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Here is our weekly survey of news stories to round out the week of January 25-31, 2016.
Is Zika the new Ebola? https://t.co/VHPK91bajY | AP Photo pic.twitter.com/FAfZP333kF
— POLITICO (@politico) January 28, 2016
In Tunisia, the sole Arab Spring success, economic woes reignite unrest https://t.co/aQ1Wf8Tz9a pic.twitter.com/dYinv43yc6
— CS Monitor (@csmonitor) January 28, 2016
Ahead of tonight’s #GOPDebate, compare the Republican candidates’ views on foreign policy: https://t.co/VAP8nI2VSu pic.twitter.com/XRfsVABNUY
— CFR (@CFR_org) January 29, 2016
While Americans take clean drinking water for granted, the residents of Flint, Michigan currently lack such a luxury. The failure of state and federal environmental officials has placed the city’s residents at risk for lead poisoning as a result of an attempt two years ago to save the city money by acquiring drinking water from the nearby Flint River instead of from Detroit. Since 40% of Flint’s residents are poor and more than half are African-Americans, community activists allege that Michigan’s Governor Rick Snyder and other state officials turned a blind eye to resident concerns on racial and socioeconomic grounds. The scandal has caused the resignation of the director of Michigan’s Department of Environmental Quality and the Environmental Protection Agency’s Region 5 director and Michigan’s state attorney general and the Department of Justice are looking into the filing of criminal charges. The crisis creates a significant test of Snyder’s leadership as he must solve this problem while also facing a work stoppage by Detroit’s public school teachers over the condition of their schools.
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Last weekend’s James Logan MLK Invitational, held at James Logan High School in Union City, California, played host to the second part of the “California Swing” of the National Points Race and this year’s event was dominated by Archbishop Mitty High School (CA). In International Extemp, Ismail Shaik of Archbishop Mitty won a five rank victory over Shreyan Jain of Bellarmine College Preparatory (CA) and in United States Extemp, Pranav Govindaraju of Mitty narrowly defeated Charles Tang of Leland High School (CA) by one rank. The tabulation of the tournament was cumulative.
Moving from its traditional February date, this year’s Stanford National Invitational, a fifth tier tournament in the National Points Race, attracted a smaller field. Twenty-six competitors faced off in International Extemp and twenty-four in United States Extemp and Brian Xu of San Marino High School (CA) took the titles in both categories. Xu defeated Michelle Huang of Irvington High School (CA) in International Extemp and teammate Joseph Kiang in United States Extemp. These wins give Xu his first victory in a National Points Race tournament this season.
Although terrorism is not unknown in Indonesia, it had been seven years since the world’s largest Muslim nation was victimized by a large-scale terrorist attack. On Thursday, terrorists reportedly aligned with the Islamic State fired upon a busy shopping district in the capital of Jakarta, killing two people and wounding more than twenty others. Indonesian President Joko Widodo, also known as Jokowi, was quick to condemn the attacks and stated his nation’s resolve not to succumb to the extremist message that the Islamic State propagates. However, there are fears that the attack may be a sign of bigger aims by the Islamic State in Southeast Asia as the group is reportedly looking into ways to extend its reach to weaken international efforts against it in Iraq and Syria. The attacks have also called into question whether Indonesian authorities are doing enough to fight extremism and the radicalization of young Muslim men.
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