The current events assignment is a fun assignment.  Since this course focuses on the
history of the contemporary world, one of the things that you need to realize is that
history is being written while you take this course.  So I designed this current events
assignment to allow you to monitor events in a single area, region or country of the
world while enrolled in this course.  This assignment should also help you with
preparation for both the midterm and final exams.
Immediately upon enrollment in the course, at the same time you submit your
introductory letter, you need to inform me of your current events selection.  At that time
I might modify that selection in some manner.  It is absolutely important that you make
this selection at the very beginning of the course since you will write your current
events paper based on events from the entire 16 week period of your enrollment.  It is
unacceptable to wait until the end of your course enrollment to make a current events
selection or to write your paper using only citations from the latter half of your
enrollment.  
When you write your paper, you should write your paper and organize it topically, or
thematically, and not chronologically.  In other words your paper should not be a
week-by-week, blow-by-blow narrative of events in a country.  Instead your paper
should give meaningful analysis to those events by grouping those events around
certain specific topical or thematic points.  For example, your paper might focus on the
foreign policy of Iraq with points focusing on relations with Iran and/or relations with the
Kurds. You will have citations, and the method of citation is indicated on the course
web page, from online sources in your paper.