Weekly Review

By Rafil Kroll-Zaidi

Research by U.S. epidemiologists and Iraqi physicians found that 654,965 Iraqis have died as a result of the Iraq war, though half of households surveyed were unsure of who to blame for the deaths of their family members. President George W. Bush said that he did not consider the study “a credible report.”^{1 2} The United States Army was planning to maintain current troop levels in Iraq through 2010, and to replace its advertising slogan, “An Army of One,” with a new slogan, “Army Strong.”³ Insurgents in Baghdad fired a mortar round at an ammunition dump on a U.S. military base, setting off large explosions that were felt miles away,^{4 5} and the judge in Saddam Hussein's genocide trial once again expelled Hussein from the courtroom; one of Hussein's co-defendants then called the prosecutors “pimps and traitors” and punched a bailiff. Another defendant declared, “I wish to be executed and finish with this court.”⁶ North Korea's Dear Leader Kim Jong Il was said to be at risk of losing his access to McDonald's hamburgers and Hennessy cognac if sanctions on luxury goods are imposed in response to his country's recent nuclear testing.⁷ U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld showed reporters a satellite image of North Korea. “Except for my wife and family,” said Rumsfeld, “that is my favorite photo.”⁸ Canadian troops in Afghanistan were finding it difficult to destroy forests of ten-foot-tall marijuana plants where the Taliban hide. “That damn marijuana,” said one soldier.⁹ Right-wing columnist Christopher Hitchens confessed that he had eaten a dog.¹⁰

Two trains collided while traveling in opposite directions between the French city of Nancy and the grand duchy of Luxembourg, killing six people.¹¹ Floods killed 37 people in Thailand, and Israeli airstrikes in Gaza killed nine people.^{12 13} Libya announced that it would provide laptop computers for 1.2 million schoolchildren,¹⁴ and Chinese Wal-Mart workers unionized.¹⁵ Americans were claiming political asylum in Britain.¹⁶ In China's Shanxi and Shaanxi Provinces, families with dead sons complained that corpse brides were in short supply.¹⁷ A study suggested that an increasing number of British students are working as prostitutes in order to pay their university tuition,¹⁸ and California researchers found that women dress more fashionably when they are ovulating.¹⁹ A Vietnamese death-row inmate convicted of possessing heroin worth more than one billion dong had her sentence commuted to life in prison when she was discovered to be pregnant.²⁰ A Virginia couple were trying to give back their fifteen-year-old adopted son, who turned out to be a sexual predator. “They just told me he was hyperactive,” said the boy's mother. ²¹ A Pennsylvania woman was arrested for beating her baby's father with the baby.²² In Bombay, where the city courts faced a backlog of 16,234,223 cases, police arrested a drunk three-foot-tall man for extorting money from people with a meat cleaver. “Everyone pampered him because he was so small and cute,” said the man's brother. “But he has brought great misfortune for the family.”^{23 24} A Minnesota school principal resigned after shooting two orphaned kittens on school property.²⁵

In Israel, four doctors were arrested for carrying out illegal, non-consensual medical experiments on their patients;²⁶ the U.S. Department of Justice accused blacks of suppressing the white vote in Mississippi;²⁷ and Adam Pearlman, the “American Al Qaeda,” was charged with treason, making him the first U.S. citizen so indicted since World War II.²⁸ Dubai's ruling family was sued for enslaving children as camel jockeys. A family representative argued that the suit was spurious, since Dubai has replaced child camel-jockeys with robots.²⁹ India's Supreme Court ordered the seizure of 300 macaques who had terrorized bureaucrats and destroyed top-secret defense documents,³⁰ and the Philippines rejected a plan to help a monkey-infested island by importing monkey-eating eagles.³¹ In Uganda, a mob armed with spears, machetes, and clubs killed a lioness, mutilated the carcass, and imprisoned the remains.³² Thousands of villagers in the Indian state of Jharkhand fled their homes in order to avoid a herd of rampaging elephants. “The elephants,” said a forestry official, “are out to avenge.” “They destroy our crops in the field,” complained a farmer. “Sometimes they damage our houses also.” ^{33 34} Donkeys were increasingly popular with Mexican farmers.³⁵ Swiss researchers in Syria discovered the remains of an extinct species of giant camel, ³⁶ and a Virginia biology teacher was suspended after compelling her students to pose with the bones of a century-old corpse in Pocahontas Cemetery.³⁷ Walnut-related crimes were on the rise in the United States,. ³⁸ and a pile of jelly left over from a wedding party's jelly-fight sparked a terrorism alert near Leipzig, Germany.^{39 40} An Italian sociologist moved into a cave, where he plans to spend the next three years;⁴¹ two Indianapolis morticians ran into a burning building to save three corpses;⁴² and fish leapt from the ocean near Hawaii in anticipation of an earthquake.⁴³