💪 Swole Patrol

📝 Biden’s Executive Orders

President Biden signed two executive orders yesterday aimed at addressing climate change:

• #1: Establishes climate change as an essential element of U.S. foreign policy and national security; pauses new oil and gas leasing on federal lands/waters; directs federal agencies to replace their existing fleets with electric, zero-emission vehicles ‘Made in America’ (an estimated ~645k vehicles in total); establishes a National Climate Task Force of members across 21 federal agencies and departments, among many other things.
• #2: Establishes the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology that has advised each president since Franklin D. Roosevelt on policy affecting science, technology, and innovation, and provided technical information needed to inform public policy in other areas.

Biden also issued a presidential memo (towards the bottom of the link) that “directs agencies to make evidence-based decisions guided by the best available science and data.”

More: The full list of Biden's executive actions so far.

Even More: The Biden administration imposed a temporary freeze on U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia while it reviews billions of dollars in transactions approved by the previous administration – a process that is not unusual, per the WSJ.

⚠️ DHS Issues Terrorism Advisory

The Department of Homeland Security released a national terrorism advisory bulletin yesterday due to a “heightened threat environment across the United States.” The DHS bulletin, which expires April 30, does not cite any information related to a specific credible plot, but rather is intended to describe “current developments or general trends regarding threats of terrorism.”

More: This is the first such bulletin issued by the DHS in about a year and the first-ever bulletin focused on domestic violent extremists, per a spokesperson.

🇷🇺 Moscow Police Raids

Moscow police conducted a series of raids on apartments and offices of allies of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny yesterday, arresting Navalny’s brother in the process. Navalny has long been at odds with Russian President Vladimir Putin – here's a summary of recent events.

More: Tens of thousands of Russians participated in widespread protests over the weekend calling for Navalny’s release.

Even More: Moscow police have yet to comment on the exact reason behind the raids.

🍩 DONUT Holes:

📅 Yesterday was International Holocaust Remembrance Day, commemorating the 76th anniversary of the Auschwitz concentration camp’s liberation by the USSR’s Red Army. (Watch the Holocaust Museum’s Remembrance Day Commemoration. Also – here's a powerful tweet thread from an Auschwitz survivor recounting his experiences.)

🌋 Mount Merapi, Indonesia’s most active volcano, erupted yesterday, with sounds of the eruption reportedly heard up to 18 miles away. (Photos)

📈 (Game)Stop Us If You’ve Heard This One…

GameStop stock rose nearly 135% yesterday to close at $347.51 per share. The price jump, a vast majority of which occurred in aftermarket trading Tuesday, was boosted by a succinct tweet by Elon Musk linking to “r/WallStreetBets” – a Reddit community largely behind the recent ‘short squeeze’ that has stuck at least two short-selling hedge funds with billions in losses to date (learn more here). Some other heavily-shorted stocks that saw large jumps:

• Blackberry (+33%)
• AMC (+301%)
• Bed Bath & Beyond (+43%)
• Koss Corp. (+480%)
• Express Inc. (+214%)

Shares of Blockbuster (+122% – though it was up as much as 300% during trading) and Build a Bear (+42%) also rose sharply yesterday, though neither are heavily shorted. (Blockbuster is also bankrupt. 🤷)

📝 Earnings Report Cards

• Shares of Tesla fell ~5% in after-hours trading yesterday following the company’s Q4 earnings report. In the report, Tesla said it expects to achieve 50% annual growth in vehicle deliveries (499,550 delivered in 2020).
• Facebook disclosed record revenue and profit for last quarter in its latest earnings report, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg calling Apple one of the company’s “biggest competitors” in his opening remarks.
• Boeing reported its largest-ever annual loss ($11.9B) as part of Q4 earnings, taking a $6.5B charge last quarter against its newest jet program, called the 777X.
• Apple recorded a record $111B in revenue last quarter, up 21% year over year – iPhone revenue rose to $65.6B (from $56B a year ago).

🗣️ Worth Mentioning: Former Sam’s Club CEO and Starbucks’ current COO Roz Brewer will take over as Walgreens’ CEO at the end of February. She will be the only Black woman to head a Fortune 500 company.

🏋️ Fitness to Witness

Image via Instagram.

Erika Rischko of Langenfeld, Germany didn’t pay too much mind to fitness her whole life, but when her two children grew up and left home, she decided to start hitting the gym. Now, at the age of 81, Erika is a viral fitness influencer – working out twice a day, every day of the week.

• “If I can change the stereotype of old people being boring or not being active just a bit, that makes me very happy,” she told Good Morning America.

And if that doesn’t get your blood pumping…

• The tenants of a luxury, high-rise residential building in NYC surprised their cleaning woman by gifting her a two-year lease for the building’s penthouse apartment. (Video)
• Juan Carlos Flores, an Amazon delivery driver in Houston, helped reunite a baby with its mother after the child was abandoned on the side of the road by a carjacker.

The net worth of the average U.S. Black family trails behind every other ethnic group, sometimes by as much as 7 times less.

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