- ☝️ A Stradivarius violin – one of ~600 in existence built by famed Italian luthier Antonio Stradivari three centuries ago – sold for $11.3 million at auction on Friday, falling ~$5 million shy of the all-time record for a musical instrument.
BUSINESS & MARKETS
- 📉 US markets fell last week (S&P: -0.2%; Dow: -0.5%; Nasdaq: -0.5%).
- 🚀 Boeing plans to lay off ~400 workers in its SLS moon rocket program amid delays with NASA’s Artemis program.
- 🏭 Nippon Steel will invest in – but not take over – US Steel, President Trump and Japan’s prime minister said; President Biden blocked a takeover while in office. | 📦 President Trump signed an executive order delaying his cancellation of the de minimis trade exception, which is commonly used by Chinese e-commerce companies Temu and Shein to ship products to the US duty-free. | 🚫 The US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was instructed to suspend virtually all activities by its new leader, Russell Vought.
SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT
in partnership with NoNetz
- 🏆🏈 Super Bowl LIX: The __ defeated the ___ . | 📺 See all the commercials from the Big Game. | 🎤🎶 Relive Kendrick Lamar’s halftime performance.
- 🏈 Buffalo Bills QB Josh Allen was named the 2024-25 NFL MVP, narrowly beating out Baltimore Ravens QB Lamar Jackson; see the other NFL awards.
- 🎮 PlayStation Network services were restored Saturday night after a nearly 24-hour outage left many users offline.
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SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH
- 🐋🗣️ Humpback whale songs follow the same basic structure as human language, including a pattern known as Zipf's law: the most frequent word in a language appears 2x as often as the second most frequent, 3x as often as the third, and so on.
- 🏥🐷 Boston surgeons successfully transplanted a modified pig kidney into a 66-year-old man with kidney failure last month; it’s the fourth pig kidney transplant ever in the US, and the first of three to be done as part of a new FDA-sanctioned clinical trial. | 🚫🍩 The FDA recalled ~2 million donuts and other pastries due to potential listeria contamination.
- 🌎☄️ Why the odds of an asteroid striking Earth in 2032 keep going up and down.
MISCELLANEOUS
in partnership with Niphtio
- ✈️ A small passenger plane crashed over the Bering Sea off Alaska's western coast on Thursday, killing all 10 people on board, per authorities who recovered the wreckage.
- 🧑⚖️🏛️ A federal judge temporarily blocked Elon Musk’s DOGE from accessing Treasury Department records that contain sensitive personal data, like Americans’ Social Security and bank account numbers. | 🧑⚖️🏛️ A separate federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s plan to place thousands of USAID employees on leave starting Saturday.
- 👍 President Trump’s approval rating currently stands at 53%, higher than any point during his first term, per a new CBS News/YouGov poll. | 🏛️ A DOGE staffer who resigned over racist tweets "will be brought back. To err is human, to forgive divine," per a post from department head Elon Musk.
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