Weekly Review

By Roger D. Hodge

Israelis and Palestinians were doing their best to slaughter one another in a vigorous exchange of revenge attacks; Israel's defense minister ordered security forces to "use everything they have" to destroy Hamas; Hamas responded in kind and released a statement calling on "all military cells to act immediately and act like an earthquake to blow up the Zionist entity and tear it to pieces."¹ Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, ridiculed Palestinian leaders as "crybabies" and said that Abu Mazen, the new prime minister, was "a chick without feathers."² Iraqi civilians continued to die in what Lt. Gen. David McKiernan called "a cycle of action, reaction and counter-action"; among those who were killed by mistake was a family of shepherds and a family that was trying to put out fires in their wheat field that were set by American flares.³ The American soldiers looking for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq were running out of places to look. "It doesn't appear there are any more targets at this time," said Lt. Col. Keith Harrington. "We're hanging around with no missions in the foreseeable future."⁴ President Bush was still "absolutely convinced" that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.⁵ Frank Luntz, the Republican pollster, said that it doesn't matter whether WMD are found, "because the rationale for the war changed. Americans like a good picture. And one photograph of an Iraqi child kissing a U.S. soldier is more powerful than two months of debate on the floor of Congress."⁶ CBS News sent an interview request to Pfc. Jessica Lynch, the American P.O.W. whose dramatic rescue in Iraq turned out to be largely simulated, that included "ideas" from CBS Entertainment, MTV, and Simon & Schuster; some news critics found the combination of news and entertainment offers "troubling."⁷ Egypt banned the new Matrix movie.⁸ President Bush was photographed falling off a Segway scooter in his parents' driveway.⁹

The U.N. Security Council voted to extend by one year the exemption for American peacekeepers who commit war crimes.¹⁰ Donald Rumsfeld threatened to move NATO's headquarters out of Brussels because of Belgium's law that permits lawsuits for war crimes committed anywhere in the world.¹¹ An Iraqi shepherd filed a $200 million lawsuit against Donald Rumsfeld for the deaths of 17 family members and 200 sheep.¹² In Pennsylvania, a fifth-grade boy killed himself in a school bathroom after several friends refused to go along with his plans to attack the school with three rifles, two shotguns, and two pistols.¹³ British scientists were developing "smart" airline seats that will detect potential terrorists by measuring airline passengers' anxiety levels.¹⁴ People named "David Nelson" were still having a hard time traveling by air because the name appears on the federal antiterrorism "no-fly" list.¹⁵ A bomb was found on an Italian airliner.¹⁶ Police in Saudi Arabia said they had prevented a terrorist attack when they raided a booby-trapped apartment in Mecca; five militants and two police officers died in the shootout.¹⁷ An Egyptian woman drowned herself shortly after giving birth to her second daughter because her husband, who has fathered daughters with three different wives, threatened to kill her if she gave him another daughter.¹⁸ A Coca-Cola employee was reportedly fired for drinking Pepsi on the job.¹⁹

New genetic research on the AIDS virus suggested that its viral parent was produced by the mixing of two monkey viruses that infected chimpanzees about a million years ago. The chimps probably caught the viruses from eating the flesh of monkeys; humans, many scientists believe, first contracted HIV from eating chimps.²⁰ Scientists said they had discovered some 160,000-year-old human skulls in Ethiopia.²¹ ConAgra Foods Poultry recalled 129,000 pounds of chicken because it contains glass.²² Maine's legislature passed a bill guaranteeing universal health coverage to all state residents.²³ Evolutionary theorists suggested that early humans lost their hair in order to fight parasites.²⁴ Monkeypox victims were being quarantined and pet prairie dogs were banned, as was the importation of African rodents.²⁵ An Australian company was planning to harvest tissue from aborted fetuses to be exported for experiments.²⁶ Gregory Peck died.²⁷ NASA sent a spaceship to Mars.²⁸ Britain's honorary astronomer royal estimated the odds of an apocalypse to be 50 percent, up from 20 percent 100 years ago.²⁹ A genetically modified fish that glows in the dark went on sale in Taiwan.³⁰ Asthma patients descended on Hyderabad, India, in order to swallow live fish that were stuffed with an herbal paste.³¹ Cannibalism was on the rise in North Korea.³²