SECTION C NEWS BROADCAST
News Item 1 (For Questions 21 and 22)
Four American teenagers, all children of U.S. military personnel, have been arrested on charges of attempted murder after a woman was knocked off her motorbike with rope strung across two poles, Japanese police said. The four suspect --- two 15-year-old boys, a 17-year-old girl and an 18-year-old man --- were taken into custody on Saturday, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department said. They are accused of causing a severe head injury to a 23-year-old restaurant employee by stringing a rope between poles across a road (Q21). U.S. Forces in Japan was informed of the August incident in late October (Q22), a public information officer said. There was no clear explanation for the delay in the handover of the suspects to police, other than it involved rules between Washington and Tokyo covering U.S. Forces and their dependents in Japan. The U.S. military presence and its impact on Japanese residents have been a thorny issue over the years.

News Item 2 (For Questions 23 and 24)
Iraqi lawmakers are expected to vote on a security agreement by Wednesday, which will keep the U.S. troops here until the end of 2011, the parliament’s speaker said yesterday. After hours of heated debate, Speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani announced that the vote is scheduled for Wednesday and can be put forward provided parties in the parliament would reach an agreement on the pact (Q23). The long-delayed agreement passed the Iraqi cabinet last week and wen to the parliament for reviewing. The vote date was originally set for tomorrow. The security agreement will replace the UN mandate to grant U.S. military presence in Iraq legal status from 2009. The U.S. has agreed to pull troops out of Iraqi cities and towns by mid-2009 and leave Iraq by the end of 2011 (Q24). The Iraqi government wants the parliament to make the decision before lawmakers would set out for a pilgrimage trip to Mecca next week.

News Item 3 (For Questions 25 and 26)
Honduran authorities dedicated to the protection of children and adolescents have undertaken a campaign to protect youngsters who beg on the streets. In the capital of Tegucigalpa alone, the effort has resulted in the rescure of 350 children, city officials say. The Honduran Insitute of Childhood and Family, together with the police and the distric attorney, carry out operations around the country to rescure the children and punish the parents (Q25). “Many children are used for begging,” said Nora Urbina, special prosecutor for children’s issues. “Many children are rented and that is precisely what we hope to punish, because Article I-70 of the Juvenile Penal Code sets a penalty of up to six years in detention.” Those children who are rescued are taken to the Honduran Institute of Childhood and Family and then handed over to their parents with the promise that their rights will be protected. Parents who allow their children to be exploited in this way face, in addition to as many as six years in prison, the equivalent of a $500 fine (Q26).

News Item 4 (For Questions 27)
A campaign is getting under way in Italy to take back large stretches of the country’s beaches from private bathing clubs, which usually charge to use them (Q27). This has been a summer of discontent, because despite government efforts, an entire coasline has been monopolized by profiteering bathing clubs. Italy has some of Europe’s finese beaches, buty they are often buried under a mountain of deck chairs and umbrellas. The government says the state owns the shoreline and swimming should be free (Q27).

News Item Five (Question 28)
The Northwest braced for blizzards Friday night --- icy roads created from storms this week paralyzed much of the greater Seattle-Washington area, where schools were closed and bus routes were suspended Friday (Q28D) as roads were too icy to navigate. Two charter buses carrying 80 people that collided and skidded off a road were pulled to safety (Q28B). The buses crashed through a metal railing and hung precariously over Interstate 5 for several hours before tow trucks pulled them back on the road. The snowfall closed the airport for several hours (Q28A), and cut into local business hours for retail shops (Q28C) during the busiest shopping season of the year.

News Item Six (Question 29 and 30)
Hundreds of emergency workers combed the site of a five-story apartment building (Q30A) in sounthern Ukraine Thursday after a series of explosions reduced it to rubble (Q30C, D), authorities said. The blasts Wednesday night in the Black Sea resort town of Yevpatoria left at least 17 people dead and 24 others missing, according to Igor Krol, a spokesman for the Ukraine’s Emergency Situ ations Ministry, 21 people have been rescued (Q29). “We are now investigating all possible reasons for the explosions,” Krol said. Volodymiyr Shandra, Ukrainian Emergency Situations minister, told local media that oxygen canisters being stored in the basement of the building could have triggered the blasts (Q30B). Television footage showed rescuers trying to free people buried underneath fallen debris, while others scrabbled through wires, construction rods and boulders (Q30D).