Watching the World
Marriage on the Wane
“Most couples who marry now have lived together beforehand,” reports the Guardian Weekly of Manchester, England. The paper notes that studies in Canada, England, Sweden, and the United States show that couples who live together before marriage have a higher rate of divorce. A survey in England found that overall such couples were 60 percent more likely to divorce or separate than those who had not cohabited before marriage. Yet, more and more babies are born to parents who do not value marriage. In England and Wales, 31.2 percent of the births are to unmarried parents. Similarly, a recent poll showed that in Scandinavia, Austria, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein, about a third of the births were out of wedlock. In the 12 European Community nations, the figure is about 20 percent.
Harvesting the Clouds
The tiny, impoverished fishing village of Chungungo, Chile, had not had clean drinking water in years. But that changed recently, thanks to a remarkable method of collecting water. Rainfall is scanty in this region, but fog frequently rolls in from the Pacific Ocean. As it passes over the 2,600-foot [800 m] mountain above the village, the fog is particularly dense. Here a team of Canadian and Chilean scientists stretched 50 large plastic nets with a fine mesh designed to harvest water from these clouds. As droplets collect on the mesh, they merge and trickle down into a pipe at the base of the net. The pipes merge and carry water down to the village. Without using any power, this easily maintained system provides some 6.5 gallons [25 L] of clean drinking water a day for each of Chungungo’s 350 inhabitants. Researchers attached to the project believe that some 22 countries on six continents could benefit from such a system. But it is hardly a new idea; trees have been harvesting water from fog for thousands of years.
Syrup River
Thailand’s Nam Pong River, crucial source of food to hundreds of villagers along its banks, suddenly turned thick and sticky recently. According to Asiaweek magazine, a silo in a local sugar mill had sprung a leak, dumping 9,000 tons of molasses into the river. As the sickeningly sweet spill smothered the river’s oxygen, it killed an estimated 2,000 pounds of fish for each mile [1,000 each km] it traveled downstream. In what Asiaweek calls “a misguided attempt at damage control,” officials tried to flush out the syrup by releasing 110 million cubic yards [84 million cu m] of water from a nearby dam. The plan succeeded only in spreading the molasses 370 miles [600 km] downstream and into two other rivers. One environmental expert estimates that it could take at least 12 years for the three rivers to recover.
Children Under Pressure
Many children in urban Japan live under enough pressure to make them physically ill, reports Asahi Shimbun, a Tokyo newspaper. After a day at school, it is reportedly quite common for the children to attend cram schools well into the evening. There is much pressure to compete in high school and university entrance exams. The paper reports that 37 percent of the boys in elementary school resort to “medical tonic drinks” to help them combat fatigue, and over 20 percent suffer from stiff shoulders, insomnia, or dizziness.
Teaching Doctors Empathy
Some hospitals and medical schools in the United States are implementing unusual programs to train doctors to be more empathetic. One New York City hospital hires actors to play the part of patients. As a doctor in training listens to their complaints, he is videotaped and later views his performance. “They’re humbled and surprised by what they see on the tapes,” says hospital director Dr. Mark Swartz in The New York Times. “They say, ‘Do I always have that expression on my face?’ ‘Am I really that harsh?’” Another hospital has doctors check in as patients to see what it feels like to be on the receiving end of treatment. Still another hospital teaches medical residents to have fellow feeling for the elderly by temporarily dulling the residents’ senses with blurry contact lenses, earplugs, and rubber gloves. Subjects must also wear splints to stiffen their joints and put hard peas in their shoes to simulate corns and calluses. Then they must perform “simple” tasks, such as filling out insurance forms and removing the caps from child-proof bottles. “In the discussion period that follows,” reports the Times, “the residents often express chagrin at the irritation they have felt in the past with some elderly patients.”
Church Decline in Ireland
According to figures published in the Irish Times, the number of people in the Republic of Ireland who are taking up a religious vocation is declining rapidly. In 1970, there were 750 who took up religious callings in the Catholic Church. By 1989 that figure had plummeted to 322, which represents a 57-percent drop. Between 1977 and 1989, the number of men becoming parish priests dropped from 206 to 139; the number of new entrants to clerical and religious orders fell from 261 to 99; and the number of new monks dwindled from 98 to 9.
Cut a Horn, Save a Rhino
The government of Zimbabwe has resorted to a last-ditch tactic to protect its dwindling black rhino population from poachers and imminent extinction. Since poachers want only the horn, a veterinarian and a team of rangers are tranquilizing rhino and dehorning them. Although some biologists worry that the animals may need the horn for some as yet unknown purpose, the rhino seem just as capable of defending themselves and their young without one. Of the 3,000 black rhino left in all of Africa, about 1,000 live in Zimbabwe. At present rates, poachers in that country are killing well over a hundred of these formidable beasts each year.
Squatter Dilemma
Largely because of severe drought, thousands in South Africa are leaving their rural homes and streaming into the cities in search of employment. With the economy in recession, chances of finding employment in the cities are not good, to say the least. Squatter settlements consisting of makeshift shacks have proliferated. Homeowners in nearby residential areas complain of plummeting property values and a dramatic increase in theft. Some feel that the government should provide low-cost housing for the squatters. But as the newspaper Sowetan observed, such a project would not be “low-cost”—or easy. One research group estimates that there are 7,000,000 persons living in squatter camps throughout the country.
Coffee as a Drug?
Athletes can—and sometimes do—use coffee to enhance performance, much as they might use a drug, said a professor in Brazil. According to the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo, Luiz Oswaldo Rodrigues, professor at the School of Physical Education of the Federal University of Minas Gerais, says: “I have no doubt that the athletes that I have followed in my research were under a doping effect—although they took caffeine in a quantity much smaller than that considered illegal.” The International Olympic Committee sets 750 milligrams of caffeine as the limit, which would be about 11 cups of strong coffee. According to the doctor, long-distance runners have increased their performance by as much as 20 percent because of the caffeine in coffee.
“Corruption in the Vestry”
Rodolfo Reviglio, a high-ranking priest in Turin, Italy, recently denounced widespread “corruption in the vestry.” His denunciation was reported by the newspaper La Repubblica. He said: “In the last few months, it would seem that there have been cases of priests who have accepted gifts and favors from politicians and candidates in exchange for open or hidden campaigning in their [the politicians’] behalf.” Reviglio charges that such corruption is not limited to election periods, asserting that it is common to “hear of illicit dealings between priests and public officials in handling paperwork, applying for permits,” and other practices, all of which Reviglio likens to “Mafia methods.”
‘Sudden-Death Widows’
“No goodbyes, no time to say, ‘I love you,’ no preparation or time to grasp the reality of death.” Widowed writer Jenny Cullen thus describes, in Femina magazine of South Africa, the impact of a husband’s unexpected death. Such a death may result in a longer period of shock than is experienced by women whose husbands die after a long illness. “For months the sudden-death widow may simply not believe what has happened to her,” says Cullen, adding that more than a year may pass before she fully realizes her loss—a fact that friends and relatives often overlook. Of course, as Cullen points out, “the death of a husband, even when expected, is a shock.” But from her own experience, she reassures widows that although the feelings of deep loss never go away completely, “eventually the acute pain of loss occurs less and less and finally hardly at all.”
A Risky Business
Japan’s Red Cross Society is going to great lengths to prevent people from donating blood just so they can have it tested for the AIDS virus free of charge. The society recently instructed its blood centers not to reveal the results of AIDS tests to blood donors. And in an advertisement in the newspaper Asahi Shimbun, the Red Cross asked those who fear they may have the virus not to donate blood. The ad stated: “There is no way, even with the newest testing techniques, to screen contaminated blood during the period between the AIDS infection and the forming of antibodies.” Still, “it seems that people who use blood donation as a free and handy means of testing for AIDS are on the increase,” reported the newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun. Last year, this procedure identified 29 blood donors who had AIDS.