In theory, I knew that this kind of thing can happen in any family.
Upstanding citizens are always turning out to be secret criminals, and I wouldn't even call
“my cousin Alan an upstanding citizen, but it's one thing to know and another thing to understand.”
Alan, murder, me, what the hell was Alan thinking? From serial productions and the New York Times, I'm Em Gesson, and this is the idiot. Listen, wherever you get your podcast. From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford.
Today's Monday, March 23rd, here's what we're covering. At approximately 11.40 last night, air cannon flight 8.6.4.6 collided with the Port Authority aircraft rescue and firefighting vehicle on runway 4. Just before midnight at New York City's Laguardia Airport, an air cannon flight from Montreal collided with a fire truck.
Video from the aftermath shows the regional jet tipped onto its tail. It's nose, sheared off, and mangled wreckage hanging down onto the ground.
“At times, journalists there said that nearby, a damaged truck was lying on its side as emergency”
workers responded to the scene. Sadly, the two pilots are confirmed deceased, and notifications are being made by air Canada's care team at this time. The crash happened as the plane was landing, and the fire truck was out responding to a separate issue, according to the head of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which oversees
the airport. She said dozens of passengers on the plane had been taken to the hospital, along with the two first responders who had been in the truck. She said many people had been released already, but that some were seriously injured. In response to the crash, officials said no flights would go in or out of Laguardia until
at least two p.m. eastern, shuddering a critical regional hub that sees nearly 900 flights
each day.
“You can find more live coverage on this incident and flight disruptions at nytimes.com.”
Now three updates on the war in the Middle East. After President Trump issued an ultimatum to Iran over the weekend, saying he'd strike the country's power grid if the straight-of-hormous wasn't opened by tonight. He has now extended his deadline. In a social media post this morning, the President said he'd push back the threat by another
five days, because the U.S. and Iran had held, quote, "very good and productive conversations regarding a complete and total resolution of our hostilities in the Middle East." It wasn't clear who was involved in those talks, and Iran did not immediately issue a statement of its own. Also this weekend in Israel, two Iranian ballistic missiles landed in residential neighborhoods.
Getting around Israel's bonded air defense systems, about 175 people were wounded, according to emergency and health services. The failure of the defense has rattled people there, and renewed concerns that the Israeli military might be holding back some of its more advanced weaponry. Their drawing down its stockpiles during the 12-day war with Iran last year.
The Israeli military has denied reports that it's running low on missile interceptors, and said that it's investigating what went wrong with the strikes that got through this weekend. And last update on the war. In southern Lebanon, the Israeli military is destroying more homes and bridges, saying
it's necessary to thwart threats from his bullet, the Iran-backed armed group. Israel's defense minister said on Sunday that his troops would use similar methods to what they did in Gaza, where huge parts of the territory were raised to the ground in the fight against Hamas. Israel's been carrying out a major military campaign in Lebanon since his bullet fired rockets
and drones in solidarity with Iran.
More than a million people have already fled their homes, and over a thousand have been
killed, according to the Lebanese government. Many Lebanese fear that the intensified Israeli assault could lead to a long-term occupation of the southern part of their country. We're talking about security options, and these officers are well-trained security, and the well-trained identification.
Starting this morning, federal officials say that ICE agents will be deployed at airports around the country to try and help wrangle the security lines that have been stretching for hours and hours due to the ongoing DHS shutdown. "We're simply there to help TSA do their job in areas that don't need their specialized expertise."
White House borders our Tom Hullman said ICE agents would mostly be doing things like monitoring exits, so that TSA agents can focus on screening passengers.
Many airports have had widespread staffing shortages, a consequence of Congre...
funding for the Department of Homeland Security, and that's left many agents going without pay.
“They've then been calling in sick or having to take other jobs.”
For many passengers, that's meant showing up to the airport only to find security lines snaking through entire concourses, even out onto the curb, or into parking garages.
President Trump first raised the idea of sending ICE into airports on Saturday in a social
media post, presenting it as a threat if Democrats didn't cooperate on funding DHS. The plan has been blasted by some Democrats who've accused Trump of using immigration agents to intimidate travelers. And one TSA officer, who's also a union official representing agents, said that the deployment of ICE officers at airports would be a "distracting scenario" to say the least.
In Mexico, guns from the US have been pouring into the country for years, a phenomenon that's earned the nickname "The Iron River." By one estimate, 80% of weapons seized by Mexican authorities are from the US.
Now, in the past year, that river has turned into a flood.
I've spent months speaking to arms, malgheris, based both in the US and in Mexico,
“and that's how I discovered that an unprecedented number of weapons are actually coming”
into Mexico, and that these cartels, particularly the St. Louis cartel, are being themselves to the teeth. Paulina Villegas, a reporter for the Times, based in Mexico City, says that over the past year or so, demand for high-powered arms like machine guns and assault rifles, has exploded. In part, the groups are buying up weapons to confront Mexican authorities, who are being encouraged
by President Trump to go after the drug smugglers more aggressively. And the cartels are preparing for a potential US military intervention, which Trump has threatened. Paulina interviewed more than a half dozen cartel operatives directly involved in buying and delivering some of the hundreds of thousands of weapons that are smuggled into Mexico every year.
“She says that as demand has skyrocketed, their tactics have evolved.”
Historically, cartels have hired American citizens or residents and send them into a gun store or gun show and buy as many weapons as they can, including high caliber firearms. But more recently, we've also discovered that smugglers have relied on other methods. For instance, they are going directly to gun store employees or managers. They're driving them to falsify a record.
They're used records of other prior purchasers to supply the weapons for them. Once the weapons are collected, they are often disassembled to make the concealment easier. And the smugglers hide the gun parts in hidden compartments inside of trucks and vehicles. They also put them in fast boats. And sometimes for smaller cargos, they told me that they even
strapped some of the gun parades onto their own bodies and just walk across the border into Mexico. What are the most striking details of this reporting was how heavily the cartel members rely on what they say are bribes to not only Mexican but US officials. These are border officials that they say they offer large amounts of money for them to guarantee the safe pass of the vehicles carrying the weapons to the final destination.
In response to questions from the Times, US Customs and Border Protection said in a statement that its officers "enforce our nation's laws along what is now the most secure border in history." And finally, over the past week, meteors have arced through the sky in at least two parts of the US, causing rumbling sonic booms and fiery streaks of light. "I came in here to look in a suit of hole in a suit and a micked in a floor, another north of Houston,
Sherry James told KHOUTV that a chunk of space rock came crashing through the roof of her house on Saturday and in Ohio, a seven-ton fireball exploded over the Cleveland area." That meteor set off a race among a small but motivated group in the US. Meteorite hunters. Some two dozen people poured over radar data, booked one-way flights, and packed their bags, along with in some cases, wads of cash. Space rocks can be a big business, a massive specimen
found in Niger last year, fetched over $5 million at auction. The Times met up with some meteorite
Hunters in Ohio who didn't find anything that big, but even a chunk the size ...
worth hundreds or thousands of dollars. It's somewhat polarizing because there's a competing belief
“that space rocks should be collected for science, not profit. But the money is there.”
One of the guys who scooped up a piece in Ohio said he quit his job a few years ago,
after he made $40,000 in one weekend, hunting meteorites.
“Those are the headlines. Today on the daily, inside the divide on the American right,”
over a Trump's decision to go to war in Iran. You can listen to that in the New York Times app
or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Tracy Mumford, we'll be back tomorrow.
