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Ryan Westback- Pluto Pictures Are Pouring In

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Ryan Westback- Pluto Pictures Are Pouring In

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The New Horizons space craft swept past Pluto and took some outstanding photos of the dwarf planet and scientist are wondering if their is something more to Pluto than they thought their was. The strange thing is that the horizon Launched into otter space when I was about 1 year old and it just now reached Pluto so it took 12 years for it to get to Pluto.

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MacKenzie- Pluto Pictures Are Pouring In

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MacKenzie- Pluto Pictures Are Pouring In

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Pluto pictures are pouring in once again from NASA's new horizon spacecraft. The snapshots revealed a more diverse place that scientists have ever imagined. New horizons swept past Pluto in July, It became the first spacecraft to ever visit the distant dwarf planet. In one picture, dark ancient craters border much younger icy plains, in another picture, dark ridges are also able to spot. Some scientists think that these strange things may be dunes.

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The story of saturns rings reminds me of the story when I learned that Pluto was no longer a planet, saying that each planet is different and unique.

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Matthew Pace- Trash Collector Creates a Library

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Matthew Pace- Trash Collector Creates a Library

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A poor trash collector had been digging in trash and finding books. With all the books he created a library in his basement. Now the poor kids around the area could come in and read. The man collected over 20,000 books and is still collecting.

Connection- When my mom was little, my grandpa was a custodian at a school. He would go through the trash and get the old encyclopedias, that the library threw out.

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I actually heard something about Saturns rings on the radio a couple days ago.

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Matthew Pace- Trash Collector Creates a Library

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Matthew Pace- Trash Collector Creates a Library

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A poor trash collector had been digging in trash and finding books. With all the books he created a library in his basement.

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The shortest man died earlier this month he was 21 1/2inch tall

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Jacey Burroughs

People will create wonderful, yet amazing things. They will do whatever it takes to make it into the Guinness world record book(s). It is sometimes hard to believe what people make

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President Obama is making history by his four day trip to Africa. Obama is the first American president to visit Kenya and Ethiopia. Obama is the first to address the African Union. He has been meeting African leaders to discuss trade, politics, and human rights. This article reminds me of when the president went to Cuba to discuss with their leader to become "colleages" with Raul Castro.

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Baylei Bicket- Guiness Releases 2015 world record

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Baylei Bicket- Guiness Releases 2015 world record

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The new world record book recorded a turtle going 0.6 miles per hour making it the world fastest turtle.

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Saturn's rings are not able to be seen if you don't have a telescope.But actually the rings around Saturn are just particles covered in ice.So therefore they are not rings.Today many scientists still don't know much about Saturn's rings

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President Obama just recently made history on his 4-day trip to Africa to meet and speak about human rights, trade, and politics. He made his visit to Kenya and Ethiopia. On July 25, he gave a speech at the Global Entrepreneur Summit and told the crowd that entrepreneurship could help solve the country's poverty and extremism problems

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2015: People have been trying to get in the world record book. Over 40,000 people try to get in every year but only 4,000 people can get in every year. One person made it in with the worlds longest legs. And another person made the worlds biggest hot dog cart. The hot dog cart was really big. The shortest person in the world had recently died he was 75 and he measured 21-1/2 inches.

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Cayden Guinness Releases 2015 World Record

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Cayden Guinness Releases 2015 World Record

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Olivia McEvoy- Who was boss before the dinosaurs? 

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Olivia McEvoy- Who was boss before the dinosaurs? 

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Dinosaurs have been around for about 230 million years. Around 200 million years ago something happened which made the dinosaurs start to go scarce. Because they are now extinct other reptiles have taken their place and we can use and study these reptiles to find out more about the dinosaurs.

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Sierra Hufnagle- 2015 Guinness world record 

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Sierra Hufnagle- 2015 Guinness world record 

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They recently published the 2015 world record book. People have been trying to get into the Guinness book of world records. 40,000 people try but only 8% get in the book. Approximately 4,000 people get in.

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MacKenzie - Pluto Pictures Are Pouring In

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MacKenzie - Pluto Pictures Are Pouring In

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Pluto pictures are pouring once again from NASA's New horizon spacecraft. The snapshots revealed a more diverse place then scientists have ever imagined.

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Karissa Ciaccio- What's up with Saturn's Rings?

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Karissa Ciaccio- What's up with Saturn's Rings?

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You can see Saturn with your naked eye, but you can't see the rings. The rings are contiously forming from dust and ice. However, no one knows when they began to form.

The rings are about 30 feet tall and over 7,000,000 wide.

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When scientist figured about the dinosaurs extinction they realized this was so bad that almost half of the worlds population (and all the dinosaurs) had died.

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Pluto pictures are pouring in once more from NASA's new horiz

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The world has changed more than ever since the dinosaur age. They have been around for about 230 million years. Around 200 million years ago something very important happened that changed life on land and sea forever.

A connection is that dinosaurs have died and now other types of reptiles are dying out.

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Since 2009 Greece has Ben having trouble paying bill. Which they have a scheduled loan. They say they can not pay the loan

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The New horizon space j is one of the fist space crafts to snap pictures of Pluto.The pictures where taken on July14 And Sep. 10th. The pictures show many types of land forms such as mountains, dunes, and plains. New Horizon is heading for Kiuper Belt on the edge of our soalar system. This reminds me of the Rosetta space craft that made a comment landing.

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Saturn has many ring, but they are not actually rings. They are actually thousands of particles that are suspended in orbit. The planets Gravity is pulling the rings in a constant circle. Scientists theorized that Saturn originally had two moons, but after many years they drifted toward the center, destroying the moons turning them into tiny particles. It

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Dallas Cohrs - Big Clock Fixed With Pennies

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Dallas Cohrs - Big Clock Fixed With Pennies

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In this article, it tells you that Big Ben is actually 6 seconds off of real time. Using pennies, mechanics are fixing the clock. By moving, taking off, adding, and replacing pennies on the clock's pendulum. The copper carries an electric current, so it fine tunes the clock's speed.

This reminds me of the story where China is hacking the U.S. because they both have to do with technology, and if people can fix a clock with just a few pennies, it proves that China can do a lot of things with limited resources.

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Big clock fixed with a few small pennies

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(AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis) Big clock fixed with a few small pennies Don't set your watch by Big Ben. Officials say the famous clock at Britain's Parliament has recently been slow by as much as six seconds. It has been used by Londoners for decades to check the time.

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Scientists discovered that there might have been a animal like a crocodile before there were dinosaurs. They have found fossils that look older than dinosaur bones. The crocodile fossils show that it originated 230 million years ago and dinosaurs were originated in 200 million years ago. They suppose dinosaurs were not the first living things on earth.

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Hayden Nerwin Guinness RELEASES 2015 World records

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Hayden Nerwin Guinness RELEASES 2015 World records

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Recently Guinness released the 2015 world records book and it is crazy. This all started when the founder of the company was in a bar arguing with one of his friends about what the fastest game bird is in Europe, he then realized that there was not an actual record of in, that is where he came up with the idea of the Guinness World Records. Now the records are anything from biggest hotdog cart to smallest adult human. But don't just think it is so easy to get into the book, it is not.

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Steven wingate  Pluto pics are coming in

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Steven wingate  Pluto pics are coming in

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the space craft new horizon is filly sending pics of Pluto. This is Inportan because it is the first detailed pictures of Pluto in many years.

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For the past 13 years Iran has been harvesting uranium, and people from the U.S. And Europe think they we're building a bomb, Well a NUKE. Secretary of State John Kerry said "now that the deal is done, and Iran is closing the big nuclear plants, the U.S. And Europe is safe".

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Logan Schlut Big Clock Fixed With A Few Pennies

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Logan Schlut Big Clock Fixed With A Few Pennies

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When London's famous clock "Big Ben" was off by 6 seconds, they had to come up with a solution. They came up with the idea to use pennies to save the bell inside the clock. They would either add or take away pennies. This is only a temparay fix until they come up with a permanent solution.

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Spencer ozimek A big clock fixed by a few pen

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Spencer ozimek A big clock fixed by a few pen

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One of the most popular bell was running late by 6 seconds. Machanics fixed the bell by using pennies

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MacKenzie- Pluto Pictures are Pouring in

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MacKenzie- Pluto Pictures are Pouring in

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Greece has been trouble paying bills. They have to loan

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Iran is bargaining to try and get their oil production back. They have been make uranium to build nuclear devices. The countries of UK, France, China, Russia and Germany and U.S. decided that  Iran should have a limit on the oil. I know how it must feel to have been limited on something your good at.

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Lots of pictures of Pluto are coming in from NASA new horizon space craft. These newest snapshots reveal an even more diverse landscape than scientists imagined.New Horizons swept past Pluto in July. It became the first spacecraft to ever visit the distant dwarf planet.

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Srijita- Who was the Boss Before the Dinosaurs?

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Srijita- Who was the Boss Before the Dinosaurs?

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In the article it says, that during the Jurassic period there were a lot of dinosaurs. Just recently, paleontologist have found fossils of a dinosaur called the Smilosuchus which caused half of the dinosaur population to go extinct. This dinosaur was a reptile and it was very similar to a crocodile. Scientists think that this happened during the Triassic period. This reminded me of the news of the paleontologists finding a fossil of a skull which was a relative of humans

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McCaffrey billings and a Big clock fixed with a few pennies

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McCaffrey billings and a Big clock fixed with a few pennies

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Whe the bell in London the "Big Ben"was noticed by city officials that it was off by as much as 6 whole seconds they had to fix it, it had been a part of history for over a hundred years! They had to do something about it so they made a sacrifice with their pennies to save the bell and now it is only off by 2 whole seconds but they are going to keep working to make it perfect again.

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Andrew Carter- Nepal: Finally,  a Constitution

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Andrew Carter- Nepal: Finally,  a Constitution

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In Nepal, they have written their official first constitution and are trying to transform to a republican country. Nepal used to be a Royal Kingdom (Monarchy), and the Shah family had owned it. Hinduism used to be the main religion, but now there is no main religion, so Hindus are protesting. Now Nepal has been divided into seven states, and each one has a seperate "head of State".

This reminds me of the earthquake that happened a couple months ago, because in the article it said that if they had a better government, Nepal could of been more prepared and saved more lives.

(If you click on the picture, scroll down to bottom to see my responce)

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When we think of Nepal, the massive earthquake that devastated the country earlier this year comes to mind (read here). But, the country has also been in the midst of a political quake.

Nepal has been transitioning from a kingdom to a republic. The country has not had an official constitution, with the different political groups failing to agree on details. The earthquake in April 2015 was a wake up call. Nepal was ill-equipped to handle the scale of the disaster as 9,000 people died. The lack of a working constitution was blamed for the poor response.

This past week, Nepal's Parliament approved the country's first official constitution. The country has been divided into seven states, each with a legislative body and a Chief Minister (head of state). Nepal has also decided that it would be secular country - in other words, it will not have any official religion. This move has angered the majority Hindus, and led to protests.

A Royal Kingdom

Nepal lies on the crossroads of India and China. It is the starting point for trekkers eager to scale Mt. Everest, the world's highest peak. For centuries, the country has attracted settlers from India, and been a resting stop on trading routes. It is also the birthplace of Gautama Buddha - a royal prince who abandoned his kingdom in pursuit of enlightenment, and founded the religion of Buddhism.

In 1768, Prithvi Narayan Shah, the ruler of a tiny mountain kingdom, unified the country by attacking and conquering neighboring kingdoms. Nepal came under one ruling family - the Shahs. The Shahs, originally from India, practiced Hinduism (the main religion in India today). Hence Nepal became a Hindu kingdom.

For more than two centuries, the Shah dynasty enjoyed complete control. The King was considered an incarnation of God, and ruled by divine right. But all that changed in 2001.

The Dawn Of Democracy

When democratic movements started sweeping across the world in the late 1980's, Nepal was caught in the storm. Opposition groups demanded that the country be handed back to its people, and the King declared a constitutional head (similar to the British monarchy).

King Birendra of Nepal agreed to the will of the people and elections were held. But the King retained the right to dissolve the Parliament and controlled the army. The initial experiments in democracy failed, and the country fell into a long drawn civil war.

The beginning of the end for the Shah kings came in the summer of 2001. King Birendra, along with nine other members of the royal family, was assassinated in the palace by his son - crown prince Dipendra, who was drunk and later killed himself. The King's younger brother, Gyanendra took over the kingdom. Many in Nepal believe that Gyanendra had a hand in the assassination, and that he suspended investigations into the killings too quickly.

Gyanendra tried to change Nepal back into a monarchy and seized absolute power. But he did not succeed and was ousted in 2006 by the rebels. Since then, Nepal has been on a long and rocky road to democracy. The new constitution is certainly a step in the right direction.

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When we think of Nepal, the massive earthquake that devastated the country earlier this year comes to mind (read here). But, the country has also been in the midst of a political quake. Nepal has been transitioning from a kingdom to a republic.

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Saturn's rings have been a mystery to most. They are really made of dust sized particles, and bits of ice. They can also be made of boulders, and the rings can be up to 30 ft high.

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What's Happening in Europe? Here's What You Need to Know

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What's Happening in Europe? Here's What You Need to Know

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More Trouble in Greece: The Country is Facing New Financial Problems

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More Trouble in Greece: The Country is Facing New Financial Problems

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Teach current events in your elementary classroom, grades 1-6.

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Teach current events in your elementary classroom, grades 1-6.

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What's up with Saturn's rings?

You asked us, "What's up with Saturn's rings?"

Although Saturn can be seen with the naked eye, its rings are invisible without a telescope. Galileo was the first to spot them. That was in 1610.

And there are 7 creatively named rings. They span up to about 175,000 miles wide, roughly 3/4 of the distance between the Earth and the Moon.

The gigantic rings are super thin, though, and some are just 30 feet high.

The rings look continuous, but they aren't. They're made of billions of particles, from dust-sized frozen grains to much larger pieces of water ice and rocky particles wrapped in ice. The frozen grains whirl around Saturn in different orbits.

We don't know how the rings formed or when. It could have been as early as when Saturn came to be. Or as late as when dinos roamed the Earth.

But we do know that the rings aren't static - their formation is a continuous process.

Thanks to tech like the probes we've been sending to Saturn since the late 1970s, we're making new discoveries all the time.

We're even identifying new rings like the 7.4-million-mile-wide behemoth that was discovered in 2009.

And that's just one of the many reasons why you've gotta love science.

CRITICAL THINKING QUESTION

How can particles appear as rings?

Write your answers in the comments section below

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What's up with Saturn's rings? You asked us, "What's up with Saturn's rings?" Although Saturn can be seen with the naked eye, its rings are invisible without a telescope. Galileo was the first to spot them. That was in 1610. And there are 7 creatively named rings.

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Garbage Collector Creates Library from Rescued Books

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Garbage Collector Creates Library from Rescued Books

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(AP Photo/Fernando Vergara)

Garbage collector creates library from rescued books

A second-grade education has not stopped garbage collector Jose Gutierrez from bringing the gift of reading to thousands of Colombian children.

Gutierrez started rescuing books from the trash almost 20 years ago. He was driving a garbage truck at night through the country's wealthier neighborhoods. The discarded reading material slowly piled up. And now the ground floor of his small house is a makeshift community library. It is stacked from floor to ceiling with some 20,000 books. They range from chemistry textbooks to children's classics.

He says books are luxuries for boys and girls in low-income neighborhoods such as his. New reading material at bookstores is too expensive. There are 19 public libraries in Bogota. It is a city of 8.5 million. But the libraries tend to be located far away from poorer areas.

"This should be in all neighborhoods and on each corner of every neighborhood. In all the towns, in all departments and all the rural areas," says Gutierrez. "Books are our salvation. And that is what Colombia needs."

The 53-year-old Gutierrez has a love of reading that he says comes from his mother. She always read to him even though she was too poor to keep him in school.

"She used to read me stories every night," said Gutierrez. He has traveled to book fairs in Mexico and Chile to share his experience of starting a library with discarded reading material. "To me, books are the greatest invention and the best thing that can happen to a human being."

Gutierrez still sifts through the rubbish for additions to his library. But, his fame as Colombia's "Lord of the Books" has also brought him thousands of donated tomes. He has sent many to other libraries around the country. That is because he does not have room for them all.

Gutierrez is an avid reader of works by authors such as Leo Tolstoy, Victor Hugo and Mario Vargas Llosa. His favorite books include "One Hundred Years of Solitude" and "The General in his Labyrinth" by Colombia's Nobel Prize-winning novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

He says he does not reject technology that allows books to be read digitally. But he prefers to read the printed word on paper.

"There is nothing more beautiful than having a book in your pocket, in your bag or inside your car," he says.

CRITICAL THINKING QUESTION

Why does Jose think "books are the greatest invention and the best thing that can happen to a human being?"

Write your answers in the comments section below

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Garbage collector creates library from rescued books

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(AP Photo/Fernando Vergara) Garbage collector creates library from rescued books A second-grade education has not stopped garbage collector Jose Gutierrez from bringing the gift of reading to thousands of Colombian children. Gutierrez started rescuing books from the trash almost 20 years ago. He was driving a garbage truck at night through the country's wealthier neighborhoods.

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Who was boss before the dinosaurs?

The Jurassic witnessed a world populated by dinosaurs. While giant plant-eaters munched their way through ferns and conifer forests, large carnivores chased them down for lunch.

At the height of the Age of Dinosaurs, they were found on every continent. They thrived in the warm environments of the time.

But, dinosaurs were not always so prominent. Fossil evidence shows that they arose about 230 million years ago during the Triassic period. But they remained scarce as other reptiles took center stage. Many mammal forerunners, such as the large plant-eater Placerias, prospered. Huge crocodile-like animals like Smilosuchus were the top predators of the Triassic.

Paleontologists who study the fossil record have discovered that something big happened 200 million years ago. It radically changed life on land and in the sea. And it paved the way for dinosaur diversification and prominence.

What happened was so important that it caused more than half of all life on Earth to go extinct. The large crocodile-like reptiles that had dominated the landscape were eliminated. So were many of the mammal forerunners.

Find out more about the events that opened the door for the Age of Dinosaurs. Join us on Thursday, October 8, 2015, for a "Smithsonian Science How" live webcast on How Fossils Explain the Rise of Dinosaurs. It is airing at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. EDT on the Q?rius website. Paleontologist Dr. Hans Sues from the National Museum of Natural History will appear live to discuss and answer questions. Get teaching resources to support your webcast experience.

CRITICAL THINKING QUESTION

To study dinosaurs, why do scientists rely on fossils instead of photographs?

Write your answers in the comments section below

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Who was boss before the dinosaurs? The Jurassic witnessed a world populated by dinosaurs. While giant plant-eaters munched their way through ferns and conifer forests, large carnivores chased them down for lunch. At the height of the Age of Dinosaurs, they were found on every continent.

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Big clock fixed with a few small pennies

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(AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis) Big clock fixed with a few small pennies Don't set your watch by Big Ben. Officials say the famous clock at Britain's Parliament has recently been slow by as much as six seconds. It has been used by Londoners for decades to check the time.

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(NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute via AP)

Pluto pictures are pouring in

The spigot has opened again, and Pluto pictures are pouring in once more from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft.

These newest snapshots reveal an even more diverse landscape than scientists imagined. New Horizons swept past Pluto in July. It became the first spacecraft to ever visit the distant dwarf planet.

"If an artist had painted this Pluto before our flyby, I probably would have called it over the top. But that's what is actually there," said Alan Stern. He is the New Horizons' principal scientist from Southwest Research Institute. It is in Boulder, Colorado.

In one picture, dark ancient craters border much younger icy plains. Dark ridges also are visible. Some scientists speculate they might be dunes.

One outer solar-system geologist, William McKinnon of Washington University in St. Louis, said if the ridges are, in fact, dunes, that would be "completely wild." That is because of Pluto's thin atmosphere.

"Either Pluto had a thicker atmosphere in the past, or some process we haven't figured out is at work. It's a head-scratcher," McKinnon said in a written statement.

The jumble of mountains, on the other hand, may be huge blocks of ice. They could be floating in a softer, vast deposit of frozen nitrogen.

After several weeks of collecting engineering data from New Horizons, scientists started getting fresh Pluto pictures. The latest images were released Sept. 10.

Besides geologic features, the images show that the atmospheric haze surrounding Pluto has multiple layers. What's more, the haze creates a twilight effect. It enables New Horizons to study places on the night side that scientists never expected to see.

It has been more than two months since New Horizons' close encounter with Pluto. That was on July 14. Its journey began at Cape Canaveral, Florida. The flight has spanned 3 billion miles and 9 1/2 years. As of Sept. 11, the spacecraft was 44 million miles past Pluto.

So much data was collected during the Pluto flyby that it will take until next fall to retrieve it all on Earth. The spacecraft is operated from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. It is in Laurel, Maryland. The physics lab also designed and built it.

New Horizons' next target is awaiting formal approval by NASA. The plan is for it to reach a much smaller object that orbits 1 billion miles beyond Pluto. It, too, lies in the so-called Kuiper Belt. That is a frigid twilight zone on the outskirts of our solar system. Following a set of maneuvers, New Horizons would reach PT1 - short for Potential Target 1 - in 2019.

CRITICAL THINKING QUESTION

Why did it take so long to get more photos from Pluto?

Write your answers in the comments section below

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(NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute via AP) Pluto pictures are pouring in The spigot has opened again, and Pluto pictures are pouring in once more from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft. These newest snapshots reveal an even more diverse landscape than scientists imagined. New Horizons swept past Pluto in July.

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Talk about record breaking. It seems folks are willing to do anything - weird and wacky, to somehow get their names into the Guinness Book of World Records.

From flipping pancakes, to scaling Mount Everest twice in one year, or doing mass massage or line dancing, there is no dearth of ideas on what one can do to get into the record books! On September 11, the iconic book released its 2016 edition.

With 40,000 records being tracked, and more added each year, there is always something new. For one, the latest edition has an entry for the world's largest feet belonging to Jeison Hernandez of Venezuela - a size 26! It is not just people, but animals have been making their way into the record books too. Bertie is the Usain Bolt of tortoises, capable of reaching speeds of 0.6 miles per hour.

Unfortunately the world's shortest man passed away earlier this month. Chandra Bahadur Dangi of Nepal was 75 years old and measured 21-1/2 inches.

For The Records...

Wondering how the Guinness Book of World Records came to be? In May 1951, Sir Hugh Beaver, the owner of a beer brewery in England got into an argument with fellow members of his hunting party over the question - "Which is the fastest game bird in Europe, the golden plover or the grouse?" Realizing that there were no reference books that carried such information and how useful they might be to resolve debates such as his, he came up with the idea of a book of world records.

Well as they say, the rest is history. The first 197-page edition of the Guinness Book of World Records came out in May 1955, and since then, nearly 100 million copies have been sold worldwide and updated annually. From the most tattoos and piercings, to the longest burrito, fastest talker, longest hair and more, there are nearly 40,000 record categories, some of which are not active.

The book however publishes only 4000 records each year and while some are standard fare -- like the tallest and the shortest, nearly eighty percent are new.

Want To Get In?

Well it may no be so easy as you may think. Guinness says it receives requests from tens of thousands of people each year who want to set a record. Guinness's motto for a record is that it should be "provable, quantifiable and breakable".

Once a request is made, Guinness officials take a month to decide whether to accept the request, eighty percent of which are rejected. If the request is accepted, detailed instructions follow. They may send an official to witness the record in public, or it has to be verified by witnesses not known to the individual and accompanied by photographs and video recordings.

Now, even if the record is verified, it may still not make it into the book! But that does not stop people from trying. Lets look at two records.

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Talk about record breaking. It seems folks are willing to do anything - weird and wacky, to somehow get their names into the Guinness Book of World Records. From flipping pancakes, to scaling Mount Everest twice in one year, or doing mass massage or line dancing, there is no dearth of ideas on what one can do to get into the record books!

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When we think of Nepal, the massive earthquake that devastated the country earlier this year comes to mind (read here). But, the country has also been in the midst of a political quake.

Nepal has been transitioning from a kingdom to a republic. The country has not had an official constitution, with the different political groups failing to agree on details. The earthquake in April 2015 was a wake up call. Nepal was ill-equipped to handle the scale of the disaster as 9,000 people died. The lack of a working constitution was blamed for the poor response.

This past week, Nepal's Parliament approved the country's first official constitution. The country has been divided into seven states, each with a legislative body and a Chief Minister (head of state). Nepal has also decided that it would be secular country - in other words, it will not have any official religion. This move has angered the majority Hindus, and led to protests.

A Royal Kingdom

Nepal lies on the crossroads of India and China. It is the starting point for trekkers eager to scale Mt. Everest, the world's highest peak. For centuries, the country has attracted settlers from India, and been a resting stop on trading routes. It is also the birthplace of Gautama Buddha - a royal prince who abandoned his kingdom in pursuit of enlightenment, and founded the religion of Buddhism.

In 1768, Prithvi Narayan Shah, the ruler of a tiny mountain kingdom, unified the country by attacking and conquering neighboring kingdoms. Nepal came under one ruling family - the Shahs. The Shahs, originally from India, practiced Hinduism (the main religion in India today). Hence Nepal became a Hindu kingdom.

For more than two centuries, the Shah dynasty enjoyed complete control. The King was considered an incarnation of God, and ruled by divine right. But all that changed in 2001.

The Dawn Of Democracy

When democratic movements started sweeping across the world in the late 1980's, Nepal was caught in the storm. Opposition groups demanded that the country be handed back to its people, and the King declared a constitutional head (similar to the British monarchy).

King Birendra of Nepal agreed to the will of the people and elections were held. But the King retained the right to dissolve the Parliament and controlled the army. The initial experiments in democracy failed, and the country fell into a long drawn civil war.

The beginning of the end for the Shah kings came in the summer of 2001. King Birendra, along with nine other members of the royal family, was assassinated in the palace by his son - crown prince Dipendra, who was drunk and later killed himself. The King's younger brother, Gyanendra took over the kingdom. Many in Nepal believe that Gyanendra had a hand in the assassination, and that he suspended investigations into the killings too quickly.

Gyanendra tried to change Nepal back into a monarchy and seized absolute power. But he did not succeed and was ousted in 2006 by the rebels. Since then, Nepal has been on a long and rocky road to democracy. The new constitution is certainly a step in the right direction.

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When we think of Nepal, the massive earthquake that devastated the country earlier this year comes to mind (read here). But, the country has also been in the midst of a political quake. Nepal has been transitioning from a kingdom to a republic.

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On July 14, seven countries, including the U.S and Iran, reached a historic agreement on Iran's nuclear program.

For a long time now, countries around the world have been concerned that Iran is trying to build a nuclear bomb. The U.S had been in negotiations with Iran for almost two years, with support from UK, France, China, Russia and Germany.

When the deal was announced in Vienna, Austria, there was jubilation on the streets of Tehran, Iran's capital. However, the deal sparked controversy all across the world. While many called it a 'win-win situation', others such as Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu perceived the deal as a 'historic mistake'.

In the U.S, Republicans vowed to block the deal with a vote. Last Thursday, the U.S Senate delivered a victory to President Obama, allowing the Iran deal to go through.

A Little Background

It was in 2002 that the world learned about Iran's secret plans for developing capability to build nuclear weapons. The matter came to light when a group opposed to the Government, revealed information about Iran's nuclear activity.

The country by that time had already acquired nuclear material and was making substantial progress to enrich uranium. Uranium is the fuel that is used by reactors to generate nuclear power. But it also has the capability to build weapons.

Worried about the safety and security in the region, US and its European allies began pressing Iran to stop enriching uranium. Talks failed to make progress and the inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) referred the matter to the UN Security Council. Sanctions were imposed on Iran on several occasions, each one more severe than the previous one.

What Does The New Deal Involve?

Per the Vienna agreement, Iran has agreed to limit its uranium production and reduce its stockpile by 98%. It will also be required to shut down some of its most important nuclear plants, one of which will be converted for scientific research. In addition, Iran will stop manufacturing weapon-grade plutonium (another radioactive material), and not build any additional plutonium reactors for at least 15 years.

Iran has also agreed to provide greater visibility into its nuclear program. It will allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to keep constant surveillance and carry out inspections up to a period of 25 years. In return, the US and other countries will lift the harsh economic sanctions they have currently placed on Iran.

Why Did Iran Agree To The Deal?

The sanctions that had been in place so far were quite severe, and had crippled the country. Iran's ability to export oil was restricted, which in turn had affected the country's economy. Iranian banks could not work with the West, which affected the value of Iran's money. These sanctions had led to rising food and fuel prices which were affecting the common people.

Iran is also worried about the spread of ISIS extremists who have taken over large parts of Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. ISIS extremists practice the Sunni form of Islam and could be a potential threat to Shia Iran's existence (Read about Sunni and Shia Islam here). Iran has been engaged in a war with ISIS, and support from the international community is important at this time.

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On July 14, seven countries, including the U.S and Iran, reached a historic agreement on Iran's nuclear program. For a long time now, countries around the world have been concerned that Iran is trying to build a nuclear bomb. The U.S had been in negotiations with Iran for almost two years, with support from UK, France, China, Russia and Germany.