Amnesty International became the third and largest human rights organization to accuse Israel of creating an apartheid system against Palestinians within its borders and occupied territories.1 2 “Yay,” said the White House press secretary Jen Psaki after confirming that Joe Biden, who repeatedly spoke out against apartheid in South Africa, supported American Olympic athletes’ right to peacefully protest in China.3 The ISIS leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, who was among those responsible for the 2014 genocide against the Yazidi people of Iraq, detonated a bomb that killed him and his family, including six women and four children, during a U.S. raid.4 “It is not my job to see who is bad and who is not,” said an Uzbek man who offers high-quality fake passports to people with connections to the Islamic State, at least 10 of whose clients were confirmed to have successfully flown out of Istanbul’s airport.5 Twelve Syrian migrants were found frozen to death crossing between Turkey and Greece, and the Turkish government announced the deportations of four Iranian refugees who had participated in a protest of President Erdoğan’s withdrawal from a treaty aimed at preventing domestic abuse.6 7 A pregnant journalist who was denied entry to her home country of New Zealand turned to the Taliban for help and was offered a safe haven in Afghanistan, where six women’s rights activists remain missing.8 In Lausanne, Switzerland, a woman was appointed to the city’s night watch for the first time in the position’s 600-year history.9
Rotterdam city officials agreed to, then said they would consider, the temporary dismantlement of a 95-year-old bridge in order to allow passage for Jeff Bezos’s yacht.10 It was reported that Amazon has failed to remove from its platform a food preservative that was traced to at least 10 deaths by suicide, and that its algorithm has begun suggesting other products frequently purchased along with the chemical to prospective buyers; the company announced that its Prime yearly/annual membership price would be increased 17 percent.11 12 Ottawa declared a state of emergency in response to the “Freedom Convoy” movement, which began as a protest against COVID-19 vaccine mandates for truckers and expanded to encompass criticisms of Justin Trudeau’s leadership, as thousands of truckers blocked roads in the nation’s capital and sounded their rigs’ horns nonstop.13 14 “Tooting a horn is not an expression of any great thought I’m aware of,” said a judge who banned the practice for 10 days.15 Los Angeles’s mayor, Eric Garcetti, claimed there was no chance of infection if he held his breath while taking photos without a mask, and New Jersey governor Phil Murphy announced that, effective the second week of March, statewide mask mandates in schools would be eliminated in a move toward “some semblance of normalcy.”16 17 “There are a small number of voices, whether they are people who were ardent supporters of remain, who see this as their last opportunity to reverse Brexit,” said the U.K.’s secretary of state for digital, culture, media and sport Nadine Dorries of a report detailing Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s multiple violations of lockdown rules, which included an ABBA-themed party at his residence.18 19 In the House of Commons, Johnson accused the Labour Party leader and former U.K. director of public prosecutions Keir Starmer of protecting Jimmy Savile, a television personality and serial sexual abuser, from legal action.20 Meta announced it would introduce mandatory distances between digital avatars in the metaverse.21
“I want my own car. I don’t want to have to give it back in three years,” said a 19-year-old who rejected an offer to take down a Twitter account that tracks Elon Musk’s flights in exchange for a Tesla Model 3 subscription; the teenager previously declined an offer of $5,000 from Tesla’s CEO.22 The Department of Homeland Security announced that it is testing headless 100-pound robot dogs to patrol areas along the U.S.-Mexico border that “aren’t desirable for human beings and vehicles.”23 A Las Vegas man accused of intentionally driving on the wrong side of a major beltway said that the ghost of NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt Sr. had instructed him to do so.24 For the second time, a Michigan man illegally parked his Chevy Tahoe in front of the U.S. Supreme Court.25 “Apparently, the answer to ‘Why did the chicken cross the road?’ is to get to the Pentagon,” wrote the Animal Welfare League of Arlington after they were called to pick up a hen that wandered into a security checkpoint and was taken into custody at the Pentagon.26 27 A new study found that words are required to think about numbers.28—Marlene Khamis
