Weekly Review

One day after U.S. officials visited Israel and warned against escalation in the region, Israel sent error messages to thousands of pagers purchased by Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria and produced by a company in Taiwan and possibly also companies in Bulgaria, Hungary, and Norway, which simultaneously detonated, killing at least 12 people and injuring thousands; the next day, Antony Blinken visited Cairo and warned all parties against escalation; hours later, Israel exploded dozens of walkie-talkies, killing at least 25; Blinken warned all parties against escalation from Paris the following day; Israel ordered an air strike on senior members of Hezbollah in Beirut the day after that, then two days later bombed the entrance of Al Jazeera’s West Bank offices after declaring the facility was being used to “incite terror,” then authorized the deadliest air strike campaign since the 2006 Lebanon War the day after that.^{1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15} U.S. Army leaders confessed that they had mislabeled nonprofit advocacy groups as terrorist groups in official training materials for years.¹⁶ “China continues to behave aggressively, testing us all,” Biden was captured saying on a hot mic to Prime Ministers Anthony Albanese of Australia, Fumio Kishida of Japan, and Narendra Modi of India, who had been avoiding mentioning China by name; the president later invited them to an “intimate” dinner near his home in Wilmington, Delaware, at the high school where he studied more than 60 years ago.^{17 18} Biden and Modi admired a celestial dancer in each other’s presence.^{19 20}

The federal felon-in-possession ban may now be unconstitutional in light of recent Supreme Court decisions expanding Second Amendment rights, complicating the prosecution of Trump’s latest attempted assassin.²¹ “It’s just too late,” Trump demurred in response to CNN’s invitation for a second debate, which Kamala Harris accepted; Pete Buttigieg, who once acted as Mike Pence in mock sessions to help Harris prepare for the 2020 vice presidential debate, is now impersonating JD Vance for Tim Walz’s preparations.^{22 23} Vladimir Putin clarified that his statement of support for Harris that cited her “infectious” laugh was a joke; it was reported that those fleeing to Russia from the U.S., the U.K., Micronesia, and 44 other countries implementing “destructive, neoliberal, ideological policies” will enjoy a simplified immigration process; and Putin implored his citizenry to have sex on their lunch breaks to boost the nation’s birthrate, while the U.S. Surgeon General cautioned that parenting could be hazardous to one’s health.^{24 25 26 27} Cryptocurrency enthusiasts announced aspirations to establish a new Mediterranean city-state, Praxis, founded on principles of “vitality” and “heroic virtue,” and Albania is preparing to establish a new Muslim microstate a quarter the size of the Vatican, where “all decisions will be made with love and kindness.”^{28 29}

On an Alaskan island, wildlife officials crawled through grasses, set traps with peanut butter, and set up trail cameras in pursuit of one rat reported by a local resident, and a Scandinavian Airlines plane made an emergency landing in Copenhagen after a mouse darted out of a passenger’s in-flight meal.^{30 31} “Those rats laugh at those mint plastic bags,” said Mayor Eric Adams, whose inner circle has been plagued by corruption-related investigations and whose interim NYPD commissioner had his residences searched by the feds a week after he was appointed to replace a previous commissioner who had resigned after being investigated by the feds, in criticism of rat-repellent bags purchased by Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration under a contract that the feds investigated in 2016, during opening remarks at the National Urban Rat Summit.^{32 33 34 35} The feds began probing Robert F. Kennedy Jr. after it was reported that he had cut off the head of a beached whale with a chain saw and strapped it to the roof of his minivan for a five-hour family road trip two decades ago, around the time he was active as an environmental advocate, after a 2012 interview resurfaced in which his daughter recounted: “Every time we accelerated on the highway, whale juice would pour into the windows of the car.”³⁶ The first polar bear sighted in Iceland since 2016, who traveled on an ice floe from Greenland, was shot dead. Police officers in West Kelowna, British Columbia, spent an hour attempting to capture a fugitive pig, who was eventually rehomed at nearby Piggly Wiggly Sanctuary, while local elementary school children rooted him on, and police officers in San Francisco patrolled crosswalks in inflatable chicken costumes to catch speeding drivers. For the next two months, Earth will play host to a mini-moon.^{37 38 39 40} —Jasmine Liu