Weekly Review
The former U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger, who in 1973 was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for ending the Vietnam War in part by orchestrating a series of bombing campaigns in Southeast Asia that killed an estimated 100,000 civilians, died at age 100.1 2 3 4 5 “Strategic focus was evident,” President Joe Biden said of Kissinger in a statement released shortly after his own secretary of state, Antony Blinken, traveled to Israel to advise the country on minimizing Palestinian civilian casualties shortly before it resumed its bombing of Gaza.6 7 8 “I saw the plans,” said Blinken, “to do everything possible to protect civilians.”9 The Israeli military published an online map that established new “evacuation zones” in Gaza, where much of the population has limited or no electricity; texted evacuation notices to residents of several newly numbered sectors in southern Gaza, where many north Gazans had previously been told to shelter; then began shelling multiple zones in what it described as a “crushing attack,” reportedly killing more than 100 people.10 11 12 13 “If we wanted to do it fast,” Israel’s minister of strategic affairs said, “we’d harm a lot more civilians.”14
In New York City, Elon Musk attended a conference where he said “go fuck yourself” to representatives of companies who had pulled ads after he agreed with claims that Jewish communities were “pushing” a “hatred against whites” on his social-media platform X, where the Institute for Strategic Dialogue says anti-Semitic language has increased 105 percent since he acquired it last year.15 16 In Washington, D.C., the New York representative George Santos was expelled from Congress by a vote of 311 to 114 for using campaign funds to buy Botox, plastic surgery, Hermès goods, trips to Vegas and Atlantic City, and subscriptions to OnlyFans.17 “To hell with this place,” said Santos as he left the Capitol.18 Pope Francis moved to evict from his Vatican home an American cardinal who had claimed that COVID-19 vaccines contain microchips, a government official in Paraguay resigned after he signed a “memorandum of understanding” with a fictional country, and a Neapolitan mafia informant attempted to negotiate a reduced prison sentence by offering Italian authorities “Taiwan,” an island he owned off the coast of Dubai which is part of an artificial archipelago built to resemble a map of the world.19 20 21
A van loaded with 10,000 Krispy Kreme donuts was stolen in Carlingford, Australia, and a plane fueled by sugar and fat waste completed a transatlantic flight.22 23 A Connecticut bus driver passed out at the wheel on the side of I-95 with 38 passengers onboard after eating gummy candies he said he did not know were infused with THC, and in North Carolina, an inmate transport bus driver was charged with kidnapping after he quit mid-trip and refused to stop the vehicle.24 25 A tumbleweed the size of a Volkswagen Beetle was filmed hurtling down a highway in Southern California, and a rat the size of a human baby was photographed alive for the first time in the Solomon Islands.26 27 The secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization announced at the United Nations climate summit that global temperature projections were “not at all going in the right direction,” the audience attending the opening night of a Wagner revival at the Metropolitan Opera shouted “go away” and “shut up” at climate protestors who interrupted the performance, and McDonald’s overhauled the Big Mac. “Look to the past to understand where you are going,” said a spokesman.28 29 30 —Rachel Anne Cantor
