Word: customs
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...hinder the course of justice, but must it run amok?" The language of Hamburg's Welt am Sonntag was inordinately strong, but then the German press and public had taken an inordinately long time to get upset. The cause of the outcry was an old German legal custom called Untersuchungshaft (investigative arrest), which has its roots in Roman law and allows a prosecutor to jail a mere suspect for years-so long as he can convince a judge that the man might flee the country or tamper with evidence and witnesses...
...church, the Holy Office has now sent an instruction to all Catholic bishops easing up on the old restrictions. The letter reaffirms the church's traditional preference for burial, but notes that there is no unchangeable dogma forbidding cremation, which thus can be authorized where national custom, economics or hygiene make it necessary...
...Catholic theologians agree that God could just as easily resurrect a body from scattered ashes as from dry bones in a grave. The new ruling will probably be of most help to bishops in the predominantly Buddhist countries of Asia, where burial is regarded as a revolting and disrespectful custom. Japanese Catholics have already drawn up a cremation rite, and it is expected that church leaders in India, Ceylon and Burma will eventually follow suit...
Buyers outside the U.S., exerting their own affluence, are also plunging into the diamond market. Sales are expanding twice as fast in Europe as in the U.S., and jewelers boast that they are successfully "educating" young Europeans in the American custom of buying diamond engagement rings instead of simple gold bands or no rings at all. At the same time, Japan has eased its barriers against luxury imports, last year spent $11.5 million for diamonds...
...American novelist to use the breakup of preindustrial American society as the stuff of fiction-Sinclair Lewis, in recognition of the fact, dedicated Babbitt to her-but she was in some ways the last to understand it. Her best pre-World War I novels (The House of Mirth, The Custom of the Country) were groping toward an understanding, and her failure to achieve such an understanding was finally the measure of her failure to become a truly first-rate novelist...