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“Bishop” Anthony Owens, 35, of Duluth, Ga., out of prison less than two years following a bigamy sentence, was arrested in April on suspicion of agreeing to marry four more women. Owens said that maybe he “misunderstood” Mormon teachings. Kylie Wilson, 28, was convicted in June in Brisbane, Australia, of stabbing her friend Daniel Blair […]

Probation-Happy Judges: Judge Angelo DiCamillo of Camden, N.J., thought probation (and $750 restitution) was enough for six teenagers in June, even though they had wrecked a family’s home during a party ($18,000 damages), urinated and defecated on the furniture and (except for one boy) declined to apologize. Also in June, Judge Harold Kahn of San […]

Violent demonstrations in northwestern India in May left at least 18 dead, as members of the lower Gujjar caste demanded that the government put them into an even lower class, at the bottom of the social ladder (so that they would be eligible for more government benefits). The Gujjars say that being one of the […]

Egypt’s Muslims are growing weary of the number of specific religious edicts (“fatwas”) issued by the country’s clerics, including two recent, highly controversial ones, according to a June New York Times dispatch from Cairo. Ezzat Atiya, a lecturer at the prestigious al-Azhar Islamic University, had declared that men can be permitted to see unrelated women […]

Hitachi’s “brain machine interface,” which it showed an Associated Press reporter in June, might soon allow a user to don a hat and turn an appliance on or off by merely thinking about doing so. (Until now, such thought-controlled instructions could only be done by people with devices implanted.) Scientists at Italy’s La Sapienza University […]