What happened
A federal judge in Chicago yesterday permanently dropped all charges against the four remaining “Broadview Six” anti-ICE demonstrators. U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros requested the controversial, high-profile case be dismissed after a “stunning hearing that revealed apparent misconduct” by his office’s prosecutors, the Chicago Sun-Times said. The “rare federal trial for misdemeanor charges” had been slated to start next week, CBS News said.

Who said what
U.S. District Judge April Perry told Boutros she was “incredibly shocked” by the “prosecutorial behavior” in the grand jury proceedings, according to transcripts of yesterday’s closed hearing. Boutros acknowledged the errors, said he didn’t think it was “deliberate misconduct,” then defended charging the defendants for protesting outside the Broadview detention center during last year’s “Midway Blitz” deportation campaign. Perry told him he was “significantly undercutting” his “mea culpa here by standing behind the charges and continuing to vilify these particular defendants.”

What next?
Perry “said she plans to consider possible sanctions against the prosecutors,” The Wall Street Journal said. “Federal judges “don’t talk like this unless it’s REALLY bad, and it is,” former federal litigator Ken “Popehat” White said on social media. “Heads should roll. Careers should end.”

What happened
Stephen Colbert last night hosted the final CBS “Late Show,” nearly 33 years after David Letterman launched the franchise. Paramount canceled the top-rated late-night show last year while seeking approval for a merger from the Trump administration. “Despite all the controversy, Colbert chose to go out on a joyful, celebratory note, with help from Paul McCartney” and other celebrity guests, USA Today said. 

Who said what
“We were lucky enough to be here for the last 11 years,” Colbert told his audience when they booed his reminder it was the final episode. He closed the show, with his fellow late-night hosts, beside an “interdimensional wormhole” that is threatening to swallow all of late-night TV. The premature death of Colbert’s show isn’t exactly “‘the death of late night’ — that funeral has been going on for decades,” James Poniewozik said in The New York Times. But it “feels like the end of a cultural era,” or “actually, two eras”: His “Colbert Report” skilfully“parodied politics,” and his “Late Show” spanned “a time when politics became a parody of itself.” 

What next?
“The Late Show” is being replaced, starting tonight, with Byron Allen’s “Comics Unleashed,” which “features a rotating roundtable of comics” and is “purposefully evergreen in nature,” CNN said, meaning it “noticeably lacks any political humor.”

Colombia is home to 1,900 identified bird species, a whopping 20% of all known avian species, said The Bogotá Post. And earlier this month, the country won this year’s Global Big Day, an annual worldwide birdwatching event in which citizen scientists document the birds they have seen. Over the course of the day, birdwatchers recorded seeing 1,566 species across Colombia, making it the world’s most bird-diverse nation.

This avian supremacy is a self-reinforcing cycle. The biodiversity has given rise to “avitourism,” said The New York Times. Visitors coming to see the birds “generate needed income,” making it more “profitable to protect, rather than destroy, habitats.” The country “stands out as a destination where biodiversity, conservation and community-driven tourism converge to define the future of travel,” said Carmen Caballero, the president of ProColombia, a national tourism promotion agency.

While only the 25th largest country in the world by land mass, Colombia “contains immense ecological diversity, from the Amazon rainforest to glacier-topped Andean peaks to palm-fringed Caribbean beaches,” said the Times. These features have allowed myriad bird species to thrive. 

Decades of political conflict have also contributed. The “conflict between the government, left-wing guerrillas, right-wing paramilitaries and narco-traffickers made many parts of Colombia too dangerous for development,” said CBS News. “Many bird habitats were preserved as a result.” 

Colombia’s Global Big Day win is a “recognition of the hard work that local communities, guides and researchers do for nature conservation,” said Luisa Aguirre, a director at the Regional Autonomous Corporation of Cundinamarca, to The Bogotá Post.