DC Plane Crash, Asteroid Samples, and Endangered Baby Names

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Breaking: Last night a regional American Eagle plane en route from Wichita, Kansas, reportedly collided in mid-air with a military helicopter as it was landing at Washington, DC's Reagan National Airport. At least 64 people were onboard the plane, which crashed into near-freezing water in the Potomac River. No survivors have been found from either aircraft as of early this morning. This is a developing story; see updates here.

'Gold Bar Bob' Sentenced

Former New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez (D) was sentenced yesterday afternoon to 11 years in prison on bribery, fraud, and extortion charges in federal court in Manhattan.

Menendez was convicted in July when a jury found the 71-year-old guilty on all 16 counts of taking payments in gold bars and cash to influence New Jersey criminal investigations and provide intel to Egyptian officials. The case ended the former head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's political career after three terms.

Menendez, his wife Nadine, and three New Jersey businessmen were indicted in the scheme in 2023, though Nadine's trial has been postponed until March as she undergoes breast cancer treatment. Two of the co-conspirators, Fred Daibes and Wael Hana, were tried alongside Menendez and convicted on all counts. They were also sentenced yesterday, each receiving more than $1M in fines and nearly a decade in prison. The third businessman, Jose Uribe, is scheduled for sentencing in April.

See a list of other US senators who have been indicted here. 

Guantánamo Bay Plan

The US government will repurpose Guantánamo Bay to hold as many as 30,000 undocumented migrants after President Donald Trump said yesterday the facilities will be used as a holding center for high-priority migrants facing deportation with criminal backgrounds (read order).

Colloquially known as “Gitmo,” the naval base has operated on a small patch of southeast Cuba under an open-ended lease since 1903 (see history). The facilities became infamous during the war on terror for the indefinite detention of suspected enemy combatants—as of the beginning of the year, 15 people are still being held. Details of how the base will be used to process migrants or when the effort will begin were not specified.

In related news, the Trump administration rescinded a memo issued yesterday ordering a wide-ranging freeze in federal funding. The guidance reportedly created confusion over which of the thousands of programs were affected and raised legal questions regarding the executive branch's ability to intervene in congressionally directed spending.  

Separately, health secretary nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr. began confirmation hearings yesterday, facing questions about Medicaid and Medicare, past statements on vaccines, and more. See a nomination tracker here.

Brine on Bennu

Analyses of samples harvested from a near-Earth asteroid suggest it broke billions of years ago from a much larger, watery object containing crucial ingredients to life, according to research released yesterday. 

In 2020, NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission collected a quarter-pound sample of regolith, or dirt, from the one-third-mile-wide asteroid Bennu, returning it to Earth in Utah in 2023. Early analyses identified 14 of 20 amino acids crucial to life on Earth in the sample, as well as all five nucleobases comprising genetic code. Additionally, a type of salt was discovered, suggesting the asteroid may have once been covered in salty ponds where amino acids had the potential to mix with other minerals and form organic compounds.

In a surprise to researchers, the asteroid's amino acids are made of an equal proportion of the molecule and its mirror-image structure, similar to right- and left-handedness. Earth's amino acids consist mostly of just one side of that mirror image, known as left-handed chirality, casting doubt on a long-held theory that life's ingredients arrived on Earth via such asteroids (see explainer).

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