Weekly Review

By Paul Ford

Caricature of Louis IV, by Thackeray. 1875.

Twenty-three people were killed in bombings in Kirkuk, Iraq, and 180 bodies, some showing signs of torture, were found in Baghdad,. ¹ where interfaith dating has become extremely difficult. “There is no hope in this country anymore for Sunnis and Shiites to fall in love,” said Husham al-Gizzy, holding his face in his hands.^{2 3} “We have to embrace,” said Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, “the culture of dialogue and reconciliation.” ⁴ The Abu Ghraib prison was placed under Iraqi control. “I heard shouting,” said a recent visitor, “like someone had a hot iron on their body.”⁵ President George W. Bush complained that Part I, Article 3 of the Geneva Convention was too vague. “What does that mean, ‘outrages upon human dignity’?” he asked at a news conference. “That's a statement that is wide open to interpretation.”⁶ Former Texas governor Ann Richards died,⁷ and Princeton professor Edward Felten said that he and his students had successfully hacked a Diebold voting machine.⁸ Pope Benedict XVI apologized for the reactions to a speech that quoted Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus's description of Islam as “evil and inhuman.”⁹

Amnesty International accused Hezbollah of war crimes,¹⁰ and neo-Nazis won seats in the regional parliament in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Germany.¹¹ The dwarf planet Xena was renamed Eris, for the Greek goddess of discord, and the planet's moon was named Dysnomia, for the spirit of lawlessness.¹² Astronomers announced a new fluffy planet called HAT-P-1 that is very far away,¹³ and Russia said that it could send Madonna into space as early as 2009.¹⁴ Australian officials suspected that ten stingrays found dead with their tails cut off had been killed to avenge television personality Steve Irwin.¹⁵ Carlos Lage, the vice-president of Cuba, said that the United States was a “morally decadent empire,”¹⁶ and Chicago prosecutors dropped all charges against a man who, after security guards mistook his penis pump for a bomb, was detained at O'Hare International Airport. “Humiliation aside,” said the man's attorney, “the system worked.”¹⁷ Two years after it started, Project BioShield, the $5.6 billion Bush Administration effort to develop and stockpile medical supplies in case of biological attacks, had shown little progress. “The inept implementation of the program,” said the director of the Center for Health and Homeland Security at the University of Maryland, “has led the best brains and the best scientists to give up.”¹⁸ There was a chemical spill on the International Space Station.¹⁹

In Indonesia gray mud seeping from the ground had inundated an area the size of Monaco; the chief of the hamlet of Kedungbendo met with psychics for advice. “Moses had a stick to part the sea,” explained Haji Hasan. “So, probably there is someone with powers out there who could help.”²⁰ A judge in Easton, Pennsylvania, sentenced a 73-year-old woman to life in prison for beating her 84-year-old neighbor to death with a claw hammer,²¹ and at Dawson College in Montreal a blogger named Kimveer Gill went on a shooting rampage, wounding 19 people and killing an 18-year-old woman and himself. It was later revealed that Gill had listed “crushing my enemies' skulls” under the “likes” section of his website profile.²² An Ontario woman died after choking during the Chubby Bunny marshmallow-eating contest. “It was just an unfortunate incident that happened,” explained a fair manager.^{23 24} On the advice of his witch doctor a Serbian premature ejaculator had sex with a hedgehog and had to be hospitalized for pricks.²⁵ Fertility clinics in Britain were low on sperm.²⁶ A Nigerian man accused of murder explained to authorities that he had actually killed a rogue goat with an axe, but the dead goat had then turned into the corpse of his brother.²⁷ Patricia Kennedy Lawford died of natural causes,²⁸ and Patricia C. Dunn, the chairwoman of Hewlett-Packard, agreed to resign in January after it was revealed that Hewlett-Packard had spied on its own board in order to stop leaks.²⁹ Scientists in India announced that they had discovered a new species of bird,³⁰ and more polar bears drowned in the Arctic.³¹ The United States was running out of troops to send to Iraq,. ³² President Bush insisted that the search for Osama bin Laden had not slackened its pace,³³ and police in Green Bay, Wisconsin, chased a pig around a highway for more than an hour.³⁴ A British man died when he fell off a cliff while flying his kite.³⁵