Over these past few weeks, people called asylum seekers have attemped to come into Australia to start a new life and escape whichever country they came from. Some have been sent to an island called Christmas island. But it might not be as easy as, “Right then all off you, get onto this boat you’re going to Christmas Island.”

Some countries have been given areas called search and rescue zones around them to save a boat if it was in trouble. Say if a ship was in trouble off the Great Australian Bight, that would probably be Australia’s job to save it. They might put the sailors/passengers onto their own boat and might take them to wherever they go to but not Australia. (And also where they’d be safe until someone works out something about it.)

One reason that might answer the question, “Why is the world split up into search and rescue zones?” is that the countries that are like the two pieces of bread on the outside of the filling to make a sandwich don’t get confused in who should rescue the boat.

In 1912, when the Titanic sank after colliding with an iceburg, the last few survivors waited almost 4 hours for a ship called the Carpathia to pick them up. It was probably the nearest ship to the Titanic at the time and was sort of in it’s search and rescue zone.

If survivors are taken to the nearest port, then that might cause a problem say if you were an asylum seeker. The nearest port might become crowded over time and the nearest port might have to change to people going to the second nearest port.

And if the asylum seekers that have had a boat in trouble in Indonesian waters recently, then it should be Indonesia’s job to do what you would have to do with the asylum seekers. Not Australia’s.

By Elise

Have you ever been overseas? I have, and it did have laws, but if you stole a mat from a hotel you wouldn’t  go to prison. In Thailand a few weeks ago a woman was arrested because her friends put a mat belonging to the hotel in her bag. The Thai police found her and thought she was actually trying to steal it as she tried to tell them she never even touched it. They didn’t believe her and arrested her.

She was told to stay in the country while the court was thinking of what should happen to her. They finally decided that she could go home and be with her family again.

Some countries have very different customs and laws to ours. If you chew gum on the street in Singapore you can be arrested. In some other countries it’s illegal to take a photo of a government building. A few years ago an Australian man was arrested for insulting a member of the Thai royal family and it’s illegal to do that there. Overseas if you smuggle illegal drugs you can get life in prison or the death penalty. If that happens in Australia you would probably get a few years in gaol (jail). It’s strange how different countries have different laws but just be careful if you’re going overseas and do some research on the internet and some simple reading.

By Elise

AHHHHHH! I’VE JUST STUMBLED ACROSS A MUMMY AND NOW I’VE GOT A CURSE ON ME AND I’M SOOOOOOO DEAD! is what we think when we see a mummy in real life. Or we have nightmares for the rest of our lives when we see a mummy coming to life on a horror movie rated MA. We also think that they’re only found in Egypt. But they’ve actually been found in South America.

In the Atacama Desert. On the edge of South America. It’s one of the driest places on earth and you’d never think you could find them there. You can even find bits of pottery and old bones!

It doesn’t rain much down there so the bacteria on the bones isn’t breaking down to much. The archaeologists seem to be very happy to find these mummies and prove other people  wrong that they’re only found in Egypt. Every time they find a mummy they take it somewhere to study them even further. And some don’t look like they died too peacefully; one mummy they found had a spear through the centre of his chest! You should’ve seen it!

By Elise.

Orangutans live mainly in Borneo and Sumatra ( native to Indonesia and Malaysia ) and are endangered because of people cutting down trees and the Orangutans are losing their homes. The people are actually cutting down the trees to collect palm ( vegtable ) oil to put in a lot of foods that we normally eat everyday. Palm oil is actually the same thing as vegtable oil so people don’t actually know what they’re eating or cooking with. After some trees are cut down the kid apes are left without any parents. Some are dead. The babies attend an ape day care centre where they’re trained so that they soon can be returned to the wild.  

By Elise.

Normally a lot of teenagers go out to rock concerts and drink and get drunk and some get arrested. Others decide to be more sensible and ditch the parties and drinking. But not many want to be sensible because they’re away from their homes and parents for a while.

But some girls decided to go to East Timor for schoolies last year. While their friends were out partying and going insane, these girls were helping the poor and homeless. A girl called Tara told the reporters that she didn’t think she was missing out on the parties and she thought she was doing something a little more valuable with her schoolies time. Another girl called Aimee had never been on a plane before she went to East Timor and her dad wasn’t acustomed to the idea. Soon he decided to come with the girls and he decided to help with the electricity in Timor because most of the poor country doesn’t have much of it. They use generators for the power and they break down a lot so Aimee’s dad fixed them. The girls felt like they were doing something right and were proud of their work.