Police on Friday arrested the head of a federal agency charged with developing Nigeria's impoverished southern oil region after allegations that the man spent millions of dollars on a witch doctor in hopes vanquishing a rival.
President Umaru Yar'Adua announced Friday that the head of the Niger Delta Development Corporation, Sam Edem, had been suspended from his job after local media reports of Edem's large expenditure on black magic. Police later said he had been arrested.
The police said they were investigating the source of the roughly $4 million Edem reportedly spent on hiring a sorcerer to hex and kill another development official.
The federal government said it was investigating how Edem, a civil servant in a country of low wages, had amassed the fortune he used to engage the sorcerer.
The government said in a statement that Edem wasn't available for comment. It added that he hasn't denied any of the charges.
Although Nigeria's 140 million people are split between Christianity and Islam, black magic is still prevalent in some rural areas.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/11/2008 00:00 ||
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Soul music pioneer Isaac Hayes -- whose 1971 "Theme from Shaft" won the Oscar and Grammys -- died Sunday in Memphis, where he lived. He was 65.
The relative discovered an unresponsive Hayes near an exercise machine in their home at midday, and Hayes was pronounced dead at 2:10 p.m. when he arrived at Baptist East Hospital in Memphis, the Shelby County Sheriff's Office tells PEOPLE. "The family had last seen him about noon," says Steve Shular, public information officer for that office. "Family members had gone to the grocery store and left him home. When the family came home around 1, his wife's cousin found him lying on the floor in the basement near a treadmill. The treadmill was running, so it is believed that he had been working out."
Although the hospital is still determining the cause of death, Shular says Hayes most likely died of natural causes. "There doesn't seem to be any foul play," says Shular. "We don't see anything suspicious about his death. There will be a further statement from the hospital about the cause of death."
Posted by: Fred ||
08/11/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
At least he died healthy....
Goodby, Chef...you'll be missed.
#6
I'm waiting for the cost effectiveness analysis to show up that tells us the point where whatever amount of time we have on this earth is consumed only by the time we exercise. 'I exercise therefore I am' doesn't quite have that catchy motivational refrain to it.
(ANSA) - Rome, August 8 - A CD of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi singing Neapolitan love songs may not come out in time for Christmas unless he takes a break from politics to focus on his musical career, his song-writing partner warned Friday.
Neapolitan folk musician Mariano Apicella said he and Berlusconi were currently working on their fourth CD together, but bemoaned the premier's work commitments. ''The disc is still up in the air. The premier told me yesterday that he's having trouble finding the time to finish it with me,'' Apicella told ANSA. ''The problem is that even when he's (at his holiday villa) in Sardinia he's always working because he receives an average of 40-50 telephone calls a day. If only he had time ,'' he added.
Apicella, who accompanies Berlusconi's croonings on guitar, said there will be 14 new songs on the new CD. ''We have to choose from around 40 songs, but they'll all be love songs linked to the Neapolitan tradition. I was also thinking about throwing some jazz in to try to make the Naples soul a bit more modern,'' he explained.
A former car park attendant, Apicella first met Berlusconi when the premier dined at a Naples restaurant where he was playing in 2001.
The relationship soon blossomed and two years later the pair released their first album, ''Meglio Una Canzone'' (Better A Song), which sold about 45,000 copies - just 5,000 short of the number needed for a Golden Disc. The two have frequently put on mini-concerts for friends and visiting heads of state at the premier's villa in Sardinia.
Apicella says the premier is an expert in Neapolitan music and a talented songwriter. Before his careers in business and politics, the media mogul sang on a cruise ship for holiday-makers in his youth.
#1
Only a piece of faggot turd like Andrew Sullivan could show any kind of sour grapes about this particular gesture of giving the obligatory victory butt slap.
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
08/11/2008 4:11 Comments ||
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#2
Actually, the player asked for a butt slap and got a tap on her lower back instead.
Check the facts before accepting anti-Bush agitprop from the likes of Sullivan.
#3
I'm not a big fan of Althouse but sometimes she's got a pretty good take. Bush hasn't done anything to get upset or angry about here no matter how bad one's BDS is. That some people are upset is, quite simply, ridiculous.
I've been very unhappy with Bush over certain issues the last few years, particularly immigration, but that's politics. I think he's personally a fine man, a good husband and a good father. I'd be proud to shake his hand and I'll be forever grateful for the dignity he managed to restore to the office of POTUS after the derisive contempt his predecessor brought it.
I hope he has a quiet, peaceful and enjoyable retirement full of honors and accolades. In years to come he's going to look better and better, especially if the U.S. elects the Democrat in 2008.
#14
Sad thing is the previous president would have had a 20 minute grope under the guise of a congratulatory pat and the media would have put a positive spin on it if they paid attention at all.
Whereas, had President Bush gotten even close to her "bathing suit area" the MSM would have (litteraly) made a Federal case out of it (as the twerp in the article did).
KATHMANDU: After a feisty French lawyer, a former Nepali attorney-general, and a legal adviser of Nepali caretaker Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala, the wife of a top Maoist leader will now defend Charles Sobhraj against the charge of murder committed more than three decades ago.
Oh.. is that what you call a psychopath and serial killer?
who has hired some of the best legal brains in Nepal to rescue him from a 20-year jail term, is expected to make a personal appearance in the republic's Supreme Court on Sunday when his innocence will be pleaded by Laxmi Devkota, the wife of Maoist lawmaker Khimlal.
Devkota has been roped in by Nepali lawyer Shakuntala Thapa, who has special ties with Sobhraj, being the mother of the 20-year-old high school student, Nihita Biswas, who created a sensation last month with the disclosure that she is engaged to Sobhraj, 44 years her senior.
Devkota is taking up cudgels on behalf of Sobhraj, who has been imprisoned in Kathmandu's Central Jail since 2003, is bound to be politicised.
A section of Nepal's media has been accusing the wily Frenchman of trying to cosy up to the Maoists, who could be heading the new government of Nepal, in a bid to derive extra mileage.
His future mother-in-law Thapa is also a Maoist supporter.
During his prison stint, Sobhraj claims he helped a Maoist member, once held incommunicado and blindfolded by the army, get medical treatment.
He also hailed the Maoist victory in the April election and offered to pay for the education of a young Nepali woman who was thrown out of her home by her father for voting for the Maoists.
Posted by: john frum ||
08/11/2008 00:00 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
