his morning I was planting impatience in the back garden around the base of a fichus tree. I looked up and there in an upper bough was a nest so small and intricate, that it was hard to believe that this would be the haven for forthcoming life. It was as if the mother hummingbird, somehow, detected, my presence and flew off. She returned a minute or so later, not before I was able to take a step ladder and peer in at the contents. In this nest, which is no more than the size of a hen's egg, are three pearl-sized eggs. I wish there was some way to communicate with the occupant that she's safe from danger with the Jacksons.

ournalists who have been accompanying the pope on his flight to Africa have reported that Pope Benedict XV1 believes that the distribution of condoms would not resolve the growing problem of AIDS. He feels that, on the contrary, that the availability of condoms would aggravate or increase the transference of the disease. It is his, and his advisors ,conviction that the answer is abstinence and campaigns to reduce the number of partners, safer sex practices are needed to bring the disease to heel. Hate to disagree with His Holiness, but there is no doubt whatsoever, based on scientific studies, that from an individual's point of view, condoms work most efficiently in preventing the transmission of the AIDS virus from infected to uninfected people.

He is wrong in blaming condoms for making the epidemic worse. The Pope is quite correct in expressing his opposition to the use of condoms on moral grounds, which is in accordance with the stance of the Roman Catholic Church. From a national perspective, condom promotion has been effective in slowing epidemics in several countries. I take strong exception to his views distorting scientific findings about the value of condoms in the spreading of the AIDS virus.

here are some signs of an easing in the economic slide. There are several indicators that offer more than a glimmer of hope that this long recession might finally be at or nearing bottom.

The economy is still in decline, but there are economists of repute who see a rate of decline that is less of a cliff hanger than it was until very recently.If that should be the case it could mean that what has become the longest recession ever in the history of this country is beginning to bottom-out. Quoting Sung Won Sohn, an economist at California State University, Channel Islands (in the Christian Science Monitor), "we're still declining, but we can see the valley down below".