Mormon women in court over child torture charges.

Two Mormon women, Deidre Carrington and Maria Keable, have appeared in court charged with the torture of children in their care. The pair forced the children to eat red-hot chillies, punched and kicked them, gagged them, and whipped them with nettles, in order to instill discipline in them. The children, some as young as two years old, were awoken at 5am each morning to say prayers and read scripture. After this, they would be forced to do hours of housework, facing physical abuse as punishment if this was not done to a satisfactory standard. Ms Carrington responded by saying that 'she was a member of the church and had strict principles to teach the children how to work and be obedient.'

Group cleared over Iran murders

Iran's Supreme Court has acquitted a group of men charged over a series of gruesome killings in 2002, according to lawyers for the victims' families. The vigilantes were not guilty because their victims were involved in un-Islamic activities, the court found. The killers said they believed Islam let them spill the blood of anyone engaged in illicit activities if they issued two warnings to the victims. The serial killings took place in 2002 in the south-eastern city of Kerman.

According to their confessions, the killers put some of their victims in pits and stoned them to death. Others were suffocated. One man was even buried alive while others had their bodies dumped in the desert to be eaten by wild animals. The accused, who were all members of an Islamic paramilitary force, told the court their understanding of the teachings of one Islamic cleric allowed them to kill immoral people if they had ignored two warnings to stop their bad behaviour.

Lawyers for the victims' families say the Supreme Court has five times overturned the verdict of a lower court that found all the men guilty of murder. Now the Supreme Court is reported to have acquitted all the killers of the charge of murder on the grounds that their victims were all morally corrupt.

Aids Victims Risk Lives

Thousands of Aids and HIV patients are risking their lives by refusing medication in favour of holy water. The controversial treatment is offered by a church in Ethiopia which claims to have cured hundreds of believers.

The church claims that more than a thousand people have been cured in the past two years. Head priest Father Geberemedhen says "We don't allow patients to take medication if they want to receive holy water". That means they must stop taking the antiretrovirals which prevent the disease taking hold, and prolong the life of those who carry the HIV virus.