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Santa Claus shot at in Rio de Janeiro
2007-12-20 13:41:00
The holiday spirit is strong in some parts of the world: Drug traffickers in a Rio slum opened fire on a helicopter carrying a Santa to a children's party, apparently mistaking it for a police helicopter, police said Tuesday. "They thought it was a police operation and started shooting. Luckily, nobody was hurt," a police official said. ... Most of Rio's 700-plus slums are controlled by drug traffickers and are not regularly patrolled by police, who instead go into the slums in military-style raids, often using helicopters and armored vehicles. Two bullet holes were later found in the fuselage of the helicopter. But the children did get their presents, after Santa arrived by car instead. Source "Jingle-bang! Santa's chopper shot up over slum," Reuters, December 18, 2007
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Mob kills two women in Nigeria
2007-12-20 11:32:00
In Nigeria , two women have been killed by a mob of "angry youths," following accusations that the women had caused the death of a two-year-old girl through witchcraft: One of the women, who eked out a living from fishing, reportedly bled to death, after being stabbed in the breast, while the second was burnt alive. The girl had died after an illness. A "prophetess" had earlier claimed that the two "witches" were planning to kill the girl. Source Omon-Julius Onabu, "Youths Kill 2 Women over Witchcraft," This Day, December 20, 2007 Related posts • Witch torched in South Africa

Somalia in ruins
2007-12-20 11:20:00
Welcome to Mogadishu, tourist paradise on the Indian Ocean: Moving through the chaotic capital of Mogadishu, one comes across a grisly scene: several artillery shells had just hit the capital's Bakaara market. Dismembered bodies, blood and severed limbs lie everywhere. And as is often the case, all the victims are civilians. ... And in a country with no health service, traditional healing is followed by many parents. One three-year-old boy has a potentially fatal disease called kala azar. On his skin are welts from where a traditional healer burned him in a futile attempt at a cure. That was from an Al Jazeera story on Somalia .
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Body found with arms and testicles missing
2007-12-20 11:11:00
Where else but in Africa, in this case South Africa. The body belonged to a 70-year-old man who went to see an inyanga (traditional healer) a few days ago and never returned home. Last mistake he ever made... Umfolozi resident Ntokoza Thabethe said she had assisted in the search. "It was horrible ... That poor man's arm and privates were sliced off while he was alive ... he must have been in a lot of pain." She said Mchunu was a well-known and respected elder in the community. "We know who did this. We have not been able to locate the inyanga and we are thinking of holding a kangaroo court soon," she said. This was obviously yet another "muti"-related killing. Source "Man's body found with arm, testicles missing," Mail & Guardian, December 18, 2007 Related posts • Police searching for testicles of beheaded boy
More About: Body , Arms , Missing , Testicles , Missi

A never-ending war
2007-12-20 10:51:00
An interview with Michael Cappi, the author of A Never Ending War, can be found here, at the (very) right-wing FrontPage Magazine website. An unbiased examination of Islam this is not (and Cappi is no historian or scholar), but at least the book has one thing going in its favour: it's not politically correct. An example: The Qur’an is filled with endless directives compelling Muslims to convert, conquer or kill non-believers and to conquer the non-Islamic world. Further Islam dictates that the Qur’an must be accepted and followed literally. Apostasy is heresy and punishable by death. It is this belief system that throughout history has caused Muslims to endlessly embark on conquest. In 1400 years of history the only time the West has been at “peace” with Islam was from the end of the Ottoman Empire early in the 20th Century through the end of World War ll. The reason for Islam’s dormancy during this brief period was the overwhelming superiority of the West technologicall...

Campaign against sorcerers in Tajikistan
2007-12-19 12:31:00
Tajikistan has launched a crackdown on witchcraft and fortune-telling as part of an anti-poverty drive (following on an earlier ban of lavish weddings and expensive funerals). Tajikistan is the poorest of the ex-Soviet nations in Central Asia and occultism is unsurprisingly on the rise: "Those indulging in sorcery and fortune-telling shall be fined between 30 and 40 times the minimum monthly wage (85 to 113 pounds)," says the text of a draft law backed by the lower chamber of the Tajik parliament on Wednesday and obtained by Reuters. It's a step in the right direction. Source "Tajikistan launches campaign against witchcraft," Reuters, December 13, 2007 Related posts • Witch arrested in Kuwait
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Footballer who fears voodoo cult gains support
2007-12-19 12:16:00
Update on the Alhassan Bangura case in Britain. Bangura is the footballer from Sierra Leone who is facing deportation and, to avoid this, is claiming that his life is in danger from a witchcraft cult back home in the old country if he's kicked out. A campaign of support is now building behind him in Britain. Related posts • Footballer to be deported fears secret society will kill him
More About: Cult , Support , Fears , Voodoo

Spiritual Warfare
2007-12-19 12:13:00
From The New York Times: "At an hour when most people here are sleeping or sinning, the worshipers of the Spiritual Warfare ministry gather in the cold sanctuary of a neighborhood church to battle evil." Related posts • Children hunted by evangelical pastors
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Wannabe politican hires witchdoctor for election magic
2007-12-19 11:59:00
Staying on the subject of politics in Kenya, here's a lengthy story about some idiot who enlisted the aid of a witchdoctor to win a seat in the upcoming elections. The witchdoctor duly informed him that the reason he had lost against his opponents in the past was that he had been "bewitched" by his enemies (obviously), and then the witchdoctor performed some mumbo-jumbo ceremony that will ensure victory. You have to pity these people. But, on the other hand, this is no more idiotic, inane, or hare-brained than the antics of certain American politicians (including a lot of the morons running for 2008) who think they're appointed by God. Related posts • Election politics in Kenya
More About: Magic , Politic , Witch

Election politics in Kenya
2007-12-19 11:44:00
Kenya is heading for elections (December 27) and there is something disturbingly familiar about all this: From a plethora of negative text messages and TV or radio adverts to nasty e-mail and leaflets, the venom is flying high and wide as competitors strain every sinew to outwit each other. ... Another memorandum titled, "Kibaki’s Secret MoU with Mungiki" enumerates how the Head of Sate [sic] signed a secret pact with the proscribed group in order for them to support him in the polls. ODM has also alluded to yet another MoU between the former President, the current President and former leader of Official Opposition. The understanding is aimed at making the country leadership centre around certain families. ... Then there have been reports in certain lower drawer weekly publication that a presidential candidate was swindled of over Sh90 million by a conman purporting to be an agent for a witchdoctor from Johannesburg, South Africa. The politician was reported to have been found na...
More About: Politics , Kenya , Election , Politic

Doctors warn against black salve
2007-12-19 08:51:00
Alternative medicine at its best again: A Utah man who used an herbal treatment that promised to remove skin cancer ended up loosing a large portion of his nose and now doctors are warning against the use of a Native American medicine called black salve or bloodroot. The man had gotten the salve from an Indian reservation, where a "medicine man" had made it, so he only had himself to blame. Source Robert Walz, "Doctors warn against use of "Black Salve" for skin cancer," ABC4.com, December 18, 2007

Zany stories of 2007
2007-12-19 08:41:00
An AFP selection of wild and wonderful news items from 2007 can be found here.
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Alternative Santas
2007-12-19 08:39:00
By Lore Sjöberg for Wired: Here's the Objectivist Santa, the Atheist Santa, the Pagan Santa, and the Parent Appreciation Santa.
More About: Alternative , Alterna

Witch arrested in Kuwait
2007-12-19 08:20:00
She was selling magic charms to women to help them "get married to rich men," according to this: Police have arrested an unidentified Kuwait i woman for practicing black magic inside her apartment in Hawalli, reports Al-Wasat daily. The daily quoting a security source said police acting on information that the woman charged KD 100 from each of her female customers — divorced and widows — and sold them a magic charm which she said can help them get married to rich men put her under surveillance for some time. Armed with a search and arrest warrant, police then raided her apartment in Hawalli and seized from her magic charms and various types of magic tools. Strange that she didn't use her dark powers to escape. But witches never seem to do that, for some reason. Related posts • Marrying for money • Black magic astrologer murdered
More About: Arrested , Witch

Alien abduction in New Zealand
2007-12-19 08:06:00
But not of the kind that the tinfoil hat crowd is used to: An alien abduction has Onehunga police baffled. The 1.8 metre statue of an alien warrior from the film Predator has been stolen from a car wreckers in Onehunga. ... The statue was made of old car and bike parts and stood in the foyer of the wreckers showroom for three years until it was stolen last Tuesday night. The piece weighs several hundred kilograms and left scratches in the showroom floor as it was dragged out. That means it wasn't beamed out... Source Janie Smith, "Alien abducted to order," Stuff.co.nz, December 19, 2007
More About: New Zealand , Zealand , Abduction

The 101 dumbest moments in business
2007-12-18 14:58:00
For 2007, gathered by Fortune on CNNMoney.com.
More About: Business , Moments , Sine

The theological delusion
2007-12-18 08:43:00
Having a degree in theology is like having a degree in fairy tales - with the exception that you are taking the fairy tales very seriously, as if Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs had really existed as something real at some point in time. Everything that the fairy tales say is therefore really true, albeit usually in some "symbolic" way, and must be interpreted as the holy words of a higher power, which is why weighty tomes have been written, and are still being written, to ponder the deep wisdom and inner meaning in the divinely inspired words of, for example, Cinderella. This, of course, is why you can safely discard and ignore anything a theologian says as utter rubbish. As an example of this, here's Catholic fairytaleogian John Haught "explaining" why science and God are not at odds (no, of course not), why Mike Huckabee worries him, and why Richard Dawkins and other new atheists are "ignorant" about religion (same old story: every time someone sees through the empty nonsense of...
More About: Theological , Logi , Theo

Serial killer eluded police for three decades
2007-12-18 08:21:00
There is an abundance of serial killer-related stuff in the news these days. Timothy Krajcir is yet another killer who has been making headlines lately, despite the fact that his victims were murdered more than 25 years ago. Krajcir has been in jail for rape and other offenses, but when DNA evidence finally tied him to a murder committed in 1982, he confessed to a total of nine killings, spanning from 1977 to 1982. The ironic thing here is that while he was murdering his victims, he was simultaneously getting a university degree in administrative justice under a court-mandated order from a rape conviction, and this was the reason why he managed to avoid capture (for the murders) for so long. Related posts • Florida serial killer on death row • Serial killer gets 438 years in jail • Robert Pickton used the Bible to lure prostitutes
More About: Police , Killer , Serial Killer

The friendly voice of the Happy Face Killer
2007-12-18 08:14:00
The third part of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette series about forensic students corresponding with the Happy Face Killer , Keith Hunter Jesperson, can be found here. Audio excerpts are included from the phone conversations the students had with the serial killer. Related posts • Letters from a serial killer
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Taliban execute grandmother and her grandson
2007-12-17 16:14:00
The brave and holy warriors of Allah in action over the weekend: AFGHAN police say Taliban militants have shot dead a 60-year-old woman and her grandson, aged 7, in public after accusing them of spying for the US. Militants stopped the pair as they were walking to their home in south-central Uruzgan province, provincial police chief Juma Guld Himat said. On Friday, seven policemen were beheaded in southern Afghanistan. Source "Boy, grandmother executed by militants as US spies," Herald Sun, December 15, 2007 Related posts • Children killed in Taliban suicide bomb attack
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Letters from a serial killer
2007-12-17 16:03:00
Forensic science and law majors at Duquesne University wrote to serial killer Keith Hunter Jesperson, the Happy Face Killer who killed at least eight women in the U.S. in the 1990s, requesting that he "reveal to them the dark side of the criminal mind," and he sent two letters in return. Read about it here and here. Related posts • Inside the Mind of the BTK killer
More About: Letters , Serial Killer , Serial

Rituals of quackery
2007-12-17 15:56:00
Everyone knows that professional athletes are superstitious (and therefore irrational), but this is just sad.
More About: Rituals , Quackery

Marrying for money
2007-12-16 08:09:00
What's the asking price to marry for money these days? (If we ignore the obvious fact that pretty much all women look at the size of a man's wallet before saying yes - the same way that pretty much all men look at the size of a woman's boobs before asking...) According to a survey by Prince & Associates in Connecticut, the average price that men and women demand to marry for money is $1.5 million. Love conquers all, indeed... Fully two-thirds of women and half of the men said they were "very" or "extremely" willing to marry for money. The answers varied by age: Women in their 30s were the most likely to say they would marry for money (74%) while men in their 20s were the least likely (41%). "I'm a little shocked at the numbers," says Pamela Smock, a sociologist at the University of Michigan who has studied marriage and money. "It's kind of against the notion of love and soul mates and the main motivations to marry in our culture." Yeah, well, welcome to reality. Of course, w...
More About: Money , Marrying

Lebanese general killed in car bomb attack
2007-12-12 11:06:00
The Lebanese army has been targeted by terrorists in a car bomb attack for the first time. The attack was successful, killing a top general: Brig. Gen. Francois Hajj, head of military operations in the army command, was killed in the explosion along with several other soldiers. Hajj had been mentioned as a candidate to succeed army commander Michel Suleiman if he is elected president. ... Security officials said Hajj, who lives in the area, had left his home few minutes earlier, probably heading to the nearby Defense Ministry, when the blast detonated near his car, killing him and his bodyguard immediately. The officials said later that his driver was among those killed. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity in keeping with military rules, said the blast came from a car bomb. The blast wrecked cars and caused heavy damage in the area, which also houses foreign embassies. Two bodies were thrown about 15 yards by the force of the explosion. Troops sealed off the area as ...
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Three car bombs in southern Iraq
2007-12-12 11:03:00
In the southern city of Amarah. At least 20 people were killed, according to AFP.
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Al-Qaeda behind Algerian bombings
2007-12-12 10:53:00
The Algerian bombings were carried out by al-Qaeda 's North African branch (formerly the Salafist Group for Call and Combat). According to this source, 26 people were killed (not 45, as claimed by other sources): Al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa, in a posting on a militant Web site, called the U.N. offices "the headquarters of the international infidels' den." A U.N. official said at least 11 of its employees died. The bombs exploded 10 minutes apart around 9:30 a.m., devastating the U.N. refugee agency and other U.N. offices along a street in the upscale Hydra neighborhood, as well as Algeria's Constitutional Council, which rules on the constitutionality of laws and oversees elections. ... The targeting of U.N. offices was a new development in the 15-year war between Algeria's secular government and Islamic insurgents, who previously focused their hate on symbols of the military-backed administration and civilians. Al-Qaida's self-styled North African branch's Web posting sai...
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Kicked out missionary behind killing spree
2007-12-11 15:45:00
Another day, another shooting. Turns out Matthew Murray - the guy who attacked a church and a missionary center in Colorado, USA, and killed five people in the process - was a failed missionary who had been kicked out from the training program a few years ago (the charitable Christian way). He was shot by a security guard who now, inevitably, credits God for her actions. Obviously, God must not have liked the five people who were killed by Murray. Related posts • Gunman kills eight in Omaha shopping mall
More About: Missionary , Spree , Killing , Missi

Children hunted by evangelical pastors
2007-12-11 15:20:00
Religion at work in Nigeria, as reported by The Observer: Evangelical pastors are helping to create a terrible new campaign of violence against young Nigerians. Children and babies branded as evil are being abused, abandoned and even murdered while the preachers make money out of the fear of their parents and their communities. A video and a picture gallery is included with the article. Source Tracy McVeigh, "Children are targets of Nigerian witch hunt," The Observer, December 9, 2007 Related posts • African children tortured as witches
More About: Pastors

Witch torched in South Africa
2007-12-11 15:10:00
A 52-year-old woman in the Limpopo area of South Africa is in hospital after she was badly burnt when her house was doused with petrol and set alight by local villagers: Police spokesman Superintendent Moatshe Ngoepe said the villagers had accused the woman of practising witchcraft. He said the woman, who may not be named for security reasons, was asleep when she heard people singing outside. When she woke up to investigate, she was pelted with an assortment of objects, said Ngoepe. He said the house was doused with petrol and set alight. “The victim tried to escape, but she was too late and was badly burnt,” Ngoepe said. ... Ngoepe said the woman was one of three wives of a sangoma. The three wives live on the same premises, but in separate houses. It is not clear why villagers targeted the woman. Why doesn't the sangoma "heal" her, I wonder... Source Frank Maponya, "Woman is set alight," Sowetan, December 11, 2007 Related posts • African children tortured as witches
More About: South Africa , Torch , Witch

Robert Pickton used the Bible to lure prostitutes
2007-12-11 12:21:00
Canadian serial killer Robert Pickton is (surprise, surprise) a religious man. Letters that he wrote to a self-styled "professional pen pal to inmates" has revealed that he used Bible passages to lure Vancouver hookers to his farm, where he then killed and dismembered them. Here's an example from one of his letters (all spelling errors are Pickton's): I know I was brought into this world to be hear today to change this world of there evil ways. They even want to dis-re-guard the ten command-ments from the time that Moses in his day brought in power which still is in existence today. And now religious apologists of all sorts will fall all over themselves in their eagerness to explain how Pickton "twisted" the Bible passages he used and "misinterpreted" them. Instead of dealing with the uncomfortable subject of what exactly it was he saw in those words that made it possible for him to act in the way he did. I'm not suggesting that the Bible made him kill, only that he found somet...
More About: The Bible , Lure , Utes