In reverse order of importance:
Ignoring the earnest advice of Taylor Swift, some guy named Robert Patterson (or is it Robert Pattinson?) and some girl named Kristen Stewart (or is it Kirsten Stewart?) might be getting back together.
Apple announced a new iPhone with a slightly taller screen. Lots of people pre-ordered it.
The IRS payed a bunch of money to a guy who exposed a bunch of Americans avoiding taxes, confirming the Obama administration’s new Whistleblower Doctrine: Expose the government doing illegal things, get prosecuted. Expose American citizens doing illegal things, get money!
New York City’s greater-than-16-oz soda ban officially went into effect, proving that when you let government be your parent by paying your medical bills it also wants to be your parent by telling you what to do. You can’t have large sodas at restaurants unless they’re diet or fruity, but you can still have them all at gas stations. Why? Because I said so, that’s why.
To mayor Rahm Emanuel’s dismay, Chicago’s teacher union went on strike for the first time in 25 years, proving that Obama’s pals apparently aren’t as cozy with unions as we all thought. They’re not facing new budget realities – they’re still getting a 16% raise over four years – but they don’t like new evaluation methods that take student performance into account. To be fair, there may be some evidence and arguments against it, but from what I can tell the idea came from the Obama administration’s “Race to the Top” and has already been implemented in several states. There are also a few non-union schools this time that were still in session last week. Obviously I’m biased, but the whole skirmish sure makes liberals looks bad.
Scientists discovered that the huge chunk of human DNA that they thought was useless junk really isn’t. They also spotted a galaxy that’s so old yet so well-formed that it shouldn’t exist. Hmm. Meanwhile, the old Mars rover found some weird spheres that are different from some other weird spheres that it found earlier.
Muslims attacked US embassies in African and Middle Eastern countries. Apparently they were upset about a weird anti-Islam movie on YouTube, but it sounds like the video was just an excuse for clerics to whip up some religious fervor (I wrote more here.)
The Federal Reserve announced a new complicated quantitative easing policy that’s supposed to save the economy or something. (I wrote about how I don’t understand it here.)