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

 * completed brief

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

 * completed brief

Russia celebrates Victory Day

 * completed brief

Multiple explosions in Russian coal mine, eleven dead

 * completed brief

Oakland A's pitcher Dallas Braden throws perfect game

 * completed brief

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

 * completed brief

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

 * completed brief

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

 * completed brief

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pledges support for Afghanistan

 * completed brief

Over 100 dead in Libyan plane crash

 * completed brief

Explosives investigation at US Embassy in Chile; Pakistani detained

 * completed brief

New Albertan Lieutenant Governor takes office

 * completed brief

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

 * completed brief

Canadian track and field coach Charlie Francis dies at age 61

 * completed brief

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.
 * completed brief

Airport named after late Nigerian President Umaru Yar’Adua

 * completed brief

Five hundred Euro note withdrawn from sale in UK

 * completed brief

Russia agrees to construct Turkish nuclear reactor

 * completed brief

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

 * completed brief

Nigerian ex-governor James Ibori arrested in Dubai

 * completed brief

Russian meeting with Hamas provokes criticism from Israel

 * completed brief

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

 * completed brief

Officials: Plot to kill Indonesian president foiled

 * completed brief

At least 21 dead after coal mine explosion in Chinese mine

 * completed brief

Moscow Metro attack suspects killed by police

 * completed brief

Russian citizen jailed for sending military intelligence to US

 * completed brief

Eight killed in Dagestan, Russia after ambush

 * completed brief

Interim Kyrgyz government retakes buildings after violent protests

 * completed brief

Iraq electroral commission: No fraud found in vote recount

 * completed brief

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

 * completed brief

IMF approves US$1.13 billion loan to Pakistan

 * completed brief

California governor Schwarzenegger presents new budget plan

 * completed brief

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

 * completed brief

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.


 * completed brief

European airline Ryanair fined over ash-triggered flight cancellations

 * completed brief

UK PM Cameron and Scottish First Minister Salmond meet in Edinburgh

 * completed brief

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.