The Leslie K. Tarr award (in recognition of outstanding contribution in the field of Canadian Christian writing) was given to W. Harold Fuller, a veteran editor who has written eight books and 2,000 articles.--
Faith Today
The latest in airline seat-back gadgetry is video gambling, available on some Singapore Airlines 747s and under test on British Airways. Passengers enter their credit card number and gamble on games like blackjack and slot machines. So far, in-flight gambling is illegal in the US, but airlines eager to take a share of the estimated $500 million in annual revenue are lobbying government to lift the restriction.--
Time
South Korea has launched an aggressive new program to lay fibre-optic cable to 10 million homes by the year 2000. The cable would enable computer-users to download information at 5 megabits per second, 4,000 times as fast as 14.4 modems.--
Time
Psychic hotlines, each promoted by celebrities and an on-air psychic in 30-minute TV infomercials running after midnight, grew from nothing in 1991 to a $1.4 billion industry in North America by 1995. They generate huge profits for the phone companies, the TV stations, the corporations that produce them and the on-air personalities (who make hundreds of thousands of dollars); they also make solid incomes for the thousands of "psychics" who actually answer the phones. More than 2 million people a day have watched Canadian psychic Jo-Jo's infomercials. Those who profit from these lines say that they are an indication of the millions of desperate, depressed people in North American society, people who are awake in the middle of the night and are willing to pay $5 a minute just for someone to talk to. About 75% of the callers are women. Canadian phone companies limit phone calls to 10 minutes, but many people make several such phone calls in a row. Some have become so addicted to these lines that they have racked up $50,000 phone bills and driven their families into bankruptcy.--
Maclean's
Return to the M.B. Herald Vol. 35, No. 14
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