Weekly Review

By Claire Gutierrez

The Treasury Department seized control of mortgage and loan giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, firing the companies' chief executives and promising to provide as much as $200 billion to prevent insolvency.¹ The jobless rate rose from 5.7 percent to a five-year high of 6.1 percent, with more than 84,000 jobs lost in August,² and Senator John McCain accepted the Republican Party's nomination for the presidency.³ “This campaign is not about issues,” said McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis. “This election is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates.”⁴ It emerged that McCain did not properly vet Alaska governor Sarah Palin in selecting her as his running mate, and that he interviewed her in person only on the same day he offered her the position. Despite McCain's opposition to earmarks, Palin, when mayor of the 6,700-resident town of Wasilla (known to state troopers as Alaska's “meth capital”), hired lobbyist Steven Silver to help win federal earmarks totaling $27 million. It also emerged that Palin, 44, received her first passport in 2006.^{5 6 7 8} Xiguang, an elephant undergoing treatment on the Chinese island of Hainan, was off heroin and headed home.⁹

American commanders returned control of Anbar Province to the Iraqi army and police, celebrating with a large parade during which soldiers marched along a newly paved street without their body armor, helmets, or guns.¹⁰ The United States promised $1 billion in aid to Georgia, and Vice President Dick Cheney visited Tbilisi to pledge continued support. “It's Cheney,” said Russian politician Konstantin Kosachyov, “who was behind all the recent events on the former Soviet turf.”¹¹ American missiles struck a seminary in Pakistan, killing twenty people, including two children, but not Taliban commander Jalaluddin Haqqani,¹² and Paris Match published a glossy eight-page spread of Taliban fighters wearing the uniforms of the French soldiers they had killed.¹³ Tropical storm Hanna struck Haiti for four days, felling fruit trees and bridges, flooding the city of Gonaives, forcing 54,000 people into shelters, and killing 137 people.¹⁴ Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick pleaded guilty to two felonies, including lying under oath, and agreed to spend four months in jail, pay $1 million, and resign from office. “I want to tell you, Detroit,” he said, “that you have set me up for a comeback.”¹⁵ Virginia Tech students were falsely told by the local registrar of elections that if they voted at college their parents would no longer be able to claim them as dependents on their tax returns, and that they could lose their scholarships and their health- and car-insurance coverage.¹⁶ Cambridge University, seeking to attract a more diverse student body and to shed its elitist image, asked the producers of leading British soap operas to mention the school in their storylines. ¹⁷ A federal judge, responding to Jack Abramoff's pleas for mercy, gave the former lobbyist only four years in prison instead of the maximum 12.5 years. “My name,” said Abramoff, “is the butt of a joke.”¹⁸ For the first time in a century, a month passed without a visible spot on the sun. An ice age, said scientists, may be forthcoming.¹⁹

Satellite images revealed that global-warming-induced melting had left the North Pole an island.²⁰ Tens of thousands of copies of a Swedish food magazine were recalled after an error in a recipe for apple cake sent four readers to hospitals with nutmeg poisoning,²¹ and a British teenager's head swelled to the size of a soccer ball after she consumed a Baileys-chili-tequila-absinthe-ouzo-vodka-cider-and-gin cocktail.²² A new biography of writer Roald Dahl revealed that Dahl, in his work as a British spy, seduced many American women. “I think,” said Antoinette Haskell, whose father, Charles Marsh, introduced Dahl to influential Americans, “he slept with everybody on the east and west coasts that was worth more than $50,000 a year.”²³ The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that it would not spend the $300,000 needed to correct cards that mistakenly list the number of a phone-sex company (1-800-TRAMP24) in place of the number of the agency (1-800-STAMP24). “That's a lot of money,” said a spokesperson, “we can be using for wildlife conservation.”²⁴ The Victorian Aboriginal Education Association warned Australian girls not to play the didgeridoo because it was “men's business” and could lead to infertility;²⁵ police in Florida checked for fingerprints on a water-filled condom that had been used as a fake breast by a cross-dressing thief who snatched the purse of a 74-year-old woman;²⁶ and a murder investigation in Japan ended when pathologists discovered that the decomposing corpse was actually a life-sized sex doll.²⁷ The author of the book 100 Things to Do Before You Die, having completed about 50 of the things on his list, fell, hit his head, and died.²⁸