Lead Story
Preemptive War
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In August ice cream truck driver Markus Miller, 29, was arrested in Enid, Oklahoma, after he wrapped up an altercation with an 18-year-old customer by allegedly pulling out his handgun and firing two shots at the woman’s feet, one of which fragmented and hit her collarbone. And in July police in Grahamstown, South Africa, were looking for a soccer referee after he ended a confrontation with a coach whose player he’d yellow-carded by pulling out a gun and shooting him dead.
As many as 400 Cambodian pilgrims a day are flocking to the northern village of Phum Trapeang Chum to be licked by a mystical cow that was born in a sacred commune, according to a July Agence France-Presse report. Word got out after the wife of the cow’s owner said she was cured of a chronic illness; other success stories followed, and now the owner is charging the equivalent of about 13 U.S. cents for four licks. But, warned the owner, Puch Pich, “the cow won’t lick people who won’t put in their money, and if he doesn’t think you believe in his powers, he won’t lick you either.”…In August two reporters from South Africa’s largest online news operation, News24, profiled Miyi Shongi’s efforts to escape a curse that has rafts of stones falling on her. She was kicked out of the village of Lombani after her family’s house was pounded by a hail of rocks. “We were there for nearly the whole night and saw stones falling from the sky like rain,” said a police spokesman who was at the scene. Shongi fled to the home of relatives in nearby Nhombelani but was forced to leave there too after a second rock storm hit. A spiritualist she consulted concluded that the problem was a spell cast by a Zimbabwean trader she owes money.
Update
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): illustration/Shawn Belschwender.
