Daughter of George Bush, Jenna Bush, announced that she is to marry her boyfriend of several years, Henry Hager!.

Jenna, who is one of two daughters (her twin is Barbara) will become the ninth presidential daughter to have been married at the white house. The others White House weddings were: Maria Monroe (1820), Elizabeth Tyler (1842), Nellie Grant (1874), Alice Roosevelt (1906), Jessie Wilson (1913), Eleanor Wilson (1914), Lynda Bird Johnson (1967) and Tricia Nixon (1971).

Henry Hager enters one of the most accomplished political families in the United States. Over three generations, the Bush's have produced a U.S, Senator, two Governors, one Vice President and two Presidents.

The Macedonian debate centres on the status of Macedonian and the conflicting opinions of the pro-Macedonians, pro-Bulgarians & pro-Greeks.

Macedonia is one of five new countries that emerged from the dissolution of Yugoslavia in 1991. The Republic of Macedonia has a population of 2m ,its capital is Skopje. It covers 9600 square miles, landlocked by Greece, Serbia- Montenegro, Bulgaria and Albania.

The population is two- thirds Macedonian, with the remainder made up of several ethnic groups, principally Albanians. The Republic of Macedonia is sometimes called FYROM (Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia). Countries that have recognized Macedonia, include the US, China and Russia, and refer to it as Macedonia, whereas Greece and some other countries call it FYROM.

Macedonia is also the name of a much larger geographical region, 26,000 square miles, that includes not only the Republic of Macedonia, but also three peripheries (political subdivisions) in Greece, called West, Central and East Macedonia, as well as a part of Bulgaria. Greeks claim that the name Macedonia refers properly only to the part of this region that lies within Greece, and, in the early 90's, actually mounted an embargo against the Republic of Macedonia for its use of that name, This became an issue that helped lead to the downfall of former Greek Prime Minister Konstantinos Mitsotakis at the hands of hardliner Andreas Papandreou.

Macedonians claim that Greeks wrested control of their part of the region in the Second Balkan War of 1913, and that the Macedonian population remaining in Greece constitutes a captive element. Greeks outlawed the Macedonian language and required submission to the Greek Orthodox Church.

There are a number of difficulties involved in the Macedonian question. One issue is the legacy of Alexander the Great. The question is whether the ancient Macedonians were Greeks. The Greek point of view is that the Macedonians were just another subdivision of the Greek, or Hellenic, people, like the Athenians and the Spartans.

The modern Macedonian view is that the ancient Macedonians, from whom they claim cultural and ethnic descent, were a people distinct from the Greeks. They further maintain that the Greeks, upon gaining their independence from the Turks in the 1830's, began creating the mythos of their own direct lineage from Hellenistic Greece,.

Greeks argue that, since the modern Macedonian language is a Slavic language and since, according to their view, the Slavs arrived many centuries after Alexander's time, the modern Macedonians cannot be the descendants of the ancient Macedonains.

If Greece were to recognize Macedonia fully, it would legitimize Macedonian ownership of the legacy of Alexander, which Greeks feel is rightly their own. And Greek acceptance of the name of Macedonia would be acknowledging that Macedonians constitute a nationality in their own right. This would lead to the conclusion that Macedonians, in and out of Greece, are entitled to a unified homeland, which would be the greater Macedonia that includes the three Greek peripheries.

The Macedonian debate continues.

Debate topics for high school students range from social issues, citizenship, ethics, etiquette, politics and law, and are a staple of high school social studies classes.

Examples of popular topics include:

• Wearing a helmet when riding a bike should be mandatory.
• The President of the United States is doing a good job.
• The Pledge of Allegiance should be recited in school each day.
• Beauty is only skin deep.
• Kids should be able to have TVs in their bedrooms.

Classroom debates help to develop a range of skills for students including critical & analytical thinking, presentation skills.,  language usage, personal vs. political values and public speaking.

Adversarial Politics takes place when one party (usually not in Government) takes the opposite (or at least a different) opinion to that of the other (usually the Government) even when they may personally agree with what the Government is trying to do.

Those opposed to adversarial politics believe that politicians should state what they actually think rather than following the 'party line'. They consider adversarial politics to be cynical and intolerant, with ‘winning’ the driving  principle versus attempting to establish the truth. Politicians captivated by the ‘struggle’ for ‘victory’ corrupt the ideals that brought them into politics in the first place.

Adversarial politics is often blamed for turning the electorate away from politics and their right to participate in the deomocratic process of their country through voting at elections. In UK, many voters consider 'prime minister’s question time', a weekly ritual involving the prime minister and the leader of Her Majesty’s opposition confronting each other in Parliament, to be a sad and embarrassing relic from the past. This only feedis their sense of apathy and disillusionment with politics. 

In the US, huge fundraising for presidential elections increasingly results in campaigns focused on personalities versus honest debate, and trading insults versus addressing substantive issues.

The more adversarial politics becomes, the greater the erosion of voter engagement and threat to the democratic process.

What are the possible effects of global warming ... the following are key areas of impact identified to date:

• Spreading disease e.g. in Mexico, Dengue fever is spreading to higher elevations.
• Earlier spring arrival 
• Plant and animal range shifts and population changes 
• Coral reef bleaching
• Downpours, heavy snowfalls, and flooding
• Droughts and fires
• Heat waves and periods of unusually warm weather
• Ocean warming
• Sea-level rising - the current rate of a sea-level rise is three times the historical rate and appears to be accelerating.
• Coastal flooding
• Glaciers melting e.g. all glaciers in the Glacier National Park, Montana will be gone by 2070 if retreat continues at its current rate.
• Arctic and Antarctic warming
• Dying mangroves e.g. in Bermuda, rising sea level is leading to saltwater inundation of coastal mangrove forests.
• Beach loss - due to sea-level rising
• Permafrost thawing e.g. causing the ground to subside 16-33 feet (4.9-10 m) in parts of interior Alaska
• Reduced sea ice
• Sea bird population decline

These are some of the clearest indicators of the possible effects of global warming.

Bilingual politics is on the increase due to a variety of factors including: high levels of migration resulting from globalisation; a resurgence of national interests; fast changing demographics in key markets such as the U.S. 

Large scale migration across borders has resulted in 191 million people living outside their home countries worldwide. In countries like Spain, where more than 1 million people from the UK (English speaking) reside, local politics in highly populated regions such as the Costa del Sol are undertaken in both Spanish and English.

In many eastern European countries that previously formed the Soviet Union, biliongual politics has emerged due to a split between the older generations of Russian speakers and younger voters who use the national language.

In the U.S., the growing proportion of hispanic and Spanish speakers means that politics is frequently conducted in English AND partly in Spanish.

In the UK, devolution has led to the creation of local Parliaments for Wales & Scotland. In Wales, in particular, bilingual politics is the norm within the Parliament.

Shayne Madsen, election attorney Colorado, was mired in controversy after misleading viewers on PBS affiliate KBDI Channel 12's show, Independent Thinking. The problem occurred when Independent Thinking host Jon Caldara and Colorado election attorney Shayne Madsen misled viewers about the origin of a controversial "emergency rule" adopted by Secretary of State Gigi Dennis (R). Neither explained that the rule to which they referred reportedly was requested first by lawyers for Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob Beauprez's campaign, the Colorado Republican Party, and the Republican-backed Trailhead Group. Dennis subsequently adopted it "in its entirety."

Anti George Bush t shirts has become a booming trade as George W. Bush has the worst approval rating of an American president in a generation. According to a recent Newsweek poll, his rating was lower than his fathers low point, and only matched in recent times by Jimmy Carter in the 1970's.

Is it any surprise that Carter was dragged down by the Iranian hostage crisis and now Bush by the Iraq war. The American public appears to have limited tolerances for messy engagement in far off lands, especially if they're in the Middle East.

Well, whilst the Republican candidates for the '08 Presidential election may be cursing the Bush legacy, the Anti George Bush t shirt makers just keep counting the dollars!

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The psychological effects of global warming are less well debated than the impact on the planet, but are also of concern.

Some experts have drawn a direct correlation between rising temperatures and an increase in aggressive and violent behavior, including violent crime.

But is there evidence of a direct link between hot temperature and aggressive behavior?

• Social psychologists have shown in laboratory experiments that simply being in a hot room makes people feel angrier than being in a comfortable room. Aggressive thoughts also increase.
• Other laboratory research has shown that hot temperatures can, when coupled with provocation, increase a person’s willingness to hurt another person.
• Other research shows that regional differences in violent crime rates are related to regional differences in ambient temperature and hotter regions of a country tend to have higher violent crime rates.
• In the 1990's the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology reported on two studies that examined the relation between hotness of year and violent crime rate in the United States from 1950 to 1995. One study found that summer produced more violent crime—murders and assaults—than the other seasons. If high temperature was a direct cause of the summer effect, then years with more hot days (days in which the maximum temperature is at least 90F) would have somewhat larger increases in murder and assault than years with fewer hot days. This prediction was confirmed by the data.
• The second study examined the relation between the average temperature for each year and the corresponding murder and assault rate for the same 46-year period. If hot temperatures have a direct effect on violent behavior, then hotter years should (on average) produce higher violent crime rates. This is exactly what happened. The combined murder-and-assault rate was consistently higher in hotter years than in cooler ones. These results occurred even when the data were statistically controlled for the poverty rate, age shifts in the U.S. population and the general upward drift of violent crime during the period.

This information on the psychological effects of global warming is based on findings from Craig Anderson, PhD, a professor of psychology at the University of Missouri at Columbia.