Bandits Attack and Burns Down KCSE Papers in Turkana

Eight police officers who were ferrying Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examination to a school in Turkana East constituency are still missing after heavily armed raiders attacked their car. The officers are said to have come under heavy attack from the over 100 raiders who also burnt the car. Former Kapedo Councillor Joseph Eragai said the attackers sprayed the police car with bullets Monday afternoon before setting it ablaze. “The raiders numbering over 100 ambushed and sprayed the car with bullets at Kasarani. The officers scampered for safety. One was already injured by the time they fled. However, we are not sure about the safety of the rest who had been surrounded by the raiders,” he said. Turkana Director of Education Nichodemus Anyang said they received the examination papers on Sunday at Lodwar airport and were expected to be transported Monday to Lokori police armoury awaiting distribution on Tuesday. The former area councillor said the incident happened only two days after a county vehicle carrying hospital staff from Lodwar to Kapedo health centre was attacked and three people, including a teacher injured. Anyang added that the exam was meant for Kapedo mixed secondary school where 25 candidates are set to sit for the examination which commences Tuesday. He said that the Kenya National Examination Council (KNEC) had been notified and an arrangement has been made to airlift Tuesday's paper to the school using military chopper. The director said due to the high levels of insecurity, the students will have to be relocated next week to Lokori where they will continue with their examinations. Last week, the head teacher of Kapedo primary school was shot and seriously injured as he left school for his home. Turkana East MP Nicholas Ngikor expressed worry over increased spate of attacks in the region. He blamed the government over what he termed as passive action and unwillingness to restore order in the region where more people have been killed a number injured. Turkana Women Representative Joyce Emanikor called for immediate air response to rescue the officers. Cases of Turkana/Pokot conflicts have escalated, only last week a vehicle was attacked between Lokichar and Kainuk where one person was killed and nine others injured.

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Reggae vocalist John Holt Pronounced Dead

Reggae vocalist John Holt, who sang the original version of Blondie's hit The Tide is High, has died aged 69. His manager Copeland Forbes told the Jamaica Observer he died in a London hospital on Sunday. The cause of death has yet to be confirmed. Holt rose to fame in the 1960s as the lead singer of The Paragons, writing and releasing The Tide is High in 1967. He went solo in 1970 and went on to become one of the biggest stars of reggae music in Jamaica. Musicians paying tribute to the singer have included Jamaican rapper Shaggy, who tweeted: "We have lost a legend. Very instrumental part of our reggae history! You'll be missed." Fellow Jamaican artist Sean Paul said: "RIP Sir John Holt. You have served your culture well. I salute you." UB40 added that Holt was a "massive inspiration and will be sorely missed". 'Huge talent' Born in 1947 in Kingston, Jamaica, Holt penned a number of The Paragons' hits including Tonight, I See Your Face and Ali Baba as well as The Tide is High. Although the track was popular in Jamaica, it only went mainstream when US band Blondie topped the charts on both side of the Atlantic with their version in 1980. It went on to be covered by a number of other artists including Atomic Kitten, Maxi Priest and Canadian rapper Kardinal Offishall. As a solo artist, Holt's 1972 track Stick By Me was the biggest-selling Jamaican record of the year. His only success in the UK came with his 1974 cover version of Kris Kristofferson's Help Me Make It Through the Night, which spent 11 weeks in the top 40 and peaked at number six. Holt went on to release almost 40 albums over his career, mostly through Trojan Records. The record company paid tribute to the singer, calling him "a huge talent and a true gentleman". His last solo album, Peacemaker, was released in 1993.

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The Origin of Copulation (SEX)

Scientists believe they have discovered the origin of copulation. An international team of researchers says a fish called Microbrachius dicki is the first-known animal to stop reproducing by spawning and instead mate by having sex. The primitive bony fish, which was about 8cm long, lived in ancient lakes about 385 million years ago in what is now Scotland. Microbrachius dicki fossils are common - but nobody noticed the sexual organs until now The female fish, on the other hand, had a small bony structure at their rear that locked the male organ into place. Constrained by their anatomy, the fish probably had to mate side by side. "They couldn't have done it in a 'missionary position'," said Prof Long. "The very first act of copulation was done sideways, square-dance style." He added that the fish were able to stay in position with the help of their small arm-like fins. "The little arms are very useful to link the male and female together, so the male can get this large L-shaped sexual organ into position to dock with the female's genital plates, which are very rough like cheese graters. "They act like Velcro, locking the male organ into position to transfer sperm." Artist impression of Microbrachius dicki Copulation using this method did not stay around for long - fish reverted to spawning Surprisingly, the researchers think this first attempt to reproduce internally was not around for long. As fish evolved, they reverted back to spawning, in which eggs and sperm to fertilise them are released into the water by female and male creatures respectively. It took another few million years for copulation to make a come-back, reappearing in ancestors of sharks and rays. Commenting on the research, Dr Matt Friedman, from the University of Oxford, UK, said: "The placoderm group (which includes Microbrachius dicki) is a well known group - the fossils are pretty common, and it's not as if this one was found in some far-off, exotic part of the world. It was found in Scotland. "It is very remarkable that we haven't noticed this before."

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Dial and Redial: Phone Hackers Stealing Billions

SAN FRANCISCO — Bob Foreman’s architecture firm ran up a $166,000 phone bill in a single weekend last March. But neither Mr. Foreman nor anyone else at his seven-person company was in the office at the time. “I thought: ‘This is crazy. It must be a mistake,’ ” Mr. Foreman said. It wasn’t. Hackers had broken into the phone network of the company, Foreman Seeley Fountain Architecture, and routed $166,000 worth of calls from the firm to premium-rate telephone numbers in Gambia, Somalia and the Maldives. It would have taken 34 years for the firm to run up those charges legitimately, based on its typical phone bill, according to a complaint it filed with the Federal Communications Commission. The firm, in Norcross, Ga., was the victim of an age-old fraud that has found new life now that most corporate phone lines run over the Internet. The swindle, which on the web is easier to pull off and more profitable, affects mostly small businesses and cost victims $4.73 billion globally last year. That is up nearly $1 billion from 2011, according to the Communications Fraud Control Association, an industry group financed by carriers and law-enforcement agencies to tackle communications fraud. Photo Jim Dalton, a telecom expert, calls attacks on Internet-based phone systems “relentless.” Credit Tami Chappell for The New York Times Major carriers have sophisticated fraud systems in place to catch hackers before they run up false six-figure charges, and they can afford to credit customers for millions of fraudulent charges every year. But small businesses often use local carriers, which lack such antifraud systems. And some of those carriers are leaving customers to foot the bill. The law is not much help, because no regulations require carriers to reimburse customers for fraud the way credit card companies must. Lawmakers have taken the issue up from time to time, but little progress has been made. Last year, Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, pushed the Federal Communications Commission to adopt new regulations after dozens of small businesses around Albany were hit with the swindle. But the agency has not taken any action, and the cause appears to have petered out. Representatives for the agency and the senator’s office did not return requests for comment. The scheme works this way, telecommunications fraud experts say: Hackers sign up to lease premium-rate phone numbers, often used for sexual-chat or psychic lines, from one of dozens of web-based services that charge dialers over $1 a minute and give the lessee a cut. In the United States, premium-rate numbers are easily identified by 1-900 prefixes, and callers are informed they will be charged higher rates. But elsewhere, like in Latvia and Estonia, they can be trickier to spot. The payout to the lessees can be as high as 24 cents for every minute spent on the phone. Hackers then break into a business’s phone system and make calls through it to their premium number, typically over a weekend, when nobody is there to notice. With high-speed computers, they can make hundreds of calls simultaneously, forwarding as many as 220 minutes’ worth of phone calls a minute to the pay line. The hacker gets a cut of the charges, typically delivered through a Western Union, MoneyGram or wire transfer. Continue reading the main story In part because the plan is so profitable, premium rate number resellers are multiplying rapidly. There were 17 in 2009; last year there were 85, according to Yates Fraud Consulting, which is based in Britain. In 2012, hackers hijacked the phone lines at 26 small businesses around Albany and ran up phone bills as high as $200,000 per business over the course of a few days. Those businesses that contracted with major carriers received credit that covered much of the fraud, though some ended up paying a few thousand dollars. Those who had signed up with a local carrier, Tech Valley Communications, were not so lucky. Tech Valley sued three of its clients to pay huge bills, according to court filings. Best Cleaners, a dry cleaning chain that operates in three states, was one victim. At that business, hackers placed more than 75,000 minutes of premium calls, totaling $147,000. At American Energy Care, a small consulting firm in Albany, the bill reached $200,353. A billboard advertising business in Cohoes, N.Y., was charged $18,000. All settled their cases with Tech Valley. None would discuss the case because of the terms of the settlement, but Best Cleaners said the cost was enough to force it to cancel a planned expansion. Industry groups are trying to tackle the problem but say it is hard to keep up with. Roberta Aronoff, the executive director of the Communications Fraud Control Association, said she routinely loads fake “hot numbers” into a fraud management system, sharing them with carriers so they can be blocked. Catching the criminals is difficult because the crime can cross as many as three jurisdictions. In 2011, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and police in the Philippines arrested four men who used the scheme to make $2 million in fraudulent calls; revenue was directed to a Saudi Arabian militant group that United States officials believe financed the 2008 Mumbai terrorist bombings. Foreman Seeley Fountain, the architecture firm, is disputing its $166,000 bill with its carrier, TW Telecom. The bill now includes $17,000 in late charges and termination fees. In addition to asking the F.C.C., the firm has asked the local police, officials at the Georgia Public Service Commission, the F.B.I. and the Department of Justice for help. The F.C.C. and Justice Department declined to comment for this article, and the Georgia agency did not return requests for comment. The local police said there had been no progress in finding the hackers. Joshua Campbell, a spokesman for the F.B.I., said the bureau was working with the industry to solve the problems but declined to discuss the specific case. Bob Meldrum, vice president for corporate communications at TW Telecom, said Foreman Seeley Fountain should have better protected its equipment from hackers. “We had to pay for those calls,” he said. “Someone had to pay for those calls.” Mr. Foreman said his firm didn’t even realize this was a potential risk. Not many do. “It’s relentless,” said Jim Dalton, founder of TransNexus, which sells Internet calling management software. “If you put a computer on the Internet, it immediately starts getting probed for a weak point.” To avoid the same fate, Mr. Dalton and other telecom experts advise people to turn off call forwarding and set up strong passwords for their voice mail systems and for placing international calls. He also said businesses needed to treat their phones as Internet-connected machines, since criminals already were doing that. “People don’t realize their phone is a six-figure liability waiting to happen,” Mr. Dalton added.

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Jesus Knows and Understands You

Does anyone know everything about you? That can be a scary thought. Even married couples sometimes hide the truth because they don’t want to hurt the other person’s feelings. Who wants to honestly answer questions like: Do you think I’ve put on too much weight? Do you think I’m too critical and overbearing? Yet there is an upside to intimate relationships and friendships. What does it mean to be able to confide in someone about your dreams and fears, and know they won’t laugh? Do you have a pal who knows all about you and likes you anyway? It’s much easier to let your hair down when you know someone appreciates you without expecting you to be perfect. Let’s face it. It’s much easier to make a joking remark or a casual comment when you don’t expect it to be repeated on Facebook an hour later. When someone “has your back,” you are less fearful of admitting your weaknesses. And one of the best ways to deal with your struggles is to be able to talk about them and get some feedback. Now, if you expect your spouse or a good friend to extend this kind of caring, why would you expect less from an all-knowing, all-seeing, all-loving God? Hebrews 4:13 comes immediately after a verse that talks about God’s word (the Bible) being sharper than a double-edged sword.

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2014 Africa Concours d'Elegance

This year’s CBA Africa Concours d’Elegance attracted a strong field of 19 entries from outside Kenya. The event went down yesterday,Ngong Racecourse. Below are some of the amazing photos.

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Ever heard of two men marrying the same Woman!

England: Drinking buddies Chris Thomas and Peter Sherratt have plenty in common, sharing a sense of humour – and, at one time, a wife. The pair, both 47, met when they discovered they were both married to bigamist Karen Sherratt, 45. She is now out of the picture – but their friendship endures. Chris says: “It might seem odd to some people that we get on so well. But we have an ex-wife in common. We have had a shared experience too. “She had us both under her spell and our close friendship is a result of that.” Wedding cheat Karen was jailed for four months this summer after she was convicted of bigamy. Her husbands could not contact each other before the trial was over due to the legal process – but when they met for a pint afterwards they noticed striking similarities in each of their experiences with Karen. Both had been smitten with the blonde and rushed to tie the knot after whirlwind romances. Karen, an area manager for a food company, had already been married and divorced when she met factory worker Peter, from Swansea, in 2005. He says: “We met on a night out and she told me all about how she was an independent woman who had come really far on her own hard work.” Their relationship developed very quickly and they were married within a year. Karen took control of the wedding plans, organising a lavish ceremony at Edinburgh Castle. But the cracks in their relationship first started to show when Peter noticed they were living outside their means. Peter says: “We had joint accounts for bills. I’d never been in debt before but suddenly I was living on my overdraft.” Shortly after the wedding Peter started having serious concerns. He says. “She would tell me lots of little lies about where she was and what she’d been doing. “Our shared accounts were always empty and I was really struggling ­financially to keep us afloat. “When I asked her about our money problems she’d be evasive and cold. She was always hiding things from me.” Just a year after the wedding Peter walked out, leaving Karen at their marital home in Swansea. He says: “I couldn’t bear to keep up the pretence of a happy marriage when she wasn’t being honest with me.” Six years later in 2012 Karen met Chris on a dating website – and he fell for her quickly, just like Peter had. Chris from Caerphilly says: “We were messaging back and forth really regularly before we decided to meet up at a cosy country pub. I fell for her straight away. “Karen was always smiling and made it fun to be around her. She worked and was financially independent and said she owned her home, which impressed me, though I later found it wasn’t true.” Just like Peter, he became so besotted with Karen that he proposed very quickly. “It was a real whirlwind,” he admits. “Within three-and-a-half months I was down on one knee proposing. “Just seven months later in August 2013 we were married in front of 40 guests at the Holiday Inn in Cardiff.” However, though Karen was separated from Peter she had never formally divorced him – and so they were still legally married. But her smitten new groom Chris had no idea she was not free to wed. He says: “I had some last-minute wobbles, but because we were in a loving relationship I overlooked them. “She always gave me the impression she had a lot of secrets and hidden depths but she just had this way about her that made me melt.” His world was shattered last December when he found a petition for divorce from Peter in Karen’s laptop bag – and he realised she was still legally married to her ex. Chris took a copy and left it on the kitchen table for Karen to find. He then packed his bags and left their home in Swansea – the same house she had shared with Peter. “All the niggles and suspicions I’d had all came to a head the minute I found that document,” he says. “In that moment I knew our entire ­relationship had been a lie and who knows how else she had fooled me.” Reeling from his discovery, former RAF serviceman Chris dropped the bombshell to Peter. He says: “I wanted him to know that I existed when I first found out. “So I let his solicitor know that Karen had remarried and was a bigamist.” Still coming to terms with the deceit, heartbroken Chris says: “I don’t feel like we ever had a marriage. “As soon as it was ­discovered she was still married, our wedding became null and void. I’m thankful she has no claim over my home or assets but the betrayal has shattered my confidence. I don’t trust my own judgement anymore and I’m off work with the stress of it all.” Chris, who has an 11-year-old daughter from his first marriage, kept his property separate from his relationship with Karen – meaning he had somewhere to go when he walked out on her. He says: “After I left Karen begged me to go back, she said it was a mistake and she hadn’t realised. She told me that she lived for me and that she loved me but I couldn’t go back to her. “I found out then that just days after I left she had uploaded her profile to a dating site again. That’s when I called the police.” Jailing Karen for four months at Cardiff Crown Court in June, Mr Recorder IWL Jones told her: “It is rare for a case like this to come before the court, especially one involving a woman. “Bigamy is clearly a serious offence that strikes at the heart of the marriage system. “You have a good job, at managerial level – you are not a fool, you are an intelligent woman. You knew full well, I am entirely satisfied, that you were still married to Peter Sherratt. “This is not a case of mere negligence, or not checking. “I have no doubt at all that you are a deceitful and dishonest woman and that Mr Thomas is the victim. “You cried during the course of this hearing, but I am by no means at all convinced that you are remorseful.” Later Peter and Chris met up to discuss their marriage hell over a pint in Bridgend, South Wales – half way between their respective homes in Swansea and Caerphilly. Chris says: “After the trial we became quite friendly and had some long chats over the phone about what we’d been through and the kind of woman she was. "After that it was pretty clear we had this bonding ­experience and we were going to be mates for a long time.” Now Peter and Chris meet regularly for a beer and a game of pool and a chat about their marriage nightmare, and are looking forward to moving on with their lives. Peter said: “It’s been almost seven years since I was in Karen’s grip so I have moved on and found a new partner who I love and trust and that’s a whole different experience for me. “I look at Chris now and I can see his pain and anger and I’ve been there too, so I can hopefully help him to move on past his upset. “But it is hard. You never get over the deception and feelings of being a fool.” Having moved back to Caerphilly, Chris is starting to put his world back together but has still not managed to rid Karen fully from his life. He says: “I’ve been absolutely taken for a ride and since the court case I’ve had bailiffs at my door looking for Karen. “But she’s already moved on to her next boyfriend and I’m left picking up the pieces - emotionally and financially. “But at least our marriage never counted for anything. “I can rest easy now knowing I’ll never have anything more to do with her. “And at least Peter and I now have each other to lean on for support.

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Sweets Linked to Heart Attacks

The findings of a large US study suggests that Eating too many sugary drinks, desserts and sweets could increase your risk of having a heart attack, 

Sugar can lead to weight gain, which is bad for your heart.

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Helping individuals cut not only their excessive fat intake, but also refined sugar intake, could have major health benefits including lessening obesity and heart attacks”

Prof Naveed SattarBritish Heart Foundation

In the study, which looked at data on sugar consumption among tens of thousands of people in the US as well as death rates from heart-related problems, there was a significant link between the amount of sugar consumed and heart risk.

The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that added sugar should make up less than 10% of total calorie intake. This is about 70g for men and 50g for women.

Most adults and children in the US and the UK eat too much sugar.

Sugars are added to a wide range of foods, such as sweets, cakes, biscuits, chocolate, and some fizzy drinks and juice drinks.

Nutrition labels often tell you how much sugar a food contains - look for the figure for carbohydrates on packs.

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Food that is high in sugar will contain more than 22.5g of total sugars per 100g, while food that is low in sugar has 5g or less per 100g.

Prof Naveed Sattar from the British Heart Foundation said there could be many reasons why people who eat lots of sugar became unhealthy.

"Of course, sugar per se is not harmful - we need it for the body's energy needs - but when consumed in excess, it will contribute to weight gain and, in turn, may accelerate heart disease."

He said: "We have known for years about the dangers of excess saturated fat intake, an observation which led the food industry to replace unhealthy fats with presumed 'healthier' sugars in many food products.

"Helping individuals cut not only their excessive fat intake, but also refined sugar intake, could have major health benefits including lessening obesity and heart attacks.

"Ultimately, there needs to be a refocus to develop foods which not only limit saturated fat intake but simultaneously limit refined sugar content."

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Can couples really get stuck together during sex?

Homer described how Mars and Venus were caught together to the "inextinguishable laughter" of the Gods (Joachim Anthonisz, J. Paul Getty Museum collection)

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It sounds like a scene from a trashy sex comedy. But stories of getting stuck during sex have been with us for centuries - and some of them might just be true.

An emergency trip to hospital is never pleasant, but it's certainly not something you would want to happen after sex.

"It's not the most romantic ending a couple can imagine," says Dr Aristomenis Exadaktylos, author of a study of 11 years of admissions to his hospital in Bern, Switzerland.

He and his co-authors found plenty of patients who had experienced problems after sex - migraines, heart problems, even amnesia. But asked on the BBC's Health Check radio programme if he had come across a case of the woman's vagina clamping on to the man's penis, he said No - and added that the idea was probably an urban myth.

Two listeners, however, wrote in to dispute this.

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Dangerous Sex

• About 0.1% of ER admissions to University Hospital Bern come about as a result of sex
• Between 2000 and 2011 the hospital recorded 445 such cases
• Of these, 308 cases (69%) were male
• Most of the patients (78%) were younger than 40
• A total of 276 (62%) had a possible infection
• Fifty-five cases (12.4%) were neurological, including headache, amnesia and bleeding between the brain and skull
• Two patients had cardiovascular emergencies and no penile fractures were recorded

Source: "Sexual activity-related emergency department admissions: eleven years of experience at a Swiss university hospital", Journal of Emergency Medicine

"I must tell you it is no myth," wrote one woman who asked to remain anonymous. "It happened to my late husband and myself one night. He literally could not withdraw i.e. was 'stuck'. I attributed it to the intensity of the vaginal muscle response during orgasm."

Another correspondent, who asked to be referred to simply as John, grew up near an airport in southern England. "I remember hearing a story when I was 14 or 15 about an American airman who got stuck inside a lady and they had to get an ambulance and get them to a hospital to get them parted," he says. John eventually joined the merchant navy and started an on-off relationship with a woman in Japan.

On one occasion he and his partner were having "very enjoyable sex" when he suddenly found that he couldn't withdraw. "Proceedings came to a halt and we decided that we'd better separate," he recalls. It took two or three minutes of fumbling and laughing - the experience wasn't painful for either of them.

John, who is now 75, has never before spoken about the incident and it was never repeated.

Dr John Dean, a senior UK-based sexual physician, says that both accounts are credible examples of a rare phenomenon that doctors sometimes call "penis captivus" (captive penis).

"When the penis is in the vagina it becomes increasingly engorged," he says, giving his hypothesis of what causes the problem.

"The muscles of the woman's pelvic floor contract rhythmically at orgasm. While those muscles contract the penis becomes stuck and further engorged."

Finally the vaginal muscles relax, the blood flows out of the penis and the man can withdraw.

Many dog-owners will have seen their pets getting stuck during copulation, which breeders refer to as a "tie". However, there are distinct anatomical reasons for this, according to Peggy Root, an expert in animal reproduction at the University of Minnesota. A dog's penis has a compartment which fills with blood after intercourse has begun, effectively locking the male in place.

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Dr Dean says that several of his patients have discussed with him their experience of getting stuck over the years, more out of curiosity than because it was a major problem. He draws a distinction between penis captivus and the more common and serious condition of vaginismus, in which a woman's vaginal muscles contract involuntarily, preventing intercourse.

Two reviews of the history of penis captivus, published in 1935 and 1979, highlight the public's longstanding fascination with it.

In 1372, Geoffrey de La Tour-Landry related how a voluptuary named Pers Lenard "delt fleshely with a woman" on top of an altar of a church, and God "tyed hem faste togedre dat night". The following day the whole town saw the couple still entwined "fast like a dogge and biche togedre". Finally prayers were spoken and the couple's prolonged intercourse came to an end (although they were obliged to return to the church on three Sundays, strip naked and beat themselves in front of the congregation).

Mars and Venus depicted by 16th Century artist Raphael Regius (Special Collections, University of Vermont)

Captivus features in several other medieval myths and stories, which F Kraupl Taylor, the author of the 1979 review, believes may bear "only a tenuous connection with the actual facts".

He is similarly sceptical about an account from 1931 about an event in Warsaw in the 1920s, which ended with a double suicide. This time, penis captivus afflicted lovers trysting in a garden after closing time, and the couple were only separated when the woman was put under anaesthetic. But the real tragedy came after journalists - "in their greed for sensational facts" - published the story. "The next day two revolver shots put an end to the mental sufferings of the two lovers," the story goes.

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Cold water cure

"When I was a student at Leyden there was a young Bridegroom in that Town that being overwanton with his Bride had so hamper'd himself in her Privities, that he could not draw his Yard forth, till Delmehorst the Physician unty'd the knot by casting cold Water on the Part."

Isbrand van Diemerbroeck17th Century Dutch physician

In his 1908 book The Sexual Life of our Time, Iwan Bloch recounted another case of penis captivus following on from a furtive meeting, this time in a quiet corner of the docks in Bremen, Germany. The woman underwent an "involuntary spasm", the man - a dock labourer - became trapped, and a great crowd gathered to watch. Eventually the couple were carted off to a hospital, chloroform was administered to the woman and they were freed.

In a 1933 manual of gynaecology, the author Walter Stoeckel speculated that penis captivus only affected couples engaged in illicit sex, the fear of detection presumably contributing to the force of the woman's muscular spasm.

This opinion is no longer held by experts, but the narrative of a clandestine meeting followed by public humiliation continues. Recent media reports of penis captivus - in Kenya, Malawi, Zimbabwe and the Philippines - all concern adulterous couples.

The Kenyan incident in 2012 supposedly occurred after the cuckolded husband paid a visit to a witch doctor. It was reported that the couple regained their liberty after prayers - and after the cheating man promised to pay the husband 20,000 Kenyan shillings (£140). He was filmed going to an ATM to withdraw the money.

The Zimbabwean media reported last year that a woman was bring a law case against her long-term boyfriend for putting "runyoka" on her - a fidelity spell that caused her to get stuck on her lover. As one report put it, she was demanding compensation from the jealous boyfriend "for humiliating her and trying to control how she should use her private part".

But there are several accounts of penis captivus taking place within a marriage, including two unsensational case studies from 19th Century German gynaecologists.

Perhaps the best verified example of the phenomenon also occurred during marriage. After the Kraupl Taylor review was published, the British Medical Journal received a letter from Dr Brendan Musgrave, recalling an incident in 1947, from his days as a house doctor at the Royal Isle of Wight County Hospital. "I can distinctly remember the ambulance drawing up and two young people, a honeymoon couple I believe, being carried on a single stretcher into the casualty department," he wrote. This account was corroborated by another doctor who had been on duty at the time.

Dr John Dean says that he can't explain this "very unusual" story, since people experiencing captivus generally have trouble disengaging for only a few seconds.

But he adds: "If you're in that position that probably that feels like an eternity."

source:BBC

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