On the 16th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the smaller but more powerful Hurricane Ida made landfall in Louisiana.1 After the Category 4 storm knocked out power across New Orleans and flattened a landmark building known as Louis Armstrong’s second home, the National Weather Service warned that parts of New Orleans and Baton Rouge could be without electricity for weeks, and the Yale Climate Connections group projected that the storm would disrupt dozens of petrochemical sites and at least three ports that export up to 70 percent of the country’s grain.2 In Afghanistan, the Taliban vowed to fight climate change, and in retaliation for a suicide bombing that killed at least 182 people and interrupted evacuation at the Kabul airport, President Biden ordered drone strikes that killed two members of the Islamic State Khorasan as well as multiple civilians, including seven children.3 The Justice Department announced that it would temporarily close the jail where Jeffrey Epstein died, and Judicial Watch, a conservative activist group that spread falsehoods about inactive voters’ votes being counted in the 2020 presidential election, released emails obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request showing that Major Biden had bit more members of the Secret Service than previously disclosed; the dog was the second presidential German shepherd named Major to be removed from the White House, after Franklin D. Roosevelt’s dog bit both British prime minister Ramsay MacDonald and Hattie Wyatt Caraway, the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate.4 5 “At the current rate an Agent or Officer has been bitten every day this week,” read one of the emails. After seeing a report of a dog bite, an agent asked, “Was it Major?” Another agent responded, “Minor. Did break the skin.” The first agent then explained that he was referring to the dog, to which the second agent responded, “Dog: Major. Injury: Minor.”
Vice President Kamala Harris’s announcement that the United States would donate one million additional coronavirus vaccines to Vietnam was delayed by three hours because of reports of Havana syndrome in the country; amid the delay, China declared that it would donate two million doses.6 Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador apologized for the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire in 1521, and India’s Supreme Court ruled that yearly income alone could not identify those living within the “creamy layer.”7 8 Citing decorum, Dade Phelan, the speaker of the Texas House, banned the word “racism” from a discussion of a voting-rights bill, and “fuck” overtook “bloody” as the most-used profanity in the United Kingdom.9 10 A pastor in Zambia died after his congregants buried him alive as he tried to emulate Jesus’ resurrection, and the governor of Mississippi, who prevented unemployed residents of his state from collecting $300 a week from the federal government, said that Southerners’ lack of vigilance against COVID-19 is influenced by belief in eternal life.11 12 A self-driving bus in Tokyo hit a visually impaired athlete, forcing him to withdraw from the Paralympic Games.13 Harvard University’s new chaplain is an atheist.14
In Argentina, a group of 130-pound rodents invaded the country’s most famous gated community, tearing up lawns and causing traffic accidents.15 The attorney general of South Dakota was fined but given no jail time after he fatally struck a pedestrian with such force that shards of the man’s glasses pierced the car’s windshield and landed in the back seat.16 “He hasn’t met anyone who hasn’t seen his genitalia,” said a lawyer for the man who, as a baby, appeared naked on the cover of Nirvana’s album Nevermind.17 A petition in Wales asked the Senedd to consider adding a penis to the dragon on the nation’s flag, arguing that such an inclusion on royal insignia would help the flag fly for “centuries to come.”18 Forty-three-year-old David Werking successfully sued his parents, who, after housing him for 10 months after his divorce, threw out the collection of porn he had left behind because it was too heavy to ship; an outside expert, Dr. Victoria Hartmann, appraised the collection at $30,000.19—Cameron French
