Watching the World
Military Spending
● One trillion dollars! That, says the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, is how much will be spent worldwide for military purposes next year. According to the agency, worldwide military spending has steadily risen from $290.9 billion in 1972 to $889.6 billion in 1983 and will reach about $970 billion this year. The rate of spending has increased twice as fast in developing countries as in industrialized ones, with the Middle East and Africa in the forefront. Actual military outlays may be higher than what is reported, said an agency official, as some nations tend to understate what they spend for military purposes. Middle Eastern countries have led all others in arms imports since 1977.
Where do the arms come from? According to the report, which covers the period from 1972 to 1982, the Soviet Union has been the top supplier since 1978, holding 30.1 percent of the arms market in 1982. The United States was next with 26.2 percent. Other leading exporters are France, the United Kingdom, Federal Republic of Germany, Italy, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania and China. The agency also found that several other countries—Brazil, Israel, North and South Korea, and Turkey—have become prominent arms exporters in recent years.
Italian Church Funds
● The Roman Catholic Church in Italy will be excluded from state funding by 1990, according to a proposal issued by a joint government-church commission. The commission was set up after a new concordat was reached between the Vatican and Italy in February. Under the arrangement, state payments are to be gradually reduced until the church assumes full responsibility for its financing in 1990. Income-tax deductions will be allowed for members making contributions to the church. This year, reports the newspaper Corriere della Sera of Milan, the government has appropriated 291 billion lire (about $175 million, U.S.) to pay the salaries of some 30,000 priests, and 20 billion lire more for new church construction.
Soviet Marital Stress
● The strain of shopping and standing in line for basic goods is a major cause of marital conflict, says the Communist Party newspaper, Pravda. One reader was quoted as saying that much family tumult could be avoided “if only it were possible to buy all basic goods round the corner or go out and get a decent meal in a café.” A yearly total of 37 billion hours is now spent just standing in lines, says the newspaper—up from 30 billion in the mid-1970’s. On the average, a Soviet adult spends 190 hours a year waiting in lines. Other reasons for marital stress were attributed to the attitude of men, who generally refuse to share child rearing and household chores with their working wives, and the lack of modern household equipment to facilitate cooking and cleaning.
The Very Best
● “People who say they can’t afford the best for their children already have it,” says U.S. Surgeon General, Dr. C. Everett Koop. And what is more, he pointed out, it is free. Koop was referring to mother’s milk, which he regards as “not substitutable.” The surgeon general urged employers and hospitals to do more to promote breast-feeding so as to meet the government’s goal of having 75 percent of all newborns breast-fed by 1990. Mother’s milk provides the most complete nutrition possible for babies, as well as extra protection against illnesses, due to the antibodies it contains. And nursing strengthens the emotional bond between mother and child.
Additionally, researchers have recently discovered that mothers of premature babies produce a special milk vital to the growth and development of the early-born’s brain and nervous system, and that such milk was easier to digest than milk from full-term mothers. Thus it is important that premature babies receive their own mother’s milk, and not that collected from other nursing mothers.
Drug-Impaired Driving
● Drug-impaired driving is on the increase in the United States. “Federal officials estimate that drugs are a factor in 5 to 10 percent of all fatal driving accidents and in 15 to 20 percent of all road accidents,” reports The New York Times. But while laws specify at what percentage of alcohol concentration a person is considered intoxicated, there is no such threshold stipulated for drug intoxication. Toxicologists agree that marijuana can be an even more potent drug than alcohol. However, they find that it is difficult to define the level that causes impairment. “We know marijuana is a problem, it clearly impairs driving skills at least four to six hours after a single joint is smoked,” says Dr. J. Michael Walsh, head of the Clinical Research Division at the National Institute on Drug Abuse. “But unlike alcohol, there is no conclusive roadside test that the police can administer.”
Teen Driving Curfew
● An after-dark curfew on teenage driving would reduce teenage traffic fatalities almost by half, claims a University of Calgary researcher. His study of 527 teenage traffic deaths showed that most fatalities took place late on Friday and Saturday nights, or early on Sundays. Reporting on his findings, the Globe and Mail adds: “Curfew laws in 12 states in the United States have led to a dramatic reduction in teen-age deaths and injuries, ranging from 25 to 69 per cent in some jurisdictions, a report this year from the non-profit Insurance Institute for Highway Safety said.” Also, the Traffic Injury Research Foundation of Canada reports that while teenagers 15 to 19 years old made up only about 10 percent of the population in 1981, they were involved in almost 17 percent of all driver deaths and nearly 25 percent of passenger deaths.
Widespread Antiquities
● “After two years of negotiations,” reports the International Herald Tribune, “the British Museum has agreed to return a 23-inch (59-centimeter) section of the Sphinx’s chin that a British sailor smuggled out of Cairo 166 years ago.” The piece is to be returned as a permanent loan to avoid violation of an English law that prohibits exporting museum pieces. It was said that Egypt threatened to bar British archaeologists if the museum refused the return. Other Third World countries are reported to be watching the negotiations closely, in hopes that they also can recover some of their national treasures that are held by the museum. Many antiquities were removed from Egypt during the period from 1517 to 1936, when the country was under Turkish, French and British rule. Rome has 13 Egyptian obelisks, while only 4 remain in Egypt. Other important pieces can be found in Paris, Berlin, the Soviet Union and the United States.
Natural Pollution Filter
● The water hyacinth, “considered worse than a plague in many areas of the world,” has been discovered to have some “sterling qualities,” says The Toronto Star. The floating purple water flower reproduces at an incredible rate. “Under normal conditions, 10 hyacinth plants can multiply to 600,000 and take over an acre of water in just eight months,” says the paper. “As they grow, they mesh together into a thick mat that can make a waterway impassable.” But with roots dangling in the water and absorbing nutrients directly from it, the plants work extremely well as a pollution filter. The common water pollutants—nitrates, phosphates, potassium—are needed by the plants to survive, and they also absorb toxic wastes, heavy metals and pesticides. So some cities have now turned to cultivating the plants for use in waste-water treatment—at less than half the cost of conventional systems.
Diaper-Rash Aid
● Many mothers face the problem of what to do about diaper rash on their baby. A dermatologist at the University of Pennsylvania at Philadelphia says that the best way to minimize the friction that produces rash is to use cornstarch in the affected areas. According to The Medical Post of Canada, there was a time when pediatricians would not have recommended this because it was thought that cornstarch “promoted the growth of Candida albicans and other yeast organisms.” It is now believed, however, that cornstarch is even better than talcum powder for reducing friction.
Feet-Fashion Danger
● Following the fashion fad in footwear may be dangerous to your health, claims the Italian medical periodical Biotestinform. “Ninety women out of a hundred wear shoes of at least one number smaller than their own size,” says the report. “In many cases shoes worn by the female public are three sizes smaller.” The article puts the blame on women who think they should wear shoes tighter than is necessary to keep up with the latest fashion of a slim foot and manufacturers that produce shoes too narrow at the toes. ‘The pointed shoe forces the big toe to set itself under the second toe of the foot,’ explains the report. “In time the big toe misshapes (valgus big toe) and arthritic processes arise.”
‘High’ on Bugs?
● Drug addicts in the Philippines are going “buggy.” They are chewing live bugs to get high. Due to strict antinarcotic laws and stiff prices, addicts are turning to this cheaper euphoriant. “Called the Korean bug, it produces, when eaten alive, a ‘high’ rivalling the effects of marijuana” and other drugs, says Time Journal of Manila. The bugs are a little bigger than a grain of rice, making it all the easier to smuggle them into the country from South Korea.
Lying Detectors
● Do lie detectors lie? Psychologists at the University of Illinois decided to find out, using 50 confessed thieves and 50 innocent persons interrogated during genuine cases of theft. As reported in New Scientist magazine, “the researchers asked six polygraph operators to distinguish the thieves from the innocents on the basis of their physiological responses during the test.” The result? “The interpreters falsely accused 37 per cent of the truthful subjects of theft, and declared 24 per cent of the thieves innocent,” says the magazine.
China’s Housing Headache
● Most people in China live in housing that is provided for and heavily subsidized by the state. According to the newspaper China Daily, the average city dweller pays 23 cents a month for rent out of an average monthly wage of $23.50. Government statistics show that such dwellers have only 4.4 square yards (3.7 sq m) of living space. To create more housing, private homeownership was introduced in 1979 and now 17 percent of the country’s 1.1 billion people own their own homes. However, reports China’s Economic Daily, new homeowners are labeled “capitalists” and “the filthy rich,” and they have become targets for insults and discrimination by neighbors as well as victims of shoddy repairs and high utility bills. Even so, a recent survey in Shanghai revealed that almost 50 percent of the residents wanted to buy their own homes.