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Vicki Barker

Vicki Barker was UPR's Moab correspondent from 2011 - 2012.

A native of Moab, she started working in radio as a teenager and earned a degree at Utah State University-Logan in broadcast performance and management. She worked as a news reporter and feature writer for radio and publications throughout the intermountain area and also worked in the national parks, in outdoor environmental education, and as an editor.

Vicki passed away in April 2012 and has left a void on UPR where her voice used to be.

  • Author Doris Lessing died Sunday at the age of 94. Lessing won the 2007 Nobel Prize for literature for a life's work which included around 40 books and collections of essays and memoirs. Her book, The Golden Notebook, has been called the first feminist novel — a characterization Lessing rejected as "stupid."
  • Britain's Conservative-led government has unveiled proposals to change the social benefits system, moving ever closer to workfare. One measure under the plan requires the long-term jobless to do community work. Another plan would ax automatic housing and other benefits for unemployed Brits under 25.
  • The scandal has shown just how long and winding the food chain really is, and how little oversight is exercised within Europe's open borders. In Britain, local butchers are among the beneficiaries of this crisis.
  • The fast food giant said this week that some of its burgers in Britain and Ireland were found to contain horsemeat. That's prompted a Twitter campaign and threats of a boycott.
  • In most of Britain, property prices are slumping amid a weak economy. But mega-rich foreigners see London's upscale neighborhoods as a safe place to invest, and they are snapping up properties and pushing up prices even though many don't plan to use these homes as a primary residence.
  • There's no place for chronic misplacers of keys at the 21st World Memory Championships under way in London. About 75 competitors from some two dozen countries are vying to see who can memorize the most numbers, faces, playing cards or random words in a set amount of time in this "mnemonic Olympiad."
  • A nurse at a London hospital who took a hoax call about Catherine the Duchess of Cambridge was found dead on Friday. Jacintha Saldhana let through a call from an Australian radio station purporting to be the Queen calling about the ailing Duchess.
  • After resisting for some time, Starbucks has agreed to pay corporate taxes in Britain. It was revealed earlier that the coffee company has paid no such taxes in the past three years.
  • On Thursday, Lord Justice Leveson is expected to release his report on regulating the British press, following phone hacking and other abuses by the tabloids. The report, and Prime Minister David Cameron's response to it, will likely be controversial.
  • The number of black, beetle-like taxis is dwindling. As the company that manufactures the vehicles files for bankruptcy protection, cabbies cross their fingers to keep the iconic car alive.