Harper's Weekly - July 11, 2007At 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. 1 2
Australia'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.”3
The 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.4
China 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.5 6 7
President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela visited Tehran and praised Iran's nuclear program, calling President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad his “ideological brother.”8
President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin rode Segway scooters together.9
Hundreds of bound bodies were discovered in a former Soviet barracks near Kabul,10 and 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.11
Barack Obama was raising more money than Hillary Clinton,12 and Cristina Kirchner, the first lady of Argentina, will run for president instead of her husband.13
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.1
One hundred and ten children were swept into the Irish Sea.2
Scientists succeeded for the first time in making a baby using a lab-matured thawed egg,3 and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in an attempt to prevent gay sex, planned to install a quarter-million-dollar robot toilet.4
In 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. 5 6
Hamas brokered a deal for the freedom of BBC reporter Alan Johnston, who had been held for 114 days in Gaza,7 and in Nairobi Libyan 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.8
Scientists cloned a sperm.9
A study claimed that men with high testosterone make irrational decisions,10 a Hong Kong woman who blinded her boyfriend in one eye six years ago was jailed for jabbing a chopstick into his other eye,11 and an Iowa State University study suggested that the happiest marriages are those in which the husband defers to the wife in all decisions.12
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.1
Four 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.2
Experts claimed that prescription pills were becoming the new marijuana on college campuses,3 and 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.4 5
Egypt outlawed female circumcision,6 and 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.7
A six-year-old girl had her small intestine ripped out by the drain of a Minneapolis swimming pool,8 a 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,9 and scientists announced a potential drug that could erase bad memories.10
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http://harpers.org/archive/2007/07/WeeklyReview2007-07-10
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