Daily Digest Online

A BBC Africa Eye investigation has uncovered a clandestine network in Sierra Leone where practitioners claim to procure human body parts for so-called "juju" or black magic rituals, preying on widespread belief and systemic gaps in law enforcement. A recent BBC Africa Eye investigation has revealed the operations of an underground trade in human body parts linked to ritualistic killings in Sierra Leone. The report documents undercover interactions with individuals claiming to be "juju" practitioners who offer to obtain human remains for clients seeking power, prosperity, or political success. The investigation was prompted by the unresolved 2021 murder of 11-year-old Papayo Kalokoh in Makeni, whose mutilated body was found in a well. “They killed my child and now there is just silence,” his mother, Sallay Kalokoh, told the BBC, highlighting a pattern of ritual killings that often go uninvestigated in a country with only one pathologist for ne...

A 95-year-old woman in China, believed by her village to have died, was discovered calmly cooking in her kitchen six days after being placed in a coffin, in a case doctors attribute to an extremely rare condition known as "artificial death." A village in China's Guangxi province was stunned when a 95-year-old woman, believed to have passed away, was found alive in her home days after her funeral preparations had begun. Li Xiufeng was discovered unresponsive by a neighbor who brought her breakfast in February 2012, following a recent fall. Unable to wake her and detecting no breath, the neighbor presumed she had died. According to local tradition, her body was placed in a coffin inside her home for a multi-day vigil before burial. Six days later, when the neighbor returned to check on the home, he found the coffin empty. A search led to the kitchen, where Li Xiufeng was found sitting on a stool, preparing a meal. She reportedly told her shocked neig...

A Russian court has sentenced a man to 19 years in a penal colony for the 2018 murder of his girlfriend, a crime prosecutors described as being carried out with "special cruelty" and involving acts of cannibalism and desecration. A Russian man has been sentenced to 19 years in prison for the brutal 2018 murder of his girlfriend, a crime that shocked investigators with its extreme violence and elements of cannibalism. Dmitry Luchin, then 23, was convicted of killing 45-year-old Olga Budunova after visiting her apartment under the pretense of celebrating International Women's Day. According to trial proceedings, Luchin struck Budunova repeatedly with a wine bottle before using a meat cleaver to dismember her body. Prosecutors detailed that Luchin then committed further acts of desecration, including roasting and consuming parts of her brain and drinking her blood. He is also reported to have scrawled insults on her body and drawn occult symbols on th...