Weekly Review
Federal judges in Hawaii and Maryland blocked a revised executive order signed by Trump temporarily banning new refugees and immigrants from six Muslim-majority countries, and Trump requested that 46 U.S. attorneys hand in letters of resignation. WikiLeaks published 8,761 leaked CIA documents revealing that the agency had developed tools to hack into phones and cars, and to listen to citizens through their TVs while the devices appeared to be switched off; and Conway said that former president Barack Obama could have spied on Trump through “microwaves that turned into cameras.” Read more...
the magnificent bird of paradise.
The Constitutional Court of South Korea voted unanimously to remove President Park Geun-hye from office, stripping her of immunity from bribery and extortion charges.[1] Thousands of people took to the streets outside the courthouse to hear the decision, and three people were killed after protesters attacked police with flagpoles and ladders. “Sorry,” said Park.[2][3][4] In the United States, legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act was advanced by the House Ways and Means Committee after 18 hours of deliberation, during which time the Republican members of Congress passed around candy and the Democrats proposed calling the legislation the Republican Pay More for Less Care Act.[5][6] “It’s not about branding,” said White House senior counselor Kellyanne Conway, defending the administration’s reported desire not to name the act after Donald Trump, whose name has appeared on lamps, wine, steaks, mattresses, ties, perfumes, bottles of water, and a multilevel-marketing company that claimed to tailor vitamin regimens to customers’ health needs based on samples of their urine. [7] It was reported that Trump had spent 22.8 percent of his time since taking office in Florida, Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari re-emerged after disappearing for seven weeks while on holiday in England, and Brazilian president Michel Temer said ghosts forced him to move out of the 75,000-square-foot presidential palace. “Bad vibes,” he said.[8][9][10]
Federal judges in Hawaii and Maryland blocked a revised executive order signed by Trump temporarily banning new refugees and immigrants from six Muslim-majority countries, and Trump requested that 46 U.S. attorneys hand in letters of resignation.[11][12][13] WikiLeaks published 8,761 leaked CIA documents revealing that the agency had developed tools to hack into phones and cars, and to listen to citizens through their TVs while the devices appeared to be switched off; and Conway said that former president Barack Obama could have spied on Trump through “microwaves that turned into cameras.”[14][15][16] On International Women’s Day, schools were closed in Maryland, North Carolina, and Virginia because teachers requested the day off en masse, dozens of nurseries and children’s centers closed in Australia after women went home early to protest the gender wage gap, and Trump, who has referred to women as “dogs,” “big fat pigs,” and “pieces of ass,” tweeted that he had “tremendous respect” for women.[17][18] It was announced that women visiting prison inmates in Maine would no longer have to remove their bras before entering.[19]
Algae turned a lake in Melbourne, Australia, hot pink; people who ate Peeps-flavored Oreos reported their mouths, tongues, and excrement had turned pink; and officials told residents of a small town in Canada that their tap water, which was contaminated with hot-pink potassium permanganate, was safe for consumption. “They assured me that everything was very good,” said one resident. “It wasn’t going to turn me into Spider-Man.”[20][21][22] A five-foot-long shark’s carcass was found in a shopping cart in a Walmart parking lot in Florida.[23] Legislation was introduced in Maine to require that dogs wear seatbelts, and a team of sled dogs in Alaska reached a checkpoint on the Iditarod race without their musher, who had gone to sleep and fallen out of his sled and arrived an hour later.[24][25] Scientists announced that there is a variety of potato capable of growing on Mars, that music makes curry taste spicier, and that the Mona Lisa is smiling.[26][27][28] An Ohio couple was arrested for faking the wife’s murder in a bathtub using ketchup and texting photos to their friends, and it was reported that a funeral home in Memphis, Tennessee, was offering drive-through viewings of the deceased.[29][30] In Mexico, the town of Tultepec honored 31 people who died in a recent explosion at a fireworks factory by putting on a fireworks show. “Fireworks,” said one resident, “is what we do.”[31][32]
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