TODAY’S TRADE story

Koreans detained in US Hyundai raid return home

What happened
More than 300 South Koreans detained last week in a U.S. immigration raid at a Hyundai plant in Georgia landed in South Korea today on a government charter flight. The Trump administration released the 316 Koreans and 14 other Asian nationals from a detention facility in Folkston, Georgia, yesterday under a deal with Seoul.

Who said what
The mass detention and the “U.S. release of video showing some Korean workers shackled with chains around their hands, ankles and waists have caused public outrage and a sense of betrayal in South Korea,” The Associated Press said. The workers had been expected to arrive yesterday, but President Donald Trump “temporarily delayed the repatriation” to “explore whether they could stay in the United States to educate and train American workers,” The Washington Post said, citing South Korean officials.

South Korean companies, which have invested tens of billions of dollars in U.S. manufacturing facilities, might now be “very hesitant” to expand their U.S. operations, President Lee Jae Myung said yesterday. “I think this will have a significant impact on direct investments in the United States moving forward.” The Korean facility managers “are not there for long-term research or employment,” he added, just to oversee the installation of “machinery and equipment.”

What next?
Once Georgia’s Hyundai-LG Energy Solution EV battery plant is fully operational, it will hire more than 8,000 American workers, the companies have pledged. Hyundai Motors CEO José Muñoz warned yesterday that the raid will set back construction by at least two to three months.

TODAY’S CRIME Story

Nadine Menendez gets 4.5 years in bribery case

What happened
Nadine Menendez (pictured above), the wife of disgraced former Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), was sentenced to 4.5 years in prison yesterday for her role in a bribery scheme that ended her husband’s long political career. The 71-year-old former senator was sentenced in January to 11 years in prison.

Who said what
“I was wrong about my husband,” Menendez, 58, told the court before her sentencing. “I put my life in his hands and he strung me like a puppet.” Menendez’s attorney had argued that her “childhood in wartime Lebanon and a series of abusive relationships” made her “easy prey for manipulative men,” The New York Times said.

Bob Menendez’s “legal strategy” of “throwing her under the bus” to save both of them failed badly, Politico said, and he recanted in a presentencing letter that threw “his defense team under the bus” for blaming the yearslong scheme on his wife. Nadine Menendez was not the “true force behind the conspiracies,” but she also wasn’t an “innocent observer of what was happening,” U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein said at yesterday’s hearing. “People have to understand there are consequences.”

What next?
Stein gave her 10 months to report to prison so she could complete and recover from medical procedures tied to her trial-delaying treatment for breast cancer. As Menendez left court yesterday, “she was asked if she wants a divorce,” The Associated Press said. “She said no.”

It’s not all bad

Ian Burke, a mail carrier in Denton, Texas, looked forward to seeing a dog named Pretty Boy Floyd as he made his deliveries. After Burke was assigned to a different route a year ago, the dog’s elderly owner died and the border collie mix was put in the pound. Burke told CBS News that when he found out about Pretty Boy Floyd’s fate, he rushed to adopt him, as he “didn’t want him in the shelter any longer than he needed to be.”

Under the radar

Africa’s largest dam is making diplomatic waves

Ethiopians have celebrated the inauguration of Africa’s biggest dam as a defining moment in the country’s history, even as downstream countries warn of “grave consequences” without guarantees on how water flows will be managed. Construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam has “fuelled nationalist fervour in Egypt, which relies on the Nile for almost all of its water needs,” said the Financial Times, but “also in Ethiopia, where use of the river is seen as a sovereign right.”

For Ethiopians, Africa’s largest hydroelectric plant is seen not just as a “pile of concrete in the middle of a river, but as a monument of their achievement,” Moses Chrispus Okello, an analyst with South Africa’s Institute for Security Studies think tank, told the BBC. When fully operational, the dam is expected to produce more than 5,000 megawatts of energy, enough to provide electricity for more than half of Ethiopia’s 120 million people.

For Egypt, “the dam represents the opposite of Ethiopia’s hopes and ambitions,” said the BBC. In a country that relies almost entirely on the Nile for its water, there are “fears that the dam could sharply reduce the flow of water to the country, causing shortages.”

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed recently downplayed these concerns, insisting that the dam “is not a threat.” However, it does mark a decisive break from the colonial-era deal negotiated by Britain in the 1920s that guaranteed Egypt about 80% of the Nile’s water, as well as from a 1959 bilateral treaty between Egypt and Sudan governing the use of the river’s resources.

On this day

September 12, 1966

“The Monkees,” a sitcom centered around the exploits of the pop-rock band of the same name, premiered on NBC. The show aired for only two seasons, but it played in syndication for years afterwards and helped The Monkees sustain popularity; their song “I’m a Believer” (written by Neil Diamond) remains an iconic tune of the 1960s.

TODAY’S newspaperS

‘Manhunt intensifies’

“Manhunt intensifies for Kirk’s killer,” The Washington Post says on Friday’s front page. “FBI releases photos, offers reward,” The Dallas Morning News says. “Officials sow confusion in hunt for killer,” says The Wall Street Journal. “Divided nation teeters on a perilous edge” amid “fears of growing tolerance for political violence,” The New York Times says. The Boston Globe maps “one day of gun violence in America.” Paramount, backed by billionaire Larry Ellison, “prepares bid for Warner Bros.,” the Los Angeles Times says. “ICE raid delays Ga. EV battery plant,” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution says. “Medicaid cuts may upend Appalachia,” says USA Today.

► See the newspaper front pages

Tall tale

Ratted out

A British bus driver says he cannot provide receipts for tax deductions he had claimed because they were all eaten by rats. His inability to show proof of purchase for items like personal protective equipment he allegedly bought in 2019 means Moses Makuna must pay $40,000 in fines to the government. And even if he did have the receipts, a judge ruled, they were “not necessary to his role as a bus driver,” said The Telegraph.

Morning Report was written and edited by Nadia Croes, Catherine Garcia, Scott Hocker, Anya Jaremko-Greenwold, Justin Klawans, Rafi Schwartz, Peter Weber and Kari Wilkin, with illustrations by Stephen Kelly and Julia Wytrazek.