Weekly Review
The city of Portland unveiled the Poopmaster 6000, which will clean crow droppings from city sidewalks. Researchers in Germany developed tiny bionic “spermbots” that escort slow-swimming sperm to eggs, and a man in Britain claimed to have fathered at least 800 children by selling his sperm on Facebook. "They’re just the ones I know of," he said. Read more...
The United States lifted $100 billion worth of economic sanctions against Iran, including restrictions on Iranian banking, money transfers, trade, insurance, and transport. As part of the deal, Iran released four American prisoners.[1][2][3][4] Ten U.S. sailors were detained by Iran when their ship drifted into the country’s waters and released after one day in custody.[5] Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for a string of terrorist attacks in Burkina Faso that killed 30 people, many of them tourists; and an Islamic State operative in Istanbul walked into a group of German tourists and detonated explosives strapped to his chest, killing ten people.[6][7] Starbucks temporarily shut down its 200 locations in Indonesia after two people were killed in an Islamic State suicide attack at one of the company’s Jakarta stores, and a Kurdish separatist group apologized for killing children in a car bombing in southern Turkey.[8][9] A report found that the world’s 62 richest people have as much wealth as the bottom half of the global population; and Goldman Sachs, where the average salary was $518,720 last year, agreed to pay a $5.1 billion settlement for its sale of toxic mortgage securities and its role in the 2008 financial crisis.[10][11][12] In New Jersey, a dishwasher who quit his job after mistakenly believing he had won the $1.5 billion Powerball lottery jackpot went back to work. “It’s a shame we didn’t win,” said the man, “but I wouldn’t trade that feeling for anything.”[13]
A man in France died after being rendered brain dead during a drug trial, and a state of emergency was declared in Flint, Michigan, when it was discovered that thousands of people had been exposed to toxic levels of lead in the city’s water supply.[14][15][16] A chainsaw sculptor occupying an Oregon National Wildlife Refuge was arrested when he attempted to drive a government-owned vehicle to a nearby Safeway to pick up groceries.[17][18] Border officials in Texas seized 2,493 pounds of marijuana hidden inside 2,817 fake carrots, a Canadian woman was arrested in New York State while trying to enter the United States with a foosball table filled with cannabis, and a Canadian man was arrested trying to bury a sled carrying 180 pounds of Xanax pills in Vermont.[19][20][21] It was reported that Anthropolgie was selling a rusty trashcan for $99.95 and, in the Indian state of Bihar, a 13.5 percent luxury tax was introduced on mosquito repellent and samosas.[22][23] Turkmenistan banned tobacco, Russia banned swearing in prison, and Auckland, New Zealand, banned mermaid swimsuits.[24][25][26]
The city of Portland unveiled the Poopmaster 6000, which will clean crow droppings from city sidewalks.[27] Researchers in Germany developed tiny bionic “spermbots” that escort slow-swimming sperm to eggs, and a man in Britain claimed to have fathered at least 800 children by selling his sperm on Facebook. “They’re just the ones I know of,” he said.[28][29] A new annotated version of Hitler’s Mein Kampf sold out in Germany, and it was reported that a former concentration camp in Montenegro that housed political prisoners during World War II would be turned into a luxury resort with a “party ambience.”[30][31] A dentist in Michigan was sued by her former employees for playing Christian music in the office, and a tribunal in England ruled that it had been an accident when a dentist exposed his penis to a dental nurse to whom he had also accidentally shown a picture of his penis a few years earlier.[32][33] A daycare teacher in Virginia was convicted of cruelty for running a “baby fight club,” a 911 operator in Florida missed a call because she was ordering pizza on another line, and a prison official in Russia was arrested for stealing the pavement of a 31-mile stretch of road.[34][35][36] In Britain, a man who ordered an Amazon Kindle received instead a piece of human tumour, and a Londoner named George Bush was arrested for trying to sell leopard skulls and monkey hands.[37][38] A naked woman was arrested after throwing plates at customers in a Waffle House in Georgia, and an Ohio man was arrested for arson after he sent police a selfie in response to a post on the department’s Facebook page featuring his mug shot. “Here is a better photo,” he wrote. “That one is terrible.”[39][40]
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