Watching the World
French Gambling Addicts
Despite rising unemployment and the worsening economic climate in Europe, the French are spending more than ever on gambling and betting says the INSEE (French National Institute of Statistics and Demographic Studies). Over 70 billion francs was wagered in 1992, 16 percent more than the previous year. For many, the urge to gamble has become uncontrollable. “It’s an addiction without a drug,” says French psychiatrist Jean Ades. “With the increasing number of betting systems . . . and the constant barrage of messages from advertising and the media encouraging people to bet, more and more people are discovering they are addicted.” Gamblers are addicted “when they begin to bet above their means and disregard the financial consequences of their behaviour for themselves and their family,” reports the French newspaper Le Monde, and “gambling is one of the most difficult types of dependency to cure.” A former drug addict says: “It was easier to get off drugs than off gambling.”
Few Swedes Go to Church
A study carried out by the Swedish Institute of Public Opinion Research on behalf of the Swedish Church shows that of the over 1,000 persons who were asked if they believed in God, 47 percent answered yes. Church attendance, however, does not reflect this. Of those interviewed, only 9 percent go to Church regularly. “People do not stream to the Church until they feel an expectation that it is there that they can find what they are looking for,” says Anders Swärd, vice chairman of the Central Board of the Church of Sweden.
Deadly Reminders of World War II
Almost 50 years after the end of World War II, the German city of Hamburg still has deadly reminders of the conflict. The newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung reports that in the 12-month period ending in July 1993, the 23 members of the city’s Weapons Disposal Unit disposed of over 500 bombs, 2,440 shells, 97 hand grenades, 24 antitank rocket launchers, 4 antitank mines, and 328 pounds [149 kg] of loose explosives from the ground and water in Hamburg. According to estimates, there are a further 2,000 bombs in the subsoil of the city. “They will keep another two generations busy,” reported the newspaper.
No Money to Save Lives
Although pneumonia and diarrhea are curable, they kill some 7.5 million children each year, reports the news service Agence France-Presse. Worldwide, children under five are affected with some 40 million cases of pneumonia and over a billion cases of diarrhea. However, Doctor Ralph Henderson of WHO (World Health Organization) acknowledged that these illnesses are “easy and inexpensive to treat.” Unfortunately, many of the programs planned by WHO to battle these two illnesses had to be canceled or postponed indefinitely because of financial hindrances. According to WHO, half the deaths due to diarrhea and a third of those due to pneumonia could be avoided if the money was available.
Other Uses of Wine for Mass
Recent findings show that while some 2,600,000 gallons [10,000,000 L] of wine are sold yearly for use at Mass in Italy, “sacred consumption” accounts for about only 260,000 gallons [1,000,000 L]. Why the difference? According to one expert, “the traditional secret sip of the altar boy and the sacristan alone would double the market.” “The truth is,” says Corriere della Sera, “it is multiplied ten times over at the dining tables of bishops, prelates and priests.”
New Cholera Danger
A new strain of cholera that has rapidly spread through India and Bangladesh and on into Thailand may cause the eighth global epidemic of the disease since 1817, health officials say. Warnings have been issued to countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Earlier attacks from the older strains give no lasting immunity to the new one. Additionally, the new strain cannot be detected by standard laboratory testing techniques, and current vaccines are ineffective against it. “Since we cannot predict where or how rapidly this new organism will spread, countries must stay prepared indefinitely by maintaining surveillance, by assuring access to treatment and by providing clean water and adequate sewage disposal,” wrote doctors David L. Swerdlow and Allen A. Ries of the Centers for Disease Control, as reported in The Lancet. The seventh pandemic, which began in Asia in 1960, is still raging, with more than three million cases and tens of thousands of deaths.
Japan Wants Quitters
With over 60 percent of adult men smoking cigarettes, Japan has more smokers than any other industrialized nation, according to the Mainichi Daily News. Hoping that many will quit, Japan’s Health and Welfare Ministry issued a paper with the warning that smoking impairs hearing, hastens aging, and causes brain atrophy, osteoporosis, and the birth of smaller babies. Low-tar cigarettes, it said, are useless in avoiding cardiac infarction. Quitters gain about four pounds [2 kg] in weight, but this poses no health problem. The report found that although 80 percent of smokers try to give up the habit, reducing the number of cigarettes smoked each day seldom works. The most effective way to stop is to cut out cigarettes completely, the Ministry said, and success rates can double when doctor-supervised programs are used.
Workplace Violence
“Nurses and other health-care workers face on-the-job violence almost as often as police officers,” reports The Vancouver Sun. Criminology professor Neil Boyd of Simon Fraser University conducted the study on workplace violence in British Columbia, Canada. He found the rate of risk for police officers and health-care workers to be “four times the rate of any other occupation” and that incidents of violence have jumped 400 percent since 1982. Patients were “almost always the perpetrators of violence against health-care workers,” the paper said, and such acts occurred most often when workers were “waking or bathing a patient.” The study cited “corrections workers, private security officers, taxi and bus drivers and retail clerks” as also facing high risks for workplace violence.
The Rocketing Yen
“In the past 22 years, the [Japanese] yen has undergone an extraordinary metamorphosis,” notes The Wall Street Journal. “It has not only rocketed 225% in value against the dollar during that time, but it has also gained a global status accorded to few currencies. . . . To grasp the change, just go to a carpet shop in Istanbul, hire a guide in Eastern Europe, or visit a department store in Sydney.” More and more merchants worldwide are accepting the yen, and some even prefer it. “To be sure, the yen has a way to go before it eclipses the dollar as the world’s key currency,” says the Journal. The dollar “remains the world’s biggest reserve currency” and “can be used in the greatest variety of financial instruments, and it remains the money of choice in the world’s black markets. But the yen is catching up fast.”
Kosher Foods Better?
Over 20,000 kosher products can be found on U.S. supermarket shelves and are being bought by many who are not religious Jews or devout Muslims (who have a similar dietary code). Why? Because people “associate the term with purity and wholesomeness,” says Tufts University Diet & Nutrition Letter. “But the kosher dietary laws, or ‘kashruth,’ were set forth to protect not the health of the body but rather of the soul, so to speak,” and “that doesn’t mean meat that passes kosher inspections is necessarily better for you than non-kosher meat.” The Jewish food inspector looks for meat that meets the dietary standards derived from the Torah, such as the draining of blood, but he is not trained to look as thoroughly for signs of infection or disease as government inspectors are. Nor does he check sanitation standards at manufacturing plants the way the government inspectors do, but he generally checks to see that ingredients and machinery meet the kosher code, which “has nothing to do with foods’ nutritional value.”
Australia’s Aging Population
Figures recently released from Australia’s 1991 census reveal that the most significant change in the makeup of the country’s population is the growing proportion of people aged 65 and over. A comparison with the 1986 census shows that the trend is general in all states of the Commonwealth. Significantly, the “percentage of the population who were children aged 15 and under decreased from 23.3 per cent to 22.3,” noted the newspaper The Australian. According to the study, the median age for an Australian man is 31 and for a woman, 33.