Good week, Bad week

Good week for:

The human race, after the world did not end on May 21, as Christian radio broadcaster Harold Camping had predicted. [Editor’s note: We filed this item several days early, but will print a correction if it’s wrong.]

Discounts, after hundreds of customers lined up at a Los Angeles gas station to buy unleaded gas for $1.10 a gallon—instead of $4.29. The price was the result of a computer glitch.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Sweet justice, after operators of an Amtrak train headed for Salem, Ore., stopped the train so that Lakeysha Beard, 39, could be escorted off. Beard allegedly spent 16 hours speaking loudly on her cell phone—in a “quiet” car.

Bad week for:

Newt Gingrich, whose quest for the Republican presidential nomination was in tatters this week, after he called fellow Republican Paul Ryan’s Medicare reform plan “radical” and “right-wing social engineering.” When he was widely denounced by prominent conservatives, Gingrich said, “I made a mistake.”

Antonio Hernández, who was arrested in North Carolina and held in jail for four days after police thought the 91 pounds of tortilla dough in his truck was cocaine. Apologetic officers said a cheese enzyme in the tortilla dough delivered a false positive on a drug test.

Autumn Braden of Michigan, after the 19-year-old put her “adorable” 2-year-old cousin up for sale on eBay for $1,000. When police showed up, Braden said, “All I was trying to do was see how eBay worked.”