Hello 2022! – A Personal Note from Sham

While Chile was deciding whether a leftist or the son of a Nazi becomes president, I was distracting myself with writing this year's last issue. What's in it?

• Malta legalized cannabis
• South Korea and North Korea flirted with a possible reunion, once again
• In December, in different years, horrible massacres happened in Turkey, China and Pakistan. I give a bit of a summary and a status quo.

Without further ado, here's what happened last week:

what happened last week

We legalized cannabis in Malta -- it's the first European country to do so:
Malta moved super quickly. First, parliament approved a bill legalizing recreational marijuana, then just days later President George Vella signed the legislation into law.

Why this matters:
Europe is talking cannabis. And Malta walked the walk. It is the first European country to legalize marijuana. Germany is thinking about it, Luxembourg is a step closer to following Malta's example and Italy will vote on a referendum this spring.

Give me the details of this law:
All adults (18 years and older) will be allowed to have up to seven grams of cannabis and cultivate as many as four plants for personal use. Up to 50 grams of homegrown marijuana can be stored at home.

What's the punishment if you go overboard?
If you have more than seven grams but less than 28 grams (as an adult), you have to pay a €50 to €100 fine. Meaning, no jail time and no criminal record. If you are under 18 and police find you with some weed, you will not face arrest either. Instead, they have something of a 'care plan' for you.

Any critics?
Oh, yes, plenty. Some medical professionals, Church-run organisations, employers and the Nationalist Party are like, 'the law will normalise cannabis use.' Former prime minister Lawrence Gonzi and former president Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca have also made their concerns public. ABBA (a political party, not the music band) wants to start a signature-collecting campagn to force a referendum on this so the law can be repealed.

Zoom out:
Before you go and celebrate how 'progressive' Malta is, the country's women's rights situation is super bad. The country has one of the strictest anti-abortion laws in Europe; stricter than Poland.

We are, once again, interested in peace between North and South Korea
After 70 years, North Korea and South Korea have agreed 'in principle' to formally end the war between them.

• Refresher: The Korean War lasted from 1950 until 1953. It is still unclear how many people died in the Korean War; but up to 70 percent were civilians. As many as four million civilians are thought to have been killed, and North Korea in particular was decimated by bombing and chemical weapons.

Wait. They're still at war?!
Technically, yes. They only have an armistice, meaning that, for 70 years, South and North Korea have only agreed to stop fighting; and this armistice is 'unstable', too, as South Korean president Moon Jae-in calls it. There's a difference between 'stop fighting' and 'signing a peace agreement' in politics. Plus, there's been more tension between them for a few months. North Korea keeps testing its limits and putting on a military-strength-power-show.

Why only end the war 'in principle'? Why not for real?
According to Moon...