Cash for corpses

Cash-for-corpses murders probed

Chinese police have arrested members of a gang suspected of murdering more than 100 disabled or elderly people and selling their corpses in a bizarre scheme to avoid cremations, a newspaper said on Tuesday.

Burials have traditionally been seen as the most respectful way to handle the dead in China, but were discouraged after the Communists came to power in 1949 to conserve farmland and eradicate superstition.

The bodies were bought by wealthy families and sent for cremation in lieu of deceased relatives who were then secretly buried, the South China Morning Post reported.

The killers would trail their victims, usually mentally disabled or elderly people, "drag them into vehicles in remote areas and either strangle or poison them", the newspaper said.

Pope's organ card an 'act of love'

He signed up as an organ donor when he was a cardinal.

Pope Benedict carries organ donor card as "an act of love'.

Pope Benedict XVI is a card-carrying organ donor, it emerged today. The disclosure that the pontiff is prepared to donate organs for transplants after his death follows a front page article in the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, calling into question the concept of brain death as the end of life rather than cardio-circulatory arrest.
__

The modern Catechism of the Catholic Church
"Donation of organs after death is a noble and meritorious act and is to be encouraged as a manifestation of generous solidarity. It is not morally acceptable if the donor or those who legitimately speak for him have not given their explicit consent."

The Voice Silenced

We all know and will all miss Don LaFonaine: The Voice

AP Obit
- The omnipresent baritone and gravely bass undertones of Don LaFontaine's distinctive voice had the unique ability to seamlessly embellish big-screen kisses, slice through over-the-top explosions, perfectly pair with robust musical scores, glide alongside car chases and effortlessly co-star with any A-list talent in Hollywood.

''He was the originator of the modern voiceover for movie trailers,'' said voiceover artist Jim Tasker. ''He is the standard for which all other voiceovers for movie trailers are measured. For the past 30 years, his voice has been the gauge for all of us in the industry.'
--
'When you die, the voice you hear in heaven is not Don's. It's God trying to sound like Don.''

Washington Post a clever appreciation by Hank Stuever,  In a World of Don LaFontaine.

In a world where marketing is far more important than content . . . came one man . . . with a Voice....

In a world that believed deeply in the potency of the words Coming Soon. . .

In a world where eyewitnesses describe real things, real events as being "like, in a movie" .

In a world suddenly without Don LaFontaine, who died Monday at 68 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, of lung failure, brought on by undetermined causes . . . (Cedars-Sinai being a world where the famous newly dead go on to other coming attractions).

Search for Lost Coffins

In Louisiana, Search Goes On for Lost Coffins.

Displacements of more than 1,500 bodies occurred in Louisiana from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Some were also displaced in Texas and Mississippi. Hundreds remain unidentified, officials say. Louisiana estimates the cost of retrieving lost coffins will be about $4 million.

Mr. Mudge, a retired councilman and former deputy, inherited recovery duty in his parish three days after Katrina. He was traveling through flood waters by airboat when he noticed coffins floating in the streets. "The storm broke apart everything," Mr. Mudge says. "Everything came out."

Over the last three years, his wife, Barbara, a 62-year-old parish government secretary, has compiled meticulous notes of the clues in each find. They quickly discovered many people are buried without any notation in the coffins of who they were.
--

Some coffins were sent to a temporary morgue an hour away, where experts looked for medical identification bracelets, name tags, dental records and performed X-rays. They kept records of mementos placed with the bodies, such as Budweiser and banana-liquor bottles, fishing poles, letters, baseball caps, jewelry and in one case an Aretha Franklin cassette tape.

In February 2006, all the bodies were sent back to Plaquemines Parish with reports of the findings in each coffin. Mrs. Mudge went to work. She conducted dozens of interviews with people who had lost relatives, as well as funeral-home directors and grave diggers -- compiling descriptions and combing through reports for clues.

Mr. Mudge retrieved two identical coffins adorned with a pink rose design, one on top of a levee and another in the woods. The local mortician opened the first coffin, and spotted a hot pink bingo marker in the exact spot described by Ms. St. Ann. "They asked me if I wanted to keep it," Ms. St. Ann says. "I told them to leave that marker with her just in case something like this happens again." Her brother's body hasn't been found.

From Lixi, a heart-breaking photo

The poignant moment rescue workers found the bodies of a mother protecting her child beneath the rubble of an earthquake.

"I don't believe in God, but I miss Him."

Michael Dirda on 'Nothing to be Frightened Of'

"Nothing to Be Frightened Of" (Julian Barnes)

Nothing to Be Frightened Of offers an extended meditation on human mortality, but one that is neither clinical nor falsely consoling.
--
"For me, death is the one appalling fact which defines life; unless you are constantly aware of it, you cannot begin to understand what life is about; unless you know and feel that the days of wine and roses are limited, that the wine will madeirize and the roses turn brown in their stinking water before all are thrown out for ever -- including the jug -- there is no context to such pleasures and interests as come your way on the road to the grave. But then I would say that, wouldn't I?"
--
While Julian examines various attitudes toward death and admits to envying those with religious faith, he himself is agnostic. As he says, "I don't believe in God, but I miss Him." ("Soppy," says his atheist brother.) He then goes on to discuss what the French call "le réveil mortel" -- the wake-up call to the reality of death, that recognition of personal mortality that marks the end of childhood. He also reviews what Montaigne called "the death of youth, which often takes place unnoticed. . .
--

While some people on their deathbeds dutifully rage against the dying of the light, Barnes prefers those who simply remain true to themselves, who depart this life with, say, a gesture of quiet courtliness: "A few hours before dying in a Naples hospital," the Flaubert scholar Francis Steegmuller "said (presumably in Italian) to a male nurse who was cranking up his bed, 'You have beautiful hands.' " Barnes calls this "a last, admirable catching at a moment of pleasure in observing the world, even as you are leaving it." Similarly, the poet and classicist "A.E. Housman's last words were to the doctor giving him a final -- and perhaps knowingly sufficient -- morphine injection: 'Beautifully done.' "

Meals Served to a Dead King

Via Tea at Trianon comes the Strange Custom of Dining with the Dead

François I died of illness on March 31, 1547, but that didn't prevent his courtiers from dining with him ever again. His meals were served to his effigy, as if he were still alive, for eleven days as part of an elaborate funeral ceremony rife with symbolic meaning.
--

François was not buried until May 22, as his successor, Henri II, wanted to combine his father's funeral with those of the king's two sons who had predeceased him and whose bodies had to be transported to Paris. This gap allowed for an elaborate ceremony to unfold.
---
Along the walls were benches for nobles and clerics, who attended the religious services and meals served to the effigy. These were the strangest parts of the ceremonial. For eleven days the king's meals were served as if he were still alive. His table was laid and the courses brought in and tasted. The napkin, used to wipe his hands, was presented by the steward to the most eminent person in attendance, and wine was served twice during each meal. At the end, grace was said by a cardinal.

No one left to toll the bells

Bell-ringer falls to his death after church wedding.   

A bell-ringer plunged 30ft to his death seconds after a bride and groom tied the knot in a romantic church wedding ceremony.

The bride and groom, and their assembled guests were walking out of the church when 80-year-old bell-ringer Jack Sturgeon fell 30ft down a church tower, moments after ringing the bells for the happy occasion.

His devastated wife Beryl, 81, was in church at the time.
--

After ringing the bells, he is believed to have climbed a second set of stairs to inspect the clock when he suddenly fell at St Mary's Church in Mildenhall, Suffolk, about 2.15pm on Saturday.

Mr Sturgeon, a bell-ringer of 40 years, suffered a suspected heart attack, however it is still unclear if it caused him to slip off the stairs, or whether the fall triggered the condition.
--

Reverend Hodges said Mr Sturgeon was a '100 per cent reliable' bell-ringer.

'All we can say is that at least he died doing what he loved best in our church, a place he loved.'

She said the newlyweds, Mr Keane and Miss Brown, had also been shattered by the tragedy.

'They're local people and they've been left devastated. 'They'll never ever forget what happened on what should have been the happiest day of their lives.'

Christians Burnt Alive in India; A Crucifixion Parade

Swami Laxmananda  Saraswat was a senior leader in the VHP, a movement  organized in 1964 to organize and preserve the Hindu world from Communism, Islam and Christianity.  In 1992 they demolished the Babri Mosque.  Muslim mobs rioted and over 900 people were killed across the country.  In 2002 there were more riots and some 2000 were killed in what came to be called the  Gujarat violence.  Mobs attacked Christians in December 2007, burning shops and churches forcing 700 Indian Christians to flee.

On August 23, the Swami and four associates were found murdered in their monastery.  The police suspected the Communists Maoists who later took responsibility for the murder.

In a horrifying display of week-long violence in Orissa,  believing the Christians were to blame mobs went on a horrifying rampage of murder and arson, a "religious cleansing" as it were.

26 people killed in week-long violence in Orissa although the real death toll may be as close to 100 as more butchered bodies are found. Some 4000 Christian homes, churches and convents were burned by Hindu fanatics.    One twenty-year old Christian girl Rajini escaped from the flames only to be tied up and thrown back in the fire.

One pregnant woman who refused to denounce her faith in Christ was cut into pieces before her husband and other Christians.

A Catholic nun was burnt alive and another nun was gang-raped by Hindu fundamentalists.

One priest who escaped describes his ordeal
They had poured kerosene on my head, and one held a matchbox in his hands to light the fire. But thanks to divine providence, in the end, they did not do that. Otherwise, I would not have been there to tell this horror,"
--
"They vandalized everything and set it on fire. It has been reduced to ashes," he added.
--

"They began our crucifixion parade," said Father Chellen. The gang of about 50 armed Hindus "beat us up and led us like culprits along the road" to the burned pastoral center.

"There they tore my shirt and started pulling off the clothes of the nun. When I protested, they beat me hard with iron rods. Later, they took the sister inside (and) raped her while they went on kicking and teasing me, forcing (me) to say vulgar words," said the priest who has cuts, bruises and swollen tissue all over his body and stitches on his face.

"Later both of us, half-naked, were taken to the street, and they ordered me to have sex with the nun in public, saying nuns and priests do it. As I refused, they went on beating me and dragged us to the nearby government office. Sadly, a dozen policemen were watching all this," he said.

Angry at his plea to the police for help, the mob beat the bleeding priest again.

Today, there is an almost complete collapse of the police force and the Orissa violence forces  60,000 Christians to take refuge in the forests.

The blog Orissa Burning is keeping witness to the ongoing torture and murder of Christians in Orissa and doing a fine job of keeping us informed.

What is at the bottom of all this outrage against Christians? An Indian archbishop says the Christians' offense is fighting against slavery -
the work that Christians in Orissa are carrying out on behalf of the tribals and the Dalits, at the very bottom of the caste system:

"Before, they were like slaves. Now, some of them study in our schools, start businesses in the villages, demand their rights. And those who – even in the India of the economic boom – want to keep intact the old division into castes are afraid that they will gain too much power. Orissa today is a laboratory. What is at stake is the future of millions of Dalits and tribals living all over the country."

Pre-mature obituaries

No news organization ever wants to do this.  It was a monumental embarrassment when Reuters  published the obituary of Steve Jobs who is still quite alive.

The stock obituary was published "momentarily" after a routine update by a reporter, and was "immediately deleted", Bloomberg said.

Jobs was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2003, but there is no suggestion that the news wire has recent news on his health. Most media organisations regularly update their pre-prepared obituaries of newsworthy figures.

The obituary contained blank spaces for Jobs’s age and cause of death to be inserted.

The opening sentence described Jobs as the man who “helped make personal computers as easy to use as telephones, changed the way animated films are made, persuaded consumers to tune into digital music and refashioned the mobile phone.”

As Mark Twain remarked when something similar happened to him, "The rumors of my death are greatly exaggerated.?

'100 Things to Do Before You Die' Author Dead at 47

Dave Freeman, ad executive who co-wrote "100 Things to Do Before You Die," died at 47 after falling and hitting his head at home in Venice.

Published in 1999, "100 Things" was one of the first contemporary books to create a travel agenda based on 100 sites and then market it with a title that reminded mortal readers that time was limited.

The "100 Things" approach later swept the publishing industry, said Neil Teplica, who wrote the book with Freeman.

The title meant "you should live every day like it would be your last, and there's not that many people who do," Teplica told The Times. "It's a credit to Dave -- he didn't have enough days, but he lived them like he should have."

From the Associated Press

This life is a short journey,” the book says. “How can you make sure you fill it with the most fun and that you visit all the coolest places on earth before you pack those bags for the very last time?”

Mr. Freeman’s relatives said that he had visited about half the places on his list, and that either he or Mr. Teplica had been to nearly all of them.

Michael C. Howard is not dead

What a headline!

Mark Twain once said, “Rumors of my demise of been greatly exaggerated,” but local attorney Michael C. Howard is living these words. And the emphasis must be placed on “living.”

A rumor that Howard died has been circulating throughout Columbia County — and beyond — for the past few days.
--

The Howard family was celebrating one of their three son’s 9th birthday with a party Saturday afternoon, so there were a lot of cars in the driveway, which certainly didn’t help matters.

“People thought it was an impromptu wake,” Howard said and stopped by to offer condolences to his family.

It’s one thing to get the phone calls, but “it’s a little freaky when they show up,” he said. When one person stopped by during the party and asked what they can do to help, he was told he could help by “flipping some burgers.”

James Hoyt, Liberator of Buchenwald, R.I. P.

He was one of the four soldiers first sent into the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany, but when he returned to Iowa, he rarely spoke of it. 

Even 63 years after the liberation, Hoyt suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and attended a weekly group therapy session at a Veterans Affairs facility.

"Seeing these things, it changes you. I was a kid," he said. "Des Moines had been the furthest I'd ever been from home. I still have horrific dreams. Usually someone needs help and I can't help them. I'm in a situation where I'm trapped and I can't get out."

James Hoyt , mail carrier, spelling bee champion and liberator of Buchenwald died at 83.

At Hoyt's graveside Thursday, a 12-veteran color guard gave him a traditional 21-gun salute. Hoyt's casket was draped with the American flag, and that flag was folded, as is tradition, 12 times.

Retired Gen. Robert Sentman gave the flag to Doris Hoyt. Sentman had earlier told mourners about the Buchenwald liberation.



"When the prisoners saw Jim, they picked him up and threw him in the air, that's how happy they were after seeing such horrors. Prisoners had been hung from hooks to die. He saw a lampshade made from a prisoner's tattoo. Jim carried those horrors with him forever. He never got what he had seen out of his mind. If you ever wondered about Jim, think about what he saw."

"When you were discharged, no one really gave a hoot about you. It was difficult for a compassionate person like Jim to forget what he saw. He was a hero.

Solzhenitsyn's Great Legacy

I was away and offline when Alexander Solzhenitsyn died. which is the only reason why I didn't write any posts about him.

Some are still reflecting on his great legacy.  Theodore Dalrymple writes in Seer of Evil that Solzhenitsyn rendered illusion not just stupid, but wicked.

Solzhenitsyn’s achievement was to render such illusion about the Soviet Union impossible, even for its most die-hard defenders: he made illusion not merely stupid but wicked. With a mixture of literary talent, iron integrity, bravery, and determination of a kind very rarely encountered, he made it impossible to deny the world-historical scale of the Soviet evil.  After Solzhenitsyn, not to recognize Soviet Communism for what it was and what it had always been was to join those who denied that the earth was round or who believed in abduction by aliens.
--

Still, a man of Solzhenitsyn’s enormous stature deserves to be remembered for his greatest achievements. His efforts to memorize, and memorialize, what he had experienced in the harshest circumstances are sufficient on their own to render the rest of us humble. No writer of the second half of the twentieth century has had so profound an effect on history, and that effect was overwhelmingly beneficial. And when he reminded us that the line dividing good from evil passes through every human heart, he said something that no human being should ever forget.

The Business of Death

Who gets final say over a funeral - the funeral director or a parish priest?

The blog getreligion reports in The Business of Death on a story in the Louisville Courier-Journal

A Nelson County funeral home director is suing the Archdiocese of Louisville and a Roman Catholic priest, whom he accuses of undercutting his business by implementing new rules on conducting funerals at his parish.

The Rev. Jeffrey Leger, pastor of St. Catherine Church in New Haven, put a new policy into effect last month, stipulating that funeral directors can no longer solely plan funerals. Instead, they must now plan them with Leger, who has final say.

Says Mollie, author of the blog post

It’s the dirty little secret of church life that some funeral directors are responsible for exerting a great deal of power over funeral services. Sometimes that’s a net blessing for the parties involved. Grieving family members don’t always make the best decisions about funerals. But for churches, such as mine, that approach funerals as worship services in which the Word of God is proclaimed in order to comfort those who grieve with hope in the resurrected Christ — meddling from non-members can wreak havoc. I say all this as a descendant of successful funeral home directors on one side of the family and the daughter of a pastor on the other side of the family. I really like the way Smith just laid the facts out in order to quickly get into the meat of the story:

Corpse Kept Standing for Three Days

Puerto Rico corpse kept upright for 3-day wake. 

A Puerto Rican man has been granted his wish to remain standing — even in death.

A funeral home used a special embalming treatment to keep the corpse of 24-year-old Angel Pantoja Medina standing upright for his three-day wake.

Dressed in a Yankees baseball cap and sunglasses, Pantoja was mourned by relatives while propped upright in his mother's living room.

His brother Carlos told the El Nuevo Dia newspaper the victim had long said he wanted to be upright for his own wake: "He wanted to be happy, standing."

The owner of the Marin Funeral Home, Damaris Marin, told The Associated Press the mother asked him to fulfill her dead son's last wish.

Pantoja was found dead Friday underneath a bridge in San Juan and buried Monday. Police are investigating.

via Jammie Wearing Fool

He Burnt his Daughter Alive for Changing Religion

Burnt Alive for Changing Religion 

The sentence could not be appealed: guilty for converting to Christianity, a young Saudi woman was set alight by her father, who first had cut her tongue.

Not an ordinary father, but a member of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Against Vice [the Muttawa], a sort of police watching over the moral behaviour of the citizens of Saudi Arabia and the full compliance with the rules of the rigid Wahabi doctrine, by using whiplashes on the legs for too high heels and arresting men and women not linked by marriage or family bonds for meetings in restaurants.

To the injury of the conversion, the woman had added also the insult of the written word, by writing articles with Christian-religious content on blogs and regional websites. The brutal news reported by the United Arab Emirates (UAE)’s daily Gulf News reflects the reality of Saudi Arabia, a conservative and intransigent country, and throws ice-cold water on the image of an oil kingdom which says to be ready to open up partially to other religions, an image painted by the recent gestures of the king Abdallah Bin Abdelaziz.

May this unknown girl, an unwilling martyr, rest in peace.

Catholic Priest Martyred in India

Carmelite priest massacred in Andhar Pradesh

“Father Thomas is a martyr: he sacrificed his life for the poor and marginalised.  But he did not die in vain, because his body and his blood enrich the Church in India, particularly the Church in Andhra Pradesh”. Those are the words of Msgr. Marampudi Joji, archbishop of Hyderabad and secretary of the bishops’ conference of Andhra Pradesh (a state in South East India), commenting the barbarous killing of the Carmelite priest Thomas Pandippallyil, 38, assassinated on the night of August 16th in Mosalikunta, on the road between Lingampet and Yellareddy, 90 km from the regional capital.

On the night of August 16th his body was found on the roadside by a group of people, not far from the village of Balampilly; the body of the Carmelite of Mary Immaculate carried wounds to the face while the hands and legs had been crushed and the eyes gouged out.  His motorbike was found one kilometre on from the body.  According to witnesses, Saturday afternoon Fr. Thomas celebrated mass in Burgida, before setting out for another village in the district where he was to have celebrated Sunday mass. The last people to have seen him alive were religious sisters from Lingapetta convent, where the priest had stopped for supper before continuing his journey.

The archbishop forcefully denied accusations of proselytism and forced conversion and pointed out that there were only five Catholic families in the parish.
--
“Priests and nuns – continues the archbishop of Hyderabad – have for decades been at the service of the least fortunate in India, and this makes them targets of forces of evil who do not want the marginalized and impoverished to become empowered”.
--

Father Thomas Pandippallyil  was ordained a priest in 2002. He was the rector for the Chanda mission province of the CMI, and also worked as hospital administrator, school manager and mission centre director.

Gorilla Grief

Eleven-year-old gorilla Gana was holding her three-month-old baby in her arms on Saturday in her compound at the zoo in Munster, northern Germany, when it suddenly died.
Initially puzzled, Gana stared at the body, bewildered by its lifelessness.

For hours the distraught mother gently shook and stroked the child, vainly seeking to restore movement to his lolling head and limp arms. Visitors to the zoo openly wept as they witnessed her actions.

Hours passed, during which Gana continually prodded and caressed the dead child, to no effect.

More Miss Marple than 007: The True Face of British Espionage.

Toxic Photo Soup

A recipe for Toxic Photo Soup: Layer 1,000 photos in a large, watertight plastic storage tub. Place high on basement shelving unit. Fail to notice small, leaky basement window nearby. Marinate, unattended, three to four years. Open and serve.

Yield: 1,000 blank sheets of sopping photo paper and four gallons of black, stinky, toxic rainwater-chemical soup.

Yes, it's time to digitize your photos.  David Pogue has advice on various services to scan your photos in Your Photos, Off the Shelf at Last.

Removing Memories

I Was There.  Just Ask Photoshop

REMOVING her ex-husband from more than a decade of memories may take a lifetime for Laura Horn, a police emergency dispatcher in Rochester. But removing him from a dozen years of vacation photographs took only hours, with some deft mouse work from a willing friend who was proficient in Photoshop, the popular digital-image editing program.

--
In an age of digital manipulation, many people believe that snapshots and family photos need no longer stand as a definitive record of what was, but instead, of what they wish it was.
--
“What we’re doing,” Mr. Johnson said, “is fulfilling the wish that all of us have to make reality to our liking.”
--
Alan D. Entin, a clinical psychologist in Richmond, Va., uses patients’ family photographs as raw material to inspire discussion and analysis of their roles and relationships within their family.

“They’re a record,” he said. “They have existed over time and space. They are important documents.”

To alter them is to invite self-deception, he said. “The value to accepting a photograph of yourself as you are is that you’re accepting the reality of who you are, and how you look, and accepting yourself that way, warts and all. I think the pictures you hate say as much about you as pictures you love.”

"We Are Animals"

To see how low Wrangler has gone with a new ad campaign, "We Are Animals", you have to click over to Wizbang to see corpses being used to sell jeans.

Zoo bears

If you're drunk, don't go to the zoo to take photos of the bears

Man torn apart by zoo bears

THREE bears at a Ukrainian zoo tore a man "limb from limb" after he fell into their enclosure, local media reports.

The 22-year-old man was drunk and trying to take close-up shots of the Siberian Brown bears at Mykolaev city zoo when he lost his footing, witnesses said, acording to Channel 5 television.

The three bears charged the man immediately, tearing him "limb from limb" as he tried to escape, according to the station, quoted by the Deutsche Presse-Agentur news agency.

The man was dead before keepers could separate the animals from their victim.

Deadly Leak

A TOURIST in desperate need of a toilet break at a train station was killed when he urinated on an electrified railway track which was carrying 750 volts.

The victim was electrocuted after he crept into a recess to relieve himself. It is thought his urine splashed on the line and he died instantly when the charge leaped up at him.

Deadly leak on railway line

Days with My Father

This photographic journal of an artist's last days with his father is both beautiful and moving, if a bit bewildering in its navigation.

Philip Toledano's Days with My Father,

Thieves in cemeteries

Sculptures stolen from cemeteries

Thieves have looted several sculptures, including the work of a famed South End artist, from the Forest Hills Cemetery, possibly to sell as scrap metal, in a sign that the theft of bronze and copper has spread to the serenity of cemeteries.

The work of Kahlil Gibran, "Seated Ceres," and two sculptures by other artists were taken over the past week from the Contemporary Sculpture Path, a nationally renowned walking trail of more than 30 works, cemetery officials said.
--
Milley, who is also president of the Massachusetts Cemetery Association, said cemeteries throughout the state have reported thefts of copper or bronze materials, but he has never heard of renowned artwork being taken.

Miller said that the Forest Hills Cemetery was unique in that it risked displaying artwork that was fitting for a museum. She said the cemetery will have to decide whether to keep bronze as part of the display.

"One of the wonderful things about this environment was that people normally treated it with respect because it is a cemetery," she said. "It just seems particularly terrible that thieves would violate that space and destroy something that has much larger value."

Desert Burial in Green Sahara

The National Geographic announced the discovery of an ancient cemetery in the once-green Sahara

A tiny woman and two children were laid to rest on a bed of flowers 5,000 years ago in what is now the barren Sahara Desert.

The slender arms of the youngsters were still extended to the woman in perpetual embrace when researchers discovered their skeletons in a remarkable cemetery that is providing clues to two civilizations who lived there, a thousand years apart, when the region was moist and green.

Paul Sereno of the University of Chicago and colleagues were searching for the remains of dinosaurs in the African country of Niger when they came across the startling find, detailed at a news conference Thursday at the National Geographic Society.

"Part of discovery is finding things that you least expect," he said. "When you come across something like that in the middle of the desert it sends a tingle down your spine."

Some 200 graves of humans were found during fieldwork at the site in 2005 and 2006, as well as remains of animals, large fish and crocodiles.

Plastic Flowers Too Dangerous

Even though my personal preference is for real flowers and long-living plants, this is ridiculous.

Plastic flowers banned from cemetery for posing a 'health and safety risk'

'We also have heath-and-safety reasons to consider: if the flowers get caught up in the lawnmower the bits of plastic flying around could be very dangerous.'

In June Croydon Council banned plastic flowers from an elderly accommodation block because they were also deemed to be a health-and-safety risk.

Meanwhile in Macedonia

Michael Totten visits Macedonia and is shocked to see
A huge number of people in Tetovo, though, looked like they had been airlifted in from the Middle East,
--
It seems the Wahhabis have successfully transformed this portion of Macedonia into what former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky calls a fear society.
--
“How long have you had problems with the Wahhabis here?” I said.

“Serious trouble started three years ago when they broke gravestones,” he said. “They didn’t respect our saints. They also broke pictures of Imam Ali on the walls, and of the world head of the Bektashis. They cut the pictures with knives. They think we are too close to Christianity, in part because of the pictures and candles.” The Wahhabis hate candles. “Then the Sunnis came in and occupied the tekke. They said This is Muslim territory.”

All Bektashis believe in the same graves. We keep them and pray to them. We believe that if we damage a grave God will punish us, so we are very afraid to do this, we would never do this. We keep the saint graves. The Muslims know this, they are trying to provoke us and claim that we have done it to ourselves. But no, really they did it. Plus, I see these Wahhabis around. Usually at night the Wahhabis are coming, sometimes in trousers, sometimes in their clothes, sometimes with the things on their heads and with beards.”