What happened
TD Bank pleaded guilty to multiple criminal charges yesterday and agreed to pay the Justice Department and financial regulators more than $3 billion for facilitating hundreds of millions of dollars in money laundering by drug smugglers, terrorists, human traffickers and other criminal organizations. Along with the record financial penalties, Canada's No. 2 bank is prohibited from growing beyond its current size in the U.S. TD Bank is the 10th-largest U.S. retail bank, with more than 1,100 branches along the East Coast.

Who said what
The "flagrant" money laundering was "somewhat of an open secret" at TD Bank, The New York Times said, with managers making jokes about the activity and at least two employees taking bribes to enable it. "You guys really need to shut this down LOL," one bank manager emailed a colleague, fruitlessly, according to charging documents.

"TD Bank created an environment that allowed financial crime to flourish," said Attorney General Merrick Garland. "By making its services convenient for criminals, it became one." TD Bank's outgoing CEO, Bharat Masrani, said the bank took "full responsibility" for the "failures" of its anti-money laundering program, and was working to fix them. "This is a sad day in our history, for which we are very regretful," he said.

What next?
The Justice Department will get the "biggest slice of the penalties, some $1.8 billion," while the Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network nets $1.3 billion, The Wall Street Journal said. Both agencies ordered independent monitors to "watch the bank closely and ensure compliance" with its commitments.

What happened
Poet and author Han Kang was awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize for Literature yesterday, becoming the first South Korean and first Asian woman first to win the prestigious literary honor. Han has earned several awards in South Korea and Europe, and her 2007 novel "The Vegetarian" won the International Booker Prize in 2016, a year after it was translated into English.

Who said what
Han won the Nobel Prize "for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life," the Swedish Academy said. "I'm so surprised and honored," Han, 53, said in an interview posted by the Nobel committee. Before yesterday's announcement, "the bookmakers' favorite" was Can Xue, an "avant-garde Chinese writer of category-defying novels," The New York Times said.

South Koreans "reacted with joy and astonishment," The Associated Press said, basking in "national pride about the country's growing cultural influence," including K-pop and the "brutal Netflix survival drama 'Squid Game.'" Lawmakers in Seoul paused multiple hearings to applaud Han's win and President Yoon Suk Yeol cheered her "great achievement" for literature and South Korea. "You converted the painful wounds of our modern history into great literature," Yoon said in a statement.

What next?
Han encouraged new readers of her work to begin with "We Do Not Part," her most recent book. The Norwegian Nobel Committee this morning awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to the Japanese organization Nihon Hidankyo, comprised of atomic bomb survivors, "for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again."