Skeptical Reporter @ 2013-09-06

Skeptical Reporter for September 6th, 2013 Former WBO heavyweight champion Tommy Morrison died in an Omaha hospital this week. He was 44. Morrison's longtime promoter, Tony Holden, said Morrison died with his wife, Trisha, beside him. Morrison tested positive for HIV in 1996 before a fight with Arthur Weathers, effectively ending his boxing career. In the years that followed, he denied having HIV and also challenged the existence of the virus. Trisha Morrison, who married Morrison in 2011, picked up that fight, and in a recent interview with ESPN.com insisted that Morrison had Guillain-Barre Syndrome, not HIV. Swaziland’s absolute monarch, King Mswati III, said he was visited by God during the weekend and this resulted in atypical electrical storms in the country, but also a new name for the country’s controversial political system. “The lightning was flashing even though it was (the time of year) when there is usually no clouds or rain,” Mswati said when he opened a trade fair in Manzini. He said the storm was sent by God to accompany his vision. The South African Weather Service interpreted it differently, reporting that a cold front from South Africa to the north colliding with warm air from the Mozambique Channel had created thunderstorm conditions in Swaziland. Swaziland is now officially to be known as a monarchical democracy, the king decreed. Mswati said the new name reflected the people’s participation in the country’s governance through use of the ballot box. Swaziland’s parliamentary election will be held next week. However, political parties are banned, and widespread bribery and vote-rigging were reported in last week’s primary election. Parliament has no governing power and may be dissolved at any time by Mswati, who may also ignore its resolutions. The carcass of a dead dog floats on the lake that supplies tap water to 750,000 Venezuelans. Witch doctor Francisco Sanchez has just dumped the previous night’s sacrifice from a cliff, contaminating the resource that has become scarcer than gasoline in Caracas. The water from Lake Mariposa, polluted by sacrifices and garbage from a local cult, is pumped to a 60-year-old treatment plant that lacks the technology to make it safe for drinking, said Fernando Morales, an environmental chemistry professor at Simon Bolivar University in Caracas who has visited the site. Ten years ago, Mariposa was a sunbathing and sailing destination. Today it is a haven for followers of Santeria. Eight kilometers away from the lake, in Caracas, sales of bottled water are booming, with families paying the equivalent of almost $5 for a five-gallon jug, twice the price of gasoline. A vote-rigging row has erupted in the Maldives ahead of the presidential election amid suspicions that one party is using cursed coconuts imbued with black magic spells to sway voters’ political allegiances. The claims came after a coconut, described as "young", was placed near a polling booth in an alleged bid to disrupt the upcoming elections. The fruit had been inscribed with verses from the Koran and placed near the booth at a school on the remote Kaafu atoll, one of the islands that make up the Indian Ocean archipelago state. Following the discovery of the 'cursed' coconut police brought in a 'ruqyah' practitioner (white magician) to examine the coconut. The expert found the black magic element of the coconut to be fake and because it's was fake the police were not worried. And now let’s look at some news in science. A system that allows electronic messages to be sent with complete secrecy could be on the verge of expanding beyond niche applications. A team of British scientists has discovered a way to build communications networks with quantum cryptography at a larger scale than ever before. Quantum cryptography has the potential to transform the way sensitive data is protected. The system is based on a communication system, where information is carried by individual phot...