R&D: Burundi’s Unrest

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Here is today’s premium R&D to accompany today’s premium topic brief on Burundi’s unrest.

Extemp Central News Quiz for the Week of December 28, 2015-January 3, 2016

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Here is this week’s Extemp Central news quiz.  Good luck!

To accesquiz-01s a list of all our old quizzes, click here.

R&D from Prepd: Turkey’s Campaign Against the PKK

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l_2Today’s R&D is brought to you by Prepd, the only software built specifically for extemp. Prepd makes it easy to research, practice, and compete!  Visit www.prepd.in to learn more. Like Prepd on Facebook for special info and contests.

This R&D provides resources on Turkey’s campaign against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).  The PKK was formed in the late 1970s and been in intermittent conflict with the Turkish government for more than three decades.  The PKK is seeking an independent Kurdish state, something that Turkish policymakers fear as it could detach the southeastern part the country (which neighbors territory occupied by Kurds in Iraq).  Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has recently renewed Turkey’s aggressive fight against the PKK, deeming the group as a terrorist organization, and fighting has occurred since August when two Turkish policemen were killed by the group.

HotTopics: United States Extemp Questions for the Week of December 28, 2015-January 3, 2016

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HOTtopics1. How cautious should schools be when deciding to close over a terror threat?
2. Should more states restore voting rights to convicted felons?
3. How many more GOP presidential candidates will drop out before the Iowa caucuses?
4. Will humanities departments suffer from ongoing campus protests?
5. Can SpaceX replace Boeing and Lockheed Martin’s roles in the space business?
6. Will food poisoning problems send Chipotle the way of Chi-Chi’s?
7. Are the FAA’s drone rules too cumbersome?
8. Will more U.S. states abolish the death penalty in 2016?
9. Would Donald Trump’s nomination destroy American conservatism?
10. Was 2015 worse than 2014?

HotTopics: International Extemp Questions for the Week of December 28, 2015-January 3, 2016

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HOTtopics1. Is Mongolia’s economy turning the corner?
2. Which nation should be the “country of the year” for 2015?
3. Will Ukraine’s economic problems strengthen the nation’s pro-Russian forces?
4. How can poorer nations prevent “brain drain”?
5. Should the world lament the end of the Doha trade round?
6. Will the Syrian Civil War be brought to a conclusion in 2016?
7. Has FIFA done enough to cleanse itself of corruption?
8. Will Turkey’s renewed war against the PKK prove to be a political nightmare for Erdogan?
9. Is the Japanese economy headed for greater recovery in 2016?
10. Would a greater shift to the political right benefit Latin America?

R&D from Prepd: Weekly Roundup for the Week of December 21-27, 2015

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l_2Today’s R&D is brought to you by Prepd, the only software built specifically for extemp. Prepd makes it easy to research, practice, and compete!  Visit www.prepd.in to learn more. Like Prepd on Facebook for special info and contests.

Here is our weekly survey of news stories to round out the week of December 21-27, 2015.

R&D from Prepd: Spain’s Parliamentary Elections

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l_2Today’s R&D is brought to you by Prepd, the only software built specifically for extemp. Prepd makes it easy to research, practice, and compete!  Visit www.prepd.in to learn more. Like Prepd on Facebook for special info and contests.

This R&D provides resources on Spain’s parliamentary elections, which took place on Sunday.  The governing People’s Party (PP) won the most votes in the election, but a collection of left-wing parties, including the anti-austerity Podemos successfully fractured the vote.  Yesterday, these three parties – the Socialist Party, Podemos, and the classically liberal Ciudadanos – ruled out joining a governing coalition with the PP.  The move may rattle European markets, which had generally approved of the austerity policies of the PP over the last several years.

Extemp Central News Quiz for the Week of December 21-28, 2015

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Here is this week’s Extemp Central news quiz.  Good luck!

To accesquiz-01s a list of all our old quizzes, click here.

Note:  Due to the holiday, there will be no premium topic brief tomorrow.  That will return on Wednesday, December 30.

R&D from Prepd: Jeb Bush’s Presidential Campaign

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l_2Today’s R&D is brought to you by Prepd, the only software built specifically for extemp. Prepd makes it easy to research, practice, and compete!  Visit www.prepd.in to learn more. Like Prepd on Facebook for special info and contests.

This R&D provides resources on Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign.  The brother of former President George W. Bush is not faring very well in the Republican presidential contest, having seen his poll numbers fall dramatically between August and December.  Bush has failed to gain traction due to the distaste of many Republican primary voters with the “establishment” that they feel is not conservative enough.  Despite having an ample war chest of funds, Bush has failed to raise his stature in Iowa or New Hampshire and a loss in both states in February would probably doom his campaign.  Bush’s new strategy appears to be to target frontrunner Donald Trump, but it is unclear whether this strategy will pay any dividends when Republican voters head to the polls in two months.

HotTopics: International Extemp Questions for the Week of December 21-27, 2015

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HOTtopics1. What role should the AU play in Burundi’s political dispute?
2. Is David Cameron mishandling his negotiations with the EU?
3. Has Jacob Zuma undermined South Africa’s democratic institutions?
4. Should national governments be given the power to censor the Internet?
5. Is Saudi Arabia poorly positioned to lead a Middle Eastern anti-terror coalition?
6. Were the Nairobi negotiations a significant victory for the World Trade Organization?
7. Do the results of the Spanish parliamentary elections bode ill for the nation’s economic future?
8. Is the PKK a terrorist organization?
9. Can Russia win its “Cold War” with Turkey?
10. Was Rwanda’s recent referendum on abolishing presidential term limits legitimate?

 

HotTopics: United States Extemp Questions for the Week of December 21-27, 2015

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HOTtopics1. Are the Democrats poorly positioned on national security issues in 2016?
2. What policies should be implemented to make the tech sector better comply with terror investigations?
3. How should the Supreme Court rule in V.L. vs. E.L.?
4. Are cities poorly prepared to prosecute law enforcement officials?
5. Who was the biggest winner of the recent spending bill?
6. Would raising the minimum wage help reduce the number of Americans on welfare?
7. Does America’s fight against ISIS need a more defined direction?
8. How high will American interest rates be by the end of 2016?
9. Would more direct targeting of Donald Trump resuscitate Jeb Bush’s presidential hopes?
10. Should Debbie Wasserman Schultz step down as head of the DNC?

R&D from Prepd: Weekly Roundup for the Week of December 14-20, 2015

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l_2Today’s R&D is brought to you by Prepd, the only software built specifically for extemp. Prepd makes it easy to research, practice, and compete!  Visit www.prepd.in to learn more. Like Prepd on Facebook for special info and contests.

Here is our weekly survey of news stories to round out the week of December 14-20, 2015.

R&D from Prepd: Prescription Drug Prices

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l_2Today’s R&D is brought to you by Prepd, the only software built specifically for extemp. Prepd makes it easy to research, practice, and compete!  Visit www.prepd.in to learn more. Like Prepd on Facebook for special info and contests.

This R&D provides resources on prescription drug prices in the United States.  Americans spent more than $370 on prescription drugs last year and prices have continued to increase in recent decades, sometimes by double digit percentages.  Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have drawn attention to the high price of prescription drugs, arguing that Medicare should be allowed to negotiate prices with drug makers and that more legislation is needed to prevent “price gouging” by companies. Polls show that Americans do favor action to reduce drug prices, but they cannot agree on what specific policies would be preferable or which political party is better suited to accomplish that task.

2015 George Mason University Patriot Games: Judges’ Preference Gives Saffran His Second National Points Race Tournament Title of the Season; Des Moines Roosevelt Places Two in the Final Round

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gmuThe first half of the 2015-2016 national circuit calendar is in the books with the conclusion of the George Mason University Patriot Games two weeks ago in Fairfax, Virginia. Nathaniel Saffran of Trinity Preparatory School (FL) won his second National Points Race contest of the season, edging Jacob Thompson of Des Moines Roosevelt High School (IA) by judges’ preference. Saffran and Thompson traded first place ranks in the final round, with Saffran’s accumulation of three one’s enabling him to overcome an errant sixth place rank. Saffran will receive 100 points in the National Points Race for his win since George Mason is a third tier tournament.

Observers of the national circuit may have expected Trinity to place multiple finalists, but that honor went to Des Moines Roosevelt instead. In addition to Thompson, the school placed Daniel Drane in the final round, with Drane finishing fourth behind Saffran, Thompson, and Justin Cooper of Scarsdale High School (NY).

National Points Race leader and last year’s Patriot Games runner-up Justin Graham of Trinity Preparatory was eliminated in the quarter-finals. Graham did win the tournament’s Round Robin competition, though.  Other notables that made an early exit in quarter-finals included Vaikunth Balaji of Ridge High School (NJ) and Brian Xu of San Marino High School (CA).

Here are the results of the 2015 George Mason University Patriot Games (Click here for tab sheet):

The Every Student Succeeds Act

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Although growing partisanship has characterized Congress for the better part of the last two decades, there is still one area where members of both political parties find ways to work together and that is education reform.  Traditionally, bipartisan coalitions have been instrumental in crafting federal education legislation, whether that be the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), the formation of the Department of Education in 1979, or the 2002 No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act.  Last week, bipartisan majorities in the House and Senate approved a reauthorization of the ESEA that had been left in limbo since 2007.  The reauthorization bill – dubbed the Every Student Succeeds Act – will replace NCLB in the fall of 2017 and will give states more flexibility when designing assessments, measuring school performance, and evaluating teachers.  In many ways, it is a repudiation of the top-down structure imposed by NCLB, which aimed to use testing to measure American schools and identify troubled ones.  However, the bill will retain NCLB’s testing requirements, so the American education system’s culture of standardized testing is not completely going away.

This topic brief will explain the significant events that led to the creation of the Every Student Succeeds Act, compare the bill with the old NCLB Act, and then assess some of the criticisms that have been levied against the bill.

Readers are also encouraged to use the links below and in the related R&D to bolster their files about this topic.

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