The United States Army was planning to maintain current troop levels in Iraq through 2010, and to replace its advertising slogan, “An Army of One,” with a new slogan, “Army Strong.”

A Virginia couple were trying to give back their fifteen-year-old adopted son, who turned out to be a sexual predator. “They just told me he was hyperactive,” said the boy's mother.

A Minnesota school principal resigned after shooting two orphaned kittens on school property.

Dubai's ruling family was sued for enslaving children as camel jockeys.

Thousands of Indian villagers fled their homes in order to avoid a herd of rampaging elephants. “The elephants,” said a forestry official, “are out to avenge.”

Apparently this vengeance goes both ways. Contrast that last item with this story from Science in 1998 (subscription required for full text):

Survival Test for Kenya's Wildlife

Two years ago, while working in Kenya's Amboseli National Park, elephant expert Joyce Poole encountered a gang of 28 Maasai tribesmen. Adorned in bright red shukas and carrying spears, the men told Poole they were out to avenge the loss of a fellow Maasai gored to death by an elephant. The vigilantes were out to get the attention of the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), too: "They told me they were going to kill 1000 elephants that day," Poole recalls.

You know what they say about the memory of an elephant.

I predict that Chan-wook Park's next vengeance trilogy will feature elephants and tribal peoples. In the first film, set in Africa, the elephants will face off against the Maasi; the second will be set in India, in the vicinity of Betla National Park; and the third, in Asia, perhaps near Park's home of Korea.

Weekly Review for 17 October 2006 | Harper's