Watching the World
Exercise and Health
Scientists continue to find benefits in moderate exercise. American Health magazine reported recently on a 30-year study of 17,000 men. Those who burned over 1,000 calories a week through exercise seemed half as susceptible to colon cancer as those who did not. A 19-year study of over a million Swedish men found that those who sat for over half their working hours had a 30-percent-higher chance of getting colon cancer than those who were sedentary less than 20 percent of their workday. A Harvard University study of 5,400 women found that those who exercised moderately while at college had half the breast-cancer rate of their less active classmates, who, in turn, had 2.5 times more cancers of the reproductive system. There is even some evidence that moderate exercise boosts the immune system, helping fight off viruses faster. Extreme exercise, though—such as running a marathon—seems to have the opposite effect, temporarily suppressing immunity.
A Growing Plague
One of the uglier by-products of the AIDS epidemic is an increase in child prostitution. That, according to an Associated Press report from Geneva, Switzerland, is the conclusion of a new UN report on human rights. The report’s author, law professor Vitit Muntarbhorn [male] of Thailand, says that the number of children nine or ten years of age being forced into prostitution is “increasing daily.” It seems that more and more customers are seeking child prostitutes, preferably virgins, because they think this will protect them from AIDS. Ironically, though, the professor notes that in several Asian countries, many child prostitutes do carry the AIDS virus. Parents force both boys and girls into this degrading trade but girls more frequently.
“Pedophile Priests”
“A flurry of child sex-abuse scandals has drawn the Roman Catholic Church into a far-ranging investigation of pedophile priests—a phenomenon critics say the church hierarchy has long kept muffled,” reports The Herald-News of Joliet, Illinois, U.S.A. “In the past nine months, seven priests in the Chicago area have been removed from parishes and one has been indicted because of sexual mistreatment complaints involving children.” A three-member commission has been appointed by cardinal Joseph Bernardin to decide how to deal with the problem that, according to a church spokesman, “is a lot deeper than anybody thought” and that is estimated to involve hundreds of priests nationwide. Efforts are now being made to root out the errant priests, who were formerly reassigned to different parishes. Some people, though, still have misgivings. “They don’t understand the psychological depth of the injury when people are injured by someone who represents the church, which we believe has formulated our values, morals and principles,” said the mother of one abused child.
China Attacks the Drug Trade
China Today reports that the Chinese government has cracked down hard on the drug trade in recent years. Although the country virtually wiped out its opium problem back in the 1950’s, its proximity to some of the world’s biggest drug-producing areas has led to a resurgence of the drug trade. Over the last three years, there have been more than half a million arrests in China on drug charges. In 1990 alone, Chinese law-enforcement agencies smashed some 40 major cases of drug trafficking, each involving over 20 pounds [9 kg] of heroin. That was double the number of the previous year. On October 26, 1991, before a large audience, 35 drug traffickers were sentenced to death, and 11,000 pounds [5,000 kg] of confiscated drugs was burned.
A Trip to a Different Planet
No human being has yet made a trip to another planet; but Sergei Krikalev must have felt as if he had done just that. When he blasted off into orbit, he was a cosmonaut of the Soviet Union, from Leningrad. By the time he returned, there was no Soviet Union and Leningrad had become St. Petersburg. Krikalev had been assigned to stay in the Mir space station for just six months, but because of financial and political pressures in the midst of all the upheavals down in his homeland, he ended up staying aloft for 313 days.
Killer Cards
Children in the United States have long made a hobby of collecting baseball cards, with pictures and statistics of their favorite players. But a new type of card has recently appeared on the scene. These cards feature, not athletes, but renowned criminals—psychopaths, rapists, serial killers, cannibals, and necrophiliacs. On the reverse side of the killer’s picture, each card features the grisly details of the crimes committed. According to an editorial in the Daily News of New York, the killer trading cards are very popular in candy shops and comic-book stores. Apparently, the consumers are mainly children.
Bogus Miracles
A doctor in England has spent some 20 years investigating claims of miracles performed by charismatic and evangelical churches in that country. His conclusion, according to the Daily Telegraph of London: “Charismatic reports of miraculous healing are not supported by a single piece of medical evidence.” Before a synod of the Anglican Church, Dr. Peter May described his repeated attempts over the years to get verification from “healers” for the various miracles they claim to have performed. “Usually,” he says, “they offer nothing at all, and cases that are put forward are never what they first appear.” He denounced magazines and videos that profit from describing miracles that apparently never happened. According to the Telegraph, Dr. May compared his findings with those of many colleagues. “None of them,” he says, “had been able to document a single case comparable to the miracles of Christ.”
Famine in Africa
Famine and civil war are forcing tens of thousands of Somalians and Ethiopians to flee their homelands and seek food and shelter in refugee camps in Kenya. According to one UN official, quoted in The Star of South Africa, “most collapse on arrival, having walked some 600 km [373 mi] with little food or water. They are in appalling condition, some little more than skin and bones and many with gunshot wounds.” In one overcrowded camp, an average of 15 people are dying every day. Most of them are women and children. Meanwhile, down south in Zimbabwe, drought has led to increases in food theft, reports the Sunday Times of Harare, Zimbabwe. Some thieves are so desperate that they simply hack pieces of flesh off of live cattle, leaving the animals to suffer until they are mercifully destroyed by their owners.
Stressed Criminals
For 30 years, Professor Francesco Aragona of the Institute of Legal Medicine of Messina University, in Sicily, has performed autopsies on mafiosi. “According to the professor, behind the arrogant and self-confident appearance, the mafioso has serious health problems: His turbulent daily life affects the heart, the brain, the adrenal glands, and even the testicles or the ovaries, depending on the sex, in an impressive way,” says the Brazilian magazine Superinteressante. “I found serious cardiac troubles in young men between 18 and 20 years of age, . . . as if they had lived for decades with high blood pressure, due to stress,” the magazine quoted Dr. Aragona as saying. He added: “If they had not been killed, they would have died of heart failure in a short time,” and “we could say, even in terms of health, that crime does not pay.”
Demonism in Rome
Gabriele Amorth claims that he has dealt with 12,000 cases of demon possession in the city of Rome alone since his appointment as a Catholic exorcist in 1986. “Why so many?” asked a journalist of the Italian newspaper Il Tempo. “All traditionally Catholic countries,” the priest asserted, “are immersed in a sea of infestation. Demon attacks can no longer be stemmed.” Amorth had harsh words for Rome: “The city of the pope is the most demon-possessed in the world. Over a hundred satanic cults operate there . . . Everybody should know that many children disappear in Rome and are used in satanic rites.”
Encouraging Expensive Weddings
In these difficult economic times, the price of weddings in the United States has become increasingly burdensome. By one estimate the average formal wedding there now costs $16,000. Wedding gowns average about $800, although many, according to The Wall Street Journal, cost over $2,000. Several magazines in the country are directed exclusively at brides-to-be and their wedding plans, and the periodicals have recently come under attack for pandering to the bridal industry and encouraging the escalating costs. For example, the magazines generally ban any advertisements for rental wedding gowns for fear of offending their biggest advertisers, the retail bridal industry—which, it seems, sees red, not white, at the notion of brides renting gowns instead of buying them.