The artifact pictured left is a pamphlet dated August 22, 1678, entitled The Mowing-Devil: Or Strange NEWS out of Hertford-shire. It takes the form of a primitive news report, which started life as a woodcut — a type of early printing plate created by carving into a wooden block and then inking it.

The image depicts a demon, scythe in hand, felling crop stems in what seems like a systematic fashion.

Naming your new bundle of joy Lucifer has been effectively banned by New Zealand’s names registrar after three parents had the odd request knocked back.

The country’s Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages has been cracking down on mothers and fathers getting too creative with their children’s names, ruling out punctuation marks such as . (Full Stop), * (Asterisk) and / (presumably ”Slash”).

The list of 102 names rejected in the past two years includes Baron, Bishop, Duke, General, Judge, Justice, King, Knight and Mr, all deemed too similar to titles.

Messiah was also turned down, as was 89, and the single letters, C, D, I and T, although Q and J were accepted after being queried.

It’s a new hard line for the agency that made headlines in 2008 when it was revealed to have approved a series of strange monikers, among them Benson and Hedges, twins named after the cigarette brand, and Violence and Number 16 Bus Shelter, both for boys…

[continues in the Sydney Morning Herald]

The evangelical cult “Paz do Senhor Amado” (”Peace of the beloved Lord”) in the interior of Brazil forbids its followers to use any USB technology by contending that it uses a symbol that shows sympathy for the devil.

Its founder, the “Apostle” Welder Saldanha, says that this is just another symbol of Satan, which is always present in all Christian homes.

“The symbol of that name [a name which he doesn't even like to pronounce] is a trident, which is used to torture souls that go to hell. Use only a symbol of those shows that all users of that vile technology are actually worshipers of Satan,” explains the” Apostle.”

Measures were taken so that all the USB connections of his followers were exchanged for common connections and even the Bluetooth, which according to Saldanha Welder is permitted, for “Blue was the color of the eyes of our savior Jesus Christ.”

Panic broke out at the Moruga Composite School yesterday as 17 female students fell mysteriously ill and began rolling on the ground, hissing and blabbering in a strange tongue, after suffering bouts of nausea and headaches. Two of the students reportedly tried to throw themselves off a railing and had to be physically restrained, triggering fears of a possible demon attack.

The drama started during the lunch hour in the Form One block and quickly spread to other areas. Form Five student Kern Mollineau, who attends the Lighthouse Tabernacle Church, said he got worried when the girls’ eyes began rolling up in their heads and they began beating up on the ground.

With the assistance of several other students and teachers, the pupils were taken to the multi-purpose hall where some of them fell into a semi-conscious state. Mollineau recalled: “One girl was blabbering as if in a strange language. I could not understand what she was saying. “It was sounding like ‘shebbaberbebeb shhhhee.’ The girls were unusually strong. We had to hold them down so that they will not hurt themselves. “The teachers were right there. I get a kick in my face when one of the girls started beating up on the floor. Many of them had bruises.” Mollineau claimed he actually communicated with the “devil which had possessed the girl. “I asked the Devil what he wanted with the girls and the voice said he wanted a life. He kept saying to send the girls in the toilet and to leave them alone,” Mollineau claimed.

Roman Catholic priests, as well as pastors from nearby churches, including Josephine Charles, Deborah Charles and Pastor Gordon, visited the school and began showering the children with holy water and prayers…

[continus at the Trinindad & Tobago Guardian]

A baby died when a family of 12 leapt from their second floor balcony in Paris claiming they were fleeing the devil.

Eight more were injured, some seriously, in the tragedy when they jumped 20 ft into a car park in Paris suburb of La Verriere.

The baffling incident occurred when a wife woke to see her husband moving about naked in the room, police said.

She began screaming ‘it’s the devil! it’s the devil!’, and the man ran into the other room where 11 others adults and children were watching television. One woman grabbed a knife and stabbed the man before others pushed him out through the front door.

Story continues at Belfast Telegraph …

Sex abuse scandals in the Roman Catholic Church are proof that that “the Devil is at work inside the Vatican”, according to the Holy See’s chief exorcist.

Father Gabriele Amorth, 85, who has been the Vatican’s chief exorcist for 25 years and says he has dealt with 70,000 cases of demonic possession, said that the consequences of satanic infiltration included power struggles at the Vatican as well as “cardinals who do not believe in Jesus, and bishops who are linked to the Demon”.

He added: “When one speaks of ‘the smoke of Satan’ [a phrase coined by Pope Paul VI in 1972] in the holy rooms, it is all true – including these latest stories of violence and paedophilia.”

He claimed that another example of satanic behaviour was the Vatican “cover-up” over the deaths in 1998 of Alois Estermann, the then commander of the Swiss Guard, his wife and Corporal Cedric Tornay, a Swiss Guard, who were all found shot dead. “They covered up everything immediately,” he said. “Here one sees the rot”. …

[continues in the Times]

MUZDALIFA, Saudi Arabia (Reuters) – Some two million Muslims headed to Muzdalifa on Thursday after spending the day at the plain of Arafat to prepare to cast stones at the devil in the most dangerous part of the annual haj pilgrimage.

Bright weather greeted the pilgrims after heavy rain hit the nearby city of Jeddah, gateway to Mecca, on Wednesday. Some 77 people were killed, none of them pilgrims, most of whom were swept away by currents and drowned, state television said.

At Muzdalifa, the pilgrims will collect pebbles to throw at walls at the Jamarat Bridge on three occasions over the next three days in an act that symbolizes the rejection of the devil’s temptations.

The bridge has been the scene of a number of deadly stampedes — 362 people were crushed to death there in 2006 in the worst haj tragedy since 1990…