In the spirit of holidays (well, mainly to get these finished by the end of the year) we are bringing you a second 2017 recap today! We are now at May, when my guy Takuma Sato won the Indy 500. The media were flooded with Russia-related news this month, but that wasn’t all that happened. The biggest story, however, was probably when the president fired the head of the FBI James Comey, right in the midst of all the Russia stuff.

• Over 500 people were injured in a terrorist bombing at a concert in Manchester, United Kingdom. 22 of the victims were killed along with the bomber, who apparently showed signs of being radicalized for years preceding the attack.
• Chelsea Manning got out of prison after being in seven years for leaking documents* to Wikileaks. She immediately started pissing conservative people off on Twitter.
• 1 person is killed and 20 more injured in New York City’s Times Square when a guy drove into the crowd of pedestrians. He was apparently on PCP and wanted to commit suicide by cop. He had psychological problems all his life.
• Trump travels to Saudi Arabia, where he signs a massive arms deal. This is so Saudi Arabia can continue its own oil-motivated skirmishes (and human rights violations) in Yemen. Trump was super proud of it, but the deal turned out to be way overblown.*
• Remember we mentioned the Somalia ramp-up in the previous blog? The one that was a training mission? This month, a US Navy SEAL was killed in action and 2 others injured, doing a little more than training outside of the city of Mogadishu.
• The French presidential election happens, with their version of Hillary Clinton (Macron) winning over their version of Donald Trump (Le Pen).
• Mass shooting: A guy with a history of anger issues and violence goes postal, killing 8 including a sheriff deputy. He apparently ran out of bullets before achieving his ultimate goal, suicide by cop.
• A Neo-Nazi stabbed 3 people on a train in Oregon, after they blocked him from attacking a Muslim teenager that had seemingly disrespected him by existing. 2 of the victims died, and the response from the murderer was “That’s what liberalism gets you.”
• Near the end of the month, President Trump met with the leaders of the other major world economies (the G7), and left that summit the only member who wouldn’t explicitly agree to the Paris Climate Agreement.**

Footnotes are for the people in the far future.

*Back in these days, there are still times when you can do something and nobody sees it. Manning’s documents gave people a glimpse into how much surveillance is really possible in their daily lives.

**The Paris Climate Agreement was an attempt by science-based cultures to curb the effects of climate change in hopes of saving our ecosystem. If you are reading this in the future they (or someone) succeeded! That or climate change never existed of course.