Weekly Review

By Christopher R. Beha

Protesters supporting Mir Hussein Moussavi clashed with security forces throughout Iran as Moussavi called for further civil disobedience and the nullification of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's re-election as president. “I am ready for martyrdom,” said Moussavi. Hundreds of people were arrested and at least a dozen were killed; Iran blamed the deaths on “armed terrorists” and announced a special court to try the protesters. President Barack Obama called on Iran's leadership to stop its “violent and unjust” response to the protests. Iranian police detained five relatives of former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who supports Moussavi, and photographs of pro-Ahmadinejad rallies were manipulated to make crowds seem larger. Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who blamed the unrest on foreign governments and media, called on Iran's Guardian Council to examine some claims of voter fraud but warned that opposition leaders who failed to stop protests “would be responsible for bloodshed and chaos.” An initial election probe revealed that 50 locales had more votes than voters.^{1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8} The United States was spying on a 2,000-ton freighter believed to be carrying missile components from North Korea to Burma; North Korea responded by threatening “unlimited retaliatory strikes” against South Korea, and Japanese intelligence officials suggested that North Korea may attempt to fire a Taepodong-2 missile toward Hawaii on July 4th, leading Hawaii to deploy its anti-missile defenses. “Without telegraphing what we will do,” said Defense Secretary Robert Gates, “we are in a good position, should it become necessary, to protect Americans and American territory.”^{9 10} The CIA was recruiting laid-off New York City bankers.¹¹

After seven months of imprisonment, two reporters--one Afghan and one American--escaped from a Taliban compound in North Waziristan by keeping their Taliban guards up late playing board games and, once the guards were asleep, using a 20-foot rope to climb over the compound wall.¹² A suicide bombing at a mosque in northern Iraq killed 67 people and wounded about 200.¹³ A woman in Switzerland was sentenced to eight years in prison for killing her wealthy French lover during sex. She had asked the man, who wore a flesh-colored latex suit, for a million dollars as proof of his love; he replied that the sum was “a lot of money to pay for a whore,” at which point she shot and killed him, cleaned the sex toys and antiques, and threw the gun into Lake Geneva. “I am a woman who is desperately in love with a man,” she told the victim's family, “and I remain so.”¹⁴ Four people were arrested in Florida for making a 12-year-old Boy Scout drink urine,¹⁵ and 70-year-old Toledo Mayor Carty Finkbeiner was videotaped breaking up a fight amid a crowd of 20 teenagers. ''Come here, fatso,'' Finkbeiner yelled. ''Tubby, get your butt out of here.''¹⁶ A fox in Germany was found to have stolen more than a hundred pairs of shoes,¹⁷ and a mother in Squamish, British Columbia, fought off a cougar that attacked her three-year-old daughter, who then asked: “Why didn't the kitty play nice?”¹⁸

Greenland, ruled by Denmark since 1721, replaced the national language, Danish, with the Inuit dialect of Kalaallisut and began to use the island's Inuit name, Naalakkersuisut, in government documents. “It's a new relationship based on equality,” said prime minister Kuupik Kleist, who compared Greenland and Denmark to partners in a marriage. “From today, the man in the house has as much say as the wife.”¹⁹ A group of prominent fathers, including Run DMC's Darryl McDaniels, skateboarder Tony Hawk, and Vice President Joe Biden, spoke as part of a White House Father's Day celebration. “My number two son,” said Biden, “he wanted to go to law school, he went to Yale. Now, I don't like those Ivy League schools, I went to a state school. But all kidding aside, he went to Yale.”²⁰ The sixth dead body in seven years was found at the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in Tennessee.²¹ Two copilots safely landed a plane in Newark Liberty Airport after the pilot died of a heart attack mid-flight,²² and the mother and grandmother of a six-year-old girl in Queens, New York, were arrested after setting the girl on fire as part of a voodoo “Loa” ritual, during which the mother poured accelerant over the child, burning 25 percent of her body.²³ A man in Brooklyn was arrested after six years of dressing as his dead mother--in a wig, sunglasses, dress, and nail polish--to collect more than $100,000 in Social Security and rent benefits. “I held my mother when she was dying and breathed in her last breath,” the man explained, “so I am my mother.”²⁴