Weekly Review
On the second full day of his second presidential term, Donald Trump ended a 2011 policy preventing Immigration and Customs Enforcement from making arrests at schools, hospitals, and places of worship; “It’s kind of a war,” said a reverend in Chicago of ICE’s actions, while Colombian president Gustavo Petro turned away two military planes carrying deported migrants, posted on social media that “A migrant is not a criminal,” and pointed out that there are at least 15,666 Americans living in Colombia without legal immigration status.1 2 3 4 5 6 In response, Trump issued “emergency 25% tariffs” on Colombian goods, which he said he would double in a week; unfazed, Petro vowed to “do the same.”7 8 9 10 “It’s just stupid,” a former biodefense official in the George W. Bush Administration said of Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States from the World Health Organization, and air pollution in Bangkok exceeded by eight times the daily maximum average recommended by the WHO, prompting the Thai government to institute “desperate measures,” including scientifically unproven “cloud seeding” and closing 352 schools, all on the same day that UNICEF reported that 242 million children across 85 countries missed school last year as a consequence of extreme weather events.11 12 13 14 15 In Java, Indonesia, floods and landslides left at least 25 dead; New Orleans saw eight inches of snow, in the city’s greatest snowfall since 1895; a bomb cyclone in Ireland broke wind speed records dating to World War II; and rain fell in Los Angeles, providing some relief from ongoing wildfires but forcing officials to prepare for floods, toxic ash runoff, and mudslides through burn-scarred neighborhoods.16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27
Israel freed 200 Palestinian prisoners, ranging in age from 16 to 69, while Hamas released four female Israeli soldiers in the second exchange between the entities since they agreed to a ceasefire; according to Palestinian news agencies and the Ministry of Health, Israeli forces have killed at least sixteen Palestinians in Jenin since the agreement, including a two-year-old who was reportedly shot in the head by snipers, and Israeli forces killed 22 people and wounded 124 in southern Lebanon after failing to withdraw from the country by the deadline set in November through a ceasefire agreement with Hezbollah.28 29 30 31 32 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 A paper published in The Lancet found that official death tolls for the first nine months of the war in Gaza may have underreported the actual toll by more than 40%, and President Trump reversed a hold imposed by the Biden Administration on the supply of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel.43 44 45 In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, rebels captured the city of Goma, forcing thousands of civilians to flee and sparking international concern over escalating war in the country’s mineral-rich eastern region, and in Sudan’s civil war, an airstrike on Saudi Teaching Maternal Hospital, the last functioning hospital in the city of El Fasher, killed at least seventy people.46 47 48 South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol was indicted for leading an insurrection after he declared martial law last month, and the Philippine government issued a comic book asserting its territorial claims, which China disputes, in the South China Sea; the next day, Filipino scientists collecting sand samples reported that the Chinese Coast Guard had harassed them out of the water by flying helicopters dangerously low over their heads.49 50 51 52 53
In Osaka, Japan, a 47-year-old woman was arrested for allegedly causing 8 traffic accidents within 35 minutes; “That’s exactly how I play Mario Kart,” said one commentator.54 55 The woman denied not only that she had caused the accidents, but that she had even been driving a car at the time.56 On nearby Okunoshima, Japan’s “Rabbit Island,” a man believed to have kicked 77 rabbits to death over the past two months explained that he’d wanted to know how they would respond to “bullying.”57 Florida police arrested a woman after finding methamphetamines in a bag labeled Definitely Not a bag Full of Drugs fourteen weeks after Oregon police found fentanyl and meth in a bag marked with the same phrase, and French customs officials warned of the dangers of illegally imported “aphrodisiac honey” infused with Viagra.58 59 60 61 62 Two Sumatran corpse flowers, Sydney’s Putricia and New York City’s Smelliot, bloomed on either side of the globe, luring in thousands of visitors as they released an odor variously described as redolent of “briny, dead fish,” “hot garbage,” and “poo.”63 64 65 66 In Japan, aquarium staff nursed a lonely sunfish back to health by pasting pictures of human faces on the side of its tank.67 In Alabama, a 53-year-old woman became the longest-living recipient of a pig organ transplant after sixty-one days.68 “I’m Superwoman,” she said, laughing.69 Thailand became the first country in Southeast Asia to legalize same-sex marriage, putting into effect a bill that redefines marriage as occurring between a “person and a spouse,” rather than a “man and a woman.”70 71 Almost 2,000 queer couples got married across the country that day, 654 of them in Bangkok, which set a new world record for the most same-sex marriages to occur in a single city in the span of a day.72 “I feel it has unlocked everything,” said one newlywed.73 “We can now use the word ‘family.’”74 —Izzy Ampil