Weekly Review

During an interview at Trump Turnberry, a golf resort that has not turned a profit since Donald Trump assumed ownership, the US president stated that the European Union was a “foe” and Russia a “foe in certain respects,” and that he “hadn’t thought” about asking Russian president Vladimir Putin about extraditing to the United States 12 Russian military officers, one of whom operated under the username Guccifer 2.0, for their role in the hacking and distribution of Democratic National Committee emails during the 2016 presidential campaign, which occurred “on or about” the date that then-presidential nominee Trump publicly suggested that hackers should try to find “the 30,000 missing emails” from his opponent’s private email server.^[1][2][3] At a joint summit in Helsinki held the day after the interview, Putin suggested that US and Russian investigators work together to improve US cybersecurity, and Trump said that he holds “both countries responsible. I think the United States has been foolish. I think we’ve all been foolish.”^[4] At press events during a NATO conference in Belgium, Trump exaggerated the portion of NATO funding that is provided by the United States by almost 500 percent, took credit for NATO military spending increases that member countries agreed to in 2014, and described a speech by French president Emmanuel Macron as “beautiful” but admitted that he had no idea what Macron was saying.^[5][6] Trump’s chief of staff, John Kelly, who also attended the talks, was “displeased” by an early meeting “because he was expecting a full breakfast and there were only pastries and cheese.”^[7] The US Embassy advised Americans in London to “keep a low profile” during Trump’s state visit to the UK.^[8]

A 75-year-old man currently serving life in prison for two murders announced his run for US Senate in Minnesota, a state that only forbids inmates from running for state-level offices; and a Republican congressional candidate in California, who stated on a radio show that his campaign is dedicated to exposing the Holocaust as a fiction, distanced himself from robocalls about the “Jewish takeover of America” made on his behalf.^[9][10] A white woman in Memphis, Tennessee, was fired for calling the police on a black man who was wearing socks while swimming in a pool; police in Ohio pulled over an 11-year-old black boy who was delivering newspapers on his route; a police officer was filmed passively observing the abuse of a woman who was labeled “not an American” for wearing a shirt bearing the flag of Puerto Rico, which has been a territory of the United States since March 2, 1917; and protesters in Chicago clashed with police after a white officer shot and killed a black man.^{[11][12][13][14]} Video was released that showed police officers in Georgia using a smartphone coin-flip app to decide whether or not to arrest a woman who was pulled over for speeding; and a congressman in Arizona told police he was allowed to break the speed limit because of his “immunity as a government official.”^[15][16] A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by the family of an unarmed black man fatally shot by an Ohio police officer because the victim’s civil rights had not been violated, and a federal court ruled that Transportation Security Administration agents cannot be sued by passengers for abusing them during searches because they are more akin to meat inspections than law enforcement.^[17][18] The US government missed its deadline to reunify all 98 immigrant children under five years old with parents from whom they were separated at the border, and a “spiritual adviser” to President Trump said that Jesus “would not have been our Messiah” if he had broken immigration laws.^[19][20]

A woman and her mechanic died from carbon monoxide poisoning while having intercourse inside a car that was running in her garage, and a woman was found alive in her car seven days after it plunged 200 feet off a cliff in Big Sur, California.^[21][22] Scientists isolated a “ghost particle,” a subatomic particle that can travel through solid matter, inside a cubic kilometer of ice in Antarctica.^[23] Thirty-three people have been evacuated from a seaside village in Greenland because of an 11-million-ton iceberg got close to shore.^[24] Studies revealed that rats were depriving coral reefs of bird droppings; and, as they were being transported to a new wildlife reserve in Kenya, eight endangered black rhinos died.^[25][26] A jaguar escaped its enclosure at a New Orleans zoo and killed four alpacas, an emu, and a fox; a mob in Indonesia slaughtered nearly three hundred crocodiles at an animal sanctuary after a man was killed near the reptiles’ breeding pond; and a family of woodchucks ate the wiring in US House Speaker Paul Ryan’s car, rendering it useless.^[27][28][29] A new study found that penis size does not matter to mice.^[30]—Matthew Hickey