POPCORN NEWS

There are events happening all around the world right now. At this time. In this page, you will read about all these issues and how they could be affecting you. -TI

Oil Prices- by SM...01/02/09

Another Crisis?!-by TI..01/01/09

An Extra Second-by TI..31/12/08

Abortion Debate- by ST..30/12/08

Failed UK Bombings-by TI..17/12/08

Poverty-by TI..17/12/08

Major Case: O.J. Simpson- by ST.. 05/12/08

Disappearing food...- by TI.. 01/12/08

   Have you or your family members been complaining about the gas prices, and how they have been going up and down without warning? Reaching over $1.30 per litre only one month ago, and then dropping to $00.80 a few weeks later does make people quite worried. Well, why is it happening? These are a few reasons why;

Reason 1: Demand

   When there is something needed, it tends to run out. It is the same as something from the grocery store. When something runs out, there is a time period when the price goes up. The more high demand something is in, the more expensive it gets. During the time period when there wasn’t much oil to be found, the price went up, as the supply went down.

Reason 2: Supply

   As mentioned in the last reason, the supply of oil was going down. The oil miners could not find much oil at the time period, so the people who had more gas made it expensive. They know how our everyday lives depend on oil. The production of plastic and gas would stop- so they put a price on it. When the supply of oil went up, the price of it went down. In the Middle East (the largest oil producer), there are ongoing attacks, like in Iraq. When the oil plants get attacked, the oil there can’t mined.

Reason 3: Recession

   As it is know, our government is going through a tough period, when prices are going up. This is another reason why the oil prices were creeping up, but not the reason of the fall. The reason that the oil prices fell was because of the two combined reasons above: demand and supply.

   Those were a few reasons that the oil prices have been going up and down. Hopefully they stay down...for the benefit of the populations wallets. 

You’ve all heard about the possible food crisis and if you’ve been reading Popcorn News recently maybe you’ve also heard of the possible doctor crisis, but what you’re probably what a water crisis really is.

            The title says it all. We’re running out of water. About 1 in 6 people (1.1 billion) don’t have access to safe drinking water. Also, demands for water are going up. Water demands (globally) are doubling every 20 years. Scientists estimate that by about 2025, one third of the population won’t have access to safe drinking water.

            Many of you may not know this but water is a non-renewable source. Well, technically water is a renewable source but have you ever learned about the water cycle? Water goes from earth to air to earth again. The water cycle is what makes water renewable but the demand is getting out of control. So much that the water cycle can’t keep up with it. Water is being used more quickly than it can be “renewed.” 

            The water we do have is being polluted daily by sewers and oil spills and other disgusting forms of pollution. Industries and factories also use up a lot of our water reserves for example, nuclear plants and heat and power plants. Water is essential for many things, the running of these factories, and of course drinking water. In fact, it takes about 5000 litres of water just to grow one kilogram of rice.  This just goes to show how important water is.

            We live in a planet where 70 per cent of its surface is covered with water, so how could we have a water crisis? Well, 97 per cent of that water is ocean/salt water.  Of the remaining 3 per cent of freshwater, most of it is locked in glaciers or ice caps, making it unusable. Several countries, such as Canada and Arabian Peninsula are already using and transporting icebergs to make drinking water.

            So now that we know there’s less and less water what can we do about it? We have to start managing water better instead of wasting it. Use all those energy-saving tips, like take a shower instead of a bath; don’t leave the tap on while you brush your teeth. Like they say, “Every little bit counts.”

        At the end of this year, 2008, the “British custodians of time” are going to add a “leap second”. So on Wednesday December 31, us, the citizens on Earth, are going to have to wait an extra second before celebrating the New Year. “Leap seconds” have been used rarely by the Royal Observatory since 1972. GMT, Greenwich Mean Time (or also known as Greenwich Meridian Time) is world time and is what all time zones are based on. It is the average time it takes for the earth to rotate from one day to another or one noon to another. If the world spins faster or slower GMT will be affected, therefore we may sometimes need to insert an extra second to be exactly accurate.

     Abortion of an unborn child is becoming one of Canada’s most confusing issues because there are always 2 sides to it.  An attempt of abortion can be considered as a punishment worthy of life sentence since it is considered as a murder. If the mother is convicted, she can be sentenced to 2 years of jail imprisonment and many women want legal change from the government.  Many critics think that these laws would just open the debate because of fetal rights. 

     Just recently, the prime minister said that he would reopen the debate but now, the Prime Minister Stephen Harper has reaffirmed that the abortion debate will be closed.  Stephen Harper says that it will not be in the Conservative agenda (or at least not an important part of the agenda).  But at the Conservative party convention which held place in November, the delegates reached a resolution which was called “Protecting Pregnant Women”. 

     Winnipeg MP Rod Bruinooge feels strongly about the topic of abortion and he wants the debate to be reopened.  He believes that Canadians should be better education about the abortion “stage” in Canada.  Plus, Bruinooge thinks that if it’s illegal to sell a kidney on eBay then it should be illegal to stop a beating heart of an unborn child.  Doctors argue that now, if the pregnancy would be a danger to the mother’s life, the doctors can perform the abortion. 

     According to Statistics Canada, in Canada, there have been 97,254 induced abortions.  Induced abortions happen because, as stated before because it is a danger to the mother’s life to give birth to the child or because the child might be born with a disease (which can be life threatening, mental or “physical”).  It is up to the government to decide whether this debate will continue and how important of an issue it is.    

          Bilal Abdulla, a British-Iraqi doctor, was sent to prison for life on Wednesday, December 17, 2008 for leading failed attempts to bomb two places in the UK. The 29 year old was convicted on Tuesday for planning, and trying to murder other Britons and trying to cause these two explosions last year. In June 2007, his first attempt at an explosion, he and accomplice Kafeel Ahmed left two car bombs in central London. They hoped that the bombs would injure the people in a London nightclub nearby and that it would also injure people who would come to help them. Days later, in Glasgow, they crashed a jeep filled with gasoline and explosives into the departure terminal of a Scottish Airport. Kafeel Ahmed died from serious burns got during the failed attempt. Police say that Abdulla was born in Britain but raised in Iraq and that the reason for his terrorist attacks was to avenge the deaths of his friends and family in Iraq.

            Poverty is something that is happening everywhere. Almost everyone can agree on that. What most people can’t agree on, are the causes of this “disease” that is affecting 1 billion children in the world. People blame governments, for heavy taxes and job losses, and other people blame poor people for bringing this unto themselves. They think “They were probably too lazy to get a job, made poor choices so they got themselves into this mess.”

            Poverty causes many things, such as world hunger and health issues. As someone has said, solving world hunger problem would mean solving world poverty. Many children, adults too, have hardly anything to eat. They become undernourished. They could die because they don’t have enough to eat, they could also die because they got an easily preventable disease. Well, a preventable disease if they just had enough to eat. Some examples of diseases that are easily preventable are malaria, AIDS and tuberculosis (see below for statistics). 26, 500-30,000 children die each day because of poverty, or something caused by poverty, yet most of us don’t even make an effort to help them. Does your family throw away leftovers after dinner? Well, those kids could probably use those leftovers, the kids who are dying this very minute.

            There are also people who are forced to drink really dirty water just to survive. Nearly 1.1 billion people developing countries don’t have easy access to clean water and 1.4 million of them die because of the lack of water, and sanitation. In fact, most people, especially in Africa and other 3^rd world countries can’t just turn on their taps for water, unlike us. 

            Isn’t it odd how the world spends $780 million (U.S dollars) on military uses? To give water and sanitation to everyone would only cost about $9 million (U.S dollars) but yet we don’t do anything about it? People always talk about poverty and how children are always dying because of it. Now, it’s time to actually do something about it.

     In 1995, charges were put on O.J. Simpson for murdering his ex-wife and her friend which attracted media around the world.  Simpson was found later not responsible for the deaths in a civil case. 

     But on October 3^rd 2008, the former famous football player, O.J. Simpson, is being sentenced to prison for a minimum of 6 years to a maximum life sentence for a few crimes.  One of these include Simpson robbing two sports-memorabilia (things that are worthy of remembrance) dealers in a Las Vegas hotel room with 2 other people.  The prosecutors said that two of the men with him were armed and it is believed that Simpson asked one of the men to bring a gun.  His defendants said they were trying to find Simpson’s sports memorabilia that were taken from him.  Simpson’s former golfing friend and one of his defendants, Clarence “C.J.” Stewart was also found guilty of the charges. 

     As well as robbing, the 61 year old was also charged for stealing many footballs from games, plaques and photos.  He tried apologizing for his actions to the judge saying he didn't know anything he did was wrong but his apologies weren't good enough for the judge. 

     Most of you know that there are starving children in the world. Thousands of people can’t afford to feed themselves daily. There are people dying of starvation but what you probably don’t know is that it’s going to get a lot worse. It’s being called a food crisis. Even worse, it’s global.           

    Food is getting more expensive wherever you go. From corn to soybeans, wheat, oats, rices and other grains, whether you’re in the United States of America, Europe, Canada or even Australia, food prices are going up fast. People need to eat food to survive, but there are about 1 billion people in the world that live on less than a dollar a day. Less and less people are able to afford the same kind of food, or any food at all for that matter. As some people have said “Food is becoming the new gold.”

    There are many reasons contributing to this food crisis. Investors recovering from the mortgage-related financial crash invested millions of dollars into grain, making the price even higher than it already is.

    Related to that, the recession is making everything even worse. People are losing their jobs, which means less money for their families, which means less money for food. Also, while most people were focused on trying to prevent the recession, and help the financial situation, the food crisis has gotten a lot worse.

    Another reason prices are so high is because more and more farmers are farming corn instead of wheatsince corn is less likely to get a disease and is more profitable. You might be thinking, it doesn’t matter; we’ll just eat more corn. Well, U.S farmers aren’t growing corn for us to eat. Once the corn is grown, they are then sold to ethanol plants to make corn ethanol. Corn ethanol can be used as an alternative for gas, especially used in the U.S.

    In the U.S, the price of eggs has rose 35 percent, a gallon of milk rose to 23 percent and a loaf of white bread rose 16 percent since March 2007.

    From what we’re seeing now, it’s pretty obvious that it’s going to get a lot worse. Like someone said, “Always be prepared for the worst, ” you never know what’s going to happen next. 

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