Hurricane Sandy

As I expected, Hurricane Sandy is taking over just about every platform of news.  When I looked at sites like the Huffington Post and LA Times, it was very well covered, as well as the New York Times, which is to be expected seeing how it hit New York and New Jersey very hard.  The hurricane is very big news because it generally does not happen in the New England area, and at this point, about 8.1 Million people are without power according to a short article in the Huffington Post.  Sandy brought winds up to 90 mph through the NJ/NYC area, leaving the city in a blackout.  The trains going in and out of the city were cancelled, as well as all flights in the entire area that Sandy was expected to hit.  I was fortunate through the storm and although my lights flickered a few times, and the winds and rain were insane, I did not lose my power.  The storm was very big news and I'm sure it will be in the headlines all throughout the rest of the week.

News Reading 10/28

Today, I decided to start off by reading the LA Times for a while.  I found it very interesting that not only is Hurricane Sandy taking over the news over here on the east coast, but many of the articles in the LA Times are also about the weather over here.  When I was reading, I found that about 90% of the articles on the "nation now" page were about it.  I read an article about how many flights were being cancelled, along with the evacuation of NYC areas, and about the Governor of Virginia and his message to people of Virginia about safety and staying off the road during the main portion of the storm.

In other news, I read an article in my local newspaper about Michelle Obama visiting UNH on Tuesday, but I later found out that it is cancelled, due to the storm coming in between Monday and Tuesday.

Interesting articles

Today while looking at the news, I spent some time reading the LA times.  I found an interesting article on Jerusalem and some more strikes in the Gaza Strip.  What I particularly liked in the article, was the lead.  The lead reads,

"Tension along the Gaza Strip intensified Wednesday as a sustained barrage of rockets fired into Israel prompted an Israeli airstrike, marking an escalation in the latest round of fighting in the region."  

I particularly liked the usage of words in it, and how it started to create a picture in my mind of these attacks going on over on the other side of the world.  After reading multiple articles, I'm starting to realize how boring my leads tend to be. I think reading good articles will help me start to develop better writing styles when it comes to starting off my articles so that they will be more interesting and I could keep the readers interested for longer.

After reading a couple of articles in the LA Times, I moved onto the Seacoast Online website to find that there was a keg explosion death at the Red Hook Brewery in Portsmouth in April.  I never heard about the initial death, but the article says a keg exploded on a 26 year old brewery employee while he was cleaning it, and he died.  The article I read was a short one about how OSHA found things wrong with the brewery and plans to fine them a lot of money because of it.

10/22 Blog

After several weeks of reading news now, I'm starting to realize that I don't really like the New York Times website compared to other news websites out there.  I think it is informative, but I just find it very boring to get into.  I recently started reading off the Huffington Post website, as well as USA Today, and my local newspaper, and I like those websites a lot more.  I also like the CNN and WMUR websites, although those are TV news website.

As for my news reading for today, it mostly was made up of political articles since those are almost all that I see on the pages today due to tonights debate.  Another news article I read was on the meningitis risk and how it could effect up to 14,000 people, which is an insane amount!  The article talked about how it may have come from an infected needle, which always seems to be the case in big problems like this.  What I particularly liked about this article is how it started out, because it started with "Cathy Literski could tell something was wrong just from her mother's voice on the telephone," which is a clever way to make the reader (me) keep reading and wanting to know what else is going to unfold in this article from just the lead.

In the News..

This week, there seemed to be quite a bit going on in the local news.  Over the past week or two, the search for Lizzie Marriott's body has been making newspapers all over the area, and has also been broadcasted on TV news as well, as it is a very unusual and sad event to happen in NH.  An earthquake that happened Tuesday night also made new for a little bit because it is once again, also an extremely unusual event in New Hampshire.  Something I found in the Hampton Union that was somewhat big news in my town is the head girls basketball coach at the high school resigned unexpectedly before the new season began this year.  This is big news in town because he has lead the team to four state championships in the last five years, so girls basketball has made a name for itself over my time in high school.  Last but not least, as always, political news was popular in the past few weeks because of all the debates, and will only become more talked about from now on with the next debate being tomorrow night and the election being about three weeks away.

Meeting Article

Instead of letting students with a disciplinary problem sleep in late like on a normal Saturday morning, the Portsmouth School Board has other plans. 

At the meeting on Monday, the School Board proposed a new idea for students with a disciplinary problem.  School Board member Tim Steele wants to approve a new policy where students who have gotten into trouble during the week will have to return to school on Saturday morning at 8 a.m. for a four hour session of detention.

The newly proposed detention session would require about $3,000 extra in the budget to provide staffing to watch over the badly behaved students.

Portsmouth resident and parent, Peggy Bacon, disagreed with the proposed idea.  “I work six days a week – including Saturday morning,” she said.  “It’s bad enough to get my son off to school Monday through Friday.  Why should I have to worry about Saturday as well?”

“I know my son isn’t perfect,” Bacon said.  “But I’m not going to force him to go.  I just don’t think it’ll make any difference, and the parents are going to pay for it—in higher taxes as well as in ruined Saturdays.”

Steele believes that the new policy would reduce the number of in-house suspensions, which involves the misbehaved students to spend a day of school under supervision in an empty classroom.  “I know this isn’t good news for parents, but I hope the threat of Saturday classes will make the students think twice before breaking the school rules,” he said.

Portsmouth resident Bob Farley agreed with the proposal.  “Parents can whine all they want about this, but maybe it’s time parents in America were made to take a little responsibility for their kids,” Farley said.  “Maybe if they have to miss a few Saturday morning cartoons they’ll start wising up.”

Portsmouth senior, Lisa Gallagher, had another take on the new rule.  “In 12 years of school I’ve never served a detention, and I don’t intend to,” she said.  “But I don’t like this idea. I think it’s just being done to make life easier for the faculty, so they don’t have to deal with detentions during the week.  Anyway, what if someone skips the session? What are they going to do, make them stay all weekend?”

Steele said that if students decide to skip a Saturday detention session, it would result in the student being unable to return to school until the detention has been served.

Steele also said that smoking is the worst disciplinary problem they have in the school.  “I just want to keep students from smoking in the high school bathrooms.  There are other problems, but smoking is by far the biggest one,” Steele said.

The School Board ended up voting 5-3 on the new policy after plenty of discussion. 

Steele was told to return at the next meeting on March 7 with more information regarding in-school detentions so far for the current school year. 

Leads (10/1 class assignment)

An eighty year old unconscious man whose car was stalled on the Amtrak Downeaster traintracks in Old Orchard Beach, Maine this morning was rescued thirty seconds before the train arrived.