Weekly Review

The first female secretary of state, Madeleine Albright—a cochair of the Genocide Prevention Task Force who supported the removal of UN peacekeepers in Rwanda, opposed the congressional recognition of the 1915 Armenian genocide, and defended of the deaths of more than half a million Iraqi children—died of cancer, and the flag at the McDonald’s outside the Guantánamo Bay naval base was flown at half-staff in her honor.^{1 2 3 4 5 6 7} A humanitarian truce was declared in Ethiopia, where over 9 million people remain hungry after 17 months of war in the Tigray region.⁸ Azerbaijan violated its 2020 ceasefire agreement with Nagorno-Karabakh and, for the second time this month, prevented gas from flowing to the entire region of ethnic Armenians during sub-zero temperatures.^{9 10 11 12} The Ukrainian defense ministry released the contact information of 620 alleged FSB agents, Credit Suisse stopped seeking new clients in Russia, and Vladimir Putin complained that Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich, and Rachmaninov were victims of cancel culture.^{13 14 15} “If everybody burns bridges with Russia then who is going to talk to them at the end of the day?” asked a spokesman for Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, whose foreign minister has voiced his support for sanctioned Russian oligarchs touring or investing in Turkey.^{16 17} It was reported that Virginia Thomas, wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, had sent 29 text messages urging then White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, and two former soldiers in Germany who claimed that a fortune-teller had instructed them to interfere in the conflict in Yemen were charged with attempting to form a terrorist organization.^{18 19}

The governor of Florida signed into law the Parental Rights in Education bill, which prohibits classroom discussion of gender identity and sexual orientation, the governor of Idaho signed into law a bill that will ban most abortions after six weeks and will be enforced through private lawsuits, and the governor of South Dakota signed into law a bill she has touted as banning critical race theory, but the text makes no mention of the conceptual framework and instead prohibits seven “divisive concepts” in university orientation materials and training that could cause racial “discomfort.”^{20 21 22} During Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings, the judge was asked if she thought babies could be racist by Senator Ted Cruz, her former classmate and debate team member; to provide a definition of the word “woman” by Senator Marsha Blackburn, who preferred to be called “congressman” during her tenure in the House of Representatives; and to rate her Christian faithfulness on a scale of 1 to 10 by Senator Lindsey Graham, who once said that he would not tolerate “a national religion.”^{23 24 25 26 27} The family of a man who was cremated against their wishes filed a lawsuit against a funeral home in Little Rock, Arkansas, on the grounds that he is now ineligible to be raptured, and a 37-ton memorial emblazoned with the word king that features a solar-powered jukebox was constructed without permission in Shiregreen cemetery in Sheffield, England.^{28 29} “Load me up with kidneys, as I want to live longer,” said a man in the United Kingdom with four kidneys.³⁰

A 21-year-old woman who tweeted “I’m the best drunk driver ever” was charged with a DUI and the third-degree murder of two police troopers and a pedestrian.³¹ A new type of ink was introduced to endoscopic tattooing, making it easier for doctors to identify polyps and tumors.^{32 33} The Duke of Cambridge expressed his “profound sorrow” about his family’s involvement in the slave trade.³⁴ Lollapalooza announced that David “D-sol” Solomon, the 60-year-old CEO of Goldman Sachs, will perform at its music festival.³⁵ “I think that some families will suffer unjustly as a result of this law, and I think that we’re going to see increasing calls in the years to come for this law to be revisited,” said a member of the group Be Reasonable, which opposes a new Welsh law that prohibits smacking children.³⁶ Scientists who deciphered a 3,000-year-old tablet found that it read “Cursed, cursed, cursed—cursed by the God YHW. You will die cursed. Cursed you will surely die. Cursed by YHW—cursed, cursed, cursed.”³⁷ —Marlene Khamis