Weekly Review
As protesters around the world called for a ceasefire in Israel’s campaign in Gaza, which has so far killed 11,240 Palestinians, of whom, according to Israel, at least 60 have been mid- or high-level Hamas leaders, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Israel would consider “tactical little pauses” in the violence.1 2 3 4 5 More than 100,000 Palestinians fled from the north to the south of Gaza, mostly on foot, including a 90-year-old survivor of the Nakba, and the Israeli military attacked the area’s largest hospital, under which it says a Hamas command center is located, bombing it five times and hitting its courtyard and obstetrics department.6 7 8 9 10 Israel lowered its estimate of the death toll from Hamas’s October 7 attack to 1,200, accused freelance photographers who took early pictures of the attack of having foreknowledge of it, and detained five Arab Israeli politicians who were preparing to hold an antiwar vigil.11 12 13 It was reported that diarrhea, chicken pox, and scabies are soaring in Gaza, where over 50 percent of the housing has been destroyed, and Netanyahu said that Israel planned to supervise the “overall security” of the area after the war.14 15 16 The White House warned Israel against re-occupying Gaza, an internal State Department memo condemned Joe Biden for “spreading misinformation” about the conflict, and the Republican-led House of Representatives passed a plan to give $14.3 billion in aid to Israel and to cut the funding of the IRS.17 18 A House hearing centering on antisemitism on college campuses was interrupted multiple times by pro-Palestinian protesters, and the body censured Democratic Representative Rashida Tlaib of Michigan after she released a video including the phrase “from the river to the sea,” which she described as “an aspirational call for … peaceful co-existence.”19 20 21 Pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian demonstrators brawled outside Los Angeles’s Museum of Tolerance.22
Ohio voters legalized marijuana and established a right to abortion.23 24 An exonerated member of the Central Park Five won a city council seat in New York, and the mother of a Uvalde school shooting victim lost a mayoral race in Texas.25 26 A rural Michigan town ousted its entire government over its decision to approve construction of an electric battery plant owned by a company headquartered in China.27 Election officials in five states received letters laced with unknown powders, and a Pennsylvanian who left his wallet at a polling place returned with seven guns.28 29 For at least the 10th and 11th times, President Biden told a provably false anecdote about a friendly exchange with an Amtrak worker, and it was reported that AIs hallucinate up to 27 percent of the time.30 31 Two A.I.s negotiated a contract without human involvement, and Elon Musk introduced an A.I. system that he described as “based” and which he says “loves sarcasm.”32 33 David Cameron, who, as U.K. prime minister, pushed to hold the 2016 referendum on whether to leave or remain in the European Union and then resigned after its results were announced, was named U.K. foreign secretary, and Great Britain’s ban on laughing gas went into effect.34 35 An aide to the head of the Ukrainian army was killed by a grenade that he received as a birthday gift, and it was reported that a group of Russian soldiers had beaten their commander to death.36 37 It was revealed that the Canadian government had spent nearly $670,000 on consultants to advise them on how to save money on consultants.38 A town in Saskatchewan debated whether it should change its slogan from “Land of Rape and Honey.”39
Actors, truck assemblers, and casino employees reached labor deals, and workers at an Obamacare call center went on strike for better health care.40 41 42 43 “Stop trying to be on your cousin’s fight compilation video,” said a Waffle House cook in a petition decrying in-restaurant violence.44 Two South Carolina day-care workers turned themselves in after being accused of running a child fight ring, and a South Korean man attacked a shop clerk with short hair because he assumed she was a feminist.45 46 “This is a case where the skylarking and tomfoolery in an employment context has gone awry,” said a lawyer for a cop in Sydney who was sentenced for pointing his gun at a colleague who threatened to spoil the film Top Gun: Maverick.47 A factory robot crushed a man to death after mistaking him for a box of vegetables.48 It was reported that in India, a surgeon left the operating theater before completing his work because he was angry that he had not been served tea.49 “It’s been a hell of a year,” said a man who is suing doctors he accused of failing to find his appendix and removing part of his colon instead.50 A Pittsburgh woman was accused of stabbing a man in the hand after he repeatedly asked for the TV remote, and a Minnesota man received probation after threatening a woman who had asked him to stop smoking near her lizard.51 52 More than two dozen horses died in an arson fire at a racetrack in Nichols, New York, and Joseph “Joe Brooklyn” Lanni, Angelo Gradilone, also known as “Fifi,” Francesco Vicari, also known as “Uncle Ciccio,” Vincent Minsquero, also known as “Vinny Slick,” and 12 other alleged associates of the Gambino crime family were arrested for extortion, assault, arson, and crimes related to unions in an attempt to dominate New York City’s demolition and waste management sectors.53 54 —Jon Edelman
