WEEKLY REVIEW

Ariel Sharon ordered the Israeli army to ease curfews, roadblocks and other restriction in response to signs of increasing popular resistance to occupying forces in Palestinian areas. Thousands of Palestinians resisted round-the-clock curfews in the west bank city of Nablus by going about daily business. The curfews have been in effect for 40 days; Israeli troops did not enter the city. The Israeli government is scheduled to turn over $15 million of estimated $600 million in tax revenues that it has been holding to the Palestinian Authority. The money has been held for the past 22 months. Israeli settlers rioted during a funeral for an Israeli soldier and clashed with Palestinians in Hebron. A 13-year-old girl was killed and 21 other Palestinians were injured; 15 Israeli policemen were injured. A 17-year-old suicide bomber set off an explosion on Jerusalem, killing himself and wounding seven others. 6 were killed and 70 wounded when a bomb exploded in a cafeteria at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. An Irish woman employed as a press officer at Israel's Dublin embassy was fired after she published a letter in the Irish Times condemning last week's air strike against a Gaza apartment building.

With a declaration of "no more easy money for corporate criminals, just hard time," Bush signed the new Corporate Fraud Law, which will strengthen penalties for accounting fraud and create a federal oversight board for the accounting industry. Lawmakers criticized the White House, claiming that an announcement mere hours after the signing reinterpreted the measures too narrowly. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and White House Economist Lawrence Lindsey appeared on major television networks to say that the US economy is "fundamentally strong". The Commerce Department released a report that shows that economic growth was lower, and recovery from the bursting of the tech bubble was much slower than previously thought. In an address at a South Carolina high school, George W. Bush said that strong marriages and educating teenagers to abstain from sex are part of a compassionate conservative agenda of "helping people help themselves." A little later, Bush harshly criticized a welfare bill before the Senate for providing not enough money for programs promoting marriage, and too much funding for child care programs. "They're saying we got to spend a bunch more money in order to make us feel better and to make things work better. We don't need that," Bush said. Former president Clinton, responding to the Bush Administration's suggestion that he bears responsibility for some corporate accounting scandals, said "These people ran on responsibility, but as soon as you scratch them, they go straight to blame." A Republican Party press secretary called it "a typical Clinton response: attack and politicize."

Argentinean President Eduardo Duhalde said that the current economic situation in South America shows that the market economy model "has collapsed". Argentina's six month old economic meltdown spread to neighboring countries of Uruguay, Brazil, and Paraguay as investors pulled out of government bonds en masse; the economies of Bolivia and Venezuela were also said to be threatened. Uruguayan banks closed on Tuesday in an effort to allow the economy to recover. British Prime Minister Tony Blair expressed reservations about the US and Britain taking action alone against Iraq, saying that a fresh UN mandate was needed to "legitimize" future action. French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder announced that they would not support an attack on Iraq without a UN mandate. Secretary of State Colin Powell said that he did not expect any further progress in continuing efforts to resolve the conflict between Pakistan and India until elections are held in Kashmir this fall.

In Stourbridge, UK, police used a battering ram to smash the door of the Ghausia Jamia Mosque, where an Afghan couple had been staying to avoid deportation. Seeking to prevent similar events in the future, British immigration minister Beverley Hughes is seeking to keep mosques from being used as sanctuaries for illegal immigrants. Only one day after 71 people were killed when a Sukhoi-27 military jet crashed into a crowd, a Russian-built passenger jet crashed shortly after taking off from Moscow's main airport. 14 died in the crash. The US Joint Strike Fighter and the EU's Eurofighter continued their competition for tens of billions of dollars in defense contracts for more than a dozen countries.

Lisa Leslie dunked during a Los Angeles Sparks game, becoming the first woman to do so in professional basketball. Amid tepid competition and accusations of drug use, Lance Armstrong won his fourth straight Tour de France after recovering from testicular cancer five years ago. "He did not have any rivals in this Tour," said legendary Belgian rider Eddy Merckx. 1,130 mothers in Berkeley, CA, set a new record for most simultaneous breast feeding, breaking the record previously held by a group of Australian women. New Yorks' Whitney Museum received a gift of $200M worth of post-WWII American art, thought to be the largest such endowment, including works by Johns, Pollock, Warhold, de Kooning, and others.

Saadeddin Ibrahim, an Egyptin-American human rights activist was sentenced to seven years in jail on multiple charges in a decision that was condemned by international human rights groups as politically motivated. French syndicalist José Bové was released from prison after serving 43 days in prison for dismantling a McDonald's restaurant. The Philosophy Department at McGill University turned down an offer of over $1.5 million to endow a chair for the study of Ayn Rand. One professor remarked: "we can't sell our souls just for the sake of being richer." The Saudi Arabian government of Prince Abdullah, beset by widespread anti-government demonstrations since March, was reported to be at risk of an extremist takeover or an internal coup by members of the ruling party sympathetic to Al-Quaeda. Videotapes smuggled out of the country show hundreds of women and men protesting and brutal police repression.

Federal officials arrested two former Worldcom executives, who will face fraud and conspiracy charges. They were released on $10 million and $2 million bail on Thursday. After being sentenced to eight years in prison for accepting bribes and kickbacks, former Democratic House Representative James Traficant is planning to run for re-election as an independent. Pope John Paul II visited Mexico and Guatemala and announced the first canonization of an Indian Saint. A California state Judge ordered Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to provide its elected board members with financial records to which the ICANN executive had previously denied them access.