Signs of the Apocalypse |
table of contents |
By Duke Heath
Suspected penis snatcher beaten to death
A 28 year old man suspected of stealing a man's penis through sorcery was recently beaten to death in the West African country of Gambia. A police spokesman told Reuters that Baba Jallow was killed by about 10 people in the town of Serekunda, nine miles from the capital Banjul. Reports of penis snatching are not uncommon in West Africa, with purported victims claiming that alleged sorcerers simply touched them to make their genitals shrink or disappear in order to extort cash in the promise of a cure. The police spokesman said many men were now afraid to shake hands, and he urged people not to believe reports of "vanishing" genitals. Belief in sorcery is widespread in West Africa. Seven alleged penis snatchers were beaten to death by angry mobs in Ghana in 1997.
Court orders man to pay ex-wife's husband pension
A German court has told a man that the pension he used to share with his ex-wife must now be shared with her widowed husband, Bernhard Wanwitz, a judge at the administrative court in the western city of Mainz, said the man withdrew an appeal to keep his entire pension when the court said the widower was entitled to a share of his late wife's divorce settlement. Under German law, when a couple divorces, the ex-spouse with the smaller pension has a right to top-up payments from the other's pension.
Surprise! Surprise!
An out-of-court settlement has been reached in the case of a North Texas man who woke up from bladder surgery only to find that doctors had amputated his penis without permission. Terms of the out-of-court settlement were not disclosed but Hurshell Ralls, 67, had been seeking over $5 million in a civil suit he filed in Wichita Falls, Texas, against the two doctors who removed his penis. They did not admit to any wrongdoing in the settlement.
Speeding Stool
Reno police pulled over a man after a slow speed pursuit. The man was driving a motorized stolen bar stool about 35 miles per hour through some of the city's busier streets. The case was treated as a car theft.
Say what? Man with ear ache gets vasectomy
A Brazilian man who went to a clinic to have an aching ear checked, ended up with a vasectomy after mistakenly believing the doctor had called his name. Valdemar Lopes de Moraes entered the vasectomy room when Aldemar Rodrigues name was called. A spokesman for the hospital stated that he was called by the full name yet he thought they had called him. The strangest thing is that he asked no questions when the doctor started preparations in an area that had so little to do with the ear. He later explained that he thought it was an ear infection that had got down to his testicles. DeMoraes, a farmer with two children, did not want to have the operation reversed.