Thursday, Friday November 8/9 News perspectives

pərˈspektiv/

noun

a particular attitude toward or way of regarding something; a

 point of view.

"most guidebook history is written from the editor's

 perspective"

synonyms Our next step is integrating news stories with perspective, so as to have  a deeper understanding of how different news sources  handle a story. Is it possible to remain unbiased?  DIRECTIONS:

1..Open a word document  2.Below you will find three paired stories, labelled by number and letter. ie.  story 1 a, story 1 b, story 2a , story 2b.. 3.  Read each pair carefully, noting diction (word choice)  usage and tone  4. Copy and paste the story headlines and author  into your word document NEXT 5. Write a comparison paragraph of approximately 100 words for each of the paired stories that explains how each of the news sources handled the story. Use specific textual examples to support your analysis. (You will have three paragraphs in total, each consisting of 100 words.  Within each of the paragraphs, conclude with an evaluation  as to what extent the story was written objectively, or has demonstrated bias. 6. Rubric: demonstrates accurate understanding of the  articles; textual evidence; evaluation of the two news sources and language conventions (grammar, spelling, syntax.) 7. Again, there are three paired articles. DUE BY MIDNIGHT ON Friday.  This is a writing assignment. For late work you will receive 50 points. STORY 1 A  from Guardian News Florida yoga studio shooting: gunman made videos voicing hatred of women Videos appearing to feature Scott Paul Beierle contain racist insults and self-made comparisons to ‘incel’ killer Eliott Rodger Four people were wounded and two killed in a shooting at a Tallahassee yoga studio. Photograph: Steve Cannon/AP A gunman who killed two people and wounded five others at a yoga studio in Florida appears to have made videos voicing hatred of women and black people, likening himself in one clip to Elliot Rodger, the self-identified “incel” student who killed six people near the University of California. Friday’s attack by Scott Paul Beierle, a former teacher and military veteran, at a busy upscale shopping plaza in Tallahassee was stopped only when members of the yoga class tackled him. Authorities said the gunman killed himself. Those he shot dead, Nancy Van Vessem and Maura Binkley, had ties to Florida state university (FSU). It later emerged the 40-year-old had once been banned from the university’s campus and had been arrested twice for grabbing women, though the charges were ultimately dropped. Beierle, who had moved to the central Florida town of Deltona after getting a graduate degree from FSU, appeared to post a series of videos on YouTube in 2014 where he called women “whores” if they dated black men, said many black women were “disgusting” and described himself as a misogynist. A Tallahassee police spokesman would not confirm or deny the videos were Beierle’s. However, the man speaking in the videos looks like Beierle and biographical details mentioned in the videos match known facts about Beierle, including details about his military service. Also, the poster’s YouTube username included the word “Scott” Beierle’s first name. The existence of the videos was first reported by BuzzFeed. In one video, the man said promiscuous women deserved to be crucified and he suggested putting up landmines to keep people from crossing into the US from Mexico. In another video, the man who appeared to be Beierle likened his adolescent self to Rodger, a 22-year-old who killed six students and wounded more than a dozen others near the University of California, Santa Barbara, before killing himself in 2014. Rodger was a self-identified “incel,” short for “involuntary celibate”. Tallahassee police chief Michael DeLeo praised the efforts of those attending Friday’s yoga class in preventing further tragedy. “The fact that we had people fight this attacker to help save other people and prevent him from doing additional harm speaks to the spirit of Tallahassee,” DeLeo said on Saturday. FSU president John Thrasher said of the victims: “To lose one of our students and one of our faculty members in this tragic and violent way is just devastating to the Florida State University family,” Thrasher said in a statement. “We feel this loss profoundly and we send our deepest sympathies to Maura’s and Nancy’s loved ones while we pray for the recovery of those who were injured.” DeLeo said police were asking for anyone who saw anything unusual around the time of the shooting to contact authorities. He said the gunman acted alone and no connection between him and the victims or the location had been determined. Police would be looking at social media, cell phone records and interviewing friends and neighbors, he said. A public records search showed Beierle was charged with misdemeanor battery for incidents in 2012 and 2016, and criminal trespassing in 2014. On Saturday afternoon, authorities said he had been “the subject of prior calls for service in the Tallahassee area related to harassment of young women”. Capital Health Plan, where Van Vessem was chief medical director, called her a “guiding, visionary force”. In a statement, it said: “Her dedication, caring, leadership, humanity and experience made her one of the most respected, inspiring, and accomplished medical professionals in the state and country. Our hearts are filled with sorrow and prayers for her family. We all have been so blessed to have Nancy in our lives.” City commissioner Scott Maddox visited the scene. He said on Facebook: “In my public service career I have had to be on some bad scenes. This is the worst. Please pray.” STORY 1B  from Tallahassee Democrat Scott Beierle, gunman in Tallahassee yoga studio  shooting, remembered as 'really creepy' Jeff Berlow Tallahassee Democrat    Scott Paul Beierle was an odd loner and self-described misogynist who had a history of  arrests for grabbing young women around the campus of Florida State University. Beierle, who turned 40 last month, shot and killed two people and wounded five others Friday at a Midtown Tallahassee yoga studio before turning his handgun on himself.  Officer Damon Miller, a spokesman for the Tallahassee Police Department, said  investigators are trying to determine a motive. Miller said Beierle, a former Tallahassee resident, was residing in Deltona but was staying at a local hotel. Officers searched his hotel room and his residence in Volusia County and  obtained search warrants for his electronic devices and social media profiles. They also appealed to the public for any information about the gunman. “Investigators have been working around the clock to uncover more information and gain clarity as to why this senseless act occurred,” Miller said. Beierle had ties to Tallahassee through Florida State University. His LinkedIn page says that  after serving in the U.S. Army from 2008 to 2010, he earned master’s degrees in 2013 in public administration and planning. He earned a bachelor’s degree at the University of New  York at Binghamton and previously resided in Vestal, New York. Miller said Beierle arrived at the Hot Yoga Tallahassee studio in a red Chevrolet Sonic  and posed as a customer before opening fire on patrons without warning. He died at the scene of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

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STORY 2A  from Guardian News

Climate change was behind this summer's extreme weather

Areas of Kinston, N.C., are still flooded more than two weeks after Hurricane Florence came ashore along the coast this year. Scientists say increasingly severe storms are caused by climate change. (Scott Sharpe / TNS)

Michael E. Mann

The extreme heatwaves and wildfires wreaking havoc around the globe are “the face of climate change,” one of the world’s leading climate scientists has declared, with the impacts of global warming now “playing out in real time.”

Climate change has long been predicted to increase extreme weather incidents, and scientists are now confident these predictions are coming true. Scientists say the global warming has contributed to the scorching temperatures that have baked the UK and northern Europe for weeks.

The hot spell was made more than twice as likely by climate change, a new analysis found, demonstrating an “unambiguous” link.

Extreme weather has struck across Europe, from the Arctic Circle to Greece, and across the world, from North America to Japan. “This is the face of climate change,” said Prof Michael Mann, at Penn State University, and one the world’s most eminent climate scientists. “We literally would not have seen these extremes in the absence of climate change.”

“The impacts of climate change are no longer subtle,” he told the Guardian. “We are seeing them play out in real time and what is happening this summer is a perfect example of that.”

“We are seeing our predictions come true,” he said. “As a scientist that is reassuring, but as a citizen of planet Earth, it is very distressing to see that as it means we have not taken the necessary action.”

The rapid scientific assessment of the northern European heatwave was done by Geert Jan van Oldenborgh, at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute and also colleagues in the World Weather Attribution (WWA) consortium. “We can see the fingerprints of climate change on local extremes,” he said.

The current heatwave has been caused by an extraordinary stalling of the jet stream wind, which usually funnels cool Atlantic weather over the continent. This has left hot, dry air in place for two months – far longer than usual. The stalling of the northern hemisphere jet stream is being increasingly firmly linked to global warming, in particular to the rapid heating of the Arctic and resulting loss of sea ice.

Prof Mann said that asking if climate change “causes” specific events is the wrong question: “The relevant question is: ‘Is climate change impacting these events and making them more extreme?’, and we can say with great confidence that it is.”

Mann points out that the link between smoking tobacco and lung cancer is a statistical one, which does not prove every cancer was caused by smoking, but epidemiologists know that smoking greatly increases the risk. “That is enough to say that, for all practical purposes, there is a causal connection between smoking cigarettes and lung cancer and it is the same with climate change,” Mann said.

ther senior scientists agree the link is clear. Serious climate change is “unfolding before our eyes”, said Prof Rowan Sutton, at the University of Reading. “No one should be in the slightest surprised that we are seeing very serious heatwaves and associated impacts in many parts of the world.”

It is not too late to make the significant cuts needed in greenhouse gas emissions, said Mann, because the impacts progressively worsen as global warming increases.

“It is not going off a cliff, it is like walking out into a minefield,” he said. “So the argument it is too late to do something would be like saying: ‘I’m just going to keep walking’. That would be absurd – you reverse course and get off that minefield as quick as you can. It is really a question of how bad it is going to get.”

STORY 2B    from Jamaica Information Service

Jamaica to Benefit from Climate Change Resilience Project

By Chad Bryan 

Principal Director of the Climate Change Division in the Economic Growth and Job Creation Ministry, Una May Gordon (left) shares in a photo opportunity with Senior Development Officer, at the Canadian High Commission, Walric Peddie (centre) and Executive Director of the Scientific Research Council, Dr. Cliff Riley. Occasion was the inaugural staging of the Caribbean Climate Innovation Summit and Demo Day at the Knutsford Court Hotel in New Kingston on November 2.

Jamaica is one of three countries participating in a US$35.7 million project designed to strengthen resilience of urban areas through Ecosystem-Based Adaptation (EBA).

The project entitled, ‘Building climate resilience of urban systems through EBA in Latin America and the Caribbean’ also includes Mexico and El Salvador. 

Funding in part for the project has been provided by the Jamaica Social Investment Fund (JSIF); the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) San Salvador; and the Municipal Water and Sanitation Commission of Xalapa in Mexico.

Principal Director of the Climate Change Division in the Economic Growth and Job Creation Ministry, Una May Gordon, said the project in the Jamaican context will target the community of Greenwich Town in Kingston, as well as other areas.

“We will try to reduce the concrete footprint of many schools along that corridor. We will be planting some fruit trees (to) also spur some liveliness along there. We will also be doing some farming so communities will be engaged,” she said.

Ms. Gordon was speaking to JIS News at the inaugural staging of the Caribbean Climate Innovation Summit and Demo Day at the Knutsford Court Hotel in New Kingston on November 2.

The countries selected under the project were chosen due to several socio-economic issues common to them.

They include the rapid and unplanned expansion of housing into areas that are vulnerable to natural disasters or unsuitable for settlement and the inadequate access to public services such as waste management, sanitation and refuse collection.

The EBA approach is a cost-effective way of reducing the vulnerability of urban and peri-urban communities to climate change by protecting, maintaining, and rehabilitating priority ecosystems in urban areas, to act as physical buffers against climate change related hazards while generating multiple social and environmental benefits.

Hosted by the Caribbean Climate Innovation Centre (CCIC), the full-day summit was held to discuss drivers and challenges for green tech innovation in the region.

The summit aimed to present current innovation and showcase some of those products that have been commercialized in the last two to four years that have had successful implementations.

Chairperson of the CCIC Management Committee, Lisa Harding, said since her agency’s inception in 2014, it has been at the forefront of building an entrepreneurial ecosystem that fosters the development of growth oriented entrepreneurs and profitable businesses.

Ms. Harding pointed out that the CCIC has been focused on supporting female entrepreneurs in green tech business ventures, which is a space usually reserved for men.

“Just recently, CCIC successfully completed the Caribbean’s green tech start-up boot camp, the first in the region…the focus on women and youth is very significant… and speaks to the broader development challenges, which we in the region face,” she said.

 The CCIC has been supported by the Government of Canada and the World Bank as well as consortiums such as the Scientific Research Council (SRC) and the Caribbean Industrial Research Institute (CARIRI) in Jamaica.

Other speakers at the summit include: SRC Executive Director, Dr. Cliff Riley; CARIRI representative, Eka Rudder-Fairman; Senior Development Officer at the Canadian High Commission, Walric Peddie; and Tasks Team Lead at the World Bank, Elaine Tinsley.

Special features of the summit included plenary sessions, green innovation exhibitions and a pitch competition involving seven green tech entrepreneurs from across the region.

STORY 3 A from Vanity Fair

MELANIA TRUMP DISCOVERS A FLAIR FOR GOVERNMENT WASTE

The First Lady dropped nearly $100,000 at a hotel where she didn’t even stay the night. Scott Pruitt who?

In the Trump administration, there exists a grand tradition of spending ridiculous amounts of taxpayer money on travel and expenses, lest anyone suffer the grave indignity of flying coach or sleeping in a non-five-star hotel. Some might even say that Cabinet members have been engaging in an unspoken-yet-very-real competition to see who can blow the most cash on luxe airfare, accommodations, and work trips that somehow turn into full-on vacations.

 Former Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin,for example, expensed taxpayers for a 10-day jaunt to Europe with his wife that naturally included a day at Wimbledon. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin used a private jet to get a better shot of the solar eclipse. Former Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price spent more than $1 million between chartered and military flights for excursions that included, among other things, lunch with his son, and a visit to an island where he and his wife own land. And then, of course, you have ex-E.P.A. chief Scott Pruitt, who had to fly in the part of the cabin where the champagne is free in order to avoid people being mean to him, and allegedly insisted on staying in hotels that far exceed the U.S. government’s per diem, sometimes by as much as 300 percent.

 STORY 3 B from The Daily Beast

Melania Trump Spent $95K During One-Day Cairo Visit: Report

Melania Trump’s stay in Cairo during her October trip to Africa cost taxpayers $95,050, according to federal spending records.

The US first lady and her entourage racked up the tab at the Semiramis Intercontinental Cairo, which offers rooms starting at $119. The hotel’s presidential suite can be rented for $699, which includes $156.50 in taxes, per the property’s website.

A spokeswoman for the first lady says Trump was in Cairo for six hours and didn’t actually spend the night at the hotel.

Although a 2017 Fox News analysis of White House staffing data called the first lady’s office ”one of the leanest East Wing operations in recent history,” her bill at the Semiramis Intercontinental Cairo was significantly higher than the $77,345.35 that the government spent on her husband’s two-night stay last July at his golf course in Scotland with, among others, son Eric, chief of staff John Kelly, press secretary Sarah Sanders, and social media director Dan Scavino.

The first lady stopped in Cairo after touring Ghana, Malawi, and Kenya in an effort to demonstrate to the world that “we care.” When pressed by a reporter in Egypt on her decision to wear a jacket reading, “I really don’t care, do u” across the back during her June visit to migrant children along the Texas-Mexico border, the former model replied, “I wish people would focus on what I do, not what I wear.” (Her plea has not been heeded.)

Payment was made to the hotel in Cairo on Sept. 30, about a week prior to the first lady’s arrival on Saturday, Oct. 6. The description of the expenditure reads simply, “FLOTUS visit hotel rooms.” No detailed breakdown of the payment, or how many rooms were rented, are provided in the data but ostensibly the tab includes the cost of the  first lady’s Secret Service detail and various support staff.

The bill for Melania Trump’s stay at the Semiramis Intercontinental Cairo.

The Semiramis Intercontinental is located along the River Nile in central Cairo. Amenities include a rooftop pool, free wifi, and a 24-hour business center.irst lady’s Secret Service detail and various support staff.

STORY 3  from Vanity Fair

MELANIA TRUMP DISCOVERS A FLAIR FOR GOVERNMENT WASTE

The First Lady dropped nearly $100,000 at a hotel where she didn’t even stay the night. Scott Pruitt who?