Weekly Review

By Gemma Sieff

Cyclone Nargis tore off roofs, shredded trees, overturned cars, and killed more than 10,000 people in Myanmar.¹ Tens of thousands of Somalis rioted in Mogadishu over the high cost of food,² President Bush pledged $770 million in international food aid,³ and an inmate awaiting trial for murder sued an Arkansas county jail for underfeeding him after he shed 105 pounds from his 413-pound frame. “About an hour after each meal,” he stated in a complaint, “my stomach starts to hurt and growl [and] I feel hungry again. We are literally being starved to death.”⁴ The sister-in-law of Josef Fritzl, the Austrian electrician accused of locking his daughter in a basement dungeon for 24 years and fathering seven children with her, told the Associated Press that Fritzl hadn't had sex with his wife in many years: “I believe it was because my sister had been getting bigger,” she said. “He never liked fat women.”⁵ Police in Germany discovered the bodies of three dead babies stored in a freezer in the cellar of a family home, after two of the family's older children went rummaging for a frozen pizza,⁶ and a former Mr Gay UK charged with murder was accused of carving up, dicing, cooking, and eating his victim's leg.^{7 8} Philipp Freiherr von Boeselager, believed to be the last surviving member of the circle of plotters who attempted to kill Adolf Hitler with a briefcase bomb, died at the age of 90.⁹

A Japanese government employee was found to have viewed online pornography at work more than 780,000 times in nine months,¹⁰ and an Ecuadorian politician proposed that a woman's right to sexual pleasure be made part of the country's new constitution.¹¹ Western Australia's Liberal Party leader, Troy Buswell, admitted to having sniffed the chair of a female staffer in 2005.¹² At a town-hall meeting in Iowa, Baptist minister Marty Parrish asked Republican presidential nominee John McCain whether it was true that he had called his wife, Cindy, a “cunt” in 1992. “You know,” McCain replied, “that's the great thing about town-hall meetings, sir, but we really don't, there's people here who don't respect that kind of language. So I'll move on.” Parrish was then escorted from the meeting by the Secret Service and local police. ¹³ In western Indiana, the president of the Sheet Metal Workers' Union attributed his support for Hillary Clinton to her “testicular fortitude” in facing problems like NAFTA.¹⁴ After Hillary Clinton proposed that she and Barack Obama compete in a Lincoln-Douglas-style debate, Fox News broadcast an image of Abraham Lincoln facing off against ex-slave Frederick Douglass instead of 1860 Democratic presidential nominee Stephen A. Douglas.¹⁵ A filly named Eight Belles, Hillary Clinton's pick, came in second in the Kentucky Derby, while victory went to the agile colt Big Brown; after losing, Eight Belles broke both front ankles and was promptly euthanized.^{16 17} Speaking to North Carolina Democrats, Clinton promised, “If Senator Obama is the nominee, you better believe I'll work my heart out for him.”¹⁸

An Italian police officer shot herself in the head outside a stadium during a second-division soccer match,¹⁹ Brazilian football star Ronaldo picked up and was blackmailed by three transvestite prostitutes,. ²⁰ and an eight-year-old boy in Arizona died after a goal post fell on him during a soccer game.²¹ An Illinois newspaper carrier rescued an elderly woman whose leg had been pinned for four days under the dead body of her obese 77-year-old husband.²² Seven hundred and fifty thousand people made reservations to visit the exhumed corpse of Saint Pio of Pietrelcina in San Giovanni Rotondo, Italy. Padre Pio, who exhibited the stigmata, and who once wrestled with the devil, died in 1968.²³ Scientists reported that echolocating bats cry out loud to detect their prey, emitting sounds louder than those at a rock concert,^{24 25} while spiders “talk” to potential mates using a type of light not visible to the human eye.²⁶ Albert Hofmann, the Swiss chemist who invented LSD and credited it with allowing him to see “the wonder of creation, the magnificence of nature and of the animal and plant kingdom,” died in his hilltop home at the age of 102.²⁷