In reverse order of importance:
Justin Bieber fainted but I hear he’s OK.
A 7-year-old was suspended for accidentally eating a pastry into a shape that kinda looked like a gun. Insert strong opinion about public school systems here.
SpaceX continues its progress on a reusable rocket system that can both take off and land itself; here’s their latest “Johnny Cash hoverslam” video.
Kenya had an election.
North Korea threatened to nuke South Korea and the United States (although it’s extremely unlikely that they have the ability to even try to nuke the US). Since sanctions are clearly working so well, the rest of the world worked on harsher ones.
In the first week of The Sequester, stock markets surged to nominal records, unemployment claims dropped to five year lows, and job growth drove unemployment to a four year low. Maybe we should sequester more often.
In cool yet freaky yet cool news, scientists are creating wireless implanted brain-computer interfaces.
Rand Paul filibustered for 12 hours and turned executive limits on drone strikes into front-page national news.
In exciting health news, a child born with HIV appears to be cured. In scary health news, superbugs are invading hospitals in the US, and a “coronavirus” has killed a few people elsewhere.
Arkansas banned elective abortions after 12 weeks of pregnancy, which is also the line at which violence-caused miscarriage can lead to murder charges. I did not realize that nine other states have recently banned abortion after 20 weeks, although many are facing court challenges.
Venezuela’s quasi-dictator president Hugo Chavez died of cancer. Apparently Cuba’s healthcare wasn’t so great after all. Chavez was praised by many on the left for how much of his country’s wealth he gave to the poor, and he was criticized by many on the right for jailing political opponents, banning critical press, and distracting the poor from crime, inflation, and empty shelves with charisma and short-term gifts funded by long-term damage to Venezuela’s infrastructure.