Global Oddities

A Nigerian religious leader with 86 wives has accepted an Islamic decree ordering him to divorce all but four of them, local authorities say.
A spokesman for the emir of Bida told the BBC that Mohammadu Bello Abubakar, 84, agreed on Saturday to comply with the decree.
Last week one of Nigeria’s top Islamic bodies, the Jamatu Nasril Islam, sentenced him to death.
The sentence was lifted but he was threatened with eviction from his home.
Earlier, Mr Abubakar had challenged Islamic scholars, saying there was no punishment stated in the Koran for having more than four wives.

Source: BBC news online, August 31, 2008

A jury in the US state of Ohio has found a mother guilty of murdering her baby by microwaving her.

China Arnold, 28, was convicted Friday by a jury in Dayton, Ohio, and could even face the death penalty. According to the prosecution, China deliberated put her baby, Paris Talley, in the microwave and burnt her to death after a quarrel with her boyfriend. Investigators had found the baby’s DNA in the microwave in Arnold’s apartment.

Arnold said in her defense that she was not in her apartment when the incident took place in 2005.

Photo: Dayton Daily News

A woman beheaded after she was accused of causing a girl to spit pins and convulse was exonerated Wednesday, more than 200 years after she became the last person executed as a witch in Europe.

The decision to clear Anna Goeldi’s name came after long debate in the eastern Swiss state of Glarus, and was taken in consultation with the Protestant and Roman Catholic churches.

Several thousand people, mainly women, were executed for witchcraft between the 14th and 18th centuries in Switzerland and elsewhere in Europe. Yet Goeldi’s trial and beheading in the village of Mollis took place at a time when witch trials had largely disappeared from the continent.

Goeldi, who was executed in 1782, was a maidservant in the house of prominent burgher Johann Jakob Tschudi. Tschudi, a doctor and magistrate, allegedly had an affair with Goeldi, according to a book published last year by local journalist Walter Hauser.

Source: AP, August 27, 2008

An Italian priest who said he wanted to hold the world’s first beauty contest for nuns has decided to cancel the project, saying he was misunderstood.
Antonio Rungi said he had never intended to put sisters on the catwalk, but had wanted to erase a stereotype of them as being old and dour.
He had wanted to hold the contest online on his internet blog.
Father Rungi said he changed his mind after the local religious authorities expressed their displeasure.
“My superiors were not happy. The local bishop was not happy, but they did not understand me either,” Father Rungi told Reuters news agency from the town of Mondragone, near Naples.
“It was interpreted as more of a physical thing,” he said. “Now, no one is saying that nuns can’t be beautiful, but I was thinking about something more complete.”
He said he had intended to showcase the good works that nuns do, especially in education and health care, so as to boost interest in religious vocations.
“We have to draw more attention to the world of nuns, who are often not sufficiently appreciated by society,” he wrote in his blog.
“Nuns are – above all – women, and beauty is a gift from God,” he told Italy’s Corriere della Sera newspaper before he cancelled the project.
He had wanted nuns to send their photos to him, so that internet users could then choose the winner.
Father Rungi said the idea of the contest had been put to him by nuns themselves.

Source: BBC news online, August 26, 2008

A newborn baby abandoned outdoors in winter by her 14-year-old mother was found safe in a dog pen with a mother dog and her brood of puppies near the city of La Plata, Argentine media reported on Friday.

Farmer Fabio Anze found the naked baby girl on Thursday, being kept warm among his dog China’s puppies, La Nacion newspaper said. Anze called the police and the baby was taken to a hospital.

Egidio Melia, director of the Melchor Romero hospital, told television and newspaper reporters that the baby was just a few hours old when she was found, and was in good health although she had some bruises.

Nighttime temperatures are chilly but not freezing in the Southern Hemisphere winter in the rural area around La Plata, 40 miles south of Buenos Aires.

Police said they had located the 14-year-old girl who gave birth to the baby outdoors during the night.

It was not clear whether the mother left her baby in the dog’s pen or whether the dog found the baby outdoors and carried it in to join her puppies.

Source: Reuters, August 25, 2008

The Japanese government will have to pay damages to the parents of a sailor who hanged himself after being repeatedly insulted by his superior, in the first such court ruling involving a civil servant, media said.
The Fukuoka High Court in southern Japan ordered 3.5 million yen ($32,000) be paid to the parents of the petty officer third class, a court spokesman said, declining to give further details.
Kyodo news agency said the court recognized that the sailor’s suicide had been caused by depression, a result of stress accumulated from insults such as: “You are not qualified as a petty officer third class” and “Are you dumb?”
The sailor had been 21 when he committed suicide aboard a destroyer in 1999, it said.
A lower court had ruled in the government’s favor, saying the remarks from the sailor’s superior had fallen within the scope of training, Kyodo added.
Source: Reuters, Aug. 25, 2008

Nigeria’s Islamic authority has told the man who has 86 wives to choose only four and repent within three days or else he will be sentenced to death.
The Jamatu Nasril Islam (JNI) passed their verdict on Mohammed Bello Abubakar, 84, according to Sharia law.
This comes two weeks after the Nigerian press and the BBC reported on the case.
Talking to the media then, Mr Abubakar challenged Muslim scholars, saying there is no punishment stated in the Koran for having more than four wives.
However, Mr Abubakar advised other men not to follow his example and marry 86 women.
The former teacher and Muslim preacher lives in Niger State with his wives and at least 170 children, and says he is able to cope only with the help of God.
“A man with 10 wives would collapse and die, but my own power is given by Allah. That is why I have been able to control 86 of them,” he told the BBC.
Most Muslim scholars agree that a man is allowed to have four wives, as long as he can treat them equally.
But Mr Bello Abubakar told the BBC: “To my understanding the Koran does not place a limit and it is up to what your own power, your own endowment and ability allows.
“God did not say what the punishment should be for a man who has more than four wives, but he was specific about the punishment for fornication and adultery.”
Niger is one of the Muslim majority states to have reintroduced Sharia punishments since 2000.
Several people have been sentenced to death for adultery by Sharia courts but none of these sentences have been carried out.
Source: BBC news online. August 22, 2008.

A stillborn Israeli baby who was pronounced dead by doctors “came back to life” on Monday after spending hours in a hospital refrigerator.
The baby, weighing only 600 grams at birth, spent at least five hours inside one of the hospital’s refrigerated storage units, before her parents, who had taken her to be buried, began noticing some movement.
“We unwrapped her and felt she was moving. We didn’t believe it at first. Then she began holding my mother’s hand, and then we saw her open her mouth,” said 26-year-old Faiza Magdoub, the baby’s mother.
The baby was pronounced dead several hours earlier, after doctors at Western Galilee hospital in northern Israel were forced to abort her mother’s pregnancy because of internal bleeding. Magdoub was 23 weeks into her pregnancy.
Source: Reuters, Jerusalem. August 19, 2008

Daring armed robbers in Nigeria’s Ekiti State Tuesday raided a divisional police station, freed their detained colleagues, killed two policemen on duty and flung open the prison doors and set free detainees awaiting trial.
The incident occurred in Aramoko Ekiti, where the robbers had gone for an “operation” at the house of a prominent citizen. However, they ran out of luck as some policemen on duty confronted two of the robbers, apprehended and locked them up.
The other armed robbers however regrouped and raided the police station where their colleagues were detained and freed them. The divisional police officer later confirmed the incident, including the death of two of his officers.

Source: Nigeria Tribune newspaper, August 19, 2008

MONTERREY, Mexico (AP) — A 700-pound man once considered the world’s most obese person left his home for the first time in five months Sunday with the aid of a forklift and a platform truck.
Manuel Uribe traveled to the shore of a lake in northern Mexico without ever leaving his specially designed bed. A forklift hoisted the bed onto the truck, which then hauled him to the lake, where he snacked on fish and vegetables and joked with a local boat operator.

Looking at the boatman’s small craft, Uribe joked, “Too bad I can’t get on it — it would sink.”

Once considered the world’s fattest man when his weight hit over half a ton, more than two years of steady dieting had helped Uribe drop to about 700 pounds as of June — 550 pounds less than his former Guinness record weight of 1,235 pounds. He did not say what his current weight is.

While somewhat bothered by the summer heat, Uribe appeared to enjoy Sunday’s outing. He is still unable to walk, and his last planned outing in March was aborted after the platform carrying his bed got stuck under an overpass.

Source: AP, August 10, 2008