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               Weekly Assignment 10


Article 1: "Blast in Syria kills 25 on eve of Arab League meeting"

Author: Alice Fordham

Source: WashingtonPost

        At least 25 people were killed and 46 wounded Friday morning when a bomb exploded in the Syrian capital, marking the second large-scale attack in the city in two weeks and adding pressure on the Arab League as it prepares to decide whether to extend a monitoring mission in the turbulent country. Some news media reported that a suicide bomber detonated an explosive device at a busy intersection in the central Midan neighborhood of Damascus at a time when many people would have been heading to Friday prayers. The attacker was not immediately clear: As in the previous attack, officials blamed terrorists, while dissidents said the authorities themselves were responsible. Neither side presented any evidence to support its claims.

Article 2 + Focus: "Rumor of N. Korean nuclear explosion prompts brief stock panic in South"

Author: Chico Harlan

Source: WashingtonPost

       Friday morning, a rumor that an explosion occurred at North Korea’s Yongbyon nuclear facility set off a brief panic Friday in the South Korean stock market, illustrating one of the ways in which Seoul is vulnerable to its neighbor. South Korean government officials found zero evidence that an explosion had actually occurred, and a visiting U.S. diplomat in Tokyo said he’d heard nothing to suggest the rumor was true. Also, Radiation-monitoring devices in the region showed no unusual activity. Still, the rumor showed some concerns about the possibility that North Korean technicians would struggle to contain an accident if one occurred; and the widely held belief that the government in Pyongyang would neglect to warn the region about spreading radiation.  I chose this article as my focus this week because of the obvious reason that we have been talking about North Korea this past week, but also for the reason that this is a perfect example of Human Geography.  When South Koreans heard that their was an explosion their stock went crazy, which shows how interconnected all the countries are. And how one country can directly affect another country. 

Article 3:  "President Obama Unveils Smaller Military"

Author: Jason Margolis

Source: PRI the world

    President Obama made a rare appearance at the Pentagon on Thursday to show off a new military strategy, one designed by shrinking budgets.

The president spoke about “turning the page on a decade of war.” He said we’ve succeeded in defending our nation and taking the fight to our enemies, and said we are safer and stronger.Because the size and the structure of our military and defense budgets have to be driven by a strategy, not the other way around.”That strategy will likely include a smaller Army and Marine Corps, with a greater emphasis on Asia and the Middle East.The president gave few specifics. He said concrete details will come in the next few weeks with the release of the Pentagon budget. But he did give a preview of sorts.“We’ll be able to ensure our security with smaller conventional ground forces, and overall, these changes are driven, in large part, by nearly $500 billion in defense cuts set to take place over the next 10 years.

Article 4: "For Iranians Waylaid by Pirates, U.S. to the Rescue"

Author: C.J Chavez
Source: New York Times

    This article is about how  in the Gulf of Oman, American soldiers saved hostages from Somalian pirates.  On Friday, Fazel Ur Rehman, a 28-year-old Iranian fisherman, had a warmer greeting for the carrier task force.“It is like you were sent by God,” said Mr. Rehman, huddled under a blanket in this vessel’s stern. “Every night we prayed for God to rescue us. And now you are here.”The rapidly unfolding events began Thursday morning when the pirates attacked a Bahamian-flagged ship, the motor vessel Sunshine, unaware that the Stennis was steaming less than eight miles away. It ended Friday with the tables fully turned. The captured Somali pirates, 15 in all, were brought aboard the U.S.S. Kidd, an American destroyer traveling with the Stennis. They were then shuttled by helicopter to the aircraft carrier and locked up in its brig.


Article 5: "Chinese News Agency Warns Against U.S. Moves"
Author: David Barboza
Source: New York Times


               This article is about how Chinas state-run news media warned Washington on Friday not to “recklessly practice militarism” or engage in “war mongering,” a day after the Obama administration outlined a new military strategy with an increased focus on China. The greatly worded commentary, published by the official Xinhua News Agency, also urged the United States to play a constructive role in the region. China has rapidly expanded its military in the past year, and plans to spend aggressively in the hopes of creating a military that can match the country’s growing economic might. 

Learning Reflection:

          This past week in class we have been talking about 2 things, North Korea and micro-loans. We watched a documentary about a medical team who traveled to North Korea to provide medical work but also got some undercover footage of the actual country.  We learned from the documentary that North Korea used to be completely controlled by their dictator Kim-Jong-Il.  The people in North Korea have O% freedom at all, they have to bow at all pictures of Kim-Jong-Il and praise him at all times. The people in North Korea have no freedom of speech, internet, or publicly broad casted television without the government approving.  The people live in fear at all times, because with one word spoken bad about the leader, the will spend their lifetime in a work camp. 

           Then on Friday we talked about micro-loans. Micro-loans are when you give someone around the world some money to start up a business and they are supposed to pay you back within a certain time period.  Our class assignment was to pick two businesses from around the world and pick them to fund as if we were actually going to fund them.  So we picked two and wrote an assignment on them.  

Weekly Assignment 9

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Weekly Post #9
Article 1: 'It's Finished': Last of U.S. Soldiers Leaving Iraq - Martha Raddatz

This article is about how all the soldiers who were fighting in Iraq are coming back. After nice years and almost 1 trillion dollars they finally return. Since the war began 4,500 American soldiers have died and huge amount 104,000 Iraqi soldiers died. The bad thing about this though is that many soldiers are without job now and are desperately looking. Some without even a college education now searching for jobs.

Article 2: EDITORIAL: Close the Strait of Hormuz (FOUCS) - Washington Post

Iran says they want to close their straight that they export all of their oil from. They say it will impact the rest of the world more than it would impact them because 1/6 of the world’s oil comes from there. But, it really wouldn’t the world can get oil from other countries just as easy like Nigeria and Brazil, and Iran doing this would just make themselves go bankrupt from not being able to sell their number one export. Iran says that they plan to do this because they want to make a point that “If the world wants to make the region insecure, we will make the world insecure.” I chose this as my focus article this week because we have been talking about Iran in class this past week and about putting sanctions on themselves and how we need to stop their economy, but if Iran does this to themselves, they will destroy their own economy by not getting money from other countries. It would be a dumb move for Iran because sure it would make the prices go up temporarily but we could find a replacement oil producing country and give them more business and make Iran go bankrupt.

Article 3: Millions From Diamonds Go to Mugabe, Observers Say - John Eligon

Apparently 10 million dollars in diamonds have been secretly given to Robert Mugabe to help give him money to expand his 31-year reign. These diamonds are coming from the state-owned mines in Eastern Zimbawe. It might even be more than 10 million, because apparently the treasury was shortchanged 60 million dollars last year. Mugabe no longer is in control of the finance ministry because of other cases that some of the money was going to allies.

Article 4: Euro Troubles Continue - PRI the world

The Euro keeps facing problems almost every single week now. The EURO fell under $1.30 for the first time in almost a year. Also the UK decided not to sign with a summit deal that was made by many other countries in the “Eurozone” But, the UK said they will still remain an active member in the EU despite their non-agreement on solving the issue.

Article 5: Journalist is Shot Dead in Russia’s North Caucasus Region - MICHAEL SCHWARTZ

Another journalist from Russia has been shot which adds to a rising amount of journalist and human rights workers killed in the last few years in Russia. The journalist who was killed was Khadzhimurad Kamalov who was the founder of a newspaper that covered delicate issues like police abuse and corruption. Police say they still don’t know who the gunman is but they are searching for him.



Learning Reflection:

This past week our class created a fake UN debate about whether or not to add more security to Iran and the goods they are exporting. We split up into groups of two, each group having its own country and had a debate. All of the countries came to a unanimous vote and all voted to freeze their central banks. All the countries, besides Iran, came up with a single group essay about why and how we should add more sanctions to Iran. Also in individual countries, we all made opening speeches about why that individual country chose to contribute to this single cause of freezing their banks. This was perfect timing because in my focus article, just recently Iran closed their own straight that they export oil out of.

Weekly Assignment 8

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Article 1 and Focus Article: "Warning Euro Fix Could Take Years, Merkel Urges Action" by Nicholas Kulish: found on the NYTimes
         Chancellor Angela Merkel held a meeting today that was intended to amend the European treaties and to address the debt crisis.  At the meeting Merkel addressed the German Parliament about how indebted countries have roiled global markets and brought down governments.  She said that she wanted some quick changes to happen by the end of the year that would help to debt crisis, but she said that to fix the whole problem would take several years.  She has now called for a new treaty and since the release of that the market rose slightly.  I chose this article as my focus article because in class this past week we have been talking about economics.


Article 2: " Pakistan Refuses to Help as U.S. Sorts Out a Fatal Attack" by Matthew Rosenburg: found on The NYTimes.
      Pakistanis are refusing to help sort out the confusion about the airstrike that happened last week that killed two dozen people.  Both sides are in dispute about almost every aspect of the event.  Both sides said they were fired on first.  Also the chief of the Pakistan Army has now declared that he gave permission to the whole army to return any fire without any permissions required.

Article 3: " Go Online, Beat a Puzzle and Become a British Spy" by John F Burns: posted on NYTimes
         This article is basically about how the British Spy Agency has posted a puzzle on the internet located here (http://www.canyoucrackit.co.uk/) where if you beat the puzzle you will be able to get interview by the British Government about becoming an internet spy for them, stopping terrorism and organized crime.  Apparently about 50 people have already beaten this almost impossible puzzle since its release last month.  A normal person would have lots of trouble beating this puzzle because all it is is decrypting 160 codes- so basically only a hacker would be able to beat it.

Article 4: " Camp Victory, emptied of U.S. troops, is handed to Iraqi government by Liz Sly: on Washington Post.
         The U.S. headquarters outside of Baghdad was handed over to the Iraqi government on Friday which the U.S. has owed for almost a decade.  This large base used to hold 68,000 soldiers and they all got to go
 home.  There is currently only 12,000 troops left in Iraq now down from a peak of 170,000 in 2007.  Col. Barry Johnson said that by the end of the year all the troops will be gone.


Article 5:  This picture is about the 24th annual world aids day held in Taipei Taiwan.  Dozens of volunteers made a human ribbon to help aids sufferers everywhere.  The color red is supposed to symbolize "love and care".








Learning Reflection : This week in class we talked about economic geography and about resources.    
We learned about 4 types of resources , Natural, Nonrenewable, Capital, and Human Resources. We also talked about how technology is effecting the way we get our energy, we went "from wood to wind".  We also talked about how different countries can be more valuable than others depending on resource access and level of education.  

Weekly Assignment 7

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Article 1: "Arab League Punishes Syria Over Violent Crackdown" Found on NYTimes by NEIL macFARQUAHR
        This article is about how the Arab League keeps isolation Syria's international business.  The Arab League is doing this by imposing lots of economic sanctions meant to destroy trade and investment in the Syrian world.  Which gave another blow to Syria's economy which was just recently jabbed by the EU and the United States.  

Article 2: "Egypt Braces for Fresh Clashes After Protester's Death" Found on NYTimes by DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
          This article is about how an unarmed protester was killed by the police in Cario on Saturday.  When the police killed this protester more protesters came about how that was wrong.The next day 10,000 returned to Tahrir Square to continue protesting and demanding that the military council cede power to a civilial government.    The Military and Political parties prepared for chaos for the elections being held on monday.

Article 3: "NATO airstrike strains U.S.-Pakistan relations" Found on Washington post by Karin Brulliard
             U.S. efforts to enlist Pakistani for peace talks with the Taliban were halted on Sunday as the fact that a NATO airstrike killed 24 Pakistani soldiers.  Resulting from that, Pakistan threatened to boycott an international conference in Afghanistan's future.  This airstrike is still under investigation but speculations say that american soldiers called it in after taking shots from Pakistani's.

Article 4 + FOCUS ARTICLE:  "European debt crisis: Ivestors' confidence shows signs of crumbling" found on Washington post by STEVEN MUFSON
           This article is about how the European leaders continue to try to create new structural measures to help the euro be worth more but market confidence already shows signs of crumbling.  To help with this banks in Europe have stopped lending money to each other as a "self-reinforcing crisis of confidence" act.    Alll of the finance leaders from all 27 countries in the EU are trying to help fix this crisis.  I chose this as my focus article this week because in class we were just talking about NATO and  EU and what it does and now reading more detail about what they actually do helps me relate more to what we were learning about in class.

Article 5: "Powerful hotel blast kills 3, wounds 27 in southern Philippines, officials say" found on Washington Post by ASSOCIATED PRESS
     This article is about a powerful blast that killed 3 people in a hotel packed with wedding guests in a southern phillippines hotel. The explosion is expected to be a bomb but is not yet proved.  The explosion was so powerful it made the whole second story floor collapse injuring everyone on that floor and killing few.  More than half of the people injured are suspected to die in a few days.


             

Weekly Assignment 6

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Article 1 and  Focus Article: This boy, Minhaj Gedi Farah was on the brink of death until the International Rescue Committee took this boy in and helped him survive. He only weighed 6.83 pounds and looked like a skeleton but the Refugee Association helped him.  I chose this as my focus article because it really relates to the video we watched about two weeks about about the Somali Flee, because this boy was one of the Somalis who fled because of the fighting in their home country.

Article 2:  This article is about 2 Muslim boys praying during the annual pilgrimage to Mecca.  I chose this article because in class we are talking about Muslims and this article can relate to that.  

Article 3:  Nigerian United Nations 


peacekeepers try to stop a Liberian riot in the  


capital Monrovia on Nov. 7. These rioters were 


trying to storm the countries headquarters. 

Article 4: Two Muslim men riding in a car being pulled by a camel.  These two men bought this camel for the day of sacrifice in the Muslim world.  This day of sacrifice has to do with the annual journey to Mecca. I like this photo because it shows how different our world is form others.  

Article 5:  A chinese  worker walks on a beam at the construction site of a new railway for new high-speed trains in Hefei, China,  China's new railways  will receive $31.5 billion to fund projects, More than 80 percent of projects currently being built are facing construction slowdowns. 






















Learning Reflection:
      This week in class we talked about the on going war between Israel and Palestine and their complications.  As to watching a video and talking about this we are now writing a research project about this also.  This has to do with a lot in the news right now and is on lots of the news websites.  

Weekly Assignment 5

Afghan girls learning to read the Koran in the mosque in Kabul 

A monk in Bangkok looking for shelter after the devastating flood that caused many to lose their homes.  






                      Focus Picture

Two men crying over the loss of friends and family that the 7.2 earthquake has caused them.  This photo can really show the effect of the people that it directly influences first hand.  Also it shows in the background all the workers disparately looking for any survivors that the might be able to save, while those two men stand by anxiously.   
                              Reflection
This week in class we split up into groups and did a cultural assignment.  Each group shared information using google documents about certain country's in the world, sharing things like their popular music and clothing.  Also sharing the popular foods from  that country with the whole class by bringing in samples for everyone to eat.  

Weekly Assignment 4

Libyan refugees celebrating Gaddafi's death.  








The RENA ship spilling oil close to the coast of New Zealand.  Crews trying their hardest to stop the spill before storms come.  

Greek riot police getting paint and rocks thrown at them by a march of Greek protesters.   














People walking on one side of a flooded highway in the suburbs of Bangkok, Thailand, the country's worst floods in half a century.  The country  battled to  protect Bangkok  for rising waters




































Focus Picture

Ashes reaming from a house in Texas due to the wildfires throughout the state.  This fire covers a large area of people and causing forced migration due to all the houses being burned to ashes.  
















LEARNING REFLECTION




This week we learned about Cultural Geography.  First we looked at a diagram of the United States about what percent of people call a frizzly beverage, soda or pop and where the people who answered are from, showing how culture can affect the way you talk.  Also we learned about cultural traits, like Language, Ethnic Heritage, and Religion.    Also about Spatial Divisions, which is how we divide the livable space found on the earth by establishing social, economic, and political control, and the reasons for that.  These cultural divisions can be found all over the world in every continent