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Robert Downey Jr finishes celebrating NYE '02
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The controversy over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in a Danish newspaper has led the producers of The Simpsons to reconsider his appearance in a forthcoming episode. In the cancelled episode, entitled Don’t Have A Pig, Man,
Mohammed
was to have appeared to Homer in a dream, converting him to Islam with
a promise of 770 donuts in the afterlife. The show is now undertaking a
review of its editorial policies, and also its life insurance policies.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is still in a coma more than a week after suffering from a massive stroke. Sharon displayed eye movement early in the week, and while it’s not clear how much cognitive function he will regain, doctors say he has now completely recovered his low-level ability to hold the Palestinians responsible for any problem in Israel, including his stroke. 
The captain of the Japanese whaling ship, Nisshin Maru, has defended his actions during a collision with the Greenpeace-owned vessel, Arctic Sunrise as being undertaken “purely for research purposes” as part of an ongoing program to establish whether a more institutionalised cull of activitists may be needed. 
Jordanian authorities fear that failed suicide bomber Sajida Mubarak al-Rishawi, who was taken into custody this week, may try, but fail, to harm herself in prison. Rishawi will be kept under 24 hour observation in an “suicide proof” cell with no sheets or sharp objects and only a bed, toilet and a vest packed with 3kg of explosives that has already been proved totally harmless. 
French authorities have hit back at international claims they are not doing enough to stem worsening violence in the Parisian suburbs, claiming that French rioting is “richer” than recent problems in the UK and US. “Unrest after the New Orleans hurricane showed America to be deeply divided country – on the one hand the wealthiest nation on earth, but still blighted with an underclass unable to escape a cycle of poverty and desperation,” said President Jacques Chirac. “It’s a rather clichéd motif. The variety of tensions leading to cars being set on fire here is much more nuanced, and ultimately more morally profound.”
