Two suicide car bombs blew up in central Baghdad, killing fifteen and injuring thirty.BBC NewsA bomb in Kirkuk killed twelve Iraqi guards,Al Jazeeraan American contractor was kidnapped north of Baghdad,BBC Newsand Marla Ruzicka, an activist from California who made it her mission to count the number of civilian casualties in Iraq, was killed in Baghdad by a suicide bomber.GuardianThe Iraqi army intervened to end a widely publicized hostage crisis in al-Madain, south of Baghdad, but found no hostages.ReutersIn the United States, Eric Rudolph, a Christianterrorist, pleaded guilty to several bombings, including those at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, an abortion-clinic …

Mahmoud Abbas was elected president of the Palestinian Authority. He dedicated his victory to “the soul of the brother martyr Yasir Arafat and to our people.”New York TimesEarlier in the week, Abbas called Israel the “Zionist Enemy” at an election rally,The Indian Expressthen announced he would pursue peace talks with it.ReutersIsrael shut the border at Gaza,Xinhuathen offered Abbas personal security in Jerusalem, which he refused.Azcentral.comKofi Annan visited the site of the South Asia tsunami disaster and said, “I have never seen such utter destruction.”CBS NewsColin Powell toured Indonesia and called it “amazing” and “heartbreaking.”ABC NewsHe also said providing disaster relief …

Caught in the Web. The Labor Department reported that the economy created a mere 96,000 jobs last month, thus failing to keep pace with the expansion of the nation’s work force and confirming that George W. Bush has the worst job creation record of any president since Herbert Hoover. The White House reacted to the bad news by declaring that the poor job numbers prove that the president’s tax cuts have been working.New York TimesThe Iraq Survey Group issued its final report and concluded that Saddam Hussein dismantled his nuclear weapons program in 1991 and did not attempt to revive …

Caught in the Web. Governor James McGreevey of New Jersey announced that he is a “gay American” and resigned. “I am here today because, shamefully, I engaged in an adult consensual affair with another man, which violates my bonds of matrimony,” he said. “It was wrong. It was foolish. It was inexcusable.”Men’s News DailyThe California Supreme Court nullified gay marriages in that state, andSan Francisco Chroniclethere was a scandal in Australiancattle circles over udder doping.Associated PressPhilippine president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo told her countrymen to stop kissing her, andAssociated Pressfour people were arrested in the Philippines for killing, cooking, and eating …

The Senate Intelligence Committee released a scathing report on the CIA’s unfounded, unjustified, and unreasonable claims about Iraq’s purported weapons of mass destruction; the report was oddly silent, however, about the Bush Administration’s well-documented and apparently successful campaign to intimidate the CIA into coming up with justifications for the President’s fraudulent case for the invasion.New York TimesSenator Trent Lott was outraged by the CIA’s “totally ridiculous, uncalled for, and counterproductive” redactions of the report and called for an independent commission to oversee the classification of government information.New York TimesJapan’s defense ministry said that it will issue its annual defense whitepaper …

President George W. Bush traveled to France to attend a ceremony commemorating the D-Day invasion and attempted to play down his dispute with President Jacques Chirac over the invasion of Iraq; Bush told French journalists that he was never angry with the French or with Chirac for his refusal to endorse the war, and he even invited Chirac to visit the ranch down in Crawford, Texas. “If he wants to come and see cows, he’s welcome to come out here and see some cows,” Bush said, apparently unaware that Chirac, a former agriculture minister, is a cattle expert.New York TimesGeorge …

Runaway Raft on the Tigris. President Bush unveiled his new “five-point plan” for Iraq during a speech at the Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and offered to destroy the Abu Ghraib prison if Iraqis want him to; the president also promised to give Iraq a modern prison system.New York TimesThe Bureau of Justice Statistics announced that 1 in 75 American men were in prison or jail last year, and itAssociated Presswas reported that interrogators from Guant�namo Bay, Cuba, went to Iraq last fall and trained military intelligence teams at Abu Ghraib prison.New York TimesIyad Alawi, a doctor who has …

Israel continued to demolish Palestinian homes in the Gaza Strip as part of “Operation Rainbow”; a tank and a helicopter gunship opened fire on protesters in Rafah and killed at least 10 people, including several children; military officials expressed “deep sorrow over the loss of civilian lives” and said that only warning shots had been fired.New York TimesAmerican forces attacked what survivors said was a wedding party in Iraq, near the Syrian border, and killed at least 43 people, including 12 women and 14 children; U.S. military officials said they had attacked a safehouse for foreign fighters and that there …

Caricature of Louis IV, by Thackeray. 1875. China announced that Hong Kong will not be allowed to elect its next leader in 2007, contrary to the city’s Basic Law, which was enacted when Britain turned over the territory in 1997; China’s Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress said that an election would create social and economic instability. Tung Chee-hwa, Hong Kong’s current chief executive, called on the people to remain “calm and rational.”BBCThe Bush Administration continued to insist that sovereignty will be turned over to an Iraqi government on June 30 but revealed for the first time that the …

Caught in the Web. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice testified publicly and under oath before the commission investigating September 11; Rice acknowledged that President Bush had received a classified CIA briefing on August 6, 2001, entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States,” though she characterized the report as “historical information based on old reporting.” She also acknowledged that the report mentioned the existence of Al Qaeda sleeper cells in the United States but “there was no recommendation that we do something about this.” Rice also admitted that Richard Clarke, whose book on the Bush Administration’s antiterrorism failures …

Former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide accused the United States of overthrowing him in a coup. “I was forced to leave,” he said. “Agents were telling me that if I don’t leave they would start shooting and killing in a matter of time.”Associated PressState Department officials claimed that the U.S. had simply declined to protect Haiti’sdemocratically elected president from the advancing rebel mob.New York TimesAristide called for a restoration of democracy and for peaceful resistance against the foreign occupiers.GuardianTwo hundred seventy-one Shiite worshipers were killed in simultaneous bombing attacks on mosques in Baghdad and Karbala; international telephone service was knocked out …

The British government declined to prosecute Katharine Gun, the linguist who leaked a United States National Security Agency memo asking British intelligence to spy on United Nations diplomats before the invasion of Iraq; there was speculation that the government was trying to avoid another embarrassing debate about the legality of the war.New York TimesClare Short, a Labor member of parliament who resigned from the Blair cabinet over Iraq, charged that British agents had spied on United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan just before the invasion of Iraq, and said that she had seen transcripts of Annan’s conversations.IndependentAnnan was said to …

Caught in the Web, 1860. President George W. Bush, apparently worried that John Kerry was beating him in recent opinion polls, appeared on a Sunday morning talk show. Bush defended his decision to conquerIraq, and although he admitted that his stated reason for invading was false, he also suggested that weapons of mass destruction might still be found. The president said that he had total confidence in the CIA but suggested that he had been misled by incorrect intelligence. “Saddam Hussein was dangerous with weapons. Saddam Hussein was dangerous with the ability to make weapons,” Bush said. “I believe it …

David Kay, the outgoing head of the Iraq Survey Group, said that Iraq got rid of its illegal weapons programs years before the United States invaded. New York TimesKay made it clear that the United Nations weapons-inspection process had succeeded in disarming Iraq and said the Iraqis had been reduced to experimenting with ricin, a primitive but deadly poison easily made from fermented castor beans; Kay also said that the CIA had completely misread the situation in Iraq, largely because the agency had no on-the-ground spies after the U.N. inspectors were removed.New York TimesMore than 100,000 Iraqis filled the streets …

The Bush Administration, worried about the political cost of the Iraq war and increasingly plagued by comparisons with Vietnam, decided to speed up its “Iraqification” plan by transferring sovereignty to a provisional native government by June 30.New York Times, USA Today“They are, we believe, ready for it,” said Condoleezza Rice. “And they have very strong ideas about how it might be done.” President Bush said that he believes the Iraqis “have the capacity to run their own country.”ReutersThe American-appointed mayor of Sadr City, a suburb of Baghdad, was killed after he drove into a forbidden area and got into a …

United Nations weapons inspectors presented their interim report on Iraq’s compliance with Security Council resolution 1441. Hans Blix, one of the chief inspectors, complained that Iraq had failed to provide important information about its weapons programs. Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said that his inspectors had found no evidence that Iraq has restarted its nuclear-weapons program. “Is Iraq complying, yes or no? If the answer is only partially yes,” said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, “then the answer is no.” Bush Administration officials were very upset over France and Germany’s latest statements condemning America’s war …

President Bush, who continued to insist that he has “seen no evidence to date that indicates that this country could have prevented the [September 11] attack,” nonetheless called for a new cabinet-level agency for domestic security. The proposal combines 22 federal agencies into one but leaves the C.I.A. and the F.B.I., whose computers are so primitive that agents are able to search files for “aviation” and “schools” but not for “aviation schools,” essentially untouched. Attorney General John Ashcroft claimed that federal authorities had prevented a terrorist attack on Washington, D.C.; Ashcroft said that the arrest last month of an American …

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a preliminary finding that virtually every American living in the United States since 1951 has been exposed to nuclear fallout: “All organs and tissues of the body have received some radiation exposure,” the report said. The fallout, which resulted from both American and Soviet tests, could be responsible for more than 11,000 cancer deaths. The Texas veterinarian who first isolated the Ames strain of anthrax was fighting $9,000 in fines for burning the carcasses of anthrax-infected cattle, in violation of Texas air pollution rules. At the time of the offense, Texas preferred …