Weekly Review
Two marshals in Marksville, Louisiana, were arrested after a body-camera video showed them shooting at a car they were chasing, killing the six-year-old boy sitting inside. A student at the University of California, Merced, was killed by university police after he stabbed four people on campus with a hunting knife. A hacking organization published the membership databases of several Ku Klux Klan websites. A Danish man appeared in a South African court this week on charges that he mutilated the genitals of his wife and at least six other women and kept their dried clitorises on a hook and in his freezer. Read more...
The leaders of China and Taiwan met for the first time since the Communist Party came to power more than 60 years ago. During the meeting, the two leaders, who did not refer to one another as “president,” ate dinner at a round table and split the bill. “We both used a lot of strength,” said Taiwan’s president, “when we shook hands.”[1] Chinese state media reported the establishment of a new spy hotline and issued a note on social media encouraging citizens to report those who “exaggerate the advantages of foreign countries.” “Anyone can be a spy,” a hotline officer said. “And anyone can also not be a spy.”[2] In Egypt, investigators announced that they were “90 percent sure” Russian Metrojet Flight 9268, which crashed in the Sinai Peninsula in late October, was downed by a bomb planted in the cargo hold.[3] Britain, Ireland, and Russia suspended flights to the Sinai Peninsula, and nearly 20,000 Britons, 45,000 Russians, and at least 120 tons of baggage were awaiting flights out of Sharm el-Sheikh International Airport.[4] A 44-year-old Antonov 12BK military cargo plane operated by the South Sudanese military crashed on the banks of the Nile, killing at least 25 people; and North Korea announced that it would begin operating sightseeing tours of Pyongyang aboard a Soviet-era military transport helicopter.[5][6] The Vatican arrested a Spanish monsignor and a social media expert after it was revealed that the pair had stolen and leaked classified Church documents, and a study of nearly 1,200 children found that those raised in religious households were less altruistic, more punitive, and more judgmental.[7][8]
President Obama formally rejected the Keystone XL pipeline seven years after the TransCanada energy company first filed its application to transport 830,000 barrels of crude oil a day from the Alberta plains to Gulf Coast refineries, and Michael Bloomberg announced that he would spend $10 million to target attorneys general who have challenged the White House’s Clean Power Plan to reduce carbon emissions from power plants by an average of 32 percent over the next 15 years.[9][10] Representative Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) became Speaker of the House and announced he would most likely use an “ozone machine” to clean the cigarette smoke from the office of former speaker John Boehner.[11] Following the New York City Marathon, an Italian runner got lost on the subway for two days; and an M.T.A. bus driver was arrested after he hit and killed a 70-year-old woman who was crossing the street.[12][13] Police announced that the nine-year old son of a gang member was lured into an alley in Chicago and shot to death by his father’s rivals; it was reported that a police officer in Fox Lake, Illinois, who was found dead in early September had killed himself after embezzling funds from a youth program and possibly planning to meet a local gang member to plot the murder of the village administrator.[14][15] Two marshals in Marksville, Louisiana, were arrested after a body-camera video showed them shooting at a car they were chasing, killing the six-year-old boy sitting inside.[16] A student at the University of California, Merced, was killed by university police after he stabbed four people on campus with a hunting knife.[17] A hacking organization published the membership databases of several Ku Klux Klan websites. [18] A Danish man appeared in a South African court this week on charges that he mutilated the genitals of his wife and at least six other women and kept their dried clitorises on a hook and in his freezer.[19]
Iranian authorities denounced two Persian actresses for publishing photos of themselves not wearing hijab.[20] In West Tehran, a restaurant modeled after KFC was shut down by Iranian police for having a striped interior that “too closely resembles the U.S. flag.”[21] An eighth grader in Oviedo, Florida, received detention for violating the school’s policy on inappropriate touching after she gave her friend a hug.[22] Authorities in Colorado were considering bringing charges against students at Cañon City High School for trading nude photographs of one another.[23] A 17-month-old toddler in Brazil bit a viper to death while he was playing in the garden, a 62-year-old diabetic Australian man survived in the Outback for six days without water by eating ants, and a 13-year-old autistic boy saved the life of his classmate who was choking by using the Heimlich maneuver. “Learned it,” said the boy, “on SpongeBob.”[24][25][26] An emaciated 100-ton carcass of a blue whale washed ashore on the coast of Oregon, hundreds of California residents reported seeing UFOs after the Navy conducted unarmed missile tests in the Pacific, and a woman in Lancashire, England, moved out of her house after claiming that a ghost interfered with her when she took a selfie.[27][28][29]
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