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Good morning, Wake Up Right fam! Sorry for the unplanned absence yesterday – I have the week off work, so I decided to clean out my garage on Tuesday, inhaled five years' worth of dust, and ended up with a sinus infection.
This morning’s newsletter is powered by Mucinex and Ludwig van Beethoven’s 9th Symphony – which debuted on this day in 1824.
Let’s get into it.
📱 Samsung Electronics hit $1 trillion value
🗽 67% say New York cost of living out of control
🗓 Germany surrendered in WWII on this day in 1945
🎰 32% of Gen Z bet on prediction markets like Polymarket
✈ Palm Beach Airport will be renamed after President Trump
Hantavirus outbreak on cruise ship sparks pandemic fears
A deadly hantavirus outbreak aboard the MV Hondius has killed three, sickened seven, and exposed serious containment failures – including an infected passenger who briefly boarded an international flight before being pulled off.
The details: The Hondius left Argentina on April 1 for an Antarctic expedition. By early May, the WHO was notified of a cluster of severe respiratory illness on board. The strain was later confirmed as Andes hantavirus – a rare mutation capable of human-to-human transmission.
Death toll: Three – a Dutch couple and a German woman
The containment mess: 23 passengers disembarked at Saint Helena on April 23 – nearly two weeks after the first death.
They went home to the U.S., Australia, Taiwan, the U.K., and the Netherlands before being notified.
A Swiss passenger has already tested positive after returning home.
A confirmed case briefly boarded a KLM flight from Johannesburg to the Netherlands before being removed.
The WHO didn't begin contacting departed passengers until roughly three weeks after the first patient fell ill on April 6.
What hantavirus actually is: A rodent-borne virus spread through urine, droppings, and saliva. Symptoms mimic the flu (fever, body aches, GI distress) before rapidly progressing to pneumonia, respiratory failure, and shock. Mortality runs around 38%.
Where did it originate? Argentine investigators suspect a Dutch couple on the cruise was exposed to infected rodents at a landfill near Ushuaia – the southern Argentine port city where the Hondius departed – before boarding asymptotically on April 1.
The P word: Most hantavirus strains don't spread between humans. Andes is the exception – typically requiring close, prolonged contact. WHO calls the global risk of a pandemic "low." But a confined cruise ship is exactly the kind of close-contact environment where rare transmission becomes possible.
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Epstein’s alleged suicide note
A handwritten alleged suicide note attributed to Jeffrey Epstein has been unsealed nearly seven years after his death, reigniting debate over one of the most controversial deaths in modern American history.
The details: A White Plains judge released the alleged note this week after it sat sealed in court files since 2023. It was reportedly found by Epstein's former cellmate, Nicholas Tartaglione, tucked inside a shared graphic novel.
The note reads: "They investigated for month—Found nothing!!! So 16 year old charge results. It is a treat to be able to choose one's time to say goodbye. Watcha want me to do—bust out crying!! NO FUN—not worth it."
Who is Tartaglione? He's a former cop convicted in 2023 of killing four people. He was housed with Epstein during his first failed suicide attempt.
Tartaglione claims he gave the note to his attorneys to prove he wasn't responsible for Epstein's death.
Back up: Epstein died in his Manhattan cell in August 2019 while awaiting sex trafficking charges.
The Epstein list: President Trump signed legislation in November 2025 to force the release of the Epstein files. Since then, millions of pages have been unsealed, including flight logs, the late pedophile's pornography, and internal records. The one elusive piece the public wants, still missing, is his definitive client list.
Real talk from G: I don't know if an unsigned, unverified suicide note found by a dirty cop to who killed four people is going to end the "Epstein didn't kill himself" conspiracies. I’ll speak for myself… This newsletter guy is not convinced.
[Source: The Post Millennial, The Daily Caller]
👍 Tanner Horner, the FedEx driver who admitted he kidnapped and brutally murdered seven-year-old Athena Strand while delivering a Barbie doll to her home in Paradise, Texas, has been sentenced to death. Read more. Rot in hell.
🧹 A majority of Indiana Republicans who were up for reelection after defying Trump on redistricting last year were unseated in their Hoosier State primaries, a near wipeout in what was seen as a key test of the president’s influence. Read more.
📉 Food stamp rolls fell by 3.5 million after states implemented Trump rules requiring able-bodied adults ages 18–64 without children under 14 to work, volunteer, or attend job training programs at least 80 hours monthly to qualify. Read more.
💊 HHS Secretary RFK Jr. launched a set of initiatives to help Americans quit antidepressants and combat psychiatric over-prescribing. Read more.
📦 Amazon will let businesses store and ship goods through its logistics network, directly targeting a market long dominated by UPS and FedEx. Read more.
🗳 Vivek Ramaswamy has won the 2026 Republican gubernatorial nomination in his home state of Ohio. Read more.
🪦 Ted Turner, the media pioneer behind CNN, TBS, and TNT and former owner of the Braves and Hawks, has died at 87 after suffering from Lewy body dementia. Read more.
🍎 Apple has agreed to pay $250 million to settle a false-advertising class-action lawsuit accusing the company of overhyping the AI capabilities in its latest smartphones. Read more.
🥩 The Justice Department is investigating possible antitrust collusion among the big four cattle and beef producers to inflate beef prices. Read more.
🏈 A jury found four-time Pro-Bowl NFL receiver Stefon Diggs not guilty of assaulting his private chef. Read more.
🚚 McLane, one of the largest distributors in the country, plans to use driverless big rigs to deliver restaurant supplies across Texas and the Sub Belt this year. Read more.
🤖 Anthropic on Wednesday announced a deal with Elon Musk’s SpaceX to use all of the compute capacity at his company’s Colossus 1 data center in Memphis, Tennessee – giving the AI giant more than 300 megawatts of compute capacity. The deal comes after Musk said Anthropic "hayes Western civilization" earlier this year. Read more.
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🎥 This clip of Secretary of State Marco Rubio went RED HOT VIRAL yesterday for all the right reasons. Watch.
🎥 NYT liberal writer calls out blue states for failing to educate minority kids. Watch.
🎥 Trump jokes about getting into trouble for auto-correct changing MELANIA to MELODY. Watch.
🎥 A driver drives onto the sidewalk to try to run down a boy on a bike. Watch.
🎥 NYPD captain was transferred after being caught on camera talking negatively about Mamdani and Democrats. Watch. He deserves a promotion, not a transfer.
🎥 White House TikTok continues its legendary run. Watch. This is great lol
🎥 Rep. Jayapal admits she’s been working with foreign nations to aid Cuba. Watch. Treason?
🎥 The Trump administration conducted a massive drug raid in one of Los Angeles' most notorious open-air drug markets controlled by the Sinola cartel. Watch.
🎥 PETA geniuses encase their feet in cement to block traffic. Watch.
🎥 An ode to Spirit Airlines. Watch. LOL, we can laugh now. But now all those customers are going to flood your preferred airlines.
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