Malala Yousafzai to meet Queen Elizabeth

Impressed by the bravery of Pakistani girls' education campaigner Malala Yousafzai, Britain's Queen Elizabeth II has invited the young activist to meet her at Buckingham Palace on Friday. Malala has been based in Britain since she was rushed there for major surgery last year after the Taliban shot her in the head in her native Pakistan. Malala has won many awards and met many people (including President Obama) and has been called by many a "brave advocate for education" who "reminds us of our duty toward children.” She has argued that to best fight terrorism world efforts would be better focused on promoting education. Malala's activism started after the Taliban banned girls from schools in Pakistan's Swat Valley in She anonymously blogged for the BBC in opposition to that order, and became an open advocate for girls' education. In 2011, Malala said "I have the right of education. I have the right to play. I have the right to sing. I have the right to talk.” A year later, aged 15, she was riding the bus home from school when a Taliban gunman climbed aboard and shot her in the head. She nearly died. Since then, Malala has recovered and continued advocating for girls' education, despite ongoing death threats from the Taliban.

In Other News One of the most dangerous asteroids on record zipped close by Earth on September 16. It made headlines on Thursday, when reports said that there's a chance it could strike our planet in less than 20 years. Such a collision could unleash a force as powerful as a couple of thousand atomic bombs. However, the chances that this one, which the Ukrainian astronomers who discovered it named 2013 TV135, will collide with Earth are extremely slim. The space agency is % certain that when it whooshes back around the planet in 2032, it will simply sail past us again TV135 was discovered on October 8, while NASA was closed during the government shutdown. And already it looks to soon be joining the ranks of the more than 10,000 known near-Earth objects that are virtually certain to cause us no harm. it has the distinction of having a danger rating of 1 out of a possible 10 on the Torino Impact Hazard Scale, the system that gauges the danger of impact destruction by asteroids. on September 16 was not a near miss. At a distance of 4.2 million miles, it flew by about 20 times as far away from Earth as the moon. Avonte Oquendo, a 14-year-old autistic boy, was last seen on surveillance video running out of Center Boulevard School in Long Island City on the afternoon of October 4. He has been missing ever since. The hope is the teen, who is unable to communicate verbally, will hear the sound of his mother's voice on speaker and approach the emergency vehicles she has been riding in. The reward for the safe return of Avonte grew this week to $77,500, as divers joined an ever growing number of police and rescue officers from several states who have been searching for him nonstop for more than a week. Missing-persons posters are being handed out, and the search has expanded to areas outside New York City. German Candymaker Hans Riegel, the creator of Gummy Bears in – passed away Tuesday.

WARM UP ACT A tax on any and all warm ups will now be in effect. Each warm up will require a fee to be paid in the amount of one budget point. Each expected warm up not satisfactorily completed will include a fine of one budget point as well as the usual engagement deduction in addition to the required fee.