Magic Statistics

Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe has become a surreal land where the dictator president and his entourage zip through the streets of the capital every day in a fleet of gas-guzzling limos while the sick are carted to hospital in wheelbarrows.

Mugabe’s cavalcade can be heard approaching from three kilometres away.

First there is the screeching of the sirens of police outriders on high-powered motorcycles. They drive at break-neck speed ordering everyone to move out of the way - quickly! "The driver of every vehicle on the road on which a state motorcade is travelling shall halt his vehicle," state the regulations.

Then the first fleet of cars follows - more than a dozen of them, lights flashing - driving ahead of Mugabe's official armoured limousine, a seven-tonne Mercedes-Benz S600L Pullman, the wags call the “Mugabemobile”.

Mugabe's S600L, as powerful as a Ferrari, was custom-built in Germany at a cost of 550,000 US dollars. Its armour is able to withstand AK-47 bullets, rocket-grenades and landmines. Because it eats up about a litre of fuel per km, it has to be followed on anything but short journeys by a tanker-full of gasoline. The S600L was ordered before the European Union instituted sanctions prohibiting this sort of trade with Mugabe and his cabinet.

Behind the Mugabemobile and the tanker come another dozen vehicles, including an ambulance resembling the "Popemobile" Pope John Paul II brought to Zimbabwe on his visit in the 1980s. Then there are trucks and sports utility vehicles packed with soldiers and bristling with guns.

Top-of-the range Mercedes Benzes, numbering up to fifteen, carry the elite Presidential Guard and plainclothes agents of the much-feared Central Intelligence Organisation. Depending on the occasion, there can be anywhere between 25 and fifty vehicles in the motorcade as Uncle Bob moves around town.

Mugabe travels with his own personal ambulance.  The other three million residents of Harare have to make do with a maximum of four ambulances fit for service at any given time.

Health care has deteriorated so badly that doctors in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second-largest city, went on strike last month in protest.  Drugs are in chronic short supply; hospital patients are dying of malnutrition; and then there’s the shortage of ambulances.

But Uncle Bob allows no complaints.  It is illegal to gesture rudely as his motorcade passes.

Previous related posts:

• Archbishop Pius Ncube: Mugabe’s most defiant opponent
• Zimbabwe’s hospital Hell
• Zimbabweans keep their sense of humour

The photo below shows a “cycle lane” designated by Camden council in London.  The sign points bicyclists down Vine Hill, a dead-end street.

Someone who works near the scene said he sees about three cyclists every hour haul their bikes up the stairs.

Previous related post: Barmy bike lane

Research conducted at a Catholic university in Italy confirms that moderate consumption of alcohol has highly beneficial health effects.  Earlier investigations showed that moderate drinking tends to reduce cardiovascular disease.  The latest research goes beyond that, however, claiming that drinking in moderation reduces mortality from all causes.

The key word is moderation. The Italian research also confirms that excessive consumption of alcohol is absolutely harmful, and the risk of death for those who drink in excess does not decrease at all. On the contrary: the risk definitely increases.

"Our data - says Augusto Di Castelnuovo, lead author of the study - show that consumption of little amounts of alcohol leads to a reduction of mortality up to 18%. But after a certain number of glasses things radically change: who drinks too much not only looses [sic] this advantage, but increases his own risk of death in relation to the amount of alcohol consumed".

The study shows very important differences between men and women. Whereas men report a beneficial effect after consuming 2-4 doses maximum (a dose refers to one glass of wine or beer), women should be aware: for them, the protection guaranteed from alcohol consumption disappears just after two glasses a day.

I found the link to Eurekalert at Catholic News, which adds that the message about moderate drinking has apparently not reached a certain Church of England bishop, whose head hurt so much after a party at the Irish Embassy that he couldn’t put on his mitre the next day.

The Bishop of Southwark, Dr Tom Butler, repeated his earlier claim that he has no memory of the episode in Crucifix Lane, Southwark.

He cannot recall how he got from a Christmas party at the Irish Embassy, near Buckingham Palace, to a back street near Southwark cathedral and from there to his home, bloodied and bruised, in Tooting Bec Gardens.

Priests in his diocese want their bishop, who they say has always taken a "zero-tolerance" approach to drunkenness by the clergy, to come clean.

The latest word from the bishop is that he still cannot remember what happened after the party.

Morocco has around 1000 Christian converts from Islam, but the government refuses to recognise them or their churches.

They might have Islamic names like Mohammed or Ali, but every Sunday these Moroccan converts to Christianity go discreetly to "church" - to the ire of Islamic militants and under the suspicious eye of police.

"There are about a thousand of us in around 50 independent churches across the big cities of the kingdom," explained Abdelhalim, who coordinates these evangelical Protestant groups in Morocco.

"As we are tolerated, but not recognised (by the state) we must, for security reasons, conduct ourselves as a clandestine organisation," said the 57-year-old, who preferred to use a pseudonym.

The state sanctions official Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant churches, but only foreigners may worship in them.

Morocco also tolerates, but does not recognise, conversion to Christianity. Abdelhalim, although he has been a Christian for 16 years, is still considered a Muslim by the state.  He has no right to a Christian burial.  Neither are church marriages involving Muslim converts to Christianity recognised; to make it legal, such couples must also be married by Muslim clergy in accordance with Sharia law.

Evangelisation can be problematic.  The penal code forbids “undermining” a Muslim’s faith or encouraging conversion.  Violations are punishable by prison terms of six months to three years.

h/t: Big News Network.com - Breaking Religious News

Two new studies show that circumcised men have less than half the incidence of contracting HIV infection, compared to uncircumcised men.  The findings are so compelling that the US National Institutes of Health shut down the studies when initial results became available.

The trial in Kenya found a 53% reduction in new HIV infections in heterosexual men who were circumcised while the Ugandan study reported a drop of 48%.

Results last year from a study in 3,280 heterosexual men in South Africa, which was also stopped early, showed a 60% drop in the incidence of new infections in men who had been circumcised.

There are several reasons why circumcision may protect against HIV infection.

Specific cells in the foreskin may be potential targets for HIV infection and also the skin under the foreskin becomes less sensitive and is less likely to bleed reducing risk of infection following circumcision.
. . .
A modelling study done by international Aids experts earlier this year showed that male circumcision could avert about six million HIV infections and three million deaths in sub-Saharan Africa.

So much for the male-circumcision-is-child-abuse meme.

Competition for Borat?

Two vegetarians and animal-rights activists who call themselves “Lettuce Ladies” travelled from Britain to Kazakhstan to stand outside in freezing temperatures wearing only lettuce-leaf bikinis.  Why would they do an asinine thing like that?  They’re on a mission from PETA: to urge Kazakhs to stop eating meat.

“Whereas Borat is ridiculing the country, we're trying to come here with a positive message," Yvonne Taylor, 35, told Reuters. "We're saying that going vegetarian is the best thing people can do for their health and to stop animals suffering."

Kazakhstan's national cuisine is almost entirely meat-based. Horse sausage and boiled sheep's head are delicacies while lamb and offal are part of the staple diet.

Wearing sequined green bikinis made of plastic lettuce leaves and high heels, Taylor and colleague Lucy Groom, 27, shivered as they waved placards and posed in the biggest city Almaty at temperatures hovering just above freezing.

According to a local blogger, Kazakhs joke that they are the world’s second-biggest consumers of meat.  Who’s first?  The wolves.

Click here for more photos of the ladies’ visit, taken by tienshan.

h/t: Kazakhstan.NewEurasia.net

Christian radio station Hope FM in Kenya has received a threat in an anonymous letter.  In response, members of Nairobi Pentecostal Church (NPC) have begun a three-day fast.

NPC Bishop Boniface Adoyo called for the fast in a letter read to church members on Sunday, saying the threatening letter also mentioned other churches targeted for attack over unspecified reasons.

“We are therefore urging you to fast and pray,” Bishop Adoyo said.

On Friday (8 December), the church’s senior pastor, David Oginde, met government officials in Nairobi, who promised him that an investigation would be launched on the authorship of the letter.

Last May, the same radio station was attacked by eight gunmen after broadcasting a discussion comparing the Bible with the Quran.  In that incident, a security guard was killed, three others injured, and the building damaged by fire.

The gunmen have not yet been apprehended.

The BBC has obtained video footage shot in Ukraine that appears to support the allegation that healthy newborns were killed in order to harvest their stem cells.

The BBC has spoken to mothers from the city of Kharkiv who say they gave birth to healthy babies, only to have them taken by maternity staff.

In 2003 the authorities agreed to exhume around 30 bodies of foetuses and full-term babies from a cemetery used by maternity hospital number six.

One campaigner was allowed into the autopsy to gather video evidence. She has given that footage to the BBC and Council of Europe.

In its report, the Council describes a general culture of trafficking of children snatched at birth, and a wall of silence from hospital staff upwards over their fate.

The video shows bodies left in pieces, which is not standard post-mortem practice.

The hospital denies the allegations.

Last year it was reported that Ukraine encourages late abortions so that unborn baby tissues may be harvested for use in expensive beauty treatments in Russia.

Ukraine proudly calls itself the stem cell capital of the world.

h/t: smalldeadanimals

UPDATE (17 Dec.): Ukraine sacks official investigating allegations of stem-cell harvesting