Nigerian Faces Death Sentence For Marrying 86 Wives


Nigeria's Islamic authority has told the man who has 86 wives to choose only four and repent within three days or else he will be sentenced to death.

The Jamatu Nasril Islam (JNI) passed their verdict on Mohammed Bello Abubakar, 84, according to Sharia law.

This comes two weeks after the Nigerian press and the BBC reported on the case.

Talking to the media then, Mr Abubakar challenged Muslim scholars, saying there is no punishment stated in the Koran for having more than four wives.

However, Mr Abubakar advised other men not to follow his example and marry 86 women.

No limit

The former teacher and Muslim preacher lives in Niger State with his wives and at least 170 children, and says he is able to cope only with the help of God.

"A man with 10 wives would collapse and die, but my own power is given by Allah. That is why I have been able to control 86 of them," he told the BBC.

Most Muslim scholars agree that a man is allowed to have four wives, as long as he can treat them equally.

But Mr Bello Abubakar told the BBC: "To my understanding the Koran does not place a limit and it is up to what your own power, your own endowment and ability allows.

"God did not say what the punishment should be for a man who has more than four wives, but he was specific about the punishment for fornication and adultery."

Niger is one of the Muslim majority states to have reintroduced Sharia punishments since 2000.

Several people have been sentenced to death for adultery by Sharia courts but none of these sentences have been carried out.

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Bruce Willis Gave Paparazzi A Car Wash Service



Bruce Willis threw water over a photographer's car after the snapper tried to take his picture as he left a medical building in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles.

The Die Hard actor reportedly became irritated at how close the photographers were getting to him, he retaliated by throwing a bottle of water over one of their cars.

However, many of the photographers were pleased with his antics as they photographed him hurling the liquid.

Bruce is not the first celebrity to lash out at the paparazzi.

Last year, Britney Spears famously beat a photographer's car with an umbrella when she deemed he was being too intrusive.

She later wrote to the photographer's agency to apologise for the incident.

She said: "I want to apologise for the past incident with the umbrella. I was preparing a character for a possible movie role where the husband doesn't play his part so they swap places.

"Unfortunately, I didn't get the part. I'm sorry I got all carried away with my part."

In January, Coldplay frontman Chris Martin tackled a photographer to the floor outside New York's Mount Sinai Medical Centre.

The singer was with his wife Gwyneth Paltrow - who was rumoured to be pregnant at the time - and became enraged when the photographer shouted "congratulations Chris!"

Chris screamed: "Have some f***ing respect!" He then pushed the paparazzo to the ground and wrestled his camera from him.

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The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

Light as popcorn without butter, the third entrée in the "Mummy" franchise is munchable summer fare that goes down easy, staving off hunger for a while but not exactly satisfying.

After the fun but forgettable "The Mummy" in 1999 and the less fun, more forgettable "The Mummy Returns" in 2001, it's time to watch more ancient corpses come to life amid digital effects laid on with a trowel. Again with the endless chases and the undead pulling their skeletons together to do battle, only to be stopped by swashbuckling heroes who can break the spell.

Tiresome and messy, "The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor" borrows mightily from the "Indiana Jones" franchise and various martial-arts films, not to mention Frank Capra's 1937 "Lost Horizon," but it doesn't do what those films did nearly as well. Director Rob Cohen and writers Alfred Gough and Miles Millar seem determined to water it down to globs of plot, strung between shapeless action sequences and humorless repartee. Only martial-arts superstar Jet Li triumphs as the mostly wordless evil Emperor Han of ancient China, a glowing magma spirit locked in a terra cotta shell.

Archaeologist/tomb-raider Rick O'Connell (Brendan Fraser) and his adventurer-writer wife, Evelyn (Maria Bello, replacing Rachel Weisz from the previous films), live in bored retirement in 1946 England. They're thrilled when the government asks them to deliver a priceless gem to a Shanghai museum. Meanwhile, their son, Alex (Luke Ford), has dropped out of college and gone on a dig in China, discovering the emperor's mummy encased in a huge terra cotta sculpture. We learn in a long prologue that it was a sorceress (Michelle Yeoh) who put the emperor and his men under a spell.

When the curse is accidentally lifted, the emperor, joined by a rebel Chinese army, rushes to the Himalayas, where a dip in a pool in Shangri-La promises immortality. He already has supernatural powers and likes to turn himself into a three-headed dragon. Accompanying the O’Connells is Evelyn’s eccentric, wisecracking brother Jonathan (John Hannah), who during the flight to the mountains is vomited on by a yak.

The kindest thing to be said for this frantic, cluttered mess of cheesy computer-generated action-adventure clichés is that at least you can see how the estimated $175 million budget (according to the Internet Movie Database) was spent. We get an avalanche, an army of bow-and-arrow-wielding skeletons, a car chase that turns into a fireworks explosion, and a cadre of snowy yetis. In the movie’s futile drive to conjure visceral excitement, the action sequences are edited into an incoherent jumble that makes you feel trapped on a rickety airplane sitting in a pool of yak vomit.

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