World Affairs
Welcome, World Affairs readers, to the newest edition of the newspaper! In this section, we have three intriguing articles prepared for your reading pleasure. The first is an explanation and overview of the APEC Summit , which took place not long ago, and is written by cosmicdude2 . Our next article is a brief investigation of The History of Halloween . Have you ever wondered where this popular holiday came from? Well fear no longer, for Natus Lumen has provided you with the answers! And finally, Definition has given us some insight into the events related to the deceitful abductions that took place in Chad, in his article entitled Child Row Leaders Released . Enjoy your reading of this section, and don't forget to go explore all the others as well!
-Kyle
APEC Summit - By: cosmicdude2
APEC – report on the summit.
As you may have realized the APEC summit was recently held. It was a week where world leaders gathered to work together on big current issues such as global warming, Iraq war etc. In this article I will write a brief up of what happened.
APEC- The summary
In case you didn't know, APEC stand for Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation – bit of a mouthful, eh? It is an annual event which is held in different Asian Pacific countries across the world. The lead up to the APEC summit included many different political meetings around Australia. This year's APEC was hosted in Sydney, Australia. The APEC summit started with a show of power from the Australian Federal police, with helicopters circling the sky, snipers stationed on buildings and police everywhere. There where roads closed, and large areas of Sydney where in lock down. Many people left Sydney, in spite of a public holiday and to get away from all the security. Sydney was practically abandoned, and it could have been referred to as a ghost city.
APEC then officially kicked off with George W. Bush, president of the United States of America (in case you live under a rock) introductory speech. He included many of his usual verbal errors, such as referring to APEC as OPEC (an oil summit), referring to the Australian troops in Iraq as the Austrian troops, and finally leaving the stage in the wrong direction.
There was a massive joke made out of security during the summit as well, when the crew of The Chasers War on Everything (a satire humour show) bypassed high security and got within metres of George Bush's hotel. They were dressed up as a fake Canadian motorcade, yet their security passports clearly said "Joke," that they were crew of The Chasers and it also said "It's pretty obvious this isn't a real pass." They were only discovered to be phonies when Chas got out of the car dressed as Osama Bin Laden. The police were very serious about this, and said that the snipers they had on scene meant business and that they would shoot on sight. You can find a video of this incident here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaXHKIFiTzo
The Chasers are due in court in early December, and are being charged with breaching security and entering without permission. The Chaser though, will argue that they did not breach security, but were instead let in.
The annual APEC protest march started, and police estimate that 3000 people attended, whereas the media say 5000 attended and the event organizers say 10 000 people attended. I'll let you judge which one you think is correct. It was a peaceful march, but one police officer was hit in the head with a wooden pole whilst another received a dart to the head. 17 protesters were arrested.
Security- taking its toll
Because of such high level of security, many problems escalated. For example, a man who crossed a road when the police told him not to was crash tackled by half a dozen officers before doing a 22 hour detention behind bars. His 11 year old son witnessed all of this. In another case, a man was wrestled to the ground for squirting tomato sauce on a flag showing the strong friendship between Australia and the U.S.A. There were many other cases where the police greatly overreacted, and acted on the point of inhumanity.
Agreements
There was a climate change initiative signed on the 8th September 2007. The agreement states for all countries to work towards unspecified goals in green house gas reduction.
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The History of Halloween - By: Natus Lumen
Halloween. The very word conjures images of magic and horror, costumes and candy. But where does it come from? Compared to other holidays, few people are aware of the origins of Halloween.
The term Halloween is a shortened form of All-Hallows’ Eve, which precedes the November 1 holiday of Allhallowmas, which is now called All Saints Day (and also includes November 2, All Souls Day). However, this was not instituted until the Papacy of Gregory IV in the early 800s. The festival itself originated in Celtic Europe, likely in Gaelic Ireland, and was known as Samhain. Whether accidentally or by design, the Christian holiday overlapped perfectly with the pagan festival, and many of the pagan customs for celebrating Samhain were carried over to Halloween.
Samhain translates approximately as “End of Summer.” The festival marked the end of the harvest and the beginning of the winter season. According to Celtic beliefs, Samhain was a night when the spirit world could intermingle with the world of the living. Therefore, steps would have to be taken to ward off the evil spirits. These steps included such things as extinguishing household fires to make houses cold and uninviting to the spirits. People would also dress up in scary costumes and parade loudly through the neighborhood in an attempt to frighten off the spirits. This particular custom has obviously survived intact to this day.
By the end of the first century AD, the Romans had conquered the majority of the territory inhabited by the Celts. Several of the Celtic Samhain customs were adopted by the Romans for two of their celebrations. One was for the commemoration of the passing of the dead, and another was for the goddess of fruit and trees, Pomona. The costumes involved in the Samhain custom became increasingly ritualistic as time passed and belief in spirit possession waned. Halloween first became popular in the United States in the 19th Century, when the Irish Potato Famine forced 2 million Irish to emigrate to America. They brought the Halloween celebration with them. Prior to this, vestiges of America’s Puritan heritage prevented the observance of several holidays, such as Halloween.
This is a very brief outline of the history of the Halloween celebration, which has become, at least in America, one of the year’s major holidays.
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Child Row Leaders Released - By: Definition
Seven European aid workers and journalists have been released from custody on charges relating to kidnapping, and handed over to French President Nicolas Sarkozy. The Europeans represented by a charity called Zoe’s Ark claimed to be rescuing 103 Sudanese children from genocidal areas in Darfur and they expected to send them to foster families in France.
While the Europeans and many others in the incidents were detained, UNICEF, a branch of the UN told reporters that many of the children are in orphanages in Abeche crying for their parents while telling UN officials that they were from villages on the Chadian side of the Chad-Sudan border.
Nicholas Sarkozy stated that their acts were illegal and unacceptable, as for Ahmat Mahamat Bachir( Chadian interior minister); he warned that most of the people involved would spend several years in prison. The Spanish government said that the charges brought to the seven flight crew members (Spanish citizens) were to be disagreed with.
The Europeans were to be charged on Fraud and Abduction, as for the seven flight crew members were to be charged with being accomplices to the crime.
Parents stood outside the courthouse awaiting news on their children. They had heard that a charity organization was to come and teach the children since the rate of insecurity had brought no teachers into the area. They had let the children go to the aid workers because they had been told that they would have taught French, and taught the Koran to the children.
Parents said that six people came to the village, four in which were French. They had promised to take the children to Abeche for a week to teach them. Some of the parents were even in the fields working when the aid came. They had heard the kidnapping news over radio, and came to Abeche. The UN is not allowing the parents to enter the orphanage at the moment.
The Europeans flew back to France with Nicholas Sarkozy after his hour’s talk with Chad’s president Idriss Déby.
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