Weekly Review

The Israeli military announced there would be a daily pause in the fighting in Gaza to deliver aid to Gazans, a move that is reportedly “unacceptable” to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was decried as “delusional” by the country’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, and was described as the work of “a fool” by the national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir.^{1 2 3} The Biden Administration imposed sanctions on the Israeli group Tzav 9 for blocking and damaging humanitarian aid trucks headed for Gaza; the group has close ties to Ben-Gvir, who was found to be “in gross violation of the law” by Israel’s state prosecutor for pressuring police to stop aid convoys from reaching Gaza.^{4 5 6 7} The United Nations paused the delivery of aid via a pier built by the United States so that the organization can determine whether it can continue to “safely and ethically” deliver supplies to Gazans, and announced that 50,000 children in the Gaza Strip require urgent medical attention for acute malnutrition; the World Health Organization announced that 8,000 Palestinian children under the age of five have been treated for malnutrition, and two children died of severe malnutrition, bringing the total number of Palestinian children killed by malnutrition to 40.^{8 9 10 11 12} Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, who is under investigation by the International Criminal Court for war crimes, rejected a proposal by the French government to mediate between Israel and Lebanon because of what he described as France’s “hostile policies” toward Israel.^{13 14} At the G7 summit in Italy, participating leaders agreed to engineer a $50 billion aid package for Ukraine, and President Joe Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy signed a 10-year security deal.^{15 16} The assembled leaders sang “Happy Birthday” to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in a tribute that one reporter described as out-of-sync, off-pitch, and “toe-curling.”¹⁷ Inspired by the summit, several social media users wrote fan fiction about a romance between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.¹⁸ 

In Rome, attendees of a Pride parade carried cardboard cutouts of Pope Francis days after it was reported that he used a homophobic slur for the second time in recent weeks.^{19 20} “Priests sometimes talk a lot, and you don’t understand what they are talking about,” said the Holy Father, instructing priests to keep their speeches under eight minutes so as to dissuade their congregants from falling asleep.²¹ During a speech in which he got the name of his doctor wrong, Donald Trump challenged President Biden to take a cognitive test.²² Congressman Greg Steube introduced a bill that would rename the coastal waters around the United States “the Donald John Trump Exclusive Economic Zone of the United States,” a former White House staffer claimed that on several occasions Trump mused out loud about executing people while in office, and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene compared the former president to Jesus Christ.^{23 24 25} Congressman Jamie Raskin described Trump as the “sugar daddy” of the Republican Party, and the former president wished a happy Father’s Day to “all, including the radical left degenerates.”^{26 27} A Brooklyn man known as the Sperminator celebrated the birth of his 165th child, and crypto analysts warned that Andrew Tate’s base meme coin, DADDY, showed signs of insider trading.^{28 29}

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling stipulating that the government of Texas could not remove “butt and fart” books from its libraries, the Utah state board of education considered whether banned books should be “shredded” or “burned,” and a book about book bans was banned in a Florida school district.^{30 31 32} “God Bless the USA,” sang the crowd as a rodeo bull named Party Bus injured three people in Sisters, Oregon.³³ It was reported that a cow was hit by a police car in Staines, England, but soon got back on its feet, and residents in Limburg an der Lahn, Germany, voted to kill the 700 pigeons that live in their town.^{34 35} A batch of purportedly psychic animals, including a lion, a sheep, a tortoise, an orangutan, a tapir, a legion of lemurs, and a sausage dog named Ludwig, were tasked with predicting the outcomes of opening matches of the European Football Championship; there were many incorrect results.^{36 37 38 39 40 41} A black bear broke into the same car it had broken into a year prior, tore up the vehicle’s seats, and then fell asleep.⁴² “Rest assured you’ll see me eat again!” said Joey Chestnut, who one commentator described as “the king of kings, the man-child among us,” upon the announcement that he would be barred from participating in this year’s Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest.^{43 44} A newly released report found that people worldwide are increasingly avoiding the news.⁴⁵ —Megan Evershed