Lead Story
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According to an August report in the Washington Post, women in Kenya are now openly defying a tradition they’ve long hated: the requirement that a newly widowed woman pay to have sex with the village’s “cleanser” to dispel evil spirits before she can attend her husband’s funeral or remarry. Cleansing is low-status work, and often a dullard or drunkard will end up with the job–the cleanser in the town of Gangre, an unkempt alcoholic the women call “the terrorist,” reflected, “It’s not bad for me since I get to be with the beautiful ladies….They need me.” Cleansers are thought to play a major role in the spread of HIV, since they believe condoms keep the ritual from working.
Least Competent People
At 2:20 AM on August 21 near Charlotte, North Carolina, a car traveling on the I-77 causeway across Lake Norman struck a 20-foot speedboat that had run up the highway embankment, become airborne, and landed upside down in the car’s path (the three boaters were the only injuries).
Ingrid Nicholls, a black woman, was informed by her hospital in Reading, England, that the only foot prosthesis the National Health Service could provide her was white, and that she’d have to pay for a black one herself (a few days later the NHS backpedaled and apologized). The city council in Duluth, Minnesota, tried to help a local nonprofit arts group by selling it an old National Guard armory for one dollar, but the group’s check bounced. And Canada’s foreign ministry announced that, because it’s easier to match a photo to a face if the subject wears a “neutral” expression, it would no longer issue passports that show applicants smiling.
