Watching the World
Accident Aftermath
Last year Japan reported the worst single-plane crash in aviation history. That tragedy took the lives of 520 people. Since then, what has happened to relatives of the victims? About 270 bereaved families formed an association, and on the first anniversary of the accident, The Daily Yomiuri reported how their lives had been affected. Since the crash, 67 families and relatives of the victims have relocated; seven family businesses have gone bankrupt; there have been nine deaths among victims’ families, including one suicide. One father, apparently because of shock over the loss of his son and daughter-in-law, left home and disappeared. Among some family members, disputes have developed over the distribution of compensation money. Migraine headaches and insomnia, as well as a variety of health problems, continue to plague others. One widow reports that bereaved family members are blaming her for her husband’s death because she purchased his ticket for the fatal flight. Thus, emotional problems from the accident persist.
Dead Silence
How is it possible that the remains of a dead man could lie undiscovered in his own home for five years? After finding the skeleton of a 56-year-old man in London’s East Dulwich, the question is still being debated. The brother of the deceased reported that he had tried to trace him but that his inquiries had come to nothing. Meanwhile, electricity and gas supplies to the house were cut off, and mail dating from December 1981 had piled up behind the locked front door. “It’s extraordinary that such a thing can occur in a civilised town like London,” noted the coroner.
White Lion Cubs
According to legend, white lions have always roamed Africa’s plains. The first recorded sighting of the animal, though, was in South Africa’s Kruger National Park in 1928. More recently, in the neighboring Timbavati Nature Reserve, two white cubs were detected in a litter of five. This year a litter of three white male cubs was born in the Johannesburg Zoo. “As far as can be established, [this is] the first litter of exclusively white lions,” reports the magazine South African Panorama. “Since the birth of the white lions, the zoo has been inundated with telephone calls from all parts of the world.”
Hard to Swallow
Seeking to cash in on the holiday spirit, one enterprising candy manufacturer in West Germany has announced the Christmas sale of fruit-flavored candy figures of Mary, Joseph, and the infant Jesus, reported The Express, a Pennsylvania newspaper. The proposed sale of these items has sparked criticism from Roman Catholic church officials. However, defending their production of such Biblical-theme candies, one spokesman for the firm noted that “many companies produce candy angel figurines and other such products.” A representative for the West German Catholic bishops described the enterprise as “a crass business venture . . . on the wrong side of good taste.”
“Puzzling Divorce”
A man in Switzerland filed for divorce because his wife was addicted to jigsaw puzzles. As reported in The Japan Times, he testified that the completed puzzles were stacked everywhere throughout the house, as well as on all walls, leaving “only a tiny corridor free from the front door to the bed.” He said that his wife spent on the puzzles $440 of the $660 he gave her monthly for household expenses, and he would find her on the floor with them whenever he came home. “It’s been going on for six years,” complained the husband, “but lately it’s become worse. For the past two years I was even forbidden to go into the living room.” Retorted the wife: “It’s only a hobby and anyway, for years I had to put up with the stench of his cigars.”
TV and Your Children
“Parents should take control of their televisions and cut down on the time they and their children view them,” states the Centre Daily Times, reporting on a three-day symposium on family relationships held at Pennsylvania State College. One expert said that even two hours a day in front of the TV is too much. If such time is cut down or eliminated, she added, families will have an easier time with discipline, can talk to one another and do more things together, and can spend more time reading and improving their social skills. Not all television is bad, she noted, but excessive watching can become a barrier to communication between parents and children.
Deer Repatriate
After 3,000 years, a strange species of Asiatic deer, called Père David’s, is coming home to roam wild again in China. The Times of London reports that international wildlife organizations and the Chinese government have set up the program to restore these large water-loving deer to their natural habitat. The last known herd to live in China was kept in captivity and died at the beginning of this century. However, Père Armand David, the naturalist and missionary after whom the deer are named, had shipped 16 of the deer to the West shortly after he discovered them in 1865. There they survived and prospered and now number some 1,500 worldwide. Forty descendants of the original emigrants, collected from zoos all over Britain, will be returned to their original home in the marshlands of China’s coastal Jiangsu province.
‘Happy Childhood Denied’
“Grim facts to shock us all,” headlined Liverpool’s Daily Post over reports from Britain’s National Children’s Home. The home found that the problems children face mirror closely those of adults. For example, annually about 160,000 children experience family breakups as their parents divorce. But the scope of the problem is far greater. The account notes that “many families collapse without there ever being an officially recorded divorce.” Another problem: Among youths under 21 years of age, reported cases of drug addiction, representing only a fraction of the real drug menace, have skyrocketed fourfold. It is little wonder that the article claims that children are being “denied their basic right of a happy childhood.”
Hoofprint Planting
Animal hooves do more than make prints in the soil. They also create new grassland and are a simple but effective answer to the topsoil crisis, reports The Times of London. Hoofprints form niches that act as natural containers for rainwater in which plants can root and thrive. That observation helped scientists to come up with a technique called land imprinting. While sowing seed, a rolling cylinder forces hooflike indentions into the stripped soil. When the soil is watered, new grasslands appear that prevent the soil from turning into a dust bowl. Land imprinting, says the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, is a “classic example” of man’s growing understanding of nature’s balance. It is expected to be especially useful in Third World countries.
Earlier Wrinkles
Everyone gets wrinkles eventually. The ultraviolet radiation in sunlight, sedentary living, and poor diet are some of the causes. Carlotta Jacobson, beauty editor of Harper’s Bazaar, identifies one cause of premature wrinkling: “Smoker’s skin wrinkles up to 10 years sooner than that of nonsmokers.” Why? According to the New York Times article, nicotine constricts blood vessels near the skin’s surface. This makes it difficult for the blood to do its job of bringing nourishment to the skin cells and carrying away wastes.