PNS 11: USU Van Accident

Practice News Story 11: USU Van Accident

November 28,2008

Jason Rogers

Logan, UTAH- A 15-passenger-van carrying 11 Utah State University Students rolled out of control on south bound I-84 at around 4 p.m. Yesterday. The students along with their instructor, Evan Parker, were thrown from the vehicle after an apparent mechanical malfunction occurred with the vehicle. The students were on their way back from a field trip to Tremonton where they went to look at a agricultural machinery combine as a department field trip.

Utah Highway Patrol Leutanant Jason Jensen was the first trooper on the scene. According to his account, 9 passengers where unconscious at the scene and two were counciouse. Seven were later pronounced dead at the scene with four survivors taken to near by hospitols for medical treatment. Their conditions are still undisclosed.

“Their bodies where everywhere ... literally just scattered around the area,” said Leutant Jensen as he described what he encountered as he entered the scene.

Former USU student and friend of professor Parker, Kyle Holden, was driving next to the vehicle as it rolled off to the shoulder. He describes this as “One of the worst things I've ever seen in my life.”

Dean of Agriculture Noel Cockett had this to say about the accident of her students. “This is certainly something that will effect many students. They've got many friends ... really, this is one of the best classes that we've had. This is something that is going to hit the hearts of many people.”

practice news story 10: Investigative

Practice News Story 10: Investigative
November 14, 2007
Jason Rogers
Logan,UT-Bill and Melinda Gates, the first family of Microsoft, and Ted Turner, media mogul and philanthropist, recently flew together on a private Jet to Nigeria, Africa. Each are involved in global health and education with there respective foundations, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and The Ted Turner Foundation Inc. Ted turner has also donated much of his funds to the United Nations foundation which continues to help third world countries around the globe.
The Mayor of the capital Abuja, Nigeria, the capital city, reported to have had many conversations with the Foundations beginning about 3 to 4 months ago with representatives and recently with the Gates' and Ted Turner. Mayor Malik Ok said, “We have interest in raising education in my city,” and when asked we he thought the Foundations have come to help him, he responded, “I truly believe they have our interest in heart. After reaching out to the world community, we were approached by these two foundations.” These foundations will attempt to hold workshops and teach people about health education topics such as polio, HIV, AIDS, pneumonia, malaria, and other deadly diseases that plague Africa today. The foundations' representatives will serve as the educators while local representatives will be taught to teach the workshops. Mayor Ok hopes that in 10 years the project can be fully supported and funded by it's government.

Bill Gates was reached momentarily for comment and confirmed the reports. “We are going to focus on health education ... we will have an official news conference on the matter in 2-3 months.”

Practice News Story 8: Sports

Practice News Story: Sports

November 7, 2007

10:00 am MT

Jason Rogers

Salt Lake City, UT- The Utah Jazz came out with the victory last night winning 106-99 against the visiting Cleveland Cavaliers last night at Energy Solutions Arena. After coming off of a devastating loss to the Los Angeles Lakers, where All Star Kobe Bryant blocked what would have been the game winning shot. Forward, Andrei Kirilenko took that to heart and contributed a record setting 21 blocks to last night's victory. Many of his blocks came while guarding LeBron James.

“He moves fast,” Kirilenko said about Lebron, “ Luckily I had a lot of energy in this game.” Energy must have been what gave AK-47 his 21 blocks combined with 21 points on the night.

Jazz Head Coach Jerry Sloan still feels that there is room for improvement. “Andrie had a great game. Some of our other guys have to step it up.” There were 8 ties throughout the game, however the Jazz never trailed once. Paul Millsap contributed with 12 points, C.J Miles had 15 points, and Boozer added 29 points to the scoreboard while pulling down 7 rebounds.

LeBron had 28 points of his own and said this after the game. “The crowd in Utah is one of the loudest. The crowd took us out of the game more than anything. We just couldn't close it out at the end.” When asked about Kirilenko's Performance he added, “He deserves to be an All-Star ... I left myself open and payed the price."

Extra Practice News Story #8: Business

Extra Practice news story 8: Business
10/31/07
Jason Rogers
Google Makes Hostile Take-Over Bid

Palo Alto, CA-Google Inc. (GOOG) made a hostile take-over bid for Time Warner Inc. (TWX) yesterday in hopes of producing more content. The $60 billion bid comes to Time Warner as a surprise to Richard Parsons, CEO of Time Warner Cable. “This was out of the blue. This was not expected at all.” Google has proposed a very generous offer to buy Time Warner and has released the breakdown of the proposal at $10 billion in cash, $45 billion in stocks and $5 billion in assumed debt.

According to Dr. Eric Schmidt, CEO and Chairman of Google Inc, “We've actually overpriced the Value in our stock.” When asked how this will help Google in the future, he responded by saying, “We don't have a top notch facility to produce content, Time Warner does,” which shows evidence of Google's desire to expand from a content contributer to a producer as well. While being one of the most hit websites online, Google would increase its influence in the information world by not only contributing to content through its search engine, but would become a main source in producing information as well.

Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO) and Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) were also interested in purchasing Time Warner, but Yahoo CEO, Steve Baller and Microsoft CEO, Jerry Yang, offered no comment on the issue. The Federal Communications Commision would still have to approve such a huge buy out before business decisons are final. However, Industry Analyst Paul Kim believes that the merg "seems to make sense."