Weekly Review

In Greece, the government of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who has campaigned on “tough but fair” migration policies, did not respond to requests for comment on video that showed 12 African migrants being captured by masked men, stripped of their belongings, locked inside an unmarked van, transferred to a Greek coast guard boat, and abandoned in an inflatable raft on the Aegean Sea.¹ British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said that the rate of legal migration was too high but refused to give a number of immigrants that he would find acceptable, and an eight-year-old Panamanian girl died after a week in the custody of the U.S. Border Patrol.^{2 3} In New York City, which last week was receiving up to 700 migrants a day, authorities shut down a volunteer-run help center at the Port Authority, and it was revealed that veterans who claimed that they had been kicked out of temporary housing in favor of refugees were actually civilian homeless people who had been offered $100 and bags of toiletries to lie.^{4 5 6} Following attempts to place asylum seekers in hotels, tents, and a cruise ship terminal, parents in New York protested a plan to place asylum seekers in public school gyms.⁷ “I have compassion,” said a state resident, “but I don’t have compassion.”⁸ It was reported that New York City is sinking under its own weight.⁹ New York Representative George Santos briefly became his own campaign treasurer, and the 89-year-old California senator Dianne Feinstein, who has missed two months of work because of shingles and has faced questions about her mental acuity, denied that she was ever absent.^{10 11 12} Homicide detectives in Australia investigated why a 95-year-old great-grandmother with a walker had been tased in her nursing home by a police officer.¹³

The government of Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, who has ruled for 38 years and whose official title is “Princely Exalted Supreme Great Commander of Gloriously Victorious Troops,” disqualified the country’s main opposition party for the second parliamentary election in a row.^{14 15} The national election commission claimed that the party had failed to file required paperwork, which the party said had been seized during a police raid in 2017. “This is not about saving a presidency, but about preserving a functioning democracy,” said Ecuador’s president, Guillermo Lasso, who, amid an impeachment trial, dissolved congress and began ruling by decree, a never-before-done maneuver known as “mutually assured death.”¹⁶ Republicans called for a pause in negotiations with Democrats over raising the debt ceiling, then resumed talks hours later.¹⁷ The Pentagon announced that, owing to an accounting error, it had $3 billion more than it previously thought to supply Ukrainian troops, and Volodymyr Zelenskyy made a surprise appearance at the G7 summit to ask for more support.^{18 19} The head of the Wagner mercenary group denied a report that he had offered to share Russian troop positions with Ukraine and claimed that Russia had captured the city of Bakhmut, which Ukraine denied.^{20 21} After Ukraine said that it had destroyed six hypersonic missiles in a single night, Russia accused three academics who worked on the technology of high treason and barred 500 Americans from the country, including the late-night hosts Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, and Seth Meyers.^{22 23} China fined a comedy studio nearly $2 million for a joke in which the country’s military were compared to stray dogs.²⁴ The World Health Organization warned against artificial sweeteners, and physicists investigated the ideal storage conditions for gummy candy.^{25 26}

A German hospital expressed regret after it was revealed that a surgeon had used a nearby janitor to assist in an amputation.²⁷ The Spanish government released an app to encourage men to do household chores.²⁸ An IT worker lost a sexual harassment suit claiming that when her boss named a work file with his initials, “AJG,” it really stood for “A Jumbo Genital.”²⁹ A Chester man was banned from making sexual comments in England and Wales, and a Londoner was barred from standing near any woman he doesn’t know in public.^{30 31} It was reported that Japanese people were taking lessons to relearn how to smile after several years of masking, and that anxious young Americans were increasingly faking British accents during awkward social situations.32 33 Scientists announced the creation of a building material made from used diapers, and a congresswoman called for an investigation into “poop rain” falling from aircrafts.^{34 35} Ted Cruz initiated a Senate probe of Anheuser-Busch, focusing on Bud Light’s partnership with the transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney, and Budweiser announced a plan to respond to falling sales by making a camouflage-print bottle.^{36 37} A Christian university fired two employees who put their pronouns in their email signatures, and the University of Pennsylvania began searching for a Panda Express postdoctoral fellow in Asian American studies.^{38 39} A study found that the old are more easily distracted than the young, and the pope took a cell phone call in the middle of his weekly general audience.^{40 41} A survey of Britons found that belief in heaven has fallen but belief in hell has remained consistent.⁴² —Jon Edelman