QUIRKY WORLD... Witch doctors preferable to court according to judge
A frustrated chief justice has told Kenyans that even witch doctors could help them resolve their disputes without taking each other to the overburdened courts.
Willy Mutunga, a respected lawyer, was appointed in 2011 to reform a judiciary widely seen as in the pay of the political elite and to cut red tape, at a time when many Kenyans had lost confidence in the courts.
Opening a new court building in Kiambu county near Nairobi, Mutunga said he was concerned that the growing demand for court services was adding to a backlog of thousands of lawsuits.
He said people should stop saying “I’ll see you in court“, and entering a long and costly process, when they could first seek help from churches, mosques, elders or neighbours.
“Even in Kutui, where I come from, I have told people they can go to the witchdoctors to solve issues,” he said, to laughter from people at the ceremony.
The remarks prompted a flurry of bemused or irritated messages to television stations and tweets and, even if meant light-heartedly, are likely to raise eyebrows in a largely conservative and religious nation.
Mutunga has won praise for his reforms of the court system, but critics say he needs to do more to combat perceptions of corruption, make the legal system more accessible to those who are less well-off, and tackle the backlog of cases. Many suspects have to wait for years in police custody for their cases to be heard.
Many Kenyans also complain of having to bribe court officials to release documents that are otherwise declared “lost”.
Mutunga last year chaired the Supreme Court panel that upheld Uhuru Kenyatta’s victory in the presidential election, dismissing a petition by his rival Raila Odinga.
A woman who as a baby was abandoned in the bathroom of a fast-food restaurant says she has found her birth mother after an appeal on Facebook.
Katheryn Deprill, 27, who was known as the Burger King Baby, said she met her biological mother for the first time in a lawyer’s office. She added that she felt “pure joy” and it was like “looking in a mirror”.
Ms Deprill began her quest on March 2 by posting a photo on Facebook. It showed her holding a sign saying, “Looking for my birth mother . . . She abandoned me in the Burger King bathroom only hours old, Allentown PA. Please help me find her by sharing my post.”
After a social media plea goes viral, the "Burger King Baby" finds her birth mother: http://t.co/NEECkTkjqZ pic.twitter.com/NfhQz1Dixb
— ABC News (@ABC) March 26, 2014
A man placed on a credit blacklist after a row over payments for a laptop computer has won a 16-year court fight.
Richard Durkin bought the laptop at a PC World store in Aberdeen in 1998 and signed a credit agreement with lender HFC Bank for about £1,500, Supreme Court justices heard. He returned the computer the next day because it did not have an internal modem, and asked for the credit agreement to be cancelled.
HFC said he had to keep making payments and after he refused the bank issued a default notice. It told credit reference agencies he had defaulted and his name remained on a credit register for several years, justices heard.
Mr Durkin took legal action, arguing that he had “validly rescinded” the credit agreement and the Supreme Court ruled his favour.
Hasbro knows that Monopoly fans play with their own rules, from negotiating to co-own properties to collecting a pile of cash if you land on Free Parking.
So it is letting Facebook fans dictate the house rules in future editions of the game. Until April 3, Facebook fans can debate 10 rules.
The top rules will make it into a House Rules Edition that will be available in the US in the autumn. They will also be in the classic Monopoly’s game guide in 2015, although officially the rules will not change.
A judge has sentenced a man to two years of supervised probation after he admitted conspiring to smuggle fossils from China into the United States.
Judge Scott Skavdahl also ordered Rick Rolater, of Colorado, to pay a $25,000 dollar (€18,122) fine.
Rolater had sold fossils through two galleries – one in Wyoming and one in Colorado. He agreed to forfeit fossils to the government, including a Tyrannosaurus skull that authorities say is likely to be returned to Mongolia.
The corpse of a 66-year-old German woman who died more than six months ago was found in her apartment, in front of a TV set that was still on, the Frankfurter Neue Presse newspaper reported on Tuesday.
The woman, in the town of Oberursel near Frankfurt, died of natural causes in a nightgown while watching TV. There was a programme guide from September nearby, the newspaper said, describing the body as “partially mummified”.
Police said residents in the 30-apartment block had noticed an unpleasant smell in the staircase, but no one had informed the authorities. The landlord opened the apartment after noticing the her mailbox jammed with uncollected letters.
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