Weekly Review

The quadrennial World Cup soccer championship kicked off in Qatar, which had never qualified for the tournament before winning the right to host in 2010 through bribery, and where more than 6,500 migrant workers have died in the ensuing 12 years.^{1 2 3 4} Matches took place in eight newly constructed or refurbished stadiums, built in part by enslaved non-native laborers.^{5 6} FIFA, whose president had said he would be open to North Korea hosting the tournament in the interest of “unit[ing] the world,” warned Qatari authorities not to arrest female rape victims and published a series of false attendance figures for early games.^{7 8 9} Qatar promised refunds to fans who paid $200 a night to stay in converted shipping containers, not all of which were finished in time, and the FIFA app crashed, preventing thousands of supporters from accessing their tickets.^{10 11} Because homosexual relations between men is criminalized in the kingdom, Welsh fans and staff had their rainbow bucket hats confiscated, the Belgian team was forced to remove the word love from their jerseys, and players were told that they would receive yellow cards if they wore antidiscrimination armbands; English fans who threw paper planes at U.S. fans whilst chanting “9/11” were not penalized.^{12 13 14 15} The father of the Club Q shooter, who killed five people and injured 19 at a Colorado queer nightclub before they were subdued by an unarmed veteran and a trans woman who stomped on their head with her high heels, said that he encouraged his child’s aggression.^{16 17}  “I praised him for violent behavior really early. I told him it works. It is instant, and you’ll get immediate results,” he said.¹⁸ The father, a former MMA fighter and porn star who had thought his child was dead before receiving an irate phone call from them six months ago, expressed remorse for the actions of his progeny. “Those people’s lives were valuable,” he said. “They’re good people, probably.”

At a Virginia Walmart, a chain that sells weapons and ammunition at roughly half of its 4,700 U.S. stores, a night-shift employee killed five of his co-workers, a 16-year-old boy, and himself.^{19 20} Four students were shot near a Philadelphia high school, a criminal justice reform advocate was shot and killed in Washington, D.C., and a Texas gas station clerk fired at a man who broke a jar of salsa.^{21 22 23} San Diego residents expressed concern after a hot dog vendor was stabbed in a turf war, and firefighters used Narcan to rescue a puppy that had overdosed on Fentanyl.^{24 25} A biker en route to a traffic victim memorial was hit by a van, and a bank robber hired an Uber to serve as his getaway car.^{26 27} Indian law enforcement officers blamed rats for eating nearly 1,300 pounds of cannabis that went missing.²⁶ “Rats are tiny animals, and they have no fear of the police,” said a local court.²⁷ The San Francisco police department faced criticism for a draft policy that would codify the use of robots to kill.²⁸ Thieves stole gold coins worth $1.7 million from a museum in Germany, and analysis of a gold coin in Britain revealed that Sponsian, a third-century Roman emperor who historians believed to be a fictional character, was actually real.^{29 30} U.S. president Joe Biden extended the pause on student loan repayment, and a Florida teacher who believed she had settled her loans received a bill for nearly $1 million.^{31 32} It was reported that a woman is suing Kraft Heinz for $5 million because her Velveeta Shells and Cheese took longer than three and a half minutes to make.³³ The U.S. Navy was found guilty of software piracy.³⁴ 

An earthquake in Indonesia killed 310.³⁵ One day after an official decree calling on its citizens to pray for rain, Saudi Arabia flooded.³⁶ It was reported that Ukrainian doctors prevented Russians from taking over a hospital in Kherson by faking a COVID-19 outbreak, and a Dutch court ruled that squatters who had taken over a Russian oligarch’s Amsterdam mansion would be allowed to stay.^{37 38} It was reported that a French court ruled that employees cannot be fired for refusing to participate in work-mandated “fun.”³⁹ A Fijian lawyer who mocked a judge for writing “injection” instead of “injunction” is facing three to six months in prison.⁴⁰ A British judge ordered court proceedings to continue in person after a lawyer played pornography over video link during a hearing, and a Colombian judge was suspended for conducting a virtual hearing while clad in underwear and smoking a cigarette.^{41 42} Alex Jones was ordered to pay $49.3 million to the parents of a Sandy Hook victim despite a law that would cap punitive damages at a much lower rate, and a man who joined the Capitol riot while on a Tinder date was sentenced to 30 days in jail.^{43 44} A new study found that, over a period of 19 years, the number of men with enlarged prostates had increased by 70 percent worldwide.⁴⁵ An English soccer fan was banned from matches after swapping a goalie’s water for a bottle of pee, and physicists unveiled a urinal inspired by the nautilus shell that virtually eliminates splash back.^{46 47} Biochemists announced they had modified a tobacco plant to produce cocaine.⁴⁸ —Jon Edelman