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11. juni 2005
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Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe once compared himself to Adolf Hitler. He certainly falls short on atrocities, but that is not for lack of trying.
The government abruptly began demolishing shanties and roadside markets here three weeks ago, evicting thousands of people and bulldozing homes or burning them to the ground, in what officials call a cleanup of illegal slums and black-market vendors.
But as the campaign, directed at as many as 1.5 million members of Zimbabwe's vast underclass, spreads beyond Harare, it is quickly evolving into a sweeping recasting of society, a forced uprooting of the very poorest city dwellers, who have become President Robert G. Mugabe's most hardened opponents.
By scattering them to rural areas, Mr. Mugabe, re-elected to another five-year term in 2002, seems intent on dispersing the biggest threat to his 25-year autocratic rule as poverty and unemployment approach record levels and mass hunger and the potential for unrest loom.
The United Nations estimates that the campaign, Operation Murambatsvina, using a Shona word meaning "drive out the rubbish," has so far left 200,000 people homeless and 30,000 vendors jobless. Human rights and civic leaders say the numbers could be several times that, a view that seemed plausible during a four-day visit to Harare and Bulawayo, the nation's second-largest city, and points between.
Surely, western governments, the UN and the alphabet soup NGOs could and should do more. But if there is one man with more culpability than anyone else, it must be South Africa's Mbeki, whose "silent diplomacy" has been more than silent. It has been non-existent to the bordering of consent.
7:53:05 PM 
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 Almost all of Britain's cats carry a parasite called toxoplasma gondii, and around half of the country's human population carry the parasite in their brains. The figures are similar for Norway and the US, but far worse for continental Europe.
So far, it has been believed the parasite, who cannot be removed by any known procedure, is a danger only to human fetuses (the reason women are warned against stray cats), but that the brain parasite is being kept in check by our immune system.
In fact the parasite works in mysterious ways on a rats' brains, making them naive and less scared of cats, naturally with the consequence that the rat is eaten, and the parasite is passed on to a cats. And so on it goes. On humans, new research indicates it has an effect, too, and one that differs between women and men.
Infected men, suggests one new study, tend to become more aggressive, scruffy, antisocial and are less attractive. Women, on the other hand, appear to exhibit the “sex kitten” effect, becoming less trustworthy, more desirable, fun- loving and possibly more promiscuous.
Interestingly, for those who draw glib conclusions about national stereotypes, the number of people infected in France is much higher than in the UK.
The findings will not please cat lovers. The research — conducted at universities in Britain, the Czech Republic and America — was sponsored by the Stanley Research Medical Institute of Maryland, a leading centre for the study of mental illness. The institute has already published research showing that people infected with the toxoplasma parasite are at greater risk of developing schizophrenia and manic depression.
The study into more subtle changes in human personality is being carried out by Professor Jaroslav Flegr of Charles University in Prague. In one study he subjected more than 300 volunteers to personality profiling while also testing them for toxoplasma.
He found the women infected with toxoplasma spent more money on clothes and were consistently rated as more attractive. “We found they were more easy-going, more warm-hearted, had more friends and cared more about how they looked,” he said. “However, they were also less trustworthy and had more relationships with men.”
By contrast, the infected men appeared to suffer from the “alley cat” effect: becoming less well groomed undesirable loners who were more willing to fight. They were more likely to be suspicious and jealous. “They tended to dislike following rules,” Flegr said.
Other studies have shown that eating improperly cooked meat or unwashed vegetables is as common a source for the parasite as cats.
Norway has a similar infection rate as Britain; around half our population is infected during the lifetime.
In France, 80% of the adult population is infected. Toxoplasma gondii is thus probably running the country's foreign policy. A logical solution (while we wait for a cure) is to throw out the French men and vote in the women.
3:52:43 PM
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"Human rights activists 'childish'" (BBC News)
3:32:58 PM
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When a Nigerian bus driver urinated on a highway, a cow went crazy and killed him. Several bystanders were also injured by the animal.
"The cow went mad, ran into a bus driver and knocked him down. Efforts to revive him were fruitless," said Lagos police spokesman Olubode Ojajuni.
Some people suggested the animal be shot, but the district police officer ordered it to be taken alive.
"You know what it will take to arrest a mad cow?" one newspaper quoted a policeman as saying. "We applied ingenuity and arrested the cow, which is now being detained at the station," he said without going into details.
Now the police are looking for the cow's owner, who may face charges for failing to control the mad cow.
There must be some weird connection between the two kittens, this mad cow and urinating, but I can't see it.
1:39:16 AM
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Two kittens caused a house fire in Japan by urinating on a fax machine.
Investigators in the western city of Kobe have concluded that the fire in January was caused by a spark generated when the urine soaked the machine's electrical printing mechanism.
The fire damaged the kitchen and living room before it was put out by the house's owner, who was treated for mild smoke inhalation, said Masahito Oyabu, a fireman at the Nagata fire station in central Kobe.
The kittens got away without spending a single life on the incident.
1:33:19 AM
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© Copyright 2005 Jan Haugland.
Last update: 01.07.2005; 11:18:10.
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