Weekly Review

A man who stabbed Salman Rushdie in western New York pleaded not guilty.^{1 2} “In this case, we don’t blame or condemn anyone except Salman Rushdie and his supporters,” said an Iran Foreign Ministry spokesman.³ In two consecutive bombardments of the West Bank and one of Gaza, the Israeli military killed a total of 49 Palestinians, including 18 children.^{4 5 6} In Chicago, a city anticipating a $127.9 million budget deficit in 2023, the police announced that construction will soon begin on a $33 million training center with a replica city block and simulated emergency scenarios, while Thomas Robertson, a cop from Virginia, was sentenced to more than seven years in prison for calling for an “open armed rebellion” at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.^{7 8 9} “Nobody was more surprised than me that I was able to walk unimpeded directly to the Capitol,” Robertson wrote in a letter to the judge.¹⁰ The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees tally of people displaced by the drought in Somalia reached 1 million, and as Europe’s rivers continued to dry up after a summer of record-setting temperatures, it was reported that the Arctic is heating roughly four times faster than the planet as a whole.^{11 12 13 14}

“What can I do to reduce the heat?” former President Trump reportedly wanted to ask Attorney General Merrick Garland the day before the search warrant for Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home was unsealed.^{15 16} “I just learned Merrick Garland is a Jew,” tweeted Steve King, a former congressman from Iowa, in the wake of the search-warrant fracas.¹⁷ “Therefore, I withdraw my previous criticism of him. I cannot withstand another wave of charges of anti-Semitism.” “I’ve had enough for everybody,” said a middle school librarian who is suing two men, one of whom is the administrator of the Facebook group Bayou State of Mind, for defamation after they authored multiple memes and posts alleging that she kept sexually explicit books in her collection.^{18 19} The Southern Baptist Convention announced that it would cooperate with a Justice Department investigation into sexual abuse.²⁰ It was reported that San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins, who replaced the progressive Chesa Boudin after he was recalled in June, earned over $100,000 as a consultant for the nonprofit that organized the recall campaign, and that OnlyFans, a subscription pornography website, attempted to defeat its competition by bribing Meta employees to place rival porn stars on a terrorist watchlist.^{21 22 23} The International Atomic Energy Agency urged Russia and Ukraine to cease fighting near Zaporizhzhia, the largest nuclear power plant in Europe.²⁴ “It’s just not been a priority over there, unfortunately, and I hope it will become one with the new revelations,” said Marco Rubio of the Biden Administration’s failure to regulate TikTok.²⁵

“Guys, that’s $20 for crudité, and this doesn’t include the tequila!” said Mehmet Oz in a promotional video for his Senate campaign that was shot at a grocery store he misidentified as “Wegners.”²⁶ “Man, he went right down the hatch,” said Doug Ford, the premier of Ontario, after swallowing a bee during a speech about privatizing healthcare in Canada.²⁷ A judge banned Shawn Parcells, who was convicted in November of performing illegal autopsies, from doing business in his home state of Kansas.²⁸ A state-sanctioned hunt for invasive Burmese pythons kicked off in Florida, with more than 800 professionals and amateurs competing for cash prizes.²⁹ Authorities in Tasmania urged a man who stole coins from the moat in a monkey enclosure to seek medical attention for potentially fatal herpes.³⁰ Provincetown, Massachusetts, declared a sewer emergency, forcing many restaurants in the crowded beach town to close.³¹ “I think everyone is impacted,” said Kyle Pleasant, a visitor. —Sam Needleman