Weekly Review

The number of people confirmed to have been killed by a magnitude 7.7 earthquake in Myanmar increased to 3,354, and the United States increased its tariff on Myanmar exports to 44 percent.^{1 2} The U.S. president imposed a 20 percent tariff on imports from the European Union, and then his secretary of state advised the bloc not to stop purchasing American weapons.^{3 4 5} The U.S. president increased the total tariff on Chinese goods to 54 percent, and it was reported that the U.S. government had banned employees in China from having sex with Chinese nationals.^{6 7 8} The U.S. president applied a 10 percent tariff on the majority of goods imported from the United Kingdom, and a British mother filmed her son eating her father’s ashes.^{9 10} The U.S. president put a 10 percent tariff on an uninhabited island in the Indian Ocean, and a 24-year-old American was arrested by the Indian Navy for bringing the world’s most isolated tribe a can of Coke.^{11 12} In South Korea, the parliament removed its president from office for declaring martial law, and its speaker proposed amending the country’s constitution to limit presidential power.^{13 14}

More than 150,000 people protested in the streets of Madrid to demand affordable housing, and heavy rains in the Congolese capital of Kinshasa caused flooding that killed at least 22 people.^{15 16} The former CEO of a German insurance corporation said a global temperature increase of 3 degrees Celsius from the preindustrial era would “destroy capital,” cause a “climate-induced credit crunch,” and lead to “market failure”; and the chairman of a British oil company announced plans to resign due to shareholder anger over his attempt to achieve net-zero carbon emissions.^{17 18} A study found that climate change strengthened a March heatwave in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan, where temperatures were more than 15 degrees Celsius above average; the Florida senate voted to ban weather control devices; and NASA doubled to 3.8 percent its estimate of the likelihood that an asteroid collides with the moon in 2032.^{19 20 21} A man in Nevada claimed that the seven tigers seized from his home were service animals, and marine experts in California reported that a neurotoxin present in algae was causing sea lions to be more violent. “Its expression was,” said the victim of a sea lion attack, “almost demonic.”^{22 23} 

A smartphone company announced that it would release a phone that emits pleasant odors, a software developer used artificial intelligence to build an app that provides users with recipes for cyanide-laced ice cream and uranium bombs, and a man in a New York appeals court attempted to state his case via an attorney generated by artificial intelligence.^{24 25 26} “I come here,” said the avatar, “a humble pro se.”²⁷ Doctors surveyed in the United Kingdom reported a rise in Victorian diseases, and it was reported that five nurses who work on the same floor of a Massachusetts hospital all developed brain tumors.^{28 29} The CEO of an American financial firm was arrested for choking a man whose wife requested he wear shoes on the dance floor of a cruise ship, a man in Florida was arrested for battery of an adult attendant after a children’s lemonade stand denied him a free refill, and the city of Montreal converted an occupied parking space into a bus stop and then issued a ticket to the vehicle’s owner.^{30 31 32 34} In Canada, the leader of the New Democratic Party suggested that the country resume selling WWII–era Victory Bonds; and in Afghanistan, the Taliban announced that it was investigating a man’s claim to have been in his thirties in 1919, at the end of the Third Anglo–Afghan War.^{35 36} “Everyone,” he said, “thanked King Amanullah Khan for chasing the British away.”³⁷  —Joe Kloc