Weekly Review
Fox News prime-time host Bill O’Reilly, who once attributed the rape and murder of a woman to the fact that she was “wearing a miniskirt and a halter top” and has said that the slaves who were forced to build the White House were “well-fed,” was fired from the network and given a $25 million severance package after it was reported that he had settled five sexual-harassment lawsuits since 2002 and had referred to an African-American colleague as “hot chocolate” and grunted at her when he walked past her desk.Researchers in California announced that they had genetically modified a wasp to have “big beautiful red eyes.” Read more...
the magnificent bird of paradise.
A man associated with the Islamic State opened fire on the Champs-Élysées in Paris, fatally shooting a police officer and injuring three bystanders.[1] More than 60,000 soldiers and police officers were deployed to polling stations across France as citizens voted in the first round of the country’s presidential election, whose top two finishers were Emmanuel Macron, a former investment banker, and Marine Le Pen, the far-right leader of the National Front, who has called for an immediate suspension of immigration.[2] British prime minister Theresa May announced a surprise election to be held in June “to make a success” of the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union, Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta canceled his party’s election primaries because of a ballot shortage, and a village in Illinois elected a new mayor by coin toss.[3][4][5] U.S. attorney general Jeff Sessions said he wanted to “put some people in jail” and confirmed that the Department of Justice was seeking to arrest the founder of WikiLeaks, a website President Donald Trump referred to as “good reading” that he does not “support or unsupport.”[6][7] It was reported that an American aircraft carrier the Trump Administration had claimed was “steaming into” the Korean Peninsula had in fact been thousands of miles away, heading in the opposite direction; North Korean officials called the carrier a “gross animal” that they were “ready to sink”; and American nuclear researchers monitoring satellite images of North Korea’s Punggye-ri Nuclear Test Facility detected three simultaneous games of volleyball being played at the site. “To have three,” said an analyst, “is quite unusual.”[8][9][10]
In Canada, it was reported that an excess of meltwater from the 15,000-square-mile Kaskawulsh Glacier in the Yukon Territory caused a river to reverse direction for the first time in modern history, and more than five times the average number of icebergs appeared off the coast of Newfoundland, covering an area of nearly one square mile.[11][12] In India, it was reported that 4,620 people have died in the past four years because of severe heat waves linked to climate change, and the suburb of Palam reached 113 degrees Fahrenheit, its hottest recorded temperature in April in a decade.[13][14] Tens of thousands of people marched to promote science in cities across the world, and Trump issued an Earth Day statement in which he did not mention climate change.[15][16] Scientists discovered that women who reside close to nature live longer than those who don’t, that injecting old mice with the blood of human babies improves their brain function, and that East African hairless mole rats can live without oxygen for 18 minutes.[17][18][19] Fox News prime-time host Bill O’Reilly, who once attributed the rape and murder of a woman to the fact that she was “wearing a miniskirt and a halter top” and has said that the slaves who were forced to build the White House were “well-fed,” was fired from the network and given a $25 million severance package after it was reported that he had settled five sexual-harassment lawsuits since 2002 and had referred to an African-American colleague as “hot chocolate” and grunted at her when he walked past her desk.[20][21][22] Researchers in California announced that they had genetically modified a wasp to have “big beautiful red eyes.”[23]
A man in New York City filed a lawsuit against the dating app Grindr, alleging that fake accounts created in his name had brought 1,100 suitors to his home and workplace in the past six months. “It’s a living hell,” he said.[24] A professional tennis match in Florida was stopped because of loud moaning noises emanating from a nearby apartment, and a new law was passed in Michigan making it illegal for undercover police officers to have sex with prostitutes. “They’re certainly not trained in it,” said the bill’s sponsor.[25] A seven-year-old boy in China was injured after trying to jump from the tenth floor of a building while using an umbrella as a parachute, a 12-year-old boy was stopped in Australia after he had driven a car more than 800 miles in an attempt to cross the country, and a three-month-old baby in England was interviewed at the American Embassy in London after his grandfather mistakenly indicated on a visa-waiver form that the baby would be flying to Florida to participate in terrorist activities. “He has obviously never engaged in genocide,” said the infant’s mother.[26][27] [28] It was reported that a dentist in Alaska had removed a patient’s tooth while riding a hoverboard, and Russian officials posted a video demonstrating that a robot with the capacity to drive a car, weld, and use saws can now also shoot pistols with both of its hands. “We are not,” said the deputy prime minister, “creating a Terminator.”[29][30]
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