Watching the World
Catholic Crisis
“The Catholic church is now facing a mounting crisis within its ranks, as older priest[s] retire, an alarming number of younger priests quit, and the number of new recruits is at an all-time low,” reports The Wall Street Journal. “Many of those priests who remain complain bitterly about being overworked and lonely.” The past 30 years has seen an 89-percent drop in the number of priests in seminary training, from 40,000 in 1960 to less than 4,500 today. Already, a number of parishes share a “commuter priest who may spend more time behind the wheel than at the altar.” The problem is “unique to Catholicism,” the article states, and is a reflection of “the unpopularity of the church’s celibacy requirement.” Says Notre Dame University professor Richard McBrien: “Here they are making a rule—a man-made rule—more important than the Eucharist.” Schemes to recruit new ones to the priesthood have not had much success, and it is feared that the crisis is causing the church to relax its standards as to those who can become priests, even accepting many “introverts . . . unhealthy personalities,” as one Catholic administrator put it.
“Knee-Deep in Weaponry”
“We still find live cannon balls from the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. There are lakes filled with toxic grenades from World War I. Every so often, a farmer in a tractor rolls over an anti-tank mine from World War II and poof, that’s it. These things are everywhere.” So says Christian Gabardos, chief of a squad of démineurs—France’s professional bomb-disposal experts. Since World War II, “they have rid the soil of 16 million artillery shells, 490,000 bombs and 600,000 underwater mines,” says The New York Times. “More than two million acres [800,000 ha] of farmland have been salvaged, but millions of acres remain fenced off, knee-deep in weaponry and surrounded by posters that warn: ‘Don’t Touch. It Kills!’” Over 600 démineurs have died. Workers digging a new path outside of Paris for the French bullet train have been unearthing two tons of mines, artillery rounds, and mustard-gas canisters from World War I each day, “remnants of hundreds of ammunition dumps left from battles at the gates of the city.”
$51,260 Per Otter
After the tragic 1989 oil spill from the Exxon Valdez, the company provided $18.3 million to capture and treat 357 otters affected by the oil. Despite extensive efforts to save them, over a third died. Of the 225 surviving otters, the majority were returned to their natural habitat, and the others were placed in aquariums. “Marine biologists have calculated that it cost $51,260 to treat each sea otter rescued,” says a New York Times report, “but scientists believe that knowledge gained from the project will help to save future victims of similar accidents.” An important finding was that crude oil is much more toxic to the animals than had generally been believed. It was noted that the project was “primarily a humane effort,” as sea otters are not an endangered species and “substantial numbers of the animals in the sound escaped lethal oiling.” Exxon officials were said to acknowledge that “dying, oil-soaked otters were particularly damaging to the corporate image.”
Fashionable Fool
“T-shirts with inscriptions on them may be in vogue these days,” notes India Today. But one young lady in Calcutta found out that trying to be fashionable in this way can have serious drawbacks. As she strolled along, “dressed in trendy baggy trousers and an eyecatching T-shirt,” she noticed some Chinese boys pointing at her and laughing hysterically. She questioned them and was told that the inscription on her T-shirt was a message in Chinese that read: “I am a bald coconut-head baboon. And anyone who can read this should make fun of me as I am the greatest fool to have displayed an inscription in a language which I am unable to either read or write.”
Drivers Take Note
Cars that try to beat trains at crossings are the norm on just about every trip, train engineers say. Statistics seem to bear that out. In 1989 there were 5,766 crashes at grade crossings throughout the United States, killing 798 people and injuring 2,588. In most cases, the car drivers ignored the gates and flashing lights indicating the oncoming train. Why do drivers try to race a train to a crossing? Most likely it is because they expect the train to perform like a car, officials say. But it cannot. On an average freight train, the locomotive alone weighs over 160 tons. Traveling at 50 miles an hour [80 km/hr], it takes over a mile [kilometer and a half] to stop the train once the brakes are applied. And car drivers should remember: The train always wins.
Smoking Fathers
The harm a smoking mother can cause to her unborn offspring is well-known. But what about smoking fathers? “The smoking father,” warns the South African Medical Journal, “must accept equal responsibility for the consequences if the mother continues to smoke through pregnancy. A mother needs the support of her spouse if she is to stop smoking and the fetus is certainly not immune from the effects of paternal cigarette smoke.” The journal also warns of the harm caused by passive smoking after the child is born. Children exposed to cigarette smoke in their homes have a higher-than-average “school absenteeism for illness” and “are more likely to become cigarette smokers themselves.”
Electronic Foul Mouth
It is called the Final Word. Pocket-sized, it is a programmed electronic voice box that looks like a beeper. It was designed to speak for people too timid to say offensive things themselves. When activated, it spews out a succession of sharp obscenities. “It’s the most popular item we’ve ever had,” said one store owner. “It’s sad, but that’s what people want.” Originally it came out in two versions. The milder one, which said such things as, “Drop dead” and, “You’re an idiot,” was a commercial failure.
India’s Spare-Parts Trade
“India now has the dubious honour of having probably the largest number of transplants of kidneys taken from live donors not related to the patient,” states India Today. It is estimated that over 2,000 kidneys from live donors are now sold each year in the country. Debts and poverty lie behind most sales. “We were desperate and the only other option left for me was to become a bootlegger or a local dada involved in crime,” explained the father of three children. He and his wife each sold a kidney. “We chose the honourable way,” he said. With high prices being paid for body parts, the sale of corneas and skin from live donors has also increased. “Commercial trafficking in human organs has become the biggest medical ethics issue in the country,” said a prominent doctor.
Egypt’s Water Discovery
Of all the lands affected by water shortages, Egypt stands out. The Nile River, its only major water source, remains subject to the growing demands of other upstream nations. And Egypt’s population of 55 million is growing at the rate of 1 million every nine months. Already the nation must import 65 percent of its food supplies. Now, however, remote sensing by satellite has revealed a vast, unsuspected underground water supply beneath Egypt’s Western Desert. “Scientists believe that it may contain more ground water than was thought to exist for the whole of Africa,” states World Press Review. “A test drilling indicated that there is enough water in one well ‘for agriculture for 200,000 acres [80,000 ha] for 200 years,’ says Dr. Farouk al-Baz, the Egyptian director of Boston University’s Center for Remote Sensing.”
Europe No Longer Cut Off!
For three years, digging had continued under the channel that separates Britain from France. Finally, on October 30, 1990, the two sides met when a French tunneling machine penetrated the chalk to reveal a borehole that had been drilled from the British side. Satellite photography coupled with laser systems guided the teams of engineers so well that the two sections were out of alignment no more than 20 inches [0.5 m] in a 30-mile [50 km] tunnel, reports The Times of London. The actual breakthrough came on December 1 after the remaining yards of chalk were chipped out to create a man-sized opening that allowed workers from both sides to meet and shake hands. Work now continues to complete this service tunnel and the two main rail tunnels, one on each side of it.
“Sweet Revenge”
The problem: how to dissuade groups of teenagers from loitering at a store and scaring off other customers. The solution: putting up outdoor speakers and playing music they can’t stand. At least that’s the solution that some 7-Eleven stores in the northwestern United States and in western Canada have come up with, and so far it has been working fine. The music? Programmed music that features such orchestras as Mantovani and Ray Conniff. “It’s all the music that kids hate, stuff like ‘Moon River,’” says one store supervisor. It’s expected that other stores will soon follow suit. Says Time magazine: “Those who have been assaulted by teenagers’ boom boxes may view this as sweet revenge.”