The Week of 3/21 in a Glance

Hello all! Hope everybody has a wonderful Easter, if you celebrate!

 

Cuba

By Maddy Art

 

    For the first time in eight-eight years, the president of the United States has taken a trip to Cuba. Why is this a big deal? Well, the United States has historically had a rocky relationship with Cuba. Issue the countries have had with each other include differences of opinion on human rights, the USSR docking missiles on the island, which appeared as a threat to the United States, and persistent communism. Due to these and other reasons, a trade embargo was set on Cuba in 1996. A trade embargo limits or restricts commerce with the country. Recently, the countries have once again begun to share diplomatic relations, the US has reopened its embassy in Cuba, and travel restrictions have lessened. By taking this trip, Obama is hoping to get the message across that the trade embargo is overkill.

 

Water Hearing

By Owen Tucker-Smith

 

This past week, EPA head chief Gina McCarthy and Michigan governor Rick Snyder played the blame game as they sat in court. They were at a hearing for that mess that happened in Flint a little while ago.

 

What mess? A while back, Flint’s water supply was switched from Detroit’s supply the Flint river for financial reasons. It was supposed to be beneficial as it would cut costs. It might’ve cut costs, but it wasn’t beneficial. The river has high amounts of iron, and children tested in Flint had doubling levels of lead in their blood. (Hint, hint, we wrote a post on all this, 2nd one down.) The problem was, nobody noticed enough, the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) and the governor didn’t act on the issue soon enough, and that is where this hearing comes in.

 

What did they say? McCarthy from the EPA wouldn’t apologize, saying that the EPA wasn’t at the helm of the ship in terms of the water when the crisis occurred, state management was in charge. She said that it was the state officials that didn’t require that the water be tested. Snyder also blamed officials, but ones at the Michigan department of Environmental Quality. He said that they were telling him that the water was safe. So it was “a miscommunication issue.”

 

The result? Lawmakers didn’t care about who the two blamed. Many said that the governor should have pushed against the state officials, and the EPA should have acted more strongly and taken a larger role. Lawmakers asked both to resign. They didn’t.

At a glance: These two really messed up, and they are truly not taking enough blame for themselves. Cue steady waves of criticism flowing into their mailboxes.