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Victorian Supreme Court Justice Elizabeth Hollingworth speaks about Aiia Maasarwe's murder






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Criminologist speaks about ankle bracelets

Professor Lorana Bartels from the ANU says the ankle bracelet worn by the alleged Darwin shooter was one of 23 parole conditions. Professor Bartels says it's generally better for offenders to be released on parole early than to complete their sentence and be released with no restrictions.




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Criminologist speaks about ankle bracelets

Professor Lorana Bartels from the ANU says the ankle bracelet worn by the alleged Darwin shooter was one of 23 parole conditions. Professor Bartels says it's generally better for offenders to be released on parole early than to complete their sentence and be released with no restrictions.





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Wildlife photographer Matthew Dwyer found dead at base of one of WA's highest peaks

A WA wildlife photographer whose body was found at Bluff Knoll where he previously captured one of his most lauded shots is remembered as a kind, gentle and warm person who honed his craft over 30 years.




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David Brill speaks about filming the 1967 fires



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  • Australia:TAS:Hobart 7000

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Langwarrin toddler Jaidyn Gomes's mother speaks as Brendan Pallant charged with murder

The mother of a two-year-old boy who died in Melbourne's outer-south-east on Monday speaks of her grief as the man charged with his murder is remanded in custody.




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Geriatrician speaks on how we may be able to prevent dementia



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peaks

Sun Yang's former training partner speaks about Chinese swimmer's world championships controversy

Former Commonwealth Games competitor Matthew Levings trained for years alongside Sun Yang. Now the Gold Coast tradie says China's Australian coach, Denis Cotterell, would never train swimmers he knew to be doping.




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Murder victim Danielle Easey's father speaks outside Newcastle court, hopes to face accused

The father of murder victim Danielle Easey says he is waiting to come face-to-face with the man accused of the violent death of his daughter whose body was found wrapped in plastic and dumped in a Newcastle creek.




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Who on Earth speaks English?

Have you ever wondered why everybody in the world doesn't speak the same language? Or at least why we don't all share a common second language? If we did, what language would it be? Listen to why Robert McCrum says that 'Globish', a version of English, is the world's second language. If you like this clip, listen to the full ABC RN documentary by clicking ‘Download Audio' at http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/latenightlive/broken-english/3042354 




peaks

Kim Burrell Speaks on Forgiveness



Kim Burrell gives a mini sermon on Romans 8:28.





peaks

Ahmaud Arbery’s Mother Speaks Out About Her Son’s Killing



She has not been able to watch the horrifying video






peaks

NBA Player Donovan Mitchell Speaks On Being Quarantined With Coronavirus

He also addresses his teammate Rudy Gobert.




peaks

Floyd Mayweather Jr. Speaks Out After Tragic Death Of His Uncle Roger Mayweather

The boxing icon had just lost ex-girlfriend one week prior.




peaks

Ahmaud Arbery’s Mother Speaks Out About Her Son’s Killing



She has not been able to watch the horrifying video




peaks

Today in Black Twitter: Mark Luckie Speaks His Mind



Mark Luckie is tracking the daily trends of "Black Twitter"




peaks

Beyoncé Speaks: 'Pain Is Not Pretty'



The icon opens up — big time — in a rare interview.




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Senator Bernie Sanders speaks out against the Trans Pacific Partnership Trade Agreement to the United States Senate May 12 2015

The Senate considered H.R. 1314, the legislative vehicle for trade promotion authority reauthorization.?It would give the president broad fast-track authority when negotiating trade agreements and require Congress to consider treaties without an amendment process. Senator Bernie Sanders speaks out against this bill before the Senate on May 12, 2015. Continue reading



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peaks

The 2020 Eta Aquarid meteor shower peaks tonight! See 'crumbs' of Comet Halley rain on Earth

The Eta Aquarid meteor shower peaks overnight tonight (May 4), with the best views arriving before dawn on Tuesday (May 5).




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Book week 2019: Jane Setter's Your Voice Speaks Volumes

Welcome to the first review post of Book Week 2019. See the intro to Book Week 2019 to understand more about what I'm doing this week.

I'm starting with the most recent book in the ol' pile of books from publishers:

Your voice speaks volumes
it's not what you say, but how you say it

by Jane Setter
Oxford University Press, 2019


Jane is Professor of Phonetics at the University of Reading (UK) and a recipient of the prestigious National Teaching Fellowship. (As you can see, we are on a first-name basis, as we travel some of the same Public Linguist circles.) I mention the teaching fellowship because it is relevant: Jane is excellent at making linguistics, particularly phonetics, crystal clear for the uninitiated. She uses that talent to great effect in her first book for the general public. 

This book speaks squarely to a general British audience — and to those who want to know more about English-language issues and attitudes in this country. I'm writing this on a day when my social media feed has given me (a) the story of a man wrongly arrested for public drunkenness in Brighton—because the police had mistaken his Liverpool accent for slurring and (b) a misreading of the relevance of accent in the US (as a means to say something about how accents are read in the UK). But I'd have at least two such things to tell you about on any other day when I might have written this post. Accents make the news in Britain because they matter inordinately. Differences that might not be discernible to those from other countries are imbued with layers and layers of meaning and subjected to piles and piles of prejudice. 

As I warned in the intro to Book Week, I have not been able to read the whole book. But I was able to get through much more than I thought I'd be able to in a single evening (four of the seven chapters: 1, 2, 3, 7). Part of my speed was because I could skim the bits that were explaining linguistic facts that I already knew. (That's not to say that the facts here are too basic. I've just had a helluva lotta linguistics education.) But it is a zippy read throughout. Setter uses personal and celebrity stories to demonstrate the everyday relevance of the phonetic and sociolinguistic facts that she's explaining. (Hey look, I seem to revert to last-name basis when I'm reviewing someone's book.) 

The chapters I haven't yet read are those that I'd probably learn the most from: on the use of linguistics in forensic investigations, on voices in performance (including accent training for actors and why singers' accents change in song—which she should know, since she's also a singer in a rock band), and on transgender and synthesized voices. I started with the chapter that relates most to my work ('English voices, global voices') and then went back to the beginning where I was most likely to run into things I already know. That's good from a reviewing perspective, because I can say with confidence that Setter covers well the things that I know need to be covered for her audience. But as I got further into the book, the more unexpected things I learned. I ended in the chapter on women's and men's voices, and I will tell you: I learned some things! To give an example, I liked her interpretation of a study in which women and men were asked to count to ten using various kinds of voices, including 'confident' and 'sexy'. It turns out men generally don't have a 'sexy voice' to put on, while women do, and this might tell us something about what we're sociali{s/z}ed to find sexy—and why.

It's hard to write about sound —and especially about linguistic sounds for a general audience. Writing for linguists is easy, because we have a lot of practice in using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). But you don't want to fill a book for non-linguists with letters that don't make the same sound as they make in English spelling, or letters they've never even seen before. Setter mostly talks about accents without having to get into the kind of phonetic minutiae that excite linguists and make laypeople glaze over. Where she does need technical terms (e.g. lexical sets), she explains them carefully and clearly. But happily for all of us, Setter wrote this book in the internet age. Throughout the book, there are scannable QR codes by which one can hear the sounds she's talking about. (You can get there without a QR reader too, the web URLs are provided.)

For readers of this blog with an interest in US/UK issues, there is plenty of comparison between UK and US and discussion of "Americani{s/z}ation". These are discussed with an assumed familiarity with British Englishes and less with American Englishes.

This book is an important instrument for fighting accentism and other linguistic prejudice in the UK. It might make a nice gift for that person in your life who says they "care deeply about the English language", but really what they mean is "I like to judge other people's use of the English language". 

But more than that, it is a great demonstration of what the study of phonetics can do. I really, really recommend it for A-level students in English (language) and their teachers, as it touches on many of the areas of linguistics taught at that level and would surely inspire many doable research projects. 

Let me just end with: congratulations on this book, Jane!





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Second NYC teen speaks out on 30-hour detention as city officials promise to investigate

Flushing High School junior Arialis Guzman said she “just didn’t get treated right" while police held her and a friend for more than a day in the aftermath of an after school altercation. The teens spent the night of Wednesday, Feb. 12 and much of the next day, Feb. 13, handcuffed to a bench in a Queens police precinct.




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Quiet Kawhi Leonard speaks loudly with backpack initiative for Clippers fans

Fans attending the Clippers game Friday will each receive a backpack with a note from Leonard to use the bag as an agent of change for a good cause.




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Clippers coach Doc Rivers speaks to Rams players about leadership and winning

Clippers coach Doc Rivers spent time Thursday speaking to Rams players and answering questions about winning through teamwork.




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Clarence Thomas speaks and other notable events from the Supreme Court 'tele-arguments'

The court should livestream arguments even after the coronavirus crisis ends.




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Indianapolis native Brendan Fraser speaks out about being groped

Actor Brendan Fraser, who was born in Indianapolis, talks to GQ magazine about being groped in 2003.

      




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'He didn't deserve to die like that': Dreasjon Reed's dad speaks after Facebook Live shooting

The family of Dreasjon "Sean" Reed, who was fatally shot by Indianapolis police, remember him as an energetic young man just getting his start in life

       




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IMPD chief speaks with Dreasjon Reed's family at site of fatal shooting

IMPD Chief Randal Taylor and Dreasjon Reed's family speak during emotional meeting, near where Reed was killed Wednesday in police-action shooting.

       




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AT#524 - Hiking the Peaks of the Balkans (Albania, Kosovo, Montenegro)

Hear about hiking the Peaks of the Balkans trail in Albania, Kosovo, and Montenegro as the Amateur Traveler talks to Dan and Audrey from uncorneredmarket.com about this off the beaten track route in Europe.




peaks

Semiclassical Standing Waves with Clustering Peaks for Nonlinear Schrodinger Equations

Jaeyoung Byeon, KAIST, and Kazunaga Tanaka, Waseda University - AMS, 2013, 89 pp., Softcover, ISBN-13: 978-0-8218-9163-6, List: US$71, All AMS Members: US$56.80, MEMO/229/1076

The authors study the following singularly perturbed problem: (-epsilon^2Delta u+V(x)u = f(u)) in (mathbf{R}^N). Their main result is the...




peaks

First, they erased our name : a Rohingya speaks / Habiburahman with Sophie Ansel ; translated by Andrea Reece.

Habiburahman, 1979-




peaks

Snyder Speaks Out About Search Warrants In Flint Probe

Former Gov. Rick Snyder says news coverage about search warrants being used to get his state-issued cellphone and computer from government storage in the Flint water investigation is "very sloppy and misleading."




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Dance speaks louder than words

OM Arts dancers come to Israel and share their art and testimony with locals.




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Pope Francis speaks up for ‘harshly exploited’ agricultural workers

Vatican City, May 6, 2020 / 05:30 am (CNA).- The coronavirus crisis can be an opportunity to recenter work on the dignity of each person, Pope Francis said in an appeal at the end of his general audience broadcast on Wednesday. 

“On May 1, I received several messages about the world of work and its problems. I was particularly struck by that of the agricultural workers, among them many migrants, who work in the Italian countryside. Unfortunately, many are very harshly exploited,” Pope Francis said May 6.

“It is true that the current crisis affects everyone, but people's dignity must always be respected. That is why I add my voice to the appeal of these workers and of all exploited workers. May the crisis give us the opportunity to make the dignity of the person and of work the center of our concern,” he said. 

Amid fears of a food shortage, the Italian government is currently discussing whether to legalize some undocumented migrant workers. These workers are particularly vulnerable to exploitation with illegal contracts that can pay less than half of Italy’s minimum wage for the agricultural sector.

May 1 is recognized as Labor Day in Italy and many countries throughout Europe, however it is not an official holiday in the Vatican, which instead celebrates the feast of St. Joseph the Worker, established by Pope Pius XII in 1955.

On the feast day, the pope asked St. Joseph to help Catholics fight for dignified work. He prayed that “no one might be without work and all might be paid a just wage.”

Pope Francis said in his Wednesday audience that prayer is “a cry that comes for the heart of those who believe and entrust themselves to God.” The pope began a new cycle of weekly catechesis on May 6 focused on prayer. 

“Not only do Christians pray, they share the cry of prayer with all men and women. But the horizon can still be widened. Paul says that the whole creation ‘groans and suffers the pains of childbirth,’” he said, quoting St. Paul’s letter to the Romans.

“The Catechism states that ‘humility is the foundation of prayer,’” the pope said. “Prayer … comes from our precarious state, from our continuous thirst for God.”

Pope Francis focused his catechesis on the Gospel account of Bartimaeus, the blind beggar from Jericho.

Bartimaeus “uses the only weapon in his possession: his voice. He starts shouting: ‘Son of David, Jesus, have mercy on me,’” the pope explained.

“And Jesus listens to his cry. Bartimaeus' prayer touches his heart, the heart of God, and the doors of salvation are opened for him,” he said. “He recognizes in that poor, helpless, despised man, all the power of his faith, which attracts the mercy and power of God.”

“Stronger than any argument, there is a voice in the human heart that calls out. We all have this voice inside. A voice that comes out spontaneously, without anyone commanding it, a voice that questions the meaning of our journey down here, especially when we are in the dark: ‘Jesus, have mercy on me! Jesus, have mercy on me!’ This is a beautiful prayer,” Pope Francis said.




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Laughter is a language everybody speaks

Participants from around the world learnt to speak the language of love and laughter during an outreach to the indigenous tribes in Panama.




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Schuylkill Speaks: Abbie Kaiser leverages campus success into marketing job

Penn State Schuylkill senior Abigayle Kaiser has embraced leadership roles on campus throughout her undergraduate experience. From Schuylkill Benefitting THON, to the Lion Ambassadors, the Blue & White Society and so much more, Kaiser is a student who did it all. As she nears graduation with a full-time marketing job secured, Kaiser reflects on her time as a Penn Stater.




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Schuylkill Speaks: Business major Morgan Edge triumphs on and off the court

Having transferred to Penn State Schuylkill from another school her sophomore year, current senior Morgan Edge didn’t let a non-traditional start hold her back. She succeeded academically and athletically, captaining the women’s basketball team this year and leading them from an 0-23 season in 2018-19 to a PSUAC playoff berth in 2019-20.




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Schuylkill Speaks: Raquele Amato finds passion for communications at Schuylkill

Few students become more engaged in clubs, academics and student life activities than Raquele Amato. A prominent figure on Penn State Schuylkill’s campus, Amato has served as an officer in more than half a dozen student organizations, swept spring awards ceremonies, worked as a resident assistant, and helped her family run their pizza shop in Frackville, Pennsylvania, all while maintaining a full-time course load. Before she closes the book on her time at Penn State Schuylkill, Amato reflected on her time at the campus and considered what’s next.




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Cybersecurity professional speaks to students via Zoom

Penn State Greater Allegheny’s current students recently joined a virtual conversation about Cybersecurity Analytics and Operations, Greater Allegheny’s newest 4-year program starting this fall.




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Schuylkill Speaks: Senior biology major Steve Shalamanda eyes optometry degree

Senior Steven Shalamanda began his education at Penn State Schuylkill knowing he was interested in becoming an optometrist. But it was this high-achieving biology student’s internship with a local practice that affirmed his vision for the future. In fall 2020, Shalamanda will begin his doctor of optometry program at the Pennsylvania College of Optometry.




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Schuylkill Speaks: Senior Bria Nickerson has heart and mind for criminal justice

Bria Nickerson turned her love of true crime television into a passion for criminal justice. During her time at Penn State Schuylkill, this administration of justice major has distinguished herself in the classroom and as a campus leader, earning her this year's Student Life Chancellor's Award for Student Leadership for contributions to the improvement and advancement of campus life.




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Schuylkill Speaks: Senior Dominique Varra discovers enthusiasm for ornithology

When she began the biology program at Penn State Schuylkill, senior Dominique Varra thought she wanted to study plants. But after conducting field research studying gray catbirds with Luke Redmond, assistant professor of biology, she has discovered a passion for ornithology. And all of her accomplishments have inspired the next generation of scientists, chiefly her five-year-old daughter Hayden, who hopes to follow in her mother’s footsteps.