Weekly Review

A kinkajou, 1886. Tunisia commemorated the first anniversary of the Arab Springâ??and of the ousting of President Zine al-Abidine Ben Aliâ??by pardoning 9,000 prisoners and commuting 122 death sentences. BBCMyanmar released 651 political prisoners, leading the U.S. State… Read More

A Small Family. Mitt Romney won the first stage of the Republican leadership race, beating Rick Santorum by eight votes, 30,015 to 30,007, in the Iowa caucus. “This has been a great victory for him,” said Romney of Santorum. Michele Bachmann, who had claimed she would stay… Read More

People around the world celebrated the passing of another year as 2012 began. The first to ring in the new year were the South Pacific nations of Samoa and Tokelau, which officially switched to the Western side of the international date line by jumping ahead to Saturday on Thursday at… Read More

The world failed to end. The United States observed the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people on September 11, 2001. Osama bin Laden was assassinated in Abbottabad, Pakistan, during a joint mission by U.S. Navy SEALs and CIA agents. The Iraq War ended. Protests across… Read More

A kinkajou, 1886. After weeks of infighting, Congress passed a two-month extension of the payroll-tax cut. House Republicans, who had rejected a nearly identical measure days earlier, were left divided over the stopgap measure, which pitted recently elected lawmakers seeking major reforms against party veterans. “When you… Read More

This distillation of Weekly Review events related to the Iraq War was compiled, selected, and edited for context by James Sligh. The lines themselves were written by many different Harper’s Magazine editors, notably Roger D. Hodge and Paul Ford. Like the Weekly Review, this history is intended to be… Read More

U.S. military officials declared the end of the Iraq War during a 45-minute ceremony in a fortified compound at Baghdad International Airport. Iraqâ??s president and prime minister did not attend, and local reporters were not invited. “To be sure, the cost was high,” said Defense Secretary Leon… Read More

Weighing the soul, 1875. Russians in nine time zones rallied to demand a revote of their country’s December 4 parliamentary elections, in which the ruling United Russia party won a slim majority. Russiaâ??s only independent election-monitoring group logged more than 5,000 fraud allegations, while videos posted… Read More

An American cattleman. The first round of parliamentary elections in Egypt since president Hosni Mubarak was ousted in February brought to the polls an unprecedented 62 percent of registered voters, many of whom had never voted before. “I donâ??t know any of the parties or who Iâ??m voting for,”… Read More

A Christian martyr. The congressional supercommittee assigned to devise a plan for reining in the federal deficit failed to reach an agreement, triggering $1.2 trillion in budget cuts that will take effect in 2013, including cuts to defense spending and Medicare. Senate Democrats planned to follow up the… Read More

Egyptian troops killed at least 30 people and wounded at least 1,250 when demonstrators descended on Cairo’s Tahrir Square following an attempt by the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces to delay a presidential election and increase the military’s power under Egypt’s forthcoming constitution. The country’s interim civilian cabinet… Read More

Silvio Berlusconi, who during the 17 years since he was first elected prime minister has been accused of tax fraud, mafia collusion, bribery of law-enforcement officials, and solicitation of an underage prostitute, stepped down after Italyâ??s parliament passed austerity measures seeking to contain the impact of the countryâ??s… Read More

Greek prime minister George Papandreou agreed to step down following a week in which he proposed a referendum on EU measures to save his country’s collapsing economy, narrowly won a confidence vote, retracted his referendum proposal, and signed a coalition deal to approve the bailout. “I am not tied to… Read More

A Small Family. A Taliban suicide bomber rammed a Toyota Corolla loaded with an estimated 1,500 pounds of explosives into an armored bus in Kabul, killing 17 people; the Taliban killed three civilians and a policeman in a suicide attack then seized an animal clinic in Kandahar;… Read More

A kinkajou, 1886. Libyan forces shot and killed deposed leader Muammar Qaddafi after finding him hidden in a drainage pipe in Sirte. Upon being discovered, Qaddafi reportedly raised his hands and begged, “Don’t kill me, my sons.” Video footage showed him being taunted, beaten, and sodomized with a weapon,… Read More

As the occupation of Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan finished its first month, the Occupy Wall Street movement spread to cities and college campuses across the United States and to more than 70 other countries. A city-mandated cleanup of Zuccotti Park by its owners, which protesters believed was a… Read More

An American cattleman. Three women were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, which has not gone to a female recipient in seven years. Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Liberian activist Leymah Gbowee, and Tawakkol Karman of Yemen, the “mother” of that countryâ??s rebellion, were recognized by the Nobel committee “for… Read More

A Christian martyr. Two American citizens, Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan, were killed by a CIA drone in Yemen. Awlaki, a cleric whose speeches purportedly inspired young Muslim radicals, had been added to the CIAâ??s list of terrorist targets in early 2010. According to the… Read More

Mahmoud Abbas went before the United Nations General Assembly in support of Palestine’s bid for UN membership, saying his was a “defenseless people, armed only with their dreams, courage, hope, and slogans.” “Yeah,” said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his UN address. “Hopes, dreams, and 10,000 missiles.”… Read More

A kinkajou, 1886. A Second World Warâ??era military plane crashed into a group of spectators at the Reno National Championship Air Races in Nevada, killing 10 people, including Jimmy Leeward, 74, who became the twentieth pilot to die at the event since it began 47 years ago. “It looked… Read More

The United States observed the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people on September 11, 2001. Thousands of mourners gathered at the World Trade Center site in Lower Manhattan, at the Pentagon, and in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Relatives and loved… Read More

A kinkajou, 1886. As Libyan forces converged on Muammar Qaddafi’s last redoubts countrywide, documents recovered in Tripoli showed that the CIA and MI6 had helped Qaddafi persecute dissidents, including Abdul Hakim Belhaj, military commander of Libya’s national transitional government, whom the CIA rendered back to the country… Read More

An earthquake with a Richter magnitude of 5.9 and an epicenter in Mineral, Virginia, shook much of the East Coast, and Irene, a Category 1 hurricane, made landfall in North Carolina and continued up the Atlantic seaboard, killing at least 38 people in 10 states. The unusually large and… Read More

An American cattleman. Violence broke out between Israel and Gaza following an ambush near the Egyptian border that killed eight Israelis, six of them civilians. After retaliatory air strikes killed an estimated 15 people in Gaza and militants fired dozens of rockets into southern Israel, Hamas… Read More

A kinkajou, 1886. A cholera epidemic struck refugees fleeing a famine in southern Somalia that has killed an estimated 29,000 children so far. Banadir Hospital in Mogadishu reported 181 deaths as well as symptoms in more than 4,000 people, three quarters of them under the age of five. Read More

Somali government troops killed at least ten famine refugees at the Badbaado camp in Mogadishu after distribution of dry rations by the World Food Program devolved into looting. “They fired on us as if we were their enemy,” said Abidyo Geddi. “We donâ??t get much food, and the rare food… Read More

A kinkajou, 1886. Democratic and Republican leaders concluded a week of fierce debate by agreeing on a “framework” deal to resolve the U.S. debt-ceiling crisis. Were the House and Senate to approve the deal, the ceiling would be raised for the seventy-ninth time in fifty years, increasing… Read More

A bomb exploded at the Norwegian capitol building in Oslo, killing eight people. Hours later, a gunman opened fire at an island camp for young members of Norway’s ruling Labor Party, killing another 76, many of them teenagers. Police took into custody 32-year-old Anders Behring Breivik, who claimed responsibility for… Read More

A Christian martyr. An Afghan police officer assassinated Ahmed Wali Karzai, half brother of president Hamid Karzai and the de facto governor of Afghanistanâ??s Kandahar region, whom U.S. officials suspected of having connections to the opium trade. During a memorial service for Karzai at a local mosque, a… Read More

The “News of the World,” a British tabloid, was shuttered amid a police investigation into allegations its journalists had hacked into the cell phones of as many as 7,000 people, including politicians, celebrities, and murder victims. Two former editors were arrested, owner Rupert Murdoch called the scandal “deplorable,” and… Read More