This was the week that was
#35, December 22 – December 29

Pieces of earth.....Earthquakes in California and, massively in Iran where an estimated 25,000
people have been killed. Still more occurred on the Panama-Costa Rican border. Hundreds killed
and injured in a huge natural gas field explosion in Chongquing and Sichuan provinces.Mudslides
in Provo Canyon, Utah and an avalanche outside of San Bernardino take even more lives.

All is not calm.....Guerrilla assaults on American occupational forces in Iraq continue–hotels,
banks, embassies and American military were targeted. Suicide bombers persist in attacks in
Israel; Israelis persist in attacks on Palestinian military organizations. UN staff house in Kabul
was bombed. In Monrovia, UN peacekeepers were prevented from carrying out their assignment
by rebel forces. A Boeing-727 crashed in Benin killing many. The President of Pakistan survived
a second attempt on his life this month.

Annals of corporate crime.....The financial managers at the giant Raymond James Financial, Inc
may have to pay more than $13 million to settle complaints of overcharging customers. CBS
MarketWatch.com estimates that 170 other companies may also be guilty of corrupt charging
practices. These include Wachovia, American Express, and Legg Mason. At the same time, the
fifth largest mutual fund company, Putnam Investments, agreed to implement “new controls” over
its money managers who were engaged in corrupt practices.

Remember the Exxon Valdez oil spill? Exxon was fined $5.3 billion in punitive damages by a
federal jury. It turns out that Exxon, now Exxon Mobil, had covertly sponsored a herd of social
scientists to study the behavior of juries in punitive damage cases (a collection of the studies was
published by the University of Chicago Press last year). The findings of these studies are now
being used by their sponsor to further reduce their loss. Meanwhile, the findings have been
invoked in at least 10 cases to reduce the damages levied against other companies. (Los Angeles
Times)

About one in every seven people in the world went to bed hungry on Christmas eve. Beagle 2 has
refused to acknowledge Earth, and the cows have gone mad.