Weekly Review

Stocks on Wall Street and other exchanges throughout the world dropped as brokerage Merrill Lynch was bought by Bank of America, insurance giant AIG sought tens of billions of dollars in government loans, and investment bank Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy. Read More

The Treasury Department seized control of mortgage and loan giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, firing the companies’ chief executives and promising to provide as much as $200 billion to prevent insolvency.New York TimesThe jobless rate rose from 5.7… Read More

One million people fled New Orleans to avoid Hurricane Gustav, which landed in Louisiana as a weakened category-2 hurricane and caused relatively little damage. Mississippi officials ordered people still living in the FEMA trailers erected after Hurricane Katrina to evacuate, and John McCain canceled opening-day ceremonies for the… Read More

Barack Obama announced Joe Biden, the senior senator from Delaware, as his running mate, even though Biden voted for the war in Iraq and for NAFTA and once said that Obama was “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a… Read More

After more than a week of fighting and one failed cease-fire, Russia and Georgia signed a revised cease-fire agreement, but Russian troops remained within 25 miles of the Georgian capital, Tbilisi. Russian President Dmitri Medvedev promised French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who negotiated the agreement, that… Read More

Claiming that South Ossetian separatists had attacked its villages, U.S. ally Georgia sent troops to capture the city of Tskhinvali. Russia retaliated by sending ground troops into Tskhinvali, then into Georgia proper; Georgia claimed that hundreds of troops had been killed on both sides along with “huge numbers” of… Read More

Caught in the Web, 1860. Senator “Uncle” Ted Stevens, the longest-serving Republican in the Senate and “Alaskan of the Century,” was indicted for seven felonies related to unreported gifts worth $250,000 from an oil-services company. The alleged gifts included a Land Rover, a Viking gas grill, and construction… Read More

Radovan Karadzic was arrested in Belgrade and awaits imminent extradition to The Hague, where he will face charges of genocide for his role in the Srebrenica massacres and the siege of Sarajevo. The former Bosnian Serb president, a psychiatrist and poet who in 1991 pledged to drive Bosnian… Read More

Barack Obama began his week-long foreign tour in Afghanistan, where he met with President Hamid Karzai, and continued on to Iraq. There, he flew in a helicopter to the Green Zone with General David Petraeus. Before he left the United States, he was asked what he would… Read More

The U.S. Office of Thrift Supervision seized the IndyMac Bank of California, worth an estimated 32 billion dollars, after the bank’s closure in the wake of mortgage industry collapse,AFPand the Bush Administration proposed a rescue package… Read More

Colombian military commandos infiltrated a settlement operated by the guerilla group FARC and freed 15 hostages, among them three U.S. contractors and the Colombian-French politician Ingrid Betancourt. President George W. Bush called Colombian President Alvaro Uribe to congratulate him. “What a joyous occasion it must be to… Read More

The Supreme Court overturned the 32-year ban on handguns in Washington, D.C., ruling 5-4 that there is a Second Amendment right to own a gun for personal use. Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in his dissent that the court’s ruling, its first on the Second Amendment in… Read More

Caught in the Web, 1860. Oil reached a record $139.89 a barrel. Four Western companies met with Iraq’s Oil Ministry to finalize no-bid contracts to tap Iraqi oil fields, and the Nigerian government distributed billions of dollars of windfall to corrupt state officials. Thirty-five countries and… Read More

The Supreme Court ruled 5â??4 that detainees held as “enemy combatants” by the United States in Guantanamo Bay,Cuba, have a constitutional right to challenge their detention through habeas corpus petitions in federal courts. “Liberty and security can be reconciled…within the framework of the law,” wrote Justice… Read More

Senator Barack Obama, having amassed more than the 2,118 delegates needed to secure a majority, was acknowledged as the Democratic presidential nominee and claimed victory before a crowd of almost 20,000 people in St. Paul, Minnesota, knocking knuckles with his wife, Michelle, in a gesture known as “dap.”… Read More

Scott McClellan published a memoir about his stint as President George W. Bush‘s press secretary from July 2003 to April 2006. In the book, McClellan says that he does not believe that the Bush Administration “deliberately or consciously sought to deceive the American people” when it dispensed with… Read More

President George W. Bush gave a radio address for Memorial Day weekend, invoking the sacrifice of 4,071 U.S. soldiers in Iraq and 432 in Afghanistan. Later, for the last time in his capacity as President, he placed a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at… Read More

A 7.9-magnitude earthquake centered in Sichuan Province, China, left 50,000 dead and 5,000,000 homeless. Outside Beichuan Middle School, where 1,000 students and teachers died, parents waited for the bodies of their children to be pulled from the rubble, lighting a single firecracker each time a body was found. A… Read More

Caught in the Web, 1860. The military junta in Myanmar put the official death toll from last week’s Cyclone Nargis (Urdu for “daffodil”) at 28,458, while foreign observers, taking into account that heavy rains were expected to continue, with malaria, tuberculosis, cholera, typhoid, and dysentery to follow, expected… Read More

Cyclone Nargis tore off roofs, shredded trees, overturned cars, and killed more than 10,000 people in Myanmar.Local 6Tens of thousands of Somalis rioted in Mogadishu over the high cost of food,CNNPresident Bush… Read More

Hillary Clinton gained nine more delegates than Barack Obama in the Pennsylvania primary and challenged him to debate without a moderator. Obama, who declined, reportedly seemed “tired” and “brittle” campaigning in Indiana. “Seniors, listen up,” he said. “I’m getting gray hair myself. Running for president will age… Read More

An American cattleman. Pope Benedict XVI toured the United States. Kathleen Battle, Harry Connick Jr., and Kelly Clarkson serenaded him, President George W. Bush gave him a crystal cross and a birthday cake, Placido Domingo threw him a birthday party (but forgot to invite him), Jews… Read More

Twenty U.S. soldiers were killed last week fighting across Iraq, and 1,300 Iraqi officers and soldiers were fired for poor performance. The Bush Administration said it was optimistic that many more refugees from the estimated 4.4 million people who had fled Iraq or had been “internally… Read More

The United States marked the fortieth anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. “He was normal as a person could be,” said his sister Christine King Farris. “I want people not to think of him as some mythic character from out of space.” Speaking from the Memphis… Read More

Caught in the Web, 1860. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ordered an offensive against the Mahdi Army, a large Shia militia allied with cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, in the oil-rich southern port city of Basra. Senator John McCain called the offensive “a sign of the strength of… Read More

An American cattleman. As the war in Iraq stretched beyond its fifth year the U.S. death toll rose to 4,000, and a national conference intended to reconcile sectarian groups was boycotted by Sunnis.BBC News… Read More

With the assistance of the Federal Reserve, JPMorgan Chase acquired its rival Bear Stearns for $236.2 million, or $2 a share, about 1 percent of the bank’s value two weeks ago. Bear Stearns Chairman Jimmy Cayne competed in the North American Bridge Championship in Detroit as the buyout transpired, winning… Read More

After John McCain swept Republican contests in Ohio, Rhode Island,Texas, and Vermont and secured by some counts the delegates required for his party’s nomination, his rivals Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul withdrew from the presidential race. McCain visited the White House to eat a lunch… Read More

Responding to rocket attacks on Ashkelon, once the largest seaport of Canaan, Israel sent tanks, troops, and fighter jets to northern Gaza. Fifty-four Palestiniansâ??eight of them children and sixteen of them militantsâ??and two Israeli soldiers died in one day of fighting; Israel’s Deputy Defense Minister Matan… Read More

Kosovo, in a move supported by the United States and strongly opposed by Russia, declared its independence from Serbia. NATO sealed Kosovo’s northern border, and Serbians looted designer clothes, shoes, and chocolates, and set fire to the U.S. embassy in Belgrade. Read More