Weekly Review
A Chicago Aviation Department police officer pulled a United Airlines passenger from his seat and forcibly removed him from the plane to make room for an off-duty airline employee; three bodies were tossed from a low-flying plane in the Sinaloa state of Mexico; and Tesla, which has yet to turn a profit, became the most valuable car company in America. Read more...
The U.S. military dropped a 30-foot-long, 21,600-pound munition nicknamed the Mother of All Bombs on a network of Islamic State–held caves and tunnels in Afghanistan, killing 94 people; a convoy of buses carrying Syrians evacuating their homes was bombed by an unknown attacker, killing at least 126 people, including 68 children; and in Cleveland, Ohio, a gunman lethally shot an elderly man, streaming the attack on Facebook Live with the caption “Easter day slaughter.”[1][2][3] Pope Francis prayed that Jesus would help world leaders “prevent the spread of conflicts,” and North Korea launched a test missile that blew up almost immediately, vowing later to begin performing such exercises once a week.[4][5][6] Carter Page, a Trump campaign adviser whose communications with Russia were monitored by the FBI last summer, said that “something may have come up in a conversation” about easing sanctions on Russia during one of his visits there.[7] A Chicago Aviation Department police officer pulled a United Airlines passenger from his seat and forcibly removed him from the plane to make room for an off-duty airline employee; three bodies were tossed from a low-flying plane in the Sinaloa state of Mexico; and Tesla, which has yet to turn a profit, became the most valuable car company in America.[8][9][10]
In Arkansas, a judge temporarily halted plans to execute eight men in the span of 11 days after finding that one of the sedatives in the state’s three-drug lethal-injection protocol, midazolam, could fail to take effect, causing the men to experience what Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor once called “the chemical equivalent of being burned at the stake.”[11][12] Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he would “immediately” discuss bringing back the death penalty to his country.[13][14] In Alabama, Governor Robert J. Bentley resigned and pleaded guilty to charges of misusing campaign contributions to hide a prolonged affair with his senior political adviser, and the state’s new governor, Kay Ivey, signed legislation preventing judges from overruling a jury’s guilty verdict in capital murder cases.[15][16] In Texas, a judge again ruled a voter ID law purposefully suppressed minority votes and Wells Fargo ordered two executives to pay back $75 million for creating a culture that led to the massive creation of bogus bank accounts.[17][18] People, a new study reported, choose fair inequality over unfair equality.[19]
The Trump Administration promoted as its new drug czar Representative Tom Marino, who once called for putting nonviolent drug offenders in a “hospital-slash-prison” setting, and White House press secretary Sean Spicer said that Hitler, unlike Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, never used chemical weapons on his own people, then issued at least four apologies.[20][21] Police found chimpanzees, a baboon, and ostriches among the 33 animals held in private zoos by a colonel in Guinea.[22] In Sri Lanka, a 300-foot-tall garbage dump collapsed, killing at least 28 people and displacing about 600 others.[23][24][25] Researchers announced that Australia’s Great Barrier Reef has reached a “terminal stage” after bleaching caused by climate change, and that one of Saturn’s moons could support aquatic life.[26][27]
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