Wounded

A shooter opened fire on Republican lawmakers and staffers as they practiced for a congressional baseball game at a park in Alexandria, Va., on June 14. The attack injured at least five people, including House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., and two Capitol Hill Police officers who were part of Scalise’s security detail. The officers reportedly returned fire and killed the shooter, stopping what would have become a “killing field,” according to U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky. “Had they not been there, it would have been a massacre.”

Hunted

The Florida Everglades have a new plague: the giant python. An estimated 100,000 pythons live in the area and prey on small animals. Even alligators cannot match the Burmese python. Pet owners introduced the pythons into the Everglades by ditching their snakes in the swamp, and the population has boomed. Miami-Dade County officials think they have an answer: professional python killers. The county has launched a two-month pilot program with 25 hunters. They are paid $8.10 an hour to find and wrestle the giants to their deaths. In seven weeks, the hunters killed and removed 149 pythons.

Died

Panama’s former leader, Manuel Noriega, died on May 29 at age 83, almost 30 years after a U.S. invasion removed him from office. Noriega, who grew up in the slums, became a leader in Panama and a power in the region with U.S. support. The CIA recruited Noriega when he was a military cadet, and he was on the CIA payroll from 1967 to 1988. He led Panama’s secret police and defense forces, giving him the power to perform assassinations, sabotage, and run cash and weapons to the Nicaraguan contras. But, Noriega also rigged the election to seize the presidency in 1984 and 1989, murdered political rivals, and threatened Americans in Panama, leading to the 1989 invasion. U.S. troops captured him, and he spent the last 17 years of his life in a U.S. prison. There, according to two Texas pastors, he became a Christian in 1990.

Offended

Harvard University has withdrawn admission offers to 10 incoming freshmen after the school discovered offensive messages the students had posted to social media. The student newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, obtained screenshots of the messages from a private Facebook chat in early December. The messages included images mocking sexual assault, the Holocaust, and the deaths of children. According to the Crimson, one post called the possible hanging of a Mexican child “piñata time.”

Failed

Every year freshmen and seniors from about 200 colleges around the country take a test measuring whether colleges increase students’ cognitive abilities. The results are terrible. The Wall Street Journal reviewed tests from schools that gave the exam in 2013 and 2016. At about half of the schools, at least a third of the seniors were unable to form a proper argument, assess evidence, or interpret a data table. Even at flagship universities, the test indicates an average graduate shows almost no improvement from his freshman year. The best results come from smaller colleges.