---

Egyptian authorities intercepted a shipment of at least 190 anti-aircraft missiles in Sinai probably destined for Gaza on Saturday, Palestinian news Agency Ma'an reported.

According to the report, the Egyptian police raided several storage areas in the area and discovered the secret cache hidden in a remote region in the center of the peninsula.

In addition to the anti-aircraft missiles, rockets and other ammunition were seized, as well as a large supply of illegal drugs.

Reports also stated that authorities raided several locations in Rafah, where they found more stores of explosives and weapons.

---

---

NEW DELHI (Compass Direct News) - Nearly two years after large-scale anti-Christian violence broke out in India’s Kandhamal district, Orissa state, a team working against human trafficking on Aug. 9 rescued a 16-year-old Christian girl – one of at least 60 people sold into slavery after being displaced by the 2008 attacks.
...
“Human trafficking agents operating in the tribal belt of Orissa have targeted the Christian girls who are displaced by the Kandhamal communal violence ...” said attorney Lansinglu Rongmei, one of the rescue team members. “Roughly 60 girls are estimated missing and have been trafficked to different states.”
...
“It was only the joint efforts of the All India Christian Council [AICC], HRLN Anti-Human Trafficking and the area police that made this rescue possible,” the source said.

The rescue team took action after the minor’s mother approached the HRLN ... . Team members said they were disappointed by the reaction of police, who were initially cooperative but later “just unwilling to help,” in the words of one member.

---

---

Mr. Astor would know that American accent anywhere. He despises America and Americans, starting with their foreign policy and ending with their so-called culture. What civilized person would read an American novel or watch a movie, television show, or ...?

In a rage-filled voice, Mr. Astor tears into Mr. Brooks, concluding with, "You're an American, and they're nothing more than colonials."

Police Officer Cheever, whose conversation with Mr. Brooks was disrupted ..., says to Mr. Astor, "Sounds like you really intended to insult him."
...
Police Officer Cheever ... identifies himself as a police officer, and says that since he is off-duty, he will have to call for another officer to arrest Mr. Astor.

Mr. Astor is incredulous. "What law have I broken?"

"Here in the United Kingdom, what you just said amounts to three crimes under the Public Order Act of 1986. ...

---

---

Turkish community demands more government pressure on Sarrazin



The chairman of the Turkish Community in Germany (TGD) has called on Chancellor Angela Merkel to send a clear signal condemning anti-Muslim comments by Bundesbank official Thilo Sarrazin, according to a Saturday report.

"I ask the German government to initiate proceedings to dismiss Thilo Sarrazin from the Bundesbank board," Turkish community leader Kenan Kolat told German daily Frankfurter Rundschau on Saturday.

Kolat said the Bundesbank official's comments, which appear in Sarrazin's forthcoming book, had crossed the line. "It is the culmination of a new intellectual racism and it hurts Germany's reputation abroad," Kolat told the newspaper.

In an excerpt from his book published by daily Bild on Thursday, Sarrazin said there were "good grounds" for reservations against Muslims across Europe.

"There is no other religion with such a flowing transition to violence, dictatorship, and terrorism," he claimed, before making the equally provocative assertion that Muslim immigrants were "associated with taking advantage of social welfare state and criminality."

Kolat praised the broader government response to Sarrazin's statements, including criticisms voiced by the SPD leadership, the Green Party, the Left and integration commissioner Maria Böhmer, as well as Angela Merkel herself.

"I'm very pleased that the German chancellor spoke so clearly of defamation," he said. Kolat also thanked the Central Council of Jews in Germany for its clear condemnation of Sarrazin's comments.

Lest the Social Democrats alienate migrant voters, Kolat said he was confident that his party would take further steps to kick Sarrazin out of the SPD. "He'll go himself, or he'll be made to leave," he said. The Bundesbank official survived a previous attempt this year to revoke his party membership for previous controversial comments.

Sarrazin's book, "Deutschland schafft sich ab - Wie wir unser Land aufs Spiel setzen", or “Abolishing Germany - How we’re putting our country in jeopardy,” is scheduled for publication on Monday. Kolat encouraged a media boycott of the press conference planned to announce the book's official release.

---

---

Akwa Ibom state, Nigeria (CNN) -- Just after midnight, the pastor seized a woman's forehead with his large hand and she fell screaming and writhing on the ground. "Fire! Fire! Fire!" shouted the worshippers, raising their hands in the air.
Pastor Celestine Effiong's congregants are being delivered from what they firmly believe to be witchcraft. And in the darkness of the city and the villages beyond, similar shouts and screams echo from makeshift church to makeshift church.
"I have been delivered from witches and wizards today!" exclaimed one exhausted-looking woman.
Pastors in southeast Nigeria claim illness and poverty are caused by witches who bring terrible misfortune to those around them. And those denounced as witches must be cleansed through deliverance or cast out.
As daylight breaks, and we travel out to the rural villages it becomes apparent the most vulnerable to this stigmatization of witchcraft are children.
Do you want to help? Visit Impact your World to find out how
A crowd gathered around two brothers and their sister. Tears streamed down their mother's face as she cast out her children from the family, accusing them of causing the premature deaths of two of their siblings with black magic.
I was beaten by the prophet in the church.
--Samuel, 15, now homeless




RELATED TOPICS

• Nigeria
• Child Abuse
• Religion

"I am afraid. They are witches and they can kill me as well," she sobbed.
Taking his time to talk to the mother, Sam Ikpe-Itauma, an imposing man wearing a "Child's Rights & Rehabilitation Network" t-shirt, has come to try to rescue the three children.
"If we are not here there's a possibility of them being thrown into the river, buried alive or stabbed to death," Sam said.
He tries to persuade their mother and a crowd of villagers that the three children are not witches - but no one believes him. And so, putting the children in his white pick-up, he drives away to his orphanage and safety.
Sam runs Child's Rights & Rehabilitation Network, or CRARN -- an orphanage that supports nearly 200 children. All of them were accused of witchcraft and cast out by their families, often after being tortured. The orphanage provides security, healthcare, nutrition and counseling.
Check out the CRARN website
Godwin's story is typical. As he sat next to the quiet 5-year-old, Sam said that after Godwin's mother died, the church pastor told his family that "Godwin is responsible."
From his own investigation, questioning Godwin and talking with neighbors, Sam said that when a relative asked Godwin if he was a witch, "he said no and was beaten and made the confession that he actually killed the mother."
Sam said Godwin was locked up with his mother's corpse every night for three weeks with little food or water before a neighbor contacted Sam, who was able to rescue him.
Witches and wizards, they started getting afraid. I never gave them rest.
--Pastor Helen Ukpabio



Other children at his orphanage bear the scars of being beaten, attacked with boiling water, and cuts from machetes. But these children are the ones lucky to be alive.
"A child witch is said to be a witch when that child possessed with certain spiritual spells capable of making that child transform into cat, snake, vipers, insects, any other animal and that child is capable of wreaking havoc like killing of people, bringing diseases, misfortune into the family," Sam said.
"When a child is accused of being a witch -- that child is hated absolutely by everybody surrounding him so such children are sent out of the home... But unfortunately such children do not always live long. A lot of them, they're either killed, abandoned by the parents, tortured in the church or trafficked out of the city."
Sam doesn't believe in witchcraft and is trying to raise awareness in local communities now gripped by hysteria.
Belief in witchcraft is rooted in centuries of tradition, but it's only in the last 10 years, that it has become associated with child abuse, he said.
"It's a social crisis," he added. "Poverty propels this child witch phenomenon and poverty is a twin sister to ignorance.
"Most vulnerable children come from single parents, divorced parents, dysfunctional families."
But the orphanage has very little space for more children. Overstretched finances mean he can barely pay a staff of 16 people, as well as feed the children.
Instead, many children are left to roam the streets.
"My parents sent me out of the house -- said I'm a witch," said Samuel, a 15-year-old who has lived on the streets for five years after a local pastor blamed him for unexpected deaths in the family.
"I was beaten by the prophet in the church," he said in a quiet voice.
Samuel lives in an abandoned building with 10 other children accused of witchcraft. A local group, 'Stepping Stones Nigeria,' which is dedicated to helping street children, visits them.
"Religious leaders capitalize on the ignorance of some parents in the villages just to make some money off them," said Lucky Inyang, project coordinator for 'Stepping Stones Nigeria'.
"They can say your child is a witch and if you bring the child to the church we can deliver the child but eventually they don't deliver the children... The parents go back to the pastor and say, 'why is it you have not been able to deliver the child' and the pastor says 'Oh - this one has gone past deliverance - they've eaten too much flesh so you have to throw the child out.'"
And most pastors charge a fee for deliverance -- anywhere from $300 to $2,000.
One of the most notorious and influential pastors is Helen Ukpabio of Liberty Gospel Church. Her 1999 film, the widely distributed, "End of the Wicked" has been attacked by child rights groups for its depictions of Satan possessing children.
She had agreed to an interview but the meeting was continually postponed for two days.
But in her preaching at Liberty Gospel Church, she heralds success stories of how she has driven out demons through deliverance.
"Witches and wizards, they started getting afraid. I never gave them rest!" she shouted to a cheering congregation.
Some pastors believe education is a more powerful tool against witchcraft fears.
"One of the things that caused the parents to abandon the children is ignorance," explains another local pastor, Celestine Effiong.
The local government, however, accuses Sam Ikpe-Itauma and Lucky Inyang of using the children to run a scam.
"We insist that the name of Akwa Ibom state must not be smeared and the people of the world should not be deceived by certain NGOs who are claiming to be taking care of stigmatized children of Akwa Ibom," said Aniekan Umanah, the Information Commissioner of Nigeria's Akwa Ibom state.
"This is a ruse, they are making money for themselves."
Stories of NGOs rescuing children, say the government, are exaggerated. They argue instead, that a new Child Right's bill outlawing child stigmatization has largely ended the problem.
But despite some arrests, so far, the government acknowledges, there have been no prosecutions.
"There may be problems yes but it's been blown out of proportion and people are capitalizing, on what ordinarily may be a social problem, across the globe in painting Akwa Ibom state black -- that is the aspect we say no to. We will not allow the image of our state to be smeared."
Sam and other NGOs deny any improprieties, insist their finances are a matter of public record and plead with the government to support their cause.
"Relevant government agencies, working on security and protection of children must step up their efforts to make sure any child that is stigmatized must -- that parent, the churches, the law must be evoked to make sure such people face the law immediately, otherwise it must go on and on, on and on."
With the night comes the screams of more deliverances -- and more witches to be cast out.

---

---

VINEYARD HAVEN, Mass. – The Obama administration asked Friday that the only person convicted for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 be returned to a Scottish prison.
...
Brennan criticized what he termed the "unfortunate and inappropriate and wrong decision," and added: "We've expressed our strong conviction that Al-Begrahi should serve out the remainder - the entirety - of his sentence in a Scottish prison."
...
Similarly, he said the U.S. had "effective and productive discussions" with Libyan officials since the restoration of full diplomatic relations two years ago.

---

---

News that Russia will load nuclear fuel rods into an Iranian reactor has touched off a countdown to a point of no return, a deadline by which Israel would have to launch an attack on Iran's Bushehr reactor before it becomes effectively "immune" to any assault, says former Bush administration U.N. Ambassador John R. Bolton.

Once the fuel rods are loaded, Bolton told Fox News on Friday afternoon, "it makes it essentially immune from attack by Israel. Because once the rods are in the reactor an attack on the reactor risks spreading radiation in the air, and perhaps into the water of the Persian Gulf."

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin declared in March that Russia would start the Bushehr reactor this summer. But the announcement from a spokesman for Russia's state atomic agency to Reuters Friday sent international diplomats scrambling to head off a crisis.

The story immediately became front-page news in Israel, which has laid precise plans to carry out an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities while going along with President Obama's plans to use international sanctions and diplomatic persuasion to convince Iran's clerics not to go nuclear.

Bolton made it clear that it is widely assumed that any Israeli attack on the Bushehr reactor must take place before the reactor is loaded with fuel rods.

"If they're going to do it that's the window that they have," Bolton declared. "Otherwise as I said before, once the rods are in the reactor, if you attack the reactor you're going to open it up and radiation will escape at least into the atmosphere and possibly into the waters of the Persian Gulf.

---