Taboo

The locust trees are in bloom today. That's the black locust,  Robinia pseudoacacia , one of the last trees to bloom. In eastern Kentucky, where the tree is plentiful, those delicate white blossoms perfume the countryside, and it is by their appearance that I know that spring has well and truly arrived.  Duty has be editing copy for the forthcoming  Sun Magazine issue commemorating the paper's 175th anniversary (I got to edit...

Patricia Galli is divorced and the mother of four grown children. And she is studying to become a Roman Catholic nun.Ms. Galli's marital status is an anomaly, but it represents an important change in a church that deplores divorce. Faced with dwindling numbers of women who choose to devote their lives to God, the Catholic Church is opening its doors to people who would have been excluded from religious life in the past.No one is keeping track of the number of divorced women entering the convent, but interviews with nuns across the country suggest that lingering taboos against the divorced are disappearing in the larger orders.

In the soft autumn mist, the Tokyo parks are filled with young couples strolling together, doing what, more or less, their parents, grandparents and great ancestors have all done before.It would all merge into the hazy fog if not for the jarring new act known to occur. A kiss.Traditionally, the Japanese don't. Not in public. Not, it is said, even in private. Pornographic videos are sold at convenience stores, and there's nudity on late-night television. But lip-to-lip contact is something else.

London -- As President Fernando Collor De Mello's power wanes in Brazil under the onslaught of the campaign to impeach him for corruption, it's inevitable that the power of Brazil's military waxes. It is likely that the ''no nuclear weapons'' accord between Brazil and Argentina signed in 1990 will unravel further. There have been indications for some time that a part of the military establishment has been secretly ignoring it, and now, with civilian authority badly diminished, who is going to pull them into line?

Picture this Hollywood scenario: A mad scientist and his young protege gleefully examine a carefully prepared contraption, then cautiously place it in a scary-looking heating machine.They put on goggles and radiation-resistant smocks and run into a glass-encased fortress. With brows sweating and hands trembling, they turn the machine on with a remote control.Sparks bounce against the interior walls of the machine, causing the material inside the contraption to smoke. Reluctantly, the scientists turn off the machine.

To all the self-righteous folks who are outraged by the Penn State sexual abuse scandal and pontificate about what they would have done in the same situation: It's hard to confront an abuser and it is harder still to report one. Jerry Sandusky was confronted in 1998 by the mother of one of the alleged victims. An investigating police officer from the university eavesdropped on her exchange with Mr. Sandusky. That confrontation reads like a tragicomic tale with the victim's mother trying to worm it out of Mr. Sandusky if his contact with her son in the Penn State locker room showers was sexual in nature.

MOSCOW -- Every Wednesday afternoon, Petya Nikitenko invites into his office some of the men and women Russia usually tries to ignore. Some have spent time in jail or have sold sex. All have abused drugs. Now that they have come for help, Nikitenko counsels them on the dangers of using intravenous drugs. One of the risks is that, by sharing needles, they will become infected with HIV. What he does not do - and what HIV-prevention programs in Russia often cannot do without bringing unwelcome attention from the government - is distribute clean needles that could help prevent the spread of the virus.

TOKYO -- Within the space of three days, Japan's three biggest political parties have shattered the 47-year taboo on any hint of change in this country's U.S.-written pacifist constitution.Senior officers of the governing Liberal Democratic Party and the opposition Social Democratic and Komeito (Clean Government) parties all have called for what two of them separately described as "a great debate" on Article 9 of the 1946 constitution.That article "forever renounces" war as a means of settling international issues and prohibits maintenance of an army, navy or air force equipped for any but self-defense fighting.

SIX DECADES after a nuclear bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, there is a question that remains unanswered and perhaps unanswerable: Should those of us who were not under that mushroom cloud thank these weapons for bringing us an era of unprecedented peace and prosperity? The bomb has been widely disparaged as the most destructive device ever invented, one that brought not only devastation to Japan, but also fear and uncertainty to generations that lived under its shadow of doom. Look at Europe.

So North Korea says it has tested a nuclear weapon. So what? The world has known for years that this rogue nation could build the bomb and in all likelihood, already had. "In a sense, nothing changed," says Steve Fetter, dean of the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, College Park. "It just demonstrated a capability that we have assumed, or should have assumed, they already had. In fact if anything, the test was probably a disappointment. "But just as obviously, it changes everything because it must have represented a decision by North Korean leadership, and they must have known they were crossing some line.