Weekly Review

By Paul Ford

Caught in the Web, 1860.

The Iraqi Defense Ministry announced that on average one person per hour was being killed in Basra.¹ In Baghdad, 19 people were killed in attacks, including four U.S. soldiers, and a tae kwon do team was kidnapped.² Gay Iraqis were fleeing the country to avoid being killed by militias.³ American troops were using lasers to "dazzle" Iraqi drivers who do not stop at checkpoints; if used properly, said a Pentagon spokesman, the laser light will not blind its target.⁴ The Nepal House of Representatives declared the King of Nepal to be powerless,⁵ and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia asked newspapers to refrain from publishing pictures of women.⁶ Plague was found at a campground in Utah.⁷ A 4.3-million-square-foot mall opened in the Philippines,⁸ and thousands of people protested against affirmative action in New Delhi.⁹ Fidel Castro denied that he had a fortune worth $900 million. "Why would I want money," he asked, "especially now that I'm going to be 80 years old?" His doctor said that Castro was in excellent health and could live another 60 years.^{10 11} In Louth, England, a group of youths kicked a pet rabbit to death.¹² White House Press Secretary Tony Snow said that he would prefer not to hug a tar baby.¹³

While acknowledging that Khaled al-Masri "deserves a remedy" for allegedly being tortured by the CIA, a federal judge dismissed al-Masri's case because allowing it to proceed would expose government secrets.¹⁴ There was a riot at Guantánamo Bay.¹⁵ A study found that only one in four United States teenagers knows the names of all four broadcast TV networks,¹⁶ and another study found that one out of every 136 Americans was incarcerated.¹⁷ A kennel was ordered closed in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, after a cockapoo was found with yeast in both of its ears.¹⁸ At least 18 people fell ill in Dallas after eating tainted muffins.¹⁹ A man with no legs climbed to the summit of Mt. Everest,²⁰ and the mayor of Scottsdale, Arizona, was offended by a new restaurant called the Pink Taco.²¹ In Santa Ana, California, a homeless man was arrested after he told five boys he would cast them in a television commercial, then licked their feet.²² A camel ran amok on the Trans-Israeli Highway,²³ and a rogue elephant was on the loose in Rwanda.²⁴ In Alaska an elephant named Maggie was refusing to use her $100,000 treadmill.²⁵ The Hershey Company opened a new health center to study the benefits of cocoa,²⁶ and Ray Nagin was re-elected mayor of New Orleans.²⁷ A British-Ugandan team of scientists said that the glaciers of the Rwenzori Mountains in East Africa, which the Greek geographer Ptolemy called "the mountains of the moon," could melt within the next two decades.²⁸

Scottish scientist Klaus Zuberbuhler found that Nigerian putty-nosed male monkeys say "pyow" to warn of leopards and "hack" to warn of eagles. "Pyow," said a monkey. "Hack hack pyow hack hack."²⁹ A patent was filed for a Pentagon-funded "controllable launcher for propelling a payload" that can shoot SWAT teams onto the roofs of tall buildings.³⁰ A Honduran teenager who stole an anti-immigration protest sign in New York was facing deportation,³¹ and the Senate passed a bill that would make English the national language.³² It was revealed that in 2004 a group of Republican lawmakers wrote letters to the IRS calling for a probe of the NAACP.³³ Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly warned that "many far-left thinkers believe the white power structure that controls America is bad."³⁴ Iran, despite reports to the contrary, was not making non-Muslims wear badges.³⁵ About 2,000 gallons of Sunny D concentrate leaked into a river in England, killing fish and turning the water bright yellow.³⁶ A South African ice cream company sprayed a ton of ammonia gas into the atmosphere, sending 100 schoolchildren to the hospital; afterwards, the company held an assembly for some of the children and gave them free ice cream. "They've been reading words like 'toxic' and 'poisonous' and obviously got quite a fright," said an engineer. "We want to enlighten them about how ammonia can be used constructively."³⁷ Finnish horror rock group Lordi (whose most recent album is "The Arockalypse") won the Eurovision Song Contest,³⁸ and President George W. Bush promised to uphold "the tradition of the melting pot."³⁹ Scientists in Germany said that apes can plan ahead.⁴⁰