Watching the World
BIBLE BROCHURE IN 192 LANGUAGES
The Guinness Book of World Records includes under its heading “Highest Printings” the book The Truth That Leads to Eternal Life, published in 1968 by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, Inc. By May 1987 the Truth book had reached the total number of 106,486,735 copies printed in 116 languages, according to the Guinness book. More recently, however, Jehovah’s Witnesses have been distributing the brochure Enjoy Life on Earth Forever! This brochure, published in 1982 by the same society, is now available in 192 languages, and more than 60,000,000 copies have been printed.
OVERUSE OF PAINKILLERS
An Australian official recently announced that ‘Australians take four thousand million analgesics each year,’ according to The Courier Mail. The main concern is that a growing number of schoolchildren, especially girls, are becoming habitual users of these drugs. The Education Department of Australia has prepared the book Painkillers: A Student Workbook for distribution to all State schools. The purpose of the book is “to try to reduce the need for schoolchildren to use drugs to cope with problems,” noted The Courier Mail. One physician noted that “many girls have grown up thinking they should take a pill for every ill.” He also listed anemia, constipation, and stomachache as possible side effects of analgesic abuse. He recommends drinking water, going to bed early, exercise, walking in the fresh air, and regular nutritious meals as alternative remedies for headaches and minor pains.
CLEVER RUSE
Want a sweet and gentle pet? Try an East German guard dog. Some 6,000 of the dogs patrolled the strip between East and West Germany. Along with electrified fences, land mines, and machine guns, they were intended to deter East Germans from fleeing to the West. It worked. Georg, an East German border guard, was even afraid to walk near them on his patrols. “Then I noticed that none of them even barked at me,” he said. “It was all just a bluff.” With a unified Germany on the horizon, West Germans seeking to obtain the animals as vicious guard dogs have been disappointed. “Most of the dogs were just decoys,” says Ulrich Karlowski of West Germany’s Society for the Protection of Animals. “They were trained to do simple things like sit and run, not attack people.”
AFRICA’S WARS
“It may be that three million people or more died as a result of Africa’s wars over the past decade,” according to the newspaper Lesotho Today. Estimates of deaths in the Ethiopian War range “between 500,000 and one million.” Lesotho Today adds that probably the rural poor population has suffered the most, stating that “some nine to 12 million Africans were made homeless by war, becoming refugees or displaced persons.” According to The Star of Johannesburg, South Africa, an estimated 600,000 lives have been lost in Mozambique during its civil war, among them 380,000 children. This is more than ten times the death toll of Americans in the Vietnam War.
BABIES BRED FOR SACRIFICE
Investigations into the practice of Satanism in various parts of South Africa show that its grip on the youth is becoming more widespread. However, according to the Saturday Star, a South African newspaper, “entire families—fathers, mothers and children—” are involved, and some Satanists are “professional people of high standing in the community.” The police are investigating the practices of child abuse, rape, bestiality, and the murder of babies. Former Satanists have disclosed to Cape Town police that 11 babies have been ritually murdered over the past five years and that the babies were specially bred for sacrifice, noted the Saturday Star.
FATAL ACCIDENT IN MECCA
The city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia hosts millions of Muslim pilgrims from throughout the world every year. This year, on July 2, 1990, a terrible accident marred this religious pilgrimage. According to The New York Times, Saudi officials reported that “1,426 Moslem pilgrims died in a stampede in a pedestrian tunnel linking this city with a tent camp for pilgrims.” Reportedly, the tunnel, which can hold about a thousand people, became crowded beyond capacity with some 5,000 pedestrians. One witness reported that in addition to those trampled in the stampede, many collapsed unconscious, and others died from lack of oxygen. The Times noted that Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd referred to the accident as being “God’s will, which is above everything.”
A NEW BIBLE FOR THE ARCTIC
Translating the Bible into Inuktitut, the language of native Inuit people in the Arctic, has long been a challenge. The language had no word for sheep, horse, or donkey, but it has 30 words for snow. The translation currently in use, according to The Globe and Mail of Toronto, Canada, is 90 years old and rife with mistranslations and awkward phrases. It renders the phrase ‘the lamb of God,’ for instance, as “God’s special thing that looks like a caribou calf.” But thanks to satellite television and education, the Inuit people are now familiar with more words once unknown to them. Thus, a new translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures is under way. “Sheep” will now be rendered by the Inuit term “sheepi,” but “donkey” will remain “the thing with big ears.”
LETHAL MIXTURE
The “cocaine” sold to drug abusers in Brazil contains only about 7.5 percent pure cocaine, according to Paulo Sérgio Fleury, chief of police in the State Department of Narcotics (Denarc) in São Paulo. Using adulterated cocaine can be lethal. The Brazilian newspaper O Estado de S.Paulo reported that cocaine seized by police has been found to be mixed with such materials as ‘boric acid (a poison used to kill ants and cockroaches), confectioners’ sugar, a diarrhea remedy, a local anesthetic, sodium chloride (salt), gypsum, and even powdered glass.’ Powdered glass, even though ground up, “may cause internal fissures, cuts and wounds in the user.”
NEW SOVIET-VATICAN TIES
The meeting between Pope John Paul II and Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev last December has resulted this year in official ties between the Vatican and the Soviet Union for the first time since the Russian Revolution of 1917. Described by Vatican spokesman Joaquim Navarro as “pre-diplomatic relations,” the agreement calls for the Vatican to exchange a representative with rank of apostolic nuncio for a Soviet representative with rank of ambassador extraordinary. Gorbachev is said to have promised the pope that freedom of religion will be guaranteed by the Soviet Union.
THE POWER OF WILLPOWER
Researchers at the University of California at San Diego in La Jolla have found that willpower may prolong life under certain circumstances. The researchers studied the death rates of elderly Chinese women during a 15-year period. They found that the mortality rates dropped by 35 percent in the weeks before the Chinese Harvest Moon Festival, an annual event in which the women play the central ceremonial role. During the week after the festival, the death rates peaked over the normal level by 35 percent. It was similar with Jewish men in regard to Passover. Sociologist David P. Phillips, who led the research, is quoted in The Boston Globe as saying: “The results suggest quite strongly that some people are able to postpone death briefly in order to reach an occasion which is psychologically significant to them.”
A DEADLY GAME
Children living in high-rise housing projects in New York City have found a deadly way to seek thrills: riding on top of the elevators. The stunt has been known for at least 20 years, but police say that it is on the increase, leading to almost 200 arrests and 40 injuries during 1989, double the figures for 1988. Besides inflicting gruesome injuries, this game also kills. One 12-year-old boy tried to somersault from a beam onto a moving elevator and was crushed to death, just three weeks after a movie warning children against this game was made in the same elevator shaft. Some youths attempt to jump from the top of one moving elevator to another. Others ride below the car, hanging from an electric cable. Girls as well as boys play the game. According to housing officials, the children are motivated by boredom and a desire to impress their peers.