The US Navy successfully shot down a drone using a laser beam.

Intercom systems on several American Airline flights started emitting strange bleating sounds that left passengers either puzzled, bemused, or just annoyed. It’s still happening and no one knows how or why.

Adderall, a drug used to treat attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, is in short supply across the US due to supply chain issues and record high demand.

In other supply chain news, Ford Motor Company has run out of blue oval badges. Also, in Argentina, the government has intervened to make sure the populace has enough World Cup stickers.

A high line walker broke a world record by walking nearly 1.4 miles on a line suspended from Mont-Saint-Michel in France.

The COO of the plant-based food product Beyond Meat was arrested after reportedly biting a man’s nose in a parking garage after a football game.

The Blue Ribbon art prize at this year’s Colorado State Fair was created by an A.I. software program taking instructions from a text prompt, re-opening the age-old debate of what is art. We’re going to see more AI-generated art as it even took over the celebrated People of Burning Man annual pictorial.

Eminem showed up in the number one spot on a Billboard chart but not the one you’d expect.

An armed man dressed in a rainbow-colored wig and bright yellow safety vest walked into a Pennsylvania Dairy Queen to announce that he was “working to restore Trump to President King of the United States.”

Dignitaries from around the world descended on London to pay their respects to the recently deceased Queen of England. Many business also recognized the passing including the drug dealers.

Los Angeles dock workers are in hot water with the DOJ after they were caught billing over $2.1 million to their union health insurance plan for “chiropractic services and acupuncture treatments” that were in reality sexual services.

Reports came in that Russian troops, falling for the oldest trick in the book, unwittingly revealed their location to Ukrainian artillery via hackers posing as women hoping to hook up with them.

Nigerian officials seized thousands of donkey penises before they were exported to Hong Kong. The article explains that the donkey genitals were “falsely declared as cow male genitals” but does not explain what someone does with donkey genitals.

In Las Vegas, a woman high on cocaine and alcohol crashed and killed another driver who was high methamphetamine.

A Texas sheriff fell ill when he dipped into a plastic baggie of what he thought was candy but turned out to be edibles seized in a raid.

Just a few highlights this week as my schedule in Japan had me focused elsewhere.

The Alcaraz v. Sinner US Open quarterfinal match that went over five hours ending 2:30am was one thing but it was the backhand save that was seared into everyone’s memory. The Spanish teenager would go on to beat Tiafoe (that match was 4 hours, 19 mins) who was celebrated not only for snapping Nadal’s 22-match Grand Slam winning streak but also because he came up thru the ranks as a son of immigrant parents from Sierra Leone and learned tennis at the center where his dad was the maintenance man.

Queen Elizabeth passed away and my favorite recollections are the stories that show her humanity. One is this amazing story of how she comforted a trauma surgeon just returned from Aleppo, and another on how she was asked to take a photo of an unaware American couple.

Russia, running out of munitions for their war in Ukraine, has placed an order with North Korea.

Forget NFTs, people in Shibuya lined up around the block and then some for one of Kith’s fungible tokens.

A bridge collapsed just as the ribbon was cut at the opening ceremony in Kinshasa, Congo. “The bridge buckled, both its handrails broke off, and the central section slumped into the stream a couple of metres below.” Thankfully, no one was injured.

Due to catastrophic flooding, one third of Pakistan was underwater.

A volunteer with severe liver disease will have donor liver cells injected into his lymph nodes. If all goes according to plan, this person will be the first to grow their own new liver.

Cryptocurrency trading platform Crypto.com accidentally transferred $10.5m to an Australian woman while processing her $100 refund. The company failed to notice decimal point error for several months and now want their money back. One hitch is that the woman has since purchased a $1.35M house.

Someone hacked into a popular Russian taxi app and called every available cab to the same address in Moscow causing a massive traffic jam.

The USDA is dropping millions of biscuits soaked in the rabies vaccine from airplanes flying across 13 states as part of a campaign to rid wild animals of the disease.

A truck full of tomato sauce crashed in California spilling the contents across the highway. The next day, on the other coast, a different truck spilled Alfredo sauce across a Memphis interstate. Bon Appétit has the story.

The Japanese government, caught off guard with the shutdown of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, decided to take more aggressive steps to reduce their dependence on old technology, such as the floppy disk. Apparently fax machines are next.

A recently adopted Texas law requires public schools to display a poster bearing the motto, “In God We Trust” and that schools not pay for them. When Sravan Krishna heard that, he offered to donate a couple of colorful signs to his local North Texas school that said the same thing, in Arabic. The school board was not amused.

CNN dug into transcripts of Trump’s past interviews and speeches and found that the former President, currently under suspicion of withholding classified documents, was quite adamant that anyone caught with classified material should be punished and thrown in jail for a long time.

Apparently, one of the missing empty folders marked “Classified” may have ended up in a display case at the bar in the lobby of the New York Trump Tower.