Stars and strikes: was America’s ship-bomb illegal?

Well, the holidays have come and gone once again. But if you've forgotten to get that special someone in your life a gift, well, Mint Mobile is extending their holiday offer of half off unlimited wireless. So here's the idea. You get it now. You call it an early present for next year. What do you have to lose? Give it a try at mintmobile.com/switch. Limited time, 50% off regular price for new customers. Upfront payment required, $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 for twelve month plan. Taxes and fees extra. Speeds me slow after 50 gigabytes per month when network is busy. See terms. The Economist. Hello, and welcome to the intelligence from The Economist. I'm Jason Palmer. And I'm Rosie Blore. Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. Big biotech firms are looking to get into the ethically sticky business of gene editing on embryos. The promise is clear for easily tackling horrible diseases. Problem is it's still illegal in most places and presents a slippery slope towards designer babies. And the biggest hit to Japan's patriarchal reputation this year was the appointment of its first female prime minister. But even that involved less change than one women are still wrestling for, to be part of the national sport of sumo. First up though, For the past two months, America has been raining missiles on boats in The Caribbean, which the Trump administration claims are carrying illegal drugs. After each strike, grainy footage has shown the vessels going up in flames. More than 80 people have been killed in the attack so far. Bombing ships was already controversial. Now one particular hit is attracting condemnation on all sides. On September 2, The US struck a boat off the coast of Venezuela. Shashank Joshi is our defense editor. But in the intervening weeks, some serious questions have bubbled up about how and why this specific attack was carried out, indeed, whether it may have been a war crime. Now we have reached a sort of political boiling point, and the White House as well as the Pentagon are both under fairly sustained attack for their role in what led to these very controversial killings. So let's just talk about these controversial killings first. Can you just lay out for me what we actually know for sure happened in these strikes? So on September 2, The US ordered a strike on a boat in The Caribbean. We know that for sure. I think there's been a little video of that. The White House has acknowledged that. Not everyone was killed in the first strike. There were some survivors left clinging to the wreckage of the boat. And what we know for sure is that there were subsequent strikes that effectively disabled and eventually sunk the boat as well as killing all the survivors. That has sometimes been called a double tap, which I think is a phrase that was originally …