🐫 Jump the Hump

🇨🇳📝 China’s Hong Kong Amendment

China’s top lawmaking body passed an amendment to Hong Kong’s constitution that expands the country’s legislature to 90 seats but reduces the number of directly elected seats to 20 (from 35). The law also requires potential candidates to be vetted by a new committee.

• In the current 70-member legislature, Hong Kong voters elect half the members while the other half are chosen by constituencies representing various professions and interest groups.
• The new 90-member body will have 20 elected members, 30 chosen by the constituencies, and 40 selected by the pro-Beijing Election Committee that also appoints the city’s leader.

More: Local national-security officials will also gain effective veto power over candidates, allowing opposition candidates to be barred from office.

🌎 Global Response to WHO Report

The U.S. released a joint statement with 13 other countries yesterday criticizing a report from the WHO and China on the origins of COVID-19.

• The joint statement, which didn’t explicitly accuse China of wrongdoing, expressed concerns the WHO report “was significantly delayed and lacked access to complete, original data and samples.”

More: The WHO report concluded COVID-19 likely spread to humans via animals and said it is “extremely unlikely” the virus escaped from a laboratory.

Even More: Read the full report.

🔥 Wildfires at Mount Rushmore

Three separate wildfires in the Black Hills of South Dakota shut down Mount Rushmore yesterday and forced the evacuation of more than 400 homes.

• Hundreds of firefighters battled the blazes amidst high winds, with gusts ranging from 50 MPH to 72 MPH. No injuries have been reported, though multiple fires are still burning in the state (as of late Tuesday night).

🧠 In the Know...

🏛️ The NYT ($) reported yesterday that the DOJ is investigating Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) over whether he had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old.

• Gaetz later denied the allegations in a phone interview with Axios, calling them part of an extortion scheme run by a former DOJ employee. (From the Left | From the Right)

⚖️ Federal prosecutors filed two new sex trafficking charges against Ghislaine Maxwell.

🏨 G. Gordon Liddy, the former FBI agent and talk show host who helped orchestrate the Watergate break-in, died at 90.

🗺️ Maps Galore

Google announced a slate of new features planned for Google Maps:

• Indoor Live View AR, where users point their camera at their real-world surroundings and see arrows and icons giving directions (currently available outdoors).
• A new type of driving route optimized for lower fuel consumption (available in the U.S. on Android and iOS later this year).
• Integration with grocery stores for more time-efficient curbside pickup.

More: Many of the updates aren’t available yet, and it's unclear when they’ll be launched globally. See the full list of features.

📹 An Extended Cameo

Baron App Inc., the startup behind Cameo, announced a $100M funding round valuing the company at $1B. 

• Cameo is an app that lets fans pay for personalized video messages from their favorite celebrities. It brought in roughly $100M in video transactions last year - a more than fourfold increase from 2019 - and features more than 40k celebrities.

More: Cameo’s top earner for 2020 was Brian Baumgartner - Kevin Malone on “The Office” - who raked in more than $1M, followed by Brett Favre and Snoop Dogg.

🚫 FTC Attempts Vertical Veto

The FTC filed a lawsuit yesterday seeking to block biotech company Illumina’s planned $7.1B acquisition of Grail – a company developing a multi-cancer early detection blood test.

• Most acquisition lawsuits filed by the FTC challenge so-called ‘horizontal mergers,’ which involve the combination of direct rivals.
• This legal challenge has added significance because the proposed acquisition is a ‘vertical merger,’ meaning the two companies don't compete head-to-head.

The agency is arguing the deal would diminish innovation in the U.S. market for multi-cancer early detection blood tests since other developers have no choice but to use instruments produced by Illumina to run these tests.

More: There has only been one litigated challenge to a vertical merger in the past 40 years: the DOJ’s 2017 case against AT&T’s acquisition of Time Warner, which the government lost.

🧠 In the Know...

🏈 The NFL officially approved an expansion of the regular season schedule to 17 games starting this year. The league will also reduce its preseason from four to three games.

🎙️ Spotify acquired Betty Labs - the creator of sports-focused live audio social app Locker Room - in a deal reportedly worth $50M.

💰 PayPal will begin allowing U.S. consumers to check out with bitcoin, ether, bitcoin cash, or litecoin.

☝️ 1 Last Thing…

• A Volkswagen spokesperson confirmed the car manufacturer will not be rebranding its U.S. operations to “Voltswagen of America,” saying the move was intended as an early April Fool’s prank.

🖌👨🏽‍🎨The Journey of Humanity

“I wanted to create something poignant... Something that could potentially make a really big difference.”

British abstract artist Sacha Jafri used all his extra time in lockdown to his advantage, transforming a hotel ballroom into his most ambitious project yet.

Images: CNN

His painting, The Journey of Humanity, now holds the Guinness World Record for the largest painted canvas, sprawling a mind blowing 17,000 square feet (roughly the size of four basketball courts 🤯).

• The piece took seven months to complete and has four sections: The Soul of the Earth, Nature, Humanity, and the Wider Universe.

Sacha incorporated artwork from children in the piece, asking kids to “send in their artworks -- how they feel, their emotions… Adults are finding this hard. But imagine how a 4-year-old child feels."

• When all was said and done, children from over 140 different countries had contributed to the piece.

The Journey of Humanity was purchased last week for a mind-blowing $62 million. The buyer? Dubai-based businessman Andre Abdoune, who remarked that the "investment and love" Sacha put into the painting was "so amazing."

• All proceeds from the purchase will go towards helping children affected by the pandemic.