Weekly Review
More than 100 people were killed when a crane collapsed in Mecca’s Grand Mosque during a thunderstorm. President Obama announced that the United States would admit 10,000 Syrian refugees for resettlement over the next year, and the European Union presented a plan to settle 160,000 refugees among its member states. “This proposal,” said the European Commission’s president, “is quite modest.” Read more...
A FAMOUS PLAY ILLUSTRATED – “THE LYON’S MAIL.”
Democrats in the Senate blocked a Republican resolution to prevent the implementation of a nuclear agreement with Iran.[1] The Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, declared on Twitter that there would be no further diplomatic negotiations with the Great Satan and predicted that Israel would not exist in 25 years.[2] A sandstorm swept across parts of the Middle East, hospitalizing 750 people in Lebanon and prompting the Syrian government to temporarily cease airstrikes on rebel fighters in the province of Hama.[3] More than 100 people were killed when a crane collapsed in Mecca’s Grand Mosque during a thunderstorm.[4][5] President Obama announced that the United States would admit 10,000 Syrian refugees for resettlement over the next year, and the European Union presented a plan to settle 160,000 refugees among its member states. “This proposal,” said the European Commission’s president, “is quite modest.”[6][7] Germany, Slovakia, and Austria imposed new border controls, and a Hungarian camerawoman was filmed kicking refugee children. “I’m not,” she wrote to a newspaper, “a heartless, racist, children-kicking camerawoman.”[8][9] Two Russian men were fined 3,000 rubles for posting an anti-Nazi clip starring Donald Duck, and a Polish explorer announced that he had discovered a giant subterranean Nazi Complex in southeast Poland. A 3.5-ton granite head of Vladimir Lenin was dug up outside Berlin for a museum exhibition. “History,” said a local resident, “is over.”[10][11][12][13] The Labour Party elected a socialist leader, and Queen Elizabeth II became the United Kingdom’s longest-ruling monarch. The achievement, she said, was “not one to which I have ever aspired.”[14][15]
The New York City police commissioner personally apologized to a former tennis star after he was mistakenly identified as a suspect in a fraud investigation and slammed to the ground by an officer, and Virginia announced it would not file charges against jail deputies who killed a restrained African-American inmate with a stun gun.[16][17] Arizona police detained a person of interest suspected of carrying out as many as 11 Phoenix-area freeway shootings, and a group of armed civilians calling themselves Bolt Force patrolled the area and searched for the shooter.[18] The California legislature voted to legalize assisted suicide.[19] A Kentucky court clerk who was jailed for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples spoke at a rally organized by Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee.[20] Pope Francis announced a set of reforms designed to streamline the marriage annulment process, and free tickets for his upcoming procession in New York City were being sold on Craigslist for up to $2,500.[21][22]
A woman arrested during a traffic stop in Waco, Texas, warned officers she had a loaded handgun in her vagina, and Kansas State University apologized after its marching band assumed a formation resembling a penis performing a sex act with a rival mascot.[23][24] A Canadian candidate for Parliament dropped out of his race after he was revealed to have been caught on a hidden camera in 2012 urinating into a coffee mug while working as an appliance service technician.[25] Two teenagers and a 43-year-old were arrested for stealing empty kegs from a New Jersey restaurant, and cereal was banned at several Zimbabwean schools after students were found to be using it to brew beer for sex parties.[26][27] A homeopathy conference in Germany came to an end when 29 participants were found “staggering around, rolling in a meadow, talking gibberish and suffering severe cramps” after taking the hallucinogenic drug 2C-E.[28] Scientists planned on resurrecting a 30,000-year-old giant virus discovered in Siberian permafrost, and a previously unknown human ancestor that may have intentionally buried its dead, Homo naledi, was unearthed in South Africa. “My mind,” said one of the research team’s leaders, “is absolutely blown.”[29][30]
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