"Student missing for 12 years was 'kidnapped to teach English to Kim Jong-un'"

"David Sneddon was presumed dead after he vanished in the Yunnan Province in western China when he was 24. A student at Brigham Young University, police said Mr Sneddon likely died while hiking in Tiger Leaping Gorge near the Jinsha River on 14 August 2004."

But they never recovered a body.

On Wednesday, Yahoo News Japan reported that Mr Sneddon had been spotted in North Korea, where he is believed to live. He reportedly works as an English teacher, and has a wife and two children.

Mr Sneddon’s parents, Roy and Kathleen, never believed the official story that their son had died falling into a river. Knowing North Korea's reputation for kidnapping foreigners, they believed the Kim regime sought out their son for his fluency in Korean – which he used during his time spent as a Mormon missionary in South Korea - and snatched him for their own purposes.

The Coke in the machine

There was a run on a soda machine at BYU's Provo campus Tuesday, when students found it contained caffeinated Coke Zero. Traditionally, BYU does not stock the machines with any caffeinated drinks.

Alas, it was all an accident, said BYU spokeswoman Carri Jenkins. 

"Coke mistakenly included a limited number of caffeinated Coke Zeros in our order," Jenkins wrote in an email, "which no one caught while the vending machines were being stocked." 

The caffeine question for Mormons stems from the Utah-based faith’s health code, known as the Word of Wisdom, which bars coffee and tea. For years, some have suggested that the ban included caffeinated colas, and the church’s flagship school, BYU, traditionally has neither sold nor served such drinks.

But what is different is that last year the Church of Latter-day Saints issued a statement on their website, saying, 

"the church revelation spelling out health practices ... does not mention the use of caffeine."

Salt Lake Tribune via TMR