Our first headline of the school year comes from the U.S. presidential campaign trail. Now it’s known for a while that former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney is the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee. But now we know his running mate.

 

 

 

On Saturday, Governor Romney announced U.S. Representative Paul Ryan as his pick for vice president. You may recognize Representative Ryan; he’s been in the headlines over the past few years because he’s the chairman of the House Budget Committee.

 

 

 

Now that we know that he’ll be the Republican V.P. nominee, we want to give you a little more information about Paul Ryan.

 

 

 

He was born in Wisconsin, and that’s the state he represents in Congress. He was first elected to Congress when he was just 28 years old. Now he’s 42, serving his 7th term. Before he got into politics, Representative Ryan worked at a family construction company. And in college, he earned a degree in political science and economics.

 

 

 

Now analysts say the decision to choose Representative Ryan as a running mate shows that Governor Romney plans to focus his campaign on the economy and government spending. Over the weekend, the new vice president candidate talked about what he sees as the choices in this election.

 

 

 

We feel, as your fellow citizens, that we owe you a choice, a choice of two futures. We can either stay on the current path that we are on, a nation in debt, a nation in doubt, a nation in despair, a nation with high unemployment, where we’re giving our children a diminished future, or we can change this thing and get this country back on the right track.

 

 

 

Our next headline takes us from the United States over to the Middle East and the recovery efforts after a natural disaster in Iran. Two powerful earthquakes, just 11 minutes apart, hit the northwestern part of the country on Saturday. 

 

 

 

The first quake had a magnitude of 6.4; the second one, 6.3. Local news agencies reported that at least 250 people were killed by the quakes, more than 2,000 others injured. One Iranian official said more than 100 villages were damaged. 

 

 

 

Rescue operations, just like the ones that you’re seeing right here, those were happening on Saturday. But those operations ended yesterday. Iran has suffered through multiple devastating earthquakes over the last 20 years or so.

 

 

 

In Oak Creek, Wisconsin, there was a two-day private funeral service this weekend. It was for the six people who were killed during an attack on the Sikh temple earlier this month. 

 

 

 

It all started during services on August 5th. The attacker killed himself after being shot by police. Investigators say they haven’t found any clues to explain the shooting. Now during a public memorial service last week, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder called it, quote, "an act of terrorism, an act of hatred."

 

 

 

Sikhism is the world’s 5th most popular religion. It was founded more than 500 years ago in a region that’s now a part of India. Sikhs have sometimes been mistaken for Muslims, but those two are very separate religions. There are around 25 million Sikhs around the world. Around 700,000 of them live in the United States.

 

 

 

You can learn more about the Sikh temple shooting at our website. Go to cnnstudentnews.com, and also check out the Spotlight section.

 

 

 

And later on this week, we’ll have more in our show about the vice presidency and a huge drought across the U.S