Watching the World

▪ “We are facing very serious peril [the political crisis in Georgia] . . . God is with us and [the] Virgin Mary is protecting [us], but one thing concerns us very deeply​—that Orthodox Russians are bombing Orthodox Georgians.”​—GEORGIAN CATHOLICOS PATRIARCH ILLIA II.

▪ “Consultations for emergency contraceptives​—the famous morning-after pill—​tripled in the last six months, [and] sales have increased more than 200% since 2004. . . . Calls intensify on Mondays. Most are made by adolescents.”​—CLARÍN, ARGENTINA.

▪ American cell-phone users between the ages of 13 and 17 each “sent or received an average of 1,742 text messages a month in the second quarter [of 2008].”​—THE NEW YORK TIMES, U.S.A.

▪ “Mental disorders affect nearly 12% of the world’s population.”​—WORLD FEDERATION FOR MENTAL HEALTH, U.S.A.

▪ “An estimated one in five European adults have tried [cannabis, the source of marijuana] at some time in their lives.”​—EUROPEAN MONITORING CENTRE FOR DRUGS AND DRUG ADDICTION, PORTUGAL.

Biblical Name Unearthed

Archaeologists digging in Jerusalem’s ancient City of David have discovered a 2,600-year-old clay seal impression, or bulla, bearing the name of “Gedaliah the son of Pashhur.” Gedaliah is spoken of in the Bible at Jeremiah 38:1, as is Yehukhal​—called “Jucal [shortened form of Jehucal (Yehukhal)] the son of Shelemiah”—​whose name was found on a bulla in the same area in 2005. The two men were officials in the court of King Zedekiah. The Jerusalem Post reports: “This is the first time in the annals of Israeli archeology that two clay bullae with two Biblical names that appear in the same verse in the Bible have been unearthed in the same location.”

Technology Used Against Crime

The New York Police Department receives most emergency calls from citizens by phone. Advances in technology recently made it possible to contact the police by text message. “Citizens are now being encouraged to capture crimes in progress on their cellphones and send the videos to the police,” reports The New York Times. Steps are also being taken, says the paper, “to enable the Real Time Crime Center to send photos out to all patrol cars in the area of a crime.”

Magpies Recognize Themselves

“It had been thought only chimpanzees, dolphins and elephants shared the human ability to recognize their own bodies in a mirror,” says a Reuters report. Now, Eurasian magpies have been recognized as members of this “club,” which had commonly been believed to be exclusive. Researchers marked magpies’ bodies with a colored dot that they could see only in a mirror. “The birds regularly scratched the mark on their body, proving they recognized the image in the mirror as themselves and not another animal,” claims the report.