Popular Elsewhere
14:39 UK time, Wednesday, 27 April 2011
A look at the stories ranking highly on various news sites.
Popular Elsewhere can't ignore the royal wedding as it is rising up to the top of most read lists in anticipation for the big day. A few highlights include the report in the Australian that the Palace refused to allow royal footage to be used for an Australian comedy sketch. Meanwhile the Daily Mail's most popular story has pictures of the "spectacular" trial run of the wedding by servicemen and its second most read story dissects "fury" over the wedding's guest list.
Outside news of the royal wedding, a popular article on the New York Times website is asking if self obsession is increasing. To measure this, it looks at a study which monitored song lyrics over three generations. Computer analysis found a trend toward narcissism and hostility in popular music. It showed the words "I" and "me" appear more frequently along with anger-related words, while there's been a corresponding decline in "we" and "us" and the expression of positive emotions. The study concludes that teenagers love themselves more today than ever before.
A popular Economist story looks at the background of animosity between the Chinese government and Tibetan monks. It comes after two Tibetans in their sixties are reported to have died after being beaten by security forces on 21 April. The article highlights a previous death of a monk who set himself on fire as a form of protest. The article says "Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, has accused the police of not even trying to put out the flames that engulfed the young monk".
Time's most read article reports a series of measurements with "ground-penetrating" radar which have revealed a massive deposit of frozen carbon dioxide in Mars. This indicates that a couple of billion years ago, Mars wasn't much different from Earth, complete with rivers that carved huge canyons across the landscape and even oceans. Because open water couldn't have existed without a relatively thick atmosphere, it is thought that most of that Martian atmosphere leaked out into space long ago.
A popular story with Al Jazeera readers is headlined the African Star Wars. It argues that there is a battle commencing between the US and China over African natural resources. On the one hand, Africa increasingly turns to China for economic investment and guidance and on the other the Pentagon is attempting to establish a security base in Africa, named Africom. The article argues the US is seeking to reverse China's geostrategic foothold on Africa at a time when the war for dwindling resources is heightening.
