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Current Event #18 - Maine Becomes First State to Ban Styrofoam

        Single-use polystyrene food and drink containers have been banned in Maine, making it the first state to ban styrofoam. The bill was signed by Gov. Janet Mills, it will be enforced by 2021. Oregon, Vermont, and Connecticut are considering the single-use containers state wide. Some states have similar bans like New York and California have a ban on plastic bags. Companies like McDonalds and Dunkin’ Donuts have started to eliminate the styrofoam cups from their retail locations. The European Union has agreed to ban some single-use plastic containers like polystyrene, they hope to help the marine pollution.        I believe it’s great that Maine signed this bill. Saving the environment is very important because we have this world and that’s all we have. I don’t think many people realize how big of a movement this is. First Maine is the first of the states to ban polystyrene single-use containers, second its one step closer to getting rid of human waste. Styrofoam is not biodegr
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Current Event #17 -Mistreated Migrants

A medical student, Rom Rahimian, was helping a 20-year-old Guatemalan woman. She was found dehydrated, pregnant and in labor in the desert. Border patrol agents lingered in the room during medical examinations, they observed while physicians helped to stop her labor, listened in on conversations with doctors and even watched her ultrasounds. The agents started pressing that the patient is put into an immigration detention facility. As migrants cross the southern border many are taken to community hospitals. The respect and treatment of them have gone down, from restricting them from using restrooms to pressuring medical officials to discharge them to Immigration detention facilities. Although these people are migrants they deserve the respect of a human being, they aren’t dirt and treating them poorly won't do anything for them or us. Everyone deserves privacy if you were in the hospital in poor condition you wouldn’t want someone to be watching your every move. Not letting som
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Current Event #16 - Could the Sewol Sinking Happen Again?

On a school trip to a resort island, a Korean ferry had flipped and drowned 250 students. Families couldn’t do anything, students were calling parents to say their last goodbyes, South Korea could only watch. The nation would hope that from the disaster they could make a change. Some change has been enforced but it's hard to stop a lying crew. The Sewol Ferry crew knew they could make a good profit off of the school trip, they lied about the capacity of the ship. Shippers had loaded twice the legal limit of cargo on the decks, some would be tied with only ropes or nothing at all. If inspectors had boarded the ship the overboard decks would be hard to miss. Today the cheating still occurs even with new laws at sea. Some people don’t realize what money can do, in this case, the greed factor killed 250 students. The company that owned the ship didn’t care about the safety of the passengers, only about the money. With many safety precautions not taken, like secured luggage and no
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Current Event #15 - Paper Bags in New York

In New York, there has recently been a ban on plastic bags, but using paper bags from a store will still cost you five cents by next year. When the state lawmakers approved the ban on plastic carry-out bags it helped to end the “paper or plastic?” dilemma. The state lawmakers gave an option whether to charge for the paper alternative or not. They voted on it and there is a nickel fee on the paper carry-out bag. It was approved less than a month after New York became the second state to ban most plastic bags and the ban was signed on Earth day. Environmentalists like the movement of banning plastic but think that the paper alternatives will exchange one form of waste to another. I think banning plastic bags is a great idea to reduce plastic waste and with more decomposable paper bags. Although one form of waste is going to the other. Instead of plastic waste, we will have paper waste. I think the fee on the paper bags will help in the change. It would be so much easier to buy reusab
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Current Event #14 - Warnings to Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka had devastating suicide bombings the days leading up to Easter Sunday. The bombings killed at least 321 people. Security agencies had been watching the National Thoweeth Jama’ath. The National Thoweeth Jama’ath was a little-known radical Islamist organization that security officials say carried out the act of the suicide bombings. They had known that this was a dangerous group and had warned of Catholic church bombings. They had known about radical Islamist that was possibly tied to the group with stockpiled weapons and detonators back in January. An enormous question is why the security agencies failed to act upon the information before the bombings. This question has led to a feud between the prime minister and president. A history of fighting between leaders has led to security breakdowns that led to one of the worlds deadliest terrorist attacks. Many people have lashed out on President Maithripala Sirisena for not taking action on the warnings before the attacks. This
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Current Event #13 - Social Media and Politics

The president is very involved and uses twitter a lot. It seems to be a valued form of communication for him. Twitter is becoming a place for public officials to make statements, activists to pressure others, and reporters to give the latest news. This is very unrepresentative of America. This whole Twitter craze with politics may even affect the 2020 race. “The views of Democrats on social media often bear little resemblance to those of the wider Democratic electorate,” as said by Nate Cohn and Kevin Quealy. “The outspoken group of Democratic-leaning voters on social media is outnumbered, roughly 2 to 1, by the more moderate, more diverse and less educated group of Democrats who typically don’t post political content online.” Social media has influenced many things in today's society some of which have actually benefitted us. Social media is not a place for things that apply and are important to politics. Reports of it, however, are okay. When the president posts something th
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Current Event #12 - Hidden Sexual Violence on the Southern Border

In the summer of 2014 Melvin, a 36-year-old mom with three kids had completed the journey of crossing the Rio Grande on a raft. She arrived in McAllen, Texas and was led to a house on the border. Melvin was locked into a room with the men she paid to keep her safe across the border. They drugged her with pills and cocaine, they withheld her and wouldn’t even let her bathe. “I think that since they put me in that room, they killed me,” she said. “They raped us so many times they didn’t see us as human beings anymore.” On the southern border women crossing the are being mistreated. Migrant women and girls become victims of sexual assault. Most of them go unreported. There are many stories like this, women being beaten, impregnated by strangers, bound with duct tape, rope or handcuffs, and some even forced into prostitution. The New York Times found many documented cases through police records, interviews, prosecutors, and federal judges and immigrant advocates around the country. What p
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