Weekly Review

By Chantal Clarke

Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf said that the country will hold parliamentary elections in January but refused to give a date for ending his emergency decree or stepping down as head of the military. Opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was placed under house arrest when she tried to attend a political rally. President George W. Bush said that General Musharraf has been an “indispensable ally.”^{1 2} Burma's military junta permitted pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been under house arrest for 12 of the past 18 years, to meet with her party.³ At an Ibero-American summit in Chile, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez called Spain's former prime minister a fascist, adding, “fascists are not human. A snake is more human.” “Why don't you shut up?” asked the king of Spain. ⁴ The Senate approved Michael Mukasey as U.S. Attorney General even though he refused to condemn waterboarding.⁵ Congress overrode President Bush's veto for the first time, on a water bill that earmarked money for the Everglades and the Gulf Coast,⁶ and half of New Orleans streetcars were still broken.⁷ Congress cheered a speech by French President Nicolas Sarkozy. “You just heard a Ronald Reagan speech from a president of France,” said a Republican senator from Kentucky.⁸ One full year remained before the U.S. presidential election. Ron Paul raised $4.2 million in 24 hours; Mitt Romney said that children were better off with dead straight rather than living gay parents; and Ben Cohen, the co-founder of Ben & Jerry's, denied that there were plans for a John Edwards flavor of ice cream, but said that a hypothetical Edwards ice cream would not be a “very fluffy flavor” and suggested it be called “Captain Courageous Crunch.”^{9 10 11} It was reported that more American troops were killed in 2007 than in any year since the start of the Iraq war,¹² and at least 75 people, including 59 children, were killed in Afghanistan's deadliest suicide bombing since the fall of the Taliban.¹³

Wrestler Mary Lillian Ellison, known as the Fabulous Moolah, died at 84, as did writer and wife-stabber Norman Mailer.^{14 15} Members of the Writers Guild of America went on strike to demand a share in the profits from new forms of media, television networks hired “loyalty consulting firms” to figure out how to lure back viewers,¹⁶ and a North Carolina researcher found that female spadefoot toads will mate with other species of toad in order to increase the survival rate of their tadpoles.¹⁷ Canadian scientists discovered that women are more likely to swing their hips seductively when they are at their least fertile,¹⁸ and researchers in Pittsburgh found that women with big hips and small waists had smarter children.¹⁹ Obesity was found to cause cancer in women,²⁰ and researchers announced that ten years after a woman stops taking birth-control pills her heightened risk of cervical cancer returns to normal.²¹ Ted Klaudt, a former Republican South Dakota state legislator, was convicted of raping his teenage foster daughters. Klaudt convinced the girls that he was a licensed gynecologist and massaged their breasts (“to get the fibroids out”) and vaginas regularly to ascertain their capability for egg donation.²² A London woman, who says she only called herself the “Lyrical Terrorist” because “it sounded cool,” was convicted under the UK Terrorism Act for posting poems on the Internet praising Osama bin Laden and for owning terrorist manuals. “You have been in many respects,” said the judge, “a complete enigma to me.”²³ Voters in Great Britain decided that their most ridiculous law was one that makes it illegal to die in the Houses of Parliament.²⁴

Italian police discovered the Mafia's Ten Commandments. “Always being available for Cosa Nostra is a duty,” reads number five, “even if your wife's about to give birth.”²⁵ Companies in Florida were forbidding their employees to smoke, even in private. “If you are an alcoholic and we have the right to fire you, we will do so,” said the president of Westgate Resorts. “And if you are obese and there is a way for us not to hire you or to fire you, we will do that, too.”²⁶ Desperate to protect themselves from crime, many South Africans were attending martial arts classes taught by Bruce Lee's top student, Grandmaster Richard Bustillo. “I was born in 1975 and Bruce died in 1973,” said one pupil. “He was a Chinese guy but maybe he came back as an African?”²⁷ Nigeria was suing American tobacco companies for promoting underage smoking,²⁸ and California was suing the federal government for preventing it from reducing car pollution.²⁹ Soon after “Aqua Dots,” a China-made bead toy aimed at children four and older, was named Australia's toy of the year, 4.2 million units were recalled because chemicals in the tiny beads, when metabolized, turn into the date-rape drug GHB.³⁰ Eight-year-old twins from Ohio were nationally recognized for inventing wedgie-proof underpants,³¹ and doctors performed a 40-hour operation to remove four limbs from an eight-limbed Indian girl, who is believed by some to be an incarnation of the Hindu goddess Lakshmi.³²