Category:May 17, 2010

• Music credit Gymnopédies - la 1ére. lent et douloureux

Today on Wikinews : Maoist rebels in India attack a bus, killing up to 50 people, Iran makes a deal with Turkey over uranium and nuclear fuel, metal singer Ronnie James Dio dies at the age of 67, and in history, French composer and pianist, Erik Satie, is born in Paris in 1866.

Today is Monday, May 17th, 2010. I'm Dan Harlow and this is Wikinews.

Official reports say that Maoist rebels attacked a bus earlier today in central India, killing up to fifty people, according to the Al Jazeera news service, however, the Agence France-Presse news service places the death toll at twenty.

The incident occurred in the Dantewada district of the Chhattisgarh state, when the fighters blew up a landmine underneath the bus. An official said the vehicle, although intended as a regular transport bus, was occupied primarily with security forces.

Violence in Chhattisgarh has increased recently, blamed on an Indian Maoist movement. In October 2009, the Indian government initiated a "massive anti-Maoist offensive" deploying 50,000 troops to several states, though last month alone rebels killed 75 security personnel.

Please visit wikinews.org for the latest on this breaking story.

In Afghanistan today,

An airliner carrying 43 passengers, including six foreigners, is reported to have crashed in the mountains in the northern region of Afghanistan. Authorities say that Pamir Airways flight 112 went down earlier today while on its way from the northern city of Kunduz to the capital, Kabul.

Rescuers were headed to the presumed crash site near the Salang Pass in the Hindu Kush mountains, north of the Afghan capital; however, poor weather conditions, including fog, reportedly hampered an aerial search.

According to Tom Popyk, a Canadian freelance reporter working with the CTV News Channel, he described the region as "... terrain that is very, very difficult to reach,"

Afghan Interior Ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary said NATO-led forces had been asked to help locate the plane using pilotless drones. NATO said in a statement that it had dispatched a manned aircraft to the last known position of the missing plane; two helicopters were also en route to the area.

The privately-owned Pamir Airways began operations in 1995. The Afghan airline has daily domestic flights and also flies to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.

A seven year-old girl was shot and killed Sunday during a police raid in Detroit, Michigan, United States when one of the officer's guns was accidentally set off during an argument with the girl's grandmother, Mertilla Jones. Police were raiding the home in search of a 34 year-old male suspect accused of murdering teenager Jarean Blake near a local liquor store the previous night.

According to police reports, Mertilla Jones got into a verbal confrontation with a police officer, which quickly turned physical. The woman, according to the police, then came into contact with the officer which inadvertently set off the gun that he was carrying. The bullet then struck the girl, Aiyana Jones, in the neck while she was sleeping on the family's couch.

The murder suspect was apprehended later that day. However, the family and public became outraged at the killing of seven year-old Aiyana. In response, the Detroit Police Department held a press conference. Assistant Police Chief Goodbee, speaking on behalf of the Police Chief, who was on vacation at the time of the shooting, said "We cannot undo what occurred this morning [...] All we can do is to pledge an open and full investigation and to support Aiyana's family in whatever way they may be willing to accept from us at this time,"

Meanwhile the girl's father, Charles Jones, was outraged about the incident. Jones described the girl as a "lively, free spirit" and of the police, said that they are falsely accusing his mother of resisting the police, and killing his baby and he wants "someone to tell the truth".

The incident is currently under investigation by the Detroit Police Department. It is not known who fired the shot that killed the girl, or whether or not they will receive any disciplinary action from the department.

Iran, Turkey, and Brazil emerged with an agreement yesterday from talks regarding Iran's nuclear program.

In this new deal, Iran will send its uranium to Turkey for processing in return for nuclear fuel. Turkish foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu revealed the agreement Sunday night, which may alleviate international tensions about Iran's nuclear program. However, he did not specify how much uranium would be transferred, or how the plan will be implemented. Leaders of each country will finalize the plan later today.

The eighteen-hour discussion in Tehran yesterday included Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who acted as a neutral broker in the deal. Lula da Silva also visited Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, although only Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was actively involved in the talks.

Prior to the meeting, many had thought the chance of an agreement slim. Iran, however, seemed to be open to new ideas. Iranian atomic director Ali Akbar Salehi said Saturday that “things are moving along positively” in regard to such proposals. Iran had originally refused to trade its uranium, but seemed to indicate last week that it had changed its mind.

Earlier, Iran denied claims by other countries that it plans to advance its nuclear arms program using enriched uranium, saying that it will be used for energy purposes only. The country had also rejected a previous plan by the United Nations for processing uranium elsewhere.

In the world of sports,

England defeated Australia in the final of the 2010 Twenty20 Cricket World Cup, winning the tournament. England won by 7 wickets at the Kensington Oval in Bridgetown, Barbados to lift the World Cup.

Newly elected UK Prime Minister David Cameron praised the English team as did English Sports Minister Hugh Robertson who commented: "I'm absolutely delighted England have won the World Twenty20. They have played exciting and intelligent cricket and are worthy winners."

For England, this is the first victory in a limited overs championship as they had never won a single one-day or T20 World Cup or the Championship League tournament until this victory.

Finally,

American metal singer Ronnie James Dio died Sunday at the age of 67, as announced by his wife, Wendy. Dio passed at 07:45 (CST) (13:45 UTC) at the Mayo Clinic, an American disease treatment center, after a two-year fight with stomach cancer that caused him to stop singing while he received treatment.

A statement posted on Dio's website by his wife said, "Ronnie knew how much he was loved by all...Please know he loved you all and his music will live on forever."

Dio (born Ronnie James Padavona) was born in July 10, 1942 in the American city of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. He was most noted for his high pitched vocals and lyrical tales involving battles and themes of good versus evil.

He performed with several hard rock and metal groups, but he was most notable for his first act, when he joined as singer of the British metal group Black Sabbath after lead singer and frontman Ozzy Osbourne left the band in 1979. Before Black Sabbath he performed with several less successful bands, including Rainbow, led by former Deep Purple's Ritchie Blackmore.

He also had a very successful solo career under the simple name "Dio", and had recently reunited with former Black Sabbath band mates under the moniker Heaven and Hell.

Dio's hit songs included "Holy Diver", "Neon Knights", and "The Last In Line".

• Music credit Je Te Veux(I want you), performed on a Korg Wavestation and Akai S5000 sampler.

In 1866, French composer and pianist, Éric Alfred Leslie Satie, was born in Paris to his father Alfred, a translator, and his English born mother, Jane. At the age of four, Erik's mother died and he was sent, together with his younger brother Conrad, to Honfleur, to live with his paternal grandparents. It was here that he received his first music lessons from a local organist but when his grandmother died in 1878, the two brothers were reunited with their father in Paris, who remarried a piano teacher shortly afterwords.

In 1879 Satie entered the Paris Conservatoire, where he was soon labeled untalented by his teachers. Émile Descombes, believed to be one of the last pupils of Frédéric Chopin, called him "the laziest student in the Conservatoire" and he was sent home from the school. In 1886, he resolved to take up military service, but that career did not last long and within a few weeks he left the army through deceptive means.

It was a year later, in 1887, that he started publishing his Gymnopédies which consisted of three short and atmospheric piano compositions. These compositions represent his attempt to cut himself loose from the conventional 19th century "salon music" environment of his father, who had also become a composer, and stepmother.

The name Gymnopédies derives from an anecdote when Satie introduced himself as a "gymnopaedist" in December 1887 to the director of the Chat Noir cabaret, Rodolphe Salis, who in the grand French tradition, was famous for serving sharp comments. Being coerced to mention his profession, Satie, lacking any recognizable professional occupation, presented himself as a "gymnopaedist", supposedly in an attempt to outwit the director.

One of the criticisms of Satie's work was that his harmonisations were erratic, and this is somewhat reflected in his social life and choice of friends in the avant-garde scene of Paris. Satie befriended famous artists such as filmmaker Jean Cocteau, writer Gertrude Stein, the composer Igor Stravinsky and artists Pablo Picasso and Man Ray with whom he helped create the dada sculpture "The Gift", a clothes iron with 14 nails glued to its sole. Satie contributed written work for a range of publications, including the American top culture chronicle Vanity Fair and kept a filing cabinet with a collection of imaginary buildings, which he drew on little cards that he would, occasionally, publish as anonymous small announcements in local journals, offering some of these buildings, such as "castle in lead" for sale or rent.

On 1 July 1925, after years of heavy drinking, Satie died from cirrhosis of the liver. At the time of his death absolutely nobody had ever entered the room he had moved into twenty-seven years earlier. What his friends would discover there, after Satie's burial, had the allure of the opening of the grave of Tutankhamun. Inside, they found four pianos, two of which were back to back, and the others sitting upside-down on top of the other two, a great numbers of umbrellas and seven velvet suits from his Velvet gentleman period.

Though not considered a major composer, his work was a precursor to later artistic movements such as minimalism, repetitive music, and the Theatre of the Absurd.

And those are the top headlines for Monday, May 17th, 2010

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