"The fact that they're holding Costa Rica as a carrot and using Uganda as a stick to try to coerce him to plead guilty to a crime..."

"... is such clear evidence that they're weaponizing the immigration system in a matter that is completely unconstitutional, and specifically weaponizing the decision of which country they send him to."

Said Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, one of the lawyers for Kilmar Abrego Garcia, quoted in "Kilmar Abrego Garcia taken into ICE custody at immigration appointment/Abrego, who was just released from federal custody on Friday, now faces deportation to Uganda" (NBC News).

"The law... calls for life imprisonment for anyone who engages in gay sex...."

"The law also decrees the death penalty for anyone convicted of 'aggravated homosexuality,' a term defined as acts of same-sex relations with children or disabled people, those carried out under threat or while someone is unconscious.... [There is also] a prison term of up to 20 years for anyone who promotes homosexuality, a vague provision that activists fear could be used to target agencies supporting L.G.B.T.Q. people, including those providing lifesaving AIDS treatment.... [O]ver the past few years, political leaders, along with domestic and international religious organizations, began ramping up anti-gay campaigns and warning about what they call a threat to family values. Politicians also began making baseless claims about a plot to promote gay activities and lure children in schools to homosexuality.... Some analysts said the law was meant to scapegoat gay people and distract the public from mounting domestic challenges, including rising unemployment and skyrocketing food prices...."

 
From "Uganda’s President Signs Punitive Anti-Gay Bill Into Law/President Yoweri Museveni dismissed widespread criticism of the anti-gay measure, which calls for life imprisonment for anyone convicted of homosexuality" (NYT).

The OED word of the day is "bambi" — the interjection

This is a word in Ugandan English that expresses "a variety of emotions, such as surprise, wonder, sympathy, etc."

Based on the examples given, it seems about like "oh, dear": 

I've selected 7 TikToks for you this evening. Some people love them.

1. Explaining the painting.

2. Taking a shower in Iceland.

3. Life in Uganda.

4. I want to rock and roll for a portion of the night...

5. The new King is a tad irascible.

6. Thumb control.

7. How could that be amore?

"American tourist rescued after being kidnapped in Uganda" — "rescued" = the tour company paid a $500,000 ransom.

I'm deciphering euphemisms in Daily News headlines.

You have to read a way into the article to get to:

Endicott and Remezo were kidnapped at gunpoint Tuesday and held hostage for a $500,000 ransom.... The touring company, Wild Frontiers, paid a ransom in a “quiet and peaceful” handover, a source with knowledge of the exchange told CNN. Wild Frontiers did not return a request for comment.

“Pleased to report that the American tourist and tour guide that were abducted in Uganda have been released,” President Trump tweeted Sunday afternoon. “God bless them and their families!”

"Released" is a better word choice than "rescued."

I suppose people think that if there's a touring company, it's fine to go to whatever foreign country you've decided is on your "bucket list." I thought that before getting to the part of the article that quotes the woman's friend, using that awful term "bucket list": “She’s a very spontaneous and independent woman, she loves to travel and it was on her bucket list … to go to Uganda, to see the gorillas, to go trekking."

ADDED: My headline assumes the company paid the full amount that was demanded, but that is not clear. Would you like to tour a "wild frontier" under the protection of a company that is known to pay a big ransom to kidnappers? It helped the women in this case, but I would think kidnappers would now target people going with this company.

UPDATE, April 9: "Suspects are arrested for kidnapping American grandmother on safari as it's claimed she was released on the border on a motorbike after the Ugandan government paid $30,000 for her safe return" (Daily Mail). That's a big change in the story I read yesterday, which made it look like the company paid and like the amount was much more.

"Look what did I do? I wasn't shaming the girls. I wasn't putting women's menstruation out there just for the sake of getting sanitary pads. I was saying, 'Screw you, Museveni.'"

From "She Strips, She Swears, She Goes To Jail ... For The Good Of Her Country" (NPR). The country is Uganda.

[Stella] Nyanzi wrote that she refused to call the first lady "Mama Janet."

"What sort of mother allows her daughters to keep away from school because they are too poor to afford padding materials that would adequately protect them from the shame and ridicule that comes by staining their uniforms with menstrual blood?" she wrote. "What malice plays in the heart of a woman who sleeps with a man who finds money for millions of bullets, billions of bribes, and uncountable ballots to stuff into boxes but she cannot ask him to prioritize sanitary pads for poor schoolgirls? She is no Mama! She is just Janet!"...

When she disrobed, she found herself holding on to the burglar bars at the university and declaring herself a nalongo owenene — the mother of twins with the big vagina.... [C]onjuring tribal mythology, she also said that Janet Museveni had no power over her, because, as the mother of twins, she had endured a pain Museveni would never know. Her vagina was bigger and more powerful than Museveni's, Nyanzi said. She also denigrated the first lady using sexual, misogynist imagery that made Nyanzi unpopular with her feminist colleagues....

"For me, I don't have guns," she says. "I don't have money. I don't have clout. I have Facebook and I have language, and I think we can be polite and continue to suffer or we can step out and be rude and get some... Maybe they won't give us the sanitary pads or the public health services, but they will know that we know."

"Though American shows once dominated the East African television schedule..."

"... familiar themes like village-to-city migration and patriarchal Christian values have made the soap operas from the Philippines more attractive to the Ugandan audience."

“You need to make sure that there's some element of African kind of living, the life that we see everyday,” says Robert Semakula, a programmer for Bukedde TV, one of Uganda’s top stations that runs “Be Careful With My Heart”. Each year for the last three years, Mr. Semakula has sorted through a catalogue of shows from foreign media, and lately, Filipino soaps have made the pick....

Filipino soaps find an audience in Uganda because they adhere to a common formula, described by Graham, as a "Cinderella story, a young girl in the country who’s relatively innocent and looks after her relatives, and she’s immediately transported to a place of great corruption, a city or a rich family." Muwonge says these shows connect because they deal with poverty and other issues affecting Ugandans' everyday lives....

Uganda is notorious for its intolerance of gay people and has long had antigay laws. So when Filipino soap operas – which have recently begun to show positive portrayals of gay culture – show two men in a relationship, the station often cuts the scene or storyline.

“The audience won't understand that,” Semakula says.

"Unless I have got confirmation from scientists that this condition is not genetic, but a behavior that is acquired..."

... Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni will not sign the Anti-Homosexuality Bill.

Homosexuality is already illegal in the East African nation, and violence against the country's LGBT population has been steadily increasing since the Anti-Homosexuality Bill was first introduced in 2009, according to activists on the ground. When the legislation was first introduced in Parliament, it called for the death of anyone who committed "aggravated homosexuality," which included repeated "offenses," sexual relationships in which either person was HIV-positive, or any encounter that involved a minor.

She "worships the female sexual organ, seeing it as her god."

Uganda denounces Eve Ensler's "Vagina Monologues."

The Ugandan government has condemned "The Vagina Monologues," which is to be staged in the country later this month, saying it is part of an international effort to corrupt the moral fabric of Ugandans. The state minister of information, James Nsaba Buturo, said the government had no plans to ban the play, but said the title "is undoubtedly indecent and tasteless" and the content "promotes values that are a threat to our country."

Well, good for them for not banning it! Myself, I think the play is awfully bad, though I couldn't care less if Ensler "worships the female sexual organ."

(Political theology might be this blog's theme of the day. See previous post.)

UPDATE: In the end, Uganda did ban the play.