after the Spanish Civil War. He also ordered the exhumation of 19 unmarked mass graves, one of them believed to contain the remains of the avant-garde poet and playwright Federico García Lorca." Source Wikipedia.
 * added the description of avant-garde and playwright for Federico García Lorca.
 * completed brief

Australian rules football: Leongatha upset Traralgon in round six of 2010 Gippsland Football League season

 * Here's the deal with these Gippsland stories. I'd love to be able to do them more justice, however, Australian rules football is not widely known and even less understood so it's nearly impossible for me (who also has no idea what's going on) to read the scoring from the game. I mean, how do I read "Traralgon keading four goals and four behinds, twenty eight (4-4 (28)) to two goals and six behinds, eighteen (2-6 (18)). Their second quarter tally of ten bahinds was the difference at half time as they lead 5-16 (46) to 5-6 (36)." It just does not read correctly outloud, especially if the listeners (and reader) has no idea what a behind is. Of course, someone can always look this up, but in an audio cast, people need something simple such as Team A won the game by X points after trailing by Y points with Z time to go. That's about the most info you can throw at someone who does not understand the game and still get the point across. I'm not knocking the writer or the sport here, I'm just pointing out why I really can't get to in depth with these Gippsland stories. Now, if I had just a final box score and some player drama (someone broke their leg or the coach was tossed out) then I could maybe start to hook listeners to the sport, but as of now, the scoring is really dry and sounds overly complicated and I'm just gonna read who won and who is leading the ladder.

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European airline Ryanair fined over ash-triggered flight cancellations

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UK PM Cameron and Scottish First Minister Salmond meet in Edinburgh

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On this day in history

 * Music Clip The Internet Archive

In 1252, Pope Innocent IV issues the papal bull ad exstirpanda, which explicitly authorized (and defined the appropriate circumstances for) the use of torture by the Inquisition for eliciting confessions from heretics.'

The bull, which, by the way, is similar to an open letter but with some legal backing, argued that as heretics are "murderers of souls as well as robbers of God’s sacraments and of the Christian faith ...", they are "to be coerced—as are thieves and bandits—into confessing their errors and accusing others, although one must stop short of danger to life or limb."

The bull also introduced some parameters that were to placed on the use of torture:

* One, that it did not cause loss of life or limb * Two, that it was used only once * And three, that the Inquisitor deemed the evidence against the accused to be virtually certain.

The requirement that torture only be used once was effectively meaningless in practice as it was interpreted as authorizing torture with each new piece of evidence that was produced and by considering most practices to be a continuation (rather than repetition) of the torture session.

While the bull did not discuss methods of torture, it is unlikely that victims were coerced by the Inquisition  in the Comfy Chair until lunch time, with only a cup of coffee at eleven.


text:
Thread:Comments:MV Rachel Corrie seized by Israeli Naval Forces/Comments from feedback form - ""This comes after the death of..."/reply (4)

I'd just like to point out that five of the dead were shot in the back. Go ask Turkey.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


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Wikinews:Audio Wikinews/News Briefs/Workspace/archive/May16-22

May 16, 2010
This is the heading for the May 16 show. All files and conversations for this show will take place here. Today's cut-off time is 22:30 UTC. I will be logged in around 20:00 UTC. If you want to add links to the stories you wish to read / write, please do so.

As there are no stories in the newsroom ready for publishing and I already have the show all written and ready to go, I'm closing all new stories and will place anything else published today on tomorrow's show. Turtlestack (talk) 19:19, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Colegio Preciosa Sangre, Pichilemu, amidst other Chilean schools celebrate Student's Day
Okay, this is a summary of the story for the show: (note, this story follows the story of the 16 year old who sailed around the world, hence the lead in):

Meanwhile, young people on dry land celebrated Students' Day in schools across Chile.

Student's Day was created in May 11, 1990 by Chile's Ministry of Education and allows students to engage in fun and team building activites such as live music performances by local bands and an event known as gymkhana which pits teams of students against each other in fun competitions that include threading a needle and eating a pear while playing with a basketball.

In the town of Pichilemu, team Verde edged out team Rojo in these student competitions.

All accross the nation, students enjoyed a wide range of activities, most noteably free food, especially in Parral where Savory's ice cream was given to people in front of the the city's Municipality building.

Meanwhile, the Clerk of the Municipality of Punta Arenas, Orlando Estefó, congratulated students for "making history every day by day, as the main actors in the educational process."

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Hong Kong by-elections start

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Efforts to cap Deepwater Horizon oil spill delayed again

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UK Foreign Secretary meets US Secretary of State in Washington, D.C.

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Canadian military aircraft escort airliner after bomb threat

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Jessica Watson becomes youngest solo sailor to sail the world

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On this day in history

 * Music Credit Polecat Blues

In 1842, the second organized wagon train along the famed Oregon Trail, set out from Elm Grove, Missouri, with more than 100 pioneers. The party was led by Elijah White, a missionary and agent for the United States government in Oregon Country.

The Oregon Trail was one of the main overland migration routes on the North American continent, leading from locations along the Missouri River to the Oregon Country, located in the America's Pacific Northwest region.

The trail was used extensively between 1841 and 1869 by settlers, ranchers, farmers, miners, and business men looking for new opportunities away from the rapidly growing eastern portion of the pre Civil War United States.

To complete the journey in one traveling season most travelers left in April to May as soon as grass was growing enough to support their teams and the trails had dried out after the snow had melted. To meet the constant needs for water, grass, and fuel for campfires the trail followed various rivers and streams and the network of trails required a minimum of road work to be made passable for wagons. People using the trail traveled not only by wagon but also on pack trains, horseback, on foot, by raft, and by boat.

The cost of traveling over the Oregon Trail and its extensions varied from nothing to a few hundred dollars per person. The cheapest way was to hire on to help drive the wagons or herds, allowing one to make the trip for nearly nothing or even make a small profit. Those with capital could often buy livestock in the midwest and drive the stock to California or Oregon for profit.

The journey itself was arduous and filled with many dangers, but the number of deaths on the trail is not known with any precision and there are only wildly varying estimates. The estimates are made even harder by the common practice then of burying people in unmarked graves that were intentionally disguised to avoid them being dug up by animals.

While Indian attacks were a hazard and increased significantly after 1860 when miners and ranchers began fanning out all over the country which, incidentally, often encroached on Indian territory, it was diseases such as cholera that were the main killer of travelers with up to 3% of all travelers dying of the disease in the cholera years of 1849 to 1855.

By the time the first transcontinental railroad by the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific railways was completed in 1869, the use of the trail rapidly diminished, yet one of the main enduring legacies of the Oregon Trail is the expansion of the United States territory to the West Coast. Without the many thousands of United States settlers in Oregon and California and thousands more on their way each year, it is highly unlikely that this would have occurred.

When Elijah White had set out in 1842 with his 100 pioneers, the Oregon Country was subject to competing claims by the United States and Britain, but after years of industrial expansion and western migration the territory was admitted to the Union on November 11, 1889.

May 17, 2010
This is the heading for the May 17 show. All files and conversations for this show will take place here. Today's cut-off time is 22:30 UTC. I will be logged in around 20:00 UTC. If you want to add links to the stories you wish to read / write, please do so.

In yesterday's news, nobody died; today, everyone died. :(

'''The show is all written, but I'm going to have to record it a little later this evening. Any new stories that come in (which I doubt since there is nothing in the newsroom) will go into tomorrow's show.''' Turtlestack (talk) 22:55, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

 * OK, I'm starting to record the show now. Sorry today's show is taking longer than usual. Turtlestack (talk) 01:32, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Metal singer Ronnie James Dio dies aged 67
Didn't Tenacious D write a song about this? :)
 * Wasn't this one? :) --Diego Grez return fire 22:55, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Yep, that's the one. I missed them in Vegas by 1 day a few years ago. Would have loved to see them live. Turtlestack (talk) 22:59, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

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Girl aged 7 killed in Detroit, Michigan police raid

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Iran, Turkey, Brazil reach nuclear agreement

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Plane crash in northern Afghanistan kills at least 43

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Bus attack in India kills many

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England defeats Australia and wins 2010 Twenty20 Cricket World Cup

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On this day in history

 * Music credit Je Te Veux (I want you), performed on a Korg Wavestation and Akai S5000 sampler.

In 1866, French composer and pianist, Éric Alfred Leslie Satie, was born in Paris to his father Alfred, a translator, and his English born mother, Jane. At the age of four, Erik's mother died and he was sent, together with his younger brother Conrad, to Honfleur, to live with his paternal grandparents. It was here that he received his first music lessons from a local organist but when his grandmother died in 1878, the two brothers were reunited with their father in Paris, who remarried a piano teacher shortly afterwords.

In 1879 Satie entered the Paris Conservatoire, where he was soon labeled untalented by his teachers. Émile Descombes, believed to be one of the last pupils of Frédéric Chopin, called him "the laziest student in the Conservatoire" and he was sent home from the school. In 1886, he resolved to take up military service, but that career did not last long and within a few weeks he left the army through deceptive means.

It was a year later, in 1887, that he started publishing his Gymnopédies which consisted of three short and atmospheric piano compositions. These compositions represent his attempt to cut himself loose from the conventional 19th century "salon music" environment of his father, who had also become a composer, and stepmother.

The name Gymnopédies derives from an anecdote when Satie introduced himself as a "gymnopaedist" in December 1887 to the director of the Chat Noir cabaret, Rodolphe Salis, who in the grand French tradition, was famous for serving sharp comments. Being coerced to mention his profession, Satie, lacking any recognizable professional occupation, presented himself as a "gymnopaedist", supposedly in an attempt to outwit the director.

One of the criticisms of Satie's work was that his harmonizations were erratic, and this is somewhat reflected in his social life and choice of friends in the avant-garde scene of Paris. Satie befriended famous artists such as filmmaker Jean Cocteau, writer Gertrude Stein, the composer Igor Stravinsky and artists Pablo Picasso and Man Ray with whom he helped create the dada sculpture "The Gift", a clothes iron with 14 nails glued to its sole. Satie contributed written work for a range of publications, including the American top culture chronicle Vanity Fair and kept a filing cabinet with a collection of imaginary buildings, which he drew on little cards that he would, occasionally, publish as anonymous small announcements in local journals, offering some of these buildings, such as "castle in lead" for sale or rent.

On 1 July 1925, after years of heavy drinking, Satie died from cirrhosis of the liver. At the time of his death absolutely nobody had ever entered the room he had moved into twenty-seven years earlier. What his friends would discover there, after Satie's burial, had the allure of the opening of the grave of Tutankhamun. Inside, they found four pianos, two of which were back to back, and the others sitting upside-down on top of the other two, a great numbers of umbrellas and seven velvet suits from his Velvet gentleman period.

Though not considered a major composer, his work was a precursor to later artistic movements such as minimalism, repetitive music, and the Theatre of the Absurd.

May 18, 2010
This is the heading for the May 18 show. All files and conversations for this show will take place here. Today's cut-off time is 22:30 UTC. I will be logged in around 20:00 UTC. If you want to add links to the stories you wish to read / write, please do so.

French teacher returns home after being held in Iran for ten months

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Australian rules football: Interview with Andy Thissling, statistician for the Traralgon Football Club senior side

 * completed promo for this interview

Afghanistan: Suicide attackers kill several people in Kabul

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Twelve people dead after blast in north-west Pakistan

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Karzai visits UK for talks with new PM

 *  completed brief and recorded and it's in the show, but, I thought this had gone live and it hasn't yet. I was talking to Mike Moral on IRC about this story and it looked fine, but I jumped the gun on this one. Let me know if this needs to be pulled.  Turtlestack (talk) 01:34, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * OK, the story went live, so it's all good; I just got to it a day early Turtlestack (talk) 03:47, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

On this day in history
It was 30 years ago today that Mount Saint Helens in Washington State erupted causing massive damage to the landscape and killing 57 people, as well thousands of animals and damaging or destroying more than 4 billion board feet of timber, mainly by the lateral blast. The eruption was classified on the 9 point Volcanic Explosivity Index as a VEI 5 event, meaning an event that releases a volume of at least 1 cubic kilometer with immediate exceptional effects on the surrounding area. Such events average about once per 50 years around the globe and Mt. St. Helens was the only significant eruption to occur in the contiguous 48 U.S. states since the 1915 eruption of Lassen Peak in California which was actually slightly more powerful.

The event began back on March 15, 1980 with the detection of Several small earthquakes which indicated that magma may have begun moving below the volcano. Prior to this, Mount. St. Helens had remained dormant from its last period of activity in the 1840s and 1850s. Then on March 18 at 3:45 p.m. local time, a shallow 4.2 magnitude earthquake, centered below the volcano's north flank, signaled the volcano's violent return after 123 years of hibernation.

A gradually building earthquake swarm saturated area seismographs and started to climax at about noon on March 25, reaching peak levels in the next two days, including an earthquake registering 4.5 on the Richter scale. A total of 174 shocks of magnitude 2.6 or greater were recorded during those two days.

Then, on March 27th,

 * Audio clip The Mount St. Helens story (03:49 - 04:15)

Two days later, on March 29th, a second, new crater and a blue flame, probably created by burning gases, was observed on the mountain. Static electricity generated from ash clouds rolling down the volcano sent out lightning bolts that were up to two miles long. Ninety-three separate outbursts were reported on March 30th, and increasingly strong harmonic tremors were first detected on April 1, alarming geologists and prompting Governor Dixy Lee Ray to declare a state of emergency on April 3.

With scientists now in place all around the mountain, predictions of what may happen became more accurate, especially those of David A. Johnston, a volcanologist from the United States Geological Survey.

 * Audio clip The Mount St. Helens story (4:28 - 4:52)

However, not everyone was heading the warnings,

 * Audio clip The Mount St. Helens story (5:46 - 6:00)

For the rest of April and early May a bulge on the mountain was growing 5 to 6 ft per day, and by mid-May it had extended more than 400 feet north. This bulge presumably corresponded to the volume of magma below that was pushing into the volcano, deforming its surface. Geologists announced that sliding of the bulge area was the greatest immediate danger.

Again, David Johnston,

 * Audio clip The Mount St. Helens story (4:53 - 5:12)

Yet, despite the warnings and visible signs of the mountain preparing to erupt, some people who lived in the area had no intention of leaving. Most famously was Harry R. Truman, the owner of Mount St. Helens Lodge at Spirit Lake, right at the base of the mountain.

 * Audio clip The Mount St. Helens story (6:11 - 6:20)

At 7 a.m. on May 18, USGS volcanologist David A. Johnston, who had Saturday night duty at an observation post about 6 miles north of the volcano, radioed in the results of some laser-beam measurements he had made moments earlier. Mount St. Helens' activity that day did not show any change from the pattern of the preceding month. The rate of bulge movement, sulfur dioxide emission, and ground temperature readings did not reveal any unusual changes that might have indicated a catastrophic eruption.

Suddenly, at 8:32 a.m., a magnitude 5.1 earthquake centered directly below the north slope triggered that part of the volcano to slide, approximately 10 seconds after the shock. One of the largest landslides in recorded history, the slide traveled at 110 to 155 miles per hour and moved across Spirit Lake's west arm.

 * Audio clip The Mount St. Helens story (6:52-7:30 / background audio used for following 2 clips)
 * Audio clip The Mount St. Helens story (11:25 - 12:01)
 * Audio clip The Mount St. Helens story (9:26 - 9:30)
 * Audio clip The Mount St. Helens story (7:47 - 8:17)

Most of St. Helens' former north side became a rubble deposit 17 miles long, averaging 150 feet thick. Thousands of trees were torn from the surrounding hillside after the lake was sloshed 800 feet up the hillside. All the water in Spirit Lake was temporarily displaced by the landslide, sending 600-foot high waves crashing into a ridge north of the lake. As the water moved back into its basin, it pulled with it thousands of trees felled by a super-heated wall of volcanic gas and searing ash and rock that overtook the landslide seconds before.

Gary Rosenquist, who was camping 11 miles away from the blast, managed to take a series of photographs of the initial blast, Sallowing scientists to be able to reconstruct the landslide. Rosenquist, and his photographs survived because the blast was deflected by local topography 1 mile short of his location, however, Harry R. Truman and David A. Johnston were not so fortunate; both men were killed in the blast.

The event was the most deadly and economically destructive volcanic eruption in the history of the United States. Fifty-seven people were killed and 200 homes, 27 bridges, 15 miles of railways and 185 miles of highway were destroyed. In all, the cost of the eruption was $1.1 billion dollars in damage.

Then U.S. President Jimmy Carter surveyed the damage and said it looked more desolate than a moonscape. A film crew was dropped by helicopter on St. Helens on May 23 to document the destruction. Their compasses, however, spun in circles and they quickly became lost.

 * Audio clip The Mount St. Helens story (10:27 - 10:43)

In all, Mount St. Helens released 24 megatons of thermal energy, 7 megatons of which was a direct result of the blast. This is equivalent to 1,600 times the size of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan.

The ash fall created some temporary but major problems with transportation, sewage disposal, and water treatment systems. Visibility was greatly decreased during the ash fall, closing many highways and roads. Interstate 90 from Seattle to Spokane was closed for a week and a half. Air travel was disrupted for a few days to 2 weeks as several airports in eastern Washington shut down because of ash accumulation and poor visibility. Over a thousand commercial flights were canceled following airport closures. Fine-grained, gritty ash caused substantial problems for internal-combustion engines and other mechanical and electrical equipment. The ash contaminated oil systems and clogged air filters, and scratched moving surfaces. Fine ash caused short circuits in electrical transformers, which in turn caused power blackouts.

 * Music clip Orange Horizon

Though the area around the eruption was devastated, some life had survived.

 * Audio clip The Mount St. Helens story (15:28 - 15:59)

In the months and years that followed the blast, scientists were given a unique opportunity to study the biology of the landscape and in 1982, President Ronald Reagan and the U.S. Congress established the Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument, a 110,000 acre area around the mountain which would allow the region to gradually return to its natural state. In 1987, the U.S. Forest Service reopened the mountain to climbing, though in 2004 it was closed for 2 years during a period of renewed geological activity.

Mount Saint Helens is still considered an active volcano and though it is unknown when it will erupt again, scientists know it is just a matter of time.

 * Audio clip The Mount St. Helens story (:45 - 1:00)

May 19, 2010
This is the heading for the May 19 show. All files and conversations for this show will take place here. Today's cut-off time is 22:30 UTC. I will be logged in around 20:00 UTC. If you want to add links to the stories you wish to read / write, please do so.

 * 'I was going to use Wikinews investigates: Advertisements disguised as news articles trick unknowing users out of money, credit card information as the feature today and not do a This Day In History but since the article is not going to be used, I will write a This Day In History. However, it may take me awhile so I will probably be posting the show later than usual.' Turtlestack (talk) 00:46, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Same-sex marriage allowed in Portugal

 * completed brief

Wikinews investigates: Advertisements disguised as news articles trick unknowing users out of money, credit card information

 * This is a really cool article - I really want to do something extra with it - maybe sound effects or something unique to really highlight this story.
 * Looks like this article does not meet the Wikinews standards of style and neutrality and it was published prematurely. I was sort of wondering myself about this article - I mean, I really liked it but it not quite seem to fit with what we usually publish either. Maybe someday it will be fixed up, but I agree with the community on why this article should not be published, and therefore I will not add this to today's AW. Turtlestack (talk) 00:44, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
 * That's probably a good idea, at least until the community settles on an acceptable solution. Benny the mascot (talk) 02:04, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree. --Diego Grez return fire 02:28, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Afghan Taleban attacks NATO base; several dead

 * completed brief

Curfew imposed in parts of Thailand

 * completed brief

Investigation into Polish air crash reveals passengers in cockpit

 * completed brief

Oil from Gulf spill reaches major current

 * completed brief

On This Day In History
On the morning of Friday 19 May, Anne Boleyn was judicially executed, not upon Tower Green, but rather, a scaffold erected on the north side of the White Tower, in front of what is now the Waterloo Barracks. She wore a red petticoat under a loose, dark grey gown of damask trimmed in fur and a mantle of ermine.

On 2 May 1536, Anne was arrested and taken to the Tower of London and three days later, Anne and her brother George Boleyn were tried separately in the Tower of London. She was accused of adultery, incest, and high treason.

Anne had been King Henry VIII's second wife, following Catherine whose marriage had been annulled. However, like Catherine, Anne too was unable to bear Henry a son, and thus heir to the throne and so with the help of Thomas Cromwell, the court conspired and spied on her, eventually condemning her with the testimony of a low-born, Flemish musician named Mark Smeaton, whom Cromwell had tortured as well as the testimony of others who claimed she had had an incestuous affair with her brother. She, of course denied all charges, but the so called evidence against her was too persuasive and she was found guilty.

On that spring morning in May, Anne climbed the scaffold and after making a short speech to the crowd, she then knelt upright, in the French style of executions. Her final prayer consisted of her repeating, "To Jesus Christ I commend my soul; Lord Jesus receive my soul."

According to historian Eric W. Ives, her executioner was so taken by Anne that he was shaken, and found it difficult to proceed with the execution. In order to distract her, he shouted, "Where is my sword?" just before killing her so that Anne would never know the sword was coming.

The execution was swift and consisted of a single stroke.

May 20, 2010
This is the heading for the May 20 show. All files and conversations for this show will take place here. Today's cut-off time is 22:30 UTC. I will be logged in around 20:00 UTC. If you want to add links to the stories you wish to read / write, please do so.

Works valued at €100 million stolen from the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris

 * completed brief

YouTube, Facebook blocked in Pakistan

 * completed brief

Surf's up in Chile; championship competition in Pichilemu

 * completed brief

On This Day In History
In 1622, Osman II, also known as Osman the Young, died after ruling as Sultan of the Ottoman Empire after a reign of only 4 years.

Osman II had been born in Istanbul and because his mother paid a lot of attention to his education, he became a known poet and had mastered many languages, including Arabic, Persian, Greek, Latin and Italian. He ascended the throne at the early age of 14 as the result of a coup d'état against his uncle Mustafa I.

Despite his youth, Osman II soon sought to assert himself as a ruler and he personally led the Ottoman invasion of Poland during the Moldavian Magnate Wars. However, during the Battle of Khotyn against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth's army, Osman II was unable to advance any further and by October 9th, due to lateness of the season and after sustaining heavy losses in several assaults on the fortified Commonwealth lines, he was forced to abandon the siege. The battle ended in a stalemate and a treaty was signed which in some sections favored the Ottomans and others the Commonwealth.

Osman II returned home to Istanbul in shame, blaming the cowardice of the Janissaries, who were infantry units that formed the Ottoman sultan's household troops and bodyguards.

Osman II probably became the first Sultan to identify and attempt to tackle the Janissaries as a praetorian institution doing more harm than good to the modern empire, and he closed their coffee shops (which were the gathering points for conspiracies against the throne) and started planning to create a new, loyal and ethnic Turkic army consisting of Anatolian, Mesopotamian  and Egyptian  Turks and Turkmens. The result was a palace uprising by the janissaries, who promptly imprisoned the young sultan.

On May 20th, an executioner was sent to strangle him but when the cord was thrown over his neck, Osman had the presence of mind to slip it with his hand, and knock down the principal executioner; on which his grand vizier, Davut Pasha, seized him by the most sensible part of his body and when Osman fainted with pain he was strangled.

Compression of the testicles was a mode of execution reserved by custom to the Ottoman sultans.

May 21, 2010
This is the heading for the May 21 show. All files and conversations for this show will take place here. Today's cut-off time is 22:30 UTC. I will be logged in around 21:00 UTC. If you want to add links to the stories you wish to read / write, please do so.

I'm going to have to be strict to my schedule today and not do any more stories that might come in. Anything that gets published for today will go into tomorrow's show. Turtlestack (talk) 22:51, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Promo
Mike, if you read the Chile story, I need you to read the part of the promo in red (remember to make it sound as if you are completing my sentence). Record that as a seperate file called EN-AWNB-2010-05-21-promo.ogg

Today on Wikinews : Chile is hit by another aftershock from the March earthquake, Cyclone Laila lashes across India's Eastern coastline, a US scientist creates 'artificial life' and in history, The Naval Battle of Iquique was fought between Chile and Peru.

Today is Friday, May 21st, 2010. I'm Dan Harlow and I'm Mike Morales and this is Wikinews.

BUT

If you want to do the science story, then read these red parts of the promo :

Today on Wikinews : Chile is hit by another aftershock from the March earthquake, Cyclone Laila lashes across India's Eastern coastline, a US scientist creates 'artificial life' and in history, The Naval Battle of Iquique was fought between Chile and Peru.

Today is Friday, May 21st, 2010. I'm Mike Morales and I'm Dan Harlow and this is Wikinews.

Iquique is pronounced e-Key-k

New earthquake hits Chile
A strong earthquake hit Chile at approximately at 14:52 local time on Friday. The United States Geological Survey reported that it reached a magnitude of 5.6, at a depth of 7.3 kilometers with the epicenter located 28 kilometers to the south of Pichilemu, a coastal town in the O'Higgins Region about 165km to the southwest of the capital, Santiago. The University of Chile Geological Survey reported it is most likely an aftershock to the March 11 earthquake.
 * brief written (and will continue to be updated until I record the segment)

Wikinews reporter Diego Grez, who was in Santa Cruz at the time of the tremor, reported that the power went out for approximately 30 minutes and people evacuated their houses quickly. In Pichilemu, the power also went out, but came back in a few minutes. Desperate people quickly ran to the now well-known La Cruz Hill.

Chile's National Emergencies Office has reported no casualties or structural damage.

Cyclone Laila lashes across India's Eastern coastline

 * completed brief

US scientist creates 'artificial life'

 * completed brief

American biologist Craig Venter has announced that he has created the first ever "artificial life form" on Earth at the J. Craig Venter Institute, a U.S. laboratory and research center.

The breakthrough is the culmination of fifteen years of research and builds upon earlier work, research which saw the creation of a synthetic bacterial genome and the transplant of a genome from one species of bacteria into a second. "Synthia", a nickname derived from synthetic lifeform, combines these two techniques to create a "new lifeform".

A genome was created using synthetic chromosomes made from bottles of chemicals, the chromosomes sequenced to create a genome using as a template an existing bacterium. A bacterium from different species then had its own genome removed and the synthetic one transplanted in its place. Venter's achievement is that the new genome switched on and the new cell replicated to create new cells. A process likened to the booting of a computer with a new operating system.

Venter's achievement has been dismissed by some as falling short of a true technolgical breakthrough, claiming that rather than creating a new genome, that he has merely recreated the genome of an existing bacterium: "a technical tour de force" but not breakthrough science, according to Caltech geneticist David Baltimore.

Amongst the possibilities of artificial bacteria talked about are bacteria tailored to solve climate change by taking CO2 out of the atmosphere and to develop new vaccines. More complex organisms could include algae which would both be a source of biofuels and a CO2 remover. This is not, however, the instant solution to the Earth's major problems. Although enough is now known to duplicate a genome, there is insufficient knowledge as to what the role of individual chromosomes within the genome do. Any advances in synthetic biology to design life forms would require a much greater understanding of how the creation of proteins are coded in a genomes chromosomes.

On This Day In History
In May 21, 1879, the Battle of Iquique (e-Key-k) took place in Chile. The Peruvian Huáscar, commanded by Captain Miguel Grau Seminario , managed to sink the Chilean corvette Esmeralda. Esmerelda's commander, Arturo Prat Chacón, died in combat and eventually became Chile's greatest naval hero.

 * Thanks! If you could give me some help with the pronunciations, I'd really appreciate it :) Turtlestack (talk) 21:25, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

OK.
 * Huáscar - Woo-ask-ar
 * Miguel Grau Seminario - Mee-guel Gra-oo Se-mee-nah-rioh
 * Arturo Prat Chacón - Arthur-oh Prat Chac-on

Simple :) --Diego Grez return fire 00:25, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

May 22, 2010
This is the heading for the May 22 show. All files and conversations for this show will take place here. Today's cut-off time is 22:30 UTC. If you wish to contribute to today's show, I need to know before 21:00 UTC. I will be logged in around 20:00 UTC. If you want to add links to the stories you wish to read / write, please do so.

I won't be able to do a show today or tomorrow. A few of you have said you want to write briefs, so please do so here and I will edit in some the stories into the show on Monday. Turtlestack (talk) 19:41, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Volunteers collaborate in reconstruction of Lolol, Chile
Yesterday, the day of the National Monuments of Chile were celebrated, and a group of volunteers travelled to Lolol, a small town located in central Chile, to help with the reconstruction of the city.

"Their attitude is a clear sample of the conscience and love of the Chileans with their legacy," said Oscar Acuña, from the National Monuments Council.

The famous musical group, Bafona, also visited Lolol, and a few other towns that were damaged by the earthquake.

 * I hope this is ok. --Diego Grez return fire 16:26, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

 * The brief is fine, but your full story is even better. No need to edit it down, in my opinion. :) Turtlestack (talk) 18:33, 22 May 2010 (UTC)


text:
Wikinews:Audio Wikinews/News Briefs/Workspace/archive/May23-29

US and South Korea to conduct naval exercises in response to warship sinking

 * completed segment

British ventriloquist Ray Alan dies at age 79

 * I never heard of Ray Alan, but based on his quote to the BBC, I bet he must have been an interesting person.
 * completed segment

State of emergency declared in Kingston, Jamaica

 * completed segment

Australian rules football: 2010 VCFL Country Championship - Bendigo vs. Gippsland

 * completed segment

"Black boxes" pulled from Air India plane wreckage

 * completed segment

Body cemented in barrel found in Toronto harbour

 * completed segment

Nicolaus Copernicus buried again

 * completed segment

California teen becomes youngest to conquer Everest

 * completed segment

May 25, 2010
This is the heading for the May 25 show. All files and conversations for this show will take place here. Today's cut-off time is 22:30 UTC. If you wish to contribute to today's show, I need to know before 21:00 UTC. I will be logged in around 18:00 UTC. If you want to add links to the stories you wish to read / write, please do so.

Slipknot bassist Paul Gray found dead in hotel room at age 38

 * completed segment

New BP oil spill plan

 * completed segment

6.5 magnitude earthquake hits Acre, Brazil

 * completed segment

Ukrainian basketball player Alexander Belostenny dies at age 51

 * completed segment

Musician David Byrne sues Florida governor over campaign song

 * completed segment

Washington politician Dino Rossi to announce US Senate bid

 * completed segment

On this day in history
Today is Towel Day, a tribute to the late author Douglas Adams. Why a towel? According to Chapter 3 of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,

 * Music Credit Divertissement

"A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have "lost". What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with."

— Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

May 26, 2010
This is the heading for the May 26 show. All files and conversations for this show will take place here. Today's cut-off time is 22:30 UTC. If you wish to contribute to today's show, I need to know before 21:00 UTC. I will be logged in around 19:00 UTC. If you want to add links to the stories you wish to read / write, please do so.

 * I'm gonna assume school is out based on the increase in articles here on wikinews :)

Attack occurs in Stavropol, Russia; at least six dead

 * completed segment

Jamaica: Violence kills at least 30

 * completed segment

Plane crashes into Toronto office building

 * completed segment

UK police announce arrest of suspected serial killer

 * this story is grisly and sad
 * completed segment

Oil spill in Alaska closes 800 miles of pipeline

 * completed segment

Oil spilled after ships collide in Singapore

 * No wonder gas is so bloody expensive, gas and oil companies keep spilling the stuff into the ocean.
 * segment completed

Iraqi Airways drops flights to United Kingdom and Sweden

 * completed segment

Irish Senator Kieran Phelan dies at age 60

 * completed segment

Mexican cartoonist Gabriel Vargas dies at 95

 * completed segment

Rollover on Illinois Route 59 in Naperville injures one

 * since when does it make the news that there are lousy drivers in Chicago? j/k :)
 * completed segment

Turkish shopkeeper saves falling toddler

 * completed segment

Volunteers collaborate in reconstruction of Lolol, Chile

 * completed segment

On This Day In History

 * Music Credit Toccata 3 by Girolamo Frescobaldi Girolamo Frescobaldi! What a name! I mean, just say that out loud - (Gear-o-Laam-o Fres-ko-Ball-dee) - I wish that was my name - Today on Wikinews, this is Girolamo Frescobaldi! :) I hereby nominate Girolamo Frescobaldi as the greatest name in all of human history. OK, anyway, for OTDIH, I will continue my series of grisly executions lol, no, seriously though, I'm not morbid, it's just, well, they make for interesting history bits that just also happen to have fair use music on commons that somewhat relates to the subject matter :)''

In 1647, Alse Young became the first person executed for witchcraft in America's original thirteen colonies.

Very little is recorded of Alse Young; her existence is only known through her reputation as a witch. She is believed to have been the wife of John Young, who bought a small parcel of land in Windsor in 1641, sold it in 1649, and then disappeared from the town records. She had a daughter, Alice Young Beamon, who, sadly, would also be accused of witchcraft in nearby Springfield, Massachusetts, some 30 years later.

Like many similar cases of witchcraft, Alse Young was a woman without a son when the accusation was lodged, which implied that she would be eligible to receive through inheritance her husband's estate. Historical record hints at the possibility that there may have also been some sort of epidemic in the town of Windsor in early 1647.

Alse Young was hanged at the Meeting House Square in Hartford, Connecticut, on what is now the site of the Old State House and the second town clerk of Windsor, Matthew Grant, recorded the execution with a May 26, 1647 diary entry, stating simply "Alse Young was hanged."

Witchcraft became punishable by death in the Connecticut Colony in 1642, and this capital offense was backed by references to the King James version of the Bible: Exodus (22:18) saying, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" and Leviticus (20:27) stating, "A man also or woman that hath a familiar spirit, or that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death: they shall stone them with stones: their blood (shall be) upon them."

In Connecticut, the crime of witchcraft was listed as a capital crimes until as late as 1750 when it was finally removed from the law.

May 27, 2010
This is the heading for the May 27 show. All files and conversations for this show will take place here. Today's cut-off time is 22:30 UTC. If you wish to contribute to today's show, I need to know before 21:00 UTC. I will be logged in around 19:00 UTC. If you want to add links to the stories you wish to read / write, please do so.

 * I've been logged in early today but will be heading out for some lunch and will be back on around 21:00 UTC. Turtlestack (talk) 18:06, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

 * This is gonna be a nice, meaty show today - I'm liking the increase in articles being written :) Turtlestack (talk) 20:58, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm recording right now but will keep checking in of any new stories drop Turtlestack (talk) 21:14, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Head of US Minerals Management Service resigns following BP oil spill response

 * completed segment

BP says Gulf oil spill slowed as estimates of oil spilled increase

 * completed segment

Obama to suspend Arctic oil drilling

 * completed segment

Vanuatu hit by 7.2 magnitude earthquake

 * completed segment

Sudanese president sworn in to another term

 * completed segment

Blagojevich defense team wants to restart jury selection in Illinois corruption trial

 * completed segment

Bottled water concerns health experts

 * completed segment

Art Linkletter, creator of "Kids Say the Darndest Things", dies peacefully at 97

 * completed segment

Atlantis lands at Kennedy Space Center

 * audio credit NASA Multimedia Archive
 * adding "STS-132 was commanded by Kenneth Ham, piolited by Dominic A. "Tony" Antonelli, and the four mission specalisists were Garrett Reisman, Michael T. Good (who replaced Karen Nyberg due to a temporary medical condition), Stephen G. Bowen and Piers Sellers. This was at least the second time all of the crew had ridden aboard a previous shuttle mission and was Sellers's third trip to space." source.
 * completed segment

On This Day In History

 * Music Credit The Modest Blue Shawl

In 1884, Max Brod was born in Prague. Although he was a prolific writer in his own right, he is most famous as a friend, biographer, and literary executor of Franz Kafka.

Brod was a German speaking Jew who had studied law at the German Charles-Ferdinand University, graduating in 1907. By 1924 he was already an established writer and also worked as a critic.

In 1939, as the Nazis took over Prague, Brod and his wife Elsa fled to Palestine, settling in Tel Aviv, where he continued to write and worked as a dramaturg for the Israeli national theatre for 30 years. When Elsa died in 1942, Brod was supported by his close companion Felix Weltsch, a friendship which had lasted 75 years from their days in Elementry school in Prague.

However, Brod's most famous friendship was with Franz Kafka, one of the most influential fiction writers of the early 20th century. Brod first met Kafka on October 23, 1902, when both were students at Charles University. Brod had been giving a lecture at the German students' hall on Arthur Schopenhaue when Kafka addressed him after the lecture and accompanied him home.

From then on, Brod and Kafka met frequently, often even daily, and remained close friends until Kafka's death in 1924. Kafka was a frequent guest in Brod's parents' house and it was here that he met his future girlfriend and fiancée Felice Bauer, a cousin of Brod's brother-in-law. Brod, Kafka and Brod's long time friend Felix Weltsch constituted the so-called "close Prague circle" of friends.

Unlike Kafka, Brod rapidly became a prolific, successful published writer. His first novel and fourth book overall, was published in 1908 when he was only 24, and was celebrated in Berlin literary circles as a masterpiece of expressionism.

During Kafka's lifetime, Brod tried repeatedly to reassure Kafka in rejecting his doubts about his own literary efforts, as he unselfishly promoted other writers and musicians, and Brod pushed Kafka to publish his work. Before even a line of Kafka's work had been published, Brod had already praised him as "the greatest poet of our time", ranking with Goethe or Tolstoy.

The two also tried, but failed, to arrange common literary projects but notwithstanding their inability to write in tandem, which stemmed from clashing literary and personal philosophies, they were able to publish one chapter from an attempted travelogue in May 1912, for which Kafka wrote the introduction.

On Kafka's death in 1924 Brod was the administrator of the estate and preserved his unpublished works from incineration despite what was stipulated in the will. He defended this course by saying that when Kafka asked him to burn his papers, he told him he would not carry out this wish, adding, "Franz should have appointed another executor if he had been absolutely and finally determined that his instructions should stand". When Brod fled Prague in 1939, he took with him a suitcase of Kafka's papers, some of which he later edited and published in 6 volumes of collected works.

In 1937 Brod wrote the first biography of Kafka, and he always resisted one-sided interpretation of Kafka, hating the term "Kafkaesque," arguing that it presented a picture of the man and his work contradicted by his own intimate knowledge.

On December 20, 1968, Brod died in Tel Aviv at the age of 84.

May 28, 2010
This is the heading for the May 28 show. All files and conversations for this show will take place here. Today's cut-off time is 22:30 UTC. If you wish to contribute to today's show, I need to know before 21:00 UTC. I will be logged in around 19:00 UTC. If you want to add links to the stories you wish to read / write, please do so.
 * I'm gonna be late today since work ran long and I still have errands and such to do today Turtlestack (talk) 20:11, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
 * WOW! I just realized my show notes for this episode suck. Sorry about that, I guess I just did too much of it off line in Notepad ++ :) Turtlestack (talk) 06:43, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

Experimental aircraft breaks record for hypersonic flight

 * completed segment

US Representative Joe Sestak allegedly offered job by Obama to stay out of Senate election

 * completed segment

Suspected serial killer appears in British court

 * completed segment

At least 65 dead after train derailment in West Bengal, India

 * completed segment

UK Conservative party wins last seat in 2010 general election

 * completed segment

Foxconn under pressure after tenth employee suicide this year

 * completed segment

California Senate prohibits sports drinks in public schools

 * completed segment

NCAA Basketball: University of Connecticut cited for eight major rules violations

 * completed segment

US actor Gary Coleman dies aged 42

 * completed segment

On This Day In History
The Battle of the Eclipse took place at the Halys River in 585 BC between the Medes and the Lydians.

May 29, 2010
I will not be around this weekend due to the holiday. I will be back at the microphone on Monday. Have a good weekend everyone! Turtlestack (talk) 05:03, 29 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I might try these shows if that's ok --RockerballAustralia c 06:06, 29 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Sweet! I can't wait to hear them. Turtlestack (talk) 06:44, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

Promo
done

Today on Wikinews : Guatemala's Pacaya Volcano erupts, the US Supreme Court rejects Rob Blagojeviches motion to delay his corruption trial, Malawis president pardons a jailed gay couple and American Dennis Hpper dies.

Today is Saturday, May 29th, 2010. I'm Patrick Gillett and this is Wikinews.

Pacaya volcano erupts; "state of public calamity" decreed
The Pacaya Volcano has erupted on Friday. The volcano is located 50 kilometers south of the capital of Guatemala, Guatemala City. Throughout the evening and night, volcanic ash has fallen in the municipalities of Amatitlán, Villa Nueva, and Guatemala City.

President Álvaro Colom's government has decreed a State of Public Calamity in the Escuintla, Sacatepéquez and Guatemala departments, for 15 days or more, so the authorities can do their job correctly. The emergency response is being coordinated by the National Coordination for Disaster Reduction.

The eruption was followed by several tremors. All flights in and out of Guatemala City's La Aurora International Airport, have been suspended. The eruption has caused many casualties, among them the death of Aníbal Archila, NOTI7's reporter, who was one of the first reporting the event.

US Supreme Court rejects Blagojevich motion to delay Illinois corruption trial
The US Supreme Court has denied Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich's request to delay his corruption trial after receiving a statement from the federal government in opposition.

The trial is set to begin on June 3, and many of the charges Blagojevich faces are based on a federal honest-services fraud law. He challenged the constitutionality of this law and argued that the trial should be delayed until the high court decides the issue. The request had already been denied by judges in the lower courts.

The Obama administration argued that there was no need to delay the trial pending the Supreme Court's decision. Shortly afterwards, Justice John Paul Stevens rejected the motion.

Malawi President pardons jailed gay couple
Bingu wa Mutharika, President of the African country of Malawi, granted pardons to a gay couple who had been sentenced to 14 years in jail for sodomy and indecency charges. Mutharika, who has in the past dismissed homosexuality as alien, stated that he was releasing the couple on humanitarian grounds.

On Thursday, the President of South Africa condemned the decision of the Malawi courts in a rare dissenting statement stating, "We have condemned the action taken to arrest people in terms of our constitution," in response to questions about the Malawi arrests.

In December, Steven Monjeza, 26, and Tiwonge Chimbalanga, 20, were arrested following a personal engagement ceremony. The men were charged with gross indecency and unnatural acts, based on laws imposed during the British colonial period in Malawi.

US actor Dennis Hopper dies at age 74
American actor, director, and artist Dennis Hopper has died today at the age of 74. He was known to suffer from prostate cancer since October 2009.

He was born Dennis Lee Hopper on May 17, 1936 in Dodge City, California. As a young man, Hopper became interested in acting and eventually became a student of the Actors Studio. He made his first television appearance in 1955, and appeared in two films featuring James Dean, Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and Giant (1956). Over the next ten years, Hopper appeared frequently on television in guest roles, and by the end of the 1960s had played supporting roles in several films. He directed and starred in Easy Rider (1969), winning an award at the Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay as co-writer of the film's script.

Hopper was unable to build on this success for several years, until a featured role in 1979's Apocalypse Now brought him attention. He subsequently received critical recognition for his work in Blue Velvet and Hoosiers, with the latter film garnering him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Hopper's more recent work includes a leading role in the television series Crash

On this day in history
On this day in history, New Zealand explorer Edmund Hillary and Nepalese Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay became the first people to reach the summit of Mount Everest. Their accomplishment was achieved through their being part of an expedition lead by John Hunt.

Using open circuit oxygen, and as the expeditions final attempt, the pair reached hte summit at 11:30am local time.

 * I wish I had an Australian accent! :) Thanks for doing the AW for the weekend - it's great to see more and more interest in the project. I got the file converted to .mp3 and uploaded to PodBean for iTunes as well as uploaded to the Internet Archive.

 * Rockerball, I really like your voice as your pronunciations are clear and is overall very nice to listen to. One thing I'd like to suggest is that you prepare your script in a way that helps you record each segment in a way that allows you to sound a little bit less as if you are reading from a script but rather just having a conversation. Usually what helps me is to read each segment aloud before I record and edit the script to make it sound more conversational. If for some reason I make a stumble, I just do a quick re-record in Audacity.

 * The only other thing is that if you get any background noise, please edit and re-record as it is a bit jarring to the listener.

 * Other than that, please keep at it and remember to have fun with it. Though it may not be all that interesting to you, everyone else on planet Earth absolutely and completely loves an Australian accent and we could pretty much listen for hours with Australian's reading even just the back of a cereal box :) so really play to that strength and give us some of your own personality and unique approach to each recording. Check out the style section on the workspace http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Audio_Wikinews/News_Briefs/Workspace#Style to assist you with fine tuning your recordings.

 * Look forward to today's recording Turtlestack (talk) 18:49, 30 May 2010 (UTC)


text:
Wikinews:Audio Wikinews/News Briefs/Workspace/archive/May30-31

May 30, 2010
This is the heading for the May 30 show. All files and conversations for this show will take place here. Today's cut-off time is 23:30 UTC.

May 31, 2010
This is the heading for the May 31 show. All files and conversations for this show will take place here. Today's cut-off time is 22:30 UTC. If you wish to contribute to today's show, I need to know before 21:00 UTC. I will be logged in around 19:00 UTC. If you want to add links to the stories you wish to read / write, please do so. Turtlestack (talk) 20:18, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

 * BTW, it's an absolutely beautiful day out today so I will be back and forth from the computer to enjoy the nice weather :) Turtlestack (talk) 20:18, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

 * K, I'm recording now and closing new stories. If the Gippsland story drops, I'll add it in tomorrow or even ad it on the outro to this show. Turtlestack (talk) 22:44, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

Nineteen activists killed by Israeli commandos aboard aid convoy bound for Gaza

 * segment completed

Seven policemen killed in Afghanistan after bomb explosion

 * segment completed

Dozens dead after bus accident in Cameroon

 * completed segment

6.4 magnitude earthquake rocks Andaman Islands

 * We should all be made honorary members of the USGS (wikiquake) because nobody reports on more earthquakes than we do :)
 * completed segment

Scot Dario Franchitti wins Indianapolis 500

 * adding "On February 14, Jamie McMurray won the Daytona 500 driving for a Ganassi team and hours after Franchitti took the checkerd flag and had the ceremonial winner's milk drink, Jamie McMurray took second at the NASCAR Coca Cola 500, just 1 second behind Kurt Busch." : I'm a huge racing fan so this is self reporting with no quoted source since I watched all the races and remember the stats :) Turtlestack (talk) 22:03, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

On This Day In History

 * Music Credit Serenade/Divertimento by Edward Elgar

In 1669, citing poor eyesight, English naval administrator and Member of Parliament Samuel Pepys recorded his last entry in his diary, one of the most important primary sources for the English Restoration period.

Pepys was born on Fleet Street in London in 1633 to his father John, a tailor, and his mother Margaret who was the daughter of a Whitechapel butcher. He was fifth of 11 children but child mortality in the age was high and he was soon the eldest.

From a young age, Pepys suffered from kidney stones in his urinary tract and he was almost never without pain, as well as other symptoms, including "blood in the urine". By the time of his marriage, the condition was very severe and probably had a serious effect on his ability to engage in sexual intercourse.

In 1657, Pepys decided to undergo surgery and upon consulting Thomas Hollier, a surgeon; on 26 March 1658, his operation took place in a bedroom at the house of Pepys's cousin, Jane Turner. This cannot have been an easy option, as the operation was known to be especially painful as well as hazardous, not to mention it would be roughly 200 more years before the use of anesthesia, however, Pepys' stone was successfully removed and he resolved to hold a celebration on every anniversary of the operation, which he did for several years. There were long-term effects from the operation: the incision on his bladder broke open again late in his life, and the procedure may have left him sterile – though there is no direct evidence for this, as he was childless before the operation.

Though his immediate family was of humble origins, his father's first cousin, Sir Richard Pepys, was a member of parliament for Sudbury and for a time Samuel lived with another of his father's cousins, Sir Edward Montagu, who would later be made 1st Earl of Sandwich. Possibly this combination of a hard working, middle class upbringing and influential connections allowed Pepys, who had no maritime experience, to rise by patronage, hard work and his talent for administration, to be the Chief Secretary to the Admiralty under both King Charles II and subsequently King James II.

What sets Pepys apart in history, however, is his diary. Beginning on January 1st, 1660, he recorded his daily life the women he pursued, his friends and his dealings for almost ten years. His diary reveals his jealousies, insecurities, trivial concerns, and his fractious relationship with his wife, Elisabeth de St Michel, a decendent of French Protestant immigrants, whom he married when she was 14 years old. The diary is an important account of London in the 1660s and the juxtaposition of his commentary on politics and national events, alongside the very personal, can be seen from the beginning.

Robert Latham, the editor of the definitive edition of the diary, has remarked that 'His descriptions of the Great Plague of 1665, and of the Great Fire of London in 1666 are agonizingly vivid and achieve their effect by being something more than superlative reporting; they are written with compassion. As always with Pepys it is people, not literary effects, that matter.

His account of the Great Fire of London is quite vivid as he had taken a boat and observed the fire for over an hour. In his diary, Pepys recorded this observation on Sunday, September 2nd 1666 :

"I down to the water-side, and there got a boat and through bridge, and there saw a lamentable fire. Poor Michell's house, as far as the Old Swan, already burned that way, and the fire running further, that in a very little time it got as far as the Steeleyard, while I was there. Everybody endeavouring to remove their goods, and flinging into the river or bringing them into lighters that layoff; poor people staying in their houses as long as till the very fire touched them, and then running into boats, or clambering from one pair of stairs by the water-side to another. And among other things, the poor pigeons, I perceive, were loth to leave their houses, but hovered about the windows and balconys till they were, some of them burned, their wings, and fell down. Having staid, and in an hour's time seen the fire: rage every way, and nobody, to my sight, endeavouring to quench it, but to remove their goods, and leave all to the fire, and having seen it get as far as the Steele-yard, and the wind mighty high and driving it into the City; and every thing, after so long a drought, proving combustible, even the very stones of churches, and among other things the poor steeple by which pretty Mrs.————lives, and whereof my old school-fellow Elborough is parson, taken fire in the very top, an there burned till it fell down"

Pepy's was, after all, also very human and he engaged in a number of extramarital liaisons with various women, which he too chronicled in his diary, often in some detail, and generally using a cocktail of languages (English, French, Spanish and Latin) when relating the intimate details. The most dramatic of these encounters was with Deborah Willet, a young woman engaged as a companion for his wife, Elisabeth. On 25 October 1668 Pepys was surprised by his wife whilst embracing Deborah and he writes that Elisabeth "coming up suddenly, did find me imbracing the girl con my hand sub su coats; and endeed I was with my main in her cunny. I was at a wonderful loss upon it and the girl also...." Following this event, he was characteristically filled with remorse but (equally characteristically) this did not prevent his continuing to pursue Willet when she had been dismissed from the Pepys household.

Throughout the period of the diary, Pepys's health suffered from the long hours he worked. Specifically, he believed that his eyesight had been affected by the work he had done.[52] At the end of May 1669, he reluctantly concluded that, for the sake of his eyes, he should completely stop writing and, from then on, only dictate to his clerks which meant he could no longer keep his diary. Pepys and his wife took a holiday to France and the Low Countries in June–October 1669; on their return, Elisabeth fell ill and died on 10 November 1669. Pepys erected a monument to her in the church of St Olave's, Hart Street, in London.

On May 26, 1703 Pepys died at a house at Clapham owned by his friend William Hewer but his diary, as well as 3,000 volumes of his personal library, still one of the most important surviving 17th century private libraries, is on display at the Pepys Library of Magdalene College, Cambridge.