Good morning. It's Monday, March 23, and we're covering President Donald Trump's Strait of Hormuz deadline, the return of K-pop royalty, and much more. First time reading? Join over 4.7 million insatiably curious readers. Sign up here.
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President Donald Trump issued an ultimatum Saturday, threatening strikes on Iran’s power plants unless the Strait of Hormuz is fully reopened by this evening. Iranian officials said they would target critical sites in neighboring countries that host US bases in response.
The escalation comes as the Iranian military launched a pair of ballistic missiles at a joint US-UK base in the Indian Ocean (one failed, one was intercepted). The launch was the farthest ever attempted by Iran and revealed a theoretical strike distance of nearly 2,500 miles, potentially threatening European targets.
Meanwhile, new Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei issued a second public statement via state media on the war and state of the country. Khamenei has not been publicly seen or heard since he assumed power two weeks ago.
Separately, reports suggest US officials are considering occupying or blockading Kharg Island, which sits 15 miles off the Iranian coast and processes the bulk of its oil exports.
See satellite photos of damage across the region here. |
Former FBI Director Robert Mueller died on Friday at age 81. After leading the agency from 2001 to 2013, Mueller later became known for his role as special counsel, appointed in 2017 to investigate claims of Russian interference in the US’ 2016 presidential election.
The Mueller investigation identified contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia. By 2019, they had brought charges against six of President Donald Trump’s associates, including campaign chair Paul Manafort and Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn. However, Mueller did not find sufficient evidence that the campaign had conspired with Russia. The team did not reach a conclusion on obstruction of justice charges. (See takeaways here; see Mueller’s 448-page report here.)
Prior to the report, Mueller served as the FBI’s second-longest serving director, joining the agency days before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Under his tenure, the FBI enforced the Patriot Act and documented CIA torture in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. |
K-pop band BTS returned to the stage over the weekend for the group’s first concert in nearly three-and-a-half years. The free concert at Seoul’s Gwanghwamun Square drew tens of thousands of attendees and was livestreamed on Netflix.
BTS (short for “Bangtan Sonyeondan,” which means “Bulletproof Boy Scouts” in Korean) debuted in 2013 and has since become South Korea’s most successful band. The group is the first since the Beatles to have three albums reach No. 1 in the US within a year (2018-19). BTS also holds the record for most music video streams on YouTube within a day (108.2 million views) for the 2021 hit "Butter." The band had been on hiatus since 2022 as its members enlisted for mandatory military service in 18- to 21-month stints. Now, they've released their fifth studio album with an 82-date world tour analysts estimate could earn at least $1.9B, approaching Taylor Swift’s record-holding $2.2B Eras Tour.
Explore the best resources on K-pop here (w/video). |
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Sports, Entertainment, & Culture |
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> Never-before-seen photos of astronauts Neil Armstrong and David Scott following their 1966 Gemini 8 mission revealed; capsule required an emergency splashdown after a critical in-space failure (More) |
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> US stock markets continued downward trajectory Friday (S&P 500 -1.5%, Dow -1.0%, Nasdaq -2.0%) amid fallout from the war in Iran (More) | Average price of gas in the US just above $3.94 per gallon; see state-by-state breakdown (More) |
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> ICE agents will deploy to major US airports today to assist with airport security operations amid partial government shutdown, White House says (More) |
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