Watching the World
“New Factors of Instability”
Has the newfound freedom of religion in Eastern Europe brought a measure of peace and harmony to the political turmoil in that area? “The Roman Catholic and Orthodox clergy in Romania, Ukraine, and along Poland’s eastern border are fighting over ownership of churches,” observes the French newspaper Le Monde. The newspaper added: “But there is something very irrational about the dispute. . . . These hints of a war of religion floating again over Europe and in the Caucasus, coming on top of all the nationalistic agitations, are creating new factors of instability and forebode nothing good.”
1991—Record Year for Bible
According to Ecumenical Press Service, the United Bible Societies’ annual Scripture Language Report shows that during 1991 “for the first time . . . , thirty-two languages received at least one book of the Bible,” increasing the total number of languages into which at least one book of the Bible has been translated to 1,978. That same year, says the Dutch magazine Vandaar, the more than one hundred national Bible societies sold a record 16 million Bibles worldwide, a 3.5-percent increase over 1990. Bible shipments to the former Soviet Union (over 700,000 copies), Romania (nearly 340,000), and Bulgaria (140,000) resulted in a 34-percent increase in Bible distribution in Europe, while shipments to China (nearly one million copies) and Republic of Korea (1.8 million) led to a 13-percent increase in Asia. At the same time, however, Bible distribution dropped more than 10 percent in Africa and 11 percent in the Americas. Vandaar adds that Bibles are sold in developing countries for a price equivalent to an average day’s wage.
Drug-Fouled Neighborhoods
In Spain, where some 100,000 people are addicted to heroin, the drug trade has infiltrated many urban neighborhoods—with devastating results. According to Cambio 16, a Madrid magazine, “everyone knows” about the worsening situation, “everyone suffers, and everyone is waiting for solutions that are not forthcoming.” In the city of Valencia, drug addicts and dealers have proliferated so openly that thousands of residents demonstrate nightly to protest this fouling of their neighborhoods. One resident told Cambio 16: “We cannot take our kids to play in the parks, because they are full of syringes. There are muggings every day.” Similarly, the newspaper El País reports that in one slum outside Madrid, there is gunfire virtually every day.
Witch-Hunt
Many people in Venda, in the north of South Africa, believe that people do not die from natural causes. As the periodical Indicator South Africa reported, they think that death is the result of witchcraft or interference by ancestral spirits. On the other hand, many Venda youths, eager for change, are determined to eradicate traditional beliefs. They have set off a wave of witch-hunts. Indicator South Africa stated: “In a growing climate of terror, anyone accused of being a witch was simply killed on the spot despite protestations of innocence. . . . March 1990 was a month filled with nightly burnings of those accused of practising witchcraft. In some villages, up to five or more accused witches were either burnt or driven out of their homes each night.”
Weapons Sales Boom
“Weapons dealers around the world are enjoying a boom in business,” reports the British journal New Scientist. What stimulates the flourishing trade? International arms trade researcher Chris Smith says that the demise of the Soviet Union and the instability surrounding the recent Persian Gulf war have fueled supply and demand for many cheap, secondhand arms across the Middle East and Eastern Europe. According to Smith and Andrew Ross of the U.S. Naval War College, the disturbing trend is that “nations of the Third World are becoming more important suppliers of arms.”
Search for Enduring Youth
A host of products on the market are reputed to retard the aging process. Unfortunately, there is little evidence to support such claims, according to Consumer Reports magazine. Further, these costly products may harbor harmful side effects. Caleb Finch, professor in the neurobiology of aging at the University of Southern California, said: “Peculiar things happen when you dump chemicals in your body. Each has its own effect, and there’s no way to predict the interactions or the long-term consequences.” Consumer Reports stated: “Few researchers expect in the near future to be able to increase the maximum human lifespan.” The magazine commented that a proper diet, regular exercise, avoidance of tobacco and too much alcohol, and maintaining the right weight can “produce the same effects claimed for life-extension products.”
Dumped Babies
“Desperate mothers have taken to abandoning their children—some only months old—in hospitals throughout South Africa,” says the Saturday Star, a newspaper of Johannesburg. “Overwhelmed by a combination of poverty, unemployment, homelessness and hopelessness, more and more mothers are simply booking children into hospitals, under false names and with non-existent illnesses, and leaving them there.” Some children have been forced to stay in the hospitals for over a year and could not be moved to foster homes or orphanages, as these were filled to capacity. In some hospitals most of the abandoned children were babies. “Rural men have affairs (in the cities), leaving young girls pregnant, and then return to their rural families. The girls are left little choice but to abandon the baby,” Johannesburg child welfare director Dr. Adele Thomas is quoted as saying. Civil unrest is another reason. “We saw an increase last year when the situation was particularly violent and many people had to flee their homes,” said one hospital superintendent.
Honesty in Europe
Does civic morality vary from one nation to another in Europe? The European Value Systems Study Group polled 19,000 persons from 13 nations in order to find out. Each was asked whether things like cheating on taxes, bribery, littering, and claiming State benefits without entitlement are justified. The European reports that Scandinavians are the most honest. Why? Persons there feel they can trust official institutions, whereas in other lands, low civic morality reflects a critical view of the State. Thus, honesty appears to reflect one’s attitude toward society. “When people are negative about the state, they are negative towards everything to do with society,” said Jan Kerkhofs, emeritus professor in social science at Leuven University, Belgium.
The High Cost of Alcoholism
Alcoholism costs. It costs both the alcoholic and society in innumerable ways, including rising health costs, broken homes, accidents, and death. However, a cost that is often overlooked is the actual amount of money an alcoholic spends to support his addiction. According to the Paris newspaper Le Figaro, a study conducted in France shows that an alcoholic spends an average of over 3,000 francs ($540, U.S.) a month on his drinking habit. Moreover, the study reveals that alcohol consumption typically takes up 50 percent of an alcoholic’s family budget—as much as 80 percent for those who live alone. After one year of complete abstinence, almost all the alcoholics who took part in the study had improved their general standard of living. They ate better and were better clothed. Half of them were even able to save money.
Quicker Malaria Test
A quicker and more accurate method for detecting malaria has been used with success in the African country of Kenya. Panoscope magazine reports that by using “a centrifuge, a capillary tube, a polystyrene float and ultraviolet light, parasites can be detected in 45 seconds, compared to four minutes with the present method.” This new method, notes the magazine, will cut down on technician fatigue and therefore reduce the number of diagnostic errors. More than 150 million people around the world are suffering from malaria. Each year, the disease kills over a million people—mostly children.
Dangerous Fishing
The U.S. National Research Council recently made public the results of a study in which commercial fishing was ranked among the most hazardous industries in the country. According to The New York Times, the study found that “with 47 deaths for each 100,000 workers, commercial fishing tied with mining as the most dangerous occupation in the United States.” In Maine alone, there is an average of six work-related deaths among fishermen each year. During 1991 that figure nearly doubled. With lobster prices going down, some fishermen who would normally never go lobstering in the winter now find it necessary to do so. The Times noted that in the winter “icy boats, erratic seas and high winds make a dangerous enterprise even more dangerous.”