"Witch" burned alive in New Guinea

PORT MORESBY, Papua New Guinea (AP) — A mob stripped, tortured and bound a woman accused of witchcraft, then burned her alive in front of hundreds of witnesses in a Papua New Guinea town, police said Friday after one of the highest profile sorcery-related murders in this South Pacific island nation.

Hundreds of bystanders, including many children, watched and some took photographs of Wednesday’s brutal slaying. Grisly pictures were published on the front pages of the country’s biggest circulating newspapers, The National and Post-Courier, while the prime minister, police and diplomats condemned the killing.

In rural Papua New Guinea, witchcraft is often blamed for unexplained misfortunes. Sorcery has traditionally been countered by sorcery, but responses to sorcery allegations have become increasingly violent in recent years.

The death was the first sorcery-related murder in Papua New Guinea in a year, national police spokesman Dominic Kakas said.

Kepari Leniata, a 20-year-old mother, had been accused of sorcery by relatives of a 6-year-old boy who died in the hospital the day before.

Flying Pterosaur Reported by American WWII Veteran (video)

During World War II, an American soldier walked into a clearing near Finschhafen (New Guinea) with his buddy. Soon after entering the clearing, a wild pig (probably startled by the men) ran through the clearing and then a large “pterodactyl” took off into the air, probably startled by the pig. The veteran soldier, Duane Hodgkinson, now lives in Montana and has maintained, six decades later, that what they saw was a “pterodactyl.” Could that creature really have been a living pterodactyl? (The correct term is “pterosaur.”) Could those creatures be non-extinct?

Since 1994, a few Americans have explored, intermittently, a few areas of Papua New Guinea. Their research indicates that the apparent pterosaur seen by the two soldiers may be the same kind of creature called “ropen” on nearby Umboi Island. And yes, it does seem to be a living pterosaur.