Wikinews:Briefs/April 15, 2010

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Intro
From Wikinews, the free news source, this is the audio Wikinews brief for Thursday, April 15th, 2010. I'm Dan Harlow and here are today's top stories:

Cyclone in eastern India kills 31 (0:18)
At least 31 people were killed by a cyclone in the North Dinajpur district of West Bengal, India late Tuesday. The storm uprooted trees and destroyed several huts in the North Dinajpur district of the state. The storm snapped telephone and electric wires and 50,000 mud huts were destroyed by the storm.

Civil defense Minister Srikumar Mukherjee reported that hundreds of people suffered injuries in the district, which is nearly 315 miles northeast of Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal. P.K. Dutta, the additional district magistrate, commented that he expected the death toll to rise as information from all affected areas was not yet immediately available.

Volcanic eruption starts on top of Eyjafjallajökull, Iceland (1:02)
People in the area of the Eyjafjallajökull (Aevaloik) glacier in Iceland have been evacuated due to concerns of flooding from meltwater after a volcanic eruption created a large hole in the glacier, as well as a 2 kilometer (1 mi) long fissure that is forming under the glacier. Plumes of steam up to 5,000 feet in altitude could be seen rising over the glacier. The first evacuations began at about 02.00 local time (03.00 UTC) today because earthquakes in the area had pointed to an imminent eruption. Air traffic is prohibited in a large area around the eruption zone.

This is the second such event this year. On March 21th, a volcanic eruption occurred between two nearby glaciers, however, the current eruption appears to be much more powerful.

Over the past 1,100 years, Eyjafjallajökull has erupted three times: in 920, 1612, and between 1821–1823. Each of these incidents directly preceded a major eruption in the nearby subglacial volcano, Katla.

Burial site for Polish president Lech Kaczynski draws objections (2:07)
Thousands of people have taken to the streets of Krakow objecting to plans to bury the Polish president, Lech Kaczynski, at Wawel Castle this Sunday. Burial spaces at Wawel castle are normally reserved for Polish kings and heroes.

Groups of protesters arrived in front of the Archbishop’s of Krakow’s house on Tuesday evening, many holding banners with slogans such as “Are you sure he is equal of the Kings?” and “Not Krakow, Not Wawel”. A further 26,000 people joined a Facebook group titled “No to the Kaczynski’s being buried in Wawel”.

Polish film director Andrzej Wajda voiced his opinion on the plans of the late president’s burial site, saying that "Lech Kaczynski was an ordinary and good man, but there is no reason for him to lie in the Wawel among the kings of Poland and Marshal Jozef Pilsudski [the founder of modern-day Poland]." He continued to comment, saying that the decision had been “misplaced”.

Officials commented on the criticism, saying that the plans were made by both church leaders and the Kaczynski family. The current plans have Kaczynski’s burial place close to Marshal Pilsudski’s crypt.

Several of the world’s leaders and dignitaries are to attend the president's funeral, including US president Barack Obama and Russian leader Dmitry Medvedev.

Somali radio stations stopped from playing music by Islamist militants (3:31)
Somali Islamic militants issued an order 10 days ago to all of that nations radio stations to stop playing music because the programming is seen as un-Islamic. The only stations not in compliance with the ban are a government controlled station and a UN-funded station based in Kenya. Stations that have reported that they complied with the ban did so over fears for their lives.

Since 1991, Somalia has had no functioning government, with militants controlling large parts of the country. The government, which is backed by UN funds and troops from the African Union, only control a small part of the capital city, Mogadishu.

Pop music is popular in Somalia and the ban has been met with heavy criticism but this new ban adds to the militants orders in certain parts of the country banning the watching of films and football.

US Library of Congress plans archive of Twitter (4:28)
The United States Library of Congress plans to create an archive of every "tweet," or post made on Twitter. It announced the move today via Twitter.

Twitter's general counsel Alex MacGillivray told the BBC that he thinks it shows tweets are an interesting part of the historical record citing US President Barack Obama tweeting his election victory in 2008.

The library plans to highlight such historically significant tweets and although the library plans a Twitter archive, it does not indicate a change of the Library of Congress' focus. The library reportedly has 160 terabytes of data already taken from other Internet sources.

On this day in history (5:11)
In 1912 the passenger liner RMS Titanic sank about two hours and forty minutes after colliding with an iceberg, killing over 1,500 people.

Outro
And those are the top headlines for Thursday, April 15th, 2010

This has been the Audio Wikinews brief. To receive the latest news, please visit wikinews.org, presenting up-to-date, relevant, newsworthy and entertaining content without bias. Wikinews is a free service and is funded by your generous donations. Click on the donate link on our homepage to learn how you can contribute. This recording has been released under the Creative Commons 2.5 License.

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