Weekly Review
In Khan Younis, Gazan medical staff told the BBC that they were blindfolded, forced to strip and kneel for hours, doused with cold water, and beaten by Israeli soldiers after the army raided the hospital where they worked.1 The Israeli military announced that it would move displaced Palestinians to “humanitarian islands” in the middle of Gaza should it begin an assault on Rafah; President Joe Biden has designated an attack on Rafah a “red line” that Israel should not cross. “We’ll go there,” said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who also said that New York Senator Chuck Schumer’s call for new elections in Israel was “totally inappropriate.”2 3 4 Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose major political rivals are dead, exiled, or incarcerated, won reelection in a contest that one protester called “a farce” and one human rights campaigner called “an insult to elections.”5 6 7 In Haiti, Prime Minister Ariel Henry announced he would step down once a transitional council was in place, and an ex-police officer and current gangster known as Barbecue threatened politicians who were planning to take part in the council.8 9 10 The Biden Administration discussed the possibility of using Guantánamo Bay as a site to process Haitian migrants should there be a mass exodus to the United States.11 A dummy with a Biden mask was repeatedly kicked and punched at a Republican event in Kansas, and a former aide to Donald Trump said that, during his time in office, Trump said that Adolf Hitler “did some good things.”12 13
The Indian government enacted a law that grants citizenship to refugees who are Hindu, Christian, Parsi, Jain, or Buddhist, but not to those who are Muslim.14 A rabbi who was part of an American delegation for religious freedom was asked to remove his kippah while visiting a UNESCO monument in Saudi Arabia.15 A priest in Michigan was pressured to resign after saying that a gay author invited to read to a pre-K classroom in the parish “did not represent the values of our Catholic faith.”16 A priest in Brooklyn, New York, who previously canceled an annual Christmas party for children of incarcerated parents, canceled a monthly dinner for people with AIDS, and raised the rent on an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, said that a volunteer-run food pantry could no longer operate out of his church.17 A pastor in Brooklyn was found guilty of spending $90,000 of one of his parishioner’s savings on luxury goods and personal expenses.18 “If they need to punish me, they should punish me,” said a priest in Tenerife who ordered 300-year-old frescoes to be painted over.19
In Nags Head, North Carolina, officials painted over lines on a road that read “SHCOOL” with the correct spelling.20 In southern California, hundreds of rolls of toilet paper spilled across a highway, and a shipment of Pittsburgh Penguin bobbleheads was stolen.21 22 “It’s an oddball thing for somebody to steal,” said the owner of a restaurant where a painting of the owner’s dog was taken off the bathroom wall.23 It was reported that a doctor delivered a baby on a Wizz Air flight from Amman to London, that a LATAM flight’s plunge through the air was possibly the result of a flight attendant accidentally pressing a button while serving a pilot a meal, and that two Indonesian pilots had fallen asleep for roughly half an hour on a flight in January.24 25 26 “Having the bees on the aircraft is not conducive to operations,” said a pilot who discovered 10,000 bees on a police helicopter.27 “They’re all high,” said a police officer in Louisiana, where it was discovered that rats had been eating marijuana confiscated as evidence.28 Officials in Fukuyama, Japan, announced that a stray cat was believed to have fallen into a tank of toxic liquid at a factory and then escaped, and that residents should avoid any cat that “appears abnormal.”29 Authorities in Hamburg, New York, seized a 750-pound alligator named Albert from a man who was keeping the reptile in his home illegally.30 An Australian farm grew a blueberry the size of a Ping-Pong ball.31 —Megan Evershed
