Weekly Review

A kinkajou, 1886. Christine Lagarde, the finance minister of France, was appointed managing director of the International Monetary Fund, making her the first woman to hold the position. “While I was being questioned for three hours by 24 men,” Lagarde said on French television, “I thought, â??Itâ??s good… Read More

An American cattleman. Revelers at New York Cityâ??s gay pride parade waved signs reading “Thank You Governor Cuomo” and “Promise Kept!” after New York became the sixth and largest U.S. state to legalize same-sex marriage. The state senate vote marked the culmination of an intensive lobbying campaign by gay-rights… Read More

Workers at Japanâ??s crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, where 110,000 tons of radioactive water have collected since an earthquake and tsunami in March, were forced to suspend a new filtration scheme after a cesium absorber that was expected to last a month wore out in five hours. Addressing fears… Read More

A kinkajou, 1886. Republican and Democratic leaders, including Nancy Pelosi, called for the resignation of Representative Anthony Weiner (D., N.Y.), who admitted at a press conference that he had publicly tweeted a photograph of his crotch intended to be sent privately to a 21-year-old woman, and… Read More

Former senator John Edwards was indicted for soliciting contributions to his 2008 presidential campaign that were intended for covering up his affair with Rielle Hunter and Hunter’s subsequent pregnancy. Edwards reportedly turned down a plea bargain that included up to six months of prison time. “We will not permit candidates… Read More

An American cattleman. Europe’s most wanted war-crimes suspect, former general Ratko Mladic, was arrested for the 1995 massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica. Supporters said the 68-year-old Bosnian Serb had suffered two heart attacks and three strokes over the years, and that his condition should… Read More

An American cattleman. Europe’s most wanted war-crimes suspect, former general Ratko Mladic, was arrested for the 1995 massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica. Supporters said the 68-year-old Bosnian Serb had suffered two heart attacks and three strokes over the years, and that his condition should… Read More

Talks with Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, grew tense after Barack Obama called for the country’s pre-1967 borders to be the starting point for peace negotiations with Palestinians. Netanyahu rejected the proposal, saying, “Remember that before 1967, Israel was all of nine miles wide; it’s half… Read More

In Shabqadar, Pakistan, two men approached a group of paramilitary cadets and blew themselves up, riddling the crowd with ball bearings and killing sixty-six members of the Frontier Constabulary, many of whom had recently graduated. The Taliban took responsibility for the attack, calling it retribution for the assassination of… Read More

The wire master and his puppets, 1875. President Barack Obama announced that the government would not release pictures of Osama bin Laden’s mutilated corpse, saying, “We don’t need to spike the football.”CBS NewsThe Associated Press filed a Freedom… Read More

A Christian martyr. Osama bin Laden was reported to have been killed during a joint mission by U.S. Navy SEALs and CIA agents in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Crowds gathered to celebrate in front of the White House, and at Times Square and the World Trade Center… Read More

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad lifted the country’s 48-year-old state of emergency and legalized peaceful protests in an attempt to placate opposition groups who have been calling for him to step down. The following day, Syrians returned to the streets to protest, security forces shot into the crowds, and more than… Read More

A Small Family. While being questioned about his abuses of power, ousted 82-year-old Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak reportedly suffered a heart attack and was rushed to a hospital in the beach resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. GuardianMubarak’s sons,… Read More

A kinkajou, 1886. Less than an hour and a half before a budget-negotiation stalemate would have necessitated the first U.S. government shutdown since 1995, Democrats and Republicans worked out a compromise. The stopgap agreement, which will fund government operations until Thursday, April 14, proposes a $38-billion reduction… Read More

In response to the burning of a Koran in Florida, riots broke out in the Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif, where a mob overran U.N. offices and killed seven staffers, and elsewhere, including Kandahar, where young men burned American flags, tires, cars, and a girls’ school. Terry Jones, the pastor… Read More

Libyan antigovernment forces, whose swift advance under coalition air strikes was slowed fifty miles outside Muammar Qaddafiâ??s home city of Sirte, signed an oil deal with Qatar, which officially recognized them as Libyaâ??s new leadership. Four New York Times journalists were released after spending six days in Libyan custody, during… Read More

An American cattleman. With 112 missiles fired at Libyan military targets, the United States and allies commenced Operation Odyssey Dawn. The military attack followed a United Nations Security Council resolution authorizing military action against Muammar Qaddafi’s regime and demanding that attacks against rebel troops cease immediately. “You… Read More

The wire master and his puppets, 1875. A 9.0-magnitude earthquake in northeast Japan triggered a massive tsunami, killing at least 10,000 people in what Prime Minister Naoto Kan called the country’s worst crisis since World War II. Hundreds of miles of coastline remained unreachable as hundreds of thousands… Read More

Muammar Qaddafi’s forces in Libya continued air strikes against antigovernment forces as fighting there devolved into civil war. Rebels took control of the oil port at Ras Lanuf but were beaten back at the coastal town of Bin Jawwad, which Qaddafi recaptured with the help of air strikes that killed… Read More

In a unanimous vote, the United Nations Security Council imposed military and financial sanctions on Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, freezing his assets and placing an arms embargo on Libya. The Security Council also voted to open a war-crimes investigation based on Qaddafi’s brutal response to antigovernment protests; estimates of… Read More

A kinkajou, 1886. Throughout the Middle East, revolutionaries and rulers struggled against one another. In Libya, the arrest of human-rights activist Fathi Terbil sparked antigovernment protests, prompting 20,000 people to gather in the city of Benghazi. Col. Muammar Qaddafi’s security forces killed at least 200 of them, including many… Read More

A Small Family. Seventeen days after protests began in Egypt’s Tahrir Square, after more than 300 fatalities, and with hundreds of protesters thought to have been secretly detained by the military, President Hosni Mubarak gave a seventeen-minute speech in which he talked in great detail about the changes he… Read More

A Christian martyr. Egyptians activists held a “day of departure” in Cairo’s Tahir Square, demanding the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak, who after eleven days of protests claimed to be “fed up” with being president. “We as a people are fed up as well,” said opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei. Read More

The wire master and his puppets, 1875. In Egypt tens of thousands of antigovernment demonstrators, inspired by the fall of Tunisia’s dictatorship, defied curfews for a week to demand that President Hosni Mubarak step down after 29 years in power. President Obama urged Egypt, America’s closest ally in the… Read More

A suicide bomber struck Moscow’s Domodedovo airport, killing as many as 34 people and leaving at least 168 injured. “From the preliminary information we have, it was a terror attack,” said Russian president Dmitry Medvedev in a televised briefing. Former Department of Homeland Security official Stephen A. Read More

An American cattleman. President Barack Obama, speaking at a memorial service in Arizona for the six killed during Jared Loughner’s shooting spree, urged Americans to be better people. “I want our democracy to be as good as Christina imagined it,” Obama said, referring to 9-year-old victim Christina Taylor… Read More

A gunman opened fire on a “Congress on Your Corner” event held by Representative Gabrielle Giffords (D., Ariz.) in a mall in Tucson, killing six people and wounding more than a dozen. Representative Giffords, the primary target of the attack, was shot at point-blank range in the… Read More

Rival Afghan and Pakistani militant groups stopped fighting each other to unite against U.S.-led NATO forces in the region. “They have been forced to cooperate due to the effect our collective efforts have had on them,” explained coalition spokesman Lt. Col. Patrick Seiber. U.S. drone attacks in Pakistan… Read More

Two thousand seven hundred twenty-two days after U.S. troops crossed the Kuwaiti border into Iraq, U.S. combat operations there officially ended. The U.S.-led war in Afghanistan turned older than the Soviet Union’s 3,339-day campaign in the country. Twenty-one percent of young veterans of the wars… Read More

A kinkajou, 1886. Letter bombs made from videocassette boxes, gunpowder, and nine-volt batteries exploded at the Chilean and Swiss embassies in Rome, injuring two. The Informal Federation of Anarchists claimed responsibility for the attack. “This is something they have to do from time to time,” said terrorism expert Gianfranco… Read More