Weekly Review
Nineteen students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, were murdered and at least 17 others were wounded by an 18-year-old armed with an AR-15 style rifle manufactured by Daniel Defense, a company that aggressively targets the youth market and has used photographs of children in its advertisements.1 2 Two fourth-grade classes were trapped in adjoining classrooms with the shooter for 78 minutes; officers from the Uvalde police department, which received funding to equip every officer with level 4 body armor to stop rifle rounds in 2018, waited for over an hour to enter.3 4 5 6 A team of U.S. Border Patrol agents, who were 40 minutes away from the school, were called in and led the assault that killed the gunman.7 8 “They could’ve been shot,” said a Texas Department of Public Safety lieutenant, referring to the Uvalde police, whose officers stationed outside the school during the massacre tackled, tasered, and handcuffed parents and onlookers for intervening in an active investigation.9 10 After issuing and retracting conflicting details of the shooting, Uvalde police have ceased cooperating with outside investigators.11 At least 15 other mass shootings—which are defined as an incident in which at least four people, not including the shooter, are shot—have transpired since the Uvalde massacre, claiming the lives of eight and wounding 55 others.12 It was reported that a retired federal agent regularly communicated with the white supremacist who killed 10 black people at a Buffalo, New York, supermarket, and is now under investigation for having known the details of the shooting 30 minutes before it happened, and in Kansas City, Missouri, highway patrol officers shot a pregnant black woman multiple times for failing to lie on her stomach even after she explained that she could not comply because she was pregnant.13 14 “Now I’m getting angry again. That to me is unbelievable,” said Dan Hils, the president of Cincinnati’s Fraternal Order of Police, of a painting at the Cincinnati Art Museum that depicts Piglet, dressed as a cop, pointing a gun at Winnie the Pooh, who is handcuffed and lying in a pool of blood.15 “I’m taking advantage of my freedom of speech and saying take that down.”
New video evidence corroborated assertions that the journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was killed in a targeted attack by Israeli forces, and during the annual Flag March through Jerusalem’s Old City, thousands chanted, “Death to Arabs” and “Shireen is dead.”16 17 18 Iranian intelligence officials offered an Instagram content moderator up to $10,700 to remove the accounts of journalists and activists amid antigovernment protests.19 In Paris, the former director of the Louvre was charged with complicity in concealing the origins of artifacts that were likely smuggled out of Egypt during the Arab Spring, and a bewigged man in a wheelchair smeared cake on the Mona Lisa after failing to break its bulletproof glass.20 21 An Indian man was sentenced to 10 years in prison for leading his wife to suicide after having abused her because he was unhappy with the car he received as a dowry.22 Russia cut off its natural gas supplies to Finland.23 Bubs, an Australian company, stated it would send the United States the equivalent of 27.5 million 8-ounce bottles of baby formula, including one made from goat’s milk, to address the shortage.24 A Kenyan law that requires all pacifiers, bottles, and breast milk substitutes to include disclaimers on their packaging, such as warning: use of teats can interfere with breastfeeding in order to encourage breastfeeding, went into effect.25 The newly appointed president of the Italian Conference of Bishops announced he would launch an independent investigation into sex abuse by Catholic clergy in the country over the past 20 years.26 “The roadway was then cleared of all hot dog debris,” said a Pennsylvania state police officer in the wake of a crash involving a tractor trailer carrying 15,000 pounds of hot dog filler.27
Billy Gannon, a councillor in Pembrocke Dock, Wales, resigned after being dogged by rumors that he is Banksy.28 “What I’m being asked to do is not to prove who I am. I’m being asked to prove who I am not, and the person that I am not may not exist,” said Gannon. “I mean, how am I supposed to prove that I’m not somebody who doesn’t exist? Just how do you do that?” “Yeah, that happened,” said Joc Pederson of the San Francisco Giants, who was slapped by Tommy Pham of the Cincinnati Reds for allegedly cheating in their fantasy football league.29 Following a campaign led by eighth graders, Elizabeth Johnson Jr., who was condemned but not executed for witchcraft, became the last victim of the Salem witch hunt to be pardoned.30 31 Spain’s left-wing coalition proposed a customer service bill that would require companies to have actual people, not simply an automated menu, to answer callers.32 In response to legal action by the treasure hunters Finders Keepers USA, the FBI made public a geophysical survey it commissioned of a site in Pennsylvania that could support claims of long-lost gold there, and a study funded by a CBD supplement company found that dog separation anxiety has increased over 700 percent in the past two years.33 34 Scientists discovered a planet that is constantly in flames.35 —Marlene Khamis
