Hi everyone, I'm Carl Azuz, thank you for joining us for a week of CNN student news.
Today, we are gonna start with something that actually started just more than two years ago.
Unrest in the middle eastern nation of Syria, began with protest, turn into a civil war.
In 2011, some Syrians were protesting their President Bashar al-Assad, they wanted him out of power.
Assad and his government responding with force, the Syria military started fighting the protesters.
Eventually, the opposition got armed and began fighting back, Syrian officials called the rebels terrorists.
Two years later, Bashar al-Assad is still President, the fighting hasn't stopped.
International aid groups accused both sides, the Syria military and the rebels of abusing human rights.
More than 70000 Syrians are reported to have been killed, now we say reported because it's not possible to confirm that number, or to confirm some of the accounts of violence, that's because Syria hasn't give CNN or any other International news organizations free access inside the country.
Violence in Syria involves one country, what about tension between two nations.
Diplomacy, trying to work things out peacefully as usually the preferred strategy, the governments have to prepare for the possibility of conflict.
Chris Lawrence has more on that when they comes to the US in North Korea.
If a nuclear missile is ever fire at the United States, this is the best hope to stop it.
Thirty interceptor missiles which can be large from ground silos in Alaska in California, now the Pentagon is deploying up to forty more.
The reason it was doing what it was doing, and the reason we are advancing our program here for homeland security is to not take any chances, is to stay ahead of the threat.
North Korea tested a long range missile in December, it conducted it's third nuclear test in February.
And just this month threaten a preemptive nuclear strike on the US, that caught the Pentagon's attention.
But as far back as the State of Union speech, President Obama said the US would, strengthen our missile defense and lead the world in taking firm action in response to these threats.
But Republican Congressional sources say the President's action have been anything but firm.
In 2011, the administration boss bought one Alaska missile field, arguing intelligence show there wasn't enough of threat.
A short-sighted move say the congressional sources, quote, the Intel didn't change, this is way where we expected North Korea to be, and that is in position of a missile that could travel nearly 5000 miles in theory, since North Korea has never successful launch a long range ICBM.
I think what you see here is mainly a political signal in North Korea, that no one is going to be intimidated by their December launch and the subsequent nuclear test.
The existing interceptors have had technological problems, and haven't performed as planed.
The Pentagon is testing a new missile and won't buy the additional 14 until officials are sure they can fly.
We spend 10 billion dollars a year on missile defense, we spend about 250 billion of the last few decades, we still don't, aren't anywhere close to a system that can actually protect United States from the determined adversary, yes, I'm saying, we are wasting our money.