Weekly Review
Lawmakers in California and New York announced they would raise their states’ minimum wages to $15 per hour, and an assemblywoman in New Jersey proposed a law that would impose jail sentences of up to 15 days on pedestrians caught sending text messages while walking. A 72-year-old man was arrested on a plane in Hawaii for trying to bite and head-butt fellow passengers after being told he wasn't allowed to do yoga, and a 59-year-old man on an EgyptAir flight traveling from Alexandria to Cairo claimed to be wearing an explosive vest and forced the crew to redirect the plane to Cyprus, where his ex-wife lives. "Always there is," said the president of Cyprus, "a woman." Read more...
the magnificent bird of paradise.
The Syrian Army recaptured the ancient city of Palmyra, which had been occupied by the Islamic State for ten months.[1] Military officials reported discovering that the group had raided tombs, planted thousands of explosives throughout the city, decapitated 2,000-year-old statues, and buried in a mass grave at least 42 people, some of whom had been decapitated.[2][3][4] An Islamic State–affiliated group in Saudi Arabia claimed responsibility for the bombing of a police station in al-Dalam, where one person was killed.[5][6] An Amtrak train traveling from New York City to Savannah, Georgia, hit a backhoe parked on the tracks outside Philadelphia, killing two people; and a train in Thailand hit a double-decker tourist bus, killing three people.[7][8] In England, 18 people were injured when two trains collided at a railway station.[9] A nurse in Tuscany was accused of murdering 13 of her patients, and a nurse in New York lost her license after taking a photo of an unconscious man’s penis on her phone and sending it to her coworkers.[10][11] Officials in the U.S. Department of Justice announced that they had figured out how to bypass the security features on an iPhone belonging to one of the suspects in the 2015 shooting at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino and agreed to unlock another iPhone for police in Arkansas.[12][13] The Great Barrier Reef was reported to be in the midst of the worst coral bleaching in its history, the Pavlof Volcano in Alaska erupted unexpectedly, and a sinkhole in a pond in China swallowed 25 tons of fish.[14][15][16]
In Georgia, video footage surfaced of a 32-year-old man who packed his lawn mower with tannerite, a powder that explodes when struck by a high-velocity bullet, and then began shooting it with his semi-automatic rifle. “I blew my leg off,” he said.[17] A 67-year-old turkey hunter in Alabama fatally shot himself when he fell into a ravine and his gun discharged into his upper body, and a 16-year-old boy in Florida fired a gun at his bedroom wall and accidentally shot his sister, who was in the next room.[18][19] GunTV, the first home-shopping network for guns, launched with the slogan “Live Shopping. Fully Loaded.”[20] Lawmakers in California and New York announced they would raise their states’ minimum wages to $15 per hour, and an assemblywoman in New Jersey proposed a law that would impose jail sentences of up to 15 days on pedestrians caught sending text messages while walking.[21][22] A 72-year-old man was arrested on a plane in Hawaii for trying to bite and head-butt fellow passengers after being told he wasn’t allowed to do yoga, and a 59-year-old man on an EgyptAir flight traveling from Alexandria to Cairo claimed to be wearing an explosive vest and forced the crew to redirect the plane to Cyprus, where his ex-wife lives. “Always there is,” said the president of Cyprus, “a woman.”[23][24]
Fishermen in Portugal rescued a 65-year-old British tourist from the Atlantic Ocean while she was attempting to swim to a cruise ship, which she thought her husband was aboard. “Susan,” said the head of the port authority, “got a little lost.”[25] A 69-year-old Florida man was arrested for driving six miles with his wife on the roof of his Toyota, claiming that he did not know she was up there and did not hear her screaming.[26] Shouting was banned on a rollercoaster in England, and a 100-year-old woman was evicted from her Palm Springs apartment because of noise complaints. “I’ve evicted people,” said the eviction specialist hired by the landlord, “off their death beds.”[27][28] In the Indian state of Maharashtra, a law was passed requiring candidates in municipal elections to provide evidence that they have working toilets.[29] A teenager in Ohio pleaded guilty to touring a high school while posing as a state senator.[30] Saudi Arabia’s Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice arrested a doctor for flying a rainbow flag, and doctors in Brazil prevented a man from losing his hand after an accident by sewing it into his abdomen. “It’s a really weird feeling,” he said, “to wiggle my fingers.”[31][32]
Read the Weekly Review in the Harper’s Magazine app, or sign up to have it delivered to your inbox every Tuesday.
