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From today's featured article

A Santería shrine in Trinidad, Cuba

Santería is an African diasporic religion that developed among Afro-Cuban communities during the late 19th century. It arose through the syncretism of the Yoruba religion of West Africa, the Roman Catholic form of Christianity, and Spiritism. Santería is an initiatory tradition with no central authority. It is polytheistic and revolves around deities called oricha. Deriving their names and attributes from traditional Yoruba divinities, they are equated with Roman Catholic saints. Each human is believed to have a personal link to a particular oricha. Practitioners venerate the oricha at altars, where offerings include fruit, liquor, flowers and sacrificial animals. A central ritual involves practitioners drumming, singing, and dancing to encourage an oricha to possess one of their members and thus communicate with them. Healing rituals and the preparation of herbal remedies and talismans also play a prominent role. The number of initiates is estimated to be in the high hundreds of thousands. (Full article...)

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Cayuga

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In the news

Paralympics opening ceremony

The Summer Paralympics open (ceremony pictured) in Tokyo, Japan.
Ismail Sabri Yaakob is appointed as prime minister by the King of Malaysia.
Hakainde Hichilema is elected President of Zambia.
The Afghan government collapses as the capital city of Kabul falls to the Taliban offensive.

On this day

August 25:

Aaliyah

1258 – George Mouzalon, the regent of the Empire of Nicaea, was assassinated as part of a conspiracy led by nobles under the future emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos.
1609 – Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei demonstrated his first telescope to Venetian lawmakers.
1758 – Seven Years' War: Prussian forces engaged the Russians at the Battle of Zorndorf in present-day Sarbinowo, Poland.
1941 – Second World War: Soviet, British and Commonwealth armed forces invaded Iran to secure oil fields and Allied supply lines for the Soviet Union.
2001 – American singer Aaliyah (pictured) and several members of her record company were killed when their overloaded aircraft crashed shortly after taking off from Marsh Harbour Airport in the Bahamas.

Gennadius of Constantinople (d. 471)
Charles Richet (b. 1850)
Velma Caldwell Melville (d. 1924)

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Today's featured picture

The Fiancée of Belus is a large narrative painting by the French artist Henri-Paul Motte based on a fanciful Babylonian ritual associated with the deity Belus (Bel). According to that ritual, the deity was offered a girl who sat on the lap of Bel's statue overnight, to be replaced the following day by another. All the girls were said to have been winners of daily beauty contests. For the interior of the Babylonian temple, Motte copied the Greek temple in Olympia, while the sculpture is inspired by the Assyrian deity Lamassu. The painting is in the collection of the Musée d'Orsay.

Painting credit: Henri-Paul Motte

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