Monday Funday

COVID Roundup

🇺🇸 In The States:

• Cases: The U.S. recorded nearly 84k new coronavirus cases for the second straight day on Saturday (83,718), with new infections coming in slightly below the country’s daily record set on Friday (83,757).
• Hospitalizations: Since the week ending September 26, weekly hospitalization rates have increased for all age groups combined (currently at 193.7 hospitalizations per 100k population), driven primarily by an increase in rates among adults aged 50 years and older.
• Deaths: An NYU Langone hospital study found that from March-August, the death rate of those hospitalized with coronavirus-related illness dropped from 25.6% to 7.6%.

🌎 Around the World: France set a new daily case record on both Saturday and Sunday. | Spain declared a national state of emergency and imposed a nightly curfew to counter a spike in cases. | Italy imposed new restrictions on businesses and gatherings on Sunday following a new daily case record on Saturday.

💬 Quote: "We are not going to control the pandemic. We are going to control the fact that we get vaccines, therapeutics ... Because it is a contagious virus just like the flu." White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows on CNN yesterday. (Video)

🤝 On The Campaign Trail: At least five members of Vice President Mike Pence’s staff tested positive for coronavirus in recent days, including his chief of staff and a top campaign advisor. VP Pence tested negative and will remain on the campaign trail.

Pope Francis Names New Cardinals

Pope Francis appointed 13 new cardinals yesterday, including Archbishop Wilton Gregory of the Diocese of Washington, D.C., who will become the first Black cardinal in the U.S. The 13 bishops will be elevated to cardinal on Nov. 28.

More: New cardinals under the age of 80 will join fellow cardinals eligible to elect the next pope.

Worth Noting: Armenia and Azerbaijan agreed to a third humanitarian cease-fire in three weeks on Sunday afternoon as part of negotiations assisted by the U.S., France, and Russia.

Samsung Chairman Passes Away

Samsung Chairman Lee Kun-hee died at the age of 78 yesterday after more than six years of hospitalization. Lee served as the chairman of Samsung for over 30 years and was responsible for its rise from a modest tech company into the world's largest smartphone and television manufacturer -- and was also convicted on charges of tax evasion and bribery.

More: His son, Lee Jae-yong, took over effective leadership of the company in May 2014 after Lee Kun-hee suffered a heart attack that left him bedridden.

(Not) Total Recall

Tesla voluntarily recalled nearly 50K Model X and Model S vehicles in China on Friday at the request of government officials, who cited several instances of suspension failures. In a letter to the U.S. vehicle safety authority, Tesla claims the problem does not lie in the vehicles themselves, but rather "driver abuse," including the poor state of Chinese roads. The same models of Tesla vehicles have so far avoided a recall in the U.S.

Strike It Rich

Canadian energy company Cenovus Energy reached an agreement to buy rival Canadian company Husky Energy in an all-stock deal valuing Husky at $2.9B. The newly-formed company will become the third largest oil and gas producer in Canada, which is the fourth-largest global oil producer.

More: The deal comes on the heels of two similar U.S. energy acquisitions earlier this month -- ConocoPhillips’s $9.7B takeover of Concho Resources, and Chevron’s $4.2B purchase of Noble Energy.

📚 Bonus Read: Scientists at the University of Glasgow in Scotland developed software that can translate a chemist’s words into robot-compatible recipes for molecules, dubbed “the Spotify for chemists.”

Pet Project

In early September, a 38-year-old British man named Phil Heckels was trying to convince his six-year-old son to make a thank you card for a family member. So the playful Phil depicted the family dog with misshapen limbs and oddly-proportioned features in an illustration that he considered unquestionably amateur (he had no formal artistic training).

After posting a picture of the silly sketch to Facebook, Phil was surprised to find his page flooded with requests from friends asking for drawings of their pets. The astonished artist quickly got to work fulfilling the commissions, having completed more than 220 lighthearted drawings to date. With more than 1,000 requests left to complete, Phil refuses to accept payment for his work, instead asking his customers to donate to his local homeless charity.

Itty Bitty Kitty Pity Committee

On Wednesday, workers at the Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport in Louisville, KY, found that a stray kitten had somehow wandered onto the terminal ramp. Members of the airport’s operations team were quickly called in to rescue the cat, a small white furball who was then cleaned up and cared for overnight.

It did not take long for the facility’s staff to find the forlorn feline a forever home, as airport safety officer Wes England offered to adopt the kitten the following day. Wes affirmed that he and his family, including his wife and two daughters, have become inseparable from their new pet – whom they named Bo, short for Boeing.

Spooky Season

With the majority of this year’s holiday traditions and special events canceled or moved to virtual since March, children and adults alike are anxiously waiting to see whether or not trick-or-treating will be possible this Halloween. Nevertheless, one persistent parent has already decided that the spooky practice must go on, having designed a unique device to facilitate the socially-distanced delivery of candy.

Using an assortment of downspout drains, decorative foam, and glitter, Michelle Bruckner – who is married to a professional children’s book illustrator – constructed a candy chute on her front porch shaped like a sandworm from Tim Burton’s movie Beetlejuice. Instructions on how to recreate the clever contraption, which allows a homeowner to slide a sweet treat down a tube and out of the sandworm’s mouth into a waiting bucket, can be found here.