Weekly Review

By Christian Lorentzen

Federal agents in Missouri found two kidnapped adolescent boys in the apartment of Michael Devlin, a 41-year-old pizzeria manager. “I still feel like I'm in a dream, only this time it's a good dream, not the nightmare I've had to live for the past four-and-a-half years,” said the mother of one of the boys. ¹ The Bush Administration announced plans to increase U.S. forces in Iraq by 20,000 troops,² Americans in Erbil arrested six Iranians working at a diplomatic office, ³ and Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D., Del.) asserted that the authority Congress granted the Bush Administration to invade Iraq did not extend to invading Iran or Syria. “I just want to set that marker,” he said.⁴ U.S. air strikes in Somalia killed seven people. Somali officials believed the dead included Al Qaeda operative Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, reputed mastermind of the 1998 bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, but U.S. officials said they were still chasing him.^{5 6} In the Persian Gulf, the USS Newport News, an American nuclear submarine, collided with the Mogamigawa, a Japanese oil tanker.⁷ Vladimir Putin threatened to cut Russia's oil production,⁸ and in Venezuela, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran and President Hugo Chávez embraced. “Welcome, fighter for just causes,” Chávez said. ⁹ Ehud Barak announced that he is seeking leadership of the Israeli Labor Party, which was trailing Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party in polls, ^{10 11} and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas rejected Israeli calls for a temporary Palestinian state.¹² Mengistu Haile Mariam, the former dictator of Ethiopia who now lives comfortably in Zimbabwe, was sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment on genocide charges.¹³ Mercenaries in Iraq lost their immunity from war crimes prosecution, ¹⁴ Muslim villagers in Bihar, India, were changing their sons’ names to “Saddam Hussein,.” ¹⁵ and a new video emerged that showed Hussein's corpse with a gaping circular neck wound.¹⁶ A rocket-propelled grenade struck the U.S. Embassy in Athens,¹⁷ House Speaker Nancy Pelosi banned smoking in the Speaker's Parlor of the Capitol,¹⁸ and President George W. Bush cried.¹⁹

Shahwar Matin Siraj, a 24-year-old clerk at an Islamic bookstore in Brooklyn, was sentenced to 30 years in jail for discussing phony plans to bomb a subway station with a police informant; Siraj’s father, mother, and sister, all asylum-seekers, were arrested for deportation to their native Pakistan. ²⁰ In Illinois, Derrick Shareef, a 22-year-old Muslim convert who was arrested last month after trading two stereo speakers to a federal agent for a pistol and four nonfunctioning grenades that he planned to set off at a local mall, pleaded not guilty to attempting to use weapons of mass destruction. ²¹ On a radio program for federal employees and contractors, a Department of Defense official listed the names of law firms whose lawyers have represented detainees at Guantánamo Bay. “Quite honestly,” he said, “when corporate CEOs see that those firms are representing the very terrorists who hit their bottom line back in 2001, those CEOs are going to make those law firms choose between representing terrorists or representing reputable firms, and I think that is going to have major play in the next few weeks. And we want to watch that play out.”²² Sealand, a sovereign country declared 40 years ago on a derelict anti-aircraft platform in the North Sea, was for sale, ²³ David Beckham signed with the Los Angeles Galaxy,²⁴ Robert Anton Wilson died, ²⁵ and an astronomer speculated that the last space probe to Mars failed to find life on the planet because it was looking for the wrong kind of life.²⁶

Senator Christopher J. Dodd (D., Conn.) announced his candidacy for president,²⁷ and Senator Barack Obama was featured shirtless in People Magazine's Beach Babes issue. “It's embarrassing,” Obama said. ²⁸ Cal Ripken Jr. and Tony Gwynn were elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame; Mark McGwire and Jim Rice were not.²⁹ Dan Gulley Jr., an Alabama septuagenarian, turned himself in to police after shooting his friend David Brooks Jr. twice in the stomach during a quarrel about the height of deceased soul singer James Brown,³⁰ and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney attended a gun show. “As a boy, I worked on a ranch in Idaho and shot rabbits with a single shot .22 rifle,” Romney said. “After a while my cousin said, 'You're not very good at that. Try using this semiautomatic.'”³¹ Under the influence of truth drugs, an Indian butler accused of serial murder, necrophilia, and cannibalism told police that the first time he tried to eat one of his victim's organs (the liver of a four-year-old girl), it made him vomit. ³² Senator Hillary Clinton said that “we want to be able to continue to export democracy, but we want to deliver it in digestible packages.”³³ Capsaicin, a substance in jalapeño peppers, was said by scientists to thwart cancer by attacking mitochondria in cancer cells, triggering cell death.³⁴ Members of the Baker's Dozen, an all-male Yale a cappella group recuperating from injuries they suffered when a gang of prep school students attacked them on New Year's Eve, were asked by police to return to San Francisco to identify their assailants. “The kids are scared shitless,” said a father of one of the singers.³⁵ A California woman died from water intoxication after a water-drinking contest, ³⁶ depressed American zoo animals were taking Prozac,³⁷ and poor Zimbabweans were happily eating dog food.³⁸