Song by indie artists, used in small movie, wins Oscar

Monday, February 25, 2008 One of last night’s surprise wins at the 80th Academy Awards was Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová winning the Best Original Song Oscar. The song “Falling Slowly” is from the 2006 film Once, which also co-stars Hansard and Irglová. The favorite in the category was Enchanted, a Disney film which received …

Endangered ‘Asian unicorn’ sighted

Thursday, November 14, 2013 On Tuesday, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) announced that a living saola, or “Asian unicorn”, has been photographed in Central Vietnam. The picture was recorded last September by a camera trap placed by the Vietnamese government and the WWF. The saola, an antelope-like animal with long horns, had not …

Errant monkeys draw the ire of Delhi court

Thursday, January 19, 2006 The Delhi High Court expressed its displeasure to the civic authorities on their continued failure to resolve the problem of marauding monkeys in the court premises. The court was in session when the public interest litigation filed by a Supreme Court lawyer was brought to its attention. The petitioner Mr.Nirmal Chopra …

Nigerian President Umaru Yar’Adua reported dead

Thursday, May 6, 2010 Presidential aides and state television announced yesterday that the Nigerian president, Umaru Yar’Adua, died. Yar’Adua ascended to the presidency in 2007, but was later taken ill, and had not been publicly seen for the last few months. He was hospitalised in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, to get inflammated tissue around his heart …

SpaceX scrubs Falcon I rocket launch

Monday, November 28, 2005 SpaceX called off the much-delayed inaugural launch of their new Falcon 1 rocket on Saturday from Kwajalein’s Omelek Island launch site. The intent was to launch the U.S. Air Force Academy’s FalconSat 2 satellite, which will monitor plasma interactions with the Earth’s upper atmosphere and magnetosphere. The launch was delayed, then …

Ayatollah Rafsanjani commemorates Iran-Iraq battle victory

Saturday, May 19, 2007 Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani commemorated the “the glories of the Islamic Revolution, the Sacred Defense in particular” during Friday prayers. He used the occasion “especially at a point when Iran’s defensive powers might be underestimated.” On 24 of May 1982, Iran drove Iraq out of Khorramshahr near its border with Iraq. Ayatollah …

Mary Barra appointed as General Motors chief

Tuesday, December 10, 2013 The United States’s largest car manufacturer General Motors today named Mary Barra as its new chief executive. Barra, 51, will be the first woman to lead a firm in the American auto industry. She has been with General Motors for 33 years, and is currently the global head of product development. …

Yahoo chooses Dublin as location of new European Headquarters

Tuesday, February 15, 2005 Dublin — Yahoo!, the internet portal, today announced it has chosen Dublin, Ireland as the location of its European Headquarters. Ireland beat off stiff competition from other European countries to win the investment. The move is expected to create over 400 jobs – two thirds of which are expected to be …

John Vanderslice plays New York City: Wikinews interview

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 …

Open software developers meet at FOSDEM 2008

Sunday, February 24, 2008 Hundreds of developers of freely licensed and open source software from all over Europe met in Brussels, Belgium this weekend for FOSDEM 2008. The 8th edition attracted considerably more visitors than previous editions, mainly from Belgium and its neighbouring countries the Netherlands, Germany, France and the United Kingdom, but also from …