Weekly Review

Two days after losing an election, Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, who said that a congresswoman was too ugly to rape, led what Médecins Sans Frontières described as the worst COVID-19 response in the world, and claimed that he would “eat an Indian, no problem at all,” authorized the transfer of power to his opponent, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, without conceding defeat.^{1 2 3 4} Israeli prime minister Yair Lapid conceded defeat to former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu after the nation’s fifth election in less than four years.⁵ Netanyahu, who is currently on trial for bribery and fraud, and under whose leadership Israel began to construct at least 19,000 settler homes in illegally occupied territory, won as part of a coalition with the Religious Zionism party, whose leader was convicted in 2007 of racist incitement against Arabs and who campaigned on the slogan “Who’s the landlord here?”^{6 7 8 9} Days before the U.S. midterm elections, for which billionaires have made over 7 percent of all donations, a federal judge ruled that an “election-monitoring” group may not take photos of voters, post information about voters online, or openly carry firearms near ballot boxes.^{10 11} “Some of us have horrible children,” said former president Donald Trump.¹² It was revealed that 44 percent of voters believe that the government is controlled by a secret cabal.¹³ A Texan House candidate was reported to have written a novel in which Anne Frank embraces Christianity while imprisoned in a concentration camp, and Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker said that he has a solution to America’s major problems but won’t share it because Democrats would copy it.^{14 15} “They are good at lying to you,” he said. In a speech, President Joe Biden mislabeled the war in Ukraine as the war in Iraq and incorrectly stated that his son had died in the Middle Eastern nation.¹⁶ Research on mice showed that nose-picking might be linked to Alzheimer’s.¹⁷ 

Elon Musk fired nearly half of Twitter’s staff, including the entire accessibility and human rights teams, and, in a tweet, threatened to “thermonuclear name and shame” companies that had stopped advertising on the platform.^{18 19 20} North Korea test-fired more than 30 missiles, including an ICBM, and the United States responded by flying two supersonic bombers nearby.²¹ The Air Force denied that a refuel plane intentionally drew a penis in the sky near a Russian base.²² An Alaska Airlines flight was delayed for over two hours after the pilots could not get along, and a disabled woman in Australia crawled off a plane after staff tried to charge her to use a wheelchair.^{23 24} A nurse in Wisconsin was charged with abuse for cutting off a man’s foot without permission, and firefighters in Denver were suspended for having a living woman declared dead.^{25 26} A Ugandan woman was arrested on suspicion of drugging men by putting sedatives on her nipples.²⁷ The chief of police in Willacoochee, Georgia, was arrested for burglary, and the mayor of Rufus, Oregon, was arrested for firing a gun at a moving car.^{28 29} A study found that most school shooters don’t have severe mental illness, and a teen who said that he was “tired of being stereotyped as a school shooter” was arrested for threatening to shoot up his school.^{30 31} “Zealous representation of a confessed murderer does not mean flipping the bird when you think the cameras aren’t on you,” said the father of a Parkland shooting victim to the killer’s defense team.³² In India, a child bit to death a cobra that had wrapped around his hand, and the Australian government determined that more research is needed before any attempt to use herpes to control the carp population.^{33 34}

It was reported that a man pretending to be a Stanford student had been kicked out of the dorms after 10 months.³⁵ Harvard argued for its affirmative action policies at the Supreme Court, and a judge ruled that the university would have to pay millions more for its defense because it forgot to notify its insurance company.³⁶ The Powerball jackpot hit a record $1.9 billion, and a Chinese man who won over $30 million in a lottery accepted his check while wearing a mascot costume in order to hide the news from his wife and child.^{37 38} Amazon closed at less than $1 trillion in market value for the first time since the early days of the pandemic, and Jeff Bezos was sued by a former housekeeper who said his staff got UTIs from a lack of bathroom access.^{39 40} Google announced the creation of robots that can write their own code, and it was revealed that scientists increasingly don’t understand how artificial intelligence works.^{41 42} Engineers in Switzerland were reported to have built a drone with wings made of rice cakes, and Italian researchers announced techniques that can extend the shelf life of fresh pasta by a month.^{43 44} Bavarian police found crystal meth in a doughnut, and the mayor of Badiraguato, Mexico, defended spending over $700,000 on a museum of drug trafficking.^{45 46} On Halloween, Peruvian police executed a narcotics raid while dressed up as superheroes, and in Roachdale, Indiana, officers pursued a man who was recklessly driving a lawnmower while dressed as Pikachu.^{47 48} “No other Pokémon characters were involved in this incident,” the police department wrote. “However, we are not opposed to catching them all.” —Jon Edelman