Weekly Review

By Roger D. Hodge

United States military personnel who worked at Camp Delta, the largest prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, revealed that many prisoners there were tortured by being forced to endure strobe lights and cold temperatures and extremely loud recordings of Limp Bizkit.¹ Members of an Army Reserve unit in Baghdad refused to deliver a fuel shipment because they said that it was a "suicide mission."² A study found that Gulf War Syndrome was caused by toxic chemicals.³ The U.S. was bombing Falluja again, and two⁴ suicide bombers penetrated the Green Zone in Baghdad and killed five people.⁵ The State Department classified Unification and Jihad, a group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, as a terrorist organization and froze its assets.⁶ Prime Minister Iyad Allawi was working to dismantle an independent commission designed to keep former Baathists out of power as part of his effort to bring former Baathists into the government.⁷ Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, was concerned that entire buildings from Iraq's former nuclear facilities have been dismantled and removed and no one knows where they were taken.⁸ Twenty-eight American soldiers were under investigation for the apparent murder of two detainees at a base in Afghanistan.⁹ Poland said that it will begin reducing its forces in Iraq next year.¹⁰ Israel pulled back from its latest invasion of the Gaza Strip, and the¹¹ University of Haifa began offering a master's degree in disaster management.¹² President Bush sent Ramadan greetings to Muslims in America and around the globe.¹³ Saddam Hussein underwent a hernia operation.¹⁴ Doc Holliday got a new tombstone.¹⁵

Officials in Oregon and Nevada were investigating claims that Republicans destroyed Democratic voter-registration forms.¹⁶ A senator from Kentucky apologized for saying that his Democratic opponent looks like one of Saddam Hussein's sons.¹⁷ A senate candidate in Oklahoma warned of "rampant" lesbianism in the schools.¹⁸ People in Detroit were debating the wisdom of creating an "Africa Town" district, where the city would give special loans to black businessmen.¹⁹ The FCC fined Fox television $1.2 million for a broadcast of "Married by America" in April 2003 that featured strippers covered in whipped cream.²⁰ Bill O'Reilly, the Fox News pundit, was accused of sexually harassing one of his female producers.²¹ An Australian doctor claimed that one of his patients had a sleep disorder that caused her to sneak out of her house at night and have sex with strangers.²² A quadriplegic man succeeded in checking email and playing computer games via a microchip embedded in his brain.²³ The Helsinki Zoo decided not to kill its 14 baboons, which it had planned to do to make room for snow monkeys, after a public outcry.²⁴ A tractor-trailer accident spilled hundreds of live chickens onto the New Jersey Turnpike.²⁵ Karl Rove testified before a grand jury investigating the exposure of Valerie Plame as a covert CIA officer, and²⁶ New York attorney general Eliot Spitzer was going after corruption in the insurance industry.²⁷ The federal government reached its $7.4 trillion debt ceiling and was forced to delay contributions to pension plans.²⁸ A Dutch princess notified her husband in a newspaper advertisement that she wants a divorce.²⁹

The Justice Department opened an investigation into the Chiron Corporation, which was supposed to provide about half the American flu vaccine supply until the British government shut down the operation because of problems with bacterial contamination.³⁰ Disabled, elderly, and sick people were lining up for hours hoping to get a flu shot; one woman in California died after she collapsed from exhaustion and hit her head.³¹ Scientists announced a relatively successful trial of a new malaria vaccine.³² The FDA ordered all antidepressants to carry a "black box" warning that the drugs might cause children and adolescents to have suicidal thoughts.³³ Scientists successfully cultivated square salt-loving bacteria called Walsby's square archaeon.³⁴ Swedish scientists found that using a mobile phone for ten years doubles the risk of developing a tumor on the acoustic nerve.³⁵ A giant virus was discovered that is as big as a small bacterium and may be an entirely new form of life.³⁶ Carbon dioxide levels were rising faster than ever.³⁷ The British Food Standards Agency warned that lobsters, cockles, and scallops taken from the waters northwest of England are contaminated with plutonium and will exceed United Nations limits scheduled to take effect next year.³⁸ Police in Burlington, Ontario, were searching for someone who glued shards of glass to playground equipment.³⁹ The British government was preparing to legalize casino gambling.⁴⁰ An analysis of government data showed that the net worth of the median white household is 11 times greater than that of Hispanics and 14 times greater than blacks'.⁴¹ The European Patent Office revoked the patent previously granted to Monsanto on the Indian Nap Hal variety of wheat. It was proved by Greenpeace that the variety was bred by Indian farmers; Monsanto claimed to have invented it via genetic engineering.⁴² The Global Amphibian Assessment announced that 1,856 of the 5,743 known amphibian species are at risk of extinction; nine species are known to have died out since 1980, and 113 have not been seen in recent years; forty-three percent are in decline.⁴³ Israeli police were searching for 1,000 baby crocodiles.⁴⁴