Weekly Review

By Rafil Kroll-Zaidi

“Into the palace parlor they stepped; her hand in his paw the old bruin kept,” 1875

In Tal Afar, Iraq, a truck bomb killed 152 people, making it the deadliest attack of the war. Two hundred and fifty more people died in other bombings carried out against Shiite targets.¹ President George W. Bush asserted that withdrawing from Iraq would be disastrous and supported his claims by citing two Baghdad bloggers.² The newly appointed U.S. ambassador to Iraq spoke of “encouraging signals of progress,”³ and the British Ministry of Defence found that a study which had placed Iraq's civilian death toll at 655,000 was “robust.”⁴ Blood spewed from a sewer in Minneapolis. “Blood just all over my face, in my mouth, I could taste it,” said a city worker. “It was terrible. I had it in my mouth and I kept spitting and I couldn't get rid of it.”⁵ In Washington, D.C., Karl Rove danced on stage during a press dinner and pretended to be a rapper, shouting: “I'm MC Rove.”⁶ Michael Jackson was planning to create a fifty-foot-tall robotic replica of himself that would roam the Las Vegas desert while firing laser beams,⁷ and in Spearsville, Louisiana, two fifth-graders had sex on a classroom floor during an assembly about murder.⁸ San Francisco endorsed legislation to establish a U.S. Department of Peace and Nonviolence,⁹ and in the Indian state of Gujarat, an unemployed man from Tooting, England, had found new work as Bahucharaji, the patron goddess of eunuchs.¹⁰ British Prime Minister Tony Blair said that he was disgusted with Iran's treatment of 15 Royal Navy hostages. ¹¹

In the United States, crystal meth was now available in candy flavors,¹² and government health officials warned of the risk of salmonella from live Easter chicks.¹³ At the Gaza‒Egypt border a woman with three baby crocodiles strapped to her waist was detained after guards noticed that she looked “strangely fat.” ¹⁴ At least four Palestinians in Gaza were killed by what authorities called a “sewage tsunami,”¹⁵ and a West Bank woman had developed special “queuing” socks to help her countrymen who suffer from swollen feet while waiting at Israeli military checkpoints.¹⁶ A U.S. Army recruiter's email exchange with a gay man was published in a New Jersey newspaper. “YOU GO BACK TO AFRICA AND DO YOUR GAY VOODOO LIMBO TANGO AND WANGO DANCE,” wrote the recruiter, “AND JUMP AROUND AND PRANCE AND RUN ALL OVER THE PLACE HALF NAKED.” ¹⁷ In Zimbabwe, scores of teenagers were beaten by riot police and dragged from a disco, ¹⁸ and President Robert Mugabe admitted responsibility for the recent torture of opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, who, Mugabe said, “asked for it.”¹⁹ China was considering using its vast harvest of rape to create biodiesel. “The government,” said Agriculture Ministry official Wang Shoucong, “should foster research work to nurture high-yield rape.”²⁰ Austrian scientists claimed that men who sleep in the same bed as their partners may suffer reduced mental function,²¹ and the World Health Organization endorsed circumcision as a tool to reduce the spread of HIV. “The recommendations represent a significant step forward,” said WHO HIV/AIDS director Kevin De Cock.²² Researchers discovered that Canadian school bullies were forcing their girlfriends to strip online,²³ and members of a Michigan college fraternity called the police after a woman disrobed and started masturbating in their living room and refused to leave; the fraternity now plans to throw away two sofas.²⁴

As many as 600,000 drought-stricken camels were invading communities in northern Australia;²⁵ a California man was released from prison after serving five months for shooting an ostrich named Gaylord who had embarrassed him in front of women; ²⁶ and in Germany, a black Australian swan named Petra was in love with a paddleboat.²⁷ The world's tallest person, an Inner Mongolian herdsman who last year used his long arms to save two dolphins by removing plastic from their stomachs, married a woman.²⁸ It was suggested that Yan Yan, a panda at the Berlin Zoo, died from stress in the wake of intense publicity generated by Knut, his polar-bear-cub neighbor.²⁹ A rambunctious elephant in Sasthamcotta, India, killed its second mahout, Podimon of Modioozhathil, who died on the way to a hospital in Thiruvananthapuram,³⁰ and farther north, police in Bhiwandi registered a complaint after a hill, with an estimated street value of $5.5 million, was reported stolen.³¹ The Dead Sea was disappearing,³² a 15,000-mile-wide hexagon was seen on Saturn,³³ and a Nepalese teenager believed to be a reincarnation of the Buddha began a three-year meditation in a concrete bunker.³⁴