Weekly Review

A group of researchers released a study identifying the Dark Empath personality type. Read More

A new study suggested that half of all Americans alive in 2015 suffered brain damage from exposure to leaded gasoline. Read More

In Texas, a screening of The Batman was paused when a live bat entered the theater. Read More

“It’s a communist country, so [Putin] can’t feed his people, so they need more farmland,” said the Republican senator Tommy Tuberville. Read More

A Maine Department of Transportation helmet was found buried in seaweed on a Norwegian fjord. Read More

An 80-year-old nun in Los Angeles who stole approximately $835,000 from her school to fund her gambling habit was sentenced to a year in federal prison. Read More

A new study found that words are required to think about numbers. Read More

Gianni Infantino, the president of FIFA, argued before politicians at the Council of Europe that his plan to hold World Cups every two years could prevent African migrants from meeting their “death in the sea.” Read More

A Czech folk singer who intentionally contracted COVID in the hopes of acquiring a “recovery pass” to the local sauna died. Read More

The Taliban dismissed nearly 3,000 members who were “giving a bad name to the Islamic Emirate.” Read More

A court in Spain ruled that animals are sentient beings and thus eligible for considerations like joint custody after their owners’ divorce. Read More

A New Year’s Day polar bear plunge in Boise, Idaho, was canceled due to severely icy conditions. Read More

Tesla announced that it would no longer allow motorists to play video games on their car’s touchscreen while driving. Read More

New York City’s mayor-elect, Eric Adams, who has said that he will move to close Rikers Island by 2027, announced that he would resume solitary confinement for detainees there, a punishment that current mayor Bill de Blasio planned to end on the final day of his term. Read More

“You firebug little bastard, you’re not going to keep us down,” said a Fox News host after the media company’s New York Christmas tree was set ablaze. Read More

No arrests were made in connection to a 200-child brawl at a trampoline park in Tampa, Florida. Read More

“Believe me, the English will not have a magic Christmas,” said Jean Michel Fournier, a French fisherman who helped form a blockade at the port of Calais to prevent trade until the two countries sort out their post-Brexit fishing licensing. Read More

A school district in Missouri announced that it will be hiring its own high school students as cooks, maintenance workers, and childcare providers to compensate for staffing shortages. Read More

Agencies reported a critical shortage of people trained to play Santa Claus over the holidays this year. Read More

Taliban officials instructed taxi drivers in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province to refuse rides to gunmen unaffiliated with their organization. Read More

Buckingham Palace said that Queen Elizabeth would not attend the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, where local residents have complained of a growing rat infestation. Read More

A medical school in Japan discovered that it had mixed up plumbing and, for the past 30 years, had been serving toilet water for “drinking, washing hands, and gargl[ing].” Read More

“How do you oppose the Holocaust?” a Texas teacher asked an administrator who said that educators should consider “other perspectives” in lessons about the Shoah. Read More

A school in Belgium alerted parents that their children had been playing games they had seen on Squid Game and beating up the losers as a way to approximate killings in the show. Read More

It was announced that pieces of a bridge on which A. A. Milne, author of the Winnie the Pooh books, played with his son will go up for auction at the same house that sold 20 tons of the Berlin Wall. Read More

A U.S. federal judge ordered Facebook to release records of all posts promoting violence against the Rohingya ethnic group that the company had previously declined to share because of privacy concerns. Read More

The pope expressed confusion as to why some cardinals were refusing the COVID-19 vaccine. Read More

Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton of Washington denied responsibility for siccing six zebras on residents of the suburbs of Washington, D.C. Read More

Major General Christopher Donahue was the last American soldier to leave Afghanistan, marking an end to the United States’ longest war, the cost of which lawmakers on the Senate Finance Committee have mentioned only once since September 11, 2001. Read More

Harvard University’s new chaplain is an atheist. Read More