Fern Cooper, 65, and 13 other cataract-surgery patients arrived at Ontario's Oakville Trafalgar Hospital on June 25 to learn that they would not receive the usual anesthesia because the hospital had decided to schedule an "experimental day" to evaluate how unsedated patients responded. (The Ontario Health Insurance Plan had recently cut anesthesiologists' fee.) A topical numbing gel, plus doctors' reassurances were provided, but Cooper, previously diagnosed with severe anxiety, told the Toronto Star of the terror she felt when, fully awake, she watched the surgeon's scalpel approaching, and then cutting, her eyeball.
Officials organizing a show for high school girls in June in Sherbrooke, Quebec, signed up a 20-year-old apprentice hypnotist to perform, but by the end of his session, he had failed to bring all of the entranced girls out of their spells, including one who was so far under that the man had to summon his mentor from home (an hour's drive away) to come rescue her. The mentor, Richard Whitbread, quickly rehypnotized her and then snapped her out of it with a stern voice, according to a Canadian Broadcasting Corp. News report. He noted that his protege is a handsome young man, which might have unduly influenced the girls.
Christianity has grown in acceptance recently in Ratanakiri province, Cambodia, according to a June report in the Phnom Penh Post, as up to 80 percent of the population has given up the traditional Theravada Buddhism (mixed with animism) as too demanding. According to local officials, traditional priests typically prescribe expensive offerings, such as a slaughtered buffalo, as the price of improving a relative's health. Said one convertee, with the money saved using Western medicine instead of traditional sacrifices, she was able to build a house for her family.
"Deer stands," classically, are jerry-built platforms hunters climb onto to spot deer in the distance, but county officials in Duluth, Minn., complained in July that the woods are becoming cluttered with elaborate tree houses that are too often abandoned on public land at the close of the season. One official was alarmed by "mansions" - tree stands, he told the Duluth News Tribune, with "stairways, decks, shingled roofs, commercial windows, insulation, propane heaters, carpeting, lounge chairs, tables, and even the occasional generator."
