Harper's Weekly Review

We subscribe to Harper's. It is the magazine I'm most likely to read, and they have a weekly news roundup they send by e-mail. There are always a bunch of fun and leading-indicator items I've missed, such as Al Gore being considered for the Nobel Peace Prize and diners at a restaurant in Illinois who were not interested in talking to Preznit Bush:

The U.S. director of national intelligence released a
declassified version of a new National Intelligence
Estimate on Iraq; the report found that "the term 'civil
war' accurately describes key elements of the Iraqi
conflict" and that "widespread fighting could produce de
facto partition." Iraqi refugees were flooding Syria and
Jordan, where they now account for 5 and 12 percent of
those countries' total populations, and a massive bombing
in a Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad killed 130 people,
making the attack the second deadliest in the country
since the March 2003 invasion. In Hillah, where a further
45 people were killed, a police officer attempted to
smother the blast from a suicide bomber. "He hugged him"
said a witness, "and the explosives tore apart both
bodies." The U.S. military announced that insurgents had
shot down four helicopters in the past two weeks in Iraq,
former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski
warned that the White House was looking for an excuse to
attack Iran, and President George W. Bush asked for an
additional $100 billion to fund the United States's wars
through the end of the current fiscal year. Detainees at
Guantánamo Bay complained of "infinite tedium and
loneliness," and a German court issued an arrest warrant
for 13 CIA operatives involved in the abduction and
torture of a German citizen. Former U.S. Vice President Al
Gore was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. "Al Gore,"
said a Norwegian lawmaker, "has made a difference."
President Bush staged an impromptu visit to the Sterling
Family Restaurant in Peoria, Illinois, but few of the
diners wanted to talk to him. "Sorry to interrupt you,"
said Bush. "How's the service?"

Taliban forces were on the rise in Afghanistan, Maoist
rebels were taking over coffee plantations near Ooty,
India, and Moro rebels in Jolo captured a number of senior
Philippine military officers including General Dolorfino,
Colonel Ramon, and Colonel Baboon. Delaware Senator Joseph
Biden praised Illinois Senator Barack Obama. "I mean, you
got the first mainstream African American who is
articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,"
said Biden. "I mean, that's a storybook, man." The
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change announced that
global warming was expected to heat up the atmosphere by 4
to 7 degrees within the next century, and the Bush
Administration suggested that scientists find ways to
counteract greenhouse-gas emissions by blocking out the
sun. "Possible techniques include putting a giant screen
into orbit," suggested the White House. "[Or] thousands of
tiny, shiny balloons." "Hot" patients who had recently
received medical treatment using radioisotopes were
setting off Homeland Security radiation detectors, and the
U.S. market for female-arousal liquids continued to
grow. A mob of Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem overpowered
policemen and stole a woman's corpse to prevent an autopsy
but later gave it back. Japanese Health Minister Hakuo
Yanagisawa apologized for calling women "birth-giving
machines," hospital staff in Yekaterinburg, Russia, were
gagging crying babies, and in Cambodia a Briton named
Bowel Anpaul was arrested on charges of pedophilia. Rubber
genitals were stolen from the set of the new "Hannibal"
movie, an Argentine soccer fan who asked for a tattoo of
his team's logo received instead a tattoo of a large
penis, and a Chinese man whose genitals were eaten by a
dog when he was a child was said to be happy with a new
penis built from his chest muscles and hip bones. Wang
You-theng, a fugitive Taiwanese tycoon, was seized by
U.S. immigration officials. HIV, said scientists, can
avoid destruction by hiding out in the testicles.

Bollywood star Amitabh Bachchan was awarded France's
highest civilian honor, the Legion d'Honneur, and was
kicked in the head by a camel. Terri Irwin, the widow of
Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin, urged her late husband's
fans to respect stingrays, which she described as "cute
little pancakes in the ocean." Britain's top female
paraglider was mauled by eagles. "Eagles," said a
colleague, "are the sharks of the air." The Indian Army
was preparing to hunt down man-eating leopards in Kashmir,
and elephants in Thailand were head-butting and robbing
trucks. New Jersey warned its residents against eating
heavy metal-contaminated squirrels, roboticists announced
the creation of a teddy-bear robot that will help men meet
women, and an Australian man sold his life on eBay. New
York Governor Eliot Spitzer told Republican Assemblyman
James Tedisco, "I am a fucking steamroller and I'll roll
over you or anybody else," and James Taylor was about to
go on tour. After it ransacked House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi's Washington, D.C., residence, a small black bird
was captured in a brown bag and released. "She kept
thinking to herself," said a spokesman, "'Quoth the Raven,
"Nevermore."'"

-- News Round-up by Rafil Kroll-Zaidi