Logan Lann

National

Duck Protected by Court

Summary

Some people were play with pellet guns and shot someone’s duck in the owner’s back yard. The duck has recovered after a bullet pierced the duck’s voice box. Suffolk County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Chief Roy Gross says that he cannot remember a case involving animal cruelty with a duck. The judge in the case ordered the offender to stay away from the duck. The offender has pleaded not guilty to felony animal cruelty.

Opinion

This is sort of ridiculous. People should just leave other people’s animals alone. I believe the offender in this case should be punished in some form or another, but I don’t think it should count as a felony crime. That is a little extreme. People are crazy these days. People need to get their acts together.

International

German Suicide Machine

Summary
A former top-level German politician has invented what he calls a "suicide machine" for terminally ill patients who want to die. Roger Kusch says it is the most bearable method for those with a death wish. The device is a modified machine normally used to inject medicine over a long period of time, and Kusch has installed a button that allows the patient to set off the mechanism. Kusch believes that way the patient is technically killing himself, making the doctors not responsible. German politicians, the medical community and especially churches are outraged by Kusch's presentation of the killing machine. And while many German politicians say the suicide machine is nothing but a sick publicity stunt, Kusch says his goal is to offer terminally ill people an option.
Opinion
I think euthanasia is wrong. It is murder. A person is not meant to die until it happens naturally, and helping someone kill themselves is not natural. It is not right to take someone’s life. The future is not known, the person could still recover. Miracles still happen.

National

Employers say have lain off as many eighty thousand jobs in the month of March. Some economists say these are the early signs of a recession. Other economists say we are already definitely in a recession, and the job lay-offs are a result of that. March is the third straight month in which jobs have been taken from employees. Unemployment has jumped from 4.8% to 5.1%. This is the highest it has been since May of 2005. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke made his bleakest and bluntest assessment on the economy's condition to the congressional committee: a recession is possible in the first half of this year.

Opinion

I feel that this is too bad. I am not sure as to whether the predictions are just pessimistic, or if they are true. I am not really worried about the economy too much. America goes in cycles, including its economy. If we are in a recession, we will come back. Even if it is worse than I think it is, I am still not worried. I know that God has everything under control and we will all be ok.

International

Plague

Summary

More than 55,000 cases of dengue, a sometimes deadly mosquito-borne disease, have been reported in a southeastern Brazilian state in the past four months, authorities said Thursday. The disease has killed 67 people this year in Brazil's Rio de Janeiro state, the state's ministry of health reported. Slightly less than half of the deaths were children under the age of 13, the ministry said. The ministry of health did not identify whether the deaths were attributed to the more severe form of dengue, dengue hemorrhagic fever. All of them are carried by infected mosquitoes, mainly the Aedes Aegypti mosquito.. Symptoms of dengue fever include high fever, severe headache, backache, joint pains and eye pain, nausea, vomiting and a rash. There is no vaccine to prevent dengue fever or dengue hemorrhagic fever.

Opinion
This is terrible . I fell for the people. I wish something could be done for the people. They need help. More commitment from the medicle community should be made to this epidemic. These poor people need help, and I feel for them, but there is nothing I can do, so I won’t worry myself too much.