Watching the World

Watching the World
Ferment in Malawi
· The Belgian news magazine To the Point International reports that two top officials in Malawi were prosecuted for an alleged plot to assassinate President Banda. One was the former security police chief and the other was minister of state and secretary-general of the ruling Malawi Congress Party. “The men largely responsible for the political purges in recent years including the widespread brutal persecution of Jehova[h]’s Witnesses,” notes the report, were these two former officials.
“Apart from the witch-hunt against Jehova[h]’s Witnesses mainly for refusing to join the Congress Party, Malawi’s only legal party, the terror campaign struck at anyone accused of a subversive or critical act against the government.” The article states that “the president himself, who runs Malawi like some feudal monarch, was seemingly unaware of the real extent of the purges.”
Defending Freedom
· Canada’s Toronto Star declared that though they were at the center of “the most bitter and persistent controversy,” Jehovah’s Witnesses “have also had the greatest measurable effect for good upon Canadian life.” The newspaper article notes that “the story of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Canada is one of cruel but passing tribulation and final victory. . . . in their self-defense against outrageous persecution, they not only established their own rights, they also made clear the rights of all Canadians. Their court cases produced a series of judgments which are landmarks in the definition of what. freedom means in Canada. . . . All Canadians can acknowledge a measure of debt to Jehovah’s Witnesses.”
Laser Eraser
· Physicist John Asmus discovered that his laser equipment could clean encrusted pollutants from exposed works of art and other objects without damaging them. Its energy boils off the pollutants, yet it is reflected from the intact material beneath. Newsweek reports that he has cleaned “bronze statues in Brussels, Italian pottery and parts of the Acropolis; he removed excess paint from Bavarian wood carvings” and calcium deposits from the lead tomb of the bishop of Liège. “Most of the time we can find a color of light which will vaporize one substance and not the other,” he says.
Quake News
· After being buried ten days in the ruins of a ten-story apartment building, a nineteen-year-old Romanian youth was dug out alive. Doctors said that he had survived his ordeal in “surprisingly good” condition after the earthquake that took over 1,500 lives. Survival for more than five days without water is considered rare.
· Scientists of the U.S. Geological Survey have discovered that cockroaches may be useful in predicting earthquakes. The bugs were kept in darkened boxes in three earthquake-prone areas of California. As recorded by sensors in the containers, these insects were found to increase their activity several hours before each of four minor quakes. However, the job has been limited to male cockroaches, as “females in the batch caused hyperactivity that was unrelated to any forthcoming tremors,” reports the Detroit Free Press.
· After 40 years, the Richter scale used to rate the intensity of earthquakes has been revised to “more accurately record and explain energy released by the so-called great quakes,” according to an Associated Press dispatch. Under the revision, the intensity of the 1906 San Francisco quake was downgraded from 8.3 to 7.9, but the Alaska quake of 1964 was raised from 8.4 to 9.2, and the 1960 Chilean quake from 8.5 to 9.5. Previously, the highest Richter rating was 8.9.
Hair Hazard
· A long-haired California cook may have second thoughts about his hairstyle. His 24-inch (61-centimeter) hair got caught on the spinning drive shaft of a truck that he had crawled under to work on in his spare time. His entire scalp was ripped off above the eyebrows, his skull was fractured and an ear was torn. However, six San Francisco neurosurgeons and plastic surgeons worked 17 hours to replant the scalp, using microsurgery to restore matched-up blood vessels. “Have you ever seen wet spaghetti when it’s kind of overcooked?” said one of the surgeons about the damaged vessels. “It’s just hard to work with at 3 in the morning when it keeps slipping from your grasp and your hands start shaking.” This is said to be the first successful U.S. scalp replant.
Blood and Surgery
· New York Surgeon Teruo Hirose “declares quietly that he has never lost a single patient for lack of a blood transfusion,” reports Parade magazine. He has operated on 4,500 Jehovah’s Witnesses, as well as thousands of other patients, seldom using blood. “Hirose’s work with Jehovah’s Witnesses has benefited his other patients,” notes the article, because with blood “there is always some risk, even if minimal, of hepatitis or other adverse reactions.” Parade observes that Hirose believes that transfusions “can often be avoided by careful operative technique. And, Jehovah’s Witness or not, he rarely uses transfusions even for such operations as whole lung removals and bypasses of leg arteries.”
· Noting the hazards of transfused blood Family Health magazine reports that “within the last decade, an estimated 30,000 people have died of serum hepatitis (also known as hepatitis B), and thousands more have had their livers irreparably damaged by contaminated blood transfusions.”—March 1977, p. 36.
Unique Anticrime Method
· Many Japanese gangsters have been as successful at dodging prosecution as their American counterparts. Hence, crime fighters in Osaka have begun to use social ostracism, a uniquely Japanese weapon, against the criminals. With police encouragement, parents keep their children from playing with gangsters’ offspring. Traditional friendly greetings between wives are omitted and shopkeepers are cool to gangster families.
Elderly gang leaders may be suddenly summoned to a police station, where they sit alone in a chair and are denounced and urged to dissolve their gangs. “We are trying to change the waters the gangsters swim in,” says a police chief, “to make them feel estranged and socially isolated.”
Charged Bees
· Why are bees so effective at pollinating plants? One answer may be their electric charge, according to a study recently reported in Farm Journal. A government entomologist found that bees start out their day with a “slightly negative electrical charge,” notes the article. “But by early afternoon on bright, warm days with low humidity, bees were exhibiting positive voltages of up to 1.5 volts.” Since some plants have a negative charge at that time, the scientist suggests that the opposite charges ‘may improve the efficiency of pollination.’
The “Other Energy Crisis”
· A shortage of firewood is mushrooming in many developing countries. Since the price of paraffin soared out of reach, along with other petroleum products, in late 1973, trees are being destroyed at an alarming rate. “Not so long ago, in countries like Mali and Chad,” reports African Development, “the [firewood] stacks were no further than 50 or 100 kilometers [30 or 60 miles] from Bamako or N’Djamena. Now they are 150 kilometers [90 miles] distant, and fast receding.” A saying in Upper Volta is: “It is cheaper to fill the pot than to heat it.”
Pet Prescriptions
· Now Parisian pet lovers and those willing to travel to that city can obtain corrective glasses for their myopic animals. Optician Denise Lemiere came up with the idea when her pet Doberman became nearsighted. Using an optical device that examines retinas, she was able to prescribe lenses and then devise frames to hold them. “After a brief settling-in period,” she claims, “pets take to the glasses completely.”
Only Cancer-Free People
· A new field of cancer research—geocancerology, the study of cancer’s geographical distribution—has found only one place in the world that is free of cancer. The Hunza tribe living high in the Himalayas north of Kashmir is thought to have this distinction because of their frugal yet healthy diet, lack of industrial pollution and lives free from stress. Researchers reported in the UNESCO magazine Impact of Science on Society that the highest cancer rates exist in “countries which have the greatest industrial density.” Increases in cancer are said to be “constant, undeniable and alarming.”
Cancer in Bangladesh
· The director-general of the Indian Council of Medical Research reported that 60,000 die yearly of cancer in Bangladesh. He noted that cancers of the oral cavity were very common. Why? Many of these cancers “were due to Bangalees’ habit of chewing betel leaf and nut, lime and tobacco mixture,” according to the report in Amrita Bazar Patrika of Calcutta.
‘Why Do They Attend?’
· “I have sung and lectured in just about every type of church you can name,” wrote an elderly professional to a widely read American advice columnist. His experience with church people made him remark: “Why they attend still puzzles me.” Taking a personal survey in over 300 churches, he asked why. More than half answered, “because it’s the thing to do.” “Less than 1 per cent mentioned anything about worshiping,” he wrote. In a new survey of church hospitality, he reports: “Of the 195 churches I have visited, I was spoken to only once by someone other than an official ‘greeter’—and that was to ask me to please move my feet.”
Arab Gratitude
· When an Englishman working in Saudi Arabia rescued two Arab businessmen from their plane that crashed in the desert, their gratitude overwhelmed him. They wanted to present him with their four daughters, aged 14 to 16, according to the Associated Press, but he already had a wife and five children. However, he said: “I was told that if I refused to take them, it would be regarded as a gross insult, punishable by prison or worse.” His employers quickly flew him back to Britain, where he had to stay until April 1, when the offer became null and void. After that the Arabs could honorably give him something else.
Counterfeiter’s Accomplice
· In addition to using sophisticated new color copying machines to counterfeit money (see Awake!, July 8, 1976, p. 31), some enterprising wrongdoers are also counterfeiting checks. A disgruntled worker fired by her employer cashed a dozen copies of her last paycheck. This and other incidents caused a U.S. Justice Department official to complain that the machines have “brought counterfeiting ability down to the rankest amateur.” The Department would like manufacturers to make “their machines less perfect as partners in crime,” reports Time magazine. But one company spokesman notes that “you don’t hold GM [General Motors] responsible just because a Chevrolet is used as the getaway car in a bank robbery.”
Sacred Horse
· New Zealand’s Prime Minister Robert Muldoon visited Japan’s vast Zen Buddhist Toshogu Grand Shrine last year. There he was told that the Gojinme (Honorable Sacred Horse) “was now 26 years old, and soon looking forward to the great pasture in Nirvana,” says To the Point International. The New Zealand Olympic Equestrian Team had presented the white horse to the shrine in 1964. Muldoon promised a replacement, but his nation’s Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals objected to the cramped quarters in the shrine’s sacred stable. To compensate, shrine keepers promised to give the “sacred” animal as much outside exercise as possible.