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Monday, May 18, 2009

Most of the Eurovision entrants have returned home from their sojourn in Moscow, Russia, and the newspapers across Europe have varied opinions. Most national newspapers congratulated their entrants on a job well done, while others trash-talked other entrants, and still others called for their countries to pull out of the Contest.

Here are some interviews, articles and opinions that made it to the front pages of newspapers and to their sanctioned blogs.

Norway’s mass media was filled with stories revolving around the winner, Alexander Rybak, but a secondary story that received press coverage was outcry against NRK‘s Eurovision commentator, Synnøve Svabø, who was criticized for talking incessantly during the event, making leering comments regarding the contents inside the male entrants’ tight pants, and making a joke about stuffing sweatsocks in her own bra. When asked for a statement by Aftenposten, Svabø said, “I guess people think I should have put the socks in my throat.” NRK did not comment on Svabø’s commentating or whether she will be returning next year.

Sweden’s newspaper Aftonbladet wrote that the “Swede of the evening” was not Sweden’s entrant Malena Ernman, but Malmö-raised Arash Labaf, one of the two singers placing third for Azerbaijan. Markus Larsson wrote, “21st place? Well, this is our second-worst result ever…Malena Ernman fell so far and deep that she almost ended up in Finland. That is to say, almost last.” When asked if she was disappointed, Ernman responded, “No, but I am sorry if the Swedes are disappointed.” She went on to quip, “Europe is simply not ready for my high notes.”

Finland, despite placing last, wrote upbeat stories; Helsingin Sanomat published an interview with Waldo and Karoliina from the Finnish act, Waldo’s People, who announced how happy they were to have participated and will be going right back to work with performances and recordings as soon as they return to Finland.

Most British newspapers in past years published lengthy screeds regarding their bad luck in the Contest and whether they should send an entrant at all. This year all that talk subsided, and newspapers published articles congratulating Jade Ewen on her fifth place ranking. Sir Terry Wogan, former Eurovision commentator for the BBC, said to the Daily Express about this year’s voting overhaul, “I think my protest about the voting was totally vindicated by the changes that were made to the scoring this year. It made a real difference. It was the change that Eurovision needed.” One of the headlines in Monday’s Daily Mail reads: “She did us proud.” Andrew Lloyd Webber, who worked with Ewen, said, “Jade performed brilliantly. After years of disappointing results, the UK can finally hold its head high.”

Spain’s newspaper El Mundo published an article entitled “Soraya’s fiasco,” outlining Soraya Arnelas‘s failure to receive points from 37 of the 41 other voting nations, with the writer remarking, “After a whole year trying to forget [Rodolfo Chikilicuatre, Spain’s “joke entrant” from 2008], Soraya jumped on-stage with strength…Spain’s experiment ended with longing [for] Rodolfo Chikilicuatre.” When asked about her performance and the result, Arnelas said, “I’ll hang on to the experiences I had, the great friends that I made and I’m happy because now I’m known in Europe.”

French newspapers and blogs were muted compared to other countries, but the overall feeling was still very supportive of Patricia Kaas, who placed eighth. In an interview with Le Figaro, Kaas said, “Eighth place, that’s not so bad. It was a great moment for France, we held our head high.” France Soir noted, “[Kaas’s] emotion does not seem to have found a place with competitors that have relied on heavy artillery choreography worthy of those like Shakira, and glamorous outfits, to ensure a place on the podium.”

German newspapers published lengthy stories analyzing why Germany was in the bottom quartile for the third straight year. Die Welt wrote, “The Germans have become accustomed to it: winning the Eurovision Song Contest just does not work [for us]. [Compared] to the total failure of last place with No Angels last year, [this] result is almost a sensational success.” Bild commented, “For years we have had little success. Germany’s placement, despite all efforts, will not be better. Why are we still participating in the Eurovision Song Contest?”

Ireland, who failed to make it to the final, led the cry to pull out of Eurovision. In the Irish Independent, Ian O’Doherty wrote, “Ireland managed something quite rare and rather gratifying last week — we actually managed to produce a Eurovision song that didn’t make you want to rip off your own eyelids so you could stuff them in your ears to stop the horrible sounds…[Sinéad] Mulvey’s elimination is proof of one thing: we need to pull out of this pile of rubbish as soon as possible.”

The Netherlands, another nation that did not make it past the semi-final round, has been very apathetic toward the Contest in recent years, and this year was no different. De Telegraaf conducted an opinion poll of Dutch television viewers, and 90% of them believed the Netherlands should not enter the Contest anymore. Despite the stated apathy, 2.5 million Dutch viewers watched De Toppers compete in the second semi-final, an improvement of 800,000 from last year’s semi-final, where Dutch entrant Hind also failed to advance. De Toppers singer Gordon, in an interview with De Telegraaf, said that the Netherlands should continue to compete: “One time, we will succeed.”

Friday, August 17, 2007

Wikinews has compiled the views from various politicians on New Zealand’s latest digital television service, Freeview. Those interviewed were Sue Kedgley, Jonathan Coleman, and Steve Maharey, the broadcasting spokespeople for their respective parties; the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand, the New Zealand National Party, and the New Zealand Labour Party.

Freeview, modelled after the United Kingdom‘s Freeview, is competing directly with New Zealand’s only other digital pay TV provider, Sky Network Television. Sky reaches around 44.5% of New Zealand households. However, unlike Sky, Freeview has no on-going subscription fees, and only has a one-off fee for a set-top box and, if needed, a satellite dish.

The Labour-led Government has provided Freeview with around NZ$25 million over a five-year period to help New Zealand change from the old analogue technology and align itself “as the rest of the world moves to digital television broadcasting,” Mr Maharey said. The funding use is monitored by the Ministry for Culture and Heritage. Dr Coleman also described the same reasons why Freeview was necessary for New Zealand and is supported by the National Party.

However, Ms Kedgley takes a different approach and describes the Freeview service as “a belated and inadequate response to the digital challenge”, but does state that digital TV is the “growth area.” She also said that the Government is now trying to catch up after they scrapped TVNZ’s (Television New Zealand) digital plan, which she describes as far more ambitious.

National, despite being supportive of Freeview, think that the Government has not done a good job with Freeview, describing it as a “white elephant“. Firstly because Dr Coleman says there isn’t enough good programming currently available to get people interested in switching, and, secondly, there hasn’t been a definite date when analogue transmission will be cut off.

Mr Maharey said that the Government is engaging various broadcasters and interested parties to get a definite analogue switch off date, and talk about other various regulatory factors. He expects the date to be within the next six to ten years.

While the Greens do welcome the new government-funded TVNZ channels, a news and current affairs channel and a family-related channel (TVNZ 7 and TVNZ 6 respectively), “The whole exercise however, smacks of too little, too late.” They also say that the amount of funding allocated to new programming cannot pose a threat to Sky. But do support “packaging and marketing […] existing TVNZ content on the emerging digital platforms.” MediaWorks, which runs TV3 and C4, will announce their two new channels in around 18-months. And Triangle TV will add their own channel, Stratos TV, in October, 2007.

National are questioning Mr Maharey why he hadn’t released the viewer number figures. Dr Coleman said that Mr Maharey was trying to distance himself away from the “reality” of what was going on. So Wikinews requested, under the Official Information Act, the amount of set-top boxes sold. The request was denied as Freeview was to release the information themselves in a months time. On August 13 the figures were released, with a total over 21,000. General Manager Steve Browning said that “we’re tracking well ahead of forecast”. Mr Maharey concurred with what Mr Browning said, saying it exceeds their first year expectations.

Ms Kedgley, Dr Coleman, and Mr Maharey all say that they don’t have Freeview, nor know anyone who has the service. Though, Mr Maharey will consider getting it when more channels and the 2008 terrestrial service is launched in eight major New Zealand cities.

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

The American satirist Stephen Colbert has announced that he will run for the Presidency of the United States. He made his announcement on his mock news show The Colbert Report.

However, Colbert said that he would only run in his home state of South Carolina as a favorite son. He also said that he would represent both major political parties: the Republicans and the Democrats. It is not known how far Colbert will go with his character during his electoral run.

Colbert has hosted The Colbert Report, a spin-off to another satirical television series, The Daily Show, since its creation in 2005. “I didn’t have a job back then. I wonder what it was like to have a job back then. I am sure I could ask a dentist or a surgeon. He would know.” On the show he plays a right-wing political pundit, based on real-life pundits such as Bill O’Reilly and Stone Phillips. Colbert has been credited with popularizing certain words such as “Truthiness”, meaning to believe something intuitively, without regard for actual facts, logic or evidence.

Filling in for New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd on Sunday, Colbert wrote: “I am not ready to announce yet — even though it’s clear that the voters are desperate for a white, male, middle-aged, Jesus-trumpeting alternative.”

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

United States Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, has asked for the financial records of six prominent televangelist ministries for possible financial misconduct, CBS News reported. The six groups were led by Paula White, Joyce Meyer, Creflo Dollar, Eddie Long, Kenneth Copeland and Benny Hinn. Half of these people (Hinn, Copeland and Dollar) are members of the Board of Regents for the Oral Roberts University, which is currently being accused of wrong-doing.

Thursday, August 16, 2007

The name Robert Cailliau may not ring a bell to the general public, but his invention is the reason why you are reading this: Dr. Cailliau together with his colleague Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, making the internet accessible so it could grow from an academic tool to a mass communication medium. Last January Dr. Cailliau retired from CERN, the European particle physics lab where the WWW emerged.

Wikinews offered the engineer a virtual beer from his native country Belgium, and conducted an e-mail interview with him (which started about three weeks ago) about the history and the future of the web and his life and work.

Wikinews: At the start of this interview, we would like to offer you a fresh pint on a terrace, but since this is an e-mail interview, we will limit ourselves to a virtual beer, which you can enjoy here.

Robert Cailliau: Yes, I myself once (at the 2nd international WWW Conference, Chicago) said that there is no such thing as a virtual beer: people will still want to sit together. Anyway, here we go.

Friday, February 8, 2008

The United States House of Representatives has passed the bipartisan US$152 billion economic stimulus package that gives one-time rebates to United States citizens, US$600 for individuals or US$1,200 for couples plus US$300 for each child. US$300 checks would be sent to people on low-income including retirees on Social Security which was not included in the original bill backed by President George W. Bush. The plan would begin to decrease rebates for citizens with taxable incomes of US$75,000 for individuals and US$150,000 for couples. The checks would go out to more than a 130 million Americans according to Treasury secretary Henry Paulson.

The House overwhelmingly approved the more broad Senate amended bill which included the low-income portion mentioned above along with provisions that would keep illegal aliens from receiving a rebate check. Despite some opposition from some Congressmen, such as John B. T. Campbell III of California’s 48th congressional district, the plan passed overwhelmingly 380–34.

Campbell called the plan “wealth redistribution” and noted it did not have safeguards to prevent illegals from receiving these rebates and also claimed that stimulus plan would increase the deficit more and noted the cause of the looming recession was because of “credit problems.”

The United States Senate voted hours earlier on the bill which passed in the Senate, 81–16. after having to shed some incentives included by Senate Democrats which caused the bill to fail. Some of the incentives that were left out of the plan in a compromise to gain Republican support were demands for benefits for long-term unemployed workers and stipulation that would allow low-income citizens to pay off heating bills and let home builders pay off losses off the current year against previous tax years.

President Bush approved of the package, noting in a statement, “This plan is robust, broad-based, timely, and it will be effective, this bill will help to stimulate consumer spending and accelerate needed business investment.”

Saturday, February 14, 2009

A car crash on the A614 road, in Nottinghamshire, England has killed six people, all of whom are believed to have lived near the scene of the crash.

All six victims died at the scene of the crash, which involved four young adults in a Peugeot 206 and two elderly people, possibly a male and female, who police believe to be in their 60s, in the other car said to be a Ford Fiesta. Rescue workers fought to save the one of the elderly individuals, but were unsuccessful. Both vehicles collided head-on and exploded upon colliding.

Two police officers on traffic patrol discovered the crash, which took place at 23:00 local time (UTC) yesterday. The officers involved were praised by Bruce Cameron, a superintendent for Nottinghamshire Police. “The bodies are very badly burnt and they will have to be identified using dental records. We want to make sure we are absolutely certain as to who was in both cars when the accident happened,” he said.

Local residents say that the A614 has been the scene of a large number of accidents. One resident, Stuart Stonebridge, told The Daily Telegraph that “we only moved here three years ago and there have been a lot of accidents and some fatalities in that time,” while another resident, Janice Gilbody said that “the people of Bilsthorpe will be in shock, horror and disbelief at the young lives lost.”

Gilbody also said that this accident is “yet again another accident on this road.” She then added that the road was dangerous, saying that “it’s a wonder it doesn’t happen more often.”

The cause of the crash is still under investigation, but police say weather was not a contributing factor.