Updates • The Yaohnanen tribe on the South Pacific island of Tanna believe their true ancestral god is Britain's Prince Philip (based on photographs of him with the queen during a 1974 visit to Tanna's mother nation of Vanuatu) and believe he promised he would return for good on his 89th birthday (June 10, 2010). Although the prince has kept in touch, he failed to show up for the grand celebration, but fortunately, Scottish university ...

Lead Story A recent surge of neo-Nazism in several countries -- including, improbably, Israel, and Mongolia (where some dark-skinned natives are rabidly anti-Chinese) -- has generally been denounced, but Corinna Burt credited it with rescuing her from a life of acting in pornographic videos. According to a hate-group watchdog, the Portland, Ore., woman is "the most prominent National Socialist Movement organizer in the Pacific Northwest." In an August interview with Gawker.com, the white-supremacist Burt (a ...

It's Never Sunny in North Korea • North Korea's World Cup adventure began auspiciously with a hard-fought 2-1 loss to a superior Brazil team, leading the government to release photographs of the North Korean coach supposedly receiving long-distance telepathic strategy signals during the game from Dear Leader Kim Jong-Il. With the country's hopes up, the team was embarrassed in two subsequent games and dispatched from the tournament. Back home in July, the players were paraded ...

The Outer Frontiers of U.S. Immigration Policy The $125 million Jay Peak ski resort in Vermont, with 120-room hotel, ice arena, golf course and the Northeast's largest water park, is just months away from completion, thanks to half-million-dollar investments from each of 250 foreign nationals from 43 countries who, as part of the deal, were given conditional U.S. "green cards" (for permanent residency). At the other end of America's immigration conundrum, prosecutors in Snohomish County, ...

Lead Story Among the promotions offered by New York City's upscale Marmara Manhattan hotel is a "birth tourism" package exploiting the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment. For about $35,000, a foreign expectant mother with a visa can spend her delivery week in luxury accommodations (including medical care) -- and assure her baby automatic U.S. citizenship. (That child could then become an "anchor," subsequently making it easier for the parents to acquire "green cards.") Also, The Washington ...

Lead Story While the morbidly obese struggle with their health, those who eroticize massive weight gain are capturing increased attention, according to a July ABC News report. Commercial and personal websites give full-bellied "gainers," such as New Jerseyan Donna Simpson, and their admiring "feeders" the opportunity to express themselves. Simpson became a 602-pound media sensation in March, when she began offering pay-per-view video of herself to an audience of horny feeders. Wrote another gainer-blogger, "Lately, ...

Lead Story "Why are you still alive?" is the question doctors ask Ozzy Osbourne, the hard-rock singer and reality-TV star, who says he is now clean and sober after a lifetime of unimaginably bad habits. In June, he started two new ventures: undergoing the three-month process of genetic mapping (to help doctors learn why, indeed) and becoming a "health advice" columnist for London's Sunday Times. At various points in his life, the now-cholesterol-conscious, vegetarian Osbourne ...

Lead Story A severe but underappreciated American drug problem (sometimes deadly and often expensive) is patients' failure to take prescribed medications -- even to save their own lives (such as with anti-coagulants or cholesterol-regulating statins). In recent pilot programs, according to a June New York Times report, compliance rates have been significantly improved -- by giving patients money ($50 to $100 a month, sometimes more) if they remember to take their drugs. Data show that, ...

Lead Story New York state school officials had promised to crack down on soft test-grading to end the near-automatic grade-advancement by students unprepared for promotion. However, a June New York Post report found that the problem lingers under the current grading guideline called "holistic rubrics." Among examples cited by the Post (from a 4th-grade math test): How many inches long is a "2-foot-long skateboard"? (Answer: 24; "half-credit" answer: 48). Also, if you have 35 ...

Lead Story It's clear, based on a May Time magazine dispatch, that Norway's felons and miscreants are of a superior class than America's. When Norway's brand-new Halden prison opened in April, the country's King Harald V headlined a glitzy gala that celebrated what has been called the world's "most humane" lockup. Among the facilities: a sound studio, jogging trails, a guest house for inmates' visitors, and a scrumptious-smelling "kitchen laboratory" where murderers and bandits can ...

America, What a Country! In 2007, after a stay in the United States distinguished mainly by his acquisition of a long police record, illegal immigrant Cecil Harvey, 55, was deported to his native Barbados. However, according to records revealed by the New York Post in May, Harvey received, in late 2009, one last remembrance of America: $145,000 from the city of New York in settlement of his lawsuit over having once been held at Rikers ...

Lead Story American families from certain Asian and African cultures continue to ritually "circumcise" their young daughters, though the practice is illegal in the U.S. and most of the world. In May, the bioethics committee of the American Academy of Pediatrics changed its policy from absolutely banning such surgery to one which would sanction a minor "pinprick" on girls' genitals (comparable, it said, to ear-piercing), with the hope of satisfying parents so they would ...

Lead Story Briton Robert Dee, feeling humiliated at being called the "world's worst tennis pro" by London's Daily Telegraph (and other news organizations) sued the newspaper for libel last year. After taking testimony in February 2010, the judge tossed out the lawsuit in April, persuaded by Dee's having lost 54 consecutive international tour matches (all in straight sets). Fearful of an opposite result, 30 other news organizations had already apologized to Dee for disparaging him, ...

Boobquake! In mid-April, senior Iranian cleric Ayatollah Kazem Sedighi issued a warning that recent earthquakes in Haiti, Chile, and elsewhere were caused by women's loose sex and immodest dress. Immediately, Jennifer McCreight responded on Facebook by urging women worldwide to dress provocatively on April 26 to create "boobquake" and test the cleric's theory, and at least 90,000 women promised they would reveal serious cleavage on that date. On April 26, following a several-day drought of ...

Lead Story Blair Fowler, 16, delights her frenzied fans as a "haul queen," inspirationally "shopping for glory" by smartly tearing through stores and then displaying and expertly describing her purchases on Internet videos. A March Times of London dispatch from Los Angeles noted Fowler's acclaim "for her ability to deliver a high-pitched 10-minute lecture on the merits of skinny versus low-riding jeans, apparently without drawing breath." According to The Times, at least 100,000 "haul" videos ...