Weekly Review

Rodrigo Duterte, the mayor of Davao City, who called the pope a “son of a whore” and has been accused of running vigilante death squads that have killed 1,000 people, was elected president of the Philippines, promising to end crime in six months by “killing five criminals a week” and by restoring the “death penalty by hanging in public.” “If I fail,” he said during his campaign, “kill me.”^[1][2][3] The Islamic State detonated three car bombs in Baghdad, killing at least 88 people.^[4] Officials in Iraq reported that they have retaken two-thirds of the territory that had been seized by the Islamic State, and the Islamic State cut the salary of its Syrian members by half.^[5][6] The Islamic State executed a seven-year-old boy in Syria for swearing while playing soccer with his friends, and a 69-year-old woman in Portugal beat to death with a walking stick an 88-year-old woman with whom she was arguing about a soccer match.^[7][8] A North Korean military official who South Korea’s intelligence agency had reported was executed for corruption was discovered to be alive, and a man in Minnesota received a letter from the I.R.S. informing him that his tax returns could not be processed because he was deceased. “I did not believe it,” he said.^[9][10] It was reported that the portion of organ donors in the United States who died of drug overdoses had increased by half over the past five years, and Budweiser changed the name on its beer cans to “America.”^[11][12]

A teenager in France allegedly livestreamed a video of herself committing suicide because her former boyfriend had raped her, and doctors in the Netherlands euthanized a 20-year-old sexual-abuse victim because of “incurable” psychological damage.^[13][14] A pastor in North Carolina was charged with sexual battery for groping and sticking his tongue in the ear of a woman he was counseling, and Pope Francis formed a commission to study the possibility of allowing female deacons in the Catholic Church.^[15][16] Brazil’s upper house of Congress voted to bring impeachment proceedings against President Dilma Rousseff for manipulating finances in order to conceal the public deficit during her 2014 reelection campaign, Nigeria’s president did not object to a comment by British prime minister David Cameron that called Nigeria one of the most “fantastically corrupt” counties in the world, and it was reported that a Panamanian tanker flying a Nigerian flag washed ashore in Liberia without a crew.^{[17][18][19][20]} A hacker stole the personal information of 100,000 users of an online forum for people who enjoy inserting large objects into their rectums, and a sinkhole swallowed a car in London.^[21][22]

Australian researchers found that five of the Solomon Islands are completely underwater as a result of rising sea levels caused by climate change, and Germany paid citizens to use electricity after generating a surplus of wind and solar power.^[23][24] Researchers in the United States found rat DNA in a portion of the fast-food burgers it tested, and a man in Houston found a dead rodent in a 20-ounce bottle of Dr Pepper his three-year-old son had been drinking.^[25][26] Romanian scientists discovered at least 33 previously unknown species in an underground cave, and botanists in the United Kingdom found that 21 percent of the world’s plants are at risk of extinction.^[27][28] A study reported that air pollution in India kills half a million people each year and costs the country hundreds of billions of dollars, and researchers found that the United States would save $63 billion in healthcare costs if 10 percent of smokers quit. ^[29][30] A mother in Canada left the antivaccination movement after all seven of her children developed whooping cough.^[31] A teacher in Virginia allegedly forced male second graders to stick their heads in a bucket of urine, and a 67-year-old man in New York State was charged with harassment for chasing a mother and child around a dollar store wearing a clown nose and a toilet seat on his head. “Run,” said the man, who had toilet paper in his mouth.^[32][33] In New York City’s Times Square, a Canadian tourist was assaulted by a 24-year-old man who was holding a sign that read “free hugs.”^[34] A 73-year-old man in Massachusetts pled guilty to locking a Verizon worker in an underground vault for parking on his grass, and a Verizon worker who was on strike was run over by a replacement Verizon worker who was driving drunk without a license. “Sorry,” the replacement worker said.^[35][36] A man in New York won the lottery for the second time in four years, it was reported that a woman in North Carolina won the lottery for the second time in three months, and, in Bangladesh, 65 people were struck by lighting.^[37][38][39]

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Correction: An earlier version of this story referenced an article reporting that Saudi Arabia’s King Salman donated to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s election campaign. It has been shown to be false.