Global Quickies: Blackmail, abortions, and enemies of god
SAUDI ARABIA
– Staff at a Riyadh university barred male paramedics from entering a women’s-only campus to assist a student who had suffered a heart attack and later died.
– The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice is monitoring Twitter accounts to identify and track sorcerers and witches. (From Criticaldragon1177)
SPAIN
– The horribly restrictive abortion law being proposed by the ruling party keeps advancing. The new law would prohibit abortion even in the case of fetal abnormality, except in the case of rape or serious risk to the health of the mother. (from Mary)
– Six people working as psychics and tarot readers in a psychic hotline were arrested for blackmailing past callers by threatening to release the recordings made of their conversations. Some of the conversations included requests of black magic to be performed on lovers or enemies.
NIGERIA
Since Nigeria’s president, Goodluck Jonathan, signed a harsh law criminalizing homosexuality throughout the country last month, arrests of gay people have multiplied and advocates have been forced to go underground.
EGYPT
A short but interesting report on the struggle of atheist to be seen as a legitimate part of the Egyptian community.
IRAN
Poet Hashem Shaabani, who had been accused of being an “enemy of God” and a threat to security, was executed by hanging.
PAKISTAN
A British man of Pakistani origin who had been treated for paranoid schizophrenia has been sentenced to death in Pakistan for claiming to be the Prophet Mohammed.
ISRAEL
Utra-Orthodox residents of Jerusalem’s Nahlaot neighborhood protested to the municipality about the shooting of a film directed by Natalie Portman in their neighborhood. They claim the scenes being filmed should have been examined first to make sure they don’t offend anybody’s sensitivities.