A 2007 Recap: What's the Real News? --The Rich and the Scandalous VS. The Rest of the Universe (PART 1 of 3)

JANUARY 2007

As celebrity gossips everywhere jump at the chance to let the world know about Miss Lohan's latest stint in rehab,



and JT's infamous split from Cameron Diaz...

...50 people died in a mudslide in southern Brazil a few weeks earlier (ReliefWeb),

while nearly 50 more lives are lost as a string of deadly, hurricane-like storms hit northern Europe (BBC News).

Meanwhile, approximately 186,000 Africans die of AIDS during this first month of 2007.

FEBRUARY 2007

While Anna Nicole Smith mysteriously dies in her Miami hotel room, so marking the beginning of the Dannielynn-paternity-scandal,






the ridiculously dysfunctional Houston-Brown marriage finally comes to an end,






and Britney loses both her hair and her sanity...

...340,000 people are left homeless in Indonesia as Jakarta is submerged in a devastating flood (ReliefWeb),




Austrian authorities uncover a huge global child porn ring, in which over 2300 suspects are involved from 77 countries (International Herald Tribune),




and 40 people are killed as a suicide bomber attacks Mustansiriya University in Baghdad (New York Times).

MARCH 2007

As Snoop D-O-double-G gets denied a British visa to perform in the UK,

Bradgelina welcome Pax into their lives,

and Mr. Spears receives his million dollar divorce settlement...

...global tensions flare as an Iranian naval fleet seizes 15 British marines who allegedly entered the country's territorial waters illegally; however, a "national embarrassment" occurs after some of the marines sell their stories to the media following their release (icWhales.co.uk),

Northern Ireland's rival sectarian parties announce a breakthrough power-sharing agreement between the Protestant Democratic Unionist Party and the Catholic Sinn Fein (the CBC),

and crazed gunmen seize a bus carrying 32 preschoolers and 2 teachers in Manila (BBC News).

So far, nearly 600,000 Africans died of AIDS in 2007.

APRIL 2008

While Prince William and Kate Middleton bite the dust,

Dannielynn goes home with her real daddy--the 15 minutes of fame fiend, Larry Birkhead,

and Boy George is arrested on false imprisonment and assault charges for handcuffing a male escort to a bed and sexually assaulting him...

...32 people, including both students and faculty, are senselessly killed in cold blood at Virginia Tech before the gunman takes his own life (the CBC),

a tsunami sweeps through the Solomon Islands, destroying over 900 homes, leaving 500o homeless, and killing nearly 30 people (Guardian Unlimited),

and 140 civilians killed in a car bombing at Sadriya market in Baghdad (Iraqi Body Count).

**Please stay tuned for PART 2 of the 2007 recap.**