A decade remembered

(Pix - Four year old Christian Ortiz participates in a candle light vigil, for members of the Amish community that were involved in the shooting that took place in Nickel Mines October 3, 2006 in Strasburg, Pennsylvania. According to reports, a milk truck driver identified as Charles Carl Roberts IV entered the one room schoolhouse, let the boys and adults go free, tied up the girls and shot them execution style before committing suicide. Five girls are dead and five others injured.)

A glimpse of what "A decade remembered" is all about -

The new millennium started on a relatively low note, accentuated, in foreboding frequency by one tragedy and calamity after another as the first decade of the 21st century plodded along its course.

The global economic scenario was also unnerved by financial jitters caused by rising oil prices that shout up to over USD140 per barrel at one stage.

There were, however, some bright spots like the Olympic Games in Sydney and Beijing but they were, in some ways, overshadowed by the horrors that plagued in the rest of the decade.

The past decade will also be remembered for the rise of Al Qaeda, a terror organisation that is a dangerous mix of fanatical fundamentalist ideology and modern technology whose mindless attack on the New York Twin Towers brought acts of terrorism to a new level.

It is also a decade when nature's fury erupted in a series of natural disasters, most onimously, the Asian Tsunami that devastated the Indonesian town of Aceh and Cyclone Katrina that blew the US city of New Orleans upside down and caused untold misery.

However, there were also silver linings in the dark clouds as the decade came to a close with the global economy holding off the dreaded depression predicted to follow the financial meltdown sparked by the subprime crisis in the US.

Get a copy of The Borneo Post to read all about how we remember the decade in a 24-page pullout supplement! And do you remember who had died over the decade? Aside Michael Jackson, who else? Sentimental people like me remember George Harrison, Bob Hope, Johnny Cash, Paul Newman... Of Bob Hope, The Borneo Post remembers -

If someone were to ask Bob Hope how he died on July 27 2003 at the grand old age of 100, he would probably have answered, "I just stopped breathing!" ... One endearing aspect of Hope's humour was that "nobody has to send the kids out of the room" during his acts - one could even imagine him making the angels laugh in heaven!

With that note of humour of Hope, HAPPY NEW YEAR!