• ☝️ Tiger Woods played his first match in his and Rory McIlroy’s new tech-infused TGL golf league last night; it marks the second match of the league’s inaugural season (which runs through March 25).

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 📊 US markets closed mixed (S&P: +0.1%; Dow: +0.5%; Nasdaq: -0.2%).
• 💼 Meta is cutting 5% of its workforce in preparation for an "intense year." | ☕🚻 Starbucks will start placing its bathrooms behind an IRL paywall this month. | ✈️ Boeing delivered 348 airplanes in 2024, about a third fewer than in 2023; rival Airbus delivered 766 jetliners last year, its most since 2019.
• 🏦 Capital One is being sued by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for allegedly "cheating" savings account customers out of $2+ billion in interest. | 🐦 Elon Musk is being sued by the SEC for allegedly failing to disclose he had amassed an active stake in Twitter in 2022, which allowed him to buy shares at “artificially low prices,” per the suit.

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

in partnership with Tuft & Needle

• 📺 DirecTV is launching MySports, a sports-focused streaming package offering access to live NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL games across 40+ channels.
• 🎉 Catherine, Princess of Wales, is in remission from cancer.
• 🏟️ The NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers are abandoning plans to build an arena in Center City; will stay in South Philly instead.

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SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 🏝️ NASA satellites recently documented the sudden emergence and swift disappearance of a “ghost island” in the Caspian Sea.
• 💧⛰️ A massive aquifer, aka a layer of water-saturated rock or sediment, discovered beneath Oregon’s Cascade Range could be the largest in the world, per scientists; it reportedly contains 19.43 cubic miles of water, over half the volume of Lake Tahoe.
• 🌌 One-third of supermassive black holes – those millions or billions of times more massive than the Sun – are hidden behind thick clouds of gas and dust, per a new NASA study.

MISCELLANEOUS

in partnership with Super Greens

• 🎓😬 College enrollment data mishap: The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center announced an error in its October report that found a 5% year-over-year decrease in freshmen enrollment for Fall 2024; instead enrollment increased by a yet-to-be-specified amount.
• 🇺🇸🇨🇺 The Biden admin is removing Cuba from the US government’s list of state sponsors of terrorism as part of a Catholic Church-facilitated deal to free political prisoners on the island.
• 🏛️ Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee to serve as Defense Secretary, participated in a combative Senate confirmation hearing yesterday; Senate hearings for other Trump nominees are scheduled through Thursday. | 🏛️ The House approved a bill that would ban transgender athletes from participating in female sports at schools that receive federal funding. (From the Left | From the Center | From the Right)

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CLICKBAIT

• 🏆🏙️ Ranking America's 20 most livable cities.