findingDulcinea

Top 10 News Stories of 2008

On October 6, Lehman Brothers CEO Richard S. Fuld, Jr. is heckled by protesters as he leaves Capitol Hill in Washington after testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on the collapse of Lehman Brothers  (Susan Walsh/AP)

It’s time for publications to review their reportage from the year and release their lists of the biggest stories of the year. At findingDulcinea, we plan to do the same next week, but in the meantime, here’s what some other news sources had to say.

Time magazine’s list of the year’s “Top 10 News Stories” leads with the first reports of the investment banking crisis in September. But if you want a list that goes beyond general news, Time has that covered in the “Top 10 Everything of 2008,” which includes such categories as the year’s top underreported stories, oddball news stories and crime stories, as well as non-news categories, such as movies, late night jokes and children’s books.

Foreign policy buffs who think they know everything that is going on in the world may reconsider after reading Foreign Policy’s list of “The Top 10 Stories You Missed in 2008,” which picks the surge in Afghanistan that occurred earlier this year as its top story.

There have been many scientific breakthroughs this year; New Scientist magazine focuses on the increase in brain research in “Your amazing brain: Top 10 articles from 2008.”

It’s been another scandal-filled year for our nation’s celebrities and their nearest and dearest; MTV highlights the worst behavior of celebrity parents (and parents of celebrities) in “The Top 10 Most Notorious Celebrity Parents of 2008.” The year’s most offensive? MTV points to Rufus Humphrey, Lily van der Woodsen, Bart Bass and Howie Archibald, the parental characters in the popular TV show “Gossip Girl.”

Soojung Chang
Senior Writer

60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Members of the Elders Group meet with French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, December 7, 2008 in Paris (Thibault Camus/AP)

December 10, 2008 marks the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. How is the day is being honored and what current events are affecting human rights law?

The Elders, an organization dedicated to easing human suffering, and which is composed of such world leaders and statesmen as Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, partnered with similarly minded groups to launch the Every Human Has Rights campaign a year ago today. The campaign, which is still going strong, asks individuals worldwide to call on governments to “uphold and protect” human rights.

Amnesty International, which is part of the Every Human Has Rights campaign, has also joined with the Irish Times this past year to publish a series of pieces by well-known Irish writers about the UDHR; Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney wrote the first one, “Human Rights, Poetic Redress.” 

Today, the General Assembly of the United Nations is considering the new Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. If approved, it would give a right of individual complaint concerning the rights to health, housing, education, etc.

And what does the world think about the UDHR? The World Public Opinion found that a majority in 25 nations polled support most of the principles set out in the UDHR, and a majority in most of those countries believe that the UN should have the “power to go into countries to investigate human rights abuses.”

For more information on where to find international news, please visit our International Politics Web Guide.

Kate Davey
Co-founder & Audience Development

Site of the Day: The Week in Rap

A new Web site from the creators of Flocabulary.com, a music project initially intended to expand students’ vocabulary by teaching them rap songs, is now also making current events more accessible by rapping about them. The new site is called The Week in Rap.

In their recent election edition, the rappers riffed about the day’s importance from a historical perspective, explaining how far America had come. In the next beat, however, they touched upon the challenges ahead, such as the country’s soaring unemployment and the divisive issue of gay marriage in California.

The listener’s experience is enhanced visually with a montage, and links embedded in the song lyrics lead to articles and videos that explain the stories in more detail. Cofounder Blake Harrison told CBS that kids want to learn but many students lack access to news that engages them: “It’s hard to care about something that you don’t know about.”

Shannon Firth
Writer

The Election's Over. How Will the Media Cope?

Once our commander in chief has been chosen, media coverage of politics will undoubtedly continue, with pundits scrutinizing every last presidential detail en route to the January inauguration. But once we’ve had our fill of White House fodder, what will we shift our focus to? There are many worthy subjects in need of media attention. Here are a few options:

Africa’s Humanitarian Crises

Darfur has become a popular celebrity cause, but according to New York Times journalist Nicholas D. Kristof, world leaders are still too slow to respond to strife in the war-torn region—most recently, the late October attack on a refugee camp in North Darfur.

In Somalia, violent clashes involving Ethiopia and sectors of the Islamic Courts Union have reached a boiling point. Clouded in religion and politics, the conflicts are decades old, but now have distinctly anti-American undertones. Late last month, a typically peaceful area of northern Somalia was hit by five suicide bomb attacks within 15 minutes. Blame fell on a group with possible al-Qaida affiliations.

Piecing Together the Economy

Whether we blame Fannie and Freddie, Wall St., Reaganomics, President Bush or Alan Greenspan for the economic downward spiral, the bottom line is that it must be fixed. To Steven R. Weisman of The New Republic, “This has been the Great Incomprehensible Recession of 2008. Incomprehensibility was at the root of the problem, and it is at the root of our difficulty getting out of it.”

Bolstering Environmental Awareness

Will environmental policies fall by the wayside in the wake of economic hard times? In Europe, the global financial crisis has already threatened “plans to slash greenhouse gas emissions” in Germany and Italy. But French president Nicolas Sarkozy is pushing the EU to maintain “the fundamental framework” of its environmental policies, despite the burden it could infringe on companies, reports Agence France-Presse.

Understanding Islam

Islam is often a central issue in African and Middle Eastern conflicts, and many Americans are uninformed on the subject. Without a basic understanding of the complex religion, how are we to establish progressive diplomatic relationships with Muslim countries, and with practicing Muslims at home? Mahnaz Shabbir, a second-generation American Muslim woman, raised the issue of the media’s portrayal of Muslims in a talk at Kansas State University last month, and emphasized the cruciality of education. “Knowing about other people and other religions starts with how you’re taught,” she said.

Sarah Amandolare
Senior Writer

Monitoring the Arctic

Sam Soja / AP

The Arctic has been in the news a lot lately. Ice in the Arctic is shrinking at a rapid pace, and some researchers believe that it might melt away completely in just a few years. Use the Web to do your own monitoring of points north.

The Arctic theme page, created by the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration, allows you to view frequently updated images from the area via Web Cam 3, which provides “a fish eye view showing sky and cloud cover.” Be sure to explore its gallery of older images as well.

The National Science Foundation has an overview of its research on both of the poles, the Arctic and the Antarctic.

The Athropolis Arctic Library lists Arctic resources alphabetically and by category. Athropolis also offers a Guide to Arctic Sunrise & Sunset.

The Arctic Studies Center hosts resources concerning the peoples and cultures of the northern region, including the Ainu, the Vikings, and the Yamal.

Soojung Chang
Senior Writer

Surfing the Financial Tsunami

While investment banks are falling by the wayside, and the stock market’s shakiness puts the camerawork on “Cloverfield” to shame, there has been no shortage of phrases evoking nature’s fury to capture the magnitude of the biggest upheaval on Wall Street since 1929.

Speaking of magnitude, the Associated Press sized up the Dow Jones via the Richter scale in its Sept. 20 piece entitled, “A quake rocks Wall Street and the tremors ripple.” Of course, financial quakes set off financial tsunamis, as pointed out by Indian news site Rediff.com’s headline, “Financial tsunami swamps the world.”

Seismology isn’t the only earth science to get a nod in credit crunch coverage, however. Weather Channel buffs can flip the remote over to CNBC to learn about Wall Street meteorology—namely to answer the question, “Can NYC Weather This Financial Hurricane?”

Britain’s Halifax Bank of Scotland also faced stormy times last week, although the clouds lifted when Lloyds TSB took it over. Read about it in The Independent’s op-ed, “Lloyds holds all the cards as HBOS seeks shelter from financial hurricane.”

Anne Szustek
Senior Writer

To read more about the current sweep of bankruptcies and mergers to roil Wall Street, please see:

“Barclays Grabs Bulk of Lehman Brothers”

“Why Did the Fed Prop Up AIG?”

“SEC, U.K. Tell Traders, Brokers, to Fix Their Shorts”