Weekly Review

By Paul Ford

A Christian martyr.

The U.S. Senate subpoenaed Terri Schiavo, a woman who has been in a persistent vegetative state since 1991, to testify before the Health, Education, and Labor Committee. The subpoena was intended to make it impossible for Schiavo to be taken off the feeding tube that allows her to survive; the order, however, was defied by a Florida judge, and the feeding tube was removed. Schiavo then began to die of dehydration. The House and Senate held emergency sessions in order to pass a bill that would transfer the case from state court to federal court. The bill was then signed by President George W. Bush, who had flown in from his ranch in Crawford, Texas, for the occasion.¹ Schiavo's husband, who wants to let her die, wondered why Congress was expending so much energy on the case. “Why doesn't Congress worry about people not having health insurance?” he asked. “Or the budget? Let's talk about all the children who don't have homes.” Schiavo described House Majority leader Tom DeLay, who is leading the fight to reinsert Terri Schiavo's feeding tube, as a “little slithering snake.”² Global warming was melting the glaciers in the Himalayas,³ and a snow festival in Arctic Greenland was cancelled due to a heat wave.⁴ The Senate passed a resolution that will permit drilling for oil in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge,⁵ and Americans celebrated the second birthday of the war in Iraq. As soldiers in Apache helicopters and Humvees kept watch, the National Assembly of Iraq held its first meeting. Two hundred and seventy-five members met at a convention center on the Tigris River while explosions rattled the convention center's windows. North of Baghdad, a suicide car bomber killed three members of the Iraqi National Guard and wounded eleven.⁶ Iraqi barbers were being killed because they gave Western-style haircuts and cut off beards,⁷ and Italy announced that it would start withdrawing its troops from Iraq in September.⁸ George W. Bush recommended Paul Wolfowitz to head the World Bank, describing him as a “compassionate, decent man,”⁹ and a television exploded in Egypt, killing four children.¹⁰

The Department of Homeland Security was preparing for: the detonation of a ten-kiloton nuclear device; a biological attack with aerosolized anthrax; an outbreak of pneumonic plague; a flu pandemic starting in south China; the spraying of a chemical blister agent over a football stadium; an attack on an oil refinery; the explosion of a tank of chlorine; a 7.2-magnitude earthquake; a major hurricane in a metropolitan area; three Cesium-137 dirty bombs going off in three different cities, each contaminating thirty-six city blocks; the detonation of improvised bombs in sports stadiums and emergency rooms; liquid anthrax in ground beef; a foot-and-mouth disease outbreak; and a cyber attack on the nation's financial infrastructure.¹¹ Edeka, a German supermarket chain, announced that shoppers would soon be able to pay using their fingerprints,¹² and Bernard Ebbers, the former chief executive of WorldCom, was convicted of securities fraud, conspiracy, and seven counts of filing false reports.¹³ Martha Stewart was finding her ankle bracelet to be both “uncomfortable and irritating.”¹⁴ Kofi Annan proposed to expand the U.N. security council to twenty-four members,¹⁵ and China took steps to stop an invasion of red ants.¹⁶ A North Carolina dentist was in trouble for filling syringes with his semen and squirting it into the mouths of several female patients.¹⁷ Bobby Short died, as did John DeLorean,¹⁸ and Scott Peterson was sentenced to death.¹⁹

In Malawi, two journalists were arrested for reporting that President Bingu wa Mutharika was scared of ghosts,²⁰ and the Washington state legislature was trying to decide whether to classify goat-napping as a misdemeanor or a felony.²¹ Angry at a corrupt election, Kyrgyzstani protesters took over municipal buildings in the city of Osh,²² and Ukraine revealed that, between 1999 and 2001, local arms dealers had smuggled eighteen nuclear-capable Kh-55 cruise missiles to Iran and China.²³ A group of researchers at Stanford University were preparing to use stem cells from aborted fetuses to create a mouse that has human brain cells,²⁴ and a British cannibal was imprisoned for life.²⁵ The Pentagon admitted that many of the prisoners who have died in American custody in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2002 were victims of criminal homicide.²⁶ The pope, too ill to perform Palm Sunday mass, waved an olive branch from his apartment window,²⁷ and police in York, Pennsylvania, arrested a fifty-three-year-old serial sheep molester in a barn. The man said he was just petting the sheep, even though it was 3 A.M., it was not his barn, and he had baler's twine in his back pocket, which can be used to bind sheep.²⁸ People were selling their bodies to advertisers as display space. ²⁹ Southeast of Baghdad, U.S. troops killed twenty-six Iraqi militants,³⁰ and police in Florida arrested a five-year-old girl at her kindergarten, binding her hands with plastic ties and placing handcuffs around her ankles. The girl, who weighs forty pounds, was upset about some jelly beans. “They set my baby up,” said her mother.³¹ Alan Greenspan related that when he needs inspiration prior to giving a speech, he turns on a large fan, strips naked, and takes a nice hot bath.³² A magnitude-7.0 earthquake hit Japan,³³ tornadoes struck Bangladesh,³⁴ and floods in Afghanistan killed more than two hundred people.³⁵ Pollution has killed all but thirteen river dolphins in China's Yangtze River.³⁶ The United Nations estimated that 180,000 people have died in Darfur since October 2003,³⁷ and municipal workers in Buffalo, New York, were asked to provide their own toilet paper at work due to a budget crisis.³⁸ A Wisconsin woman rammed her car into a Catholic church after deciding that God does not exist; her car was destroyed, but the church was unharmed.³⁹ Evangelical Christians from the United States and ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel were working together to stop homosexuals from marching through Jerusalem,⁴⁰ and a woman in Zimbabwe testified that she had paid an advisor $5,000 to fly four invisible mermaids, named Emma, Charmaine, Sharvine, and Bella, from London to Zimbabwe.⁴¹ Satan's face appeared on a turtle's shell in Indiana,⁴² and a judge in Pennsylvania refused to let two first cousins marry.⁴³ United States gas prices reached a record high,⁴⁴ and a woman in India committed suicide so that her two blind sons could each receive one of her eyes. Doctors said there was little chance that such a transplant would work.⁴⁵