Sunday, Mar 1 2020

Dose Of News Useful Today

Monday, March 2nd

One Breakfast to Rule Them All...

Happy Monday. Looking to start your week off on a good note? You can’t go wrong with free stuff: until 10:30 am today, McDonald’s is offering a free Egg McMuffin through their mobile app.

This sparked a company-wide debate about the best fast-food breakfast on the market, so we’d like to settle the topic once and for all. Which fast-food breakfast is your favorite? Let us know by filling out this one question survey - we’ll be publishing the full results in tomorrow’s edition, stay tuned.

Daily Sprinkle

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.”

– Richard P. Feynman

This Week at a Glance

Monday: Israel’s third election in a year

Tuesday: Super Tuesday

Wednesday: Supreme Court hears high-profile Louisiana abortion case

Thursday: OPEC+ to meet in Vienna

Friday: February Jobs Report

The U.S.-Taliban Deal

The U.S. and Taliban officially signed a peace agreement on Saturday that would see a complete withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan over 14 months.

Back to the beginning…

The U.S. invaded Afghanistan weeks after the September 11, 2001 attacks - perpetrated by the Afghanistan-based Al Quaeda group - that caused the deaths of 2,977 people.
As of June 2018, 2,440 U.S. military personnel have been killed, and 20,320 service members have been wounded in Afghanistan.
At one point more than 100,000 U.S. troops were deployed in Afghanistan - now there are about 13,000.

Let’s Talk Terms:

The U.S. commits to reducing troop levels to 8,600 in the first 135 days. The rest will leave over the next nine-and-a-half months.
The Taliban promised not to let extremists use the country as a staging ground. Their compliance is to be continually assessed by the U.S.
As a gesture of goodwill, the deal calls for the Afghan government to release 5,000 Taliban prisoners in exchange for 1,000 Afghan prisoners.

Moving forward
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has already objected to the uneven prisoner exchange laid out in the deal. The Afghan government was not involved in the U.S.-Taliban talks, and will now attempt to come to terms on a separate peace agreement with the Taliban.

So… what are people saying?

After peace deal with Taliban, many uncertainties remain about what comes next in Afghanistan

RIGHT → FOX News (Opinion)

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Coronavirus Update

U.S.:

The number of confirmed cases rose to 87 as of Sunday night.
The first and second deaths due to the illness were reported in Washington state over the weekend (learn who’s most at risk of dying from the virus).

World:

Scotland and the Dominican Republic both reported their first confirmed cases of the virus on Sunday, bringing the total number of affected countries up to 61.
As of Sunday night, over 89,000 people worldwide have contracted the disease, leading to more than 3,000 deaths.

LEFT CENTER → NBC News	RIGHT CENTER → Washington Times

Biden Takes SC, Buttigieg Drops Out

Joe Biden won Saturday’s South Carolina primary, gaining 35 pledged delegates (compared to second-place finisher Bernie Sanders’ 13). Tom Steyer dropped out of the race Saturday night while Buttigieg officially bowed out the next day - neither candidate received a single delegate in the SC contest.

More: Sanders still leads the pack with 58 delegates - next is Biden with 50, Warren with 8, and Klobuchar with 7. Buttigieg’s 26 formerly pledged delegates are now unbound and can vote for whomever at the DNC.

LEFT CENTER → ABC News	RIGHT CENTER → Chicago Tribune

Judge Rules Trump Appointment Illegal

A federal judge ruled Sunday that President Trump’s appointment of Ken Cuccinelli as acting U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services director violated the Federal Vacancies Reform Act. The decision suspends two immigration policies that Cuccinelli had implemented in the past few months.

LEFT CENTER → Axios	RIGHT CENTER → New York Post

The Coronavirus Effect

According to data from Dow and S&P, global market indices have lost a combined $6 trillion ($4T from U.S. markets) over the last nine days. Multiple major employers have canceled conferences and restricted travel to infected areas.

More: On Sunday, the FDA announced it will allow new diagnostic technologies to be used to test for the virus at prominent schools and hospitals across the U.S.

Hit The Road, Jack

Activist investor Elliot Management has reportedly nominated four new members to Twitter’s board of directors after taking a roughly $1 billion stake in the company. Elliot is notorious for advocating for organizational changes in companies whose stock it has acquired, such as AT&T and Arconic.

More: Per Bloomberg, Elliot plans to put pressure on the company to replace Chief Executive Jack Dorsey.

Faces in the Crowd

An app created by controversial startup Clearview AI has been pulled from the App Store and effectively banned by Apple. The app allows users to search a database of 3 billion public photos scraped from social media sites and claims to only serve law enforcement agencies, though a BuzzFeed News report has revealed otherwise.

More: Clearview AI also recently notified its customers of an internal data breach due to a vulnerability the company said it had already fixed.

The Giver

Unmarried and without kids, Sheila Woodcock recently passed away at 87 after a long life highlighted by close friendships and a love for travel.

But even her closest confidants were blown away when they found out Sheila’s final act - the Aussie woman stunned 15 local charities by willing her entire secret $14 million fortune to be split between them.

A Day To Remember

It’s rare enough for people born on Leap Day (Feb. 29th) to find someone who shares the same birthday, but baby Camila - born Saturday in California - will have no such issues.

In an incredible coincidence, Camila’s father, Ivan, was also born on Feb. 29. According to the hospital, the odds of a parent sharing a Leap Day birthday with their child are 1 in 2.1 million.

I Need A Hero

While some kids’ special request from the Make-A-Wish Foundation is to meet their heroes, 10-year-old Gaige Pike of Florida wanted to be a hero - “I really just wanted to save people” he told WESH.

Make-A-Wish worked with multiple local organizations for three months to make Gaige’s dream come true - dressed up as crime-fighting ROBOGaige, the superhero stopped a bank robbery and rescued an actor from a burning building, much to the delight of the crowd of onlookers.

Ender’s Shadow… Adam Rainer, born in 1899, was considered both a dwarf and a giant during his lifetime - the only documented medical case of its kind in history.

Cold-blooded… summer temperatures in Antarctica combined with a certain type of red algae have created a uniquely spooky phenomenon called “blood snow.”