Weekly Review

By Christian Lorentzen

Radovan Karadzic was arrested in Belgrade and awaits imminent extradition to The Hague, where he will face charges of genocide for his role in the Srebrenica massacres and the siege of Sarajevo. The former Bosnian Serb president, a psychiatrist and poet who in 1991 pledged to drive Bosnian Muslims down “the highway of hell and suffering,” had been living in the Serbian capital as a New Age guru, promoting alternative medicine and “Human Quantum Energy” under the name “Dragan David Dabic.” Serbia hoped the arrest would hasten its campaign to join the European Union, and it was reported that Ratko Mladic, the general who led Bosnian Serb forces during the war and is believed to be in hiding in Serbia, is protected by two bodyguards under orders to kill him in the event of his arrest. ^{1 2 3 4} Two bombs placed in trash cans exploded in Istanbul, killing thirteen people,⁵ and a bombing in Gaza killed five Hamas militants and an eight-year-old girl. ⁶ In Ahmadabad, India, shortly after television stations received an email that read, “In the name of Allah, the Indian Mujahidin strike again! Do whatever you can, within five minutes from now, feel the terror of death!” 16 bombs exploded across the city, killing 45 people. ⁷ Iraqi officials said that a suicide attack that killed eight people in Baquba, Iraq, had been carried out by a woman, as indicated by the pair of feminine legs found nearby, and four female suicide bombers killed 57 people in Baghdad and Kirkuk.^{8 9} NASA announced that the lights of the auroras australis and borealis are caused by magnetic explosions one-third of the way to the moon.¹⁰

Congress passed a $300 billion bailout for the mortgage lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, ¹¹ and the mortgage crisis was causing suicides.¹² Wall Street got drunk, President George W. Bush told an audience at a fund-raiser. “Now it's got a hangover.”¹³ Oil prices were dropping,¹⁴ and the United States Geological Survey announced that there are 90 billion barrels of oil in the Arctic. ¹⁵ China was paying parents of victims of the recent earthquake in Sichuan province to sign statements to the effect that the Communist Party “mobilized society to help us”; Chinese newspapers were ordered to stop reporting on school collapses; and a poll ranked China as the most optimistic of 24 nations surveyed. ^{16 17} Barack Obama delivered a speech to a crowd of 200,000 in Berlin,¹⁸ and John McCain endorsed a ban on affirmative action in his home state of Arizona. ¹⁹ France abolished the 35-hour workweek. “It's a specter,” said engineer Michel Guyot, who expects to forsake his weekday trips to the limestone cliffs of the Calanque de Sugiton. “A cloud over my head.”²⁰ Iran executed 29 drug smugglers,²¹ and Iraq was banned from competing in the Olympics.²² A locust plague in Mongolia threatened to spoil next month's games in Beijing.²³ The planet CoRot-Exo-4b, a ringed gas giant resembling Jupiter and larger than the sun, was discovered 3,000 light-years away, in the Unicorn constellation. ²⁴ California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill requiring that students in the state's public schools be taught about global warming.²⁵ Bloggers for the Los Angeles Times received a memo instructing them not to write about a National Enquirer story alleging that former Senator John Edwards was meeting his mistress at an L.A. hotel. ²⁶ Research showed that men lust for women whether or not they find them attractive.²⁷

During a children's production of “Annie, Jr.” at Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville, 58-year-old unemployed truck driver Jim J. Adkisson opened fire on a packed sanctuary with a twelve-gauge shotgun. “We were just, 'Oh, my God, that's not part of the play,'” said Amira Parkey, 16, who was playing Miss Hannigan. After killing one man and wounding seven others (one of whom later died from her wounds), Adkisson was tackled by John Bohstedt, who was playing Daddy Warbucks. ²⁸ Actor Christian Bale was arrested in London for allegedly assaulting his mother and sister, ²⁹ and actress Estelle Getty died.³⁰ Seventy-six-year-old Marlene Mackenzie of North Caldwell, New Jersey, was arrested for killing her husband by throwing a cocktail glass at his head.³¹ Hot rubber safety mats on New York City playgrounds were burning children's feet, ³² and lightning struck ten people in New York and New Jersey, killing one.³³ Edward “Eddie” Davidson, a 35-year-old “spam king” convicted of tax evasion and fraud, escaped from a minimum-security prison in Bennett, Colorado, and killed his wife, his three-year-old daughter, and himself in the SUV they had used in the escape. Davidson's 16-year-old daughter escaped from the vehicle with a neck wound, and a seven-month-old boy was found, unharmed in a car seat, with the victims.³⁴ Two employees at a deli in Brooklyn used machetes to defeat three armed thieves attempting to steal $2,000 worth of cigarettes. One of the attackers, said clerk Sammy Othman, “had a knife on him and he said, 'I will stab you,' and I told him, 'Don't even think about it. My knife is more bigger than yours.'”³⁵