Weekly Review
In Georgia, where Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election by 11,779 votes, Donald Trump and 18 others were hit with a 41-count indictment outlining 161 acts committed in service of a conspiracy to reverse the former president’s loss in that state.1 The alleged conspiracy, which includes Trump pressuring Georgia’s secretary of state to “find” votes for him, the signing of false election certificates by fake electors, and the intimidation and harassment of two black poll workers, who were falsely accused by co-conspirator Rudy Giuliani of passing a clandestine USB drive between them like “vials of cocaine or heroin,” was charged under the RICO Act, a set of laws Giuliani helped innovate.2 3 “There’s probably no one that knows [RICO] better than I do,” the former New York mayor said.4 It was reported that Trump had failed to pay Giuliani as well as his fellow defendants Sidney Powell, Kenneth Chesebro, and John C. Eastman for their legal work in promoting the claim that the election was stolen, and within minutes of the charges going public, Trump sent out a fundraising email referencing the case.5 6 The 45th president, who now faces 91 felony counts from four indictments, announced and then canceled the release of “A Large, Complex, Detailed but irrefutable REPORT” that he said would exonerate him.7 8 9 “You better recalculate, motherfucker!” the former Trump physician and current Texas Representative Ronny Jackson was reported to have told police officers who handcuffed him at a rodeo. “You are a fucking full-on dick!”10 A Virginia Republican was criticized for displaying a 16-foot-long sign depicting Biden’s head on a penis at a youth baseball game.11
Following an inconclusive national election, the king of Spain began talks to ascertain which political party had the best chance of forming a government, and Thailand’s Constitutional Court rejected an attempt to renominate a prime ministerial candidate who proposed weakening a law that punishes critics of the monarchy with up to 15 years’ imprisonment.12 13 14 In Niger, where the president was assassinated by soldiers in 1999, the civilian leader of the junta holding the current president hostage promised that he wouldn’t be harmed. “Nothing will happen to him, because we don’t have a tradition of violence in Niger,” he said.15 In Tripoli, Libya, clashes between rival militias killed at least 55 people and wounded 146; in Bangladesh, at least 150 people were injured in protests over who should oversee the upcoming election; and in Israel, a Palestinian man accused police officers of branding a Star of David on his cheek.16 17 18 It was reported that a dispute between Russian military units that involved knives, grenade launchers, and automatic weapons killed 20 servicemen and that Russian military commissars had been telling the families of dead soldiers that they have to pay a fee to receive their bodies.19 20 Indonesia’s president, Joko Widodo, who has reportedly had a cough for a month, asked that the nation’s poor air quality be tackled within a week.21 The WHO warned of a new coronavirus variant, “Barbenheimer” was cited as a potential cause for outbreaks in Germany, and it was reported that the legs of a man with long COVID turned purple when he stood up.22 23 24 Doctors advised parents against throwing their children up in the air in rooms that have ceiling fans.25
In Edmonton, Alberta, a soccer for peace event was canceled due to fighting.26 A Florida man was hit by several vehicles after exiting a moving ambulance that was transporting him to the hospital, and a Mexican man was reported to have survived a shooting when the bullets bounced off his skull.27 28 A Texas father was arrested after a gun was found in his three-year-old’s backpack.29 A blackout in Australia was reported to have been caused by an advertisement that was stapled to an electrical pole, an outage in Cancún, Mexico, was attributed to stolen cables, and a power failure in New Jersey was blamed on a bird that dropped a fish onto a transformer.30 31 32 Police announced that flying aliens harassing an indigenous community in Peru were believed to be illegal gold miners wearing jet packs.33 It was revealed that bots are better than humans at solving CAPTCHA puzzles and that an Iowa school district had used ChatGPT to determine which books to ban.34 35 It was reported that Google is working on AI that offers life advice, and an AI-written Microsoft Travel article recommended an Ottawa food bank as a “cannot miss” tourist spot.36 “Consider going into it on an empty stomach,” the AI wrote.37 A Ugandan archbishop said that the poor will not go to heaven. “God will not entertain the poor in heaven. You will not go there. I will also stand at the entrance to stop you from going there,” he said.38 Researchers announced that a drug to regrow teeth will begin clinical trials, that inflammation in the body leads to social media usage, and that more middle-aged people are binge drinking, using marijuana, or taking hallucinogens than ever before.39 40 41 It was reported that NASA is planning to investigate Uranus from behind.42 —Jon Edelman
