"Syria Meets Chemical Weapons Deadline"

LA Times
By: Patrick J. McDonnell
Ocotber 27, 2013

The Syrian government has officially agreed to demolish all the chemical weapons that have been terrorizing the Syrian civilians. After three years of a terrible civil war the government has agreed to publish a declaration agreeing to destroy all toxic chemical weapons. Syria has agreed to stop the inhumane chemical warfare causing the ongoing civil war, they have created and published a deadline for a declaration that will completely demolish all chemical arsenal. This declaration concludes that the US and Russian governments will not have to go along with strict and forceful measures to end the civil war in Syria. The declaration to destroy all the weapons had a set deadline for Sunday, October 27 to the OPCW or Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. The Syrian government met its deadline and turned in the declaration to the OPCW this Sunday, making the organization very proud. All chemical weapon creation facilities have promised and are following along with their declaration to demolish all toxic weapons. Syria has officially and formally become the 190^th nation to join the Chemical Weapons Convention, a treaty banning members from using any type of chemical weapons or creating any type of chemical weapons. This agreement has killed the threats from any air force strikes that were set out by the US. 

"2nd LAX Worker Arrested"

LA Times
By: Richard Winton
October 18, 2013

Another LAX worker was arrested on Friday. Miguel Iniguez was said to have connections with the dry ice explosions. He was arrested and being held with a $500,000 bail. He was suspected of possessing a destructive device linked to the dry ice bomb incidents. Iniguez was working in the same department as Dicarlo Bennett, the man who was first arrested, he was actually Bennett's supervisor. Bennett was arrested earlier in the week being accused of creating two ice bombs that exploded in the LAX airport. Both explosions went off in the employees bathroom. Bennett has pleaded not guilty and his attorney said that he removed the dry ice from a cargo bay to protect a dog that was being transported. Apparently he was scared the fumes would harm the dog. Police reported that both explosions were not intended to be a type or terrorism but only for Bennett's amusement. After both incidents a third dry ice bomb was found but it had not been detonated. This whole incident caused a lot of traffic for the air port since the bomb squad was called in two days in a row and many flights were delayed.

"Concrete Risks"

October 13, 2013
Rong-Gong Lin II
La Times

We are overdue for a very large earthquake and LA could be considered as an old city that is at risk with its old buildings. Most of Los Angeles's buildings are built with mostly concrete and no anti-earthquake precautions. More than 1,000 old concrete buildings are predicted to collapse during a large earthquake. An estimate of about 50 buildings will be completely destroyed causing serious injuries or death to civilians inside and around them. The reason for the predictions for many of these old structures to collapse is because they do not have enough steel reinforcements which create a large amount of support during the sideways motions of an earthquake. Our city has known about these vulnerable buildings for about 40 years but has failed to force owners to make corrections to the structures. Seismologists have reported that buildings that are next to the vulnerable concrete buildings will have to make even more reinforcements because of the chain reaction that collapsing buildings create, once one building collapses it is very likely for the building or buildings adjacent to it to collapse as well. The reinforcements will cost a very large amount of money but lives of innocent civilians are priceless.

Speech Project Critique

Karnie and Rita did an excellent job at presenting their speech project. Their power-point was very well organized and informative. Their topic was very interesting and actually made a different kind of connection with the class. They chose Elie Wiesel's speech about the holocaust. The holocaust was a terrible genocide. The class as Armenians must have been very interested in the presentation just because of that factor. Other than the topic, their presentation was put together very nicely. Both Rita and Karnie knew about what they were talking about throughout the whole presentation. They spoke to the class about the speech and the different aspects and did not read off the project much which kept me listening. They did a splendid job at pointing out different literary devices that were used throughout the speech. The entire presentation was very well put together and presented to the audience with great enthusiasm which kept the audience entertained throughout the whole thing, great job to both of them.

"Redesigned $100 Bill"

Federal Reserve to Unveil a Redesigned 100$ Bill

The New York Times

By-Emmarie Huetteman

A new 100$ bill will be put into circulation on Tuesday, October 8. The new bill will have many different anti-counterfeiting features. The bill will have a new colorful look. The new design will finally be put into effect after being postponed for two and a half years. The re-designed note will have two brand new features. There will be a three dimensional blue strip close to the middle of the bill that has images that appear to move when it is tilted. There will also be an image of a copper inkwell that has a holographic bell that will change colors. The 100$ bill will be the last note to undergo the "New Color Of Money" change, which started in 2003. The 100$ note is said to be the most counterfeited note outside the US, that is why it needed this new change. The changes will make it much easier for people to confirm if a bill is counterfeit or not. The new design took about ten years to complete. It was said to be released in February of 2011, but a printing problem that had come up, which caused bills to be printed with creases. Because of the creases and other small printing problems the Federal reserve decided that the bill could not be put into circulation and thus the postponing of it until now.