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|   | Subject: "What news story has caught your attention today?" thread
Posted Yesterday by swl
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| | Post: 7361
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More than half of the Italian city of Venice is flooded.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8428781.stm
| | Subject: "What news story has caught your attention today?" thread
Posted 17 Hours Ago by Ballynac
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| | Post: 7362
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What an unusual story!!!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8428650.stm
A giant straw goat - the traditional Scandinavian yuletide symbol - erected each Christmas in a Swedish town has been burned to the ground yet again. Just 10 of Gavle's goats, built every year in the town's central square, have survived beyond Christmas since 1966.
| | Subject: "What news story has caught your attention today?" thread
Posted 10 Hours Ago by anhaga
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| | Post: 7363
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'A Toronto woman accused of posing as a witch in order to defraud a lawyer of tens of thousands of dollars has made her first appearance in court. . .
Persuad faces eight fraud-related charges — including one count under an obscure section of the Criminal Code dating back to 1892 that prohibits fraudulently exercising witchcraft or sorcery.'
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/st...9/12/24/toronto-witch-court463.html
I don't see how she can be convicted on all the charges: if it's fraud, then she wasn't *really* exercising witchcraft or sorcery, and, if she was *really* exercising witchcraft or sorcery, then there's no fraud.
off to find my Pocket Criminal Code
| | Subject: "What news story has caught your attention today?" thread
Posted 9 Hours Ago by Taliesin
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| | Post: 7364
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Does that count as spellbinding courtroom drama!
| | Subject: "What news story has caught your attention today?" thread
Posted 9 Hours Ago by Taliesin
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| | Post: 7365
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That charge cannot be made to stand, simply because it is impossible to demonstrate the existence of the implied 'real' witchcraft, or perhaps even define it.
This could get interesting... 
And did you notice the Python reference in the comments?
| | Subject: "What news story has caught your attention today?" thread
Posted 7 Hours Ago by anhaga
This is a reply to this Posting.
| | Post: 7366
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I don't expect anyone can predict the outcome.
| | Subject: "What news story has caught your attention today?" thread
Posted 7 Hours Ago by anhaga
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| | Post: 7367
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right, I've finally gotten around to digging out my Pocket Criminal Code (2008).
Section 365 is the part they're using and it's not a law against witchcraft -- it's a law against *pretending* to be able to perform witchcraft:
'Every one who fraudulently
(a) pretends to exercise or to use any kind of witchcraft, sorcery, enchantment or conjuration,
(b) undertakes, for a consideration, to tell fortunes, or
(c) pretends from his skill in or knowledge of an occult or crafty science to discover where or in what manner anything that is supposed to have been stolen or lost may be found,
is guilty of an offence punishable on summary conviction.'
There sure are a lot of people who could be facing charges under this one, including the authors of the horoscope columns in the newspapers.
| | Subject: "What news story has caught your attention today?" thread
Posted 7 Hours Ago by swl
This is a reply to this Posting.
| | Post: 7368
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Why does c) remind me of Monty Python?
There shall in that time be rumors of things going astray, erm, and there shall be a great confusion as to where things really are, and nobody will really know where lieth those little things with the sort of raffia-work base, that has an attachment. At that time, a friend shall lose his friend's hammer, and the young shall not know where lieth the things possessed by their fathers that their fathers put there only just the night before, about eight O'clock.
| | Subject: "What news story has caught your attention today?" thread
Posted 7 Hours Ago by anhaga
This is a reply to this Posting.
| | Post: 7369
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I like the term 'crafty science'
| | Subject: "What news story has caught your attention today?" thread
Posted 6 Hours Ago by swl
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| | Post: 7370
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"There's just a humongous storm moving across the centre of the country, basically from the Canadian border to Texas and spreading from west Colorado to Illinois," Pat Slattery, a spokesman for the National Weather Service, told AFP news agency."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8429618.stm
Is "humongous" a technical term then? 
| | Subject: "What news story has caught your attention today?" thread
Posted 5 Hours Ago by anhaga
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| | Post: 7371
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It's funny how it stops at the Canadian border.
I guess we're doing something right.
| | Subject: "What news story has caught your attention today?" thread
Posted 5 Hours Ago by swl
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| | Post: 7372
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Even the bad weather's more liberal in Canerderr 
| | Subject: "What news story has caught your attention today?" thread
Posted 5 Hours Ago by anhaga
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| | Post: 7373
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we're going to be a balmy +2 Celsius on Saturday where I am. A little different from that -45 two weeks ago.
| | Subject: "What news story has caught your attention today?" thread
Posted 4 Hours Ago by anhaga
This is a reply to this Posting.
| | Post: 7374
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As much as I'm unfond of the old fellow, this is beyond unnecessary:
'A woman jumped the barriers in St. Peter's Basilica and knocked down Pope Benedict XVI as he walked down the main aisle to begin Christmas Eve Mass on Thursday.'
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2009/12/24/christmas-world.html
|  | Subject: "What news story has caught your attention today?" thread
Posted 4 Hours Ago by swl
This is a reply to this Posting.
| | Post: 7375
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Just as well John Prescott isn't Pope.
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