Global Quickies: Horrible Crimes, Horrible Punishments, and Some Lighter Links for Not Totally Ruining Your Weekend

INDIA
Authorities in northern India have arrested three men, including two police officers, suspected of gang-raping and killing two teenage sisters before hanging their bodies from a mango tree.

PAKISTAN
A pregnant woman was stoned to death by her family for marrying without their consent.

SUDAN
The Sudanese woman who was sentenced to death for apostasy was forced to give birth in prison with her legs chained, her husband has claimed.

NIGERIA
Four of the more than 200 Nigerian girls kidnapped by militants in April have escaped their captors, confirms a Nigerian Ministry of Information official.

IRAN
Iranian actress Leila Hatami has apologized for kissing the Cannes film festival president, Gilles Jacob, on the cheek, an act which angered religious authorities in Iran and saw calls for her to be publicly flogged.

THE BALKANS
Senior clerics in Serbia and Montenegro said that the devastating floods in the region were god’s punishment for drag artist Conchita Wurst winning the Eurovision song contest.

INDIA
The family and followers of one of India’s wealthiest Hindu spiritual leaders are fighting a legal battle over whether he is dead or simply in a deep state of meditation.

SIERRA LEONE
International medical aid teams will arrive in eastern Sierra Leone to try to deal with an outbreak of Ebola virus. This comes after six suspected Ebola patients were taken out of hospitals by their families.

EUROPE
The European Commission rejected the “One of Us” European Citizens Initiative asking for for a stop to funding of “research activities that destroy human embryos, including those aimed at obtaining stem cells, and research involving the use of human embryonic stem cells in subsequent steps to obtain them”

PAKISTAN
Twitter has honored five requests made by a Pakistani bureaucrat working for the country’s Telecommunications Authority to censor tweets and accounts it considered “blasphemous” and “unethical”.

MEXICO
A terrible campaign by the Mexico City government to encourage women to breastfeed featured topless, slender female celebrities with a banner covering their breasts reading “don’t turn your back on them, give them your breast”. The posters have been removed and they’re redesigning the campaign.

RUSSIA (From Mary)
How kitchens became the hot spot for dissent and culture in the Soviet Union.

Featured image: Actress Leila Hatami