Current Events Week 10

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/sandy-cost-hit-50-billion-article-1.1194978
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/10/how-much-will-hurricane-sandy-cost-the-us-economy/264236/

On Monday of this week category 1 Hurricane Sandy hit the New York Metro and Tri State areas. This was the worst storm in recorded history to hit the New York Area. Hurricane Sandy will come with a very steep price tag. The expected costs are supposed to be in the range from $40 Billion to $60 Billion.  Many buildings were damaged along with the most traveled subway system in the U.S. which was flooded and will take nearly a week to restore. New York is the Financial capital of the country and since the NYSE was closed for 2 days, billions of dollars worth of business around the world was lost. Depending on the length of time it takes to fix the subways much more business will be lost considering that 7 million ride the subways a day. The city of New York adds $3.5 Billion to the economy every day. This relates to the U.S. because in an economy that is already horrible this storm could have a very big impact on the economy and the election if this storm isn't cleaned up quickly.

Jury Systems of the World

A jury is a group of people chosen by both the defense and the prosecution in the intent of determining the guilt of a defendant. The US and Canada are the only nations that regularly use jury's for civil cases. Great Britain uses jury's for very few civil cases while juries for civil cases in other parts of the world do not exist. Jury's first were used in Ancient Athens and consisted of up to 500 citizens for normal cases and 1,001 to 1,501 people for larger and more serious cases. In Ancient Athens jury were called dikastai. Today we have 12 people in a jury and up to 6 alternates. Today for jury selection, a large group of people are questioned on their views and beliefs before the trial in the hopes of finding an impartial jury. I think jury's are a very good idea and are important to keeping a fair legal system.

I chose Russia to research.
In Russia potential jurors must be at least 25, be legally competent and without a criminal record. The jury consists of 12 jurors like ours and they are selected from a group of 30 to 40 potential jurors. In Russia there are only about 600 cases with a jury per year out of about 1 Million trials a year. These juries must return unanimous verdicts during the first 3 hours of deliberation and majority verdicts after that, only 6 jurors are needed to acquit. Jurors may also ask the judge to show leniency in sentencing. Juries have granted acquittals in only 15 to 20 % of cases while judges only grant acquittals less than 1% of the time.Most juries not guilty verdicts are usually overturned by a higher judge.  I would definitely increase the number of juries that happen per year and i would give them more power in their verdicts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_trial#Russia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_trial#History

Current Events Week 9

Lance Armstrong has been stripped of all his 7 Tour De France titles and has been banned for life. This comes after he resigned from his position at Livestrong and after Nike dropping him as a sponsor. This was announced this morning and several weeks after Armstrong announced he would stop his defense of these claims and he still says he is innocent. I don't think that Armstrong cheated and i don't think he should be stripped of his medals because other than him stopping his defense there is no evidence like a positive drug test to prove he took steroids.

http://www.foxnews.com/sports/2012/10/22/decision-day-for-lance-armstrong/

Current Events Week 8

http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/15/world/asia/philippines-peace-agreement/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

Yesterday Filipino Leaders and Rebel Muslim Leaders agreed to a framework agreement in the region of Mindanao. The rebels have been trying to get this type of an agreement set in place for 15 years according to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. The government has given the rebels the power to help government he southern region. This rebel group has been responsible for tens of thousands of deaths from terrorist attacks.

Review of Game Site

The game that i played was the Bill of Rights game. I thought it was a very educational game and i learned more about the bill of rights. I wish that the game was a little bit more fun and entertaining because for every question on the game was after a 5 or 6 minute video. For the Naturalization Test I got a 3/4 and I was most like William Paterson  when i took the which founder are you most like test.

http://games.sunnylandsclassroom.org/Preview/Games/?gameid=4