Good morning. It's Thursday, Dec. 4, and we're covering scrutiny over US strikes in the Caribbean, immigration enforcement in Louisiana and Minnesota, and much more. First time reading? Join over 4.5 million insatiably curious readers. Sign up here.
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A Colombian family yesterday filed the first legal challenge against US airstrikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific with an inter-American human rights watchdog.
Alejandro Andres Carranza Medina, a 42-year-old fisherman, was among over 80 people killed in 21 confirmed airstrikes carried out by the Trump administration since September. Carranza's wife and four children insist he was on a fishing expedition and not carrying drugs when his boat was struck Sept. 15. Their complaint alleges Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the strike without knowing who was aboard, violating Carranza's right to due process and a fair trial. Hegseth is also facing scrutiny from US lawmakers over a follow-up strike on another alleged drug boat days earlier that killed two survivors of the first strike.
Separately, the Pentagon’s internal watchdog determined Hegseth endangered US troops earlier this year when he shared details about military operations in Yemen via a private Signal group chat. |
New Orleans, Minnesota Crackdown |
Federal agents began immigration enforcement efforts yesterday in New Orleans, Louisiana, and two Minnesota cities: Minneapolis and St. Paul. The crackdown follows similar endeavors in Los Angeles, Chicago, Charlotte, and Memphis.
Federal officials specifically named 10 people in Louisiana for arrest and deportation: men from Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Jordan, and Vietnam who had been arrested for crimes including child endangerment, robbery, and domestic abuse. The Department of Homeland Security says the men had been inappropriately released from custody due to New Orleans' sanctuary city laws. Federal agents are separately targeting unauthorized Somali immigrants in Minnesota, according to reports. The crackdown comes after President Donald Trump used derogatory language to refer to Somalis and Somali-born Rep. Ilhan Omar (D, MN-5).
It is not clear to what extent officials will arrest people without criminal records. Out of more than 370 unauthorized immigrants arrested in North Carolina, federal officials say at least 44 had criminal records. |
Malaysia announced yesterday that a search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 will resume this month, more than a decade after the jet’s disappearance—and months after the effort was postponed due to poor weather. The government has pledged $70M to the US robotics company Ocean Infinity if it can produce wreckage.
On March 8, 2014, the Beijing-bound Boeing 777 aircraft stopped transmitting location data, 39 minutes after taking off from Kuala Lumpur. After exiting Malaysian airspace, the plane veered off course (see flight path) with satellite data indicating the aircraft continued flying for hours. Multiple international search efforts failed to reveal the jet’s location; the plane is believed to have crashed somewhere in the Indian Ocean, killing all 239 people on board.
Ocean Infinity says its technology has improved since a previous search failed in 2018. Beginning Dec. 30, the company will scour a 5,800-square-mile site in the Indian Ocean for 55 days. See a documentary trailer about the mystery here. |
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Exxon Has an Unlikely New Competitor |
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Sports, Entertainment, & Culture |
> Spotify Wrapped reveals Bad Bunny as the platform's most-streamed global artist in 2025, dethroning Taylor Swift's two-year reign (More) | "The Joe Rogan Experience" is Spotify's most-listened-to podcast for fifth straight year (More) |
> Matthew Perry's doctor is sentenced to 30 months in federal prison for selling ketamine to the late actor weeks before his fatal overdose (More) |
> Germany selected to host UEFA Women's Euros in 2029, marking the nation's first major women's soccer tournament since the 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup (More) |
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> Waymo begins testing self-driving vehicles in Philadelphia and launches manned drives in Baltimore, Pittsburgh, and St. Louis to collect road data (More) |
> Chemists synthesize a fungal compound with potential to fight diffuse midline glioma, an aggressive pediatric brain cancer that has few treatment options (More) |
> NASA scientists find bioessential sugars and a gum-like material rich in oxygen and nitrogen in an asteroid sample, offering clues about how life’s molecular building blocks arrived on Earth (More) |
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> US stock markets close higher (S&P 500 +0.3%, Dow +0.9%, Nasdaq +0.2%) as weaker-than-expected private payrolls data spurs interest rate cut bets (More) |
> Delta Air Lines reports this year's 43-day-long US government shutdown cost the airline an estimated $200M (More) |
> OpenAI to acquire Neptune, a startup that builds monitoring and debugging tools used in training AI models; deal terms were not disclosed (More) |
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7 Retirement Income Streams to Explore |
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> President Donald Trump pardons Rep. Henry Cuellar (D, TX-28) and his wife, indicted last year on charges of receiving almost $600K in bribes from Mexican and Azerbaijani companies (More) |
> House Oversight Committee releases 10 images, four videos taken in 2020 of late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein's two private islands (More, w/photo, video) |
> European Commission proposes using over $150B in frozen Russian assets to fund reparations-style loan to Ukraine despite Belgium's concerns of Russian retaliation (More) |
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> Pigeon Racing
The Paris Review | Oliver Egger. Inside the world (and ethical debates) of pigeon racing, where fearless birds battle storms and predators while the humans behind them treat the fastest fliers like high-stakes commodities. (Read) |
> When Your 9 to 5 Becomes Optional
1440 Daily | August Moon. A dive into "post-labor economics," the idea that if machines replace workers, they will also erase paychecks, keeping the economy running. Will labor evolve to meet the moment, and if not, how might society evolve? (Watch) |
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Clickbait: A raccoon’s booze bender.
Historybook: English philosopher Thomas Hobbes dies (1679); President Woodrow Wilson travels to Versailles for WWI peace talks, is first US president to travel to Europe while in office (1918); Jay-Z born (1969); Tyra Banks born (1973); American journalist Terry Anderson released after more than six years as hostage in Lebanon (1991).
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1440 Trivia: Nvidia controls what percent of the graphics processing units market? Check back tomorrow (or dig for it here) to see if you were correct.
... and vote on tomorrow's Trivia topic: Salvador Dalí or Soap Operas.
PS: Yesterday's answer was ... About 10%-15% of people experience chronic insomnia.
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