News this week

Using various websites' "most popular" function, I'm looking for a good news and a bad news article from each site.

BBC World News:
Good: umm, "World moves to contain swine flu" has the most positive sounding headline of the "most viewed" over each of the past 5 days.
Bad: "Car attack on Dutch royal parade"

Guardian website most viewed:
Good: Revolutionary Espresso Book Machine launches in London
Bad: Southampton will fold in eight days without a buyer

NY Times most emailed:
Good: After 341 Years, British Poet Laureate Is a Woman
Bad: Personal Health: Paying a Price for Loving Red Meat

Economist Most Read:
Good: The American economy: Better than it looks?
Bad: Chrysler: End of the road

To be clear, these aren't all the "top" story on each list, but are chosen to represent as many different stories as is reasonable, using the top 5, top 10 or whatever the website offers. Swine flu dominates all of the lists, obviously.

Podcasts

Not exactly brand new, but they are a very useful thing, to those who use them.

I tend to listen to news based podcasts, such as the NY Times' "Front Page" and "Back Story" or the BBC's "Business Daily". The Guardian's "Guardian Daily" is good for anyone who only wants to listen to one news podcast, that more-or-less mirrors the news priorities of BBC/Channel 4 TV news, or the UK's broadsheet (or former broadsheet) newspapers.

Slate has some very interesting podcasts. I subscribe to their "daily podcast" that includes 6 different areas over the week. My favourite is the political gabfest.

Comedy is also well represented in the land of podcasts. Stephen Fry and David Mitchell each have very succesful podcasts that hardly need promotion, but my favourites are the BBC's "Friday Night Comedy from BBC Radio 4" which includes the News Quiz and the Now Show whenever either is in season, and the Onion's "Onion News Network (Video)" which provides twice-weekly 2-3 minute spoofs of 24-hour news reports. The same videos are available (although not full screen) on their website. A recent example is the story: Prague's Franz Kafka International Named World's Most Alienating Airport

For formula 1, there are fewer (unless you can recommend any) with the BBC providing (under the name Chequered Flag) a race preview and review for each race and Autosport providing occasional (monthly?) chats about the goings on within the sport.