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The top news stories to me were the Civil War in Syria, and Barack Obama contemplating sending over military support, the on-going investigation of the Boston Bombing, and the three news suspects.

The civil unrest in Syria has been a consistent top news story with the most recent one about the Israeli missile strike. The strike was allegedly to stop weapons being transported. The second major Syrian story involved Syria’s use of chemical weapons. Other major stories include the building collapse in Bangladesh and the hunger strike that caused a prison revolt in Guantanamo Bay. In Europe, the economic recession is slowly creeping to northern countries such as France and Germany. Germany has seen a decrease in exports of its Mercedes car which is a large part of its economy. In the U.S., the Boston bombing is a big news story with new information suggesting that the brothers planned to attack Times Square and an investigation is currently on going with the brother’s, who was shot by FBI officers, wife. Also in the U.S., the Supreme Court backs a restriction of who can access state records. This limits people from out of State ability to ask for state information. This will limit national publications ability to fully investigate events in other states than their home state. In New York, the Mayoral race rages on with Christine Quinn, Bill de Blasio, John Liu and William Thompson remaining the top candidates.

The first story that I know has been gaining more ground in news outlets is the Guantanamo Detainees.  The prisoners have been conducting a hunger strike since February, in protest of their indefinite detention and the raid of personal items in their cells that was committed by the U.S. Army.  The pressure is on for Pres. Obama to release them and end this entire crisis.

The mayoral race is still making headlines with the latest televised debate, that centered around the discussion of public safety.

The latest with uprising and civil war in Syria is the majority of the American public not supporting the need of military support to Syrian rebels.  62% of Americans feel that American military does not have the responsibility to intervene between government and anti-government groups in Syria. Pres. Obama has also expressed his reluctance to militarily intervene in Syria

Pres. Obama has visited Mexico and of course the big topic of discussion was immigration. Though Mexico’s president, Pena Nieto, has been very quiet on the ongoing immigration reform debates in the U.S.

There was an article in the paper yesterday about Israel bombing Syria.  The title is “Israel Bombs Syria as U.S. Considers Its Own Military Options.”  I think this is important because it shows how hard Obama is trying to stay civil with everyone and in every aspect.  Obama stated that he wanted to remain out of the situation, and when asked if things went further, what he would do, he went on to explain there needed to be several questions answered, even at that point, he probably wouldn’t resort to any sort of military action.  It also shows how difficult bombings and wars can be; as well as how easily the US can be dragged in…

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/04/world/middleeast/syria.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0

As the hunger strike continues in Guantanamo Bay, different sources take different ways of portraying how president Obama is reacting to the issue of whether the prison should be shut down or not. Recent hunger strikes from the inmates have raised issues whether the US can force these prisoners to eat against their will.  while the New York times looks at the president’s decision to back off his initial want of wanting to close down the prison, and relates it to how the issues within the country side tracked him, BBC news focuses more on the international feel and looks at the issues the president faces without going into detail as to what those in the US are saying themselves, sort of giving the BBC a feel that they are simply delivering the news without trying to give insights as to what they think should be done. The independent however, goes about by giving details as to how the prison became so infamous and the issues with closing it, neither criticizing the president nor presuming how the country should go about the issue, it’ll be interesting to see how these different media sources go about publishing the developments after the president comes to a decision

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/president-obama-to-make-new-effort-to-close-guantanamo-bay-after-mass-hunger-strike-8596709.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-22358351

Cyprus, a small Island off the Mediterranean, has been going through some financial troubles. Victim to money laundering two of the largest banks in Cyprus have been close to shutting down. Because Cyprus had such low taxation rates and a welcoming relationship with Russian citizens, many Russians immigrated to the Island, held large amounts of money in the banks, and invested in real estate, only to have a “haircut.”

The “haircut” refers to the Cypriot governments attempt to raise 7 billion Euros to receive a bailout from Troika. So what they decided to do was tax anyone that had over 100,000 euros in the bank, in an effort to raise this money.

Cypriots are outraged, discouraged, and scared as unemployment rates increase, fearing that what happened to their neighbors in Greece will happen to them. The people that are not scared are the Russians that are in Cyprus. Many of them are “depressed” that the expensive boutiques that cater to the Russian and Cypriot elites have been a little slow, but all in all they are not as fearsome as the Cypriots that have everything on the line.

The Wall Street Journal Europe had a gripping story on how Russians have already moved their money to Switzerland, “a better place” according to one Russian Lawyer that is residing in Cyprus.

It is very interesting to me that Russians in Cyprus are still living a lavish life and aren’t as affected as Cypriots are although they are permanent residents in the country. Some have been affected but in very minimal ways.
Publications used:

www.dw.de

www.ekathimirini.com

The Wall Street Journal Europe

The Australian News

Cyprus-Mail.com

Last week, the most interesting stories I read were published in both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. Both Published a story about 13 teams working on offensive attacks in the event the United States needs to retaliate to a foreign cyber attack.  Currently, young students are actually being trained in cyber attack defense. Interestingly, I did not see this story mentioned anywhere else.

U.S. China Dailey, as always, gave the Chinese point of view of things. It mentioned John Kerry’s trip to China, and how the Chinese are calling for joint efforts to to create a safe and open cyber space. This source is more defensive of China than the others.

Finally, the Guardian News Blog wrote of China and the U.S. agreeing that North Korea should open peace talks.

Immigration’s  process has been so well. According to the Washington Post, President Barack Obama’s political support group, Organizing for Action is stepping up its immigration efforts as the Senate holds hearings on overhauling the nation’s broken immigration system.  OFA will hold an Immigration, Day of Action on May 2 that will include rallies around the country and visits to members of Congress. The group is organizing nearly 250 phone banks, on Tuesday, to appeal for supporters to get involved. The goal is to mobilize OFA’s massive voter database, the same one that helped elect Obama twice, to support one of the President’s top legislative priorities. Obama is backing a draft bill written by bipartisan Senators that would secure the border and provide a path to citizenship for some of the 11 million immigrants in the country who are undocumented.

As reported in USA TODAY, the President will be hosting a dinner for the 20 women in the Senate. This group meets periodically but when the President heard that they were getting together at Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s house he invited them to the White House instead. The President has met with other groups from Congress but this will be the first time for this group. They are expected to discuss a budget deal and a comprehensive immigration bill. Sen. Klobuchar hoped that the recent attack in Boston wouldn’t be used as an excuse to delay work on an immigration bill.

Fox News reported that Sen Marco Rubio believes that immigration is important to our nation and that Americans have been generous in welcoming them. But he believes that the current immigration system is broken resulting in 11 million undocumented immigrants He believes that Republicans should take the lead in fixing the system. His plan would allow them to become permanent resident after a period of 10 years. They would have to submit biometric data to pass multiple national security and background checks ,  pay $2,000 in fines, pay taxes, and learn civics and English. Under his plan they would not be eligible for any federal benefits. We would also have to improve border security to prevent this situation from reoccurring.  We would also have to put in place systems to identify people who overstay their visas and prevent them from being hired.

The World Journal advises those immigrants who have become citizens to be sure to have their close relatives apply for green cards as soon as possible. The Boston bombing may influence Congress it make it more difficult for new immigrants to enter the country. If the law changes to a lottery, it may be more difficult for them to apply and only those who are highly educated may be able to obtain H1-B visas.