World News and Trends

New Three-Pronged Axis on the Rise in Europe?

The concept of a European army -separate and entirely apart from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization-has been in and out of the news for at least 10 years.

A small conference on a standing army for Europe occurred five years ago at Weimar in former East Germany. Reports Britain's The Independent: "In the town of Weimar in 1991 the foreign ministers of Germany, France and Poland gathered to inaugurate a new alliance. Their meeting went almost unnoticed by the rest of Europe, but the foreign ministers of the three countries have continued to meet annually to devise a common security concept."

Some British observers now talk of a new axis, an alignment of France, Germany and Poland. Britain has not been included in annual discussions of the alliance. Margaret Thatcher, former British prime minister, consistently opposed a common European army that would be an essential component in a European federal state with its own foreign and defense policy.

The idea of some Euro-federalists is to merge all the national sovereign armies (including Britain's) into a single supranational force with the German heartland at its natural geographic center. But, as the Independent article pointed out, "France, Germany and Poland have repeatedly been the area for European aggression and war."

Memories of this area tend to be of armed conflict. Could some of these events in central Europe eventually result in history repeating itself? (Sources: The Independent, The Sunday Telegraph.)

The Environment in Retreat

In spite of some notable successes here and there in the world, the public often has the uneasy, even unspoken, feeling that we are gradually losing ground in the war against pollution and environmental damage to our precious planet. Now even advisers to national governments are confirming our worst fears.

Says Tom Burke (formerly of Friends of the Earth and now an adviser to a British cabinet minister): "Successes of the past 25 years have been mere tactical victories in a long retreat for the environment." Official reports show, for instance, that European Union countries are not meeting targets set at the Earth summit in Rio de Janeiro four years ago. (Source: The Independent.)

The Resurgence of Infectious Diseases

Keep a watchful eye on old diseases we thought we had mostly conquered-and potentially many new ones. Says the World Health Organization in its 1996 report, "The world is facing a crisis over infectious diseases which kill at least 17 million people a year." These maladies include cholera, pneumonia, typhoid, malaria, hepatitis and AIDS. A growing resistance to drugs is a big part of the problem.

A disturbing factor is our global response to 20th-century diseases. According to an article in The Independent: "Despite the emergence of some 30 new diseases in the last 20 years, there is still a lack of national and international political will and resources to develop and support the systems necessary to detect them and stop their spread. Without doubt, diseases as yet unknown, but with the potential to be the AIDS of tomorrow, lurk in the shadows."

Remember that disease epidemics are represented by one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse as recorded in the Bible. (Sources: The Independent, The Times of London.)

Adult Men Linked to Teen Births

Contrary to popular perception, adult men, not fellow teenagers, father most babies born to teen mothers in the United States.

Results of a California study appearing in The American Journal of Public Health showed that almost two thirds of babies born to teenage girls were fathered by men four to six years older than the girls themselves.

"Most people always assumed a couple of teens fooling around" caused a teen pregnancy, said researcher Mike Males of the University of California, Irvine. "But these are adult men, not [teenagers] in school, not part of the programs and countermeasures that groups have set up to fight teen pregnancy . . . It's a real complicating factor."

More than 500,000 babies are born to U.S. teens annually. (Source: The Associated Press.)

World Sets Good and Bad Records in 1995

The world set both good and bad records in 1995, according to the Worldwatch Institute's annual report, "Vital Signs 1996." The report focuses strongly on what the institute sees as evidence of worsening global climate problems, including grain shortages, mounting insurance claims and anticipated rising food prices.

"In an era of high technology, humanity is suddenly struggling in 1996 with one of the most ancient of challenges: how to make it to the next harvest," warns Lester Brown, leader of the environmental research group for the last two decades.

Citing statistics from both government and private sources, the institute reports records in 1995 for several factors central to human welfare:

 The global grain harvest was the worst since 1988, and world grain reserves-the amount of grain available to humanity if all grain production ceased-reached an all-time low of only 48 days' consumption.

 World meat production reached a new high, putting even greater pressure on grain production. Meat consumption continues to grow in Asia, where population growth and prosperity are bringing rapid increases in demand.

 Insurance companies paid out $48 billion for weather-related damage in the first half of the 1990s, compared to $16 billion for the entire decade of the 1980s.

 A record 4.7 million people contracted HIV infections, with most new cases appearing in Asia.

 A record 6.1 billion tons of fossil fuels was consumed, in spite of international agreements to limit carbon emissions into the atmosphere.

 The world population continued to set new records, increasing by 87 million to 5.732 billion total. The population of developing nations increased by more than 80 million.

 The global climate was the warmest since systematic records began to be kept 130 years ago. The average worldwide temperature hit 59.70 degrees Fahrenheit (15.39 degrees Celsius).

Positive developments cited in the report included a 2 percent increase in average annual personal income, to about $3,500 per person worldwide. The report also noted the spread of democracy, citing several countries that held their first elections or made significant movements toward democracy. (Source: The Associated Press.)

U.S. Society Pays High Price for Crime

Crime costs the United States at least $450 billion annually, according to the first U.S. Justice Department report to try to calculate the cost of domestic violence and child abuse along with other crimes including murder, robbery and rape.

The report measures such out-of-pocket costs as legal fees, police work and lost work time as well as such intangibles as mental-health-care costs and reduced quality of life for crime victims and their families. These figures were released in "Victim Costs and Consequences: A New Look," a report sponsored by the National Institute of Justice, the U.S. Justice Department's research division.

The report excludes the costs of the nation's jails, prisons and probation and parole systems, which add another $40 billion to the cost of crime, according to Justice Department statistics, bringing the total yearly cost of crime in the United States to almost $500 billion.

To put this sum in perspective, this estimated total cost of crime is almost double the entire 1995 U.S. Defense Department's budget of $252.6 billion. (Source: The New York Times.) GN

-- Scott Ashley and John Ross Schroeder