Lead Story
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In October a senior Vatican spokesman, Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, repeated to a BBC radio audience the church’s claim that people in AIDS-ravaged countries should not use condoms to prevent the spread of HIV; contradicting widespread scientific consensus (and public statements by the World Health Organization), the cardinal insisted that the virus can pass through pores in the latex. In Kenya, where an estimated 20 percent of the population is infected with HIV, the archbishop of Nairobi has said, “AIDS…has grown so fast because of the availability of condoms.”
In October the New York Times reported that the U.S. Transportation Security Administration’s inspector general, dismayed by the “simplistic” questions on the final exam for airport screeners in training, had made much of the test public. One example: “How do threats get on board an aircraft? a. In carry-on bags; b. In checked-in bags; c. In another person’s bag; d. All of the above.” The inspector general also complained that 22 of the exam’s 25 questions had already been asked on lesson quizzes during training, and that screeners were often briefed on the exam in advance.
Fetishes on Parade
In Johannesburg, South Africa, 22-year-old Theuns Prinsloo, a white man who’d dressed as a bullfighter to emphasize his Spanish heritage, won the Mr. Africa pageant; an organizer insisted, “He epitomizes a young African in Africa today.” In Woodbury, New Jersey, a 39-year-old man was arrested for bank robbery ten days after fleeing the scene of the crime on an oversize tricycle. And in Salem, Oregon, a 24-year-old man armed with a pistol was arrested after ramming a car with his tricycle (knocking himself to the ground) and then stealing the car.
