Last Week

If someone asked you, How was your week, Harper's can guide you: Swedish researchers announced that the Toxoplasma virus hijacks human cells and forces them to commit suicide. North Korea reserved the right to test missiles capable of hitting the United States. A Canadian bear was caught stealing oatmeal, and London's mayor cracked down on a "radical" pigeon-feeding "splinter group" in Trafalgar Square. Congressman Peter King said Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi's heavenly reward would be 72 virgins who "all look like Helen Thomas," the 85-year-old White House correspondent. State Representative Kathi-Anne Rheinstein introduced legislation that would designate Fluffernutter as the official sandwich spread of Massachusetts. The Scripps Institution of Oceanography predicted that a massive earthquake will strike southern California some time in the next ten years. The Episcopal Church elected its first female primate, Katherine Jefferts Schori, and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) voted to allow experimental liturgies that would permit the Holy Trinity to be evoked as Mother, Child, and Womb, or Rock, Redeemer, and Friend. Daryl Hannah was forcibly removed from a walnut tree in South Los Angeles. A six-toed cat named Lewis was placed under house arrest in Fairfield, Connecticut. Scientists told women who are interested in having babies to relax. Men who undergo vasectomies were found to have increased levels of genetically abnormal sperm. The Pentagon classified homosexuality as a mental defect akin to retardation. Scientists announced that the Earth is surrounded by giant fizzy space bubbles; the bubbles swell to nearly 620 miles in diameter, explode, and are replaced by a cooling solar wind. Researchers in Texas successfully convinced fringe-lipped bats to eat poisonous sympatric cane toads. "Nerve-friendly" cells helped partially paralyzed rats walk, 25 of Britain's 4,000 beetle species were missing, and the World Health Organization said that Indonesians who contracted bird flu were ignorant. A federal court ruled that the penile plethysmograph, a test used to measure male arousal levels, may not be used to supervise sex offenders. A study by Pfizer found that most women between the ages of 25 and 74 prefer their sex partners to have hard penises, and a Rhode Island handyman won $400,000 in compensation for his ten-year erection. Lance Corporal William Windsor, a billy goat in the British army, was demoted for "lack of decorum." The theme of the 2006 World Refugee Day was hope.