Weekly Review

Torrential rains in New York City caused massive flooding in subway stations, streets, and homes, and allowed a sea lion to briefly escape from her enclosure at the Central Park Zoo.¹ At the behest of the mayor’s office, schools remained open, though 150 were deluged with rain and wastewater, and one was forced to evacuate its students and teachers.² The night before the rains, as weather agencies issued warnings about life-threatening flash flooding, New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who recently joined the Freemasons, reportedly hosted a birthday fundraiser to which guests were asked to contribute $2,100 per ticket.^{3 4 5} “Leadership is not only the mayor,” said Adams at an emergency press conference the day of the floods, for which he was 40 minutes late.⁶ Javier Milei, an anarcho-capitalist candidate for Argentina’s presidency who owns an English mastiff named after Milton Friedman and routinely appears at campaign stops wielding a chainsaw, denied during a pre-election debate that 30,000 people were disappeared under the country’s military junta.^{7 8} The speaker of Canada’s House of Commons resigned after praising a veteran of Adolf Hitler’s Waffen SS unit during a session of parliament, and Romana Didulo, a QAnon influencer who claims to be the Queen of Canada, and her followers were asked to leave an abandoned school in Richmound, Saskatchewan.^{10 11} In Central Greece, a herd of sheep, looking for grass after fields had flooded, entered a greenhouse and ate 100 kilograms of cannabis.¹² “I don’t know if it’s for laughing or for crying,” said the greenhouse owner. 

Joe Biden became the first American president to join a picket line when he visited striking United Auto Workers in Belleville, Michigan, and the labor contract for thousands of unionized health care workers in the United States expired.^{13 14} Charles Littlejohn, the IRS contractor who leaked the tax returns of the country’s wealthiest people, as well as Donald Trump’s, to the press between 2018 and 2020, was arrested.¹⁵ The civil fraud trial of the 45th president and his eldest sons, their companies, and Trump Organization executives began in New York City.¹⁶ Germany banned a neo-Nazi sect known for its indoctrination of children, and it was reported that a beetle named after Hitler was approaching extinction because neo-Nazis wouldn’t stop buying it.^{17 18} An Ohio high school football coach was forced to resign after his team yelled “Nazi” at their opponents, a team from a largely Jewish suburb.¹⁹ “The events of today have caused significant shock, sadness, and anger throughout the local community and beyond,” said a police superintendent after the Sycamore Gap tree, which grew in between a break in Hadrian’s Wall, was felled by a vandal.²⁰

A tortoise escaped the vet for the third time, an eight-foot albino boa constrictor was found stuck beneath a car in Myrtle Beach, and a support alligator named Wally was denied entry to a Phillies game.^{22 23 24} “No one is safe … It’s hell when someone finds themselves confronted with this,” said the deputy mayor of Paris about an outbreak of bedbugs in the city’s Metro system.²⁵ A moose was found wandering the underground train tracks in Stockholm.²⁶ A man in Australia was ordered to compensate the police for the hundreds of hours they spent searching for him after he pretended to be kidnapped so he could spend time with another woman.²⁷ A Rwandan serial killer, who was arrested after his landlord reported him for being late with rent and police found 12 bodies in his kitchen, was denied bail.²⁸ A Chucky doll was handcuffed and arrested in Mexico after a man used it to intimidate robbery victims.²⁹ Mississippi was found to be the state with the highest rate of STIs, and Alabama was found to be the pettiest.^{30 31} An Arkansas police officer chased a trespassing chicken for more than four minutes.³² —Megan Evershed