The Gift That Keeps On Giving

The Nintendo Wii is hot this holiday season. So are those beautiful iPhones. Anything Hannah Montana is essential for daughters 8 to 12.

But we know you're looking for something truly unique for your spouse. Something the awful Joneses down the block don't have and can't buy. Something that's useful and also shows that you are truly in.

Got just the thing! Yes, it's the new, better-than-ever National Counterterrorism Center's 2008 weekly planner, out just in time for Christmas.

Where else can you discover that nine years ago today, on Dec. 19, Libyan-trained Abu Sayyaf Group leader Abdurajak Abubakar Janjalani died in a gunfight with Philippine authorities on Basilan island? Or that it's 20 Dhu al-Hijjah in the Arabic calendar?

Or let's say it's July 30, and you spot a tall, thin, bearded guy eating chocolate cake with candles on it while schlepping around a dialysis machine. Your NCTC planner will tell you that it's Osama bin Laden's birthday, and you can collect a cool $27 million "for information leading directly to [his] apprehension and/or conviction."

Just call the FBI or the nearest embassy. Telephone and e-mail options are provided.

Bin Laden, in years past, had been listed as likely to be in Afghanistan and, more recently, Pakistan. This year's calendar -- which says he has somehow maintained his girlish 160-pound figure all these years -- has him "in the wind," as the spooks say, with no location mentioned.

Early this year, there were reports that Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, wanted for the bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998, might have been killed by U.S. airstrikes in Somalia. Apparently not, because the State Department's Rewards for Justice Program still has a $5 million price tag on his head.

The calendar's most-wanted group includes many of our favorites from years past, most with a $5 million bounty. Our longtime favorite, Faker Ben Abdelazziz Boussora, a Canadian, still has those "prominently protruding ears and is believed to have a serious pituitary gland illness."

One newcomer in 2008 is Ramadan Abdullah Shallah, secretary general of the Damascus-based Islamic Jihad, which the State Department lists as a terrorist group. The 2008 planner has more realistic color photos of Shallah and many of the most-wanted, including Taliban chief Mullah Omar, which should help sightings.

For example, there are three candid photos of Jaber Elbaneh of that famed terrorist cell in Lackawanna, N.Y.

The left-hand page has the customary helpful information about terrorist groups, safety tips for chemical and biological weapons, and safe distances from various types of explosives. (You'll want to be at least 500 yards from the typical car bomb, we're advised.) So you think that runny nose and shortness of breath are just a cold? Maybe. Or maybe you've got symptoms of exposure to VX, a deadly nerve gas, the planner says. If you start to twitch, pull out your atropine syringe or high-tail it to your doctor. But it might only be anthrax.