Spirits Get the Blame in Cambodian Illness: The people of a couple of tiny villages in Cambodia, Ping and Bornhok, have been afflicted by a disease that resembles SARS, but, unlike SARS, responds to antibiotics. The villagers blame the spirits. The NYTimes article is here. The great thing about the article is that it covers, at length, the different spirits and what they're responsible for.

Arak Chantoo, the mountain spirit, is the Zeus of the pantheon, and when it is angry it is believed to bring chest pains, headache, dizziness, high fever, hydrophobia and sometimes death, anthropologists say.

Hydrophobia? This is nice, as well:

One shaman told the people of Ping that they were being punished for felling sacred trees. Another told the family of a 16-year-old girl named Mel — one of the first to die — that she was being punished for having a sexual affair.

And if you like your proof to be of the incontrovertible sort:

"I know the disease was caused by spirits because after we held a big ceremony with all the villagers, people stopped dying and didn't get sick any more," the village chief said.

Those ridiculous savages. Meanwhile, back in civilization -- namely, Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, England -- prayers are being said for a missing boy.

Police fear Daniel fell into the river while playing and was drowned - although they have not ruled out the possibility that he was abducted. Daniel's step-grandfather, Keith Dutton, said as he attended a church service near the family home on Sunday: "We are prepared for the worst although we must not lose hope. "The family are grabbing on to that iron bar of hope."

The iron bar of hope? Don't they mean "the wet toilet paper square of hope"?