Locally...

Same "story," two different "headlines." The first, "Mother seeks probe into child's death." The second, "Maid accused of infant death" [it is always the maid, isn't it?]. Not enough information in either to form an opinion, but who is to say that it wasn't the child's mother's sister that had something to do with the child's death? The mother of the child says that her sister's maid killed the child because she wouldn't buy her a phone card. You've got to be kidding. Someone would kill a 15-month-old child over a phone card? Stranger things have happened, here, in the Sandbox.

A severe punishment for a "Blackmailing womanizer." One can only surmise that this 45-year-old Saudi man pissed off someone much further up the proverbial food chain than his position. [Saudi Gazette published the nationality.] Right now, the only thing missing from the article is the man's name. No matter. Whoever he is, he has been "sentenced to eight years' prison and 700 lashes of the whip for blackmailing and threatening women after obtaining their telephone numbers and photographs." How do you obtain someone's telephone number AND their photograph without someone knowing it? Ahh-haa! They did know it - all of those women - because he "obtained telephone numbers of various women and 'improper' images of them through e-mail after building trusting relationships with them" and then of course he screwed his little plan up when he decided to "ruin their reputations" if they did not comply with his demands for money and xes. It always ends this way... One of his victims turned him in and "officials fournd incriminating evidence on his mobile telephone and laptop computer." Naturally. "The sentence includes a SR50,000 fine and the publication of the conficted man's photograph in a local newspaper." Oh, my! The shame!!! Finally, "the lashes of the whip [will] be carred out in public with the man's face exposed." Well, okay, then. Like I said, this guy pissed someone off. Big time.

Last week a blogger I have never heard of made it into the "Blogosphere" section of the Saudi Gazette with her take on the jeja's bow to Japanese Emperor Akihito. Obviously readers in the Sandbox are not impressed with the jeja's ineptitude or Sandra Rose's little snippet never would have been published.

Not a whole lot going on over here...