Correction — August 24, 2015 These briefs incorrectly describe BP as ‘British Petroleum’. In fact, such a company has not existed for many years as BP dropped this name when becoming a multinational company. The initials no longer stand for anything. Wikinews Audio Briefs Credits Produced By Turtlestack Recorded By Turtlestack Written By Turtlestack Listen To This Brief Problems? See our media guide. [edit]
Saturday, April 16, 2005 The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has penned a stiff reminder to drug giants Bayer Pharmaceuticals Corp. and GlaxoSmithKline PLC: pull your 15-second “reminder” ad for the erectile dysfunction drug, Levitra, off TV. FDA said there is no evidence Levitra is better than rival drugs Viagra from Pfizer, or Cialis, owned by Eli Lilly and Co., in producing results that make female partners happy. Levitra and Cialis together control about 30…
Sunday, October 4, 2015 Nine people were killed on Thursday by 26-year-old Chris Harper Mercer on the campus of Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon. By various reports seven or nine people were also injured. Officials said Mercer killed himself during the subsequent shootout with police. Mercer began the killing spree in a class where he was a student by shooting the class teacher, and killed eight students in that and at least one other…
Wednesday, February 27, 2008 The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a vault containing millions of seeds from all over the world, saw its first deposits on Tuesday. Located 800 kilometers from the North Pole on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, the vault has been referred to by European Commission president José Manuel Barroso as a “frozen Garden of Eden“. It is intended to preserve crop supplies and secure biological diversity in the event of a worldwide…
Thursday, September 27, 2007 John Vanderslice has recently learned to enjoy America again. The singer-songwriter, who National Public Radio called “one of the most imaginative, prolific and consistently rewarding artists making music today,” found it through an unlikely source: his French girlfriend. “For the first time in my life I wouldn’t say I was defending the country but I was in this very strange position…” Since breaking off from San Francisco local legends, mk Ultra,…
Sunday, December 2, 2007 American heavy metal performer Ozzy Osbourne, who became famous as the lead vocalist for Black Sabbath and later as a solo act, has raised more than US$800,000 for The Sharon Osbourne Colon Cancer Program, founded by his spouse Sharon Osbourne at the Cedars Sinai Hospital, by auctioning off personal items. A number of the items that he auctioned off over the two day period have been seen on his reality TV…
Tuesday, January 24, 2006 January’s second Interview of the Month was with Danny O’Brien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) on 23 January in IRC. The EFF is coming off a series of high-profile successes in their campaigns to educate the public, press, and policy makers regarding online rights in a digital world, and defending those rights in the legislature and the courtroom. Their settlement with Sony/BMG, the amazingly confused MGM v Grokster decision by…
Wednesday, June 11, 2014 Saeb Erekat, head of the Palestinian Negotiation Group, delivered to the UN Security Council on Tuesday a letter from the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, urging the UN to tend to the issue of Palestinian administrative detainees in Israeli prisons who have gone on a hunger strike. He further noted that a new Israeli bill, allowing to force feed hunger strikers, undermines international conventions. The reportedly longest group hunger strike in Palestinian…
Friday, March 3, 2006 The possibility of large-scale protests in the face of the 3,000 journalists covering the Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games, has event organisers and the Government worried. The group “Black GST” – which represents Indigenous Genocide, Sovereignty and Treaty – are planning demonstrations at prominent Games events unless the Government agrees to a range of demands including an end to Aboriginal genocide, Aboriginal Sovereignty and the signing of a treaty. The Black GST…
Sunday, November 27, 2016 More than a year after he was first charged, a judge on Friday sentenced London serial killer Stephen Port to life imprisonment without parole for four murders and a host of poisoning and sexual offences, calling him “wicked and monstrous”. Port was convicted of the murders on Wednesday. Chef Port, 41, was first charged on October 18 last year and made his first court appearance the following day. He initially faced…