CONTINENTAL DRIFT

Murder in the monastery

A disgraced monk in Egypt has been detained on charges of killing a bishop at a desert monastery, in a case that has rocked the Coptic community. The monk, Wael Saad, was stripped of his religious title in connection with the murder of Bishop Epiphanius. The church has also put a freeze on accepting new monks and a ban on monks leaving monasteries without official permission. The motive for the killing is not known.

Bad exam-ple

Burundian headmaster Benjamin Manirambona was confronted by police and exam officials while sitting for a national university entrance exam. The police had received a tipoff that Manirambona was going to write the paper for a student who was deployed on a peacekeeping mission and was hoping to qualify for university. Manirambona, who is the head of Buterere Technical College, admitted that the student had promised to pay him when he returned from the mission.

Heir hear!

Under sharia law, male heirs often receive double the inheritance of their female relatives. But this is going to change in Tunisia. President Beji Caid Essebsi has pledged to make equal inheritance a law, to be applied only when a will does not spell out the division of an inheritance. Essebsi’s proposal, put forward by a commission he established last year to review the country’s rights laws, is one of the more hotly contested planned reforms.

Red card