Weekly Review

Travis McMichael, Gregory McMichael, and William Bryan, the three white men who chased and killed Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old black man, in Brunswick, Georgia, were found guilty of murder.¹ Malikah Shabazz, a daughter of Malcolm X and Betty Shabazz, was found dead at her Brooklyn home less than a week after two men found guilty of assassinating her father were freed from prison.^{2 3} After serving 43 years of a life sentence, Kevin Strickland was exonerated without DNA evidence, which disqualified him from compensation.⁴ In Canada, militarized police raided a camp intended to block construction of the 400-mile Coastal GasLink pipeline on sovereign Wet’suwet’en land.⁵ “Now is the time for us all to step up, work together, and do everything we can to stop these gangs who are getting away with murder,” British prime minister Boris Johnson said after 27 migrants drowned in the English Channel.^{6 7} “Believe me, the English will not have a magic Christmas,” said Jean Michel Fournier, a French fisherman who helped form a blockade at the port of Calais to prevent trade until the two countries sort out their post-Brexit fishing licensing.⁸ “We’ll ruin the party.” British health officials said that the third identified patient with the omicron variant of the coronavirus had left the country, though he spent some time in Westminster first.^{9 10}

The Philippine government attempted to block Maria Ressa, a journalist and critic of President Rodrigo Duterte, from accepting this year’s Nobel Peace Prize in person, and two years after accepting his prize in Oslo, the Ethiopian prime minister Abiy Ahmed, whose armed forces have been accused of massacres, ethnic cleansing, and sexual assault, announced that he would personally join the front lines of the country’s escalating civil wars.^{11 12 13} Biden announced that the United States will attempt to reduce energy prices by releasing 50 million barrels of crude oil, and Quebec Maple Syrup Producers declared that it would release roughly 50 million pounds of maple syrup from its reserves.^{14 15} Three people were killed and eight were injured in Black Friday-related confrontations, the same day that protesters with the climate activist group Extinction Rebellion blocked 13 Amazon depots.^{16 17} “It just wipes out everything underneath it,” said David Coyle, an invasive species expert, referring to the Bradford pear tree, the sale and trade of which South Carolina began the process of banning after the trees’ long tenure in American suburbia.¹⁸ A federal jury in Ohio found CVS, Walgreens, and Walmart liable for contributing to the opioid crisis by selling and dispensing large quantities of prescription pain pills, some of which were later resold illegally.¹⁹ “I highly suggest anybody that picked up cash out here—it’s not your cash, so turn it in immediately,” said a police sergeant in California after an armored car dropped money all over Interstate 5.²⁰

To curb derivative fashion choices among North Koreans, Kim Jong-un allegedly banned leather coats.²¹ Helen Fioratti, a New York art dealer, discovered that the surface of her coffee table was a mosaic from one of Caligula’s party ships.²² The trial of Ghislaine Maxwell began after one juror arrived late and two others forgot to show up; one claimed that her husband surprised her with a vacation.^{23 24} On a flight from Syracuse to Atlanta, a woman allegedly refused to stop breastfeeding her cat.²⁵—Sam Needleman