Weekly Review

By Rafil Kroll-Zaidi

“Into the palace parlor they stepped; her hand in his paw the old bruin kept,” 1875

Two hundred fifteen people were killed in a massive bombing and mortar attack on a Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad, marking Iraq's largest single-day death toll since the U.S. invasion. The killings prompted Shiite militiamen to seize and burn alive as many as twenty-four Sunnis; other Shiite residents of the capital stoned Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. “It's all your fault!” one man shouted.^{1 2} Elsewhere in Baghdad, insurgents set fire to a U.S. base, ³ and the host of a popular satirical Iraqi television show was found murdered. “He was a star in the galaxy of Iraqi arts,” said the show's director. “Now, he's another sacrifice on the altar of this slaughtered country.”⁴ Previously unreleased video footage from early 2003 showed Saddam Hussein and his generals preparing to fight the United States with slingshots and crossbows. “Let’s use all the methods we can,” says Hussein. “These methods can be made at home.”⁵ In Washington, D.C., President George W. Bush pardoned two turkeys, Flyer and Fryer, ⁶ and in Ramsey, New Jersey, a flock of turkeys was spotted waiting for a New York-bound train.⁷ Former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet accepted responsibility for everything that occurred during his eighteen-year rule,⁸ and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich announced that he would lead an effort to revitalize the Republican Party. “I am not 'running' for president,” said Gingrich. “I am seeking to create a movement to win the future by offering a series of solutions so compelling that if the American people say I have to be president, it will happen.”⁹ British Prime Minister Tony Blair announced that state-sponsored supernannies would be dispatched to deal with the United Kingdom's problem children. “Life isn't normal if you've got 12-year-olds out every night,” said Mr. Blair, “drinking and creating nuisance on the street with their parents not knowing or even caring.”¹⁰ President Bush's daughter Barbara was robbed in Argentina,¹¹ a college student in Portland, Oregon, was expelled after questioning a classmate's belief in leprechauns,¹² and residents of Oberlin, Ohio, were upset by the presence of gingerbread Nazis. ¹³

In London, Col. Alexander Litvinenko, an ex-KGB agent, died several weeks after being poisoned with polonium 210, a rare isotope that is used in nuclear bombs and moon buggies. Investigators fear that Litvinenko, who accused Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin of ordering his assassination, may have spread radiation to his wife and son as they hugged and kissed him on his deathbed.^{14 15 16} Researchers in Navajo territories suggested that abandoned, rain-filled uranium-mining pits had led to eyeless sheep and disabled Native-American children.¹⁷ Chinese scientists revealed that showing pornography to pandas has helped increase the captive panda population; Vassar scientists said that they had successfully mated robot fish.^{18 19} American scientists announced the creation of a self-aware robot that can heal itself,²⁰ and researchers from Vienna and Massachusetts were studying aggression in fruit flies by crushing the heads of female fruit flies and encouraging two males to fight over the corpses.²¹ A conference of Muslim scholars in Cairo denounced female circumcision,²² and Israeli military officials decided that Miss Israel, in order to prevent bruises on her legs, should not have to carry a rifle.²³ A San Francisco-based organization called for a “Global Orgasm for Peace.”²⁴

The dancing bears of India were in dire need of medical attention,²⁵ and Rhesus macaque overpopulation in Delhi was causing extreme environmental stress. “The problem of man-monkey conflict,” said an environmentalist (who argued against building more monkey prisons) “is only going to increase.”²⁶ A ninety-two-year-old woman was killed in a shootout with Atlanta police,²⁷ a Houston teenager was sentenced to jail for sodomizing a Hispanic teenager with a patio umbrella while shouting “White Power!,”²⁸ and a professional dominatrix testified that an officer in the Greenburgh, New York, police department had extracted sexual favors from her. “He wanted to go to a motel in the Bronx where I would defecate on him,” she said, “but I told him I was uncomfortable going to the Bronx.”²⁹ Police in the Mpumalanga region of South Africa were looking for the owner of an unclaimed penis,³⁰ and two Texas penguins that survived a truck crash hatched a chick.³¹ The Yellow River turned red for the second time in a month,³² 48 boxing orangutans retired to Indonesia from Thailand,³³ and Indian officials announced that they would establish seven vulture havens in order to relieve shortages at the Towers of Silence, where Zoroastrians leave their dead to be eaten.³⁴