Weekly Review
In northern Gaza, Israeli air strikes killed more than 90 Palestinians at the Jabalia refugee camp.1 Snipers killed a Gazan mother and daughter at a Catholic church, an act that Pope Francis denounced as “terrorism,” and Israeli forces shot and killed three shirtless Israeli men waving a white flag who had been taken hostage by Hamas.2 3 4 Additional white flags discovered near the site of the shooting included messages in Hebrew, likely written with leftover food, that translated to “SOS” and “Help, 3 hostages.”5 6 “Lessons have been learned,” an Israeli military spokesman said of the killings.7 In southern Gaza, an Al Jazeera cameraman was killed by a drone strike on a school, and a 13-year-old girl who had lost her parents, two siblings, and her leg in an earlier strike was killed by an artillery shell at a hospital.8 9 Gaza entered its fifth communications blackout since the war began, the World Health Organization described the conditions at Al-Shifa Hospital as a “bloodbath,” and the U.N. General Assembly voted 153 to 10 in favor of demanding a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza, with Israel and the United States among the countries that opposed the resolution.10 11 12
The House passed an $886 billion defense bill, which set a new record for military spending and included measures that the House Armed Services Committee said would “end wokeness in the military,” and also approved an impeachment inquiry into President Biden.13 14 Hunter Biden defied a House subpoena to testify at a closed-door deposition as part of the inquiry, saying he would speak publicly or not at all; the Oversight Committee’s chair, James Comer, and Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan vowed to begin proceedings to hold the president’s son in contempt of Congress.15 Rudolph Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City who went on to serve as a lawyer for Donald Trump, was ordered to pay $148 million to two Georgia election workers who brought a defamation suit against him following his claims that they interfered with the 2020 election, and a Senate staffer was fired after a video circulated online of him having sex at the Capitol in the congressional hearing room where the 9/11 Commission hearings took place.16 17 In its final day in session before the winter break, the House passed a bill to bring whole milk back to school cafeterias, which Representative Lloyd K. Smucker of Pennsylvania called “utterly fantastic.”18
NASA revealed that two tomatoes had been found aboard the International Space Station, rather than the single tomato the agency had previously reported missing.19 A bronze top hat went missing from a statue of Abraham Lincoln in Louisville, Kentucky, a marble slab that had been stolen from the ruins of Pompeii was found on display in a Belgian home, and two men on trial for robbing a Kohl’s store in Parker, Colorado asked for a lesser charge because the items they stole were on sale.20 21 22 A copy of Beowulf was returned to a Pennsylvania library after 54 years, and a Nancy Drew novel was returned to a Wisconsin library after 20 years; as both libraries had gone fine-free in the intervening decades, no charges were incurred.23 24 A robot dog named Hound set a world record for a 100-meter sprint, a chihuahua named Bean raced across four lanes of traffic on the Staten Island Expressway before being caught with the help of a marathon runner, and commutes on Amtrak, PATH, and NJTransit were delayed for nearly an hour when a large, horned bull ran onto the tracks at Newark Penn Station.25 26 27 “We’re bullish on keeping you moving,” said a spokesperson for the PATH train, “but this situation was bull.”28 —Rachel Anne Cantor
