NDTV [India]
27 July 2019
3 Congress Leaders, Mistaken
As Kidnappers, Thrashed In Madhya Pradesh
Bhopal: Three Congress leaders were thrashed by a mob
after they were mistaken as child kidnappers at a village in Madhya Pradesh,
the police said. The mob had blocked the main road using fallen trees over
rumours that a gang that kidnapped children was prowling at Navalsinh village
in Madhya Pradesh's Betul district on Thursday night. The three local Congress
leaders - Dharmendra Shukla, Dharmu Singh Lanjiwar and Lalit Baraskar - were
travelling in a car when they saw the barricade at night. They turned around,
assuming some highway robbers were waiting to ambush them, the police said. The
villagers chased them and in no time surrounded them and damaged the vehicle.
They were taken out and thrashed by the mob, the police said. […]
Times of India
29 July 2019
Child-lifting rumours: 75%
drop in school attendance in Damoh
BHOPAL: With rumours about gang involved in stealing
children continuing in the state, attendance in primary and middle school has
gone down by almost 75% in several villages of Damoh district. […]
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The Guardian [UK]
28 Jul7 2019
Spoof or truth? The plucky
local reporters who took on the tsar of Russia
A few columns ago I cited a story often told among
journalists, for fun and to caution against self-importance, usually in vain.
Variously attributed to small newspapers in remote locations at some time in
the 19th century, an editorial discussing Russian foreign policy is said to
have thundered: “We warn the Tsar!” The source is sometimes said to have been a
newspaper in Tasmania, the Mercury, and sometimes a paper in Nelson, New
Zealand. In the column I said the story might be apocryphal. As often happens,
readers and researchers mobilised, so here is an update. […]
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Lake Cowichan Gazette [BC]
28 July 2019
Robert Barron column: No
truth to rumours about homeless people being bused here
We’ve been hearing lots of rumours these days about
homeless people from other communities being bused into the Cowichan Valley. According
to the rumours, the homeless are being sent here so that the Valley’s already
overtaxed social services for the needy will take care of them, offloading that
responsibility from the communities from which they came. […]
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The Guardian [UK]
28 July 2019
Man, 43, and woman, 41,
released after cruise ship brawl arrests
A man and a woman arrested on suspicion of assault
after a mass brawl on a cruise ship have been released from police custody but
remain under investigation. Witnesses said the fight erupted in the buffet area
onboard P&O’s Britannia in the early hours of Friday morning after a day of
“patriotic partying” while the ship was en route to Southampton from Bergen,
Norway, with passengers using furniture and plates as weapons. […] The Press
Association reported that an entertainer working on Britannia said a clown had
gatecrashed a black-tie party held in the 16th-floor restaurant, prompting
anger. However, on Sunday P&O Cruises said there was no clown onboard. […]
I couldn't quickly turn anything up online for a cite, but while we were living in Sarajevo, the "bused in from out of town" story was regularly told to explain the high number of stray dogs about town.
ReplyDeleteBosnia and Herzegovina has state laws protecting the animals, and Sarajevo enjoys quite a lot of international money supporting shelters and neutering programs, etc. So the story went that other towns, those without the wherewithal to deal with their own animal control problems, would load the stray dogs into trucks and sneak them into the capital at night. Everybody believed it. Honestly, I believed it.
I can’t recall having heard before of city dwellers believing that animals were secretly trucked in from other towns. On the other hand, it’s a not uncommon suspicion in some rural areas of Europe and North America that noodle-armed environmentalists or government agencies are relocating animals, usually of the perceived harmful sort (like snakes, foxes, or bears), to the countryside.
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