Wikinews:Briefs/June 3, 2010
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Today on Wikinews : Talks continue in Bonn, Germany for the upcoming climate change conference; Apple sells 2 million iPads, Claude Giroux scores the game winner in game 3 of the Stanley Cup finals and, in history, "Mighty Casey" fails to get the game winner for Mudville in 1888.
Today is Thursday, June 3rd, 2010. I'm Dan Harlow and this is Wikinews.
Script
The second of four preparatory rounds of negotiations leading up to this years United Nations Climate Change Conference continued in Bonn, Germany today. The 4,500 attendees include government delegates from 182 governments, representatives from business and industry, environmental organizations and research institutions.
Among the discussions were a focus on emissions reduction commitments for the 37 industrialized countries that have ratified the Kyoto Protocol for the period beyond 2012.
The talks were designed to discuss issues that were not resolved at the 2009 UN Climate Change Conference which were held in Copenhagen amid mass protests. Between 40,000 and 100,000 people attended the protests in Copenhagen last year and activists claimed that the police had used wire-taps, undercover officers and pepper spray on people who had been detained. In all, 968 protesters were arrested but only 13 were finally charged. Protests had also been held in London, England and Melbourne, Australia.
This year, the United Nations Climate Change Conference will be held in Cancún, Mexico, from 29 November to 10 December
As the world attempts to clean up the environment, Apple is cleaning up in the marketplace as
the company announced on Monday that it has sold over two million iPads, just two months after the device began shipping in the US and only days after its international launch.
Apple shares rose 2.9 percent to US$264.29 Tuesday afternoon. Market analysts also upped price targets and sales estimates in response to the announcement. Shares for AT&T, who provides data plans for the iPad, also rose yesterday.
Prior to the iPad's April 3 launch, many analysts had speculated about the viability and marketability of the device. However, iPad sales have been faster than anticipated. Although it was only expected to sell one million iPads for the whole quarter, Apple announced in early May that it had surpassed the one-million mark in just 28 days. It again surprised industry watchers, who were expecting about 1.6–1.7 million iPads to have been sold when Apple announced that it had passed the two-million mark.
iPad sales may make up over ten percent of Apple's revenue this quarter, a feat that took the iPhone twice as long to achieve. The iPad has been so popular and supplies of the tablet so low that Apple tried to place limits on the number of iPads a person can purchase and postponing sales of the iPad to Europe and Asia until last weekend due to strong demand for the tablet in the US.
While some people are able to watch their favorite television shows on an iPad, many still rely on an old fashioned television, however,
an episode of the British soap opera Coronation Street has been postponed after it was due to air on the same day as a string of shootings in Cumbria occurred killing 12 people and injuring several more. The episode, due to be broadcast on ITV last night, featured a siege and hostage situation heavily involving guns.
The soap was replaced with an episode of Harry Hill’s TV Burp, a comedy program which takes a satirical look at the week in television. ITV released a statement saying they postponed the episode "out of respect to those affected by today's tragedy."
Finally, in sports,
Claude Giroux scored the overtime, game winning goal to lift the Philadelphia Flyers to victory over the Chicago Blackhawks in Game 3 of the 2010 Stanley Cup Finals. The shot came at 5:59 into the overtime period on a redirection off Matt Carle's pass, squeezing the through the right arm and leg of Blackhawks goalie Antti Niemi.
Flyers captain Mike Richards told CBC Sports that the game-winning goal was a big relief to the team. "We came out and played hard," Richards said. "Both teams played extremely well and we were lucky to get the last goal."
Like the first two games, this one was decided by a one-goal margin, but was not an offensive shootout like Game 1 or a defensive standoff as in game 2.
Chicago and Philadelphia will continue the best-of-seven series on Friday night at Philadelphia's Wachovia Center.
On this day in history (4:52)
To honor Detroit Tigers pitcher, Armando Galarraga, who pitched a perfect game yesterday only to have it taken away on a blown call in the ninth inning from umpire Jim Joyce: in 1888, the poem "Casey At The Bat" was published for the first time by Ernest Thayer, a humor columnist for the San Francisco Examiner.
The poem is about an American baseball team from the fictional town of Mudville (implied to be the home team) who are losing by two runs with two outs in their last inning. Both the team and its fans believe they can win "if only" they could somehow get "Mighty Casey" (Mudville's star player) up to bat. However, Casey was scheduled to be the fifth batter of the inning – the first two batters (Cooney and Barrows) did not reach base, while the next two batters (Flynn and Jimmy Blake) were perceived to be weak hitters with little chance of reaching base to allow Casey an at bat.
Surprisingly, Flynn hits a single, and Jimmy Blake follows with a double (Flynn reaching third on the play). Both runners were now in scoring position and Casey represented the potential winning run. However, Casey is so confident in his abilities that he doesn't swing at the first two pitches, both strikes. On the last pitch, the overconfident Casey strikes out, ending the game and sending the crowd home unhappy.
Here is DeWolf Hopper's famous recording of the poem which was released in October 1906.
- Audio credit Casey At The Bat
Outro
And those are the top headlines for Thursday, June 3rd, 2010
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- Audio credit thats_it.wav