FROM
HARPER'S MAGAZINE: 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 Muslims down "the highway of hell
and suffering," had been living in the Serbian capital as
a New Age guru, promoting alternative medicine and "Human
Quantum Energy" under the name "Dragan David Dabic."
Serbia hoped the arrest would hasten its campaign to join
the European Union, and it was reported that Ratko Mladic,
the general who led Bosnian Serb forces during the war and
is believed to be in hiding in Serbia, is protected by two
bodyguards under orders to kill him in the event of his
arrest. Two bombs placed in trash cans exploded in
Istanbul, killing thirteen people, and a bombing in Gaza
killed five Hamas militants and an eight-year-old girl. In
Ahmadabad, India, shortly after television stations
received an email that read, "In the name of Allah, the
Indian Mujahidin strike again! Do whatever you can, within
five minutes from now, feel the terror of death!" 16 bombs
exploded across the city, killing 45 people. Iraqi
officials said that a suicide attack that killed eight
people in Baquba, Iraq, had been carried out by a woman,
as indicated by the pair of feminine legs found nearby,
and four female suicide bombers killed 57 people in
Baghdad and Kirkuk. NASA announced that the lights of the
auroras australis and borealis are caused by magnetic
explosions one-third of the way to the sun.
Congress passed a $300 billion bailout for the mortgage
lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the mortgage
crisis was causing suicides. Wall Street got drunk,
President George W. Bush told an audience at a
fund-raiser. "Now it's got a hangover." Oil prices were
dropping, and the United States Geological Survey
announced that there are 90 billion barrels of oil in the
Arctic. China was paying parents of victims of the recent
earthquake in Sichuan province to sign statements to the
effect that the Communist Party "mobilized society to help
us"; Chinese newspapers were ordered to stop reporting on
school collapses; and a poll ranked China as the most
optimistic of 24 nations surveyed. Barack Obama delivered
a speech to a crowd of 200,000 in Berlin, and John McCain
endorsed a ban on affirmative action in his home state of
Arizona. France abolished the 35-hour workweek. "It's a
specter," said engineer Michel Guyot, who expects to
forsake his weekday trips to the limestone cliffs of the
Calanque de Sugiton. "A cloud over my head." Iran executed
29 drug smugglers, and Iraq was banned from competing in
the Olympics. A locust plague in Mongolia threatened to
spoil next month's games in Beijing. The planet
CoRot-Exo-4b, a ringed gas giant resembling Jupiter and
larger than the sun, was discovered 3,000 light-years
away, in the Unicorn constellation. California Governor
Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill requiring that
students in the state's public schools be taught about
global warming. Bloggers for the Los Angeles Times
received a memo instructing them not to write about a
National Enquirer story alleging that former Senator John
Edwards was meeting his mistress at an
L.A. hotel. Research showed that men lust for women
whether or not they find them attractive.
During a children's production of "Annie, Jr." at
Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in
Knoxville, 58-year-old unemployed truck driver Jim
J. Adkisson opened fire on a packed sanctuary with a
twelve-gauge shotgun. "We were just, 'Oh, my God, that's
not part of the play,'" said Amira Parkey, 16, who was
playing Miss Hannigan. After killing one man and wounding
seven others (one of whom later died from her wounds),
Adkisson was tackled by John Bohstedt, who was playing
Daddy Warbucks. Actor Christian Bale was arrested in
London for allegedly assaulting his mother and sister, and
actress Estelle Getty died. Seventy-six-year-old Marlene
Mackenzie of North Caldwell, New Jersey, was arrested for
killing her husband by throwing a cocktail glass at his
head. Hot rubber safety mats on New York City playgrounds
were burning children's feet, and lightning struck ten
people in New York and New Jersey, killing one. Edward
"Eddie" Davidson, a 35-year-old "spam king" convicted of
tax evasion and fraud, escaped from a minimum-security
prison in Bennett, Colorado, and killed his wife, his
three-year-old daughter, and himself in the SUV they had
used in the escape. Davidson's 16-year-old daughter
escaped from the vehicle with a neck wound, and a
seven-month-old boy was found, unharmed in a car seat,
with the victims. Two employees at a deli in Brooklyn used
machetes to defeat three armed thieves attempting to steal
$2,000 worth of cigarettes. One of the attackers, said
clerk Sammy Othman, "had a knife on him and he said, 'I
will stab you,' and I told him, 'Don't even think about
it. My knife is more bigger than yours.'"
-- Christian Lorentzen
