Sunday, 12-17-06: This is amazing. The Iraqi prime minister is reversing two of the worst mistakes the Bush administration made in the early days of the war: de-Baathification and disbanding the army. You had to join the Baath party to have a government job, so de-Baathification meant none of the people who actually knew how to run the government could work for it. And the army could have been used to keep order. It's probably too late now.... Monday, 12-18-06: "There are a lot of circling vultures that will eat you alive," Katie Couric said in an interview. "You even take a shot at me. You have something in the November issue, something about how since I've become an anchor, you don't know me anymore. You don't know me anymore? Bite me." A shoplifter in Lapel, Indiana, stuffed a potato peeler, an ice cream scoop, a set of measuring spoons, two cake decorating tubes, six candy bars and a can of Nesquik down her pants. They fell down around her ankles as she was leaving the store, and she was arrested. Military spy teams have clashed with the CIA, and have carried out missions in countries that are staunch US allies. The spy missions are part of a classified anti-terrorist program approved by Rumsfeld. He distrusted the CIA, so he tremendously expanded military intelligence. So far, it's failed to catch a single significant terrorist suspect. But there have been embarrassing incidents: a shootout in Paraguay, and the exposure of a secret mission in East Africa. An armed robber tried to rob a spy team in Paraguay outside a restarurant, and they killed him, and then had to leave the country. Members of a team in East Africa were arrested after the local government caught them. Tuesday, 12-19-06: Lawrence Roach of Seminole, Florida, complained that he shouldn't have to continue paying alimony to his ex-wife now that she's no longer a man. "I'm a man, and I don't want to be paying alimony to a man." A report has come out from the Pentagon saying that attacks in Iraq are at an all-time high. In August the US led an operation to secure Bagdad, and there was some initial success. But the militants adapted, and sectarian killings resumed. North of Baghdad there's a war going on between insurgents backed by Al-Qaida and the al-Mahdi army. An Iraqi American was sprung from a Green Zone prison in Baghdad by security contractors he'd hired. Ayham al-Samaraie is a rich American businessman in jail for corruption, and he hired some mercenaries to bust him out. Two police officers guarding him have also disappeared, and nobody reported he was gone for 12 hours. Wow! It's like the Wild West over there.... In local news, a Police sergean was hospitalized Monday after he was injured in a foot chase. Scott westerman chased down a suspect, pushed him to the ground, tripped over him and fell into the curb, breaking several teeth and a finger. Dangerous job.... In more local news, a 15-year-old autistic boy was walking down a street without a shirt about dawn. Sir Millage has the comprehension of a 2-year-old, and had climbed out a window in the middle of the night. The police came. Millage didn't respond to shouted orders to drop the stick he was carrying, so the police tasered him four times. And struck him six times with a baton when he wouldn't stay on the ground. He didn't understand their orders. He was just trying to get up. Wednesday, 12-20-06: Four people were attacked and killed by wild elephants in Assam. About a dozen elephants stormed into a group of woodcutters. Elephant habitat has been encroached on in recent years by development. 268 elephants have died in the last five years, and they've killed 248. Typically the trouble begins with the aroma of rice beer luring the animals into a village.... Studies of dust from Comet Wild 2 caught by the Stardust spacecraft reveals that comets didn't form in the outer reaches of the solar system, as long thought. They formed in the inner regions at temperatures at up to 2000 degrees. Comets have long been thought to be icy, but scientists found no evidence of water. A court in Libya sentenced 5 Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor to be shot by a firing squad for infecting over 400 children with HIV. The nurses worked in a hospital for children, and an investigation found the infections came from the wards where the nurses worked. So Gaddafi charged them with working for the CIA and injecting children with HIV. Two of the nurses say they were tortured into confessing. AIDS experts say the virus was present before the nurses arrived. Thousands of soldiers sent to one of Mexico's top drug-producing regions have discovered widespread cultivation of a hybrid marijuana plant that's easy to grow and difficult to kill. The resist aireal fumigation, and can only be killed by pulling up the roots. The plant first appeared in Mexico two years ago, and it's become the plant of choice in western Michoacan state, a remote and mountainous region that lends itself to growing pot. The Goldman family has sued O.J. Simpson for the million dollars he got over the quashed book deal: "If I Did It." He owes them $33.5 million, and he funneled his payment into a shell corporation to avoid paying them. So far he's cuked payments by claiming he has no income. The Cobb County, Georgia, school board that put stickers in highschool science textbooks saying that evolution is a "theory, not a fact" yesterday abandoned its four-year legal battle to keep them. The board agreed in court never to use a similar sticker, and the suing parents agreed to drop all legal action. Last year a federal judge barred the Dover, Pennsylvania school district from teaching "intelligent design" as an alternative to evolution. And voters ousted members of the Kansas state school board who adopted standards critical of evoltion. More than nine out of ten Americans have had premarital sex, a new study finds. 99%of Americans have had sex by age 44, and 95% had done so before marriage. Thursday, 12-21-06: Rival groups of monks clashed yesterday over control of a 1000-year-old monastery in Greece. Seven monks were injured. Esphigmenou monastery is the scene of a long-running dispute between Orthodox Church authorities and rebel monks who occupy the facility. The battle began with an attack from the Orthodox outsiders, wielding sledgehammers. The rebels responded with crowbars and fire extinguishers. The rebel abbot says, "They should be ashamed to call themselves men of the cloth." Friday, 12-22-06: Two teenage girls in Trenton, New Jersey, staged an attack on a classmate outside a high school gym. The 16-year-old beat the victim, and the 14-year-old made a video of it, which they used to harrass the teenager. The police have charged them with assault and harrassment. Saturday, 12-23-06: A woman in London with two wombs had triplets. Hannah Kersey, age 23, gave birth to three girls. Two are identical twins from one womb, and the third is a fraternal twin from the other. They were delivered 7 weeks early by C-section, and are doing well. A federal appeals court judge struck down the Bush administration's plan for dealing with smog. The EPA has given counties as long as 17 years to comply with clean air standards, and the court says that's too long.