👁️ Keep Your Eye on the Ball

🇫🇷 Charlie Hebdo Verdict

A Paris court on Wednesday convicted 14 suspects accused of helping plan and carry out deadly terrorist attacks on Charlie Hebdo magazine headquarters, police officers, and a kosher market in January 2015, claiming 17 lives over three days. The attacks stemmed from satirical cartoons Charlie Hebdo published over several years depicting caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.

More: The trial began in September, one month before French teacher Samuel Paty was killed by an Islamist extremist after showing his class the same Charlie Hebdo cartoons that inspired the 2015 attacks.

Unrelated Random France News: The city government of Paris was fined $110K for violating France’s gender-equality laws by hiring too many women.

⚖️ SCOTUS & the NCAA

The Supreme Court agreed on Wednesday to hear a case regarding allegations the NCAA violated federal antitrust law by putting limits on college athletes’ compensation. The NCAA is appealing lower court rulings that allow athletes to receive an expanded range of education-related benefits – including laptops, learning equipment, internships, and cost-covered graduate programs.

More: The rulings didn’t address the NCAA’s restrictions on athlete compensation unrelated to education.

Even More: SCOTUS is expected to hear arguments in the spring and publish a decision by the end of June.

🗄️ Biden’s Cabinet Picks

President-elect Biden announced several more nominees for his incoming Cabinet, including ex-presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg as Secretary of Transportation, OH Congresswoman Marcia Fudge as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and ex-MI Gov. Jennifer Granholm as Secretary of Energy. All of Biden’s Cabinet picks must be confirmed by the Senate. The full list of nominees thus far.

More: A Biden spokesperson confirmed the president-elect plans to publicly receive Pfizer/BioNTech’s vaccine as early as next week, while Vice President Pence said he will publicly receive the vaccine at the White House this Friday.

🏛️ Congressional leaders are reportedly close to compromise on a COVID-19 stimulus package, and could soon announce a ~$900B relief bill with a second round of direct payments as low as $600. (Learn more: Left Center | Right Center)

☝️ 1 Last Thing…

💉 U.S. officials quarantined several thousand doses of Pfizer/BioNTech’s vaccine in Alabama and California this week after a transit "anomaly” caused the storage temperature to fall too low (from the required -94ºF to -134ºF).

🔍 Google Has (Anti)Trust Issues

The attorneys general of ten Republican states, led by TX AG Ken Paxton, filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google on Wednesday. The suit accuses the tech giant of maintaining an illegal digital-advertising monopoly and reaching a secret agreement with rival Facebook to avoid competing with each other’s ad-tech businesses in exchange for guaranteed special treatment in Google-run ad auctions.

More: A separate, bipartisan group of state attorneys general is expected to file another antitrust case against Google as soon as today targeting its search business.

Unrelated Facebook News: The social giant rolled out a new ad campaign Wednesday targeting Apple’s upcoming iPhone privacy changes, which it claims will hurt small businesses reliant on targeted ads.

📡 Keep Up With Kuiper

Amazon revealed the design for antennas used by customers to connect to Project Kuiper, its upcoming satellite constellation designed to provide global internet coverage from space (similar to SpaceX’s Starlink). The company said its antenna design is capable of streaming 4K video from geostationary satellites 22k miles above the earth’s surface.

More: Amazon received FCC approval in July to launch a constellation of 3,236 satellites but has not yet begun to do so. The company said Project Kuiper would be online once 578 satellites are placed into orbit.

🍩 DONUT Holes

• ⚾ The MLB announced yesterday it will retroactively elevate the Negro Leagues to “Major League” status, updating MLB records to include the achievements of Negro League players.
• 🌨️ Winter Storm Gail, one of the East Coast’s largest snowstorms in years, caused the cancellation of 700 airline flights on Wednesday and an additional 560 today (so far).
• 💵 The U.S. Treasury Department officially designated Switzerland and Vietnam as currency manipulators yesterday due to alleged intervention in foreign markets, placing ten other countries on a watch list.
• 🌙 China became the third nation ever to successfully return lunar samples to Earth yesterday (after the U.S. and former Soviet Union).
• 📈 The price of Bitcoin rose above $20k for the first time ever, reaching $20,600 according to market data from Coin Metrics.

🚗 Inner Drive

Renee Dixson, a preschool director at Lynhurst Baptist Church in Indianapolis, IN, is incredibly invested in her 50 students' lives. With many of her young learners' families relying on food banks due to the pandemic's economic impacts, Renee is pursuing extracurricular methods to care for her pupils ahead of the holidays.

Each weekend, the benevolent educator works a second job driving for Uber, using the additional income to buy Christmas gifts for all of her students and staff members.

🐕 You’ve Got a Friend in Me

A black Labrador retriever named Dexter was deemed "too friendly" to serve as an anti-drug dog for England's Metropolitan Police earlier this year. Despite completing all of the necessary training, Dexter was just not cut out for the job's stress.

Confident the playful pup could still be an asset to the force, Officer Mike Sheather enlisted Dexter as Scotland Yard's first "Wellbeing Dog." Now, the black lab serves his country by comforting first responders and health care workers dealing with trauma.

👶 See You Soon

Nathan Edge, a 26-year-old father-to-be from Mansfield, England, has been visually impaired since he was six years old. Following a recent prenatal checkup, Nathan's partner, Emma Fotheringham, became upset that Nathan could not view an ultrasound of their child, who is due in May 2021.

After hearing of the couple's predicament, local guide dog trainer Deb Fisher embroidered a replica of the scan - despite having no embroidery experience - so Nathan could ‘see’ the tactile image of his baby. Check it out.

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