Prime Minister Iyad Allawi of Iraq declared martial law after twenty-two policemen were killed in one day; moments later a car bomb blew up in Baghdad near the home of the finance minister. A British contractor was killed in Basra, attacks on American soldiers continued, and three Iraqi translators were found dead in Tikrit.ReutersThe United States invaded Falluja for the second time in six months and conquered the city’s general hospital. Patients and doctors were tied up and an Iraqi soldier shot himself in the leg.New York TimesFour car bombs blew up in Samarra and three police stations were attacked …

United Nations weapons inspectors began their work in Iraq; among the first installations to be inspected were Al Dawrah and Al Nasr, two factories that Tony Blair and George W. Bush, citing satellite photographs, had claimed were sites of renewed production of nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons. Inspectors found nothing but ruins. Another factory (known as Al Furat) that the United States has cited as evidence of a nuclear weapons program was also inspected and showed no signs of illegal activity. It was reported that one of the weapons inspectors is the co-founder of Black Rose, “a Washington-area pansexual S&M …

The United States Department of Justice appointed a special criminal task force to investigate the collapse of Enron, the Texas oil company. Attorney General John Ashcroft recused himself from the investigation, as did the entire United States Attorney’s office in Houston, because of conflicts of interest. Kenneth L. Lay, Enron’s chairman, who called two different cabinet secretaries last fall before the company imploded, apparently fishing for a government bailout, has given more money to President Bush than anyone else �?? more than $550,000 to his political campaigns plus $100,000 for his inaugural committee. In the months before Enron’s stock dropped …

Astrophysicists found evidence that the speed of light and other laws of nature might have changed over time. Donald Rumsfeld, the American secretary of defense, explained that his much-ballyhooed “revolution in military affairs” was not a revolution at all but was instead a “transformation”: “When they see that word,” he explained, seeking to comfort critics in Congress and among the troops, “there’s a tendency to think that you go from this to something different.” In fact, he said, you can do something rather modest, like improve communications, which “could be characterized as transformed or transformational.” President George W. Bush declared …

An international team of scientists announced that they had finished the first complete genetic sequence of a plant; Arabidopsis thaliana, or thale-cress, is related to cauliflowers and brussels sprouts and previously was a worthless weed.A new study found that marijuana slows the swimming of sperm in a test tube.The United StatesArmy was funding research aimed at allowing humans to hibernate.Experts on a National Toxicology Program panel said that estrogen should be listed as a carcinogen.Switzerland banned the sale of beef on the bone because of mad-cow concerns.Cargill Turkey Products recalled 16.7 million pounds of turkey products after it was linked …

Safeway, the supermarket chain, recalled its house brand of corn taco shells after food critics discovered that the shells contained StarLink, a type of genetically modified corn that was not approved for human consumption. Taco Bell previously recalled its shells.The National Grain and Feed Association demanded the names of some 2,000 farmers who have planted StarLink crops; the manufacturer, Aventis Crop Science, refused to provide the names.Advanced Cell Technology, a company in Worcester, Massachusetts, announced that it had cloned an Asian guar; the embryo was gestating in an Iowan cow. The company plans to clone the extinct bucardo mountain goat …

A Concorde airplane crashed in Paris; two amateur Hungarian photographers snapped a picture of the doomed plane with flames shooting from its engines, which were manufactured by Rolls Royce, just before it destroyed a small hotel near the airport. Investigators soon narrowed their suspicions to a fuel leak, saying that previously detected cracks in another Concorde were unrelated. Atmospheric scientists discovered that some 4,000 tons of a new synthetic greenhouse gas have been released into the atmosphere; the gas, which takes 1,000 years to degrade, may be a by-product of weapons production. A Russian spacecraft docked with the International Space …