An American cattleman. In the G.O.P. primaries on Super Tuesday, John McCain emerged as the likely Republican presidential nominee after winning California,New York, New Jersey, and other “blue states”; Mike Huckabee won states in the South, and Mitt Romney won states in which he has owned a home. Romney later announced the end of his presidential campaign to an audience that moaned and cried “No, no!” “Size,” explained Romney, referring to the number of delegates pledged to McCain, “does matter.”Talking Points MemoNational PostBreitbartDemocratic primaries left neither Senator Barack Obama nor Senator Hillary Clinton with a clear lead over the other, …

The Cloaca Maxima, 1872 Iran criticized Australia, Bahrain, Britain, France, Italy, and the United States for carrying out a practice naval exercise in the Persian Gulf, then announced ten days of “Great Prophet II” war games.AP via International Herald TribuneBreitbartThe International Atomic Energy Agency said that it has been approached by at least six Arab countries interested in developing their own nuclear programs,Reuters via Yahoo! Newsand the U.S. government shut down its “Operation Iraqi Freedom Document Portal” website after the New York Times pointed out that it contained instructions for building an atomic bomb. “It’s a cookbook,” explained a senior …

In Iraq a car bomb killed 16 people and wounded 90, 14 bodies were found stacked in a hole, 5 U.S. troops were killed, and Saddam Hussein was boycotting his own trial.CNN.comProfessor Philippe Sands of University College, London, said he had seen a secret memo that details a January 2003 meeting between British Prime Minister Tony Blair and U.S. President George W. Bush. According to Sands’ account of the memo, Blair offered Bush full British support for an invasion of Iraq regardless of whether U.N. inspectors found evidence of weapons of mass destruction. Bush also told Blair that he was …

The Conservative Party won a plurality of seats in Canada’s federal election, making Stephen Harper Canada’s next prime minister.CBC.caThe Islamic group Hamas won 76 of 132 parliamentary seats in Palestine’s parliamentary elections, unseating the Fatah party. U.S. President George W. Bush, whose administration supported open democratic elections in Palestine, said that the United States would not negotiate with Hamas until the organization renounced its chartered goal of destroyingIsrael,BBC Newsand U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced that the United States would cut off aid to Palestine if Hamas assumed power without changing its policies. “I’ve asked why nobody saw it …

President George W. Bush said that allegations made by Amnesty International, claiming that the prison at Guant�namo Bay is a “gulag,” were absurd. Bush accused Amnesty of listening to “people that have been trained in some instances to disassemble–that means not tell the truth.” Whitehouse.govU.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said that HIV and AIDS were spreading at an accelerating rate around the world,ReutersNew Jersey was planning to try six animal-rights activists on “animal enterprise terrorism” charges,Reutersand an Australian woman was arrested for attempting to bring fifty-one tropical fish into the country hidden in her skirt.APSeveral prisoners at Guant�namo Bay said …

George Bush delivered his State of the Union address.CNNHe said the country was “confident and strong,”CNNthen announced he would reduce or eliminate 150 government programs.The New York TimesHe called Social Security “a symbol of the trust between generations,” then discussed proposals for the reduction of its benefits and an increase in the retirement age.The New York TimesHe suggested that his tax cuts be enshrined in perpetuityThe New York Timesand that “the spending appetite” of the federal government should be restrained.CNNHe said he would “confront” Middle Eastern nations in the name of peace,CNNbut insisted the United States had “no right, no …

Ukraine’s Supreme Court ordered a second presidential run-off to be held by December 26 after it ruled last month’s fraud-plagued election invalid.New York TimesSupporters of Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich, the winner in the November 21 run-off, threatened to form a separate nation in the country’s east; theNew York Timesopposition candidate, Viktor Yushchenko, who promises to increase Ukraine’s ties to the West, celebrated the court’s decision with thousands of protesters in Kiev’s Independence Square. Stricken by a mysterious illness that has left his face a mask of puffy, red cysts and lesions, Yushchenko said to the crowd, “This is the face …

A kinkajou, 1886. Nobel Prize winner Rahman Abdel-Raouf Arafat Al-Qudwa, better known as Yasir Arafat, died of unknown causes at a French military hospital. He was 75.AP Samples of Arafat’s blood were sent to the United States and Germany to test for poison, whileJerusalem Post some claimed that Arafat had a fondness for wild homosexual orgies, and had consequently died of AIDS.Front PageArafat’s funeral, attended by tens of thousands, was marked by two hours of honorary gunfire.Jerusalem PostMahmoud Abbas, Arafat’s most likely successor, dodged bullets in Gaza.Al Jazeera The Palestinian leadership was left wondering where Arafat had stowed his billions …

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 …

The Bush Administration reversed itself and declared that non-Iraqis captured fighting in Iraq are not protected by the Geneva Conventions; such prisoners, it was reported, have already been transferred out of Iraq in recent months and could be taken to Egypt or Saudi Arabia where torture is more common than it is in the United States.ScotsmanFour British citizens who were held without charges in Guant�namo Bay, Cuba, filed suit against Donald Rumsfeld and other senior administration officials, and claimed that they were tortured while in custody. The Pentagon responded that the men were “enemy combatants” and thus had no right …

Martin Luther controlled by the Devil, 1875. The interim Iraqi government officially notified the International Atomic Energy Agency that 380 tons of extremely powerful HMX and RDX explosives that American forces simply failed to secure have disappeared from a former military facility called Al Qaqaa. The explosives can be used to destroy buildings, arm missile warheads, and detonate nuclear devices, and it was generally conceded that the Al Qaqaa cache, which was under seal by the IAEA prior to the U.S. invasion, is the most likely source of the explosives used in the extremely effective roadside and suicide bombs that …

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 …

Thai health officials confirmed that avian flu has probably begun to spread from person to person. Influenza experts were begging drug companies to begin manufacturing enough vaccine to prevent a pandemic but the companies were complaining that production is too expensive and that they will lose money if a pandemic does not occur. Patent issues were also cited.New York TimesEmory University Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia, began notifying more than 500 patients that they might have been exposed to sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakobdisease because of inadequate sterilization procedures.Associated PressTony Blair underwent heart surgery, andNew York TimesMerck & Co. withdrew its arthritis drug Vioxx …

After maintaining for three years that Yaser Esam Hamdi, an American citizen captured in Afghanistan, was so grave a threat to the United States that merely permitting him to meet with his lawyer would fatally compromise national security, the Bush Administration (having been told by Justice Antonin Scalia that “the very core of liberty secured by our Anglo-Saxon system of separated powers has been freedom from indefinite imprisonment at the will of the Executive”) declined to defend its case against Hamdi in open court and announced that he will be stripped of his citizenship and released in Saudi Arabia.Boston Globe, …

A burning plain. The United Nations Security Council passed another resolution asking the Sudanese government to prevent its proxies from slaughtering people in Darfur (China, Algeria, Pakistan, and Russia abstained). The resolution, which for the first time formally invokes the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, says that the council will “consider” sanctions if the genocide continues.New York TimesChaos continued to rule Iraq; there were many attacks by insurgents, including several large suicide bombings, hostages were beheaded, and many civilians, including women and children, were killed in American airstrikes.New York TimesIraqi prime minister Iyad …

Chechen militants took more than 1,000 children and adults hostage at a school in southern Russia, though the Russian government lied at first and claimed that there were only 354 hostages; at least 338 died, half of whom were children, when security forces stormed the school.Washington Post, ReutersA suicide bomber blew herself up in a Moscow subway station, killing at least 10 people.Associated PressPalestinian suicide bombers blew up two buses in Beersheba, killing 16 and wounding at least 80.Associated PressIraqi insurgents blew up another oil pipeline, and aAssociated Presscar bomb killed seven American marines and three Iraqi soldiers near Falluja.ReutersTwelve …

Two government reports, one civilian and one military, were issued on the Abu Ghraib torture scandal. The Army reported that military intelligence officers and civilian contractors were deeply involved in the abuse; the civilian report went to great lengths to avoid the logical conclusion that the Bush White House had created the conditions (legal, operational, and military) that directly led to the Abu Ghraib horrors. Both reports found that many of the techniques employed at Abu Ghraib originated in CIA torture chambers in Afghanistan.New York TimesArmy investigators discovered that military police dogs were used to terrify teenage Iraqi prisoners as …

Senator Pat Roberts, the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, proposed eliminating the CIA, removing the National Security Agency from the Pentagon’s control, and creating three new spy agencies governed by a national intelligence director.New York TimesThe American Civil Liberties Union warned that the federal government has been using corporations to carry out surveillance of citizens because private firms are not subject to many privacy and civil-liberties laws.WiredSenator Ted Kennedy confirmed that he had been placed on the federal “no-fly” list designed to prevent terrorists from boarding commercial aircraft.ReutersOil prices rose above $49.Agence France-PresseThe U.S. Army announced that it will …

Weighing the soul, 1875. Finance experts warned that the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, the government agency that insures company pensions, could be forced into a situation similar to the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s, which led to a $200 billion bailout, as a result of cascading pension defaults in the airline industry.New York TimesEconomic growth was slowing,Washington Postfewer jobs were being created, crude oil prices reached a record high of $44.41,New York Timesand the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped to a new low for 2004.Associated PressBerkshire Hathaway’s second quarter earnings were down 42 percent.ReutersThe Bureau of Labor Statistics …