delayed until May 24 in 40 of 45 townships in the Yangon area and seven in the Irrawaddy delta, which took the brunt of the weekend storm. It indicated that the balloting would proceed in other areas as scheduled.
Journalism 061
Spring 2008
Online Final Project
DUE: 10:30 a.m. MAY 20
You create a news website. You may call it what you want, but it must have a name.
Include at least six stories on your web site.
This project must include at least four originally written stories - 100 to 150 words. (The Group of Three must have six originally written stories and at least eight total.)
Please use online journalism style. These originally written stories may include rewrites of your earlier work in this semester and rewrites of the stories provided below.
Find photos or other multi-media presentations to complement your story online.
WE ARE NOT PUBLISHING SO FEEL FREE TO 'BORROW' PHOTOS, VIDEOS AND OTHER MEDIA TO AID YOUR PRESENTATION.
__________________________________________________________________________
The following two links must be created, the video for which you will be shown in class:
Don Kassing Profile
Immigration March
You will need to find information on these stories and determine a way to use them on your website.
You may use these stories in your group of six required stories, but you will need to find the information for them, and write the story.
__________________________________________________________________________
You may choose stories from this group:
[If you include a story here without rewriting it, please note from which source you got the story.]
YAHOO
From Mercury News
San Jose, CA-
Yahoo faced a shareholders' rebellion Monday as the stock market punished the pioneering Internet company for its weekend rejection of Microsoft's $47.5 billion bid.
One hedge fund manager said he was encouraging investors to vote against Yahoo's board members at the next annual meeting, which the company scheduled late Monday for July 3.
"I haven't spoken to one Yahoo shareholder who is happy," said Eric Jackson of Ironfire Capital, a small, activist hedge fund. Jackson said the dozen investors he'd spoken to were "upset, frustrated and wanting to know what they can do."
The Web pioneer's stock closed down 15 percent, or $4.30, to $24.37 a share, the first trading day after a Saturday morning meeting between Yahoo's two co-founders and top Microsoft executives left the two sides at an impasse over price.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer called Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang on Saturday afternoon to say he was dropping his company's offer.
Still, Monday's close, while a significant loss, is higher than the bargain-basement level of $19.18 on the day before Microsoft announced its offer, indicating that some investors think Microsoft might come back with another offer.
The Sunnyvale-based Internet company now faces an uncertain future. Yang promised to make its Web sites more useful to users, more effective for advertisers and more friendly for software developers; others weren't so sure.
MYANMAR CYCLONE
From Associated Press
YANGON, Myanmar - The cyclone death toll soared above 22,000 today and more than 41,000 others were missing as the international community prepared to rush in aid after the country's deadliest storm on record, state radio reported.
Up to 1 million people may be homeless after Cyclone Nargis, some villages have been almost totally eradicated and vast rice-growing areas are wiped out, the World Food Program said.
Some aid agencies reported their assessment teams had reached some areas of the largely isolated region but said getting in supplies and large numbers of aid workers would be difficult.
Images from state television showed large trees and electricity poles sprawled across roads and roofless houses ringed by large sheets of water in the Irrawaddy River delta region, which is regarded as Myanmar's rice bowl.
"From the reports we are getting, entire villages have been flattened and the final death toll may be huge," Mac Pieczowski, who heads the International Organization for Migration office in Yangon, said in a statement.
Shari Villarosa, the top American diplomat in Yangon, told NBC's "Today" show that the cyclone had knocked huge trees in the country's largest city.
"And it blew down a significant portion of them, some of these are 6, 8, 10 stories tall - huge trees, 6 feet, 5 feet in diameter. So they came down on roofs," she said.
State radio also said that Saturday's vote on a military-backed draft constitution would be
AdvertisementGetAd('tile','box','/breakingnews_article','','www.mercurynews.com','','null','null'); delayed until May 24 in 40 of 45 townships in the Yangon area and seven in the Irrawaddy delta, which took the brunt of the weekend storm. It indicated that the balloting would proceed in other areas as scheduled.
HORSE RACING COMES UNDER FIRE
From the Chronicle
When Barbaro sustained what turned out to be a fatal injury to his right hind leg early in the 2006 Preakness Stakes, two weeks after he had won the Kentucky Derby, the nation's collective heart went out to him and followed him in the eight months veterinarians spent trying to save his life.
The sport of thoroughbred racing might not get off so easy following the 2008 Kentucky Derby, which ended Saturday in the death of the filly Eight Belles minutes after she finished second to rousing winner Big Brown.
The tragedy has propelled People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) into action and has trainers, breeders, owners and track officials re-examining their sport.
PETA President Ingrid Newkirk first blamed jockey Gabriel Saez for "mercilessly" whipping Eight Belles in the stretch of the race and then called on the Kentucky Horse Racing Authority to adopt major reforms.
Numerous factors are being cited as root causes for fatal injuries: 1) The use of medications that may have weakened the breed, 2) an emphasis on training for speed instead of stamina, 3) racing horses at too young of an age, 4) the proliferation of races around the nation and 5) the track surfaces.
Even the decision of trainer Larry Jones and owner Richard Porter to run Eight Belles against males has been questioned. They could have run her in Friday's Kentucky Oaks, which Jones won with Proud Spell for a different owner.
"That's up to the owners and trainers to find a race to fit their horse," said Jerry Hollendorfer, Northern California's winningest trainer who also co-owns many of his horses. "If the Kentucky Derby is what fits their horse, and obviously it was because she ran second, then they made the right decision."
Eight Belles was the 39th filly to run in the 134 years of the Kentucky Derby and the first since Excellent Meeting and Three Ring in 1999. Three fillies have won: Regret in 1915, Genuine Risk in 1980 and Winning Colors in 1988.
FANNIE MAE LOSES 2.2 BILLION DOLLARS
From the Washington Post
Fannie Mae, a key source of mortgage funding, today reported that falling home prices and rising defaults contributed to further losses for the government-sponsored company during the first quarter.
The company said it lost $2.2 billion ($2.57 per share) in the three months that ended March 31, compared with a gain of $961 million (85 cents) in the comparable period a year earlier. Measured in relation to Fannie Mae's total mortgage guarantees, credit losses rose by 55.6 percent during the first quarter compared with the last quarter of 2007.
The loss came as a sign of further trouble in the mortgage and credit industries. This morning, Swiss bank UBS reported an $11 billion quarterly loss and said it will cut 5,500 jobs, many of which will come from the bank's investment division.
Today, Fannie Mae plans to announce a series of initiatives to help troubled borrowers and reduce the fallout from the market crisis, including allowing borrowers whose homes are worth less than their mortgage to refinance up to 120 percent of the property value. That option would be offered to homeowners whose loans are owned by Fannie Mae and who remain up to date on their mortgage payments.
To shore up its own financial condition and fulfill a promise to regulators, Fannie Mae said it plans to raise $6 billion of new capital from investors, much of which will dilute the value of current shareholders' stock. It also said it will cut the dividend it pays shareholders later this year.
OIL PRICES HIT NEW RECORD
From Associated Press
NEW YORK -- Oil futures blasted to a new record of $122 a barrel Tuesday, gaining momentum as investors bought on a forecast of much higher prices and on any news hinting at supply shortages. Retail gas prices edged lower, but appear poised to rise to new records of their own in coming weeks.
A new Goldman Sachs prediction that oil prices could rise to $150 to $200 within two years seemed to motivate much of Tuesday's buying, although a falling dollar and increasing concerns about declining crude production in Mexico and Russia contributed, analysts say.
Light, sweet crude for June delivery jumped to a new record of $122 a barrel before retreating slightly to trade up $1.92 at $121.89 on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Oil prices have nearly doubled from about $62 a barrel a year ago, which Goldman sees as a sign that the world is in the midst of a "super spike" in oil prices. Analyst Arjun Murti said in a research note released Monday that prices would ultimately force demand to fall sharply.
Not everyone shares Goldman's view. Tim Evans, an analyst at Citigroup Inc., countered Goldman's analysis with a note predicting that crude prices could as easily fall to $40 a barrel as rise to $200 over the next two years because supplies are, as Evans put it, comfortable.
James Cordier, president of Tampa, Fla., trading firms Liberty Trading Group and OptionSellers.com, said Goldman's prediction isn't necessarily new: "We've heard numbers like these out of Goldman Sachs, especially over the last 12 months."
But there is a type of investor who responds to such predictions by buying, Cordier said.
A falling dollar on Tuesday also gave traders reason to buy. Investors often buy commodities such as oil as a hedge against inflation when the dollar falls, and a weaker greenback makes oil cheaper to investors overseas. Many analysts feel the dollar's protracted decline is the real reason oil prices have nearly doubled since last year.
Cordier said investors are also increasingly concerned about falling oil production in Russia and Mexico, which are both major oil producers. And prices are still supported by the concerns about supply disruptions in Nigeria and northern Iraq that first drove crude past $120 a barrel on Monday. Militant attacks in Nigeria over the weekend cut some production at a Royal Dutch Shell PLC facility. In Iraq, Kurdish rebels warned they could launch suicide attacks against American interests to punish the U.S. for sharing intelligence with Turkey after Turkey bombed rebel bases in Iraq on Friday.
At the pump, meanwhile, the national average price of a gallon of regular gas slipped 0.1 cent overnight to $3.61, according to AAA and the Oil Price Information Service. Analysts are split over how high gas will go; while prices have slipped lower since May 1, leading some analysts to say gas is close to peaking, others predict the fuel will follow oil's upward surge.
BRAZIL DEFENDS FOOD-BASED ETHANOL
From The Christian Science Monitor
SÃO PAULO, Brazil - – Brazil, the world's biggest ethanol exporter, is bristling over criticism of its biofuel.
As wheat, rice, and corn prices rise sharply, critics say producing fuel for cars is taking precedence over food for people.
"Ethanol has certainly become the scapegoat for a variety of issues, in particular the current price of food," says Toni Nuernberg, the executive director of the Omaha, Neb.-based Ethanol Promotion and Information Center. "But there is a collection of factors responsible: Drought, population growth, higher demand for protein [i.e., meat] from developing countries, and transportation costs."
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva says the bad publicity is unwarranted and uninformed. Many biofuel experts agree. Critics, they say, fail to distinguish between the different kinds of ethanol. Brazilian ethanol from sugar cane is up to eight times more energy efficient to produce than ethanol derived from corn, beets, wheat, or other temperate crops.
And Brazilian officials point out that there's plenty of sugar. Brazilian sugar production has doubled since the end of the last decade and is expected to grow by another 50 percent by 2021, says Marcos Jank, the president of Unica, the Brazilian Sugar Cane Industry Association.
There is more than enough sugar on the market and so no land is being taken for fuel rather than food, he adds. "Food versus fuel is not an issue in Brazil," Mr. Jank says. "Sugar prices today are depressed because there is too much production."
Brazil has around 160 million hectares of arable land ready to be planted, and although claims that no trees are being cut down to plant sugar cane might be true, they are also disingenuous, environmentalists say.
Cattle farmers in the fertile south and center of Brazil are selling pastures to crop farmers and moving their herds north into the Amazon where land is cheap and deforesting is easy, according to a recent Friends of the Earth report.
Nevertheless, the authors of the report agree that Brazil has been unfairly vilified. They and other experts say that solutions are on the horizon.
Second-generation biofuels made from waste products such as citrus peel, corncobs, and wood chips are under development and should be produced on a commercial scale within three to four years, says Reid Detchon, executive director of the Energy Future Coalition, a think tank funded by the UN Foundation. That is likely to eliminate much of the food-versus-fuel debate.