Hardly news, but I'll miss it

NBC's fantasy White House drama "The West Wing" will end its seven-season run on May 14 with the inauguration of the new president, executive producer John Wells told television critics Sunday.

The election will be covered on April 2 and 9 and viewers will know by the end of the latter episode whether the presidential candidate played by Jimmy Smits or Alan Alda won the election -- a decision the producers "have only really in the last couple days made," at the end of "quite a brawl," Wells told critics at the very last session of Winter TV Press Tour 2006.

The story goes on to say that the producers are doing something I rather hoped they'd do: both killing John Spencer's character, Leo, and keeping in the continuity the last work he did before he died. It just somehow seems...more right this way, to me at least.

(sigh) It was great TV. Less so when Aaron Sorkin wasn't working on it: but great TV nonetheless.

Turkey drops charges against writer

Well, good.

A charge of insulting his country levelled against the Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk was formally abandoned on Monday, ending an embarrassing chapter in Turkish criminal justice that has drawn sharp criticism abroad.

Mr Pamuk’s lawyer said the writer’s trial had been abandoned after a court decided that it could not hear the case after a political decision that it should not be pursued.

Others will doubtless discern the EU's pressure being brought to bear as regards this issue. Maybe so. In any case...the right result. Shame it took so long.