DEPARTMENTS

OCTOBER 2008 – NO. 27

A despotic grip on North Korea, loosened in the wake of Kim Jong Il's stroke. South America's working relationship with America, hampered after Bolivian President Evo Morales and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez respectively expel our ambassadors. The security of the U.S. embassy in Yemen, breached after a terrorist attack claims 16 lives. Several records in U.S. financial history, shattered. Among them the collapse of Lehman Brothers, marking the largest ever Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing; the liquidity crisis of AIG, resulting in the largest ever government bailout of a private company; and a single day 777 point drop in the Dow, the largest ever. Another record, this time in sports, after Roger Federer wins his fifth consecutive U.S. Open title. Paul Newman, 83. News retention around the world, or perhaps IQ, after a website announces its findings that an average of only 46 percent of residents polled in 17 countries believe Al-Qaeda to be responsible for 9/11. The lives of 24 people, when the conductor of a passenger train in California, distracted with text messaging, collides with a freight train. Richard Wright of Pink Floyd, 65. A small mystery of Stonehenge, as carbon dating places its construction around 2300 B.C.

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