Watching the World
Decision Upheld
The Council of the Supreme Court of Appeal in Turkey has rendered its final decision regarding the standing of Jehovah’s Witnesses in that country. Issued on May 26, the binding decision upholds the Supreme Court’s ruling of June 19, 1985, that the Witnesses had not overstepped the boundary of religious freedom guaranteed by the Turkish Constitution. This new ruling acquits the 23 Witnesses who had been unjustly sentenced to jail in 1984, when they were charged with violating article 163 of the penal code, which forbids religious activity aimed at changing the governmental order of the land. The decision holds that Jehovah’s Witnesses are not guilty of violating the law and acknowledges them as a religious group.
Success in Fighting River Blindness
It is “the largest and most successful health program in sub-Saharan Africa,” says the World Bank publication Finance & Development of efforts to control river blindness. The project, begun in 1974, attempted to break the breeding cycle of blackflies, which lay their eggs in fast-flowing rivers. The biting females transmit a parasitic worm that eventually reproduces into millions of other worms that spread throughout the body. When these reach and burrow into the eyes, they cause blindness. Now, after over ten years of spraying larvicide, transmission of the disease in the project area—some 500,000 square miles (1.3 million sq km) in the countries of Benin, Togo, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Mali, and Niger—is said to have been halted, with no new cases reported in recent years. The cost? About $1 per person for the 16 million people benefited. The program will now expand to other areas of West Africa.
Heavy Problem
Fatness is a result of “gluttony, not thyroids,” claims Dr. Guillermo Ruiz, endocrinologist at the La Raza Medical Center in Mexico City. Although fat can also be hyperplastic (greater amount of adipose tissue) or prepubertal (before puberty), he says that studies reveal that fat is not caused by disorders in the thyroids but by “the lack of will to eat less” and “can start from the earliest years in life when a mother excessively feeds her child.” Since obesity is linked with disorders causing heart disease, Dr. Ruiz points to a proper diet and exercise as the solution. At the same time, he warns the gorditos (chubbies) to beware of poisoning because of abuse of diet pills.
Locust Threat
The arrival of rain after years of drought has brought another problem to the African continent: locusts. Since the start of the rains last year, certain grasshoppers and migratory locusts have been breeding in catastrophic proportions. According to the French newspaper Le Monde, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization has reported that, for the first time in over 50 years, “a large part of the African continent and several Near Eastern countries are threatened by four different species of locusts at the same time.” Mentioned among the main countries affected are Sudan, northern Ethiopia and Uganda, northwest Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique.
“Religious Impostors”
Thus reads a bold headline in The Winnipeg Sun of Canada. “A growing number of hospital patients afraid of catching AIDS or developing other blood related problems are posing as Jehovah’s Witnesses,” states the article. “Church elders have discovered more than a dozen impostors while doing their hospital rounds.” One woman said she pretended to be a Witness so that she would not have to fight with the doctors over the treatment. “The reason I refuse blood is not religious,” she said. “When you take someone else’s blood there’s no guarantee that you’ll be any healthier. It could make you sick or even dead.” One impostor was discovered by a chaplain who saw the man sitting in bed smoking a cigar. The man sheepishly admitted that he wasn’t a Witness. “I just don’t want a blood transfusion,” he said. “I’m a doctor.”
Insufficient Payment
“How much is a life worth?” asks U.S.News & World Report. “In the U.S. today, the answer is seven years. That’s the median time convicted murderers spend behind bars, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.” Many don’t stay in jail even that long. According to a survey of 30 states, one out of every seven prisoners given a life sentence serves three years or less.
Baby School
In Japan babies are going to school. Asahi Evening News reports that at nurseries run by the EDA (Early Development Association), 18-month-old tots are trained to sit still at desks and to obey rules. Babies sing and clap along with their mothers, as well as attend classes where they listen to English. EDA says that their schools are not geared to producing fast-learning “super-kids” but, rather, are instructing mothers in how to teach their own children. How are things working out? The mother of a three-year-old who attends both an EDA nursery school and a cram school complained: “Mamie is tired and not happy. I didn’t want to put her through cramming but a neighbor told me she had trouble getting her toddler into a good school because she spent all last summer at the pool.”
Early Jerusalem’s Grandeur
Just how large a city was ancient Jerusalem in the “First Temple era”? “For years Bible scholars . . . have been arguing about whether Jerusalem was really a grand city, or just a forgotten little town whose reputation was built up through the ages,” says Gabriel Barkay, a Tel Aviv University archaeologist. “Now we know that it was a major city. This is critical also because a city that was the scene of the growth of monotheism and classical prophecy, a city said to be the only place you could worship God, had to have this importance reflected in its physical size.” Leading to this conclusion was the discovery by Barkay of an unmolested burial vault containing some one thousand objects in a hillside along the western slope of the Valley of Hinnom. According to The New York Times, the find proves not only that the “size of [the] early city was as grand as its historical reputation” but also “that parts of what came to be known as the Old Testament were familiar to the residents of the Judean Monarchy 2,600 years ago.”
Plastic Killing Sea Life
Plastic trash in the sea “is taking a heavy toll on marine life, particularly on seals, sea lions, turtles and seabirds,” states Time magazine. The plastic flotsam comes from trash discarded by ships, boaters, and beach goers, lost or discarded fishing gear left by commercial fishermen, and sewage discharged into the sea. “Almost without exception, surveys show plastic to account for over one-half the man-made products on the ocean surface,” says fishery biologist Al Pruter. Thousands of seals die each year after getting caught in netting that either exhausts them or restricts their ability to catch food. Leatherback turtles mistake floating plastic bags for jellyfish—a favorite food. Over 42 species of seabirds are known to ingest plastic. Some have been strangled by the plastic yokes from six-packs. The swallowed items cause ulcers or death by obstruction of the digestive tract. Efforts to reduce the plastic pollution have so far been unsuccessful.
Heat From Earth’s Interior
An experimental project succeeded in tapping enough usable heat from two and a half miles (4 km) under the ground to provide power for a town of 2,000 people, report scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and the U.S. Department of Energy. The technology extracts heat from underground rocks by pumping water down one well and back up another where the heated water emerges as steam. The steam can then be used to spin turbines for generating electricity. What makes this source of energy different from conventional geothermal energy systems is that hot dry rock technology, as the method is called, does not rely on natural underground water reservoirs to produce geysers or hot springs. Rather, it mines virtually unlimited heat from the naturally hot rocks of earth’s interior. Scientists from Britain, Japan, and Europe hope that hot rock heat systems will be an alternative to nuclear energy and fossil fuels.