Weekly Review

At least 150 Iraqis were killed by a truck bomb in northern Iraq in possibly the deadliest bombing since the United States invaded in 2003, and it was reported that, despite a police security drive, the number of unidentified bodies found in Baghdad had increased sharply in June. New York TimesBBCnews.comAustralia’s defense minister, Brendan Nelson, admitted that securing oil is one of the reasons Australian troops stay in Iraq. “This government,” said Labor leader Kevin Rudd, “simply makes it up as it goes along.”BBCnews.comThe White House rejected demands to hand over documents related to the firings of eight U.S. attorneys and said Democratic lawmakers should spend their time passing bills that solve domestic problems.AP via Yahoonews.comChina sentenced a former official to death for corruption and for approving counterfeit drugs, admitted that nearly 20 percent of the goods it produces are substandard, and announced that it was searching for oil in Sudan.BBCnews.comNew York TimesBBCnews.comPresident Hugo Chavez of Venezuela visited Tehran and praised Iran’s nuclear program, calling President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad his “ideological brother.”BBCnews.comPresident George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin rode Segway scooters together.New York TimesHundreds of bound bodies were discovered in a former Soviet barracks near Kabul,BBCnews.comand a military judge rejected the Pentagon’s request to reinstate previously dismissed charges against a Guantánamo prisoner who was arrested when he was 15 years old.CNN.comBarack Obama was raising more money than Hillary Clinton,BBCnews.comand Cristina Kirchner, the first lady of Argentina, will run for president instead of her husband.BBCnews.com

The European Commission posted a 44-second videoclip of 18 orgasms to YouTube in support of European cinema. Critics complained that the title “Let’s Come Together” was too suggestive and that the pun fails to work in all EU languages.Reuters via Msnbc.comOne hundred and ten children were swept into the Irish Sea.BBCnews.comScientists succeeded for the first time in making a baby using a lab-matured thawed egg,BBCnews.comand Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in an attempt to prevent gay sex, planned to install a quarter-million-dollar robot toilet.South Florida Sun SentinelIn Nigeria, where the price of machetes has dropped by 50 percent since the end of the April elections, a kidnapped British three-year-old was released after four days. CNN.comReutersHamas brokered a deal for the freedom of BBC reporter Alan Johnston, who had been held for 114 days in Gaza,BBCnews.comand in NairobiLibyan president Muammar al-Gaddafi, surrounded by his squad of female bodyguards and wearing a shirt printed with pictures of the African presidents, called for the creation of a “United States of Africa” and implied that he should be its first leader.TelegraphScientists cloned a sperm.BBCNews.comA study claimed that men with high testosterone make irrational decisions,Newscientist.coma Hong Kong woman who blinded her boyfriend in one eye six years ago was jailed for jabbing a chopstick into his other eye,Reutersand an Iowa State University study suggested that the happiest marriages are those in which the husband defers to the wife in all decisions.Reuters

It was revealed that Wal-Mart has collected on at least 75 of the 350,000 life insurance policies it had secretly taken out on its employees.The Tampa TribuneFour members of a Virginia family and a farmhand drowned (or were killed by methane gas) in a manure pit after each jumped in to rescue the others; two children survived.AP via CNN.comExperts claimed that prescription pills were becoming the new marijuana on college campuses,CNN.comand Al Gore Jr. was arrested for possessing both pills and pot after he was pulled over for driving 100mph in his hybrid car. At Gore’s father’s 24-hour, seven-continent Live Earth concert for the environment, Duran Duran’s Simon Le Bon addressed the crowd. “Everyone who did not arrive on a private jet,” he said, “put your hands in the air.” Le Bon then put his hand in the air.ReutersNMEEgypt outlawed female circumcision,BBCnews.comand in India, where ten million female infants have been killed in the last 20 years, a farmer rescued a two-day-old girl after finding her hand sticking out of the soil of his field.BBCnews.comA six-year-old girl had her small intestine ripped out by the drain of a Minneapolis swimming pool,11Alive.coma Miami man was charged with elder abuse after his mother, who was found in a trailer covered in red ants with newspapers shoved into her anus, died,Local6.comand scientists announced a potential drug that could erase bad memories.Livescience.com