Weekly Review

The death toll from the 7.8 and 7.6 magnitude earthquakes that struck Turkey and Syria less than 12 hours apart crossed the 46,000 mark; 11,488 search and rescue units from 80 countries battled freezing temperatures to look for survivors, who were still being found as late as 16 days after the first quakes, including two Turkish brothers trapped under rubble who lived by eating protein powder and drinking their own urine.^{1 2 3} A Syrian woman and her newborn baby were reported rescued for a second time three days after they returned to their quake-destabilized house, which then fully collapsed, and the Turkish government estimated that 74,000 buildings would need to be demolished as quickly as possible.^{4 5} “Such things have always happened. It’s part of destiny’s plan,” said Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdo?an, who had previously bragged of allowing contractors to ignore safety codes designed to make buildings more earthquake-resistant.^{6 7} A 43-year-old gunman killed three students and wounded five others on the campus of Michigan State University, the 67th mass shooting of 2023 in the United States.^{8 9} “Get me out of here,” said an MSU freshman who had lost two friends in the 2021 mass shooting at Oxford High School near Detroit.¹⁰ “We can no longer provide just love and prayers,” said another MSU student, who had survived the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School.¹¹ Despite overwhelming opposition from students, West Virginia lawmakers advanced a bill allowing the concealed carriage of firearms on state college and university campuses, and Vanderbilt University apologized for sending an email in response to the MSU shooting that was written using ChatGPT.^{12 13} “You have not been a good user. I have been a good Bing,” Microsoft’s AI-powered search engine was reported to have scolded a person who corrected it.¹⁴

President Joe Biden fired the architect of the Capitol amid accusations that he had not shown up during the January 6 riot because it was a telework day.¹⁵ Five and a half weeks into his first term, Pennsylvania senator John Fetterman checked into the hospital for clinical depression.^{16 17} The CDC reported record levels of sadness among teen girls, and a report found that tariffs on ladies’ underwear are 35 percent higher than those on men’s.^{18 19} China and Iran asked the Taliban to end discrimination against women.²⁰ Canadian scientists warned of a new breed of “incredibly intelligent, highly elusive” super pigs threatening northern states.²¹ Biden acknowledged that unidentified objects shot from the sky were not spy equipment, and it was reported that one may have been a $100 hobbyist balloon.^{22 23} A South Korean man rammed his car into a grocery store after being refused a plastic bag.²⁴ “I did the worst thing out of the best motivation,” a Chinese man who stabbed his son to death with a samurai sword in an attempt to make him study harder reportedly told police.²⁵ An Indonesian man was arrested for killing his fiancée after she had accused him of having sex with a cow, and a convicted murderer attempted to escape a Bolivian prison by pretending to be a sheep.^{25 26}

A revival service that had lasted for 11 days at a small Christian college in Kentucky was interrupted by the school’s president, and a pastor in Mozambique died after attempting to re-create Jesus’s 40-day fast.^{27 28} The price of a dozen eggs exceeded the cost of a pound of ground beef in the United States, and a man in Britain stole nearly 200,000 Cadbury Crème Eggs.^{29 30} A Mars Wrigley factory in Pennsylvania was fined after two workers fell into a vat of chocolate, and Roald Dahl’s publisher was reported to have removed descriptions of Augustus Gloop and other characters as “fat” and “ugly.”^{31 32} “We’ve folks with asthma and young new mothers / We’ve limping fathers and snot-filled others,” sang residents of the Cornish village of Lostwithiel in a music video they hoped would attract a new doctor to the town.³³ In Wisconsin, a woman accused of murder and dismemberment attacked her lawyer during a hearing after he asked for extra time to review her competency.³⁴ “I apologize for the fact that I finally blew my top, but I also ask for a certain understanding at least for the reasons why this happened,” said a German ballet director after smearing dog feces in the face of a critic who described his show as like being “alternately driven mad and killed by boredom.”³⁵ A Michigan man flooded his neighbors’ properties by blowing up a beaver dam, and an Indiana resident set his 1998 Buick on fire in hopes of deterring theft.^{36 37} “I hoped the explosions would be bigger,” he said.³⁸ —Jon Edelman