Watching the World
Saving Babies
◆ Almost 20 percent of Hong Kong’s newborn Chinese babies are threatened by potentially fatal “hyperbilirubinemia.” This condition of an abnormally high level of bile pigments in the blood is a common complication among premature infants whose livers are not yet fully developed. Now, says the South China Morning Post, “local doctors are encouraging the use of simple blue lighting as a substitute for dangerous blood transfusions.” Previously, complete exchange transfusion was the principal treatment, but now bathing the babies in blue light is eliminating this practice from Hong Kong hospitals, as it is in other nations.
Communication Gap Closed
◆ “It’s incredible!” writes a mother in a letter published in the New York Daily News. “I have found a solution to the void that existed between me and my totally uncommunicative teenage daughter.” What is it? She says that she tried ‘giving her daughter a hand’ with the dishes instead of making her do them alone. The result: “The girl nearly talked an arm and a leg off me! . . . I feel we are ever so much closer and so does she.” The concept of parents working and playing together with their children is ancient, but too many parents have lost sight of it in today’s society where everyone ‘does his own thing.’
Papal Blessings
◆ A Greek Catholic Church official in Jerusalem recently announced that Pope Paul VI, in a ‘warm personal’ letter, had conferred a “very special apostolic benediction” on imprisoned Archbishop Hilarion Capucci. The archbishop is serving a twelve-year term for smuggling guns and explosives to terrorists in Israel. The pope’s letter, personally signed, came in response to one from Capucci lamenting his “suffering in prison for peace and reconciliation among the peoples of the Middle East.”
Another papal blessing brought this reaction from a reader, as published in the Detroit News: “I am a Catholic. Your recent story about the Pope sending a telegram to [a prominent underworld figure’s] daughter for her wedding infuriated me. . . . Our church is in trouble. We can’t get young people to attend. They call us hypocrites, which I’m beginning to understand. . . . if the Pope continues to send telegrams to ‘Mafia’ big shots I’m sure we who don’t believe in the ‘Mafia’ will not want to stay with the church.” Attempting to explain, Detroit priest Hubert Maino said: “Anyone can obtain a papal blessing by merely having any priest state in writing that he, or they, are Catholics in good standing.”
Good Spy
◆ What makes a good spy? The Interim Report of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee reveals that, in 1960, one Congo-based agent then considered to be an “asset” was a stateless soldier of fortune, a forger and bank robber. “He is indeed aware of the precepts of right and wrong,” said a cable from Africa recommending him, “but if he is given an assignment which may be morally wrong in the eyes of the world, but necessary because his case officer ordered him to carry it out, then it is right, and he will dutifully undertake appropriate action for its execution without pangs of conscience.”
New Money
◆ An enfeebled $2 bill is scheduled to return to American pockets after a ten-year absence. In April the Federal Reserve Bank expects to start releasing the first of an annual 400 million of these bills. Their value has decreased in purchasing power to about $1.19 since circulation ceased in 1966.
Snowmobiles and Eskimos
◆ Dog teams are fading out as the transportation choice of Eskimo hunters. Food and upkeep for the teams may cost as much as $2,500 annually, whereas snowmobiles are said to be more economical. Some trappers may have to travel over 10,000 miles a year, and snowmobiles can cover as much distance in two hours as dogsleds do in a day. But the time and money saved has not been without cost. A third of adult male eskimos tested in the Baffin Island area were found to have impaired hearing from snowmobile noise. In one village serious hearing difficulties affected 83 percent of hunters who customarily spent long hours on their vehicles.
Sinking Cities
◆ Venice may no longer be sinking (Awake!, 11/22/75, p. 29) but reports indicate that Paris and cities throughout Japan are. Dating from the Middle Ages, gypsum mines that produced the original plaster of Paris honeycomb the land beneath about a tenth of that city. “We all know that Paris is built on a layer of Swiss cheese,” remarked one city official. Due to the grave risk of cave-ins, new construction was temporarily barred in the affected area.
In Japan the Daily Yomiuri reports that ground subsidence due to “excessive pumping-up of groundwater . . . is now a nationwide phenomenon.” Land is said to be sinking from ten to as much as twenty centimeters (4 to 8 inches) annually in some urban areas. The article notes that in these cities “roads are becoming uneven and ill-drained . . . floors, walls and window sashes of buildings are cracking . . . bridges and concrete structures have been distorted” and underground pipes are cracking.
Hidden Galaxy Discovered
◆ A University of Maryland astronomer reports discovering a previously unknown galaxy that is nearer our own Milky Way galaxy than any yet discovered. It is said to be a dwarf galaxy, containing about a thousandth the mass of our own. Obscured behind the Milky Way’s dense star fields and dust clouds, it had escaped detection until now.
Guns in School
◆ After a Gary, Indiana, high school student had gunned down a classmate in a school hallway, Superintendent Gordon McAndrew said that teachers and other employees could henceforth carry guns on the job if applications for permits were approved. He said of the rapid arming of students: “The problem in this community and others is that it’s as easy to get a gun as it is to go to the library and check out a book.”
Biggest African Airlift
◆ About 120,000 starving Somali nomads were reportedly flown from drought-stricken northern Somalia to camps in more habitable southern parts of the country. Relief officials report that Russian aircraft took a little more than a month to move the Somalis to new homes where Soviet experts were said to be teaching them deep-sea fishing and crop-raising skills. A few thousand are scheduled eventually to return to their desert nomadic way of life.
Justifying War
◆ Jesuit priest Richard T. McSorley recently wrote to the Catholic journal America that “the only efforts to relate war to the gospel have been the Christian pacifism of the first three centuries and the [just-unjust war] theory that began with Augustine in the fourth century.” However, he says, “it is clear now, 1600 years later, that the [just-unjust war] theory never worked. It never applied to a single war in history. It never deterred a single war.” Why not? “Just-unjust war theory assumes that war on one side will be just and on the other side unjust; this never happens. The theory allows each nation to judge its own cause”—favorably, of course.
Birds or Rats?
◆ Japan’s Miyake Island recently faced an apparent choice of being overrun by rats or losing the rare wild birds that find sanctuary there. The 5,000 islanders are being besieged by eight times that many rats, which they say are destroying a third of the island’s farm products. They want to introduce yellow weasels from nearby Hachijo Island to kill the rats. This method had already proved successful on Hachijo and other islands. But bird protection organizations were strongly opposed, since they feared that the weasels would have a taste for rare birds as well as for common rats.
Male-Female Longevity
◆ Are women inherently more long-lived than men? Though statistics show that women do live years longer, a report recently published in the Illinois Lung Association’s Journal of Breathing asserts that to conclude that women’s longevity is inherent is “nonsense.” Why? Because the study indicates that both men and women live an average of 75 to 76 years if they do not smoke. The study predicted that average female life-spans will fall as the trend to more smoking among women continues in the years ahead.
Living to Be a Hundred
◆ More than 19,000 Russian citizens are over a hundred years of age, says Professor G. Pitskhelauri, director of the [Soviet] Georgian Gerontology Center. By contrast, there are only about 3,500 centenarians in the U.S., according to the Census Bureau. Almost 300,000 Soviets are over ninety.
World Shipping
◆ In the last year, reports Lloyd’s Register, the capacity of the world’s merchant shipping has grown by 10 percent. Now it is twice the size of the 1966 global fleet. Liberia has the largest merchant fleet, followed by Japan, with less than two thirds the capacity. Next come Britain, Norway, Greece, Russia and the United States, in that order. The Soviet Union’s fleet of giant fishing trawlers is well over twice as big as those of all other countries combined (643 ships compared with 259), and Russia now controls more than a third of the world’s 18,217 fishing vessels.
“Wedded” to the Gods
◆ The Bombay, India, Free Press Journal reports that “in the temples of Southern Maharashtra alone there are nearly 250,000 ‘Devdasis,’ women supposedly ‘wedded’ to deities but in reality forced into direct or indirect forms of prostitution . . . At least 9,000 ‘minor’ girls are being inducted into the ‘profession’ annually in temples in the nine districts of Maharashtra and Karnataka.” Now a government probe into this “nefarious tradition” is being urged. But, the Journal notes, “legislative enactments alone cannot put an end to ‘traditions,’ which have a religious sanction in the eyes of the people.”
Greatest Magnifier
◆ Tokyo University’s Engineering Research Institute recently unveiled an electron microscope that can magnify 500,000 times, “the greatest in the world,” according to the Daily Yomiuri. The microscope was said to be able to magnify the “eye of a needle to the size of the Korakuen Stadium.” A single person can operate it.
Legalizing Witch Doctors
◆ A parliamentary debate recently occurred in Papua New Guinea over the matter of licensing local witch doctors. One member, who warned against charlatans that bilk people with fraudulent sorcery, suggested licensing legitimate witch doctors with proved powers. Another observed that, since most tribes consider their witch doctors to be the best, licensing would be a difficult matter.
Tree-climbing Dog
◆ A combination German shepherd and husky puppy often played with a domesticated squirrel in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. The dog learned climbing from the squirrel. Now grown, she “easily walks up branches as high as 40 feet [12 meters] off the ground,” reports the New York Times. Her owner had to obtain a permit for the dog’s tree-climbing activities from the Park Department.
Divorce World Wide
◆ How do nations of the world compare as to divorce rates? Sweden tops the list, with 60 divorces for 100 marriages. The U.S. is next, with 44, followed by the Dominican Republic, 43; Denmark, 39; East Germany, England and Libya, 30; U.S.S.R., 28. Iran, Japan and France are near the bottom of the list, with just 10.