What's in the news?

Started by Beorning, September 21, 2014, 07:02:11 AM

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Lilias

Quote from: TheGlyphstone on September 25, 2014, 09:17:49 AM
Anyone getting decent coverage of the freaking EBOLA epidemic that's chewing through southern Africa right now?

Believe it or not, Wikipedia seems to have it down pat.
To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.
~Wendell Berry

Double Os <> Double As (updated Feb 20) <> The Hoard <> 50 Tales 2024 <> The Lab <> ELLUIKI

Trieste

Quote from: WikipediaAffected countries have encountered many difficulties in their control efforts. In some areas, people have become suspicious of both the government and hospitals; some hospitals have been attacked by angry protestors who believe that the disease is a hoax or that the hospitals are responsible for the disease. Many of the areas that have been infected are areas of extreme poverty without even running water or soap to help control the spread of disease.

This breaks my heart.




Today's news:

Wildfire in California
"People drink more alcohol on workout days" - workout days being thursday through sunday, according to article
UN security council discusses whether or not some countries should keep using their veto powers "to prevent mass atrocities"
US Treasury makes huge sweeping gesture aimed at tax inversion (which may not actually do anything useful at all)

Hrm.

Ephiral

Something that caught my eye recently: The US has approached Canada to ask for support in a new, long-term Middle East operation, probably targeted at ISIS. And it's pretty much a given that Harper's going to give it to them.

Euron Greyjoy

A pregnant woman was tased and  slammed to the ground, by the police for intervening when they were arresting son. Granted she shouldn't of tried to intervene, but the cops could of done a lot better of a job handling the woman.
"The Devil is in the details, and that's where you'll find me."

"The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.

"There is no such thing as status quo when it comes to relationships. You either come closer together or drift further apart."

https://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=209937.0

Hemingway

Quote from: TheGlyphstone on September 25, 2014, 09:17:49 AM
Anyone getting decent coverage of the freaking EBOLA epidemic that's chewing through southern Africa right now?

Yeah. We get pretty much constant coverage over here in Norway, even in the tabloid press.

Incidentally, since Surge was brought up: We've always had that here ( sold as Urge - Surge was already registered here ). ;D

Beorning

News items from this afternoon's news on Polsat TV channel:

1. The miners' strike at one of Polish coal mines and the new Prime Minister's decision to heed the miner's demands.

2. Catalonia's possible independence vote.

3. The stench problem in one district of Warsaw.

4. The rising popularity of sumo, as well as an interview with Polish female sumo champion.

Some more news from Gazeta.pl:

1. The Poznan councilwoman who intervened in the case of copulating donkeys may get punished by her party.

2. A man in USA beheads an office employee and wounds another one after getting fired.

3. A priest in the town of Klecina refused to consecrate the monument dedicated to the 700th anniversary of the town's founding. The reason is that the monument incorporates "the devil's claw marks" from a local legend.


Oniya

Quote from: Beorning on September 27, 2014, 12:26:19 PM

1. The Poznan councilwoman who intervened in the case of copulating donkeys may get punished by her party.

Would this be the one that separated them, or the one that reunited them?

Quote
2. A man in USA beheads an office employee and wounds another one after getting fired.

Well, that's a change from shootings - has the 'edged weapon' lobby commented yet?  *bets that the NRA (gun lobby) is trying to spin this in some way.*
"Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women.~*~*~Don't think it's all been done before
And in that endeavor, laziness will not do." ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think we're never gonna win this war
Robin Williams-Dead Poets Society ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think your world's gonna fall apart
I do have a cause, though.  It's obscenity.  I'm for it.  - Tom Lehrer~*~All you need is your beautiful heart
O/O's Updated 5/11/21 - A/A's - Current Status! - Writing a novel - all draws for Fool of Fire up!
Requests updated March 17

Kythia

Machetes don't kill people, people kill people.

Over here:

Tory MP defects to UKIP. 
We're gonna bomb ISIS.
Two tourists got killed in Thailand, looks very much like it was by their (missing) friend.
242037

consortium11

Quote from: Kythia on September 27, 2014, 12:40:11 PMTwo tourists got killed in Thailand, looks very much like it was by their (missing) friend.

Do you have a source for this? Pretty much all the news I've read about the story has the investigation going nowhere, lurching from suspect to suspect with the current group under scrutiny being a Thai football team who were at the nightclub.

Beorning

Quote from: Oniya on September 27, 2014, 12:31:03 PM
Would this be the one that separated them, or the one that reunited them?

The one that separated them. It seems that even Law and Justice (the councilwoman's party), while being very conservative, has its limits when it comes to absurdity...

Or, maybe, they just decided to act, because the whole affair got them quite a lot of ridicule.

TheGlyphstone

Quote from: Oniya on September 27, 2014, 12:31:03 PM
Would this be the one that separated them, or the one that reunited them?

Well, that's a change from shootings - has the 'edged weapon' lobby commented yet?  *bets that the NRA (gun lobby) is trying to spin this in some way.*

Fox News insists it was clearly an act of terrorism. :D
Also in Things Right-Wingers Care About, Headline Edition: The Forest service passing an 'unconstitutional' rule about limits on filming federal wilderness, a suspected cop killer is being tracked down, and a CEO quits his job because his young daughter asks him to.

Over at CNN, we have:
-A mass escape from a juvenile detention center
-George Clooney is getting married
-A volcano erupts in Japan
-A school bus carrying a college softball team is hit by a tractor-trailer, with 4 casualties.

ABC enlightens us on:
-George Clooney's wedding
-A report on the air travel network getting back to normal after the Chicago fire
-Minnie Driver buys a house
-An Arizona man trades a $160,000 diamond for $20 worth of weed.

Oniya

Quote from: TheGlyphstone on September 27, 2014, 05:32:47 PM
Fox News insists it was clearly an act of terrorism. :D

Yeah, the amount of variance I saw in the headlines for this story from varying news outlets was extremely revealing.

NY Times:  Fired Man Beheads Co-Worker in Attack at Oklahoma Food Plant
CBS: Police: Woman beheaded at Oklahoma workplace
NewsOK.com:  Oklahoma beheading: Attacker had just been fired from food company, police said
Washington Post: Police: Oklahoma man beheaded former co-worker and attacked another just after his firing
NBC News:  Man Beheaded Co-Worker in Moore, Oklahoma, Workplace Attack: Police
LA Times:  Suspect in co-worker's beheading was recently released from probation
KFOR (a TV news station): FBI investigating claims Oklahoma beheading suspect tried to convert co-workers to Islam
USA Today:  Police: Suspect in Okla. beheading was Muslim convert
FOX News:  Woman Beheaded In Oklahoma By Muslim Convert
"Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women.~*~*~Don't think it's all been done before
And in that endeavor, laziness will not do." ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think we're never gonna win this war
Robin Williams-Dead Poets Society ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think your world's gonna fall apart
I do have a cause, though.  It's obscenity.  I'm for it.  - Tom Lehrer~*~All you need is your beautiful heart
O/O's Updated 5/11/21 - A/A's - Current Status! - Writing a novel - all draws for Fool of Fire up!
Requests updated March 17

Beorning

Not sure if there are any notable things in the news today, so I'll give you one that seems the most controversial: Polish ethics scholar, columnist and, lately, politician, Jan Hartman, causes furor by posting a column on his blog (maintained by the Polityka weekly)that calls for national discussion whether incest should remain forbidden.

The column got quickly removed by Polityka. Hartman's political party, Your Movement, threatens that there will be consequences for him, too... which proves that there are ideas too revolutionary even for a party whose platform was anti-Catholicism and radical social liberalism (YM is pro-LGBT, pro-abortion, pro-marijuana etc).

Trieste

There was a huge thing yesterday about how everyone wants to investigate the NY Fed over their gentle treatment of Goldman Sachs.

I like Elizabeth Warren, so I will share a link that talks about Warren's reaction.

gaggedLouise

Not big news but really weird: just read in a newspaper around here about two Russians engaging in parkour on the Parthenon, climbing, jumping and managing to break down a wall - luckily a medieval supporting wall inside the temple and not part of the truly ancient stone structure. Still can't effing believe they were allowed to do urban acrobatic running in that place...  ::)

Good girl but bad  -- Proud sister of the amazing, blackberry-sweet Violet Girl

Sometimes bound and cuntrolled, sometimes free and easy 

"I'm a pretty good cook, I'm sitting on my groceries.
Come up to my kitchen, I'll show you my best recipes"

Kythia

For reference, this is why we should keep the fucking Elgin Marbles.
242037

gaggedLouise

Quote from: Kythia on October 05, 2014, 11:52:19 PM
For reference, this is why we should keep the fucking Elgin Marbles.

Totally agree -. plus a Swedish officer was involved in blowing up the temple (though he was hired by the Venetians, and it was the Turks that had the bad idea to stack the place with gunpowder)

Good girl but bad  -- Proud sister of the amazing, blackberry-sweet Violet Girl

Sometimes bound and cuntrolled, sometimes free and easy 

"I'm a pretty good cook, I'm sitting on my groceries.
Come up to my kitchen, I'll show you my best recipes"

consortium11

Quote from: gaggedLouise on October 05, 2014, 11:11:02 PM
Not big news but really weird: just read in a newspaper around here about two Russians engaging in parkour on the Parthenon, climbing, jumping and managing to break down a wall - luckily a medieval supporting wall inside the temple and not part of the truly ancient stone structure. Still can't effing believe they were allowed to do urban acrobatic running in that place...  ::)

In had a somewhat similar experience when I was in Corinth several years back; the ruins are pretty much free to walk around and a group of people were using that as an excuse to go all Assassin's Creed on it.

gaggedLouise

*nods* Tourists are breaking off small bits of the Colosseum too, or scrawling graffiti onto the stones, but jumping around on the ruins of an iconic temple is worse in my eyes.

Good girl but bad  -- Proud sister of the amazing, blackberry-sweet Violet Girl

Sometimes bound and cuntrolled, sometimes free and easy 

"I'm a pretty good cook, I'm sitting on my groceries.
Come up to my kitchen, I'll show you my best recipes"

Beorning

The worst thing of that sort I've heard was one Chinese (or Japanese?) tourist signing a wall in some Egyptian tomb...

Beorning

Okay, time for some news catch-up.

Last week, the big news here was Wednesday's vote of confidence in the parliament for the new government, which was preceded by new Prime Minister's, Ewa Kopacz's, expose. The vote of confidence wasn't too interesting - it was obvious that the government would get it. But every new PM's expose is something to look for...

Kopacz didn't do anything too surprising in her expose: as all PMs before her, she made a whole lot of promises she most probably isn't going to keep.  ::) The fun part was that she declared that her government would execute the former government's plan three times faster... which is interesting, considering that the new goverment has many of the same members as the old one. The biggest change is the change of the PM: from Donald Tusk to Kopacz. And, suddenly, Kopacz declares that she's going to do everything that Tusk promised, but much faster. So... does it mean that Tusk was quite lame as the PM? It's an interesting suggestion, considering that Tusk and Kopacz are from the same party and friends in personal life...  ;D

Interesting soundbite from the expose was Kopacz turning to Tusk and saying: "I've got a message for you, Donald - I'm in charge of the government now". Unfortunately, she didn't end that part with a maniacal laughter  ;D

Another interesting thing from that day: shortly after the expose, the leader of the main opposition party (Law and Justice), Jarosław Kaczyński, approached Tusk and congratulated him on the "president of the EU" job. He even shook his hand... which caused total furor in the media, as the bloody rivalry between Kaczyński's LnJ and Tusk's Civic Platform, as well as the personal bitter animosity between the two men, were the central issues of Polish politics for years. With Kaczyński shaking Tusk's hand, media immediately started speculating: will the "Polish-Polish war" be over? Will LnJ and CP stop hating each other's guts and start cooperating finally?

The predictible answer: the handshake didn't change a bit. The two parties are still at each other's throats... And I'd say that it says a lot about our media that they started to deeply analyze *one frigging handshake*.

So, that was last week.

The most striking news of today (and of yesterday's evening) is Anna Przybylska's death. She was an actress, a model, an A-list celebrity, she was beautiful and a fun person... and yet, she just died, being only 36. Of course, there are many people dying every day... but we often somehow assume the celebrities like Przybylska to be immune to that. Such people seem too young, too successful and too happy to just die like that. And yet, it happens. A death like that gives you a pause, somehow... And, of course, it's just sad, especially considering that she left three children behind.

In other news, one of our universities (I think it was Wrocław's Medical University) caused a small controversy, because they cancelled Behemoth's concert that was to take place in a club owned by the university. The reason was the pressure from Catholic groups. Hmmmm.

BTW. Have you heard last week's news of HMS Erebus being found? I think it's interesting. I've read Dan Simmons' The Terror, so I've heard of that mystery... It's interesting to see it finally solved.

Cycle

Ebola, Ebola, and oh look, more Ebola.

Geez.  Give it a rest.


gaggedLouise

#47
The number one subject of talk, gossip and speculation in the papers here today: who's going to be awarded the Nobel prize for literature? The two lowest-odds candidates seem to be Haruko Murakami and Ngugi wa Thiong'o, a patriarch of Kenyan and black African literature often writing about colonialism, black African identity and oppression; runners-up and dark horses include Svetlana Alexeyevich (Belarus, novelist/journalist/oral historian writing about women and families in wartime), Adunis (Syrian poet, a major figure in modern Arabic poetry), Margaret Atwood, Philip Roth, Péter Nadás (Hungarian novelist, grew up during WW2, often writing about war, exile and desire) and...Bob Dylan.

Many of these are folks that return in the buzz around the prize from year to year and there's no shortlist published anywhere beforehand (though there is commercial betting), so it's really a guess up to the point when we know. When I was a kid the award used to be given someone nobody had ever heard of before, the choices could appear really exclusive, but the Academy also makes a point of putting the searchlight on writers from fairly small language areas and nations who haven't had a big break with a wider readership, like the prize to Isaac Bashevis Singer in the 1970s, a wonderful author and splendid storyteller writing in Yiddish (translating his own books into English) but practically unknown to the wider reading world before he was awarded the Nobel. Salman Rushdie would probably have got the prize long ago if it hadn't been for a tricky internal rift in the Academy about how to respond to Khomeiny's fatwa.

Alexeyevich or Adunis might be assisted by the ongoing wars in or near their native countries and the connections from those to what they often write about, but they're both long-running candidate names who are known to have support within the Academy.

Well, in a couple of hours we'll know...The only ones among the hot candidates mentioned that I've read myself are Atwood and Dylan.

(On the contrary, I have seen no speculations at all in the media here about the Peace prize, where the awardee should be named on friday)


Update: None of them, instead the awardee turned out to be the French-Jewish novelist Patrick Modiano (born 1945). Likely something of a compromise choice when two or three other names had garnered their own factions within the house, but that's just my guess about it. I've heard the name of the guy before but haven't read him.

Good girl but bad  -- Proud sister of the amazing, blackberry-sweet Violet Girl

Sometimes bound and cuntrolled, sometimes free and easy 

"I'm a pretty good cook, I'm sitting on my groceries.
Come up to my kitchen, I'll show you my best recipes"

Beorning

Those Nobel Prizes in literature make me feel guilty: I almost never know who the winners are... When you mentioned Margaret Atwood, I thought: hey! Finally, someone whose book I've read!

News from over here:

1. Anna Przybylska's funeral.

2. The continuing rescue action in one of Polish coal mines, after methane fire / explosion that happened there on Monday. One of the miners remains missing, while many other are hospitalized in very bad or even critical condition.

3. Ebola in Spain.

4. Pretty weird news item I've just heard: Polish Episcopate (the bishops and archbishops of Polish Catholic church) heavily criticised the new handbook prepared by Ministry of Education for first-grade students. The Episcopate's criticique mentions issues like:


  • Christianity not being mentioned at all, even in the context of holidays like Christmas or Easter (the holidays themselves are mentioned, but not their Christian meaning),
  • a father of the family being shown as helping his children with homework and doing his house duties (somehow, showing a man doing these kind of things doesn't present the male role properly, according to the bishops),
  • dragons and nymphs being shown in the book (according to the bishops, this means that children are being introduced to magic and the occult),
  • a grandfather on one of the pictures standing awkwardly (the bishops say that there's suggestion that the grandpa is drunk...)

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

5. There's a lot of talk of the Bogowie (Gods) movie. The movie is a biographical piece about Zbigniew Religa, an extremely respected cardiac surgeon and heart transplant pioneer. The movie is receiving an enormous praise from both critics and viewers who have seen it before the official premiere - and it has already won major festival awards. The commercial premiere is tomorrow.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1biE4cOrDPE

I wish there were some English subtitles in that trailer, because it actually is pretty dramatic when you understand what the people are saying...

TheGlyphstone

Is he supposed to look like a serial killer?