Sidelights: ‘Lunatic’ causes iftar confusion

MADINAH: A trickster decided it would be fun to climb onto a building here with a megaphone and issue a call for the Maghreb prayer five minutes before the actual time of sunset. While many people were savvy enough to realize it was a premature announcement to break their fast, others — perhaps delusional from a day of no food, drink or tobacco — jumped immediately on the dates when they heard the call. The motive behind the premature announcement is unclear, but Al-Madinah daily, which reported the story on Monday, described the man as “mentally deranged.”