Ashley Furnia

National
1: As the University of South Carolina continues to heal after a North Carolina beach house fire Sunday killed six of its students and a student from Clemson University, the world is getting know the stories of the victims and survivors.
Of the six people who escaped the blazing beach house, Fredrick Wylie was the only one on his floor to survive.

Opinion
That is so sad that there was only one kid out of eight that survived that beach house fire. I feel so bad for all those people loosing their homes and families, animals, loved ones, and friends. It must be so difficult for them to survive through life without all those people. I hate the feeling thinking that this is going to be happening more until someone can stop it. That is going to take a while too because if they could stop it they would have already.

2:The murder trial of British au pair Louise Woodward 10 years ago rocked the small town of Newton, Mass., and brought "shaken baby syndrome" into the national consciousness.
Woodward, 19, was found guilty of second-degree murder for violently shaking 8-month-old Matthew Eappen and causing his death.Days after the jury's decision, the judge shocked residents by commuting the sentence down to manslaughter and releasing Woodward for time served (about nine months). She returned to Britain and has maintained she did not hurt Matthew.

Opinion
That is messed up that the baby got killed from being shaken to hard. That is horrible that a babysitter would just try and shake a baby until it shuts up I mean you should know better than that when you are a babysitter. Someone dumb has to do that. I would never shake a baby until it was quit that is not going to make it shut up. You should learn from that to not do it. Then she gets off from doing that and gets the charge taken off on top of it that is just wrong.

International
1:Tropical Storm Noel headed toward the Bahamas on Tuesday after causing flooding and mudslides that killed at least 20 people in the Dominican Republic and left another 20 missing, officials said.
Forecasters said a tropical storm watch, which means that tropical storm conditions are possible within 36 hours, may be issued for southeast Florida later in the day.The spinning tropical storm had been forecast to hit Haiti hardest but veered toward the Dominican Republic, apparently catching residents off guard Monday.

Opinion
I hate it when you hear that there is a storm so bad and it just destroys a place because you obviously cannot stop it. The weather needs to get more mellow even though you cant do anything to do that but I wish you could. People loose so much stuff in these situations and so many things close to their hearts I feel so bad for them. Then they have to move out here or get sent out here until everything is fixed and thats not done for a long period of time.

2:The first two days of torture started with threatening questions about his family's conspiracy. Shin Dong-Hyuk had no answers because at age 14, he was required to live in the dormitory with other teenagers in North Korea's notorious political prison camp No.14, north of Pyongyang. He had not seen his parents and brother for weeks.
The next morning, Shin was hung upside down with his ankles cuffed, all day long. He wondered why his mother and brother tried to escape, if what the authorities claimed was true. Surely, they should have known that anything short of being out of place in this camp is punished by death.On the fourth day Shin was dragged into cell No.7, the secret underground torture chamber. Completely stripped, legs cuffed, hands tied with rope, his legs and hands were hung from the ceiling. The torturers lit up a charcoal fire under his back. He struggled. But they pierced a steel hook near Shin's groin to keep him from writhing. Amid the sounds and smells of flesh burning, Shin then blacked out. Eleven years after that day, Shin Dong-Hyuk is now standing high in Seoul, South Korea, signing autographs in his recently published book "Escape to the Outside World."

Opinion
That is so horrible that north korea gets away with what they do to people. They need to get caught or at least get into trouble for doing that. The police or our air force or something needs to definetly take care of that pronto. People cannot live their lives like that it is wrong and hateful.