Today, another school shooting occurred. Fortunately, for the kids at the school, this incident was a fellow classmate shooting himself. Reports have indicated that the student pulled out a gun in his class this morning. Students in the class as well as the teacher, as it does not take much to imagine, were described as fearing for their lives. Once the student had shot himself, the school was placed on lockdown and the students, faculty and staff members were escorted into the school’s gymnasium. Parents were given the option to come pick up their children if they wanted to do so.

Although in this incident, it was just a student shooting himself, this is further evidence that something needs to be done at a higher level. No, it does not mean to take guns away from those who own them for self protection and for gun related sports, such as trap shooting or hunting. It means that kids who are obviously suffering from some sort of mental illness or bullying need to be assisted. The problem, however, is that there is still such a stigma on getting treated for mental illness and it is an even bigger hit to one’s ego to report that they are being bullied to authority figures at the school.

As long as the emphasis continues to be placed on guns, it is highly unlikely that this type of school violence will come to a halt anytime soon. When you really think about it, if kids were not left out of the “cool kids” circle and if they were not left to feel like they needed to do something to get big attention, why would they want to even think about hurting themselves or others?

Sure, they raised taxes on the “rich” and they ended the social security tax break that everyone had been receiving over the last handful of years. But, the republicans, and anyone with common sense, understands that there needs to be cuts made in addition to the taxes being raised- but this was an agreement that Obama and the democrats failed to agree to.

Several members of the United States armed forces have had their hours and benefits reduced already, and it is speculated that there are more pay cuts and job losses to come. As a result, experts had projected that the economy would be quite shaky throughout 2012 as people obviously are not going to run out on major shopping sprees every month when they feel less secure than ever before about having a job tomorrow morning.

Surprisingly, however, the reports are in and they indicate that consumer spending is up by 2.5 percent during the first quarter of 2013. However, this mark is still below the three percent increase that many economists would have normally projected, which may not be good news for the American economy.

And, to make matters even worse, other experts have reported that there may be a major catch to why retail spending is up by the 2.5 percent it is. They say that towards the end of 2012, many people would notice that shelves were quite sparse at many retailers due to a low back stock of inventory. However, in 2013, they have noted that these retailers have plenty of stock, which could potentially indicate that sales are not actually up but that these same people would have made their purchases in late 2012 if they were unable to take the product home that day.

Then, we heard about the shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School where Adam Lanza, 20, entered the school and began shooting at students, faculty and staff members. When all was said and done, he tragically ended the lives of 28 people. Just last week, the bombing at the Boston Marathon occurred, which killed three people and injured several others. It did not stop there, however, as the two brothers went on a rampage later that week after their photos were released to the public and they took on the mentality that if they were already going to the pen, they might as well selfishly harm more individuals.

As soon as it seemed like we might finally go a week without hearing of another tragedy, it has been announced that at least five people were killed overnight in Manchester, Illinois. The suspect was still believed to be on the loose as of early this morning, which prompted local schools to tell students and faculty members to stay inside their homes.

Due to all of these horrendous events, we have seen the government working hard to try to tighten up gun control laws; however, they came to a halt when the NRA and others in favor of the Second Amendment said that they should be able to keep their guns as long as they met the legal requirements for being a gun owner. Many democrats were angered by the laws not passing, but GE has taken a step that might make doing business a little tougher for those businesses who are primarily selling guns as they have cut out their consumer financing.

Back in 2008, GE decided they would no longer be providing consumer financing for the purchase of guns from gun stores that had not done business with GE prior to 2008. However, the new move will even end the grandfathered in financing arrangements. Although this seems like it might be bad for gun store owners, only 75 stores will be effected.

As a result, businesses and politicians have added social media, such as Facebook and Twitter into the mix over the last several years. By doing so, they have been able to get their name and their concepts as well as products in front of potential clients or voters. However, it also does not take much to stir up a fast moving storm in the social media world. We have seen the businesses who are sponsoring posts on Facebook. If the business is not well liked by the person whose wall the company shows up on, the person will normally leave a comment reading something along the lines of, “why is your company showing up on my wall-” only with a few choice words in between.

And, when U.S. Representative Anthony Weiner last had a Twitter account, things did not go much better. Sure, he probably got a lot of mileage out of all of the networking he got to do with people who may not have otherwise voted for him. However, he also had some stuff get out that he probably should have thought twice about. For those of you who do not know what “stuff” we are referring to- it was an undressed picture sent to some of his followers on Twitter.

Despite his previous incident on Twitter, Weiner is making a comeback. The believed reason for his return is that he will be running for the mayor seat in New York later this year. His first Tweet read, “Keys to the City: 64 Ideas to Keep New York the Capital of the Middle Class.” While it is great that Weiner is able to get back on his feet in the political game, we can only hope that he is better able to keep himself composed this time around.

Do you think he’s making a good move by coming back?

Between Monday evening and Thursday afternoon, things had seemingly begun to cool off a bit. Sure, law enforcement authorities throughout the Boston area were in pursuit of hunting down the people who costs numerous people their lives as well as causing hundreds of others to wind up in the local hospitals with serious injuries. Fortunately, the police in the area received a nice break when a camera was in the right place at the right time and caught two men with black backpacks right in the area where the bombs were located.

As it turns out, the two men were brothers who came to the United States about ten years ago. A man who lived in the Boston community near them says that he has spoken with them in the past. They had reportedly told him that they did not care too much for America or its citizens and that they “didn’t understand Americans.” Of course, a lot of this stemmed from the fact that they believe the United States should not be fighting in Afghanistan as the two brothers are from a Muslim background.

Last night, things went to a new extreme. The two men reportedly went on a rampage at MIT where they wound up shooting and fatally wounding a police officer. From there, they went on a huge pursuit, which saw them stealing vehicles and shooting at other police officers. At one point, they were even throwing explosives out the window as the police were hot on their tale.

One of the suspects has been shot and killed, but the other brother is still on the loose. Police have warned people in the area to stay inside and not go to work or school until instructed otherwise. They say he is armed.

Since then Carnival Cruise has worked extremely hard to make things right, and in all fairness they have done one of the best jobs of damage control we have ever seen a major corporation due in such a bad situation. They refunded the ticket price for those on board the ship meaning they essentially had a free cruise- despite it was far from being the most enjoyable cruise they had ever been on. They were also treated to numerous other amenities, such as a free cruise ride for future use, which surprisingly did not have some unrealistic expiration rate to where the people would be unable to use them in time due to having already exhausted their vacation time at work.

When it seemed like things had begun to calm down and that Carnival would move on with the daily operations of their business, things started to slide out of control again yesterday. The Carnival ship was heading back to shore when the power was suddenly lost. At first, this likely felt like the cruise earlier this spring to many of those aboard the ship.

They were likely wondering if they would make it back to shore in time to return to work by the end of their vacation time. You can also bet that they were a bit concerned about how bad of a mood they would be in upon returning to work if they would have had to deal with the unsanitary conditions reportedly dealt with on the ship that had issues earlier this spring.

Fortunately for Carnival Cruise and the passengers aboard the ship this time around, the issue was averted. Reports have indicated that the power came back on within just over 10 minutes of it being lost. Carnival has said they are upgrading power backups and fire safety equipment.

However, what many people forgot to consider was the fact that anhydrous ammonia is a chemical used by fertilizer plants, which is extremely combustible. Despite the quick arrival by fire fighting crews, there was nothing that could have been done about the fire. The flames were already hundreds of feet in the air. In fact, they were so high that the FAA issued a no fly zone within a substantial boundary of the facility. Additionally, they ordered that planes were not to fly below 3,000 feet.

There are a fair amount of home videos circulating around the Internet today that show what happened from a distance that put the videographers themselves right in the path of danger. In fact, there is one video, possibly the best one, where a father and son are on the scene when the fire has just begun. They sit there for a while filming the fire, and the next thing you know a loud boom is heard and their car is rattling. Luckily, they had their windows rolled down to relieve the pressure inside the vehicle, or their windows would have likely been shattered- resulting in serious cuts if not death.

When many of the residents in the area first heard the explosion, their first thoughts, as you might imagine considering the Boston Marathon bombing that occurred just a couple of days beforehand, was that a bomb had been set off at the plant. Although officials, at this time, believe that this was purely accidental, we cannot blame these people for suspecting that this was yet another act of terrorism. Law enforcement officials say that hundreds of people were seriously injured in the community, and that there may be 15 or more people dead. One of the greatest challenges they are currently facing is that cell phone connections are down and people have been evacuated, so it may be hard to separate the missing from those who lost their lives.

If Dish were to buy Sprint, however, things could drastically change. Cell phone giants, Verizon and AT&T would be stuck marketing their cell phones, which would not be a horrible scenario for them considering their current market share. However, it is highly speculated that if Dish were to purchase Sprint, they would be making some pretty aggressive bundling options.

Nothing has been officially released to what kind of bundled packages Dish might offer if they bought Sprint, but you better believe they will be going after the market that AT&T and Verizon currently have. If they were to offer some type of extremely aggressive deal where your cell phone had unlimited minutes, texts and data along with a satellite TV subscription for far less than most people would pay for the two separately, there would be a lot of people who would not have otherwise considered using Sprint doing some serious thinking.

I mean, who wouldn’t essentially take a buy one, get one half off (or better) on two products or services they were going to spend money on to begin with? Sources close to the merger have reported that Dish is competing with Softbank, a Japanese-based company, to buy Sprint. Softbank made their offer of $20.1 billion to buy 70 percent of Sprint. Dish returned with the counteroffer of a cool $25.5 billion to buy Sprint out completely.

Dish’s offer may not sound quite as appealing considering it is just a few billion more than what Softbank has offered and they want 30 percent more, as in the whole company instead of 70 percent, than Softbank does. However, the merger deal may all come down to federal regulators anyway. The cell phone and paid television markets are very highly regulated for various reasons, which means that if a federal regulator has any say in it, they might reach the conclusion that the deal would go smoother if bought by another American based company, such as Dish.

There was a lot of going back and forth between the senate and the house of representatives as well as Obama himself. When all was said and done, the primary goals were to have background checks beefed up and to attempt to prohibit the average citizen from purchasing high-capacity firearms.

Today, the vote took place in the senate and they needed a total of 60 votes to pass the bill. When all was said and done, only 55 senators voted in favor of the bills; meaning they failed. This was bad news for those who had put in so much effort to have these bills put into effect, but Obama said, “I see this as just round one.” There may still be another chance for these bills to pass, but it is going to take going back to the drawing board and putting together some new selling points that would convince gun owners, a huge demographic in the United States, of why they should have a restraint put on their Constitutional rights.

So, if these bills were supposed to put such a major damper on gun related violence, why did the senate come up five votes short of the required 60 tallies? Well, there are numerous reasons, but the important thing to realize is how much pulling power the National Rifle Association has.

They did a good job of standing up for their members’ rights to own a firearm provided that the meet the requirements of not having a felony on their background and using it in a responsible manner. The problem with the bills, as many people in favor of the right to own guns as well as the NRA has pointed out, is that if criminals want to get their hands on a gun, they will find out a way to do so. In other words, they are probably not going to hassle with going to buy a gun when they can illegally acquire one.

As a result of so many people taking such a hard hit from flying debris, officials immediately got to work with investigating the case. As of last night, it had been reported that just one man, a Saudi man who was being treated for injuries resulting from the explosion at a local hospital, had been interviewed by law enforcement officials. No word was released in regards to what they found out during the interview with him or whether or not he is being held in custody.

Today, law enforcement officials have indicated that they believe the bombs were constructed from a pressure cooker. When you think about a pressure cooker, it uses a very high level of pressure along with heat to quickly warm up your meal. Well, imagine what happens when you put all sorts of dangerous metals inside of a pressure cooker. You have a potential for a major explosion.

Although the bombs resulted in over 100 injuries and at least three fatalities, one of which was a little boy whose father was running in the race, things could have been much worse according to authorities. They acknowledge that the explosion was huge, but they also say that the pressure cooker bomb device used in yesterday’s tragedy only had the capability of covering a little over one-half of a mile per second- still fast, but it did not cover enough ground to be considered any more than ‘low.’

The investigation is still ongoing, and law enforcement agents in the area are going to continue following up on leads and searching for the person to ensure they are brought to justice. We will continue to follow this story and keep you informed as soon as we learn of new details.