Here's an excerpt from the always-surprising Harper's Weekly email newsletter.
A United Nations investigation of last week's coalition airstrikes in Afghanistan found that the United States had killed 90 civilians, including 60 sleeping children, and Nigerian religious leader Mohammadu Bello Abubakar, who is 84, accepted an Islamic decree that would force him to divorce 82, or 95 percent, of his 86 wives. An Australian plastic surgeon who received oral sex from a patient before providing her with a nose job was fighting to keep his medical license. "Knowing her nose better than anyone else," said Dr. Martyn Mendelsohn, "I was in a unique position to take care of the problem." A man concerned that he had injected air into his veins while shooting cocaine tried to amputate his own arm with a butter knife, and then a butcher knife, at a Denny's Restaurant in California, and European officials warned that Botox injections could have dangerous side effects, including death. Nearly half a million people in developing nations were manufacturing virtual weapons and mounts to sell to players of online video games such as World of Warcraft, and the Pentagon launched a program that aims to create an artificial brain within the next decade.
Harper's Weekly for September 2, 2008
