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This R&D provides resources on the unrest in Baltimore. The city was plagued by looting and rioting earlier this week as tensions rose over the death of Freddie Gray, an African-American, who died in police custody of a spinal chord injury. Maryland’s Republican Governor Larry Hogan sent the National Guard into Baltimore to maintain order and declared a state of emergency on Monday.
What you need to know about #FreddieGray http://t.co/iiWAdpgcqA pic.twitter.com/nOVlfHjLvR
— Newsweek (@Newsweek) April 29, 2015
Baltimore Forces Presidential Hopefuls to Confront a Jarring Crisis http://t.co/nvReh7iXRE
— The New York Times (@nytimes) April 29, 2015
Loretta Lynch’s supporters have advice for her on Baltimore http://t.co/DE4RoR9rvz
— POLITICO (@politico) April 29, 2015
Although the University of Kentucky has hosted an extemporaneous speaking section of its Tournament of Champions (TOC) event for the last three years, this year was the first that a large-scale tournament was held in the Bluegrass State. Forty-eight extempers made the trip to Lexington, which included ten of the top twenty-five extempers in the National Points Race and four of the top six finishers at this year’s Montgomery Bell Academy Extemp Round Robin.
Extempers are aware of the United States’ illegal immigration problems, but another illegal immigration phenomenon has recently caught the attention of the international media: the travel of migrants from North Africa to Europe. While the migration of peoples from Africa and the Middle East to Europe is not a new phenomenon, growing border controls by nations within the European Union (EU) over the last decade has caused migrants to brave the waters of the Mediterranean Sea. Seeking refuge from political or religious persecution or a better economic future, migrants pay smugglers to take them to Southern European countries, which have argued that the EU is not doing enough to help them offset the cost of dealing with the problem. 2015 has already been a deadly year for migrants crossing the Mediterranean as 1,800 people have died making the journey compared with just 180 deaths in the first four months of 2014. On April 19, 900 migrants were thought to have been killed when their overcrowded vessel sank, prompting the EU to hold an emergency meeting in Luxembourg and triple the funding for border operations. Dealing with immigration is a sensitive issue in European countries, where far-right parties have linked excessive immigration with economic problems and claim that the different cultural backgrounds of migrants will erode the foundations of European society. Therefore, the problem is a test of the EU’s tolerance of helping the world’s less fortunate and its ability to work out an effective immigration system for its member states.
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When 2015 began policymakers figured that the U.S. Federal Reserve would raise interest rates. Optimism about the strength of the U.S. economy, as well as projections that inflation would soon meet the Federal Reserve’s preferable mark of 2%, lent credence to these predictions. However, lower than expected growth during the first quarter, coupled with disappointing unemployment data and stubborn inflation statistics have caused some observers to change their predictions of a rate increase. Instead of expecting an increase in 2015, some are now saying that a change in monetary policy will not occur until next year. The minutes of the Federal Reserve’s meeting last month show that it is divided about what to do and this uncertainty means that extempers could face questions over the next three months about when the Federal Reserve will act, and if it should raise interest rates before the end of the year.
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