By Hamida Ghafour
TOKYO: The family that prays together, stays together
During a panel discussion last week, Prime Minister Jean Chrétien and the premiers couldn’t agree on what kind of future young Canadians should expect. Canadian interns and exchange students in Tokyo raised the problems of scarce jobs, costly post-secondary education and high taxes. Chrétien, talking out of both sides of his mouth, so to speak, agreed that taxes are high taxes are the price we pay for living in the best country in the world. On the other hand, Alberta Premier Ralph Klein felt tax cuts were sorely needed because “money is better spent in your pockets … than the government’s pockets.” Huh?
BOGOTA: A land where professor are rebels
While our profs in Canada are busy negotiating their contracts, profs in Colombia are busy brokering peace deals between leftist rebels and the government. The latest casualty is professor Jesus Bejarano, a well-respected economist. He was shot once in the forehead after two young men dressed as students approached him at the University of Bogota. Bejarano held unsuccessful talks between the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia — the country’s oldest and most powerful rebel organization — and the right-wing government in 1991. It wasn’t clear what the motive for the shooting was.
LUSAKA: AIDS in Africa leaves orphans
The AIDS epidemic in Africa will kill enough adults in the next 18 months to create 13 million orphans, according to a report from the United Nations children’s agency. Africa is home to two-thirds of the world’s 31 million HIV-infected people. The situation has become worse because of a lack of political will from the West and African leaders themselves. The most vulnerable victims are young girls, because of a myth circulating in some African countries that sex with young girls is safe — and even that sex with a virgin can cure AIDS.
KINGSTON: Antics of our high-brow Queen’s cousins back east
Queen’s University is coming under fire again for their frosh slogans, dreamed up by the Gap-wearing, beer-guzzling jocks in the engineering society. This year, students driving to school along Highway 401 were greeted by signs reading, “Go Down or Go Home.” The incident sparked a controversy and the society was forced to take the posters down. Ten years ago, the school was in the spotlight after mocking the anti-date rape campaign with posters like, “No Means Now” and “No Means Harder.” So Queen’s students are a bunch of insulated, arrogant creeps — as if we didn’t know that already.
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