data.xml

<collection>
    <advertisement x="1" y="1" width="1" height="8"
        img="239px-Old_Danish_enamel_advertising_sign,_Zinck_godthaab.JPG"
        source="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Old_Danish_enamel_advertising_sign,_Zinck_godthaab.JPG"/>
    <advertisement x="6" y="87" width="1" height="28" img="dd5fb88b9d96141f596406cf01c1550f.jpg"
        src="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/dd/5f/b8/dd5fb88b9d96141f596406cf01c1550f.jpg"/>
    <article x="2" y="1" width="1" height="8"
        url="https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Labour_Party_UK_members_win_right_to_vote_in_leadership_contest">
        <title>Labour Party</title>
        <text>
            <p>On Monday the High Court of Justice of England and Wales ruled the UK Labour Party's
                National Executive Committee has no right to bar members who joined the party after
                January 12 from voting in the party's leadership election this month.</p>
        </text>
    </article>
    <article x="1" y="10" width="2" height="25"
        url="https://www.propublica.org/article/new-jersey-senate-examines-controversial-student-loan-agency">
        <title>Controversial Student Loan Agency</title>
        <subtitle>New Jersey senate examines agency</subtitle>
        <text>
            <p>Almost a dozen people with harrowing experiences with New Jersey’s controversial
                student loan program testified on Monday before state lawmakers, detailing its
                aggressive collection tactics and onerous terms that some said had ruined them
                financially.</p>

            <p>“Hesaa destroyed my family,” Tracey Timony, referring to the state’s Higher Education
                Student Assistance Authority, said at a hearing before the Higher Education and
                Legislative Oversight Committees of the New Jersey State Senate.</p>
            <p>Ms. Timony had co-signed on her daughter’s loans totaling $140,000. After her
                daughter defaulted, Ms. Timony was sued by one of the agency’s collection firms and
                has since declared bankruptcy to get more manageable monthly payments.</p>

            <p>The hearing was prompted by an investigation published last month by ProPublica and
                The New York Times into the agency, which runs the largest state-based student loan
                program in the country, with nearly $2 billion in outstanding loans.</p>
            <p>The agency charges higher interest rates than similar federal programs, the
                investigation found, and has strikingly broad collection powers. If borrowers fall
                behind on payments, the agency can garnish wages, seize tax refunds and revoke
                professional licenses, all without getting a court judgment.</p>

        </text>
    </article>
    <article x="3" y="1" width="4" height="72" url="http://chicagostories.org/global-chicago/">
        <title>Chicago: The Global City</title>
        <image caption="Meeting the 21st century"
            filename="BP-globalcity-fisheyehancock-shutterrunnercom-lrg.jpg" width="3" column="2"
            row="top"/>
        <image
            caption="The Great Fire of 1871 destroyed much of the center of Chicago. Undaunted, the city bounced back with more industry, more building, more jobs, more stores, higher buildings (it invented the skyscraper). Overcoming East Coast skeptics, it hosted a successful Columbian Exposition World’s Fair in 1893."
            width="2" filename="BP-globalcity-rails.jpg" column="1" row="bottom"/>
        <text>
            <p>
                <b>At mid-century, Chicago was the “City of the Big Shoulders,” the mightiest
                    industrial city of them all. Thirty years later, in the ‘80s, it was “Beirut by
                    the Lake,” a troubled metropolis caught in economic decay and torn by racial
                    politics. Along the way it’s been the “Second City” or the “City on the Make”
                    or, as the first Mayor Daley had it, “The City That Works,” a name that stuck
                    even at a time when it seemed the city stopped working.</b>
            </p>
            <p>Today, Chicago is a global city, anointed by rankings that invariably put it in the
                top ten of global cities worldwide, up there with Hong Kong and Singapore. Indeed
                our architects design whole cities in China and, in Dubai, the world’s tallest
                building. Our museums, theatres, symphony and universities are second to none. The
                Washington Post dubbed Chicago “the Milan of the Midwest,” Bernard-Henri Levy called
                it “this magical, beautiful city, perhaps the most beautiful in the United States,”
                and the Economist magazine devoted a special section to it called “A Success
                Story.”</p>
            <p>Well, yes and no. If Chicago has come back from its Rust Belt torpor of the 1980s,
                its rebirth as the mid-continental metropolis is still a work in progress. The
                glitter and power are real, but so are the challenges – economic, fiscal,
                demographic, educational.</p>
            <p> What can be said is that Chicago today is a laboratory of urban change, the very
                model of a city making the hard transition from industrial behemoth to global city –
                that is, from the 20th to the 21st century. It may be America’s most interesting
                city, but not for the usual clichés: Al Capone’s era ended 80 years ago and even
                Michael Jordan has been gone for fourteen years: the Bulls are still healthy, the
                Mob less so. Rather, Chicago today is a thrusting but struggling city, part
                beautiful and part bleak, created for one era and coping with another, an experiment
                in civic transformation, dominating the American heartland even as it loses people
                and jobs. Chicago is what it is because it’s where it is. Incorporated barely 180
                years ago, it began life as a trading post at the foot of Lake Michigan, where the
                early trails from the east coast met the rivers flowing into the Mississippi and the
                American interior. The first railroad came through in 1848 and cemented Chicago’s
                supremacy among western cities. Coal trundled up from the Midwest and iron ore
                floated down the Great Lakes from the north, to be fused into the steel industry.
                Midwestern cattle created and fed the Chicago Stockyards and Midwestern crops
                created the mighty Chicago markets. Across the Midwest, towns and cities grew to
                feed the city’s thirst for coal and crops and livestock and wood. Literally, Chicago
                and the Midwest created each other.</p>
            <p>Chicago’s growing economy became a magnet for waves of immigrants from around the
                world, working hard jobs, building neighborhoods and churches and community
                institutions. The trains that crisscrossed Chicago for a half century now framed the
                Great Migration of African Americans from the agricultural South to the city’s
                stockyards and factories: They built a thriving Black Metropolis, rich in culture,
                commerce and politics – which decades later would give America its first black
                president. In the postwar years, Chicago took this industrial civilization to a
                level of economic decency unmatched before or since, a sort of a working class
                middle class. Workers on blast furnaces and assembly lines, unschooled and
                semi-skilled, owned their own homes, a car or two, a cottage by the lake, took
                vacations, sent their kids to school. African-American remained locked in ghettoes,
                trapped by the de facto segregation of the day, but they had come north in search of
                work and they, too, found it in the mills of Chicago. The air reeked with the orange
                fumes from a thousand smokestacks: to Chicagoans, it smelled like bread on the
                table. If you wanted work, buddy, Chicago had work for you. And then it ended. The
                stockyards went west, to be closer to the cattle and to cheaper, non-union labor.
                Japanese competition overwhelmed the radio and TV factories. Imports and new
                technology doomed the steel mills and metal fabricators on the southeast side:
                today, what’s left of America’s integrated steel industry is clustered across the
                Indiana state line, around Gary. Chicago lost 153,000 manufacturing jobs in the
                ‘70s, and another 188,000 in the ‘80s. It lost people, too, about 800,000 of them
                between 1960 and 1990, many to the suburbs. As the people left, stores closed, tax
                revenue declined, city services shriveled. Chicagoans wondered if their rusting city
                and would survive.</p>
            <p>From manufacturing to finance It has, as a global city. Some manufacturing remains,
                of course, but it doesn’t drive the city’s economy anymore. Instead, the major
                industries are business services, finance, global trading, hospitals, universities,
                tourism, communications. Some of this new economy is based on the old: the LaSalle
                Street markets, having pioneered trading in corn futures and pork bellies in the
                old, Invented currency and global derivative trading and, in the process, laid the
                foundation of the Loop’s revival. United and Abbott have made Chicago their
                headquarters home for decades; now Boeing and Groupon do as well.</p>
            <p>Industry may have fled, but Chicago’s lawyers, accountants and consultants still knew
                how industry works and turned the city in a center of global business services.</p>
        </text>
    </article>
    <article width="2" height="38" x="1" y="36"
        url="https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Al_Gore_endorses_Obama_for_US_President">
        <title>New US President</title>
        <subtitle>Al Gore endorses Obama for US President</subtitle>
        <text>
            <p><b>Washington D.C.</b> Environmental activist and former Vice-President Al Gore today
                announced his support for Democratic candidate Barack Obama in the United States
                presidential election.</p>
            <p>In an email sent to Obama supporters, Al Gore voices his support for the presumptive
                nominee. "From now through Election Day," he writes, "I intend to do whatever I can
                to make sure he is elected President of the United States." He believes that Obama
                is the candidate who will "bring change to America" in issues such as the Iraq War,
                the American economy, and climate change.</p>
            <p>"Over the past 18 months, Barack Obama has united a movement," Gore writes. "He knows
                change does not come from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue or Capitol Hill. It begins when
                people stand up and take action."</p>
            <p> Gore also stated his intention to attend a rally with Obama in Detroit, Michigan
                later that night. Obama was in Flint earlier today, where he addressed a crowd of
                workers at a General Motors plant. Obama said Gore was "a visionary, not just for
                the party, but for the country."</p>
            <p>At the rally in Detroit's Joe Louis Arena, Gore called Obama "the next President of
                the United States of America" and said he could lead the nation past "eight years in
                which our Constitution has been dishonored and disrespected". He addressed the issue
                of climate change, which he said many Republicans had "refused to discuss at
                all".</p>
            <p>"The outcome of this election will affect the future of our entire planet," Gore
                said, adding that "the future is ours, not to predict, but to create." He compared
                the criticisms of Obama's young age and foreign policy experience to those faced by
                John F. Kennedy in the 1960 Presidential election.</p>

            <p>Obama spoke next, thanking Al Gore and calling him "a global leader in the fight for
                a clean energy future". He discussed many issues, including healthcare, education,
                the national debt, and the war in Iraq. He criticized the way the Bush
                administration has handled these issues, and repeated the oft-heard criticism that
                McCain is running for Bush's "third term".</p>

            <p>"We can't afford 8 more years of George W. Bush policies," Obama said. He said that
                if there was one thing that could unite the Democrats, it is that "when we go into
                the polling places in November, the name 'George W. Bush' will not be on the
                ballot." Obama commended McCain for his service to the country, but said that he
                "seems to have lost his way" from his reputation as a political maverick. "The
                Straight Talk Express lost a couple of wheels,” he said. Many of the problems in
                America.</p>
        </text>
    </article>
    <article width="3" height="40" x="3" y="75"
        url="https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Panda_cub_born_in_Taiwan_to_gifted_Chinese_pandas">
        <title>Panda cub born in Taiwan to gifted Chinese pandas</title>
        <image width="3" column="1" row="top"
            caption="Proud panda parents Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan at the Taipei Zoo in 2008."
            filename="1920px-Taiwan_pandas_after_earthquake.JPG" height="20"/>
        <text>
            <p>Nine year old giant panda Yuan Yuan has given birth to a cub in a zoo in Taipei,
                Taiwan on Saturday at 8:05pm local time. The female cub was born weighing 6.4 ounces
                and measuring 6.1 inches. The cub won't be on public display for another three to
                five months. The cub, born out of an artificial insemination given in March, is
                under intensive care for its first week of life. It was the seventh attempt to get
                the nine-year old Yuan Yuan pregnant in a three year period. Yuan Yuan, and her
                mate, Tuan Tuan, were a gift from China to Taiwan in December, 2008, as a gesture of
                goodwill due to historical conflicts between the island of Taiwan and mainland
                China. The two pandas have failed to mate successfully through natural pregnancy,
                hence the use of artificial insemination.</p>
            <p>Yuan Yuan showed signs of pregnancy in early June and towards the end of the month
                caretakers believed she would soon give birth. Caretakers spent the night at the
                zoo, keeping a constant watch over Yuan Yuan during her birth. China usually
                requests that cubs born in other countries be returned to China for care. China has
                agreed to allow the newborn cub to remain in Taiwan. Two Chinese panda specialists
                are at the zoo helping to care for the newborn.</p>
            <p>China usually requests that cubs born in other countries be returned to China for
                care. China has agreed to allow the newborn cub to remain in Taiwan. Two Chinese
                panda specialists are at the zoo.</p>
        </text>
    </article>
    <article type="info" head="headline.pdf" width="2" height="40" x="1" y="75"
        url="https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/APEC_closes_in_Sydney">
        <title/>
        <subtitle/>
        <image filename="640px-APEC2007_FinalDec2.jpg" width="1" column="1" row="top"/>
        <image filename="320px-APEC2007_Final_Dec1.jpg" column="1" row="bottom" width="1"/>
        <text>
            <p>APEC Australia 2007 has officially closed in Sydney, with Australian Prime Minister
                John Howard delivering APEC's final declaration. The final leader's declaration said
                that APEC member economies will support the Doha trade talks and that the leaders
                examined a series of measures to deal with terrorism, pandemics, contaminated food,
                energy security and natural disasters. Mr Howard said that the APEC members had
                    decided to make "An urgent request to all countries involved in the Doha process
                    to renew their efforts to achieve an outcome, emphasizing that agriculture and
                    industrial products are the two priority areas". The leaders wish for Doha
                to enter its final phase this year. Talks have been stalled due to disagreements
                between the European Union and United States over subsidies and tariffs for the
                agricultural sector. A plan by the United States to establish an APEC free trade
                zone received a mixed reception with some members believing that such a move would
                weaken the group's commitment to the Doha round. They did agree that if the WTO's
                Doha talks were not completed by the end of the year, the APEC zone would be
                examined. Speaking to CNBC, the head of the World Trade Organisation, Pascal Lamy
                said that negotiations taking place in Geneva were making progress.</p>
            <p>"There is a strong sense that it is a make-or-break moment. It may take a few weeks,
                but my sense is that there is a lot of focus and energy," Mr Lamy said. In the area
                of health, the final declaration also promised to share influenza samples and
                provide equitable access to vaccines. Security related issues were a commitment to
                rooting out terrorism and a recognition of the danger proliferation of weapons of
                mass destruction poses to the region.</p>
            <p>Despite interest from India and Pakistan in joining the group, it was announced that
                additional members will be considered in 2010.</p>
        </text>
    </article>
    <article width="1" height="11" x="6" y="75" url="https://www.propublica.org/article/a-good-cop">
        <title>A Good Cop</title>
        <subtitle/>
        <text>
            <p>In the 1990s, cop reporting was not a strength of the New York Times, and I’d often
                get calls from the Metro desk asking if I could help match something or other that
                had been in the tabs. I was Irish and Catholic and had grown up in Brooklyn along
                with other kids who wound up “on the job.” Oh, and I was an ex-sportswriter,
                too.</p>
        </text>
    </article>
</collection>