Weekly Review

By Rafil Kroll-Zaidi

A kinkajou, 1886.

The Pentagon announced that civilian casualties in Iraq had increased recently by more than fifty percent, and death squads were said to be torturing and killing as many as 1,800 people per month.¹ At least 200 Iraqis were killed in bombings, rocket attacks, and shootings, as were 19 American and British soldiers.^{2 3} U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales visited Iraq to encourage “the rule of law,” and^{4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12} U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld quoted Georges Clemenceau, who said, “War is a series of catastrophes that results in a victory.”¹³ Iran ignored a U.N. Security Council deadline for suspending its uranium-enrichment activities,¹⁴ and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad challenged U.S. President George Bush to a televised debate.¹⁵ U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan denounced Israel's use of cluster bombs,¹⁶ Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert refused to lift a seven-week-old blockade on Lebanon,. ¹⁷ and Israeli troops were being attacked by Lebanese wildlife.¹⁸ Plans were underway to save the Dead Sea.¹⁹ President Bush, visiting hurricane-damaged New Orleans, spoke optimistically of the rebuilding effort. “There will be a momentum, momentum will be gathered,” said Bush. “Houses will begat jobs, jobs will begat houses.”²⁰ Marine biologists said that manatees are not stupid so much as unmotivated.²¹

Forty-nine people died when a commercial jet attempted to take off from the wrong runway at an airport in Lexington, Kentucky.²² Tropical Storm Ernesto killed at least six people and four seals in the United States,. ²³ and around 125 people in Ethiopia died from an outbreak of acute watery diarrhea.^{24 25} American heavy-metal band Fecal Corpse were denied entry to Canada,²⁶ and children in Dublin saw a clown crushed to death.²⁷ Warren Steed Jeffs, who reportedly has 80 wives and 250 children and serves as the leader of a polygamist Mormon sect, was arrested in Nevada on suspicion of arranging marriages between underage girls and older men. ²⁸ Researchers warned that countries with unnaturally high male-to-female population ratios, such as China and India, could foster violence, organized crime, and terrorism.²⁹ Montana Senator Conrad Burns said that terrorists “drive taxi cabs in the daytime and kill by night,”³⁰ and Miss England, an Uzbek-born Muslim, declared that stereotyping leads to terror. ³¹ Tony Blair was seen sporting a new tea mug. “You're a man who's in charge,” reads the mug. “Others follow your lead.” ³² It was reported that the average British woman spends two and a half years on her hair during her lifetime.³³ A British professor announced that five-year-old girls were worried about their weight,³⁴ and a study revealed that the brains of nuns “flicker” in the presence of God. ³⁵ Swiss hikers were warned not to hug cows.³⁶ A woman in Hohhot, China, crashed her car into another vehicle while allowing her dog to drive,³⁷ and Danish researchers reported that pollutants may shrink the genitals of polar bears, foxes, and whales.³⁸ Forty Australian seals were killed in a drive-by shooting.³⁹ Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter, died after a stingray stabbed him in the heart.⁴⁰

Police broke up a ring of badger-baiting gangs in Scotland.⁴¹ Afghanistan's opium production was expected to increase by 59 percent this year, making the country the source of 92 percent of the world's supply,⁴² and Taiwanese apartment-dwellers were upset to discover that their water supply contained the corpse of a 27-year-old drug addict named Kuo.⁴³ In a courtroom in Duluth, Minnesota, a cocaine trafficker ate his own feces;⁴⁴ a vigilante mob in North Carolina beat and killed the wrong man;⁴⁵ and SAT scores in the United States showed the largest decline in 31 years.⁴⁶ Female condoms were becoming more popular in South Africa,⁴⁷ Australian brothels were offering clients discounts based on their gasoline bills,⁴⁸ and in Russia a participant in a sex-doll river-rafting race was disqualified for sexually abusing his rafting apparatus. “I think,” said the man's friend, “it was an expression of his great desire to win.”⁴⁹ In the Indian state of Bihar, high-caste landowners were raping and gouging out the eyes of low-caste residents.^{50 51} A 10-pound, 20-inch-tall, 14-year-old Nepalese boy claimed to be the world's smallest adult.⁵² Japanese physicists were preparing to create a “baby universe,” with its own laws of physics, by cutting off a piece of our own.⁵³ Indian doctors were attempting to treat a girl who weeps tears of stone.⁵⁴