Papua New Guinea sounds like an interesting place that's about to become increasingly more so. ExxonMobil has plans to begin shipping natural gas out of the countries southern highlands, an area unexplored by westerners until the 1930's who were terribly surprised to find the million odd people living there. What's the situation on the ground?
Constant tribal wars over land, women and pigs — the last being prized measures of wealth, used to pay for dowries and settle disputes — have grown deadlier in the past decade with the easy availability of high-powered rifles smuggled in from Indonesia, just to the west, which are exchanged for the marijuana grown here.
The pig wars are heating up. But at least the tribal elders benefiting from the development are using their money responsibly:
His face adorned with red and white paint, a pair of industrial safety glasses perched incongruously on a head ornament from which large leaves stuck out, Mr. Matipe said he had given most of the money to his 10 wives. But he had used about $20,000 to buy 48 pigs, which he used as a dowry to obtain a 15-year-old bride from a faraway village, paying well above the going rate of 30 pigs. He and some 30 village men then celebrated by buying 15 cases of beer, costing about $800.
“All the money is now gone,” Mr. Matipe said. “But I’m very happy about the company, ExxonMobil. Before, I had nothing. But because of the money, I was able to buy pigs and get married again.”
Murder...hiccups....Florida.... what?!?!?!?!This is good.
Japan has resolved it's problems with a rapidly aging workforce as only the Japanese can. Personally, I think a cheaper way to manage age demographics is sex. But that's just me.
It's almost Halloween! And here are some pumpkins! Sort of surprised that this is coming via an English newspaper. I'd always thought that Halloween wasn't really a British thing. Nice job, Brits!
Oh my... Russian bears are descending on cemeteries to devour human corpses. Yikes!
And finally...
There is actually a very real chance that Poland and Lithuania will recall their respective ambassadors over an argument about spelling.
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