A Lebanese television presenter has been sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia after two different Saudi courts found him guilty of “sorcery.” Oh hey, Saudi Arabia! Welcome to the 17th century! See you guys in 400 years!

Ali Hussain Sibat (former host of a popular call-in show that aired on Sheherazade, a Beirut based satellite TV channel), who is 48 and has five children, would predict the future on his show and give out advice to his audience.

[His] attorney, May El Khansa, who is in Lebanon, tells CNN her client was arrested by Saudi Arabia’s religious police (known as the Mutawa’een) and charged with sorcery while visiting the country in May 2008. Sibat was in Saudi Arabia to perform the Islamic religious pilgrimage known as Umra. [CNN]

Sibat appealed the death sentence, but the court of appeals wisely upheld the initial judgment. Because let’s face it, predicting the future and giving advice on TV is some A-1, punishable-by-death sorcery.

…Out of curiosity, exactly when can we drop the pretense of  ”respecting other cultures” and just say, “Okay, that’s enough. We gave you stone-age jackasses like 800,000 chances, and all you did was get pissed off at everyone and hit technology with rocks.”? Is now too soon? How about next week?

Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi was criminally charged for selling booze to minors after a drunken driving accident led to the death of one of her classmates. The incident, which happened when Snooki was still in high school in 2004, was uncovered by Radar:

Snooki was one of three people charged in connection with the 2004 death of teenager Michael Truncali… The Marlboro High School senior died with a blood alcohol level of .18 — more than twice the legal limit — when he rolled his Mazda in the early hours of Thanksgiving morning after drinking for hours at Snooki’s house.

Actually, a BAC of .18 is infinity times the legal limit for someone who’s underage.

Anyway, the party happened at Snooki’s home with the approval (and presence) of Snooki’s mom, and now Truncali’s parents are expressing concern at the way “Jersey Shore” glorifies alcoholism. But those are heavy details that require some amount of analytical thought. Let’s focus on what matters: Snooki killed a dude. She should face some kind of punishment, and yet here it is, 2010, and we’re still not electrocuting reality TV stars. We’ve got a long way to go as a society.

On Monday, award-winning BBC presenter Ray Gosling admitted to smothering his AIDS-stricken, terminally ill gay lover on BBC’s “Inside Out.” Acting on the tip, police arrested Gosling on suspicion of murder.

The broadcaster used a documentary on BBC East Midlands’ Inside Out programme to claim he made a pact with an unnamed partner – who he later described as his ‘bit on the side’ – to end his life if the pain got too severe.

He told Radio Four’s Today programme that he did not fear police action, adding: ‘I don’t do worry – bugger the law.’

He insisted he would not tell police the name, place or date of the killing, which happened ‘a long time ago’. [Daily Mail]

It’s always so touching to hear about a smothering murder inspired by love and mercy. Can you believe that gays aren’t even afforded that right in America? As it is now, only married heterosexuals can legally smother their spouse. The inequality — that’s the real crime.

As much fun as it is to poke fun at VH1 for featuring so many murderers on its dating shows, the Spanish TV show “El Diario de Patricia” may have done worse: a father whom the show reunited with a daughter he hadn’t seen in four decades is now in prison after he used the reunion to sexually abuse and rape his daughter.

[H]e seemed like a normal father who was desperate to get back in touch with the two daughters he had not seen for nearly 40 years.

By chance, one of his daughters saw him on the programme and the two were reunited after 38 years apart. But this was not to have the happy ending that normally delights the producers and audiences of Spain’s reality shows.

The 65-year-old father repeatedly sexually abused the younger daughter, who was scarred by the experience of growing up without a father.

Yikes. Sorry, we’re fresh out of happy news today. But if you want to know more about this depressing and sordid train wreck — or if you just hate Spain — keep reading.

It was the latest in a series of real-life tragedies to have hit the shows that delight in exploring the underbelly of Espana profunda (deep Spain) and which rival the likes of The Jeremy Kyle Show [damn British articles -- think of it like "Jerry Springer" - Ed.]

The daughter’s ordeal began in 2003 when she was watching an edition of El Diario de Patricia (Patricia’s Diary), a reality show that specialises in family scandals, marriage breakdowns or long-lost relatives appearing by surprise live on air.

The 38-year-old spotted her father, who told viewers that he had not seen his two daughters since 1966 when he split up with their mother. She decided to get in touch with him after they spoke on the telephone. They met for the first time in Torremolinos, near Málaga.

The mood changed when the father kissed her on the lips during one of their seafront meetings. Instead of refusing to see him again, she returned with him to her home in Málaga, where he sexually abused her.

The court was told that the abuse continued during several other meetings and he later raped his daughter. A psychiatric report, submitted to the court, said that the woman did not react in the normal way when her father started to abuse her “because of the lack of support which she had suffered throughout her life”.

The father denied that he had abused his daughter and claimed she made up the allegations as revenge for him abandoning her as a child.

The hugely popular TV shows, which Spaniards call telebasura (rubbish television), have been beset by troubles. Two years ago Antena 3, the maker of El Diario de Patricia, faced calls to close the show after Svetlana Orlova, a single mother, declined her ex-boyfiend’s live proposal of marriage. A week later she was murdered by Ricardo Navarro, who had been turned down.

After the killing it emerged that the couple had a violent past and Ms Orlova had been granted a restraining order against Navarro, who stabbed her to death.

The father was sentenced to seven years in prison, which may or may not be a severe enough punishment, depending on your views. It’s like one year for ever half-decade he didn’t rape her.

All of these stories deserve some kind of coverage; none of them interested me enough to give them a dedicated post. Solution: news dump! It’s like a regular Warming Glow link dump, but with fewer cats.

‘JERSEY SHORE’ SEASON 2 LOCALE: MIAMI — MTV is currently in the process of renting and remodeling their South Beach Guido palace, and shooting will begin as soon as producers find enough chlorine for the hot tub to survive a season’s worth of hair product and chlamydia. I’m kind of disappointed in the decision to film in Miami. MTV should have shipped them to Australia, where it’s mid-summer and the culture clash could have kept me interested.

YET ANOTHER VH1 REALITY MURDERER — The eyewitness who testified against Jamal Trulove recognized him as a suitor on “I Love New York 2″ three months after he fatally shot Seu Kuka in 2007. Implicit in the article is that Trulove was a convicted felon when he appeared on the dating show. Say what you will about TSA, no one sucks at background checks quite like VH1.

ABC ORDERS SECOND SEASON OF ‘DATING IN THE DARK’ — Awesome. I’m really not one for reality shows — especially ones about dating — but this show did a fascinating job of forcing people to face up to their superficial reliance on judging people by their looks. Great news for fatties!

All right, we’ve got a couple of arrests to start off our week! Yay! First up, “Diff’rent Strokes” star Gary Coleman was picked up by police in his Utah hometown for an outstanding domestic abuse warrant from 2009. He and his wife have had a rocky marriage, but the alleged victim in the case isn’t known. It’s a pretty dull story, except for Coleman’s mug shot.

In other law-related news, Andy Dick surprised absolutely no one when he was arrested late last week for two counts of sexual abuse in West Virginia. Wait, sexual abuse is against the law in West Virginia? Huh. Who knew?

According to the criminal complaint, Dick was talking to a guy when he “unexpectedly and without invitation grabbed the victim’s crotch, repeatedly groping then kissing him.” Also in the complaint, a security guard at the bar says that Andy Dick “grabbed his crotch and began laughing” when the guard tried to give him an armband. [TMZ]

I’ve never understood why Andy Dick gets any work. It’s obvious to the most casual observer that the only things he really loves are drugs and cock. Comedy is just something he dabbles in but wasn’t made to do. Kinda like sex with women.

Joshua Warner, a former deckhand on “Deadliest Catch,” was arrested in Illinois on suspicion of three bank robberies in Eugene, Oregon. In a related story, whoa! People still successfully rob banks?

Eugene police say he is the same Josh Warner who appeared as a greenhorn deckhand on the Alaskan king crab fishing boat Wizard in the Discovery Channel show “Deadliest Catch.” His actions and confrontations with deckhands and the captain made him well known to the show’s followers…

Prior to fishing in Alaska, Warner was a Dungeness crab fisherman on the Oregon coast and a wildland firefighter. [CBS 13]

I don’t condone bank robbery — I’m more of a liquor store man — but I have to admit, that’s a helluva resume for picking up dangerous women. “What do you do?” “I’m a crab fisherman, wildland firefighter, and bank robber. But my real passion is anonymous sex in public.”

Shane Sparks, an Emmy-nominated choreographer for “So You Think You Can Dance” and a judge on “America’s Best Dance Crew,” was arrested Friday on suspicion of felony child molestation stemming from alleged incidents fifteen years ago.

The Los Angeles district attorney’s office filed an eight-count felony complaint [Friday] against Sparks, alleging multiple lewd acts upon a child, starting in 1994. It identified the victim as a girl who was younger than 14 years old when the incidents began. [LA Times]

Web site TMZ reported that Sparks attorney Steve Meister said ‘the case “stinks to high heaven” because Sparks’ accuser waited 15 years to come forward. He called the claims “extortion, Hollywood-style.” [Examiner]

Sparks, meanwhile, called the sex “statutory rape, Polanski-style.”

It’s that time of the year where local news stations do heartwarming puff pieces for the holiday season. Except in Tennessee, where four-year-old Hayden Wright snuck out of his home in the middle of the night, got drunk, wandered around the neighborhood, went into a neighbor’s house, and stole presents from under the tree — one of which was a little girl’s dress that he then put on before continuing wandering around the neighborhood. I repeat: four years old. THIS ACTUALLY HAPPENED.

April Wright is 21 years old and is going through a divorce with her husband who is in jail.  She says she is not sure how her 4-year-old managed to get out of the house, open a beer, and steal the neighbors presents from under their tree. Now she’s just glad he’s okay and says she won’t let it happen again.

“He runs away trying to find his father,” she said. “He wants to get in trouble so he can go to jail because that’s where his daddy is.”

My mom always said I was precocious, but compared to me this kid is a genius. I didn’t get into drunken burglary and cross-dressing until I was 19.

LAST NIGHT’S EPISODE: Kind of disappointing, yes? That raging bitch Angelina (not pictured above, because she’s fat and annoying and I hate her) finally got her ass kicked out of the house, but it’s bittersweet since she didn’t get jacked in the face. The rest of the episode felt strained, like the manufactured sort of trash I expect of “The Real World” instead of the genuine trash of “Jersey Shore.”

GYM CLASS HERO. Brad Ferro, aka the man who punched Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi in the Gif Heard Round the World, is a high school gym teacher in New York City. Or was, at least: Ferro has “been moved out of class and into one of the Department of Education’s teacher reassignment centers, also known as a ‘rubber room,’ agency officials confirmed.” More on that, including Ferro’s mugshot, at the New York Post.

SNOOKI SNOOKI SNOOKI! Now that we know Snooki’s full name, we can enrich our lives so much more with added exposure to her. For example, thanks to her Twitter feed, I found out that (a) she’s going to be on today’s Wendy Williams show, and (b) she doesn’t get punched until next week’s episode. MTV, you tease! Oh, and in the most unsurprising development of all time, Snickers was one of the maligned girlfriends on MTV’s “Is She Really Going Out With Him?” Video below. Prepare to be irritated.