1. A 24-year-old Jordanian man killed his unmarried sister after she became pregnant. He "stabbed her 10 times in different parts of her body with a dagger in front of a group of people before handing himself over to police and confessing to the crime," a police spokesman said. Seventeen “honour” killings were reported in Jordan last year.

2. Two Saudi families have agreed to annul the marriage of an 11-year-old girl to a 40-year-old man, following intervention by the kingdom’s National Human Rights Society. Maktoob website adds: “The Saudi government is working on new regulations to impose a minimum age to marry, probably of 18, to prevent further child brides … Saudi authorities recently came under fire after a father allowed his daughter, eight, to be married to a man in his fifties. The marriage was eventually annulled in April after international pressure.” 

3. “Is ethnicity and religion an aetiological factor in men with rapid ejaculation?” You can buy this scientific paper for 16 quid (and thanks to the Angry Arab for pointing it out). It sounds like a variant on that old tale that black men have big cocks. “Eighty-nine percent of patients who reported rapid ejaculation [an “intravaginal ejaculatory latency time" of less than three minutes] reported their religion as Muslim; 72% of men were from Bangladesh.” So what has Islam – or, indeed, Bangladesh – got to do with this? Probably nothing. “The reasons are unclear. We contend that possible aetiological features include psychosocial and environmental influences.”