Weekly Review
Accusations surfaced that Trump had kissed a former Miss USA contestant, a makeup artist, and a Trump Tower receptionist without their consent; groped a People magazine reporter, a former contestant on his television show, a stranger he was sitting next to at a nightclub, and a stranger sitting next to him in first class on a flight; told a group of 14-year-old girls he would be dating them in “a couple of years”; and entered the dressing rooms of Miss Teen USA contestants while they were changing. Read more...
The American Psychological Association found that more than half of Americans now identify the 2016 presidential election as a source of stress in their lives.[1] It was revealed in leaked emails allegedly stolen by the Russian government that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton told a trade union that she wanted “to defend fracking under the right circumstances” and that environmental activists needed to “get a life.”[2] Campaign staffers for her Republican opponent, Donald Trump, told reporters that last year he had blocked them from investigating whether there was anything incriminating in his past.[3] Accusations surfaced that Trump had kissed a former Miss USA contestant, a makeup artist, and a Trump Tower receptionist without their consent; groped a People magazine reporter, a former contestant on his television show, a stranger he was sitting next to at a nightclub, and a stranger sitting next to him in first class on a flight; told a group of 14-year-old girls he would be dating them in “a couple of years”; and entered the dressing rooms of Miss Teen USA contestants while they were changing.[4] Trump denied the allegations, explaining to a crowd of supporters that one of the accusers “would not be my first choice,” that he “wasn’t impressed” by Clinton’s body, that she was on drugs during the second presidential debate, and that the allegations of sexual assault were a “total setup” by the New York Times. “Carlos Slim,” said Trump, referring to the paper’s largest shareholder, “comes from Mexico.”[5][6][7][8] The value of the peso rose to its highest level in nearly a month.[9]
In North Korea, a missile capable of striking U.S. bases overseas blew up immediately after a test launch, and in North Carolina, a G.O.P. headquarters was firebombed.[10][11] U.S. Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg called NFL players’ protest against police violence and systemic racism “really dumb,” and a man in Florida was sentenced to 20 years in prison for the attempted murder of George Zimmerman, who in 2012 shot and killed Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager.[12][13] A judge in New Mexico declared a mistrial in the proceedings against the two police officers who killed James Boyd, an unarmed homeless man they had opened fire on after they attacked him with a stun grenade and a police dog.[14] A study of the Chicago Police Department found that some officers had more than 100 civilian complaints lodged against them, 20 times more than most of the city’s police accrue in their entire careers.[15] In Kansas, three men were charged with domestic terrorism for conspiring to detonate explosive-filled vehicles outside an apartment complex where Somali immigrants lived.[16] In Iraq, 4,000 Kurdish troops advanced on villages near Mosul, the first phase of the Iraqi government’s effort to reclaim its second-largest city from the Islamic State.[17] In Australia, an inventor developed a device to convert old potatoes into a sustainable substitute for cheese.[18]
Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari told reporters that his wife “belonged to” his kitchen.[19] A man in Canada was arrested for demanding sexual favors from a woman before he would return her lost wallet, the head of a craft-beer-kit company in China was reportedly requiring his female subordinates to line up and kiss him each morning, and a woman in Australia fell to her death from a 14th-floor balcony while trying to climb down the side of a building to escape her Tinder date.[20][21][22] A hospital in Utah billed a woman $39.35 for holding her own baby.[23] Investigators found that a surgeon in Massachusetts accidentally removed a kidney from the wrong patient, and a former mayor in Thailand was given a six-month prison sentence for kicking his doctor in the neck.[24][25] A driver in Newfoundland hit a moose while he was looking across the highway at the wreckage from a vehicle that had also hit a moose.[26] A 24-year-old woman in Florida asked her father for a ride to a job interview at a Fort Lauderdale bank, which she then robbed; a 43-year-old man in New York thought he rescued a dog from a house fire, which police informed him he had hallucinated while high on a mixture of LSD and cough syrup; and, in Houston, a 9-1-1 operator was arrested for hanging up on emergency calls. “Ain’t nobody got time for this,” she told a caller.[27][28][29]
Read the Weekly Review in the Harper’s Magazine app, or sign up to have it delivered to your inbox.
