Weekly Review

The largest wildfires in Los Angeles history continued to burn, destroying more than 12,000 structures across 40,000 acres and killing at least 24 people.^{1 2 3} Public fire hydrants ran dry; an insurance contractor dispatched private firefighters with their own dedicated water supply to extinguish the blazes at its customers’ homes; and the inferno in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood caused the Rams football team to relocate their home game to the Arizona Cardinals’ State Farm Stadium, named for the eponymous insurance company that months earlier canceled fire insurance policies for hundreds of Palisades homeowners.^{4 5 6} Mexico and Canada sent dozens of firefighters, Iran offered to provide rescue equipment and fire specialists, Ukraine announced that it was prepared to contribute 150 firefighters, and around 800 incarcerated Californians were paid $1 an hour plus a base fee of up to $10.24 a day to fend off the blazes, a job that when done by inmates instead of professionals is four times more likely to result in broken bones and other injuries.^{7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15} A fire tornado broke out near the neighborhood of Brentwood, a water-dropping airplane collided with a private drone over the Palisades, and police officers arrested a man in the neighborhood of Woodland Hills who was riding around on his bicycle lighting discarded Christmas trees on fire with a blowtorch.^{16 17 18 19}

The Belgian government warned its citizens not to eat their discarded Christmas trees, Poland’s agriculture ministry ordered 82,000 apples for handing out at meetings, the Ukrainian military apprehended a 51-year-old Italian pizza chef who was assisting the Russian army in invading the Donbas, and North Korea announced that cooking hot dogs will be considered an act of treason.^{20 21 22 23 24 25} The mayor of an Italian town banned his own residents from getting sick, the European Union fined itself 400 euros for violating its own data privacy laws, and Washington, D.C., sued the U.S. government for dumping carcinogenic PCBs into the Anacostia River, which runs about two miles southwest of the Capitol.^{26 27 28 29} A man in Arizona tattooed the American flag on the arm of a nine-year-old girl; a school in Rhode Island dropped off the same child at the wrong home twice in one afternoon; a principal in Indiana was charged with felony residential entry for breaking into a student’s apartment to recover items he believed the student had stolen from the school’s visitors’ locker room during a football game; and the parents of a student in Kentucky filed a lawsuit against their son’s former elementary school principal for calling the second-grade boy into his office, slamming a plastic gun on his desk, and threatening to kill him.^{30 31 32 33 34} “I’m going to feed you to the wolves,” the principal said.³⁵ A Canadian man was arrested for bringing the skull of a protected species of baby crocodile through an airport in India, a baby gorilla was discovered in a box at an airport in Turkey, a sheriff in Missouri captured a monkey in a tutu, and scientists in Florida warned residents that a sudden cold front could cause stunned iguanas to fall from the trees.^{36 37 38 39} A woman in Florida defecated on the floor of a Family Dollar store to distract employees while her partner stole $500 worth of cleaning products, another woman in Florida was arrested after she accidentally sent a text meant for her fentanyl dealer to a sheriff’s department narcotics investigator, and a Florida police officer admitted that he had crashed his cruiser into a stopped vehicle because he was looking at pornography while driving.^{40 41 42} “Boobs,” he told internal affairs, “or whatnot.”⁴³

The CEO of a health care company was accused of using $5 million accidentally transferred to her company by the state to win a seat in Congress, the chairman of an Indian manufacturing conglomerate said each employee should be working 90 hours a week instead of staying home to “stare at your wife,” and the families of workers who died during a flood at an eastern Tennessee plastics factory reported that the company sent them fast food gift cards as condolences.^{44 45 46} A man in St. Louis, Missouri, helped another man dig his car out of the snow and then brandished a gun and stole his keys; a Polish general was fired after anti-tank mines that went missing on his watch were found in an IKEA warehouse; the mayor of Bogalusa, Louisiana, was arrested in connection with an opioid-, MDMA-, and marijuana-trafficking ring; and a viral salad recipe caused a cucumber shortage in Iceland.^{47 48 49 50} The pope appointed the first woman to head a Vatican department and then told nuns to stop putting on “vinegar faces,” stop “dialogue with the devil,” and stop gossiping; and in Australia, scientists genetically modified male fruit flies to poison their female partners during sex.^{51 52 53} “We are,” said a researcher, “trying.”⁵⁴ —Joe Kloc