Henry Bowles's blog

Winners

Bertie Ahern: The Taoiseach (PM of Ireland) is victorious despite a series of scandals.

Monica Goodling: Gonzales's former counsel comes off surprisingly well in her long-awaited testimony before the House Judiciary Committee.

Fred Thompson: Whetting the right's appetite.

Cannes: Old-school Hollywood glamour resurrected, despite the appearance of a few losers.

Saudi-bound plane passengers: Spared a real-life "Snakes on a Plane" experience after 700 serpents are confiscated from the carry-on bag of an Egyptian en route to Saudi Arabia.

Losers

Democrats: Will have hell to pay with the left after Congress passes a war funding bill sans withdrawal timetable.

Lebanon: A Sunni militant group tries to radicalize Palestinians living in squalor in Nahr el-Bared, a refugee camp in northern Lebanon.

Bangladesh: UAE will accept more Bangladeshi workers.

Nilofar Bakhtiar: Pakistan's tourism czar forced to resign for hugging para-jumper instructor.

Photos: Getty Images; New Line Cinema; Getty Images 

François Durand/Getty Images

France may be on the verge of a historic shift away from a socialist model, but the country is transfixed not so much by new President Nicolas Sarkozy's laissez-faire economic reforms, but by his wife. I don't blame them: Cécilia Sarkozy is fascinating, and her behavior raises more questions than answers. Why, for instance, did the famously insouciant "première dame de France" ditch her husband's May 6 victory speech, and finally—after some serious begging by her daughters—show up at a late-night political rally dourly dressed and barely able to conceal her boredom? And why did the former Schiaparellie model disappear in the run-up to the election and then decline to even cast a ballot? And what of those photos from 2005 of her cavorting with advertising exec Richard Attias in New York?

The tale of Cécilia and Nicolas began when young Sarko, then mayor of Neuilly, officiated at Cécilia's wedding to her first husband. According to legend, he fell in love on the spot. He pursued her for 12 years (never mind that he was also married at the time—this is France we're talking about) until, having finally seduced the object of his desire, he abandoned his wife for Cécilia, and she abandoned her husband.

Then, in 2005, at the height of a Sarko-orchestrated media blitz meant to showcase the candidate's photogenic family to the French public, Cécilia dropped out of sight. While she would later complain that she'd been overexposed by her husband's campaign, she had, first and foremost, fallen for another man. Or was she getting even? Sarkozy himself had fallen for Anne Fulda, the Le Figaro journalist assigned to cover his campaign.

So, does that slightly awkward election night kiss signify a détente between the two Sarkozys? Perhaps, but considering Cécilia's ambivalence toward the Elysee Palace—she famously announced that the idea of being a first lady "bores me"—there will no doubt be much frisson-inducing speculation over France's combustible first couple over the coming months and years.

A lecturer at Cairo's al-Azhar University—the Yale Law School of the Sunni legal world—is in hot water after issuing a fatwa that proposes a novel method of circumventing traditional Islamic provisions for segregating the sexes. If a man sucks on a given woman's breasts five times, she may legally proceed to reveal herself to him, declared Ezzat Atiya, who heads the university's department dealing with the Hadith. Needless to say, Atiya's fatwa has tantalized the media and outraged colleagues:

Atiya's unusual opinion was widely publicised by Arabic-language satellite television channels and featured in a discussion in the Egyptian parliament. But after controversy in the Egyptian and Middle East media, university president Ahmed el-Tayeb suspended Atiya pending an urgent investigation into his opinions, the Egyptian state news agency MENA reported."

With his job on the line, the maverick professor has rescinded the fatwa. He will no doubt be remembered and reviled as the professor who liberated — albeit ever-so-briefly — conservative young Egyptians for a short, grope-ridden period of intermingling over a few sweet spring days.

Winners

WILLIAM WEST/AFP/Getty Images

Australian farmers: It finally rains.

Illegal immigrants: Amnesty (or something like it) on the way.

Protectionists: Doha going nowhere.

The Japanese economy: Enjoying a record current account surplus.

Odyssey Marine Exploration: Struggling treasure hunters hit $500 million jackpot.

Losers

Prince Harry: Instead of going to war-torn Iraq he may be headed for … war-torn Sierra Leone. Also, no more nightclubs.

Chris Jackson/Getty

Team Landis: Tries to blackmail Greg LeMond. 

Russia: Cements global image as hacker-infested human rights abuser.

World Bank reformers: United States moving to install Wolfowitz replacement ASAP.

Al Qaeda of North Africa: Algerian elections go off with nary a peep.

AFP/Getty Images

Opium—used for centuries as a painkiller and recreational narcotic in Europe and throughout the world—is now so popular as a village panacea and emotional palliative in Afghanistan that one million Afghans are hooked. Even more disturbing is the fact that, according to the United Nations, some 600,000 of those addicts are under 15. In some areas of the country, giving opium to children is a common method of treating insomnia, bad behavior, and "ADD"-like symptoms. Sometimes, it's way of simply feeding an addiction that began in utero. Al Jazeera sent a reporter to the northeastern province of Badakshan to investigate the phenomenon:

Three-year-old Said is an opium addict. Without it, he becomes restless. His mother Zarbibi shares her child's condition. She herself is a user and has been one for the past four years. Zarbibi routinely blows opium into Said's face to keep him quiet. It is the only way she knows how to free herself so that she can work. She said: 'Whenever I have chores or work at home, I give my son opium so he would stay calm. I also give him opium so he can sleep. When I realised he became an addict, I regretted it.'"

Another woman in the story feeds her daughter opium-laced breastmilk and "blows opium smoke on her child's face to keep her from crying."

PEDRO UGARTE/AFP/Getty Images

As Ehud Olmert struggles to contain the fallout from a report that slammed his conduct of last summer's war with Hezbollah, Israeli authorities are panicking over losing another war: The War of Reproduction. Palestinian population growth in Jerusalem is fast outpacing that of Israelis; so fast, in fact, that within 30 years the city may be home to as many Arabs as it will be to Jews. While the impressive Arab birth rate—at 3-4%, it's more than twice that of Jews—has long haunted leaders of the Jewish state, recent buzz over the issue stems from a Hebrew University study released early this month, just in time for the 40th anniversary of the city's reunification. Since that time, the study found, Jerusalem's Arab population has grown by 257 percent, compared to a 140 percent Jewish growth rate. Mayor Uri Lupolianski nicely sums up Israeli anxiety here:

Jerusalem could, God forbid, end up not under Jewish sovereignty, but rather that of Hamas." Hamas, Lupolianski said, "knows that it is possible to capture Jerusalem through demography within 12 years. We need a plan, and not crumbs, so that Jerusalem will remain Israel's capital forever."

Grand schemes to bolster the city's dwindling Jewish population dominated last weekend's special Jerusalem-themed cabinet meeting. Not only must pols deal with the disparate birth rates, they're going to have to address the fact that, due to lousy job prospects and Jerusalem's high cost of living, Israelis just don't want to live there: 17,300 Israelis, more than half of whom are between 25 and 30, flee the city annually. The proposed solution? Israel's going to pump $1.5 billion into social services, build schools, relocate government agencies to within the city, and build 20,000 settler units in East Jerusalem.

Peter Macdiarmid/Getty

Winners

Gordon Brown: Long-suffering, dandruff-prone UK treasurer prepares to succeed Tony Blair as the head of Labour and Britain.

Paul Wolfowitz: Survives the unsavory Euro-coup—for at least a few more days.

Vietnamese stocks: So hot right now.

Michael Moore: U.S. Treasury stupidly publicizes the perennial blowhard's latest stunt, which involves schlepping sick 9/11 rescuers to Cuba.

Timor-Leste: What better way to end the violence than to elect a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize? 

Losers

Iran doves: So much for engagement, eh?

Dave Einsel/Getty

Rudy Giuliani: Pope Benedict XVI's abortion pontificating underscores what will be the inevitable campaign-killer for the abortion-fickle former NYC mayor.

Syrian democrats: President Bashar al-Assad guaranteed a second-term; pro-democracy dissident Dr. Kamal Labwani guaranteed a stint in prison.

Japanese vending machines: Vital source of panties threatened by crackdown in Colombia.

Poland: Pootie-Poot scuppers Polish hopes bring Kazakh oil around, not through, Russia.

Iraq's famously dysfunctional Parliament, still reeling from the building's suicide-bomber cafeteria penetration and now facing the prospect of an abbreviated summer vacation, is having coping problems. The latest indication came when Mahmoud al-Mashadani, the Parliament's Sunni speaker, cracked an inappropriate smile as he listened to Shiite MP Shadha Mousawi chastise the legislature for ignoring Shiites displaced from the Diyala province as a result of the Sunni insurgency. Reports the LA Times:

At one point as Mousawi was speaking, Mashadani smiled.'How can you smile during such a time?' Mousawi said.

Other lawmakers began joining her in calls for action to assist the displaced people, infuriating Mashadani. He declared the meeting adjourned and headed for the door.

[Rival Sunni MP Hussein] Falluji chided him for leaving and for surrounding himself with bodyguards, suggesting Mashadani was not important enough to warrant such security. Mashadani then lunged at Falluji and slapped him.

'Damn you!' Mashadani said before hitting Falluji...

Bodyguards separated the two men."

Clearly, the real reason behind Mashadani's belligerence this week is the threat of a summer stuck in the now-scary Green Zone. Just two days ago he gave the Bush administration a verbal slap for suggesting the Parliament skip its two-month summer vacation. "You had better try and control Nancy Pelosi rather than Mahmoud al-Mashhadani," he announced.