Get Down With It

Xi Jinping Critic Sentenced To Prison

Ren Zhiqiang - vocal opposer of President Xi Jinping’s response to COVID-19 - was sentenced to 18 years in prison on Tuesday after pleading guilty to charges of corruption and abuse of power. Ren was detained in March after referring to the President as “a clown stripped naked who insisted on continuing being emperor.”

Audit Finds UC Wrongfully Admitted Students

A California state auditor released a report on Tuesday identifying four state universities - UCLA, UC Berkeley, UC Santa Barbara, and UC San Diego - that wrongfully admitted a combined total of 64 students over the past six years. These students were found to be accepted as favors to donors, family, and friends within the universities.

COVID Roundup:

• The U.S. COVID death toll reached 200k on Tuesday, per data compiled by Johns Hopkins. Coronavirus by the numbers.
• UK PM Boris Johnson announced new COVID restrictions that could last for “up to six months” yesterday. Dig deeper.
• Miami-Dade, FL - the fourth largest school district in the country - will reopen schools for in-person learning in one month.

Worth Noting: Billionaire Michael Bloomberg has paid fines for 32,000 convicts in FL (amounting to ~$16M), thus allowing them to vote in the upcoming election.

🧑‍⚖️  Court Report… Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) said yesterday he would vote to confirm a possible Supreme Court nominee. President Trump pledged to announce the nominee this Saturday.

🎃 Spooky Season… the CDC released new COVID guidelines on Tuesday regarding virus safety on Halloween, including a discouragement of door-to-door trick-or-treating and crowded parties.

🚨Breaking News: The House overwhelmingly approved a bipartisan bill needed to prevent government shutdown ahead of a Sept. 31 deadline.

Shoot For The Moon

NASA unveiled the $28B Artemis plan on Tuesday, which calls for the agency to land the first woman and the next man on the moon in 2024 -- humankind’s first such journey since 1972. Before the planned lunar landing, NASA will launch two test flights around the moon, one unmanned mission in 2021 and the second with a crew in 2023.

Searching For The Truth

A WSJ investigative report (no $) found that Amazon is limiting the ability of some rival companies to promote smart speakers, video doorbells, and other competing products on its e-commerce platforms. According to unnamed Amazon employees and industry sources, the tech giant excludes some large competitors from buying ads tied to searches for Amazon’s own devices, such as Fire TV, Echo Show, and Ring Doorbell, while permitting such ads on search results for rival devices.

Pin The Tail On The iPhone

Per third-party estimates, Pinterest saw a record-high number of daily downloads in the days following the surprise release of iOS 14, which offers users the ability to customize their home screen. App intelligence firms Apptopia and Sensor Tower noted that Pinterest recorded an all-time high in daily downloads - reporting 680k & 800k, respectively -- days after iOS 14 was made available on Sept. 16.

🔋 Battery Flattery Pt. 2… Tesla CEO Elon Musk hosted the company’s “Battery Day” event in Fremont, CA, on Tuesday. Full recap.

📦 Prime Time… Amazon will kickoff its annual Prime Day this October 13th, per multiple reports.

🗳️ Campaign Season… Facebook removed the first-ever coordinated inauthentic campaign engaged in U.S. politics linked to China, though the company said it “gained almost no following” in the U.S.

The Pup Who Got Back Up

On Sept. 1st, a woman driving along Interstate 84 in Idaho was dismayed when she witnessed a 10-week-old Shih Tzu tossed from the window of a moving car. The woman immediately pulled over to rescue the rattled dog and flagged down an Idaho State Police Trooper, who took the poor puppy to the West Valley Humane Society.

Fortunately, the jettisoned canine did not suffer any significant injuries in the incident and was treated with proper care and affection at the Humane Society. Meanwhile, police determined that the deserted dog had been reported stolen from the house of a family in nearby Nampa, and were subsequently able to return the puppy – whose name is Panda – to its grateful owners.

Food For The Soul

Until earlier this month, the Taqueria El Torito food truck in Humble, TX, was on the verge of joining the more than 100,000 small businesses that have closed permanently during the pandemic. Owned and operated by Elias Aviles for the past six years, the Taqueria saw sales plummet when the pandemic hit. One Saturday earlier this month, when Elias’s daughter, Giselle, asked her father how much money he made that day, he reported a mere $6.

Alarmed by the food truck’s dramatically reduced earnings, the 21-year-old Giselle took to Twitter to ask friends and followers to support her father’s struggling business. The social media plea quickly amassed more than 2,000 retweets. The following day, Elias’s restaurant served more than 100 eager customers, many of whom waited in line for close to two hours to try Taqueria’s cuisine.

Teacher Of The Year

As elementary schools across the country begin the academic year with completely virtual classes, both students and teachers are forced to cope with an unexpected challenge posed by online instruction – boredom. With fatigue from screen time and the distractions of life at home threatening to inhibit young learners' attention spans, some educators are getting creative with their quarantine lesson plans.

Kindergarten teacher Kayla McCourt of Monterey Bay, CA, recently went viral on TikTok after her sister, Shannon, posted a video of the imaginative educator pretending to swim during her online lesson – dressed in a wetsuit (watch here). Kayla, who dons a different silly costume each day, delights her 17 students with her daily dress-up routine, which she masterfully ties into the course content.

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