On Thursday night, the BBC brought us news of witchcraft and child-sacrifice in Uganda via two media: Radio 4’s ‘Crossing Continents’ and BBC2’s ‘Newsnight’ (19 mins to 33 mins) both carried reports by Tim Whewell.

In northern Uganda in the last year, police reckon there have been around two dozen ritual killings and 120 missing persons. People in the affected area and campaigners believe the numbers may be much higher, reflecting under-reporting to the police. So far, no-one has been prosecuted.

China’s completion of an historic natural gas pipeline with Kazakhstan bypassing Russia this week tightens the Asian behemoth’s grip on energy resources needed to fuel a burgeoning economy, a desire also forcing it on a quest for oil and gas wealth in other corners of the globe.

China is not alone in this scramble for energy security. Hungry for oil and gas, world powers like Russia and the United States are also relying on different strategies to grab resource treasures but their efforts have raised questions about conflicts down the road.

[bpsdb] Guest post by British doctor DeeTee. See more by DeeTee here.

Recently, Voice of Young Science wrote an open letter to the WHO appealing for an end to the promotion and use of homeopathy for life threatening infections such as HIV, malaria and tuberculosis in developing countries. This is an appeal that is close to my heart. When I worked in Africa I saw how detrimental ineffective traditional and “alternative” forms of medicine could be, and how easily people could come to rely on totally inappropriate services for their health care. I remember one distressing case where a parent insisted on taking his small child out of the local hospital where I worked in order for the traditional healer to administer “muti” (a form of traditional medicine often made from herbs or occasionally human body parts). The child was suffering from meningitis, which was eminently treatable with antibiotics. He was brought back to us moribund the next day, when he died.

[bpsdb] A lot of the time alternative medicine is something we can chuckle at - rich Chelsea types with more money than sense going into some local quack shop to get their Chakras realigned or whatever. But sometimes a quack comes along so utterly misguided, so horrifically arrogant, that they have the potential to endanger lives. In his live blog from Tanzania, Jeremy Sherr, a homeopath with an interest in AIDS, is gleefully telling the world about his fake treatments for AIDS patients.

Edit: Since I wrote this article and the claims made on Jeremy's blog were brought to wide attention, he has apparently been busy censoring and deleting entries. Rob Hinkley at semiskimmed.net has posted an incomplete archive here.