Weekly Review

By Roger D. Hodge

Senator Pat Roberts, the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, proposed eliminating the CIA, removing the National Security Agency from the Pentagon's control, and creating three new spy agencies governed by a national intelligence director.¹ The American Civil Liberties Union warned that the federal government has been using corporations to carry out surveillance of citizens because private firms are not subject to many privacy and civil-liberties laws.² Senator Ted Kennedy confirmed that he had been placed on the federal "no-fly" list designed to prevent terrorists from boarding commercial aircraft.³ Oil prices rose above $49.⁴ The U.S. Army announced that it will withhold 15 percent of the fees billed by the Halliburton Company but almost immediately decided to "withhold" the decision pending further review.⁵ President Bush was concerned about the "Soviet dinar," and⁶ President Silvio Berlusconi of Italy underwent a hair transplant.⁷ German men were being admonished to pee sitting down by a gadget called the WC ghost; when the device detects a lifted toilet seat, it says, in German: "Hey, stand peeing ("Stehpinkeln") is not allowed here and will be punished with fines, so if you don't want any trouble, you'd best sit down." It was reported that the term for a man who pees sitting down, "Sitzpinkler," is a synonym for "wimp."⁸

A bioethicist writing in The Lancet called for an investigation into the role of doctors and nurses in the torture program that was exposed at Abu Ghraib; he cited evidence that doctors or medics covered up the abuse by falsifying death certificates and actively participated by reviving unconscious prisoners.⁹ Twenty-seven inmates of the county jail in Clearwater, Florida, who were released so that they could flee Hurricane Charley were still at large; 256 inmates were let out of jail but most returned in four days as instructed.¹⁰ There was a prison uprising in Olmito, Texas.¹¹ Moktada al-Sadr refused to disarm the Mahdi Army,¹² bombs went off at United Nations voter registration offices in Afghanistan, and¹³ Kathmandu was being blockaded by Maoist rebels.¹⁴ An audit by international observers confirmed that Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez fairly won the referendum on his rule.¹⁵ A 57-year-old partially deaf Texan veteran with skin cancer was called up to report for active duty.¹⁶ The Sierra Club released a report denouncing the Bush Administration for lying about the risks posed by the smoke and dust in lower Manhattan after 9/11; the EPA was aware of the risks, from asbestos, concrete dust, glass fibers, and other substances, by September 27 but continued to claim that the air was safe.¹⁷ John Kerry's war record continued to excite controversy.¹⁸ President Bush said that he opposes "legacy" admissions to colleges and universities, and¹⁹ an Australian drunk ate a cup of maggots, a pint of anchovies, drank a pint of mouthwash, and chewed off a mouse's tail in a pub competition.²⁰ People were still starving in North Korea.²¹

A British scientist warned that a gigantic section of La Palma island in the Canaries is poised to fall into the ocean, an event that would trigger "mega-tsunamis" 50 to 100 meters high that will crash into Africa's west coast, the Caribbean, and the eastern United States.²² Twenty people were stuck on a roller coaster at Six Flags Great Adventure amusement park after a power outage; eight people were stuck upside down.²³ Demographers said that Japan's population could decline 20 percent by 2050.²⁴ A 105-pound woman in Kennebunk, Maine, ate 38 lobsters (9.76 pounds of meat) in 12 minutes and won the World Lobster Eating Contest.²⁵ A new survey found that about 10 percent of the world's food crops are irrigated with sewage.²⁶ Children living next to gas stations, a French study found, are four times more likely to develop leukemia.²⁷ Korean researchers found that leukemia deaths are 70 percent higher among people who live near AM radio broadcasting towers.²⁸ A new report concluded that deaths from brain diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and motor neurone disease have tripled in the last 20 years.²⁹ Edvard Munch's The Scream was stolen by armed robbers from a crowded museum in Oslo, Norway.³⁰ The European Environment Agency said that winters on the continent could disappear by 2080.³¹ Science labs were experiencing a monkey shortage.³² Hippos were dying in Uganda.³³