Weekly Review
“Make no mistake. If Russia pursues its plans, it will be responsible for a catastrophic and needless war of choice,” said U.S. president Joe Biden, who also affirmed he was open to diplomacy and implemented sanctions against Russia and Ukrainian separatists.1 2 An Air Moldova plane flying near the Ukrainian border wrote the word relax with its flight path, and a Ukrainian journalist punched and slapped a pro-Russia politician on the talk show Freedom of Speech.3 4 Qatar, where human trafficking and enslavement of migrant workers is widespread, announced that neither it nor any other single country would have enough natural gas to cover the amount provided by Russia in the event of a war.5 6 More than one hundred people died in Petropolis, Brazil, during a series of catastrophic mudslides and floods caused by record-breaking rainfall, including boat passengers who sank into an overflowing river.7 8 The families of several Sandy Hook shooting victims settled with Remington, the maker of the assault rifle used by the killer, for $73 million; California governor Gavin Newsom proposed a bill, modeled on a Texas abortion law, that would allow Californians to sue manufacturers of assault weapons in order to limit their spread; and the U.S. Justice Department sued Missouri over a law that permits citizens to bring lawsuits against police departments for cases in which their right to bear firearms was violated.9 10 11 “No more just doing whatever you want,” said New York City mayor Eric Adams, after announcing a plan to evict all homeless people sheltering in subway cars.12 In Kansas City, Missouri, homeless shelter employees who were shoveling snow mistook an unhoused man lying outside for trash.13
Citing the disruption of trade and jobs, Justin Trudeau became the first Canadian prime minister to invoke the Emergencies Act, which temporarily suspends certain civil rights in order to restore public order, to halt the trucker convoys across the country; the Emergencies Act’s predecessor, the War Measures Act, was last used during Trudeau’s father’s term, after two Quebecois separatists kidnapped the British trade commissioner James Cross and killed Quebec’s Labour minister, Pierre Laporte.14 15 “His decision was not guided by guilt but by a deep sense of injustice,” said lawyers for Jean-Luc Brunel, a modeling agent accused of rape who also allegedly procured minors for Jeffrey Epstein and other unknown clients, after Brunel was found dead in his prison cell in an apparent suicide.16 17 Prince Andrew, who had previously smeared Virginia Giuffre as a liar, called her brave after he settled a sexual abuse lawsuit she had brought against him for a reported £12 million; the prince also publicly apologized to his daughters and mother, who has since contracted COVID-19.18 19 20 21 “I legally said I want to burn the school in the sense of filing a lawsuit and hiring an attorney,” said a man in Miami who sent a text saying he wanted to burn down his son’s private school after receiving a photo of his son wearing a mask at the school.22 “Go on, my son!” said Jerry Dyer, the founder of the YouTube channel Big Jet TV, over live footage of planes attempting to land during winter storm Eunice at London’s Heathrow Airport.23
A Georgia state employee was indicted for faking two pregnancies, both involving a nonexistent father named Bran Otmembebwe, to receive family leave money.24 A pastor in Pennsylvania threatened to expose six people in his church as witches, and it was reported that a man in California had solicited help from spellcasters to “incapacitate” his wife before he was arrested for her murder.25 26 Disney introduced a plan to build a Disney-designed neighborhood with private homes in Rancho Mirage, California, and a 500-pound bear nicknamed “Hank the Tank” broke into his 28th home in the Lake Tahoe area after repeatedly resisting efforts by law enforcement and Department of Fish and Wildlife employees to subdue him with Tasers, paintballs, and bean bags.27 28 Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that employees will be renamed “Metamates,” and the Thai government clarified that it would not rename Bangkok.30 31 A Maine Department of Transportation helmet was found buried in seaweed on a Norwegian fjord, and a cargo ship transporting Porsches and Volkswagens to customers from Germany to Rhode Island caught fire and was abandoned in the Atlantic Ocean, where it burned for six days.32 33 34—Sara Krolewski
