📰 Ground-Breaking News

🌍 Around the World

• 🇮🇳 The Indian government unveiled its annual budget yesterday, increasing spending on roads, education, hospitals, and other infrastructure. Indian farmers, tens of thousands of whom have been camped outside the country’s capital for over two months, said the budget failed to address their concerns, and vowed to press on with protests despite the government’s internet shutdown around New Delhi.


• 🇻🇳 Vietnam’s ruling Communist Party formally approved an economic blueprint for the 2021-2025 period at its quinquennial congress (occurring once every five years… we learned a new word yesterday, too). Officials said the plan would boost Vietnam’s growing role as a key manufacturing hub for global tech giants like Samsung or Intel, while also attempting to raise the country’s profile from a low-cost labor destination to a center for science and technology.

❄️ Winter Storm Hits Northeast

A winter storm continued across the Northeast U.S. yesterday, placing over 80M people under various weather watches and warnings – over 2 feet of snowfall is/was expected in some areas. Officials in NYC and NJ declared states of emergency on account of the storm, shutting down schools and certain COVID-19 vaccination sites on Monday.

More: Over 1,600 flights were canceled on Monday due to the storm.

☝️ One Last Thing

👮 Police investigators made a preliminary determination that the officer who shot and killed a rioter in the U.S. Capitol on January 6 shouldn’t be charged with any crimes in connection with her death, per the WSJ.

💰 Robinhood Reloads

Robinhood raised another $2.4B from shareholders yesterday, adding on to $1B the company raised last week. The combined $3.4B, which represents more than Robinhood had previously raised in the eight years since it launched, gives the company a cushion to cover the rising collateral requirements associated with recently-volatile stocks like GameStop (which fell nearly 31% yesterday).

More: The price of silver rose at much as 13% yesterday to close at an eight-year high. The swing was largely attributed to a Reddit-influenced movement in the news – a claim the users of r/WallStreetBets vehemently deny.

🚘📱 Howdy, Pardner

Ford and Google announced a six-year partnership yesterday to “create unique services and capabilities for Ford and Lincoln customers, and to accelerate Ford’s transformation plan.” As part of the estimated nine-figure deal, most Ford and Lincoln vehicles will utilize Google’s Android operating system by 2023, with Google apps and services built in.

More: The deal also creates “Team Upshift,” a new collaboration between the companies that will work on developing new consumer technologies powered by Android.

🚀 Reach for the Stars

SpaceX announced “the world’s first all-civilian mission” yesterday, in which four private individuals will be launched around the Earth in a Crew Dragon capsule this October. “Inspiration4,” a mission funded and commanded by Shift4Payments founder and CEO Jared Isaacman, will feature three crew members chosen from the general public alongside Isaacman, who paid SpaceX an undisclosed amount to charter the flight.

More: Isaacman granted two seats to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, with one going “to a frontline healthcare worker” and the other to the winner of a competition among donors. The fourth seat will be determined by a competition among new and existing customers of Shift4Payments.

🦌 Your ‘Deer’ Friend

Image via Facebook.

Yesterday we brought you the story of Nico Lavallée, a four-year-old from Ottawa, Canada, who was reunited with his beloved stuffed deer after it fell into a frozen canal.

Today we present the story of Dominic Brown, a four-year-old from Virginia who took his affinity for fawns to the next level. Last Tuesday, he stunned his mom by appearing on their front porch with a live baby deer he named “Flash,” casually asking if the animal could come inside to enjoy some cereal.

And in other news we hold near and deer…

• Once a week, friends Andy Gullahorn and Gabe Scott of Nashville, TN, meet each other to exchange a brief, wordless high five – a tradition that they have kept up for more than seven years.
• While attending a bird show at the Australia Zoo – a facility owned and operated by the family of Steve Irwin – crowd member Erin Taylor was left speechless when her boyfriend of six years proposed by employing the help of the show’s red-tailed black cockatoo. (Video)

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