Good morning. It's Tuesday, April 15—and it's also Tax Day in the US. Today, we're covering a mistakenly deported man stuck in limbo, the first footprints of an armored dinosaur species, and much more. First time reading? Join over 4 million intellectually curious readers. Sign up here.
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El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele said yesterday he would not return to the US a Maryland man with protected legal status who was mistakenly deported—raising concerns about due process.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, 29, fled to the US as a teenager after facing gang threats in El Salvador. In 2019, a US immigration judge issued a court order barring his deportation to protect him from harm. However, the Trump administration expelled Garcia to a Salvadoran mega-prison last month despite no criminal charges against him, later acknowledging the move was a clerical error. Garcia’s case is one of more than 200 migrants who have been deported after Trump invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act (see previous write-up). The Trump administration is paying the Salvadoran government $6M to host deportees.
Bukele's comments came after the US Supreme Court ordered the administration to facilitate Garcia’s return last week. US officials have stated they cannot force El Salvador to return him, but legal experts say judges can order the US to have Garcia returned and note the US has previously assisted in returning mistakenly deported individuals. |
Paleontologists have discovered 100-million-year-old fossilized footprints in the Canadian Rockies that reveal the first known tracks of three-toed, clubbed-tail armored dinosaurs, filling a gap in the fossil record.
The footprints belong to an ankylosaurid, part of a larger group of ankylosaur dinosaurs (see overview) that were heavily armored herbivores from the Late Jurassic to Cretaceous periods, known for their bony plates (even on their eyelids) and spikes. The ankylosaurs have two main subgroups: the nodosaurids, which have a flexible tail and four toes and whose footprints are well known, and the ankylosaurids, which have sledgehammer-like tails and three toes. Ankylosaurs are estimated to have been up to 30 feet long and weighed over 10,000 pounds.
The footprints (see photos) from the middle of the Cretaceous period, roughly 100 to 94 million years ago, indicate ankylosaurids were present in North America despite the absence of skeletal remains. The discovery suggests both nodosaurids and ankylosaurids coexisted in the same region during the same period. |
Harvey Weinstein’s retrial on sex crime charges begins with jury selection today in Manhattan. The 73-year-old faces accusations of sexually assaulting former production assistant Mimi Haleyi (2006), raping aspiring actress Jessica Mann (2013), and a new allegation of forced oral sex at a Manhattan hotel (2006). Opening statements could begin as early as April 22, with the trial expected to last up to six weeks.
Weinstein’s 2020 conviction, which included guilty verdicts for assaulting Haleyi and raping Mann, was overturned in April 2024 by a New York appeals court. The court found the jury had been unfairly influenced by testimony from women whose allegations were not part of the formal charges. The retrial will feature fewer witnesses and tighter rules on testimony language.
Weinstein is serving a 16-year sentence in California following a separate 2023 conviction for rape and assault. He has denied all allegations and maintains that all sexual encounters were consensual. |
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Sports, Entertainment, & Culture |
> NBA postseason kicks off tonight with the Play-In Tournament; see full play-in schedule (More) | Dallas Wings take former UConn star Paige Bueckers with the top pick in the WNBA Draft; see complete draft results (More) |
> Mario Vargas Llosa, Nobel Prize-winning Peruvian author, academic, and Latin American political leader, dies at age 89 (More) |
> HBO reveals first actors cast for upcoming "Harry Potter" TV series (More) | Tony Award winner Leslie Odom Jr. to reprise role of Aaron Burr in Broadway's "Hamilton" this fall (More) |
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> OpenAI releases GPT‑4.1, GPT‑4.1 mini, and GPT‑4.1 nano, which can code and follow instructions; OpenAI claims the latest model, available via its API rather than through ChatGPT, outperforms other models (More) | Google launches new AI model to help researchers decode dolphin communication (More) |
> Study finds Earth's atmosphere and the sun filter out fragile, carbon-rich meteoroids before they can reach the ground; answers long-running question about why carbon-rich meteorites, which are abundant in space, rarely reach Earth (More) |
> Wearable AI system uses visual, audio, and haptic signals to help blind and partially sighted people navigate obstacles; walking distance and navigation time improved by 25% compared to using a cane (More) |
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> US stock markets close higher (S&P 500 +0.8%, Dow +0.8%, Nasdaq +0.6%) as tech shares rise after the US exempts electronics from import tariffs (More) |
> Nvidia to mass-produce artificial intelligence supercomputer chips in the US for the first time; announces up to $500B investment in the US over the next four years, including in Texas and Arizona (More) |
> Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg takes the witness stand on first day of antitrust trial; federal regulators argue Meta—the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp—monopolized personal social networking services (More) |
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> Trump administration freezes over $2.2B in funding to Harvard after the university rejected the administration's requests to overhaul its policies and processes, becoming first university to refuse to comply with such requests (More) |
> Suspect charged with attempted murder, arson, and more after setting fire to Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro's (D) home; the 38-year-old man told investigators he would have beaten Shapiro with a hammer (More) | Jury selected in retrial of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's (R) libel suit against The New York Times (More) |
> Hungary approves constitutional amendment to ban LGBTQ+ public gatherings; legislation was first proposed by the ruling Fidesz-KDNP coalition led by populist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán (More) |
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> Taking Down the Texas Lotto
WSJ | Joe Wallace, Katherine Sayre. In 2023, a gambler known as "The Joker" devised a plan to win the Texas Lottery by purchasing nearly all possible 25.8 million ticket combinations, aiming for a roughly $60M profit on a $95M jackpot. (Read)
> How a KGB Spy Recruited His Son
The Guardian | Shaun Walker. At 16 years old, Peter Herrmann's world was upended when his father revealed he was not German but a spy, recruiting his own son into the intelligence agency of the Soviet Union. (Read) |
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All of today's Tax Day food deals.
... and even ancient civilizations paid taxes.
... plus, how your tax rate actually works.
A 6,000-year-old "gummy bear" may have been a Stone Age amulet.
Are planes really falling from the sky?
How a funeral home became Warner Records.
Are twins allergic to the same things?
A German community's 1,500-year-old Easter egg tradition.
Clickbait: Florida café offers coffee and capybara cuddles.
Historybook: President Abraham Lincoln dies (1865); RMS Titanic sinks after hitting an iceberg, killing more than 1,500 (1912); Jackie Robinson breaks color barrier, becomes first Black major league baseball player (1947); Actress Emma Watson born (1990); Two bombs explode at Boston Marathon, killing three and injuring 264 (2013). |
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📖 This week's 1440 Topics newsletters:
1440 Business & Finance (Thursday)
Nvidia: How the company went from video games to a global AI leader (join here).
1440 Society & Culture (Saturday)
Professional Wrestling: From medieval grappling to Hulk Hogan and The Rock (join here). |
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