How much have you missed?

Here’s a recap of this week. Just click the story to read on!

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Politics

• The North Carolina political operative behind the voter fraud that benefitted a Republican congressional candidate Mark Harris has been indicted, and a new vote has been ordered.
• Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer, testified in front of the White House Oversight Committee on Wednesday, and a lot came out. Here are the highlights you should know.
• Behind closed doors, Michael Cohen testified in front of the House Intelligence Committee on Russia and the existence (or nonexistence) of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.
• The second nuclear summit for Trump and Kim Jong Un in Hanoi was cut short and ended without a deal.
• Trump has excused Kim Jong Un for the death of American student Otto Warmbier who was imprisoned in North Korea and sent back to the U.S. in a vegetative state. Trump said that Kim Jong Un “felt very badly” about the treatment of Warmbier in prison, and Trump will “take him at his word.”
• Senator Cory Booker (D- NJ), a 2020 presidential hopeful, is reintroducing a bill to legalize marijuana at a federal level. The bill is co-sponsored by other senators and 2020 presidential hopefuls Kristen Gillibrand (D- NY), Kamala Harris (D- Calif), Elizabeth Warren (D- Mass), and Bernie Sanders (I- VT), in addition to Senator Jeff Merkley (D- Oregon).

Pop culture

• Jussie Smollett has been suspended from Empire after being charged with orchestrating a fake attack on himself as a ploy to get more money.
• The host-less Oscars went off without a hitch this week. Here are the highlights. The memes were Oscar worthy
• Selma Blair (you probably know her as that bitch Vivian from Legally Blonde) spoke out this week about her multiple sclerosis diagnosis on Good Morning America this week. The episode aired shortly after Selma turned heads at the Vanity Fair Oscars party, sporting her custom-made patent leather cane and inspiring millions of people with chronic illnesses. Selma will be designing a clothing line for people with disabilities, and we can’t wait.
• The Jonas Brothers are reuniting and releasing a new single called ‘Sucker’ after five years. The single will drop on Friday at midnight, and the JoBros will take over The Late Show with James Corden for a week.
• After the internet went wild over Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper’s intimate performance of the song ‘Shallow’ at the Oscars, Gaga addressed the rumors of a secret romance.

Humanity

• R. Kelly turned himself in after being charged with 10 new counts of sexual abuse, and was released on $1 million bail. He will be pleading not guilty.
• New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft has been charged with two counts of soliciting a prostitute at a Florida spa.
• Thousands of migrant children have reported sexual abuse while in US custody.
• Tik Tok has been fined a record $5.7 million for illegally collecting children’s data without their parents’ knowledge.
• A disturbing new internet challenge, the “Momo Challenge,” is encouraging children to harm or even kill themselves.

Science says...

• Scientists are unsure how a young humpback whale washed ashore on an island in the Amazon jungle.
• A website was launched this month by a software engineer that constructs eerily realistic pictures of fake people through the use of artificial intelligence.
• A Wallace’s giant bee, the world’s largest bee, has been spotted for the first time since 1981.
• Water tests conducted this week did not show the toxic algae bloom that has been a prominent issue along Florida’s coastline for over a year.
• IBM’s AI machine lost in a debate to a human, but it showed the increasingly complex skill level that robots are capable of.

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