Weekly Review

By Paul Ford

Swine flu, renamed under pork-lobby pressure to “influenza A (H1N1) virus, human,” and referred to as “killer Mexican flu” by anti-immigration activists, had infected 985 people, or 0.0000145 percent of the world's population. Twenty countries reported infections; one death from the flu was confirmed in the United States; and 25 people had died in Mexico, where a cute five-year-old boy named Edgar Hernandez was presented to the media as “patient zero.”^{1 2 3 4 5} Mexico shut down for five days to contain the illness,⁶ China began to quarantine Mexicans,⁷ and Vice President Joe Biden appeared on television and counseled U.S. citizens to avoid airplanes, subways, and classrooms, which led to protests by the travel industry. “I think the vice president misrepresented what the vice president wanted to say,” explained Press Secretary Robert Gibbs.⁸ Egypt, which has no cases of the flu, ordered all its pigs killed, especially slum pigs; police at Manshiyat Nasr slum fired tear gas and rubber bullets at rioting Coptic Christian pig farmers.^{9 10} Geneticists continued to sequence the flu's genes. “Atgaaggcaa tactagtagt tctgctatat,” read the opening line of the segment-four hemagglutinin gene. “Acatttgcaa ccgcaaatgc agacacatta.”¹¹

Recalling September 11, New Yorkers panicked as a spare Air Force One 747, accompanied by a fighter jet, flew low near the World Trade Center site in Manhattan for a White House photo op. President Barack Obama, who is reading the novel Netherland by Joseph O'Neill, ordered a review of the $328,835 flight.^{12 13 14} Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter rejoined the Democratic Party after more than 40 years as a Republican. “There's more than being reelected here,” he insisted. “There's the factor of principle.”¹⁵ Jack Kemp died,¹⁶ and Republicans launched an organization called National Council for a New America. Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush urged his party to “listen a little bit, learn a little bit”; former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney called the Democrats “the party of the monarchists.”¹⁷ Supreme Court Justice David Souter announced that he was retiring, a decision some attributed to his hatred for Washington, D.C., which he has called “the world's worst city,”^{18 19} and Mr. T was called for jury duty in a drug case in Cook County, Illinois. “If you're innocent, I'm your best man,” he said. “But if you're guilty, I pity that fool.”²⁰ Mine That Bird won the Kentucky Derby despite 50-1 odds.²¹ The New York Times Company decided not to close the Boston Globe,²² and dollar stores were selling more food.²³ Guided by the Obama Administration, Chrysler filed for a bankruptcy from which it plans to emerge in two months, when it will be purchased by the United States, Canada, the United Auto Workers union, and Italian manufacturer Fiat, which plans to merge with Opel, part of General Motors Europe, to create a massive new car conglomerate. The new company will be rechristened Chrysler but will probably not honor its outstanding car warranties.^{24 25 26} The United Kingdom pulled its troops out of Iraq. ²⁷

Sweden recognized same-sex marriages,²⁸ and a senior Buddhist monk in Thailand named Phra Maha Wudhijaya Vajiramedhi vowed to teach gay and transgender Thai monks better manners, which would include the elimination of their pink purses, their sculpted eyebrows, and their revealingly tight robes.²⁹ South Korea bioengineered four fluorescent beagles.³⁰ Child-injury researchers demonstrated a 40 percent rise since the early 1990s in the number of childhood injuries brought on by falling furniture,³¹ and a food-service industry survey found that schoolchildren would like to replace lunch ladies with robots.³² Sri Lanka's army reportedly killed 91 people at a hospital inside a civilian safe zone; officials blamed the bombing on the Tamil Tigers.³³ Pakistan's army killed as many as 60 Taliban,³⁴ and Kenyan women's organizations called for wives to boycott sex, and for prostitutes to be paid not to work, until leaders in the coalition government stop feuding.³⁵ Veronica Lario, wife of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, announced plans to file for divorce after learning that her husband had attended the eighteenth birthday party of a budding lingerie model to whom he has given jewelry and who calls him “Daddy.” “That surprised me,” said Lario, “because he never attended the eighteenth birthday parties of his own children, even if he was invited.”^{36 37} Archaeologists searched sites near Alexandria for the tomb of Cleopatra and Marc Antony,³⁸ and the Italian container ship Jolly Smeraldo, at sail off Somalia, was able, through evasive maneuvers, to ward off pirate attacks twice in successive days, despite taking on bazooka fire.³⁹ Nine people died when a pleasure boat capsized off Malaysia; the lone survivor, a 14-year-old boy, stayed afloat by using his mother as a raft.⁴⁰ Officials in New Delhi were investigating the case of Shanno Khan, an 11-year-old girl whose teacher allegedly forced her to stand in the hot sun for two hours as a punishment for not doing her homework, ignoring Khan when she promised to learn her alphabet and begged for water. The girl fainted and was hospitalized. “I never want to go to school again,” she told her mother, and died a day later.^{41 42}