News summaries for Jour3101

Paris Hilton, socialite and heiress to the hotel fortune, received a sentence of 45 days in jail after driving with a suspended license and violating her probation stemming from a September DUI arrest, the AP and msnbc.com are reporting.

A judge sentenced the heiress to 45 days in a correctional facilty without work-release options. He also denied her option to pay for the jail term and serve the sentence in generally better prisons and under more lax conditions.

Hilton testified that she thought her license was suspended for only 30 days, and that then she could drive for work purposes. Her spokeperson testified the same thing. the judge called her spokeperson's testimony "worthless" and said that Hilton was given verbal and written reminders on subsequent traffic stops, which were then found, signed and in Hilton's glove compartment.

Hilton's lawyer says they plan to appeal.

Guess money can't buy everything.

Posted by Wendy Diedrich at 11:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

According to FOX Sports, the Vikings' weekend draft pick recieved a "grade" of a B-, while the Packers recieved a C "grade."

Both teams used their first round pick for players recovering from injuries, which is rarely an advisable move. The Vikings passed on a quarterback pick, signifying faith in their QB of one year's performance. They picked a running back from Oklahoma, and a wide reciever from South Carolina for their first and second rouond picks. Later draft round picks were less high profile, but said to be of "good value."

The Packers picked a lineman from Tennessee who is recovering from shoulder surgery, and therefore has little indication of his recent or future play quality. Their 2nd round pick was a running back from Nebraska, who many experts thought should have stayed in college for his senior year to further develop his skills.

Posted by Wendy Diedrich at 11:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Officials at the Kentucky Correctional and Psychiatric Center freed Timothy Rouse, a felon, after recieving a fax, msnbc.com is reporting. However, officials did not bother to look at the origins of the fax and realize that instead of coming from the State Supreme court, as it claimed to, it was actually from a grocery store.

In addition, the fax was filled with grammatical and spelling errors which also went unnoticed by the police when they released him on April 6th.

Rouse, 19, who was in prison for beating an elderly man, was taken back into custody this week after being found staying at his mother's house.

Police officials were quoted as calling him "dangerous," and are investigating who faxed the note.

Officials also made excuses for the embarrassing error, saying that spelling errors in those types of faxes were not uncommon. No explanation was made for the lack of double-checking a fax, the fact that the fax was not on letterhead, nor for the fact that the origins of the fax were not looked into.

Needless to say, the Kentucky officials who released him are probably pretty embarrassed. Oops.

Posted by Wendy Diedrich at 4:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Kobe Bryant, of the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team, scored 43 points Sunday night against the Golden State Warriors FOX sports is reporting. The Lakers won their 5th game in a row, 115-113 against GSW.

Prior to tonight's high scoring game, Bryant has had 4 games in a row scoring 50 points or more, an almost unheard of streak for the NBA. Bryant joins Wilt Chamberlain as the only player to have such a streak. Chamberlain's streak came in 1961.

Bryant scored 65 points against the Minnesota Timberwolves on March 16th which is a NBA season high and rare occurence. Bryant has scored more than 50 points 18 times in his career, putting him behind Chanberlain and Michael Jordan.

Sports articles are an interesting way to look at numbers within news stories. This article did a great job of putting forth the relevant, number-based stats, without getting too confusing. The names, records, and stats were spaced out enough in the story to keep them straight. Using relevant and interesting number facts is helpful and spacing them out throughout the story to give the reader enough time to process the information well.

Posted by Wendy Diedrich at 11:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Illegal immigrants caught trying to cross the US-Mexico border are facing harsher punishments in the past year. In the Del Rio sector of the border, US Border Patrol agents have been following the orders of Operation Streamline.

In Operation Streamline, people trying to sneak in the US will now not immediately be returned to Mexico. Instead the undocumented migrants will have to face a judge within 2 days and likely spend at least 2 weeks in jail. If they are repeat offenders they could spend months in jail.

Convictions are made in mass sentences and an individual's time in front of the judge is extremely limited. Critics say Operation Streamline is not due process. Proponents claim it is deterring illegal crossings, and allowing border patrol officials time to focus on other issues.

msnbc.com/NBC news reporting.

Posted by Wendy Diedrich at 11:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Barack Obama, Illinois senator, announced his candidacy for Presidency on Saturday. The young candidate will likely face issues and questions regarding his race, religious background, and experience level.

Obama, who is bi-racial, and spent 4 years of his youth studying at a Muslim school in Indonesia, downplayed the focus on these issues. He said that he is now a member of the United Church of Christ, and has reiterated that he does not believe either his race or relgious background should be a focus of his candidacy.

Obama points to his message and main campaign issues and their reasonance with the people as his main focus for the campaign. He cites his grasp on main issues that matter to people as being an important part of leadership, writing off criticisms about his relative lack of experience.

Obama also has detailed his plan for withdrawing troops from Iraq within the next year and a half. He called the war a "tragic mistake."

Posted by Wendy Diedrich at 11:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Protesters were pushed out of 2 natural gas plants on Saturday after they clashed with police and troops. The protesters were upset about President Morales's percieved lack of action in moving along the nationalization process of Bolivia's natural gas resources.

Morales is a strong ally of Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, and last May signed a deal with international gas corporations in Bolivia that would give the country better control of their resources and production. Theoretically, the deal would allow Bolivia to see a bigger profit from their gas resources.

Protesters were upset with Morales speed of movement in implementing the new deal, and also wanted to see the governmental overseer of the gas production moved to another city (not the capitol, La Paz) within Bolivia.

Police used rubber bullets, and injured at least 2 people during the 200 person protest. Police said that the protesters were armed with sticks and dynamite, and justified their use of the non-lethal rubber bullets.

The article can be found here:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13116744/

Posted by Wendy Diedrich at 1:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Star Tribune is reporting that YouTube, a hugely popular internet site that allows users to upload, share, and view videos online, will soon share profits with it's users. The site is fairly new, yet was recently sold to google for 1.65 billion dollars.

One of the cofounders of YouTube, Chad Hurley, was at the World Economic Forum Saturday in Davos Switzerland. Hurley said he wanted to improve the content and quality of videos by offering some financial profit for those who upload videos to the site.

At least one other video site, Revver, has already starting implementing ideas similar to Hurley's. Hurley didn't provide any in depth information on the methods that would be used to share revenue with users.

The lead of this article provides much of the needed information, as the article is fairly short, and but is limited on details. It functions as a lead-in to the next paragraph which provides the figures and specific details to the article. It seems to be a good example of a hard news lead.

In my opinion, this article is very interesting because of YouTube's recent popularity since its inception in 2005. The site has intergrated itself into everyday life and language, and was one of the reasons that "Time" magazine choose 'you' to be the person of the year. YouTube is a good embodiment of the culture that we live in; where anything can be found on the internet, the average person's face can be all over the world in a day, and the barriers of entry to media production are much lower than ever before.

The article can be found here: http://www.startribune.com/484/story/964348.html

Posted by Wendy Diedrich at 3:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Keep checking back for news updates all semester!

Posted by Wendy Diedrich at 1:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)