Weekly Review
In Toronto, fire-suppressing foam was accidentally released at the Pearson International Airport, covering an area equivalent to between two and three football fields. A woman was arrested on a flight to Chicago after she kissed and punched a flight attendant, a flight from Tel Aviv to Toronto was diverted when a seven-year-old bulldog in the cargo hold became too cold, and Mishka, an asthmatic sea otter in Seattle, was given an inhaler after she experienced trouble breathing because of nearby wildfire smoke. "We try," said a biologist working with her, "to make it as fun as possible.” Read More...
the magnificent bird of paradise.
Hungarian authorities temporarily sealed the country’s border with Serbia. Police used tear gas, water cannons, and Humvees mounted with guns as they tried to stop refugees from climbing their partially complete 13-foot razor wire border fence. Refugees threw water bottles at Hungarian police, and two children were injured when they were thrown over the fence. Thousands of people were stranded in Serbia, an estimated 25,000 people entered Croatia instead, and 519 people were arrested trying to enter Hungary in the first day of its border closure. “This is worse,” said one Syrian man, “than Bashar al-Assad.”[1][2][3][4] It was reported that the German town of Dachau was housing refugees in a former Nazi concentration camp, and an Egyptian billionaire proposed resettling refugees on two private islands off the coast of Greece.[5][6][7] During the Republican presidential debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, Ronald Reagan was mentioned 45 times, Planned Parenthood was mentioned 23 times, and Donald Trump was mentioned 29 times.[8][9][10][11][12] Trump, who said over 4,000 words and whose first and fourth most-used words were “I” and “Trump,” respectively, said that, if elected, his Secret Service code name would be Humble. [13] The United States began military talks with Russia to address reports that Russian fighter jets and gunships had been deployed to a Syrian base with accommodations for 1,500 Russian troops. “This is the beginning,” said a U.S. official, “of a conversation.”[14][15] Russian president Vladimir Putin and former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi vacationed together in Crimea and drank a $90,000 bottle of wine from 1775 that had formerly belonged to Crimea. “Is it possible,” Berlusconi had asked, “to drink?”[16]
A Somali-American teenager in Irving, Texas, who was handcuffed and suspended for bringing a clock to school was later invited to tour MIT, Facebook, and the White House, and offered an internship with Twitter. “You can’t,” said the Irving police chief, “take things like that to school.”[17][18][19] A teenage boy in North Carolina reached a plea deal with prosecutors to avoid going to jail and registering as a sex offender for having naked photographs of himself on his phone, and police officers in Stockton, California, tackled, arrested, and charged with trespassing a black teenager who was walking in a bus lane.[20][21] Two armed men stole pizza from a 68-year-old Domino’s delivery man in New Orleans, a man in Berkeley, California, returned $1,300 he found in a Domino’s box of wings, and a 35-year-old prisoner who protested conditions in a U.K. jail by living on the roof for three days came down after being promised “a pizza and a can of Coke.”[22][23][24] General Motors was fined $900 million for hiding an ignition-switch defect that led to at least 174 deaths, and American regulators ordered Volkswagen to recall 500,000 cars containing a device that hides emissions, which were actually up to 40 times the legal limit, during emissions tests.[25][26] A wine bar in Lancaster, England, was fined £100,000 after serving an 18-year-old girl a free liquid nitrogen–Jägermeister cocktail that caused an explosion in her stomach.[27]
In Toronto, fire-suppressing foam was accidentally released at the Pearson International Airport, covering an area equivalent to between two and three football fields.[28] A woman was arrested on a flight to Chicago after she kissed and punched a flight attendant, a flight from Tel Aviv to Toronto was diverted when a seven-year-old bulldog in the cargo hold became too cold, and Mishka, an asthmatic sea otter in Seattle, was given an inhaler after she experienced trouble breathing because of nearby wildfire smoke. “We try,” said a biologist working with her, “to make it as fun as possible.”[29][30][31] Researchers successfully tested an ultra-thin invisibility cloak and discovered that giraffes hum in the evening and chimps and bonobos like watching movies in which a scientist dresses up as King Kong.[32][33][34] Men in China were encouraged to donate to a sperm bank so they could buy the new iPhone 6s, and robotics and ethics scholars launched the Campaign Against Sex Robots.[35][36] Researchers discovered evidence of a new 75-million-year-old Ceratopsian dinosaur in Montana that, according to a paleontologist, looked like “a fat pony with a big head and horns.”[37] Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s 91-year-old president, mistakenly delivered the same 25-minute speech in parliament that he read last month, and the White House accidentally sent a letter wishing a “Happy 101st birthday” to an infant in Utah. “You have witnessed,” read the letter to the one-year-old, “the best of what our Nation can accomplish when we work together.”[38][39]
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