Using NewsHour Extra Feature Stories

Overview: NewsHour Extra features stories can help students identify and interpret key issues in current events. This activity anticipates one class period, but the follow-up essay might be assigned as homework, or in another period.

Warm Up: Use initiating questions to introduce the topic and find out how much your students know.

Main Activity: Have students read NewsHour Extra's feature story and answer the questions on the reading comprehension handout.

Discussion: Use discussion questions to encourage students to think about how the issues outlined in the story affect their lives and express and debate different opinions.

Follow-up: Students can write an 500-word editorial on the topic expressing their views and send it to NewsHour Extra [extra@newshour.org] for possible publication.

Evaluation: Students are graded on their answers to reading comprehension questions and/or their editorial.

Story: U.S. Opens First American Embassy in Baghdad in Over a Decade, 6/28/04
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/jan-june04/iraq_6-28.html

Initiating Questions:

1. Have you ever traveled abroad? Did you visit an embassy there? Why?


2. What kind of work do you think is done in an American embassy?

Reading Comprehension Questions: (click here for printout)

1. What significant event happened in Iraq on Monday? What was especially interesting about the timing of this event?

The U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority ended its formal occupation of Iraq on Monday when it handed over control of the country to members of Iraq's interim government.

The official transfer, which had been scheduled for Wednesday, was held two days earlier in a secret ceremony in Baghdad in order to deter possible plans by militants to sabotage the handover, U.S. officials said.

2. Who will head the U.S. Embassy in Iraq? Who will he replace, although in a new position?

Newly appointed U.S. Ambassador to Iraq John Negroponte will head the embassy and will take over from U.S. administrator Paul Bremer as the top American official in the country. On Monday, Bremer handed the transfer document to the head of Iraq's Supreme Court before he boarded a plan and left.

3. What will Ambassador Negroponte do in his new position? How will Negroponte's role differ from that of Bremer?

In a NewsHour interview, Negroponte said the new embassy would help prepare Iraq politically for upcoming elections, establish security in the country and it would help rebuild its economic and physical structure using an $18.4 billion budget allotted by Congress.

"My role in Iraq will be fundamentally different from that of Ambassador Bremer," said Negroponte at his Senate confirmation hearing on June 23. "Whereas the CPA is the ultimate political authority in Iraq, the embassy will be in a supportive, as opposed to a commanding, role," he said.

4. What kind of work does an embassy do?

The State Department lists the following tasks as some of the responsibilities of its embassies: prevention of war; advancing democracy and human rights; establishing economic opportunities for Americans; promoting the safety of Americans abroad; and helping refugees.

Embassy staff also issue passports, provide travel information, help if a U.S. citizen is arrested or dies abroad, and evacuate U.S. citizens from areas of conflict, according to the State Department's Web site.

5. What is the security situation for new Iraqi embassy staff?

Concern for the safety of the new Iraqi embassy staff is running very high. Since the end of the war, hundreds of people, including civilians, have been killed in attacks led by militants opposed to the U.S. occupation of the country.

"Our top priority is to keep our people safe," said the State Department's chief of political affairs Marc Grossman in a May briefing about the new embassy. "This is a dangerous mission. We have already begun the security upgrade of the planned interim embassy buildings, and have selected a site for a future new embassy compound based largely on its security features.

"Iraq is, and for some time will remain, a dangerous place to live and work," he added.

6. Where will the new embassy be located? Why?

The temporary embassy offices and eventually the permanent embassy structure, which officials say they have identified, will sit in the "Green Zone," the heavily guarded area of closed off streets in Baghdad, where American officials live and work under tight security, according to the State Department.

Discussion Activity (more research might be needed):

1. How is the work at the new Iraq embassy both similar to and different from the work done at other U.S. embassies? Explain your answer with examples.

2. Research the work that is done at U.S. embassies. Which kind of work seems most interesting to you? Why? How does one become an embassy worker? What kind of education and training is necessary? Try interviewing an embassy worker overseas via e-mail about the work that he or she does.

Write a 300-500 word essay on either of these topics providing clear examples. Send your completed editorial to NewsHour Extra (extra@newshour.org). Exceptional essays might be published on our Web site.