Word: nightful
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...That night, narco gunmen massacred 15 Juárez teenagers at a party. After apologizing for initially suggesting that the victims were somehow involved with drugs themselves, Calderón has since made two visits to Juárez, which saw some 2,500 drug-related murders last year. He is making another visit on Tuesday. But rather than throwing more troops onto the city's streets, as he did last year, Calderón is pushing social and financial reform - including the kind of judicial modernization that tends to spook drug lords more than soldiers do. Last week...
...continued well past midnight, although the state did what it could to keep Iranians from attending the festivities, including airing Hollywood blockbusters such as Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull on television. None of those tactics worked; the streets were filled with people who for one night seemed to ignore the recent proscriptions of the ruling religious establishment. Said an attendee who asked to remain anonymous: "This isn't something that the government can take away from us. We've been doing this for 3,000 years. They should just accept...
...roots are in Zoroastrianism, the world's first monotheistic religion - the country's national faith before Islam - one in which fire is revered as a symbol of purity. Apart from the theocracy, most Iranians in and outside the country, irrespective of their religion, celebrate the ancient rites. The Tuesday-night event itself is known as Chaharshanbe Suri (literally "Wednesday Party," because dusk brings the new day in Iran) and was originally intended as a ritual to ward off evil spirits and negative energy collected in the previous year. That purification is done by leaping over a series of small bonfires...
...recent times, however, the ritual has evolved into an opportunity for people to set off illegal fireworks, some of extremely dubious quality and reliability, creating what many residents of Tehran liken to a war zone. Some older residents even compare the night and the anxiety it brings to the eight-year-long war with Iraq when Saddam Hussein's air force intermittently and indiscriminately bombed Tehran. Says a Tehran taxi driver in his 60s: "People used to enjoy themselves on this day. This is supposed to be a family tradition, but it's not safe for women and children...
Concerns have arisen about public buildings, including government-controlled banks, being targeted for arson. Sporadic explosions began on Monday night. "This is nothing," said Setareh, a 25-year-old graduate student in English studies, the night before the festival. Tuesday, she predicted, "will feel like you're in Gaza." Police in Tehran have attributed several deaths over the past few days to faulty fireworks...