Southwest Journalist
Page 2 — Thursday, May 31, 2007
International/National
Bush calls Zoellick ‘eminently’ qualified By JEANNINE AVERSA The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — President Bush on Wednesday tapped his former trade chief and No. 2 diplomat, Robert Zoellick, to run the World Bank, to try to mend wounds inflicted by outgoing president Paul Wolfowitz. Zoellick, 53, would succeed Wolfowitz, who is stepping down June 30 after a special bank panel found that he broke bank rules when he arranged a hefty compensation package in 2005 for his girlfriend, Shaha Riza, a bank employee. Bush’s selection of Zoellick must be approved by the World Bank’s 24-member board. Zoellick, who is a seasoned veteran of politics both inside the Beltway and on the international stage, is known for pulling facts and figures off the top of his head. He also has a reputation for being a demanding boss.
“Bob Zoellick has had a long and distinguished career in diplomacy and development economics,” Bush said. “It has prepared him well for this new assignment. This man is eminently qualified,” Bush said. Internationally, the reaction to Bush’s choice was generally positive, although some public health groups and others expressed concern about Zoellick’s ability to carry out the institution’s mission. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner welcomed Zoellick’s appointment. Asked whether Zoellick was the right man for the job, Kouchner said, Amy Zerba / Southwest Journalist “Certainly.” “In between the partners and Robert Zoellick, former deputy secretary of State, will replace the World Bank, it is mainly a outgoing World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz. President Bush question of confidence, and announced his decision Wednesday, but a 24-member board I hope that Mr. Zoellick will must approve. re-establish — or establish — confidence in between all of foreign ministers in Potsdam, dent Jose Manuel Barroso said, them,” Kouchner told report- Germany. “This is absolutely “I certainly respect very much ers Wednesday on his arrival crucial.” Mr. Zoellick,” but declined to at a meeting of Group of Eight European Commission Presi- comment further.
What George Bush had to say H “Bob Zoellick has had a long and distinguished career in diplomacy and development economics. It has prepared him well for this new assignment.” H “Bob Zoellick is the right man to succeed Paul [Wolfowitz] in this vital work. He’s a leader who motivates employees; he builds a constituent support and focuses on achieving goals.” H “He is deeply devoted to the mission of the World Bank. He wants to help struggling nations defeat poverty, to grow their economies and offer their people the hope of a better life.”
iTunes shirks copy protection EXXON: Firm viewed as behind Unrestricted music now costs more with each download By MAY WONG The Associated Press
SAN JOSE, Calif. — Apple Inc.’s iTunes Store started selling thousands of songs without copy protection Wednesday, making the trendsetting company’s latest coup a model for what analysts say will likely become a pattern for online music sales. Launching initially with songs from music company EMI Group PLC, iTunes Plus features tracks that are free of digital rights management, or DRM, technology — copyprotection software that limits where songs or movies can be played and distributed. The unrestricted content means some songs purchased from iTunes will work for the first time directly on portable players other than Apple’s iPod, including Microsoft Corp.’s Zune. The i naug u ra l batch of iTunes Plus songs includes music from Coldplay, The Rolling Stones, Norah Jones, Frank
Sinatra, Pink Floyd and more than a dozen of Paul McCartney’s classic albums. The DRM-free tracks feature a higher sound quality and cost $1.29 apiece — 30 cents more than the usual 99-cent price of other, copy-protected songs at the market-leading online music store. If available, users could upgrade existing purchases to DRM-free versions for 30 cents a song or $3 for most albums, Apple said. Smaller online music vendors, such as eMusic.com, already offer songs without DRM, but the selections have been limited to mostly content from independent labels. Earlier this year, Apple CEO Steve Jobs called on the world’s four major record companies to start selling songs online without copy-protection software. In a statement Wednesday, Jobs reiterated Apple expects that more than half of the 5 million songs on iTunes will feature a DRM-free version by the end of the year. In the meantime, Apple’s iTunes Store will continue to offer songs in the same copyprotected format as today at 99-cents-per-download and
encoded at 128 kilobits per second. The iTunes Plus versions are encoded at 256 kbps, which Apple says makes the audio quality on par with original recordings. Apple also will continue to encode its songs — including EMI’s DRM-free content — in the AAC audio format, which could force some users to go through an extra step of converting tunes into a version that would be compatible with their players. Some gadgets don’t support AAC, including SanDisk’s newest Sansa Connect or Samsung Electronics Co.’s YP-K3, but industry analyst Susan Kevorkian of the IDC market research company expects support for AAC will widen following Apple’s move this week. The next generation of digital music will be untethered from usage restrictions, Kevorkian predicts. It’s something major music labels will have to do if they want to combat the industry’s years long decline of music CD sales, she said. “They absolutely have to reach the Internet to drive music sales, and part of that is to remove the hurdle that comes with the lack of interoperability,” Kevorkian said.
— Continued from Page 1 appease those who say Exxon places profits ahead of a clean environment and has funded groups to cast doubt on the science of global warming. E x xon Mobi l i s v iewed among many environmentalists as a laggard compared to competitors such as BP PLC, ConocoPhi l lips a nd Roya l Dutch Shell’s U.S. arm, which have joined a corporate-environmental coalition urging Congress to require limits on greenhouse gases tied to global warming. Many shareholders have asked why Exxon Mobil doesn’t use more of its vast research and development resources to help solve the climate-change threat, saying that failing to do so threatens its long-term financial health. Shareholder Stephen Viederman of New York likened Exxon Mobil’s current tack to that of Ford and General Motors a quarter century ago, when they stuck with some larger models while foreign competitors began building more fuel-efficient cars. He even quest ioned t he accuracy of Exxon Mobil’s slogan, — “Taking on the world’s toughest energy challenges,” —
LM Otero / Associated Press
Rex Tillerson, chairman and CEO of Exxon Mobil, said Wednesday at a news conference in Dallas that the company will focus on finding and producing new supplies of crude oil and natural gas instead of creating policies to reduce harmful greenhouse-gas emissions. saying there was little evidence of commitment to any type of energy beyond oil and gas. Exxon Mobil representatives say they’re still studying whether proposals such as mandatory emissions caps — which ConocoPhillips, BP and Shell have endorsed — or a tax on carbon emissions are the way to combat global warming via public policy. Ken Cohen, the company’s
vice president for public affairs, said any such policy would need to ensure a uniform and predictable cost of reducing carbon dioxide, promote global participation and adjust to developments in climate science. “What we’re trying to do is make sure, as policy options are being developed and analyzed, that all of them are on the table and given a full and fair hearing,” Cohen said.
REFUGEES: Many wait in camps in nearby countries
Airing peace
— Continued from Page 1
Howard Yanes / Associated Press
University students show their hands with the Spanish word for “peace” written on them during a protest Wednesday in Caracas, Venezuela. The students poured into the streets for a third day to protest the removal of a leading opposition TV station Radio Caracas Television, RCTV, from the air.
resettlement in the U.S. will be given assistance from both government and private aid agencies, including language and job training in the communities that will be their new homes, officials said. “A mer ica’s t rad it ion of welc om i ng i nter nat iona l refugees and responding to hu m a n i t a r i a n e m e r g e ncies is unrivaled,” he said in a statement. “Yet we also must be mindful of the securit y risks associated w it h ad m it t i ng ref ugees f rom war-torn countries — especially countries infiltrated by large numbers of terrorists.” Homeland Security officials would not discuss what the enhanced process entails, but several people familiar with the program said it includes additional interviews, biometric screening and cross-checks against employer databases, none of which is necessarily required for non-Iraqi refugees. The 59 Iraqis who will arrive soon are among a group of more than 700 considered to be the most vulnerable and for whom resettlement interviews have already been conducted, the department said.
S. Griffin Singer
Director, Center for Editing Excellence
George Sylvie
Assistant Director, Center for Editing Excellence
Beth Butler & Amy Zerba
Southwest Journalist Volume 10 May 20-June 1, 2007 A publication of The Center for Editing Excellence at the School of Journalism of The University of Texas at Austin and the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund.
BIOMETRICS ARE USED TO IDENTIFY INCOMING REFUGEES. THEY ARE... H measurable H physiological and/or behavioral characteristics H used to verify the identity of an individual Source: Department of the Army T he y i nclude “per son s whose lives may be in jeopardy because they worked for coalition forces,” it said, without giving specific numbers of former U.S. employees. Re f u g e e a d v o c a t e s on We d n e s d a y p r a i s e d t h e announcement but lamented that many desperate Iraqis have been languishing in camps in other Mideast countries. “Obv iously, DHS ha s a responsibility to make sure that everybody who comes into the country is going to be a good citizen ... but they also realize that the country has a responsibility to these Iraqis,” said Kenneth Bacon of Refugees International. “My hope is that with this they will begin large-scale
resettlement program,” he said. “We are very disappointed that there are so few now, but I have hope for the future.” Refugees International is one of several groups that have been pushing the administration to accept at least a fraction of the Iraqis and noted that other countries, including some Scandinavian nations, have agreed to accept tens of thousands. “It is embarrassing that Sweden is taking more refugees than we are,” Bacon said. “The U.S. should be doing much more.” That complaint has been echoed on Capitol Hill where the Senate and House earlier this month passed legislation allowing a tenfold increase in special immigrant visas for
Iraqis and Afghans who worked as translators and interpreters for U.S. forces. “America has a fundamental obligation to help those brave Iraqis who put their lives on the line by working for our government,” said Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., who co-sponsored the Senate bi l l w it h R icha rd Luga r, R-Ind. As of May 18, the United Nations had identified 4,692 Iraqi refugees at camps in Syria, Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon and Egypt for possible resettlement in the United States. Officials said they expect that number of refugees at camps in Syria, Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon and Egypt to rise from about 4,600 to about 7,000 by Sept. 30 and the U.S. hopes to admit as many as possible. “We fully intend and expect to be able to handle 7,000 referrals,” deputy State Department spokesman Tom Casey told reporters. “This is very good news that this has now been arranged.” The State Depa r t ment’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, which deals with refugee resettlement, said communities around the U.S. have been identified as destinations for the first batch
2007 Dow Jones Newspaper Fund Interns K atherine G. Armstrong
Carolyn A. Garza
Cristina Parker
University of Texas at Austin The Denver Post
University of Missouri Austin American-Statesman
University of Missouri Houston Chronicle
Administrative Assistants-Faculty
Ryan Claunch
Joel Gehringer
Jacqueline C. Stone
Lorraine Branham
Texas Christian University The Tennessean
University of Nebraska The Arizona Daily Star
University of Texas at Austin Houston Chronicle
Gregory B. Finley
Hoon David Ok
Breanca Thomas
Visiting Faculty
Cal State University, Chico The Washington Post
University of Texas at Arlington The Beaumont Enterprise
University of Oklahoma Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Director, UT School of Journalism
Phil Avila, Dow Jones Newspaper Fund; Gary Dinges, Austin360.com; Bradley Wilson, North Carolina State University; Drew Marcks, Austin American-Statesman visit host.
The Southwest Journalist was edited and designed by interns attending the 2007 Center for Editing Excellence, funded by a grant from the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund and the daily newspapers hosting the interns.