China puts new weapons on South Sea islands-late 3

Beijing, China is adding new antiaircraft weapons to a string of islands in the middle of the South China Sea. In recent year, Beijing has turned coral reefs into small, outpost by piling sand and then building different insulation like barracks, lighthouses, and military-grade airstrips. China claims power over the full South China Sea even though Philippines and Vietnam border the sea. During an recent interview, Donald rump accused Beijing of building a "massive fortress in the middle of the South China Sea." Beijing still maintains that these 7 island are not military purpose but serve civilian. The United States has been very critical of the different building on the islands, China sees the presence of U.S. ships as interference and has repeatedly said "that it is the United States, not China, that wants to militarize the China Sea." The report by the U.S. groups that found the weapons claim that Beijing "is serious about defense of its artificial islands in case of an armed contingency in the South China Sea." Tensions between Washington and Beijing are still long-standing.

House conservative wants Trump to undo certain regulations-late 3

Republican, Mark Meadows, the incoming chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, has used a meeting with Donald Trump to discuss a list of 232 regulations that the incoming president could repeal. Climate, energy, nutrition, net neutrality, consumers, smokers, international developments and etc, are all examples of certain regulations that the The Freedom Caucus has suggested. The Caucus suggest that Trump opens up oil exploration on federally owned land, kill the State Departments office on climate change and any office assigned to study it (climate). The caucus advised Trump to undo Obama-era guidelines for school lunches and supplements (nutrition). The caucus also recommend undoing the Federal Communications Commission's 2015 regulation, because it did "too much in a stroke."Another recommendation would be to end funding for smoke-free public housing and removing tobacco products from the Food and Drug Administrations purview. The list goes on, with an explanation of every regulation.

Salvation Army red kettles-late 2

Its getting to that special date that tons of people celebrate, Christmas. And this Christmas one generous donor has been secretly dropping wads of $100 bills adding up to $1,000 inside all the Salvation Army Kettles around the Twin Cities area. This donor has given about $100,000 since 2011. The mystery donor is nicknamed "St. Grand"and the method is always the same every year, bundles of money dropped in a kettle. His donations are improving this world, no one is really sure exactly who he is but when he shows himself he will be thanked by everyone.

Drama with the Trump sign-late 2

A school in Missouri, Warrensburg, held up a trump sign during the opposites team player introductions. The opposing team was from Center High School, where all of the players are black or biracial according to the Kansas City Star. The video posted online has more than 6,800 shares and it is shown that the white students all turn their back at the black students. Supposedly the school has a tradition of the student section turning around but in this situation the other team took it differently. Holding up the Trump sign was what took the tradition to a new level. The Warrensburg Missouri school issued the statement on Facebook after the video was shared, "Members of our student body acted inappropriately and were insensitive toward our opponents. The Warrensburg R-VI School District does not condone these actions and apologizes to anyone who was offended by the actions of these students. We will do everything we can to keep incidents like this from happening again."

Alaska's Arctic refuge to oil drilling-late 2

Oil companies may be on the verge of tapping into Alaskan refuge's huge reserves, under Donald Trump. Trump's nomination of General Scott Pruitt to lead the Environmental Protection Agency has uplifted the hopes of many energy industry insiders and Alaskan lawmakers who have seen attempts to drill into the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but never succeeded. Unfortunately their are two sides to this situation. Alaska's Republican lawmakers see the estimated 7.7 billion barrels of oil and know that they will receive money, but the Environmental Groups and the Indigenous Gwich'in people consider their planes sacred land and oil drilling would ruin the habitat around; gray wolves, polar bears, porcupine caribou, and more than 200 species of birds. The refuge was created in 1980 by President Jimmy Carter, he put more than 100 million federal acres in Alaska under conservation protection. The oil drilling issue has stood for the past 36 years figuring out what is the right thing to do.

NASA's tiny satellites-late 2

NASA recently shot off an plane that carried a rocket up into the sky. The plane releases the rocket and shoots up into space releasing 8 mini satellites into orbit, that would hopefully improve hurricane forecasts. The rocket was about 40,000 feet over the Atlantic Ocean east of Cape Canaveral before it released the rocket. This is the first time ever for this scenario to happen. The satellites will measure the near-surface ocean winds in hurricanes, typhoons, and other tropical cyclones around Earth. It is called the Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS). Scientist are really trying to look for the winds underneath the storm's clouds because they can not see that exact path. Hopefully the satellites will read and work the way the scientist want it to.

Chairman Tom Wheeler resigns-late 2

Tom Wheeler, a Democratic chairman of the Federal Communications Commissions since 2013, is resigning at the age of 70. It is customary for the FCC chairman to resign at the start of a new administration, but Wheeler refused for months to publicly step down. Wheeler was a huge lobbyist for the wireless and cable industries which led him into the commission. Not many public interest groups liked that he was nominated because they disliked his business ties. Critics explain that Wheeler's habits of pushing through major items with party-line votes makes his legacy vulnerable to being reversed by republican. His departure causes the FCC to start the Trump administration with a 2-1 Republican majority, it now allows the GOP to immediately begin dismantling Obama regulations. Wheeler's goodbye speech "Serving as FCC Chairman during this period of historic technological change has been the greatest honor of my professional life...It has been a privilege to work with my fellow commissioners to help protect consumers, strengthen public safety and cybersecurity, and ensure fast, fair and open networks for all Americans.”

Texas Abortions-late

The state of Texas now requires women who have abortions have to bury or cremate their unborn babies. Not sure how i feel about this. The governor says that he is "giving voice the unborn" while others are saying that he is trying to shame and financially burden multiple women. As Texas has tried to fight to ban abortion but got turned down every time, they ended up thinking of something else. Pro-choice advocates believe that the timing of the governors letter was very odd because Stephen Breyer wrote in the Whole Women's Health how the Texas law "has no significant health-related problems." Many women who end up getting abortions do not have enough money to pay for a burial at the same time. The cost of an abortion is $300-$950, the cost of a burial on average $2,000, and the cost of cremation $1,500-4,000, I'm not sure how many women will pay for this.

Texas Abortion fight

NYPD arrests Muslim Girl-late

In New York City college student, Yasmin Seweid, claimed to be the victim of a hate crime by Trump supporters due to her religion. She says that three men attempted to pull of her hijab while calling her a terrorist and yelling out Trumps name. But surprisingly no one around her on the train tried to stop it, she admitted that she had made the whole thing up and blamed it on a family issue. She has been arrested for filing a false report.

Gatlinburg Fire-late

The fire started on November 23 in Chimney Tops area of the national park close to the Tennessee-North Carolina border, after a week on November 28 the fire had spread all the way to Gatlinburg, going up into flames. The fire department told everyone to evacuate. 14 people have been found dead, 175 injured, and over 2,400 buildings were burned to the ground, but many people believe that it was man-made. Currently Mayor Larry Waters estimates the damages to be more than $500 million and the federal government says that nearly 20,000 acres of land have been scorched. Two Tennessee children are sitting in Juvy waiting for the answer if they are guilty or not-guilty and if they are guilty they can get up to 60 years in prison. If more serious charges ended up being dropped they could go for first-degree murder. But right the officials keep saying that "its complicated."

Obama did not sign the Iran Sanctions-late

President Barack Obama declined to renew his signature on the Iran Sanction Act. Obama wanted an apparent bid to alleviate Tehran's concern that the U.S. is backing out of the nuclear deal. The White House says that Obama was expected to sign the 10-year renewal but he never did, and yet it still became a law. The White House has also argued "that the renewal is unnecessary because the administration retains other authorities to punish Iran, if necessary, and has expressed concern that the renewal may undermine the nuclear deal." Unfortunately Iran's government has complained to the United Nations about the renewal and their president has even ordered up plans to build nuclear-powered ships and to formally accuse the United States on violating the terms of the deal, they made. US law makers argued that renewing the law that was first passed in 1996 was critical to painting pressure on Iran to abide by the deal, the bill passed the Senate.

Trump and the Tech Giants-late

After Trump publicly slammed leaders of the Tech Giants as in leaders of amazon, apple, and Facebook, he ended up inviting them to the Trump Tower to apologize. During his election Trump claimed that Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, was using his ownership of The Washington Post as a tax-dodging scam and argued with Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, about immigration reform. When they met it ended up to be very civil unlike how many people believed in would be. The group even discussed how to improve the governments technology, and Trump agreed to that and to having additional meetings with the tech industries.