Weekly Review

Ariel Sharon, a known war criminal, was elected prime minister of Israel; Sharon declared that the peace process was dead and that the Palestinians must submit to Israeli domination before negotiations could resume. Palestinians set off a car bomb in Jerusalem; Israeli… Read More

The Democratic Party demonstrated its seriousness of purpose by failing to mount a filibuster to block the confirmation of former senator John Ashcroft, who was defeated by a dead man in the last election; Ashcroft was sworn in as Attorney General by Supreme Court Justice… Read More

Australianresearchers, who were trying to use genetic engineering to sterilize mice, accidentally created a deadly, immune-system-destroying strain of the mousepox virus, a cousin of the human smallpox virus. Two biotechnology companies announced that they had sequenced the rice genome. Uganda’s most recent outbreak of… Read More

President Bill Clinton, on his last day in office, made a deal with independent counsel Robert Ray to avoid indictment for lying under oath, which concluded the $60 million Whitewater investigation and gave Bill Clinton banner headlines on the day of George W. Bush’s inauguration.President Clinton… Read More

Liberal political groups were attempting to rally SenateDemocrats to oppose the nomination of John Ashcroft to be attorney general of the United States, though few seriously believed that members of the Democrat Party were brave or principled enough to do what it would take to defeat… Read More

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus tried unsuccessfully to block the acceptance of Florida’s electoral votes during a joint session of Congress. Federal law requires at least one senator and one member of the House to sign a formal objection questioning a state’s electoral votes; no… Read More

Dot-com stocks continued their long slide into the dustbin of history.A large man with a bushy beard ran amok and shot dead seven co-workers at an Internet consulting company near Boston.A hacker named “prime suspectz” cracked the Nasdaq’s web server and left an offensive message; he also mentioned how… Read More

Bethlehem was empty this Christmas, devoid of lights or trees or public celebrations, having been sealed off by the Israeli army.Jerusalem’sChristian churches endorsed Palestinian demands for sovereignty in East Jerusalem; they condemned Israeli violence against demonstrators and noted that an oppressed people living under… Read More

An international team of scientists announced that they had finished the first complete genetic sequence of a plant; Arabidopsis thaliana, or thale-cress, is related to cauliflowers and brussels sprouts and previously was a worthless weed.A new study found that marijuana slows the swimming of sperm in… Read More

Pentagon investigators acknowledged that American troops had massacred unarmed Korean civilians near No Gun Ri at the beginning of the Korean War, but claimed there was no evidence of direct orders from superiors to kill the Koreans, which would constitute a war crime.Former Congressman Pete McCloskey, a… Read More

Chile’s former dictator General Augusto Pinochet was arrested, in Chile.The terms of the amnesty he negotiated upon his abdication included murder but not kidnapping, and the bodies of nineteen people who were abducted by the “Caravan of death,” a helicopter-borne death squad led by one… Read More

Peru’s dictator Alberto Fujimori stopped in Japan on his way to an economic summit, decided he liked it there, and quit his job, via fax; Peruvians were generally pleased with the development, and within days Fujimori was named in a corruption investigation.Slobodan Milosevic was reelected president… Read More

The European Commission announced its intention to test all beef cattle for mad cow disease. Italy banned the importation of French beef. Sales of beef in France dropped, even at McDonalds, even though France has rigid controls on the provenance of… Read More

Israelassassinated a Palestinian paramilitary commander by blowing up his vehicle with missiles fired from helicopter gunships; two women who were standing nearby were also killed. One witness described seeing the women’s bodies with “their intestines and livers hanging out.” An Israeli general said that he hoped… Read More

The Mexican government was upset about a Mexican citizen on death row whom Texas failed to notify of his right under the Vienna Convention to contact his government’s embassy; the Mexican government did not find out about his arrest until a year after he was condemned. Read More

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak called “timeout” and decided to make peace with Ariel Sharon, the right-wing opposition leader, instead of with the Palestinians.Gun sales in Israel were on the rise.The United States Congress increased military aid to Israel by $60 million,… Read More

The Texas Defender Service issued a report on the death penalty; the report said that the Texas system was “a national embarrassment” due to racial bias, prosecutorial misconduct, and other problems.One psychologist, who was expelled from the American Psychiatric Association for producing diagnoses without performing examinations, testified for the… Read More

Safeway, the supermarket chain, recalled its house brand of corn taco shells after food critics discovered that the shells contained StarLink, a type of genetically modified corn that was not approved for human consumption. Taco Bell previously recalled its shells.The National Grain and Feed Association demanded the… Read More

Thousands of Chinese who worked as slaves for Japan in World War II filed suit in California against Japanese companies that might have profited from their servitude; Japanese military occupiers enslaved over ten million Chinese on the mainland and some 50,000 in Japan.Hundreds of members of… Read More

A Dutch archaeologist claimed to have identified a papyrus containing the signature of Cleopatra; the document, which dates from 33 B.C., was written by a secretary, except for one word, “genestho,” Greek for “make it so.”Saddam Hussein sent senior spies to Serbia to help Slobodan Milosevic, who lost… Read More

A new book claimed that anthropologists working in Venezuela in the 1960s deliberately infected the Yanomami people with measles, killing hundreds, perhaps thousands, in order to test theories about evolution and eugenics; the same anthropologists, who were working in association with the United States atomic… Read More

The Palestinian Central Council voted to postpone its declaration of an independent state; in Gaza, members of the Gaza Accountants Association fought with police after several accountants were arrested for firing their weapons in the air.Spanish police arrested twenty Basque terrorists.Someone fired a mortar… Read More

The Vatican proclaimed, not for the first time, that the Roman Catholic Church was the one true Church of Christ and that worshippers of false gods were in a “gravely deficient situation” with respect to their eternal souls.A group of Jewish scholars and rabbis called on Jews to let… Read More

Albert Einstein’s theory that a massive spinning object will twist space-time around it received support from X-rays emanating from three neutron stars detected by the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer, a NASAsatellite. President Bill Clinton’s lawyers argued in court that disbarment was too harsh a penalty… Read More

Data from the Galileo spacecraft yielded evidence that Europa, Jupiter’s second moon, may have salty liquid oceans beneath its icy shell, increasing the likelihood of finding life there. Austrian scientists discovered bacteria living among the clouds. The National Institutes of Health issued rules allowing researchers who… Read More

The Motion Picture Association of America succeeded in convincing a federal judge in Manhattan that publishing or linking to a free computer program that allows people to play DVDs on their Linux computers will lead to widespread copying of DVDs; the judge rejected arguments that computer source code,… Read More

A National Academy of Sciences report found that most U.S. nuclear bomb-making facilities, including the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, will be contaminated “in perpetuity.” Defense Secretary William S. Cohen delayed making his recommendation to President Clinton concerning the wisdom of building a national missile defense… Read More

Republicans formally nominated George W. Bush as presidential candidate at their convention in Philadelphia; a display of dark-skinned speakers elicited much comment from journalists who noticed the contrast with rank-and-file Republicans on the convention floor. Former President Gerald Ford suffered a mild stroke. Ralph Nader, the… Read More

A Concorde airplane crashed in Paris; two amateur Hungarian photographers snapped a picture of the doomed plane with flames shooting from its engines, which were manufactured by Rolls Royce, just before it destroyed a small hotel near the airport. Investigators soon narrowed their suspicions to a fuel leak,… Read More

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat failed to meet President Bill Clinton’s deadline for making peace in the Middle East; Clinton declared the summit over and flew to Okinawa for a meeting of the G8, the world’s seven richest industrialized countries… Read More