the weekly review by paul ford

It was hot in most of the United States. Many U.S. cities set records for high temperatures, and huge wildfires burned in the Southwest. At least twenty people, many of them homeless, died from the heat in Phoenix, Arizona. Concern over storms in the Gulf of Mexico led to an increase in oil prices, and the directors of Enron gave themselves large raises. Investigations into the expenses of former Tyco executive Dennis Kozlowski revealed that Kozlowski had once held an extravagant bachelor party for his son-in-law. “It wasn’t like a three-ring circus,” said the son-in-law's father. “It was a nice party. There was only one dwarf.” Germany declined to finance a bald man’s toupee, even though the state covers the costs of wigs for women who have lost their hair, and Michael Jackson announced that he would build another Neverland near Berlin. A German magazine published a coupon for free sex with prostitutes, and Heidi Fleiss was planning to open a brothel in Nevada. “I’m a perfect example of the fact that prison does work,” she said. “I have served my time, now will do my crime legally.” President George W. Bush nominated John G. Roberts, a federal appeals court judge, to the Supreme Court. Roberts has criticized U.S. abortion policy, but is considered very handsome. “American women will love him,” said an editor at More Magazine. “I love thee,” commentator David Brooks wrote of the nomination, “with the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach. I love thee freely.” Bill and Hillary Clinton paid off the last of their legal bills, and a Kenyan man was reported to have offered twenty cows and forty goats to the Clintons in exchange for their daughter, Chelsea. Another octopus learned to open lids.

More bombs went off in London's public-transport system, but only the detonators of the bombs exploded. There was one injury. Around twenty London police officers chased a Brazilian electrician named Jean Charles de Menezes onto a train and shot him dead, thinking he was a terrorist. Later, a suspicious package in Little Wormwood Scrubs was detonated safely. Members of the British government said that the bombings were not related to the war in Iraq, but only 28 percent of British people agreed; a Muslim cleric in London said that such attacks would continue. The U.S. House of Representatives voted to keep most of the USA Patriot Act, extending provisions that allow the search of library and medical records by ten years. “Periodically revisiting the Patriot Act,” said Representative Martin Meehan (D.-Mass.), “is a good thing.” In New York City, police began random bag checks of subway passengers. The CIA was granted the power to secretly interrogate Irish citizens in Ireland, and the Pentagon asked Congress to allow people up to age forty-two to enlist in the military. Tommy Thompson, former Secretary of Health and Human Services, announced that he would have an RFID identity tag inserted into his body. U.S. Congressman Tom Tancredo (R.-Colo.) said he did not advocate bombing Mecca, but did not want to rule out the possibility. Fifty-two prisoners were on hunger strike at Guantanamo Bay.

A study found that 24,865 civilians have been killed in Iraq during the last two years; in Baghdad, a suicide truck bomb killed twenty-five more people. Thirty-six people were killed in Yemen during riots over fuel prices. Film director David Lynch announced that he wants to raise $7 billion to promote transcendental meditation and thus create world peace. Iran whipped then executed two teenagers for raping a thirteen-year-old and for being homosexual, and U.S. rapper Big Tigger denied that he was gay. Lance Armstrong won the Tour de France for the seventh time, and a study found that French people think they look good. The U.S. House of Representatives passed an amendment to start broadcasting radio and television programs into Venezuela that will counter the “anti-Americanism” of Telesur, a new Latin American TV station. Venezuela's president Hugo Chavez called the plan “a preposterous imperialist idea.” A British court, acting under the legal principle of “universal jurisdiction,” convicted a man named Faryadi Zardad on torture charges for events that took place while Zardad lived in Afghanistan, where he would often unleash a “human dog”--a crazed man he kept in a hole--on captives he was holding for ransom. In London, where he has lived since 1998, Zardad ran a pizza parlor. A bipolar Indiana woman beat her two young sons to death with a dumbbell so that the boys could go to heaven. Florida police were looking for a naked man who steals into the homes of elderly women late at night and tickles their feet, China planned to launch forty grams of pig semen into space, and authorities in Malaysia arrested fifty-eight people who worship a giant teapot.