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Hard Numbers: Migrant boat capsizes off Yemen coast, US banana giant found liable for murders, EU stocks up on bird flu vaccines, “Pink slime” crisis in America

The Galaxy Leader commercial ship, seized by Yemen's Houthis last month, is seen off the coast of al-Salif, Yemen, December 5, 2023.

The Galaxy Leader commercial ship, seized by Yemen's Houthis last month, is seen off the coast of al-Salif, Yemen, December 5, 2023.

REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah
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49: At least 49 people are confirmed dead, and 140 are missing after a boat carrying migrants sank off the coast of Yemen. The vessel was carrying roughly 260 people, mainly from Somalia and Ethiopia, to Yemen, where they would have continued the treacherous onward journey to the wealthy Gulf kingdoms in search of work. Despite being wracked by a brutal, decade-long civil war, Yemen is a major immigration route, with some 380,000 migrants in the country right now.

8: A South Florida jury found US banana giant Chiquita liable for the deaths of eight men killed by the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC, a right-wing paramilitary group designated as terrorists by the US. Chiquita, which financed the AUC with nearly $2 million, was ordered to pay the victims’ families $38.3 million in penalties. Under its former name, the United Fruit Company, Chiquita was famously meddlesome in Latin American politics – its infamous 1928 massacre of striking banana workers in Colombia was immortalized in Nobel laureate Gabriel García Marquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude.”

40 million: These vaccines are for the birds – literally. The European Union has secured 40 million doses of bird flu vaccine as cases of the disease continue to rise. So far, at least 10 US states have reported outbreaks among farm animals in recent months, with three cases of the illness jumping to humans.


1,265: Pink slime is oozing through America. A new study has found that at least 1,265 websites are masquerading as local news outlets while drawing funding from dark money sources or openly political financiers on the left and right. The sites are particularly concentrated in swing states. The grossest part of the story? Owing to the long-standing decline of local journalism, these imposter sites, known as “pink slime” (a beef industry term), now outnumber legitimate local outlets for the first time.