You sure are. Hi, everyone, I’m Carl Azuz,we are going to have more from Marlene Esparza coming up, but we are startingtoday with some global headlines. First up, we’re heading up to Afghanistan.The U.S.-led coalition is gradually transferring control to Afghan authorities,but he war is not over, and there are still tens of thousands of Americanforces there. On Sunday, four U.S.troops were killed by Afghan police. These attacks are sometimes called “Greenon Blue” violence, when coalition troops are fired on by their supposing Afghanallies. Two other Americans were killed on Friday when a group of 15 insurgentsraided this military base. Six jets were destroyed in that attack as well. 14of the raiders were killed. The other was wounded and captured. 

 

Next, we are moving toward the Korea peninsula and Japan. Over in this part of theworld, hurricanes are called typhoons, and the 16th one this year barreledthrough over the weekend. It’s called Typhoon Sanba. Forecasters said the stormwas heading towards South  Korea yesterday. It made landfall on theJapanese island of Okinawa Sundaymorning. The storm’s eye was nearly half the length of the island, there wereno immediate reports of damage. Okinawa isbuilt to handle powerful typhoons since it’s in an area where they happen sooften. 

 

Finally, we are heading to the U.S. city of Chicago. The country’s third largest schooldistrict was not in class last week because the teachers union was on strike.Union officials and teacher representatives met to discuss the latest contractproposal. The teacher reps had the power to either stop the strike or to keepit going. But the meeting was still under way when we were producing this showyesterday evening, but you can get the latest details at cnnstudentnews.com.

 

In 50 days, Americans will head to thepolls to vote for president. The two main candidates represent the country’stwo main political parties, but how did these groups get started? Tomorrow weare going to take a look at the Democrats. Today, Tom Foreman explores theorigins of the modern Republican Party. 

 

The modern Republican Party absolutely owesits origin to the fight over slavery. In the mid-1800s, in that tumultuous time right before the Civil War, manypolitical activists were worried about slavery spreading into the westernterritories, and they didn’t think the other parties would do much about it.The Democrats or the Whigs, so they said, let’s form our own party, and we’llcall it the Republicans, as a salute to former American leaders long ago who’dcalled themselves Republicans. In fact, at one point, almost every politicianin this country called themselves a type of Republican, but that was the oldRepublicans. Now we’re talking about the new Republicans. By 1861, they hadtheir first president, Abraham Lincoln. Slavery soon fell, as we all know. TheWhigs soon disbanded, and the Republicans began this long steady march into power. Even back then, they talked aboutissues like immigration and religion and basic values and having a strongbusiness climate. That’s why one newspaper back then that liked them said wewill call this the Grand Old Party, the GOP. We still hear that to these days.Their voting base was largely in rural areas and the West. That’s stillpartially true. And those people proved really adept at using the ElectoralCollege system to produce presidents. Even sometimes they couldn’t get thepopular vote. Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, many more, they produced alot of presidents, but then along comes World War I, and the party has thesedeep policy divisions over what to do. Herbert Hoover shows up, ushers in the Great Depression, and the Republicans goscurrying off into retreat. And that’s where they stay for quite some time.It’s 20 years, until Dwight Eisenhower finally get the White House back forthem again. However, since 1969, they’ve been pretty much back to their winningways. During that period of time, Republicans have held the Oval Office almosttwice as many years as the Democrats.