Weekly Review

It was reported that troopers in Eagle Pass, Texas, were told to deny water to migrants and push children back into the Rio Grande, where barrels wrapped in razor wire have been placed in the water and miles of concertina wire submerged in the river’s shallows.¹ Officers were directed by the Texas Department of Public Safety to tell migrants to “go back to Mexico.”² A newly issued report found that the recent death of an 8-year-old Panamanian girl, the second during a two-week period in U.S. border custody, was a result of officials refusing to review her medical records and repeatedly denying her mother’s request for an ambulance.³ The United Kingdom passed a bill to make it easier to deport asylum seekers that was described by United Nations human rights officials as being “at variance with the country’s obligations under international human rights and refugee law.”^{4 5} It was reported that the United States military had been mistakenly sending emails to Mali, a Russian ally, for years.⁶ The head of MI6 asked Russians “wrestling with their conscience” to “share secrets” with British intelligence, and a video that seemed to show mutineer Yevgeny Prigozhin addressing a group of people circulated online.^{7 8} “Welcome guys! I am happy to greet you all. Welcome to the Belarusian land! We fought with dignity! We have done a lot for Russia,” said the figure. “I assumed initially he had a mate filming him in some kind of really stupid prank or stunt, like a TikTok, the most stupid thing you could do,” said a bystander who watched the American service member Travis King cross into North Korea; another bystander described King as running with “full gas” and saying “ha ha ha.”^{9 10} 

A school board in Missouri revoked an anti-racism resolution, and Florida education officials approved new teaching standards that claim African Americans received some “personal benefit” from slavery.^{11 12} The Israeli parliament passed a law to curb the Supreme Court’s ability to block government decisions.¹³ It was reported that Israel was struggling to retrieve antiquities it had lent Donald Trump during his presidency, with one source saying they wouldn’t be surprised if “the items Israel seeks are also eventually found in some bathroom” in Mar-a-Lago.¹⁴ A 19th-century cathedral in Odessa, Ukraine, was badly damaged by a Russian airstrike.^{15  16} “Some may say it’s historical, but it was in the middle of the street, and we took it down to expand the street,” said an official about the destruction of a historic minaret in Basra, Iraq.¹⁷ After three boys were accused of spitting at a Hindu procession in Ujjain, India, their home was demolished to the sounds of drums and DJ music.¹⁸ A large cylindrical object assumed to be “space junk” washed up on an Australian beach, an Australian man and his dog were both rescued by a Mexican tuna boat after three months at sea, and hundreds of baby seahorses were released into an Australian harbor.^{19 20 21} Four Russians who were diagnosed with anthrax after eating infected horsemeat escaped from a hospital in Siberia, and the film set for Beetlejuice II was repeatedly robbed.^{22 23} “We have to punish to make people behave better,” said the mayor of Béziers, France, where a database containing the genetic information of dogs will be created so that excrement left on the street can be identified and the owners fined.²⁴ 

Authorities in Berlin searching for a lioness found a brood of “startled piglets,” and then revealed that the lioness was likely a wild boar instead.²⁵ “He’s hiding from us somewhere. But we’re getting closer. We’re going to find him,” said a resident of Willacy County, Texas, where people have been searching for a goat after it escaped from a local youth rodeo.²⁶ Marijuana was legalized in Albania, the U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen ate potentially hallucinogenic mushrooms in China, and Donald Trump praised China’s president, Xi Jinping, as “smart, brilliant, everything perfect.”^{27 28 29} A Florida jury awarded a girl $800,000 after she was burned by a chicken nugget.³⁰ “As staunch followers of Mahatma Gandhi, we have decided to follow the path shown by him to deal with systemic injustice,” wrote a couple in British Columbia who began a hunger strike to protest the sounds of pickleball being played in a nearby park.³¹ The annual Ernest Hemingway look-alike contest took place in Key West, Florida.³² —Megan Evershed