All Posts Tagged With: "2012 newsmaker"
Teens who sent Legoman into space had their pick of schools
Surprisingly, neither chose engineering
When Asad Muhammad and Mathew Ho mapped out a route for the lego man they hoped to send into space last January, they little imagined they’d be changing the course of their own lives as well.
The voyage they planned for the toy figure was originally conceived as a fun project for two high school friends who shared a love of science. By attaching cameras to a weather balloon and styrofoam container, the 18-year-olds from Toronto hoped only to capture pictures of the earth’s curvature.
But the lego figure they included in their makeshift craft on a whim catapulted the test flight to greater heights than Ho and Muhammad ever imagined. Footage of the plastic figure soaring 24 kilometres above the earth garnered instant praise once it had been posted to Youtube, and the teens found themselves dead centre on the public radar.
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Canadian Press criticized for “Newsmaker of the Year”
Luka Rocco Magnotta was editors’ top choice
Lin Jun, Luka Rocco Magnotta's victim (Facebook)
The selection of Luka Rocco Magnotta as Canada’s 2012 Newsmaker of the Year lit up the country’s social media and news web sites on Sunday with a cyclone of outrage and condemnation.
The alleged killer, who now sits in a Montreal detention centre as his case goes through the legal process, was the subject of a global manhunt last spring after a Chinese engineering student was killed, his body cut up and remains mailed to four different locations in Ottawa and British Columbia.
The event, including Magnotta’s capture last June at a Berlin internet cafe, was splashed across newspaper front pages and Web sites all over the world.
Magnotta was chosen in the annual poll of the country’s newsrooms by The Canadian Press.
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