Weekly Review

A 15-year-old walked out of Casa Padre, a detention facility for migrant children in Brownsville, Texas that was formerly a Walmart, and has not been seen since.^[1] A French teenager visiting her mother in British Columbia was arrested and detained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection for two weeks at the Tacoma Northwest Detention Center after jogging across the unmarked border into Washington State; U.S. congressman Derek Kilmer attempted to visit the facility but was denied entry because of an outbreak of chicken pox.^[2][3] Melania Trump wore a $39 Zara jacket with the phrase i really don’t care. do u? on the back while boarding a plane to visit New Hope Children’s Shelter, a McAllen, Texas facility that currently houses 55 immigrant minors.^[4][5] “What’s going on in the United States is wrong. . . This is not how we do things in Canada,” said Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, whose country closed its last indigenous residential school in 1996 and has not amended its “safe third country” policy of sending asylum seekers crossing the border back to the United States.^[6][7][8] EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has spent $2,749.62 of taxpayer money on “tactical pants” and “tactical polos.”^[9]

Protesters from the Metro D.C. chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America interrupted Department of Homeland Security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen’s dinner at MXDC Cocina Mexicana in Washington D.C. with chants of “no borders, no walls, sanctuaries for all,” and White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked to leave the Red Hen, a 26-seat farm-to-table restaurant in Virginia, by its owner.^[10][11] Burger King employees in St. Francisville, Louisiana, allegedly told uniformed police attempting to order via a drive-through window that they were “out of burgers.”^[12] On VK, the Russian equivalent of Facebook, Burger King Russia offered any woman impregnated by any World Cup player 3 million rubles and a lifetime of Whoppers; they later deleted the post and apologized.^[13] A 64-year-old civil servant in Kobe, Japan had half a day’s worth of pay docked for leaving three minutes early for lunch 26 times over a seven-month period.^[14]

The Grand Bazaar in Tehran, Iran, was shut down amid protests against the falling value of the rial, the largest protests in the country since 2012.^[15] The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that states can collect sales tax from online retailers even if they have no shops, offices, or warehouses in that state; it has refused to hear a case about redistricting in North Carolina.^[16][17] North Carolina’s House Bill 2, the so-called bathroom bill, has been replaced by House Bill 142, which prevents local governments from passing any new nondiscrimination laws until the end of 2020 and ensures that the state General Assembly is the only public institution permitted to regulate “access to multiple occupancy restrooms, showers, or changing facilities.”^[18][19] An explosion during a rally for Ethiopian prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, in Addis Ababa killed at least two people; Zimbabwean president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, was unwounded while other ZANU-PF party members were harmed by a blast at a campaign rally in Bulawayo; Suraj Patel, who is running for Congress in New York’s Twelfth District, had volunteers create fake profiles on dating apps to help canvass for his campaign; and incumbent Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan won national elections.^{[20][21][22][23]} A black felt bicorn hat dropped by Napoleon Bonaparte at the Battle of Waterloo was sold at auction for more than $400,000 to an anonymous bidder.^[24] While speaking in his hometown of Davao, Filipino president Rodrigo Duterte called god “stupid” and a “son of a bitch” while criticizing the story of Adam and Eve.^[25] “You created something perfect and then you think of an event that would tempt and destroy the quality of your work.”

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