Welcome to the second installment of this blog's version of As the World Turns (for a look back at "Act One," click here). As with the first installment, most of this stuff has been lifted directly from the weekly e-mail reports I get from Harper's. Scene 1: AfricaOn May 30th, the June 5th edition of TIME reports an International Rescue Committee estimate that 3.9 million people have died from war-related causes since the conflict in Congo began in 1998, making it the world’s most lethal conflict since World War II (Congo, the second-largest country in Sub-Saharan Africa, has a population of 63 million people and is larger than California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas combined.)
Some Congo history from TIME: “ . . . Congo won its independence [from Belgium] in 1960. 
But within months its first elected Prime Minister had been killed by Belgium- and U.S.-backed opponents because of his growing ties to the Soviet Union, an assassination that eventually opened the way for army general Mobutu Sese Seko (see photo at right) to grab power. A U.S. favorite during the Cold War, Mobutu presided over one of the most corrupt regimes in Africa history."In 1996 neighboring Rwanda and Uganda jointly invaded Congo to eliminate the Hutu militias, known as the Interahamwe, that had been responsible for the Rwandan genocide and were hiding in Congo’s eastern forests. As the invading armies advanced across the country, Mobutu fled, and the invaders installed a small-time rebel leader named Laurent Kabila as President. But things got worse. In 1998, after Kabila got too friendly with the Interhamwe, Uganda and Rwanda invaded Congo again, triggering what became known as Africa’s first world war. The scramble for power and resources dragged in forces from eight African neighbors, pawned a myriad of Congolese factions and set off campaigns of ethnic 
cleansing. Kabila, as nasty and corrupt as his predecessor, was shot dead by one of his bodyguards in 2001.Laurent's son Joseph Kabila, 29 (see photo at left), assumed power. One year later, after some arm twisting by continental power South Africa . . . the young leader and most of the rebel groups and foreign forces fighting in the country signed a peace deal. A national army was formed, aimed at integrating soldiers who had previously been trying to kill one other. . . . But in some parts of the country, the fighting has never really stopped.”
The IRC says that though the peace deal was signed more than 3 years ago, 1,250 Congolese still die every day because of “war-related causes—the vast majority succumbing to diseases and malnutrition that wouldn’t exist in peaceful times.”
In June, an Islamic militia takes over Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, routing U.S.-backed warlords. In August, Ethiopia denied reports that it had attacked Somalia, but Somalia declared an "all out holy war" on Ethiopia.
In July, a United Nations official in Sudan lamented that violence in Darfur has gotten worse since the signing of a recent peace accord.
Also in July, the five-year-old world trade talk known as the Doha round because that's the city they started in, broke down over agriculture policies: The U.S. has been pushing for the EU and others to end their agriculture tariffs, with others responding that the U.S. first needs to cut back its farm subsidies—and that is a no-go. Bad news for cotton-producing African countries like Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad and Mali (see map at right).
Scene 2: The Americas 
In May, Alvaro Uribe (at left) became the first president to win re-election in Colombia since 1892.
In June, former President Alan García beat Ollanta Humala in Peru's runoff presidential election. During his last presidency, which ended 16 years ago, García led Peru into an economic collapse, but he was able to gain approximately 55 percent of Sunday's vote. Some analysts believe voters elected García more as a rejection of Humala—who had been endorsed by Hugo Chavez of Venezuela—rather than as an endorsement of the former president.
Meanwhile, in the U.S., the Senate voted for the ninth consecutive year to keep the minimum wage at $5.15 per hour, and House Republicans declined to renew the 1965 Voting Rights Act because it was unfair to Southerners.
In July, Felipe Calderon (see electoral poster at right), the candidate of Mexico's conservative Institutional Revolutionary Party, was apparently elected president of the nation, though Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the leftist mayor of Mexico City, refused to concede and demanded a complete recount.
It was reported that advisers at federally funded "pregnancy resource centers" in the United States were telling women that abortions increase the risk of cancer, infertility, and mental illness.
Scene 3: Europe
In August, under pressure from U.S. officials, authorities in the United Kingdom announced the discovery of a terrorist plot to blow up as many as ten passenger planes in the air, possibly by using explosive liquids hidden inside sports-drink bottles. Twenty-one suspects were arrested. Carry-on luggage was banned on flights in and out of Heathrow airport.
Scene 4: Israel and PalestineIn May, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (see photo at right) called on the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority to accept the goal of establishing a Palestinian state (and thus acknowledge Israel's right to exist); if Hamas does not comply, he said that he will call a national referendum on the issue.
In June, it was reported that an Israeli artillery shell killed at least seven civilians, including five members of one family (including young children aged ten, three, and one) who were picnicking on a beach in Gaza. Israeli officials expressed regret and said that the shell had been aimed at a target 400 yards away from the picnic. Later, however, the Israeli military absolved itself of responsibility in the deaths. An Israeli committee admitted that Israeli forces fired six shells on and around the beach, but found that a mine planted by Hamas (or possibly a buried shell) had, by coincidence, exploded and killed the family at around the same time as the shelling. A former Pentagon battlefield analyst said that the shrapnel and craters he found at the scene of the explosion were consistent with shelling by Israelis, as were the wounds suffered by survivors.Hamas declared that it would no longer abide by a 16-month-old cease-fire and fired a rocket into Israel.
In July, Palestinian militants conducted a raid in Israel and abducted an Israeli soldier, whom they carried to Gaza via a secret tunnel. Israel retaliated by bombing Gaza's main power plant, two bridges, the offices of Palestine's prime minister and interior minister, and a soccer field, and by arresting as many as 64 Palestinian officials. Palestinian militants demanded that Israel release all Palestinian prisoners who are women or under the age of 18.
Later in July, war erupted between Hezbollah and Israel after the Lebanese militia launched Operation Truthful Promise against Israel by crossing the border and capturing two Israeli soldiers. 
Israel countered by staging Operation Just Reward against Lebanon, bombing roads, bridges, power stations, fuel depots, ports, and airports, and killing numerous civilians. Hezbollah bombed Haifa, surprising Israel with the range of its rockets and killing at least eight civilians.
Ehud Olmert, prime minister of Israel (see photo at left), said Hezbollah's war on Israel was a ruse to divert attention from Iran's nuclear weapons program.
In August, after an Israeli bombing raid killed 54 people, including 37 children, in the Lebanese village of Qana, Beirut residents set fire to a U.N. headquarters. Israel agreed to suspend some bombing operations for 48 hours in order to investigate the deaths. Israeli bombs later struck a U.N. post in southern Lebanon, killing four peacekeepers. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said the targeting was "apparently deliberate," and Olmert called Annan's comments "premature and erroneous."
Hezbollah guerillas fired several hundred rockets into towns in northern Israel, hitting a laundry detergent factory and a cemetery, and injuring at least 31 people. Nine Israeli soldiers were killed in an ambush, and Israeli officials claimed to have killed some 200 Hezbollah "operatives" since the outset of hostilities.
Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah (see photo at left) boasted that his forces were inflicting "maximum casualties" and warned Israel that if it "bombed our capital Beirut, we will bomb the capital of your usurping entity." Ultimately, ,however, Hezbollah accepted a U.N. ceasefire resolution, and agreed to allow Lebanese and U.N. troops to serve as peacekeepers in southern Lebanon and subsequently declared victory in the 34-day war. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert pledged that Israel would "do better" in what Defense Minister Amir Peretz referred to as "the next round."
In September, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan denounced Israel's use of cluster bombs, and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert refused to lift a seven-week-old blockade on Lebanon. French president Jacques Chirac said that sending 15,000 United Nations troops to Lebanon was "excessive."
Scene 5: Asia
In May, the Nepal House of Representatives declared the King of Nepal (see photo at right) to be powerless.
In June, the United States announced that it would join 5 other nations in demanding that Iran immediately suspend uranium-enrichment activities. In August, Iran was launching missiles at Kurds and cracking down on "decadent" satellite dishes.
In July, North Korea launched six rockets over the Sea of Japan, including a Taepodong-2 intercontinental ballistic missile, which apparently was aborted after just 40 seconds.
Bombings on trains and in train stations killed 181 people in Mumbai, India, and led India to postpone peace talks with Pakistan.
In August, the Sri Lankan air force bombed an orphanage and killed dozens of schoolgirls, and the Tamil Tigers failed to kill the High Commissioner of Pakistan with an exploding rickshaw.
Scene Six: The History Stacks
In June, The Army Corps of Engineers admitted that its incompetence was largely to blame for the destruction of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina.
In August, Nobel-prize winning German novelist Günter Grass (see photo at left) announced that he had once been a member of the Nazi SS.
Scene Seven: The Cemetery
In September, Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter, died after a stingray stabbed him in the heart.
Scene Eight: Iraq
In May, the Los Angeles Times reported a top U.S. ground commander in Iraq telling his officers that some U.S. troops have been their "own worst enemy" because of how they've dealt with Iraqis. "We have to understand that the way we treat Iraqis has a direct effect on the number of insurgents that we are fighting," he said.
Later in May, The New York Times and Los Angeles Times front what military officials say appear to be the murders of two dozen Iraqis by Marines last November. A congressional official said the shootings were "methodical in nature." The Marines reportedly killed a few unarmed men taken from a taxi. Then they went into houses, where they killed women and children. An initial press release from the military said most of the civilians were killed by a "roadside bomb." The NYT, which has the more detailed report, asked a "senior defense official" how many Iraqis were really killed by the bomb. The answer: "Zero." The military only investigated after TIME started digging and reported the story back in March. The killings are now the focus of three investigations, including one into the possible cover-up. "When these investigations come out, there's going to be a firestorm," one retired military lawyer told the Washington Post. "It will be worse than Abu Ghraib—nobody was killed at Abu Ghraib."
In July, four U.S. soldiers in Iraq were being investigated for raping a woman, then killing her and three other members of her family; it was suggested that the accused, Private Stephen D. Green, of Midland, Texas (see photo at left) may have spent up to a week planning the attack. A week later, five more American soldiers were charged in the case and Iraqi prime minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki denounced the immunity of American soldiers in the case. It was later reported that Green had said that, in Iraq, "killing people is like squashing an ant, I mean, you kill somebody and it's like, 'All right, let's go get some pizza.'"
It was later announced that May was the deadliest month for Baghdad residents since the beginning of the American occupation.
In August, it was pointed out that the United States has been fighting in Iraq for as long as it fought Germany during World War II and thousands of U.S. Marine reserves were involuntarily recalled to active duty to offset a lack of volunteers for the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In September, The Pentagon announced that civilian casualties in Iraq had increased recently by more than fifty percent, and death squads were said to be torturing and killing as many as 1,800 people per month.
Scene Nine: Al Qaeda Situation Room
In June, United States forces succeeded in killing Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, with two five-hundred-pound bombs that were dropped on a safe house north of Baghdad. Zarqawi reportedly survived the bombing at first and even tried to get away but was strapped to a stretcher, where he died.
In August, Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman lost the Democratic Senate primary election to anti-Iraq-war candidate Ned Lamont (the Lamont campaign made a lot of hay out of the photo at right). Lieberman then announced that he would run as an independent candidate. Vice President Dick Cheney said that Lamont's victory was encouraging to "Al Qaeda types." One week later, Lieberman said that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld should resign.
Scene 10: The Courts
While acknowledging that Khaled al-Masri (see photo at left)--an entirely innocent former detainee of the U.S. government-- "deserves a remedy" for allegedly being tortured by the CIA, a federal judge dismissed al-Masri's case this past May because allowing it to proceed would expose government secrets.
In July, the high courts of Georgia and New York both upheld bans on gay marriage.
Scene Eleven: The Executive Office
In June, it was reported that the Pentagon has decided to remove a reference to Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions-- the one that bans torture and cruel treatment as well as "outrages on personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment"--from a new edition of the Army Field Manual on interrogation. The change, which would reverse decades of military policy, follows President Bush's declaration in 2002 that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to "unlawful combatants" such as terrorists.
In June, three detainees at the American prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, committed suicide using nooses made from clothing and bedsheets. Navy Rear-Admiral Harry Harris said "I believe this was not an act of desperation but an act of asymmetric warfare against us." All three men had been in the camp for about four years and had recently engaged in a hunger strike.
In July, The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that President George W. Bush had overstepped his authority in establishing military tribunals for Guantanamo Bay detainees.
President Bush also said that he was "willing to abide by the ruling. "It didn't say we couldn't have done--couldn't have made that decision, see?" Bush added. "They were silent on whether or not Guantanamo--whether we should have used Guantanamo. In other words, they accepted the use of Guantanamo, the decision I made."
Scene Twelve: A Note of Hope
In June, the worldwide rate of HIV infections stabilized for the first time in history.
The Map of Africa at right is colored according to the percentage of the adult (ages 15-49) population with HIV/AIDS. Data from UNAIDS - the majority of percentages are from 1999, although several are more recent (2001, 2002).
Here's some more crazy talk from Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez (for those of you who don't subscribe to TIME.)the threat of a U.S. empire that uses the U.N. to justify its aggression against half the world. In Bush's speech to the U.N., he sounded as if he wants to be master of the world. I changed my original speech after reading his.
