Current Events 3.2 -- A Very Decisive Thursday

To get to the Austin American-Statesman - click the link and then put in the user name and password.

http://nieonline.com/austin/studentconnect.cfm

The user name is MAC-J

The password is Knight1!

To answer question no. 1, please read, "House OK's tough refugee checks," atop page 1A.

1. Describe the measure that passed Thursday in the House of Representatives. Why is the measure so popular? What is the next step for the bill (after Thanksgiving)? What was President Obama's response? Why does the Obama administration feel the bill hurts U.S. foreign-policy efforts? Why does the administration feel the decision is unnecessary? 

To answer question no. 2, please read, "City eases regulations on garage apartments" on the middle right of page 1A.

2. Describe the decision passed by the Austin City Council on Thursday. Proponents of the decision argued that there were two primary benefits of the decision: What where they? What objection did District 9 Council Member Kathie Tovo raise about the decision? What similiar point was made by both Tommy Ates, an AURA board member, (at the board meeting) and District 3 Council Member Sabino “Pio” Renteria (at a press conference afterward)? Do you have an opinion on this decision? If so, what is it? If not, why not?

We pause the newspaper reading portion of this current-events activity to ask you a civics question: 

3. Which Austin City Council board member serves the neighborhood where you live? If you don't know, take a second to look it up here. 

http://www.austintexas.gov/government

You can click on the "Council District Map" icon and find your neighborhood (That's how I found out which district the school is in). Or you can type your home address in the "District Look Up" menu bar.

We now resume our regular reading of the newspaper. 

To answer question No. 4, please read, "Modified salmon OK to eat, feds say" on the top right of page A3. 

4. What decision did the Food and Drug Administration announce on Thursday, and what may now reach "U.S. supermarkets and dinner tables" as a result? What two arguments did consumer and environmental groups make in opposing this decision? Why did the decision take so long? How did the chief executive of the company who applied for the approval react to the decision?  

Check out the graph that accompanied the story. State one conclusion you can draw from the data presented in it. 

(I don't know about you, but I am wary of eating anything called AquAdvantage. It sounds more like an insurance policy or a checking account feature than something I want to eat).

To answer question No. 5, please read "Zimmerman’s refugee proposal blasted" and "Miller compares refugees to rattlers," both on page 10.

5. The matter of Syrian refugees is creating a lot of news in Texas these days, isn't it? What proposal did District 6 Council Member Don Zimmerman make at the Austin City Council meeting on Thursday? How did Council Member Greg Casar and Mayor Steve Adler respond? How many total refugees (from all areas) came to Travis County in 2013? Describe the Facebook post that has Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller in the news.  How did Texas Democrats respond?

(I think this is the first time that I have read the term xenophobic in two stories on the same news page.)

To answer, question No. 6, (yep, there's a No. 6, I had to make sure you saw this since it connects so directly with the column we are going to discuss on Tuesday), please read, "Man who set fire that killed 3 kids executed" on page B5. 

6. What crime was Raphael Holiday convicted of committing? How many "convicted killers" has Texas executed this year? How many have the other 49 states executed? Why did Austin-based lawyer Gretchen Sween believe Holiday's case should be appealed? Why did Holiday's trial lawyer believe an appeal was in order? Who overturned each appeal?

THE BIG QUESTION: 

7. There were several articles in the A section and in the B section (Metro and State) that might be good topic for your future board editorials and/or columns. Take some time to look through today's paper and isolate three articles that contain topics that you might fashion into an editorial or column. Write the topic and a couple of sentences stating what your opinion on the topic would be if you chose it as the topic for an editorial. 

If you have other ideas, please feel free to post those too after you get three from the paper. Keep in mind that local topics are usually better for editorials and columns so think about matters that have a lot of proximity to you (school, neighborhood, city, etc.).

EXTRA CREDIT:

I love Kirk Bohls, but couldn't ask another question. If you want an extra credit opportunity to read at home, please read his column in today's paper (on the right of page C1) and let me know what you think of it. 

Do you think you will see the movie he writes about? How does his piece illustrate what we have been discussing about columns in general?