Weekly Review

By Paul Ford

Paul Wolfowitz announced that he would resign as president of the World Bank on June 30; the Bank in turn said that it accepted Wolfowitz's assurances that he had acted “in good faith” when he oversaw a promotion for his girlfriend Shaha Riza.^{1 2 3} James B. Comey, deputy for former attorney general John Ashcroft, testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee that on March 10, 2004, Alberto Gonzales and Andrew Card had attempted to persuade Ashcroft (who was hospitalized and had temporarily given up his authority as attorney general to Comey) to reauthorize the Bush Administration's domestic surveillance program, even though the Justice Department had just determined that the program was illegal; Ashcroft, Comey said, refused.⁴ Senate Democrats called for a vote of no confidence in Gonzales, and Senator Charles Schumer called the Attorney General a puppet.⁵ Jimmy Carter said the Bush Administration was “the worst in history” in terms of its impact on the world but later said that his words were “careless or misinterpreted.”⁶ Jerry Falwell died. “Dr. Falwell,” said Senator John McCain, “was a man of distinguished accomplishment.”^{7 8} Arizona dogs were advised to not swallow hallucinogenic toads.⁹

For the first time since the Korean War a train traveled between North and South Korea and a North Korean cargo ship docked in a South Korean port.¹⁰ Hamas was fighting Fatah in Gaza and sending Qassam rockets into Israel, which was bombing Gaza in return,¹¹ and troops in northern Lebanon were fighting against Fatah Islam, a splinter group from a Syrian-backed Palestinian splinter group.¹² Kazakhstan's parliament voted to allow President Nursultan Nazarbayev to stand for unlimited terms,¹³ and Jeb Bush joined the board of Tenet Healthcare Systems, which in 2006 agreed to pay $725 million to resolve claims that it cheated Medicare.¹⁴ In Sre Leav, Cambodia, villagers were raiding the graves of those killed by the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s. “I'm afraid,” said a farmer named Srey Noeun, “that the owner will take revenge on me because she died with nothing but her earrings, and now I have taken them. She'll say, 'Please give them back. They are all I had.'” On the other hand, Noeun pointed out, she had been able to buy some pork.¹⁵ Observing the bent light from cluster CL0024+17, astronomers inferred that a ring of dark matter 5 billion light years away had been formed by colliding galaxy clusters.¹⁶ Off the coast of Monterey, California, a new kind of sea anemone--small, white, and cube-shaped--was found inside a whale's corpse,¹⁷ and scientists in the Antarctic discovered hundreds of new worm and crustacean species, along with a new kind of gourd-shaped carnivorous sponge.¹⁸ Microsoft announced that it would acquire online media and advertising firm aQuantive for $6 billion,¹⁹ Thomson Corp. agreed to buy Reuters for $17.2 billion,²⁰ and the editor of a California news website, explaining that editors and interns “are extremely demanding and produce inferior work,” hired two new reporters who will cover Pasadena from India.²¹ Only 38 pupfish remained in Devil's Hole, Death Valley.²²

Ten people, including a schoolboy, were killed in an Afghanistan suicide bombing,²³ at least 15 U.S. troops died in Iraq,²⁴ and Iraqi President Jalal Talabani flew to the United States, where he hopes to lose weight.²⁵ Hillary Clinton released a video on YouTube. “So now I'm turning to you, the American people,” said Clinton in the clip. “Here's the issue: what do you think our campaign song should be?”²⁶ The Defense Department said that it was cutting off soldiers' access to YouTube and MySpace because the military wanted to “get ahead of the problem before it became a problem.”²⁷ Kuwait stopped pegging the dinar exclusively to the dollar, raising doubts that a Gulf currency union will take place by 2010,²⁸ and China announced that it would invest $3 billion in the New York‒based private equity group Blackstone.²⁹ A group of deep-sea explorers in Tampa, Florida, announced that they had recovered $500 million in sunken treasure from a shipwreck in the Atlantic Ocean,³⁰ and the 138-year-old tea clipper Cutty Sark burned in London.³¹ A Galveston, Texas, man microwaved his daughter,³² and in Orange County, Florida, a woman was helping her father move out of his home when she discovered photographs of both her father and her deceased mother molesting her daughter.³³ New stars were hatching near the head of Orion,³⁴ and a gorilla named Bokito ran amok at a Rotterdam zoo, biting a woman and breaking her arm. “He is and remains,” said the woman from her hospital bed, “my darling.”^{35 36}