N Korea Executes 30 Officials For Failed Talks With S Korea

North Korea has been busy purging its government ranks by killing officials who have somehow failed in some form or other. According to a new report from Amnesty International, 30 people who were tasked with improving relations with South Korea were either executed or killed in apparent "staged traffic accidents." Of course,  the main reason those talks have failed is because the whacked out former "dear Leader" Kim Jong-il, and his equally touched son, Kim Jong-un, keep playing with their nukes and ballistic missiles. The country also happens to maintain one of the largest armies in the world, right on South Korea's doorstep. But no matter, 30 of those officials quickly dispensed with last year.

Then this January, when dear "Father's" fiefdom was passed on to his pudgy, 29-year-old baby-faced son, another 200 were either killed or sent off to North Korean gulags. Just making sure that any potential dissension was stopped before it happened. Amnesty estimates there are some 200,000 North Koreans rotting away in gulags.

But members of the oligarchy have never been safe in communist North Korea. Pak Nam-ki (or sometimes Nam-gi) Director of the Planning and Finance Department- was executed in 2010 for being

"a son of a bourgeois conspiring to infiltrate the ranks of revolutionaries to destroy the national economy"

In other words, he messed up an already incredibly messed up economy by revaluating the local currency, which caused further drastic problems.

Since relations with South Korea will continue to remain soured, and the economy will continue to suffer (unless they make major reforms), I'm sure there will be plenty more shipped off to gulags or executed.

After the failed missile test in April, there is talk that they might try again on May 28, Memorial Day:

"The North Korean regime is hell-bent on being a belligerent actor," said Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, chair of the US House Foreign Affairs Committee, during a visit to Seoul with a congressional delegation. "And I think that on holidays or sad commemorations like Memorial Day weekend is when the leadership tries to provoke the democratic allies into action."

We shall see.

Sri Lankan In Saudi Arabia Faces Beheading For "Casting Spell" On 13-Year-Old Shopper

In Saudi Arabia dabbling in witchcraft will get you beheaded. Trouble is, the definition of what constitutes 'witchcraft' is vague, at best.  One Saudi woman in her 60s, Amina bint Abdul Halim bin Salem Nasser,  was executed last December for  'witchcraft and sorcery".  There were no specific details regarding the case other than the fact that she allegedly took money ($800, so they say) from people claiming she could heal them. Did she give them herbal remedies, or just wave a magic wand or wiggle her nose and say they were cured?  And how many people actually accused her?  It only takes one person to finger an individual as a witch in Saudi Arabia and they can face execution.  That's what's happened to a poor woman after a Saudi man claimed she cast a spell on his daughter at a shopping mall.

A Sri Lankan woman could face the death penalty by beheading after she was arrested on suspicion of casting a spell on a 13-year-old girl during a family shopping trip, a police spokesman said on Wednesday. The daily Okaz reported that a Saudi man had complained his daughter had "suddenly started acting in an abnormal way, and that happened after she came close to the Sri Lankan woman" in a shopping mall in the port city of Jeddah.

"He reported her to the security forces, asking for her arrest and the specialised units dealt with the situation swiftly and succeeded in arresting her," Okaz reported.

What?  So, let me get this straight- a Sri Lankan woman is in a mall, minding her own business I assume, and this Saudi man's little girl starts acting up (as 13 year-olds are apt to do) as she walks by, and the woman could lose her head over this?

Ironically, although Saudi Arabia has no penal code (it's a monarchy, and a backwards one at that), according to Peter Luther of Amnesty International:

"The charges of 'witchcraft and sorcery' are not defined as crimes in Saudi Arabia and to use them to subject someone to the cruel and extreme penalty of execution is truly appalling."

Amnesty also states that  charges of witchcraft are often a means of  punishing people ".. after unfair trials, for exercising their right to freedom of speech or religion." And according to Human Rights Watch, it's foreigners who are usually the major targets "... because of their traditional practices or, occasionally, because Saudi men facing charges of sexual harassment by domestic workers want to discredit their accusers."

But it's all so very arbitrary, and anyone can get the short end of the stick.  A Sudanese man was also executed in 2011 for sorcery. Then there's Ali Sibat, the Lebanese fortune-telling TV personality, who almost lost his head, while on a pilgrimage to Mecca. And Mustafa Ibrahiman, an Egyptian pharmacist working in Saudi Arabia, executed in 2007  for trying "to separate a married couple, through sorcery."

God knows why anyone visits there.