ISIS leader dead

The White House announced yesterday that ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi died in a raid by U.S. forces on his safe house in Syria. Baghdadi had been the head of ISIS since 2010.

California’s state emergency

California Governor Gavin Newsom declared a statewide emergency yesterday due to wildfires, as nearly 200,000 people were ordered to evacuate their homes. In an attempt to reduce the risk of sparks that can cause fires in high winds, Pacific Gas & Electric shut off power for 2.3 million people Saturday night.

Cabinet begone

Chilean President Sebastian Piñera asked all of his cabinet members to resign on Saturday after more than one million people – 5 percent of the population – participated in a Friday protest demanding change. The protests began over a week ago in response to a proposed metro fare hike, but the message of the demonstration broadened to represent widespread complaints regarding wealth inequality and living costs.

Return of the JEDI

The U.S. Department of Defense announced on Friday that Microsoft won its Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) cloud contract, a deal worth up to $10 billion over 10 years. The contract process to date has involved some controversy, including various lawsuits, last-minute recusals, and even presidential intervention.

Deal with it

The UAW’s 40-day strike against General Motors came to an end with the majority of union members voting in support of a new four-year contract - the new deal will see around 48,000 union members return to work following a strike that experts estimate cost GM well over $2 billion. The UAW said it plans to negotiate with Ford next, followed by Fiat Chrysler, using the deal with GM as a template.

Going once...

Tiffany & Co. has received an unsolicited takeover offer from French company Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton (LVMH) - an all-cash bid that values the company at close to $14.5 billion. Tiffany will respond soon to the bid  - which currently represents a premium of about 20% over the jeweler’s market value of nearly $12 billion.

To the Max

HBO Max - a streaming service that hosts movies, original shows, and classics such as “Friends” - will be available after its spring launch to the ten million AT&T customers who are also HBO subscribers at no extra charge. The move draws parallels to other wireless giants like T-Mobile, who offers free Netflix to some users, and Verizon, who - as we previously mentioned - is offering a free year of Disney+ to some customers.

Ride Along

After Nikki Ihus’s unborn baby was diagnosed with a congenital diaphragmatic hernia – a rare birth defect with a small chance of survival – she temporarily relocated from Kansas City to St. Petersburg, Florida to be treated by a specialized doctor. While Nikki was thrilled to be giving her baby the best possible care, the move meant that during the months of intensive treatment far from home, her family couldn’t always be there. Her mother and husband visited frequently, but during many days before and after John Henry was born, Nikki was manning her son’s bedside on her own.

One day, Nikki needed to leave the hospital to pick up clothes and supplies for John Henry. When she got into the Uber, she found a listening ear in her driver, Belinda, and started explaining how overwhelmed she was by the circumstances. Moved by the story, Belinda turned off her meter and insisted on sponsoring a shopping spree - the two spent the next few hours picking out a new wardrobe for John Henry, at no charge to Nikki.

Over the course of one short car ride, Nikki had found the support she desperately needed in the most unlikely of places. And while John Henry still has a long road to recovery ahead of him, Nikki’s sure that with the support system he’s got, he’ll beat the odds no matter what they are.

Life with clean plastic, it’s fantastic

We’ve all heard the disappointing statistics about how little plastic gets recycled, how much of it gets into the ocean, and how part of the problem is a lack of technology to safely and effectively turn used, colored, and dirty plastic into something usable again. Well, one French startup is about to change all of that.

Scientists at Carbios use a process called “biorecycling,” where enzymes from the soil that would eventually break down plastics are altered to work much more quickly. They heat up a mixture of hard-to-recycle plastics in water and churn them together with those enzymes. In a matter of hours, the plastics are broken down into building blocks that can be used to create new, safe, clean plastics.

Carbios will open their first demonstration plant in 2021, where they’ll be able to transform piles of polyester shirts, food containers, and pretty much anything else made of oil-based plastic, into brand new plastics. CEO Martin Stephan says the process has the potential to compete directly with oil-based products, meaning they’d be cleaning up the world while reducing reliance on oil for the plastics we’ve gotten so attached to. A winning combo!