Monday, December 31, 2007

2007
The Big News in Review......
October to December....

OCTOBER

Speaking on an audiotape aired Monday, Osama bin Laden called for Iraqi insurgents to unite and avoid divisive 'extremism'. Truck bombs will now have 'UNITY' spray painted on the side.

The Federal Reserve will do whatever is necessary to prevent damage from the credit crunch that has gripped world financial markets and Wall Street, a Fed official said Monday. The Fed official said the standards for lending to budding refinancers was now so low that they took down the 'no shoes no shirt no service' sign out the front.

With 15 months to go in office, President George W. Bush wants the U.S. Congress to know he has no plans to fade quietly away, the President says he will be 'sprinting to the finish line'. Unfortunately, no one watches the Special Olympics.

President Vladimir Putin has been warned by his special services of a possible plot to assassinate him during a visit to Tehran this week, according to the Kremlin. It was later discovered that this was a planned celebration to welcome the Russians to Iran with some of their native culture.

NOVEMBER

# NATO air-strikes killed 12 civilian road workers in eastern Afghanistan, a provincial governor said on Wednesday, an incident bound to fuel Afghan resentment against the presence of international forces. In response, international forces handed out more soccer balls.

Russia announced officially the start of campaigning for next year's presidential election on Wednesday. All sides promised to limit the politics of personal destruction by using contract killing sparingly.

The 53-nation Commonwealth suspended Pakistan on Thursday, after President Pervez Musharraf failed to meet a deadline to lift emergency rule and resign as army chief. As a result the Commonwealth Games will be robbed of two bronze medal performances.

Saudi Arabia defended on Tuesday a court's decision to sentence a woman who was gang-raped to 200 lashes of the whip. The Saudis accused their detractors of being a bunch of girls who need a good beating.

A mass grave filled with badly decomposed bodies was unearthed Saturday in southern Baghdad. Mass grave is another term for 'local street' in Baghdad.

DECEMBER

# An explosion at an Islamic school in a Pakistani town on the Afghan border on Monday killed at least five people and wounded three, police said. Authorities have not confirmed whether it was during Show and Tell.

Russian opposition leader Garry Kasparov, the former World Chess Champion, said Thursday the Kremlin has stopped him from running for president by preventing his supporters from meeting to nominate him. Kasparov refused to speculate whether the Russian government had employed the same IBM computer that beat him at chess.

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates held out hope Friday that US forces in Iraq could continue a steady decline next year if security keeps improving, but said patience must be had, explaining how it took 55 years to get down to 30,000 troops in Korea.

Egypt has rejected Israeli criticism that its government has failed to stop smugglers from crossing the porous border with the Gaza Strip. Israel's Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni infuriated Egyptian officials on Monday by accusing Egypt of doing a "terrible" job in securing the border. Egypt shot back by saying that it's not so easy to do and Israelis should know since Moses proved the difficulty of containing such efforts.