The Freakin’ Weekend

💉 COVID + Vaccine Update

Image via the CDC.

• The first two U.S. cases of a new COVID-19 variant were discovered in South Carolina yesterday. First identified in South Africa, the highly-infectious mutated strain known as B1351 was found in two SC resident with no recent travel records.

Image via Bloomberg.

• U.S.-based biotech company Novavax announced its COVID vaccine proved 89% effective against the virus during its UK Phase 3 clinical trial. Novavax’s vaccine was found to be 86% effective against the UK variant of the virus, but only 49% effective against the South African strain mentioned above.

📝 NY Nursing Home Report

NY AG Letitia James published a 76-page report Thursday morning revealing Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration undercounted COVID-related deaths of residents in state nursing homes by as much as 50%. Hours later, Health Department officials added more than 3,800 deaths to their tally, representing nursing home residents who had died in hospitals and were not previously counted as nursing home deaths (increasing the nursing home death toll by over 40%).

More: The findings do not change the overall number of COVID-19 deaths in New York (43,200 per Worldometer).

🇵🇰 Pakistan Releases Alleged Terrorist

The Supreme Court of Pakistan upheld a lower-court decision yesterday overturning convictions of terrorism and murder for Ahmad Saeed Omar Sheikh, the man allegedly responsible for the beheading of American journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002. Sheikh is widely believed to have masterminded the plot, though Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the chief planner of the 9/11 attacks, confessed to Pearl's killing in 2007. US intelligence has corroborated Mohammed's role in the actual killing.

More: Read a deep-dive investigation into Pearl's murder. 

Even More: Read the official U.S. statement from Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

⚖️ Facebook Goes By the Board

Facebook's Oversight Board made its first set of decisions yesterday, ruling against Facebook in four out of the five posts it chose to review. The Board ordered Facebook to restore the four posts in question. Read the decisions here.

More: Yesterday's set of decisions did not include former President Donald Trump's suspension from the platform. The Oversight Board has until April 21 to give a ruling in regards to Trump.

LEFT CENTER → NPR

RIGHT CENTER → WSJ

🔌🚘 General (Electric) Motors

General Motors announced plans to entirely phase out gas and diesel-powered cars by 2035 and exclusively offer electric vehicles. The move is part of a broader company initiative to become carbon neutral by 2040.

More: Over 95% of GM’s current portfolio runs on gas or diesel.

💸 Market Update

• Comcast reported Q4 earnings beating analysts’ expectations, and said NBCUniversal’s Peacock streaming service now has 33M U.S. sign-ups – up 11M from last quarter.
• American Airlines & Southwest Airlines both reported record annual losses last year. The six-biggest U.S. airlines lost a combined $34B in 2020.
• Qualtrics, a management company being spun out of SAP, raised $1.55B in its IPO (at a $30 share price). The stock debuted on the Nasdaq Thursday at $41.85 before closing at $45.50.

More: Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase announced plans to go public via SPAC yesterday.

Even More: The Commerce Department released its first GDP estimate for Q4, revealing 2020 was the U.S. economy's worst year since 1946.

💬 The Rumor Mill: The latest addition to Twitter’s sidebar navigation will reportedly be “Newsletters,” with a noted reverse engineer uncovering the information two days after Twitter announced its acquisition of newsletter platform Revue.

❤️ Best Friends Forever

Image via Facebook.

To clean up your newsfeed heading into the weekend, we bring you the story of Marshall, the golden retriever, and his human baby sister, Macy.

• Marshall has loved Macy since the day she was born. Over the first year of Macy’s life, their parents documented the pals’ budding friendship in a series of photos and videos they eventually assembled into this charming montage.

And in other heartwarming headlines…

• Jessica Nelson, a former Marine from Jackson, MS, who completed her undergraduate degree after retiring from the military, now serves on the board of directors of the Warrior-Scholar Project, a program helping former military members transition into academic careers. 
• After discovering an elderly woman in the backcountry of British Columbia was breaking apart her own furniture to use as firewood, members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (known as ‘Mounties’) went out of their way to chop, split, and sort wood to help heat the woman’s home.

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