Weekly Review

By Paul Ford

A Christian martyr.

The world marked the sixtieth anniversary of America's decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan.¹ The United States sentenced a South African man to three years in jail for smuggling nuclear bomb parts to Pakistan and India,² Iran rejected a plan put forth by the European Union that would have limited its ability to manufacture weapons-grade uranium,³ and North Korea would not make changes to its nuclear program, despite the efforts of China, Japan, Russia, the United States, and South Korea.⁴ Wisconsin opened a school for children who had been bullied.⁵ An archaeologist claimed to have found King David's palace in East Jerusalem,⁶ and the Presbyterian Church USA announced that it would ask Caterpillar, Motorola, ITT Industries, and United Technologies to stop providing Israel with the materials it uses to enforce the occupation of Palestine.⁷ Israel's finance minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, quit his post in protest of Israel's pullout from Gaza.⁸ A Florida man pleaded guilty to beating his wife to death because she wanted to cuddle after sex,⁹ and a Cambodian man found his mother after being separated from her for thirty years, then learned that she was also the mother of his wife.¹⁰

In South Korea, scientists cloned an Afghan hound. The clone is named Snuppy, for Seoul National University Puppy.¹¹ In Los Angeles, cocaine was found in the bloodstream of a toddler who died when her father used her as a shield in a shootout with police,¹² and an estimated $400,000-worth of cocaine was flowing through the Italian River Po every day.¹³ In Niger, one child in five was dying.¹⁴ At least sixty-one people were killed in Iraq, including fourteen Marines killed in a roadside bombing, many members of the Iraqi army, and journalist Steven Vincent. Condoleezza Rice said that the Iraqi insurgency was "losing steam,"^{15 16 17} and the Pentagon was teaching scientists how to write screenplays.¹⁸ A Montana court ruled that it is legal for police to search through a suspect's garbage without a warrant. "I don't like living in Orwell's 1984," wrote Montana Supreme Court justice James C. Nelson, who concurred with the ruling, "but I do."¹⁹ A man in Yorkshire, England, filmed his own suicide on his mobile phone and beamed it to his girlfriend,²⁰ and an Australian woman sued the Sydney Aquarium for allowing a shark tank to shatter and shower her in sharks.²¹ A surprising number of dogs were jumping to their deaths from a bridge in Milton, Scotland, but no one knew why. "Everything dogs do is for a reason," said a perplexed animal behaviorist. "They're not stupid like we are."²² A man fell off the same building twice in Darwin, Australia.²³

A British man was ordered to stop committing anti-social acts after he was witnessed throwing furniture through his windows, setting bonfires in the morning, and going out in public naked save for a hat and a padlock on his penis.²⁴ The Cherokee Nation was thinking about gay marriage,²⁵ a company in California was planning to sell human breast milk,²⁶ and scientists found that the male human brain has to work harder to listen to women than to listen to men.²⁷ The head of the U.N. Oil-for-Food Program, Benon Sevan, was accused of taking nearly $150,000 in bribes.²⁸ One hundred thousand gold miners were on strike in South Africa,²⁹ and a suicide bomber detonated a bomb in Fuzhou, China, killing himself and and injuring over thirty people.³⁰ A man in Royal Oak, Michigan, attempted to fend off police with a medieval-style sword while wearing chain mail, ³¹ and a British man was in trouble for attacking his wife with a pike. He later fed the pike to his cats and dogs.³² An Israeli soldier was lynched after he shot and killed four Israeli Arabs,³³ rioting in Sudan killed 130 people,³⁴ and Peter Jennings died.³⁵ A Michigan woman beat her boyfriend with his own prosthetic leg,³⁶ prairie dogs in Colorado were found to have the plague,³⁷ and someone in South Africa was sodomizing corpses.³⁸