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A study released by Men's Health magazine ranked the nation's "Most Dangerously Drunk" cities, with Denver topping the list, startribune.com reports.
The ranking which appears in the December issue also ranked Fargo, N.D. not too far behind Denver, as the most dangerous city in the Midwest. According the magazine, the results were based on five things. First, the annual death rates due to alcoholic liver disease. Secondly, the prevalence of downing five or more drinks in a sitting. Third was drunk driving arrests. Fourth was fatal accidents involving drunken drivers and lastly MADD's report card on state efforts to combat excessive drinking.
According to CW2.trb.com, the CW's affiliate in Colorado, the magazine sourced its data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the FBI and the U.S. Department of Transportation.
The magazine ranked the city's from 100 to 1, with 100 being the worst. Fargo was 96th, four spots behind Denver. Other cities in the Midwest were Milwaukee (91), Madison (73), Des Moines (54), St. Paul (50), Minneapolis (34) and Sioux Falls (17).
Nationally, the city that was number one, or the least dangerous, was Durham, North Carolina. After that was Miami at number two and Buffalo, N.Y. at number three.
For this national story, I picked startribune.com, where I initially found the story, and a news outlet in Denver to compare how the two stories reported this new study. The Star Tribune report had more of a straight news approach. There were only two quotes and mostly it just contained the information that the report in Men's Health Magazine found. However, it pulled out Midwestern cities and gave their rankings specifically. There was also a little debate as to why St. Paul was higher on the report than Minneapolis. On the other hand, the Denver source was a lot more personal and contained a lot more quotes. They seemed to be quite angry with this report. Specifically the spokesman for the Denver Metro Convention & Visitors Bureau who claimed that "you could statistics to say anything." Obviously they did not contain any information in their story about Midwestern cities.

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Washington Redskins Safety Sean Taylor was shot in his leg at his home in Miami early Monday, police are investigating a possible robbery.
According to startribune.com the Miami police said that Taylor is in "critical condition." Officers were sent to Taylor's home at 1:45 a.m., after his girlfriend called 911. According to Lt. Nancy Perez, Taylor was shot in his lower body and was airlifted to Jackson Memorial Hospital. She did not disclose how many times Taylor had been shot.
"It could have been a possible burglary; it could have been a possible robbery," Perez said. "It has not been confirmed yet."
However, according to Richard Sharpstein, Taylor's attorney, he was shot in the leg and there was much bleeding because his femoral artery was severed.
According to ESPN.com, Taylor has a home in the Miami suburb of Palmetto Bay and Taylor remained home and did not travel with the team because he had a sprained ligament in his right knee. He was expected to miss at least two games, probably more.
The 24-year-old is in his fourth season with the Redskins. He was the number five pick in the first round of the 2004 NFL draft from Miami University, where he was an All-American. Even though he has missed two games, he currently leads the NFC with 5 interceptions.
Taylor has had a hard time staying out of trouble in the past. He has been fined at least seven times, including a penalty for spitting in the face of another player during a playoff game. Also in 2005 Taylor was accused of beating a man with a weapon during a fight that broke out after Taylor and his friends went looking for the people who allegedly stole his all-terrain vehicles, startribune.com reports.
Since this was a national sports story, I looked at ESPN.com the worldwide leader in sports news, and also our local paper, the Star Tribune. Even though these are two completely different news outlets, the two stories were quite similar. They both included the troubled past of Taylor as well as the details from the accident and quotes from the police officers and Taylor's attorney as well. However, ESPN.com had more of a sports angle to it. For example, they interviewed some of Taylor's teammates, such as Clinton Portis to get the players' reactions. They also interviewed the head coach Joe Gibbs. Lastly, on the ESPN.com website, this story was listed as breaking news and took up a lot of their homepage. The story did not carry the same weight on startribune.com.

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A wildfire raced through the canyons and over the mountains of the wealthy enclave near Malibu for the second time in little more than a month Saturday, forcing 14,000 residents to flee, startribune.com reports.
The fire started early Saturday, around 4 a.m., and destroyed 49 homes, 30 homes were completely destroyed, cbs.com reports.
By midafternoon, the fire was estimated at 7 square miles, with a 25 percent containment. By Saturday evening, about half of the evacuees were allowed to return to their homes.
Fifteen helicopters and 15 airplanes attacked from the air to combat the fire, while nearly 2,000 firefighters battled flames from the ground, according to startribune.com. The planes skimmed the ocean to reload their tanks to help extinguish the fire.
Hundreds and firefighters and equipment had been positioned throughout the week in Southern California, due to the predicted winds of over 50 miles per hour. According to the Mayor, the fire "could have been far, far worse than it was."
For this national story, I compared our local coverage, startribune.com, with a national news outlet, in this case cbs.com. I wanted to see if the coverage was any different and indeed it was. The biggest difference was that the startribune.com report was more of a straight news story where it just included what exactly happened on Saturday. For example, the amount of airplanes and helicopters was courtesy of startribune.com. However, cbs.com had more of a feature story, concentrating less on the fire on Saturday and more on California wildfires as a whole.

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Jetmax International Ltd. recalled 36,000 toy storage racks after an 8-month-old boy died, startribune.com reports.
The infant was playing with the storage rack and when he tugged on it, the top rail landed on his neck and killed him.
"Young children are at risk of injury when the storage rack can tip over, posing entrapment and suffocation hazard to them," the Cosumer Product Safety comission said Friday on the FOXnews.com website.
The name of the toy was "Home Trend Kids 9 Canvas Bin Boy's and Girl's Organizers." This toy is made in China and its company is located in Irving Texas.
This toy was sold at Wal-Mart from August 2004 to July 2005 and at Ollie's stores from July 2006 to the present.
There were two types of storage racks, one for boys and one for girls.
This was an AP story that was found almost identically on FOXnews.com and startribune.com. Since this story was not written by a local writer for either website, it was obviously just picked up and ran through the respective websites. However, the startribune.com report created a new title and also a new lead whereas the FOXnews.com report just ran the story as is.

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U.S. home prices fell nationwide in August for the eighth consecutive month, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller index released Tuesday, startribune.com reports.
According to economist Robert Shiller, who helped create the index, "there is really no positive news in today's report." He later went on to say that "the fall in home prices is showing no real signs of a slowdown or a turnaround" in both the national and the metro levels, USAToday.com reports.
Home prices have fallen every month this year. August 2007 is the 21st month of declaring returns as well. 20 popular metropolitan areas had at least a 4 percent drop in annual returns in August from a year ago. This includes Minneapolis, where it showed a 4 percent drop.
Housing prices has been a big worry to our economy and to its consumers. Many believe that our economy will go into recession, due to the summer's steep decline in credit availability and the information from this new index.
This index is designed to track prices of typical single-family homes, according to startribune.com.
Lastly, the National Association of Realtors said sales of existing homes fell 8 percent in September, the largest decline since 1999.
This story was interesting to look at when deciphering between the two sources because they were both taken from the exact same story, written by Vinnee Tong. However, USA Today cuts the story about 5 paragraphs before the Star Tribune does. The Star Tribune report includes information pertaining to which cities have the lowest return, including Minneapolis, as well as the statistics pertaining to September. I do not know why USA Today did not include that. Lastly, the reason I picked this random story is because my Dad is a Realtor, so I have been hearing about this problem for almost two years, and I am very effected by it.

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Over 3,000 inmates from prisons around Southern California were on the front lines Friday battling fires around the lower half of the state, from Lake Arrowhead to San Diego.
This program, which has been around since the 1940s, makes inmates available for natural disasters, such as fires and flooding.
Not every inmate can be a firefighter. According to Seth Unger, spokesmen for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, the inmate-male or female- must be physically fit, have no history of violent crime and have four to 36 months remaining on their sentences.
This program saves the taxpayers an estimated $80 million per year, said Yahoo! news. Inmates only earn $1 an hour, but each day spent in fire lines earns two days of credit towards completing their sentence.
Some firefighters said that without the help of inmates, the blazes may have caused more destruction.
Only one inmate has dies in this program. In July 1999, a male inmate died when he fell from a hillside.

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J.K Rowling, mastermind author behind the Harry Potter series gave one last surprise about her collection Friday night. After reading briefly from the seventh installment in the series "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" in Carnegie Hall in New York she took questions from the audience members. One young fan asked if Dumbledore will ever find "true love." To gasps and applause the author answered "Dumbledore is gay." This ended the rumors that were stirring around for years in the fiction world from all the Harry Potter fans, due to Dumbledore not having any close relationships with women and also a troubled mysterious past. During the Q & A Rowling went on to talk about that Dumbledore had a past love, fellow wizard Gellert Grindelwald. However, he was forced to fight him in a battle between good and evil and defeated him. According to Rowling after that Dumbledore was "horribly, terribly let down." Rowling is currently in the middle of finishing up her U.S. book tour, her first tour here since 2000. Not everyone likes her work. She has repeatedly received slack from Christian groups saying that her books promote witchcraft. According to Rowling, her new news on Dumbledore will give them another thing to talk about.

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A 27-year-old intoxicated mother faced felony charges of child abuse in Pinellas Park, Florida Thursday for holding her young son out of a moving SUV.
According to witnesses, Christina Adams, 27, was seen dangling her 5-year-old out of the car late Wednesday. At some points she even forced the child to run alongside the car to catch up, according to the report in the Star Tribune. According to the local paper, the Tampa Tribune, she was not taking the situation seriously. She was taken to jail and her son was given to relatives.
Adams said that her son was trying to climb out the window and she was keeping him from doing so. According to local police, she denied dragging the boy outside the vehicle by hand.
She was not driving; two other adults were inside, Joseph West, who was driving, and Ariane Marie Parsons, along with three children. According to Parsons, Adam's 5-year-old son was causing a ruckus, and Adams was holding him out the window until he calmed down.

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For fear of attack, a British church safety group is ordering Catholic and Anglican clergy to remove their clerical collars while off duty, according to the article in the Star Tribune.
They are often under attack in public, because criminals believe that these men have money.
Also the stiff neck pieces, commonly referred to as a "dog collar," can attract people that are bearing a grudge against god, according to the head of the National Churchwatch, Nick Tolson.
According to Nick, clergymen should "Be aware when they are on their own."
Even though Britain does not routinely monitor violence against clergy, there was a study in 2001 done by the University of London. They found that seven out of 10 clergy had experienced violence between 1997 and 1999. Also in the past decade, five clergymen has been murdered.
The two sources that were used for this story were taken from the Star Tribune and the BBC website. The sources used for each story were not that different. The Star Tribune story used the head of the National Churchwatch for the source for most of the story. They went with more of a national beat to the story. Even though the BBC used authoritative sources as well there sources were more local. For example, they issued the response from the Church of England. Also, they got a local source from a clergyman from St. Paul's Cathedral. However this story also ran the same quotes from Nick Tolson, who seemed to be a very important source of the subject, no matter who was doing the reporting.

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An off-duty sheriff's deputy, 20, went on a shooting rampage early Sunday at a home where seven young teenagers were having a pizza party.
According to the Star Tribune, the gunman killed six people and injured the other. Authorities fatally shot the deputy, however it was too late.
Three of the deceased were still in school at the small town's high school, and the others were recent graduates. According to witnesses, the gunman attended the same school.
The shooting occurred in a small town of about 2,000 people, Crandon, Wisconsin. One of the victim's parents beleived that the shooting was due to the deputy being a "jealous boyfriend."
The Crandon School District called off classes Monday. The town is 225 miles north of Milwaukee.
I used two sources for this story, the Star Tribune and a website entitled the Guardian. They both approached sources very differently. The Star Tribune went with a much more personal twist to the story. They both got their information of the details of the shooting from the police department, however the Star Tribune interviewed neighbors and former classmates to get a more in depth look into what type of person this deputy was. Also, the Star Tribune interviewed the victim's mothers, whereas the Guardian did not. The Guardian piece, as far as sources, is much more of a straight news story, whereas the Star Tribune article puts more of a feature twist on it.

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Two escaped killers were captured on a Wyoming highway, ending an 11-mile police chase Saturday night, according to an article in the Star Tribune.
David Martin Gallegos, 49, and Juan Carlos Diaz-Arevalo, 27, stole guns and the SUV used in the police chase.
The police believed Gallegos and Diaz Arevalo entered a home near the Utah jail after they escaped and tied up the homeowner, a 72-year-old retired police officer. They tied him up with duct tape and threatened him with a knife.
The homeowner freed himself and then later called the police.
The fugitives had climbed a fence and fleed from Daggett County jail on September 23. They had recently been transfered from another prison due to overcrowding.
Diaz Arevalo was convicted of murder and child abuse in 2006. Gallegos was convicted of aggravated murder in 1991, according to the report on ABC.com
Gallegos was shot on the scene and brought to the local hospital. He was in critical condition. Diaz-Arevalo ran from the scene but was captured instantly.

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Fueled by the idea that Canada would grant them asylum, Mexican immigrants arrived to the border by the hundreds seeking refuge. Starting three weeks ago, with just a family or two, immigrants have congregated at the foot of the bridge on the Canadian border, and they are growing in numbers. Most of the immigrants are from Florida and have made their way north, most of them flying into Toronto. This trip, according to some of the immigrants, occured because an organization in Naples, Florida suggested their claims were more likely to be accepted in Canada. However, that suggestion is rather unusual since only 28 percent of such claims by Mexicans are approved in Canada, versus a 47 percent approval average of all other nationalities. The word has spread over the internet and through social networks though, and by Thursday, at least 200 immigrants were present near the bridge. According to Canadian officials, "thousands more are on their way." Immigration advocates are currently issuing warnings to Mexicans attempting to make the same journey, saying that it is useless and unsafe.

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I found this article in the St. Paul Pioneer Press as well as on the WCCO web site. The lead in the Pioneer Press on this game is as follows: "Forget about Notre Dame turning this season around." This is a feature lead, rather than a direct lead. Feature leads are more common in sports stories usually, rather than straight news stories, because in sports stories you can afford to wait to disclose the information until later in the article, because the news more or less is not "breaking" since it is just a game.
However, the author of this article, Dick Weiss, uses a feature lead to strike an emotional chord with sports fans. Notre Dame is America's team, with every game shown to a national audience every Saturday on NBC. However, for the first time in a very long time, the Fighting Irish are 0-3 and have yet to score an offensive touchdown. The author is leading with that line because it is almost more important that the Irish are 0-3 and basically already out of bowl contention, rather than the fact that they lost to Michigan 38-0.
If this lead were to be a direct lead, it would have included the score or other important facts in the lead, however the gameday stats do not appear until the later paragraphs.

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Things could have not gotten much worse for Notre Dame's freshman quarterback Jimmy Clausen in Saturday's 38-0 loss to Michigan. Clausen, the top-ranked prospect in the country last year, completed 11 of 17 passes, but only for 74 yards and one interception. He was also sacked eight times by the Wolverine defense and had a lost fumble. Coach Weis announced during the post game interviews that they are going to "start over from day one of training camp on Monday" and that all the positions are "up for grabs". The Fighting Irish are now 0-3 and have yet to score an offensive touchdown. It does not get much easier either with their next five games against Michigan State, Purdue, UCLA, Boston College and USC, who currently is ranked number one in the BCS poles. Michigan's running back Mike Hart was the star of the game getting two touchdowns on 35 carries and collecting 187 yards. He did not need much though to back up his promise of a "guaranteed victory" earlier this week, since Michigan's defense held the Irish to 79 total yards.

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Chuck Hagel, the Republican Senator of Nebraska will retire after his term ends in 2009. He is fulfilling his promise he made to the voters back in 1996 that he would only run for two terms. This prevents a problems for Republicans who are already in the minority of the congress. Currently, Democrats have a 51 to 49 majority in Congress. Hagel's possible predecessor and former governor of Nebraska Bob Kerry is a Democrat. However Kerry declined to talk about his intention to run for Senate. Mr. Hagel's retirement plans were first announced late Friday night by the local paper in Nebraska. Hagel is an outspoken critic of the Iraq war. He is a Vietnam veteran and also a very important Republican voice in the Senate on military affairs.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/09/us/politics/09hagel.html?ref=todayspaper

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