Weekly Review
Hackers took control of a digital billboard in Jakarta and played a pornographic film, a church in Western Australia had its windows broken by a gang of children between the ages of four and eight who were armed with small rocks, and a Pittsburgh man was given 30 days to catch a wild rooster on his property before being penalized by the city. “I called the zoo,” the man said in court, “but they said they didn’t have the capabilities to catch a rooster.” Read more...
U.S. presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump debated each other at Hofstra University in New York. During the debate, Trump stated that not paying income tax makes him “smart” and speculated that the recent hack of the Democratic National Committee may have been perpetrated by “somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds.”[1] A poll found that 53 percent of Americans thought Clinton won the debate.[2] Congress voted to override President Barack Obama’s veto of a bill that will allow American victims of terrorist attacks to sue complicit foreign governments; the White House announced the United States would be sending 615 additional ground troops into Iraq; and the state of Texas pulled out of the federal Refugee Resettlement Program.[3][4][5] In South Carolina, a 14-year-old boy killed his father and then shot two students and a teacher at an elementary school playground, and in California, police shot and killed Alfred Olango, an unarmed black man who was holding a vape device.[6][7] It was reported that police officers use confidential databases to look up personal information on co-workers, celebrities, and their significant others.[8][9] In the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte likened himself to Adolf Hitler while addressing his plan for the country’s estimated 3 million drug users. “I’d be happy to slaughter them,” he said.[10]
A New Jersey Transit train derailed and crashed in the Hoboken Terminal, killing one woman waiting on the platform and injuring 108 other people; Dutch-led investigators concluded that the missile system that shot down Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over Ukraine was brought into the country from Russia and returned the same night; and a Russian company debuted a new model of children’s bed in the shape of a Buk missile launcher as part of its Future Defenders of the Motherland product line.[11][12][13] The United States abandoned talks with Russia over Syria after Russia refused to end the bombing of Aleppo, and the Syrian government attempted to attract tourists to the city with a new advertisement featuring music from Game of Thrones.[14][15][16] Colombian voters rejected a peace agreement between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia that would have ended a 52-year-long war in which about 220,000 people have died; the International Criminal Court declared the destruction of antiquities to be a war crime; and a French civil servant sued his government over the right to smile in passport photos.[17][18][19][20]
Hackers took control of a digital billboard in Jakarta and played a pornographic film, a church in Western Australia had its windows broken by a gang of children between the ages of four and eight who were armed with small rocks, and a Pittsburgh man was given 30 days to catch a wild rooster on his property before being penalized by the city. “I called the zoo,” the man said in court, “but they said they didn’t have the capabilities to catch a rooster.”[21][22][23] Forty-six French cows broke out of their pen and 22 ate themselves to death in a food store, and a Memphis woman returned home to find two burglars having sex on her couch. “They just had a big old nasty party,” she said.[24][25] The Bureau of Land Management replaced a Utah trail marker that said “Negro Bill” with one saying “Grandstaff Trailhead,” and the Fairbanks, Alaska, school board proposed changing the name of an elementary school memorializing a pedophile nicknamed the “Strawberry King.”[26][27] A 68-year-old Florida millionaire discovered that his 24-year-old wife was his biological granddaughter.[28] Eight employees fired for abuse at a Colorado center for the disabled blamed supernatural powers when residents were found with words like “kill” and “die” etched into their skin.[29] An elderly, legally blind hoarder in Brooklyn discovered that she had been living with the decomposing corpse of her son for 20 years, and doctors speculated that a Utah man may have contracted the Zika virus from his dying father’s tears.[30][31] The Rosetta space probe flew into a comet after completing a successful 12-year mission, and, in Reykjavik, city officials turned off all street lights to improve the view of the northern lights.[32]
