Weekly Review

By Paul Ford

Eighteen people died when a U.S. helicopter crashed in Afghanistan. The Taliban claimed they shot down the helicopter; the United States blamed bad weather.^{1 2} Iraq's parliament elected Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, as president; his Presidency Council then named Ibrahim Jaffari, a Shiite, as prime minister.³ Senior American defense officials noted several positive developments in Iraq: only thirty-six American soldiers, they said, died there this March; attacks on allied forces were down to thirty or forty a day; and by early 2006, only 105,000 American soldiers may be needed in the country.⁴ Tens of thousands of Iraqis held a nonviolent march in Baghdad to protest the American occupation,⁵ tens of thousands of Lebanese held a mass jog through Beirut to show national unity,⁶ and thousands of Chinese rallied to protest Japanese history textbooks.⁷ The Bush Administration was working to gain access to records of international money transfers,⁸ and transcripts of legal proceedings at Guantánamo Bay were released. “I don't care about international law,” said the president of a military tribunal in one transcript. “I don't want to hear the words 'international law' again. We are not concerned with international law."⁹ At the pope's funeral, Prince Charles shook Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's hand,¹⁰ then went home to England, where he married Camilla Parker Bowles.¹¹ Tony Blair called a general election for May 5, 2005.¹² Prince Rainier III of Monaco died,¹³ and Peter Jennings announced that he has lung cancer.¹⁴

Scottish soccer fans booed during a moment of silence to honor the pope,¹⁵ Saul Bellow died,¹⁶ and National Library Week began.¹⁷ The New York Public Library planned to auction off rare artworks to raise money,¹⁸ and developers in England were about to start construction on Dickens World, a $113 million theme park that will offer an Ebenezer Scrooge ride and Dickens characters on ice.¹⁹ A long-lost poem written by Tennessee Williams was discovered,²⁰ and geneticists bred blue roses.²¹ Ten million eight hundred thousand copies of the next Harry Potter book were being printed.²² In Florida, investigators traced an outbreak of E. coli to a petting zoo,²³ and the EPA decided to cancel a study of the effects of pesticides on infants.²⁴ It was revealed that Interior Department scientists studying the environmental effects of a proposed nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, had made things up and deleted findings they did not understand so that the development of the dump could go forward. “Science by peer pressure is dangerous but sometime it is necessary,” one scientist wrote in an email.²⁵ The United Arab Emirates tested prototypes of robotic camel jockeys, which will replace child camel jockeys,²⁶ a nine-foot-long eel with a head as big as a soccer ball was swimming loose in Australia,²⁷ and millions—possibly billions—of butterflies were fluttering towards California.²⁸ It was announced that Cookie Monster would cut back on cookies.²⁹

Republicans held a conference to discuss ways to reform the federal judiciary, which they say has “run amok.” Senator Tom Coburn's chief of staff said that “mass impeachment” of judges might be necessary, and Tom DeLay, who is under investigation for illegal fundraising, gave a pre-recorded speech entitled “Confronting the Judicial War on Faith.”³⁰ DeLay was accused of paying his wife and daughter $500,000 from funds controlled by his political-action committee. He was also accused of taking lobbyist-funded trips to Russia, Saipan, and Scotland.^{31 32} Both sides in Ivory Coast's civil war signed a peace accord.³³ Scientists drilled 4,644 feet into the earth's crust, nearly reaching the mantle,³⁴ Andrea Dworkin died,³⁵ and archaeologists in Germany uncovered a 7,200-year-old pornographic statue. ³⁶ A study found that store clerks are more respectful to slender shoppers than to obese ones,³⁷ and scientists in Connecticut inseminated a whale.³⁸ In Indiana, someone threw a pie in William Kristol's face. Someone else threw a pie at David Horowitz. Prior to the pie throwings, Pat Buchanan was doused with salad dressing.³⁹ Israel was planning to dump 10,000 tons of garbage a month into the West Bank,⁴⁰ and Israeli soldiers shot dead three Palestinian teenagers in Gaza.⁴¹ A social-studies teacher in Georgia was in trouble for putting on blackface,⁴² a Virginia judge sentenced a spammer to nine years in jail,⁴³ and a Georgia man died after police shot him with nonlethal beanbags.⁴⁴ Many conservative American pharmacists were refusing to dispense birth control,⁴⁵ and tailors sewed the next pope's robes.⁴⁶