Cold pizza, donuts and coffee are the fare of the night if you can afford them or venture out to get them. Under no condition can you obtain lobster.

[The term] comes from the red hands the typesetters had after setting the morning "red banner" headlines. When they went for their coffee, with their red-stained hands, they were often heckled as "lobster men" by the early morning workers.

During newspapers' heyday in the early 1900s, a lobster trick named "the tour of duty after the morning paper went to press and before the day staff arrived," and its variant lobster shift became popular in the 40s.

In 1942, editors at Merriam-Webster asked the great newspaperman H.L. Mencken what he knew about the origin of the term. Mencken put in some late hours investigating, but the best he could come up with were guesses. "Perhaps," he said, "since the lobster is considered 'an extremely stupid animal,' the name lobster trick recognizes the fact that no intelligent person would want that shift." Alternately, Mencken speculated that back in the old days, anyone up and about at 2 a.m. must be a wily old dog who surely spent those hours cavorting in nightclubs and wolfing down lobster.

Other newspapermen provided more fanciful theories. They ranged from overnight typesetters in England whiling away idle time by reciting 17th-century poetry about lobsters and the moon to the overnight rewrite men of the New York Herald enjoying exotic breakfasts that included lobster.

Some experts claim that at the time the festival was known as Shoum. Osiris, the god who taught Egyptians to plough the land, grow food and hunt and fish, was murdered by his jealous brother Seth, who went on to hide his remains. Osiris's wife Isis found her husband's remains and resurrected him from the dead. As a symbol of life, Isis then gave birth to Osiris's son Horus. The story, and the festival, symbolise the triumph of good over evil. It is typical that we forget the moral of the story and go for the food.

Sham Al-Nessim, in its present form, was established shortly after Christianity came to Egypt in 312AD. Thus, it falls on the first Monday following the Orthodox Easter. But Sham Al-Nessim is a festival that goes beyond history and religion -- and straight for the fish.

[T]he local Imam, Mohamed Raguig, has decided to ask the Spanish bishop to grant grant the Muslim community a land plot belonging to the church or a space inside the church.

The Andorran government has refused to allocate a land plot for the mosque construction, citing as reasons the insufficiency of low-price lands.

This would not be the first time that a church would be transformed into a mosque or that Muslims would be performing their prayers in a space inside a church. The experience already exists in Paris.

200. (1) The Jurisdiction of a Kadhis' court extends to

(a) the determination of questions of Muslim Law relating to personal status, marriage, divorce, including matters arising after divorce, and inheritance and succession in proceedings in which all the parties profess Islam;

(b) the determination of civil and commercial disputes between parties who are Muslims, in the manner of a small claims court as by law established, but without prejudice to the rights of parties to go to other courts or tribunals with similar jurisdiction;

(c) the settlement of disputes over or arising out of the administration of wakf properties.

The announcement that Sgt. Félix Doh, the leader of a ferocious group called the Ivoirian Popular Movement of the Far West, had been captured and executed on Friday morning appeared to illustrate the price of hiring seasoned fighters to stoke the many conflicts of West Africa.

The rebel group said the man responsible for the death was Sam Bockarie, an infamous West African warlord wanted by a United Nations-backed court for crimes against humanity in Sierra Leone.

The group said Mr. Bockarie's men, whom Sergeant Doh had recruited, killed him because he had called on them to put down their guns and go home.

Most speakers quoted biblical passages they claimed condemned non-monarchial governments. A pleased Mswati endorsed their views: "It is good that you have quoted verses from the bible which do not support multi-party democracy." His comments were greeted by loud shouts of the royal salute, "Bayete!"

Mswati sat grinning or nodding in agreement during a debate hosted by the League of Churches, entitled "The Disadvantages of Multi-Party Democracy."

Reverend Khayeni Khumalo said citizens of democratic states are damned. "A king links a country with God. A president cannot communicate with God because God does not know how he was installed. Presidents are power-hungry people who are like rapists, they break in and rule. They are imposed. Many presidents are going to hell, together with their people, no matter how many they are," Khumalo said.

Noting "there is not a single verse in the Bible which says there should be a president ruling a country," the Reverend Mkhuluza Zwane was applauded when he told Mswati: "When people are given the right to choose, they always choose evil. There are people who are sponsored to dethrone you, Your Majesty, and these are the people who advocate for democracy."