Numbers, By The. "Airport Screening: Would Profiling Work? - The Week." The Week Magazine:

Political News and Cartoons, Current Events and Entertainment Online. Web. 30 Nov. 2010.

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The new full body scans and full body pat downs are not going over to well with travelers. Some are taking

it so far as to compare it to Racial and Religious profiling. A lot of Muslims are arguing that they are the

only ones being searched. Some top security officers are saying that not only is profiling mean it is also

useless. They said that it won't detect diverse terrorists, because Muslims are the only ones being searched.

Numbers, By The. "Is Obama's Federal Pay Freeze a 'gimmick'? - The Week." The Week Magazine: Political News and Cartoons, Current Events and Entertainment Online. Web. 30 Nov. 2010. .

Obama has announced that for the next two years anyone who works for the federal government will not get any raises. The good thing about this is that their salary cannot drop either. Even though he has announced this Congress still has to approve it, and if it does go through it won't save a lot of money. Some people are saying that this was a bad move and "won't win him any political points."

China's towering inferno

"Apple's Beatles Announcement: A Letdown? - The Week." The Week Magazine: Political News and Cartoons, Current Events and Entertainment Online. Web. 16 Nov. 2010. .

In downtown Shanghai, China on Monday 53 people were killed and 70 injured in a monstrous fire destroyed a 28 floor apartment building. The fire is thought to have started by "flammable nylon and bamboo scaffolding" outside of the building and took about 4 hours for firefighters to get it under control

Apple's Beatles announcement: A letdown?

"Apple's Beatles Announcement: A Letdown? - The Week." The Week Magazine: Political News and Cartoons, Current Events and Entertainment Online. Web. 16 Nov. 2010. .

Starting on Tuesday Apple said that it would start selling Beatles MP3's. This ended a 20 year long legal case about whether they could sell the music or not. After this they made their home page on apple.com all about the Beatles. Was all of the hype leading up to this day a big let down? That is the main question people are asking.

Obama's settlement stand: The end of Mideast peace talks?

• It is Important that I did this article for two reasons. The first one is that it is a very big topic right now in the world. The second one is that I am Jewish and and Israel is my homeland. The second one is more important to me, because if my homeland is not safe and that is the only place I can be safe than I don't feel safe.

• President Obama says that he is worried about the decision Israel made to start building the 1000 new homes in East Jerusalem. Obama, who right now is on his nine day trip through Asia, insists that the talks he started in September through Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas should keep going. Obama’s disapproval of Israel is a signal that the peace treaty between Israel and Palestine has failed again.

Donorboy by Brendan Halpin

Some of the main themes in Donorboy are grief, trust, acceptance, and the definition of family. The author is discussing both Rosalind’s and Sean’s loss of their mothers at young ages, their ability to learn to trust and accept each other and other people, and how to be a person that you can like.

Through the e-mails and texts Rosalind, the main character of the book, learns to accept Sean and her new situation and maybe most importantly she learns about love and family. Throughout the novel, many situations show Rosalind opening up and trusting Sean and herself. While this progression was slow throughout the book, one situation really causes Rosalind to change. Rosalind finds herself in a terrible situation with drugs at a friends house and sends Sean a secret text that he was able to understand and come rescue her.

The book had many interesting sections but a few stood out to me. The first one is in a journal entry that Rosalind wrote in her diary where she calls herself lucky even though most people would not find her situation to be good luck. Next, there was an e-mail from Sean to Rosalind where he talks about many things including their great weekend in Philadelphia and how proud her mothers would have been of her. Lastly, at the end of the book Rosalind runs away so as not to experience Christmas day without her moms and Sean tracks her down in New York City and it is clear to Rosalind how much Sean loves her.

Rosalind doesn’t like the person that she becomes after her mothers die. This easily relates to my life in the junior high in the past year and a half (mostly last year though). Last year I was new and I didn’t like the person that I became. I was a suck-up and it got to be so bad I wrote my speech about it this year. I was a big suck-up especially toward all of the 8^th graders who I really wanted to like me as a friend. I have also witnessed some seventh graders this year sucking up to me and to other 8^th graders.

I enjoyed Brendan Halpin’s Donorboy very much. The author developed the character really well and it was easy for me to read because it was written in e-mail style. I would definitely recommend it for next year’s reading bowl. It was a great book.