• ☝️ You’re looking at some of the winners from the annual Nature inFocus Photography competition, which attracted a record-breaking 14,180 entries from 42 countries.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 📉 US markets closed down yesterday (S&P: -1.6%; Dow: -0.4%; Nasdaq: -2.8%). | 🤖 Nvidia shares tumbled 8% following quarterly earnings; market cap drops below $3 trillion. | 🏡 Pending home sales fell 4.6% from December-January to the lowest level since the National Association of Realtors began tracking the metric in 2001.
• 📝 President Trump said his proposed 25% tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada will go into effect March 4 (Tuesday); China tariffs will be doubled to 20% and will also go into effect on that date.
• 🛢️ Trump admin says it will revoke a Biden-era license allowing a joint venture between Chevron and Venezuela's state-run oil company to export oil to the US despite sanctions. | ⚖️ The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau dropped at least four enforcement lawsuits; cases involved Capital One, a Rocket Mortgage affiliate, and others.

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

in partnership with Super Greens

• 📈 Warner Bros. Discovery added 6.4 million streaming subscribers in Q4; brings total to ~117 million; company forecasts 150 million by end of 2026. | 📝 Paramount is ending several DEI policies; cites Trump executive order as catalyst. | 📵 Meta apologized for an error that led to some users’ Instagram Reels feeds being flooded with videos of people getting killed or maimed.
• 🙏 Legendary actor Gene Hackman, 95 and wife Betsy Arakawa, 63, were found dead in their Santa Fe home; one of the couple’s German Shepherds was also found deceased.
• 🏆 It’s Oscars weekend: See a preview of this year’s show + award predictions based solely on math.

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SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 🚀 Gayle King and Katy Perry will join an all-female crew of six on Blue Origin’s next space mission.
• 🧠🌋 A man’s brain was turned to glass due to an extremely hot ash cloud from the Mount Vesuvius volcanic eruption in 79 AD, per new research. | 🇨🇩🦠 A fast-spreading mystery illness linked to bats has killed dozens of people in the Democratic Republic of Congo, with nearly half dying within 48 hours of symptoms appearing, the WHO announced yesterday.
• 🤖 OpenAI released GPT-4.5, a new version of its flagship large language model.

MISCELLANEOUS

in partnership with Going

• 🙏🇮🇳 The Maha Kumbh Mela, the world’s largest spiritual gathering, concluded after 6+ weeks and ~400 million visitors to the Indian city of Prayagraj.
• 🇮🇱 Israel’s military released the first findings from its internal investigations into the military and intelligence failure of Hamas’ surprise attack on October 7, 2023. | 🇷🇴🇺🇸 Romanian prosecutors allowed influencer Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan, who face local rape and human trafficking charges, to leave the country for the US; reports claim the move followed pressure from the Trump administration.
• ✈️ The US government is taking steps to hire more air-traffic controllers and will spend billions of dollars upgrading the nation’s aviation system, per Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. | 🎓🏫 The Education Department no longer features applications for student loan repayment plans on its website.

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CLICKBAIT

• 🏥👶 Nebraskan struggles to change daughter’s name from hospital’s computer-generated ‘Unakite Thirteen Hotel’