Weekly Review

By Claire Gutierrez

An American cattleman.

President George W. Bush announced a $13.4 billion bailout for General Motors and Chrysler. The bailout, which will make use of funds authorized by Congress in October for the rescue of U.S. financial institutions, requires among other things that the automakers sell their fleets of private aircraft. “I've abandoned free-market principles,” said Bush, “to save the free-market system.”^{1 2} President-elect Barack Obama called for an expansion of his economic recovery plan in order to save a half-million more jobs atop the 2.5 million he already hopes to save, at a total cost of $600 billion or $700 billion, then left for vacation in Hawaii, where he stayed with his family in a five-bedroom, $9 million home.^{3 4} Officials in Washington, D.C., warned that if the two to four million visitors expected for Obama's inauguration actually show up the city's public transportation system will crash.⁵ Welfare rolls were growing for the first time in a dozen years;⁶ the Federal Reserve cut its interest rate from one percent to a range between zero and 0.25 percent, the lowest rate on record;⁷ and companies including FedEx, Motorola, General Motors, and Resorts International were forgoing contributions to employee 401(k) plans. “It has been a grand experiment,” said an economics professor of employee-investment plans, “and it has failed.” ⁸ A Missouri state representative filed legislation to legalize the sale of margarine.⁹

Hamas announced that it was formally ending its truce with Israel,. ¹⁰ and dynamite was found inside a high-end department store in Paris after an unknown group warned that explosives were hidden there. The group demanded France withdraw its military from Afghanistan, and threatened further attacks.¹¹ Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, speaking to reporters for the first time since federal criminal complaints were filed against him, denied any wrongdoing and quoted, from memory, the poem “If” by Rudyard Kipling. ¹² Cleveland Clinic surgeons performed the nation's first face transplant;¹³ the Bush Administration issued new rules that will allow health-care workers, from doctors to janitors, to refuse to perform services that violate their religious beliefs;¹⁴ and the owner of Soapy's Car Wash in Paw Paw, Michigan, found a heart on the floor of one of the wash bays. “We're obviously hoping it's an animal,” said the village police chief.¹⁵ The abuse by Iraqi soldiers and police of such prescription drugs as Artane and Valium—known on the Iraqi street as “the capsule,” “the cross,” or “the eyebrow”—was on the rise. “We don't commit suicide,” explained an officer, “and that's why we resort to Artane and other drugs.”¹⁶ A recent poll found that more than a quarter of U.S. teenagers think that violence is at least sometimes acceptable,¹⁷ and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement began investigating allegations that children sent to the Florida School for Boys 50 years ago were abused and possibly killed after a group of men, now in their 60s, told investigators they believe the bodies of classmates are buried on the school's premises. One of the men, Dick Colon, remembered wanting to save a black teenager whom he found inside a running clothes dryer. “I said, 'Do it! Do it! Do it!' And then I thought to myself, 'If you do it, they're gonna put you in there. You're gonna be next.' And I walked away,” he said. “A chicken shit, I was.”¹⁸ After offering tips at a security seminar in Mexico on how to avoid being kidnapped, Felix Batista, an American who has negotiated the release of many kidnapping victims, was kidnapped.¹⁹ The cofounder of online gambling company PartyGaming pleaded guilty to a charge related to online betting and agreed to pay $300 million to the United States. “I acknowledge my actions,” said Anurag Dikshit, “and have come to believe that what I did was wrong.”²⁰ Deep Throat died.²¹

The Vatican said that homosexuality, currently punishable by law in 85 countries, should not be a crime.²² Archaeologists unearthed a Roman oil lamp that depicts a woman receiving a gynecological exam by a doctor holding a vaginal speculum.²³ Doctors found that women with overactive bladders and restless legs are more likely to have persistent imminent orgasms,²⁴ and researchers were studying whether hirsute women are more likely to have G spots and whether women with small G spots can grow them with practice.²⁵ Mice were suspected as the cause of a Toronto fire that killed 100 cats at a shelter. “It's unfortunate,” said a spokesman, “and ironic.”²⁶ A New Jersey ShopRite refused to decorate the birthday cake of a three-year-old boy with his name, Adolf Hitler Campbell. “ShopRite can't even make a cake for a three-year-old,” said the boy's mother. “That's sad.”²⁷ Scientists learned that the presence of elephants can make smaller animals feel safe; found the largest tear ever detected in Earth's magnetic field; and reported that the boundary between Earth's atmosphere and space was lowering, which would mean that the sky is falling.^{28 29 30} A three-day-old baby boy undergoing brain surgery to remove what was believed to be a tumor was instead found to have in his skull a tiny foot and other partially formed appendages. “It looked like the breech delivery of a baby,” the pediatric neurosurgeon said, “coming out of the brain.” ³¹