Welcome back from spring break! Now it's time to get back into the swing of things.
In that vein, here is your weekly discussion question. Your thoughtful replies are due by midnight Tuesday, as always.
What was the most interesting event you read, saw or heard in the news in the past week – and why?
21 comments:
A story that I followed closely over break was the jailing of Bernie Madoff. Im not usually a viewer of Katie Couric but on the evening of the day which the judge decided to put Madoff behind bars she interviewed some of the people he swindled that were in the court room.
It was interesting to hear these people discuss the emotions they felt sitting in the court room. A few of them said that it wasnt difficult being near a man who took there money, rather it was difficult to share the same space with such an "evil" man.
I remember one woman saying in the interview that had the judge allowed him to remain in his home, it would have been a slap in the face to all of those effected by his actions.
There was also another man on 60 Minutes recently who spoke about trying to alert authorities to Madff's activity. I cannot remember what his name was, be he was someone that dealt with Madoff and saw right through him from the very beginning. He said it took him 10 minutes to determine Madoff way lying, and about 4 hours to do the math that would prove that the promises and figures given by Madoff to investors were untrue.
This is a tough question because I was in Canada most of the break and most of the news stations up where I was staying were in French, but from what I am gathering on the New York Times website I'm finding that nothing is interesting to me anymore. Everything I read is depressing and sad. Frankly I'm starting to get sick of the news in todays world. "4 U.S. soldiers killed in Afganistan" "India Struggles with Hunger", "Confronting Rape on Zimbabwe's Border" Nothing is worth reading when all it does is make you sad and look at the world and say "How can this all be happening"
So nothing has interested me, only made me depressed. If i had to pick something though I would say that space shuttle that finally launched after all the delays.
the most interesting story i heard was on tv. They showed people in Sacremento CA that live in tents because they can not afford there houses or apartments anymore. They called the place "tent city". It sort of reminded me of those Great Depression photos in my junior high textbook. It is quite a interesting story
I saw a special report on MSNBC about this man who kidnapped teenage girls and raped them in his homemade dungeon. It was very disturbing & sad. Hearing the interviews with the victims and the rapist were informative.
One of his victims was a former drug addict. When she was finally let go by her rapist & brought back home she had the best recoaltion of details. She noticed the make year & model of the vehicle and detailed physical description of rapist.
When she went to the police they couldn't find a vehicle registered in that area. They closed the case. Only later to find out they found out she was off by a year. She wasn't taken seriously because of her drug history.
When another victim called out for help they were able to apprehend him. At that time the rapist had the cops believing they were making a mistake. He told them she was a fling of his & that she was 18. They found out she was only 16. Luckily they raided his house and uncovered the dugeon.
He is in prison but what is sad is his interviews. He seems convienced that he was doing no wrong. That everything was of mutual consent & that he took care of the girls. Video tapes of some of his interactions in an unbias fashion.
Two things i found to be interesting over the break. The first was that palaeontologists discovered some dinosaurs that died encased in mud. About 25 of them died in a sinkhole close to 90 million years ago. The researchers are hopping to find out new and interesting things about the Gobi Desert.
and the second thing is...
Peter Tork from the Monkees has a rare form of head and next cancer. Oh the sadness!
I heard they're making the school day longer.
just kidding.
Over the weekend, at a casting call for America's Next Top Model, somebody supposedly yelled "Fire!" and all the hundreds of people waiting for their turn stampeded out of there, resulting in a chaos. Tyra Banks then issued a statement regarding the value of the NYPD and their preparedness for such a catastrophe.
I personally believe that the biggest news that happened last week was when Jim Kramer from CNBC appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. For me, CNBC is one of the only channels I watch on a regular basis plus I am a huge fan of The Daily Show, so for these show entities to come together last week was a pretty big deal. To give a little back story to the situation, Jon Stewart for about a week leading up to Jim Kramer appearing on his show, was going after CNBC relentlessly. His satire comedy was discrediting CNBC as a news channel as a whole. Stewart also made strong arguments that CNBC was not doing their job properly, by not being reporters of the business news, but more of a spokesperson for the big CEO of major corporations.
Jim Kramer decided to make the appearance on the show to defend the actions of the station. He is CNBC’s front man, so who better to come on The Daily Show to speak on behalf on of CNBC. At first, it may have appeared that Jon Stewart was directly going after Jim Kramer, but after a few moments you could tell he was putting the whole station on the butcher block. Jon Stewart was in fact asking the questions that CNBC should have been asking in the first place. Questioning why CNBC would take what CEOs say for face value and not actually doing any actually investigation and being real reporters. Jim Kramer did his best to defend his channel, but in the end I feel that Jon Stewart made is point and CNBC should be held accountable for their actions of not reporting the news properly.
Over the break I heard a lot about the Bernie Madoff trial. Its terrible how he scammed all those people out of their life savings with his Ponzi scheme. They said the amount of time he would have to serve for all the money he stole would be about 250 years?!?! Thats crazy!!! He definitely deserves to spend a lifetime behind bars for his criminal ways. Very interesting!
One story I read was acutally a recent story based on means of communication and how it is causing mistrials.
The use of blackberrys and iphones is helping jurors on a case to search information on the web while sitting in the jury. They are also using them to send out information about cases which is causing an uproar with the judges
Jurors are told to not seek information outside of the courtroom because it can cause them to change their minds on cases based on information they read and not what they hear.
Nicole A
I've been reading about AIG and how they have been giving employees (and former employees) bonuses of $1 million dollars (or more in some cases) AFTER they were bailed out by the government. Because they are facing much scrutiny from various officials including President Obama, AIG claims that they were held under contract and HAD to give out the bonuses even though it probably wasn't such a good idea after receiving more than $170 billion dollars from the government's bailout plan. Apparently, various politicians are working together to try and block and or tax the bonuses so that the people who received them won't be able to keep the money. You can check it out here at http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/03/17/aig.bonuses/index.html
I actually took a week off from all news and television.
However while reading the wires @ Channel 12 last week I read a story about the continuing Mexican drug cartel problem. The story stated that someone found the heads of five Americans in a cooler in Mexico with a disturbuing note from drug cartels.
Pretty gruesome.
That's about all for me though....been very much away from all news due to changes in my personal schedule.
Also heard about the ridiculous story of Madoff ripping off all those people for millions.
Crazy.
This story started in April of 2008, but there is this Austrian man named Josef Fritzl, who held his daughter captive in the basement of their home for decades and had 7 children with her. It wasn’t until one of the daughters got really sickly and started having convulsions that he was forced to bring the daughter to the hospital. The medics knew something wasn’t right so they contacted police, and that’s when the investigating started. They found his daughter along with 3 other children locked up in the basement.
His trial was today and his daughter Elisabeth (the one he had held captive for years) was able to testify against him for the first time. The charges he faces are murder, involvement in slave trade, rape, incest, withdrawal of liberty & assault.
Here is a link to the story..
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/03/17/austria.incest.trial.fritzl/index.html
The most interesting article I have read in the news over the past week concerns the starvation that is taking place in India. The word I would use to describe the article is far from interesting, rather though... disturbing. It said that about two-thirds of children in India are malnourished by age 2. This type of thing happening at such a young age will most certainly affect the children throughout their lives. They even mention how preventable malnourishment is. So why is it getting worse?
An interesting story I saw in the past week was about a 200lbs. Harp Seal stuck in the North Shore River in Saugus Mass. The seal swam down from Canada then swam through the Boston Harbor. Due to lower levels of water in the river the seal became stuck. The New England Aquarium sent people out who saved the seal and are transporting it back to the ocean. I just found this story odd and very random to see a seal stuck in a river around here.
This was interesting to me, might not be to many. Washington based publisher Bluewater Productions released a series of comic books featuring Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin on March 11. The company says it has already sold 7,500 copies of each to distributors. This series is called Female Force. They said they really want to show strong independent female role models in comics. Each comic is biographical and portrays each figure respectfully and honorably. This might get young girls thinking about politics.
Kirstie Mahon
i dont think i could agree with corey more... the majority of the news just really stinks, for lack of a better word. it is all depressing, and i really try to avoid reading and listening to the news as often as i can, this past week, i actually did a good job of avoiding the news.
one news story i did hear was that a man in austria was found out to be having a second family with his daughter in his sound proof basement. he had children with his daughter that he had with his first wife. one of the children escaped from the basement and outed her father. several of the children that were living in the basement had never seen sunlight.
The most outrageous news story I heard while on spring break was about the A.I.G. executives receiving $160 million dollars in bonuses after receiving $170 billion dollars in taxpayer money and are still seeking more! I was in Florida all week and when flipping through the stations I turned to CNN just as they were talking about this story. I have to say I was in a bit of a bad mood for the rest of the day after hearing this! Since being home I have tried to read up on this stoy somewhat. I know that the Obama administration has said they are seeking every legal avenue open to them to "repossess" this money that was paid as bonuses, but I think that is highly unlikely that they will succeed. In the meantime, all of us who are fortunate to have a job during this difficult time can expect to continue to be pissed off because Congress has made it far too easy for the CEO's and corporate executives these companies who received bailout money to keep shoveling it into their own pockets!
The most interesting news event that I heard about in the past week is the ongoing battle in Mexico between rival drug cartels and drug cartels and the public. The drug problem in the country is enormous right now- so much so that in light of the current administrations failing tactics, a rival political party is proposing to legalize drugs in Mexico so that citizens could grow their own marijuana and mushrooms for personal use and cocaine and heroin would be distributed to addicts by the government at medical facilities. The current administrations solution is simply to attack the cartels using the Mexican military. In fact, over 50,000 Mexican troops, more troops than the US has in Afghanistan, are deployed all over the country trying to make a dent in the cartels powers. To no avail. The violence that accompanies this drug war is stunning- the real reason why i think this story is so important- the Mexican attorney general's office reports over 6,000 violent drug war related deaths in Mexico in the last year, sometimes 1-2,000 murders occurring in a single month. There have apparently been some US casualties as well. However, this direct, tangible violence is not the only way that the US is affected. Many more deaths can probably be attributed to this problem as a result of drug deaths from drugs smuggled in to the states from Mexico. Much of the drugs produced in Mexico are intended to be smuggled in to the US specifically. The US knows this and has pledged a staggering $1.4 billion to the cause of fighting and winning this war against drugs. Hopefully sooner rather than later the people of Mexico, including much of my family who currently resides there and is exposed to this violence first hand nearly every day, will be granted a reprieve from the murders, the kidnappings, the beheadings, and the torturing that has been plaguing the country...
Something that caught my eye over break is actually this article is actually quite heartwarming and contrasts quite a bit compared to AIG.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/03/12/a_head_with_a_heart/
Basically the CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center has suggested having the more prominent workers (doctors, nurses, therapists, etc) to defer some of their salary and/or benefits in order for the lower wage workers to keep their jobs, since they're more likely to be laid off. He asked for their suggestions and has gotten them by the barrelful.
The great thing for me here is the fact that everybody is working together on this idea. People are WILLING to sacrifice their own benefits and pay in order for the others to keep from getting laid off. It's refreshing to see people caring for their fellow man in this way. I'm not entirely sure if it will work, but it's nice to see people actually giving it a try. Being an eternal optimist, I surely hope that it works out well.
I heard the most about Madoff. I also rerad an article that said they were investigating his family as well. I think that is a good idea because I do not think they had nothing to do with it. Maybe they just turned a blind eye or were actually a part, but this is why the need to be investigated.
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