Weekly Review

A video emerged in which Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump bragged about being able to “grab them by the pussy,” referring to women, without consequence because he is a celebrity.^[1] “I’ve never said I am a perfect person,” Trump said in a video response.^[2] Speaker of the House Paul Ryan uninvited Trump to a campaign event in his home state of Wisconsin, and Trump held a surprise news conference featuring three women who had previously accused former president Bill Clinton of either sexual assault or harassment, along with a rape victim whose attacker was a former court-appointed client of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.^[3][4] Hours later, during the second presidential debate, the first ever to be aired on Iranian television, Trump announced that should he become president he would appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Clinton’s use of a private email server while Secretary of State.^[5][6] Excerpts of paid speeches that Clinton delivered to Wall Street executives but refused to make public were uploaded anonymously to WikiLeaks, including comments about the need for politicians to have “both a public and a private position.”^[7] The White House accused Russia of using cyber attacks in an attempt to interfere in the presidential election, and U.K. ministers were banned from wearing Apple Watches in cabinet meetings over fears that the devices’ microphones could be used by Russian hackers to eavesdrop.^[8][9] Geologists in Russia reported that the disputed Crimean Peninsula, annexed from Ukraine in 2014, is moving toward their country at a rate of 2.9 millimeters per year, and will reach the mainland in 1.5 million years.^[10]

Russian president Vladimir Putin, who turned 64, received 450 birthday roses from his country’s parliament and was awarded a Venezuelan peace prize created in honor of former president Hugo Chávez.^[11][12] Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to end the decades-long conflict with a leftist rebel group, five days after his proposed peace deal was rejected in a national referendum.^[13] Civil War–era cannonballs washed up on a South Carolina beach in the wake of Hurricane Matthew, a category-four storm that left 1.2 million people without power and killed 22 residents of the southeastern United States.^[14][15] The hurricane killed more than 1,000 people in Haiti, and a U.S. meteorologist apologized for saying that hungry children eating trees was one of the causes of the island nation’s deforestation.^[16][17] Saudi Arabia said it “regretted” but did not take blame for an air strike in Yemen that killed 142 funeral attendees, South Sudanese rebels killed 21 civilians in an ambush on several trucks, and Israel refused to guarantee that Irish passports would not be used by the Israeli secret service in future assassination attempts.^[18][19][20] The value of the British pound dropped 6.1 percent against the dollar in just two minutes, and vending machines in Australia rejected new five-dollar notes designed to thwart counterfeiters.^[21][22] A Syrian refugee suspected of planning a terrorist attack in Germany was captured by fellow Syrians, who invited him back to their apartment, tied him up, and alerted the police through social media.^[23] The Islamic State’s Central Fatwa Committee issued a decree prohibiting the breeding of cats indoors.^[24]

Oklahoma governor Mary Fallin announced that she would amend the executive proclamation that created Oilfield Prayer Day, inviting people of all faiths, not just Christians, to pray for the oil and natural-gas industries.^[25] The Shiyan Lake Ecologic Park in China unveiled its “exciting and adventurous” glass-walled bathrooms, and a public restroom in Virginia was consumed by a sinkhole.^[26][27] Officials in Indiana asked motorists for heightened caution during deer-mating season, and snake catchers in Australia observed a rare snake orgy in an empty pool.^[28][29] In Germany, the seven-year hunt for the person responsible for slashing inflatable backyard pools ended with the arrest of a 27-year-old man, whose apartment also contained multiple inflatable mattresses. “We cannot rule out that the man has some kind of fetish,” said a police spokesman.^[30] A Dutch tourist was sentenced to three months of hard labor in Myanmar after unplugging an amplifier that was broadcasting Buddhist chants because it was disrupting his sleep, and nine Australians were deported from Malaysia for publicly stripping down to their underwear, which bore the country’s national flag.^[31][32] A woman suffering from Rapunzel syndrome had a four-by-six-inch ball of her own hair cut out of her stomach.^[33] The world’s oldest living man, a Holocaust survivor, celebrated his bar mitzvah at age 113, and scientists concluded that humans will never live past 125. “At some point,” said one of the researchers, “everything goes wrong.”^[34][35]

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