Current Events Night 4

Current Events Night

8 February, 2021

IA Academic Chair, Samantha Zimmerman, hosted another current events catch up night. She created a Kahoot, testing for general knowledge of 6 news stories from around the world that she chose. After the Kahoot, she presented a deeper background into the issues in a PowerPoint. Samantha discussed the recent updates from the Myanmar Coup, including the government’s shutdown of the internet in Myanmar. She also discussed Russia’s expulsion of three European diplomats for participating in opposition protests in support of Alexei Navalny. I spent a lot of time focusing on this situation in Russia last semester, but have since stopped following so I was glad to get an update on whether the protests were still occurring. Other events included the compensation to be provided by the Brazilian government after a dam disaster that took place 2 years ago, the bushfires in Perth, the conviction of an Iranian diplomat for plotting to plant a bomb in France, and the 50,000 jobs added in the US. This event was related to the International Affairs scholars program because it involved looking at news stories from around the world and getting a sense of what is happening worldwide. This was a great way for me to be caught up on what is happening around the world as I have not been paying much attention to the news lately and I feel more encouraged to keep up with the news even just by looking at the headlines every morning because some of these stories are very important. There was not a lot of intersection with my course work this semester, but I was able to connect the European diplomat’s expulsion to my course from the past semester as stated before. Overall, I feel more caught up with the good and bad parts of international news and plan to keep checking to stay up to date with what is happening.

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