Many of my Internet searches begin with what I read in the newspaper. When I find something interesting or unusual in a news story, I often want to learn more. And I do!

Brett de la Mare

For example, late last month I read a strange story about a man who flew a motorised parachute into the grounds of Buckingham Castle in London. That, of course, is where Queen Elizabeth lives.

According to the story, the man, Brett de la Mare, was a frustrated writer and wanted to attract the attention of a publisher for a book he had written. The story said he had his own website, so I immediately took a look.

Here is a photo that was taken during his New York City adventure.

There I found out, this is not the first time he had tried such a stunt in a big city. He did the same thing in New York City where he was very lucky not to be shot by the police.

This week I am going to let your try your own newspaper-Internet activity. You won’t actually have to go on the Internet, but you will see the kind of information you can get there.

Here is a recent story from the Bangkok Post that aroused my curiosity. Coming from the northern United States, I had often heard of cougars, but I had never seen one. With the Internet, I had no problem at all finding out what cougars look like. I found out a lot of other information as well and you can use it to complete the activity following the story.

Woman killed by cougar Banff, Canada, AFP A 30-year-old woman was fatally attacked by a cougar while cross-country skiing in Banff National Park in Alberta, the park’s warden service said on Wednesday. The cougar hid behind a tree at a distance from the trail, and after the woman skied by, it ran up from behind and killed her in the middle of the day, said Banff’s chief park warden Ian Syme. "Cougars are normally dawn or dusk hunters, so a daytime attack we would consider extremely unusual. An attack on a human in extremely unusual. When park wardens arrived at the scene the cougar was still mauling the body and so they shot it, said a service spokeswoman Amber Stewart. The service will examine the animal to determine why it may have killed her, the first such killing in Banff and in the western province of Alberta. The cougar "was a healthy, big male cat approximately 60 kg, 210 cm long," Warden Syme said. Several other cougars or pumas were spotted around town in the past few days, highly unusual for the animals which normally try to steer clear of humans and rarely attack, except when they are very hungry, like in spring after a hard winter, Ms Stewart said. dawn early morning around sunrise dusk early evening around sunset mauling attacking and hurting very badly steer clear of to stay away from What does a cougar look like? What does a cougar normally eat? How large do cougars normally grow? How much do they weigh? Where do they live? What colour are they? What do they sound like? How long do they live? The story also mentions the puma. What is the difference between a cougar and a puma? Below is some information on cougars from an Internet website, http://www.k12.de.us/warner/cougar.htm . Use the information to answer the questions above. A cougar is from the cat family. It can also be called a puma, mountain lion, or a panther. Cougars live along the westcoast of the United States, including California and New Mexico. The Canadian provinces they live in are British Columbia and Alberta. Their habitat is mountains, forests, lowland swamps, and grasslands. Cougars are carnivores. They only eat meat. They find their prey at night. Their prey can be horses, elk, deer, domestic cattle, and smaller mammals. A cougar’s body length is 1½-2 metres, not including the tail. The tail is slightly less than one-metre long. It helps keep their balance. Their weight is 40-80 kilogrammes. They are the second largest cat in North America. (The jaguar is the largest cat). It has a round and shortened head. Their whiskers are well developed and their eyes are large. Their colors are reddish tawny or tawny grey to dark chocolate brown. The backs of their ears and the tip of the tail are black, and there are black markings on the face. When a cougar cries it sounds terrifying. It sounds like a screaming woman. This is something you will never forget. Cougars don’t like people. They wouldn’t come in to your front or back yard. Cougars are an endangered species. Their life span is 10-20 years old. tawny a light yellowish brown colour Follow up Three places were mentioned in the story, the city of Banff, Banff National Park, and Alberta, the province where Banff and the park are located. If you have access to the Internet, use it to place all three on the map of Canada below. You might use these key words in your search: map of Canada; Banff National Park And if you are interested to find out some more about cougars and to see some actual photos, here are some sites: http://www.desertusa.com/may96/du_mlion.html http://www.hdw-inc.com/Wildcatsphotos15.HTM http://www.phillyzoo.org/pz0045.htm If you’re still curious Anna Kounikova celebrates a win at the Australian Open — REUTERS Russian tennis star Anna Kournikova was in the news again this week, reaching the quarter-finals of the Australian Open in Melbourne. As usual, the Bangkok Post published her photo, the only woman pictured in Monday’s issue. I suspected that a beautiful young celebrity like Anna would attract a lot of attention on the Internet. Curious, I decided to count all the websites I could find that were devoted to her. I never found out the answer. There were too many – hundreds of them in fact. Many were developed by her fans and some even contained interesting information about her. But the vast majority were simply collections of her photos. If you too are curious, here are a couple of sites to get you started. The first is her official website and the other two were put together by her fans. Be warned. Many of the fan websites are really awful. http://www.kournikova.com/ http://members.aol.com/fanforvm/anna/index.htm http://www.angelfire.com/celeb/a1kournikova/index.html Certainly the big news in our region this week has been the fall of Philippine President Joseph Estrada and the rise of the country’s new president Gloria Arroyo. Here is a short excerpt from one of the many news stories the Bangkok Post has carried on this change of government. Palace ready, waiting Manila, AFP Newly-installed Philippine President Gloria Arroyo will be given the "best arrival honours" at the presidential palace when she officially assumes duties, the chief of the presidential guards said. What is the name of the palace and what does it look like? Here is two websites where you can find the answers. http://www.erap.com/office/malacanang/history/index.htm http://www.philippines.com.ph/cards/malacanang.htm

Exploring the Premier league Blackburn's Matt Jansen will be in action this weekend against Derby County. He and his teammates have a good chance of joining the Premier League next season. There are no Premier League games this weekend because of the fourth round of the FA Cup. At this stage of the competition most of the 600 or so teams that began the competition have long since dropped out and the remaining teams are almost all from England’s top two leagues: the Premier League and Division One. Several PL teams will be in action against D1 teams and this gives us another opportunity to add teams to our map. (If you don’t already have a map, there are directions for getting one at the end of this section.) Gillingham vs Chelsea Last year’s FA Cup champions Chelsea will be taking a short trip from its London home to Gillingham’s Priestfield stadium. To add Gillingham to your map, follow the Thames River out of London to the coast where the river flows out into the North Sea. Gillingham is just below this point. As city officials point out, this is one of the most convenient locations in England because of its access to modern roads and to the tunnel connecting England and France. Driving 2.5 hours in one direction will get you to Paris or Brussels and driving for the same time in another direction will get you across England to Birmingham. Everton vs Tranmere This is a match between two Liverpool teams. To get to Everton’s Goodison Park, the Tranmere team will simply have to drive about 10 kilometres from one side of the Mersey River to the other. Blackburn vs Derby This game is a particularly interesting one because it involves teams that may replace each other next season in their two leagues. Currently, Blackburn is near the top of D1 and it has a good chance of being promoted into the PL. Derby is in the opposite situation sitting near the bottom of the PL table. The game will be played in Blackburn’s Ewood stadium. To add Blackburn to your map, move to northwest England and find the location of Everton and Manchester United. Blackburn will be slightly to the northeast of Everton’s stadium in Liverpool and slightly to the northwest of Manchester United’s stadium. It is not as far north as Bradford. To do this activity, you will need a map and best map for your purpose is available by clicking here.

TEACHER'S NOTE

One reason for my insistence on using the Internet is my interest in learner-centred activities. With the Internet, you can really get students to explore on their own and there are almost no limits to what they can learn.

This lesson is an example of one such learner-centred activity. Once the students understand the idea of this lesson, I suggest that you allow them to look through today’s Bangkok Post for stories that interest them and let them design their own search.