⚾ It’s Time For A “Major League” Reboot...

Image: Cleveland Indians

The team's announcement on Friday culminated a year-long project that saw nearly 1,200 potential choices to replace the franchise's previous moniker.

• Flashback, July 2020: The club announced it would “[engage] our community and appropriate stakeholders to determine the best path forward with regard to our team name,” citing “the need for us to keep improving as an organization on issues of social justice.”

Image: Fine Art America

📛 What’s in a name… The new mascot pays homage to the Guardians of Traffic statues flanking the Hope Memorial Bridge near Progressive Field in Cleveland since 1932. ☝️

• Their name comes from Wilbur Watson, the bridge’s engineer, who wrote the eight figures were meant to “typify the spirit of progress in transportation.”
• Each 43-foot-tall guardian holds a different vehicle in its hand, representing the history of ground transport — from a stagecoach, covered wagon, and hay rack to a 1930s-era automobile and four types of trucks.

“Throughout this process, we surveyed more than 40,000 fans and conducted 140 hours of interviews with fans, community leaders and front office personnel… [and] we identified a few key themes that were most important to fans – connect to the city of Cleveland, unite our community, and honor our rich baseball history,” per a statement from owner Paul Dolan.

📊 The reaction… In a flash poll conducted by Cleveland sports reporter Ben Axelrod, 26% reported they love the name, 29% said they hate it, and 45% are indifferent.

• Quick note: The team is keeping its same color scheme, and the uniforms likely won't be altered much.

👁️ Looking ahead… The MLB isn’t the only league where times are a-changing. In the NFL, the team formerly known as the Redskins is in the midst of its own renaming process.

🎁 DONUT Headline: The Catholic Church published "one of the most detailed disclosures of Vatican assets ever" ahead of a court case stemming from a London real estate scandal involving a once-prominent cardinal.

Researcher Hatice Cengiz, fiancée of murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who allegedly had Pegasus spyware "successfully installed" on her phone; Image: Arif Hudaverdi Yaman

A piece of military-grade spyware called Pegasus was used to hack dozens of smartphones belonging to journalists, human rights activists, and others, according to reporting last week from a coalition of 17 news outlets called the Pegasus Project.

📜 Background... Pegasus software was developed by Israeli private contractor NSO Group for use by government agencies. The company claims to sell its tools to 60 unnamed clients across 40 countries.

• The spyware can access all data within a target's device, even within apps like WhatsApp and Signal that use end-to-end encryption, and can also turn it into an audio or video recorder.
• Recent versions have reportedly been able to hack a target's smartphone without having to get them to do anything – a link is sent to their phone, without notification, and Pegasus immediately starts collecting their private data.

🤿 A deeper dive... The Pegasus Project was made possible by a data leak of 50,000 phone numbers from 50 countries first obtained by journalism nonprofit Forbidden Stories and Amnesty International.

• Amnesty International ran detailed forensics on 67 smartphones with numbers on the list and found 37 of them were targeted by Pegasus.

The list reportedly includes at least 65 business executives, 85 human rights activists, 189 journalists, and 600+ politicians and government officials.

• Some of the names dropped: The current presidents of France, Iraq, and South Africa, the current prime ministers of Pakistan, Egypt, and Morocco, seven former prime ministers, and the king of Morocco.

The list also doesn't feature phone numbers with a +1 prefix. NSO says "it is technologically impossible" to target U.S. +1 numbers anywhere or foreign phones inside the United States.

✋ Yes, but... "This is an attempt to build something based on a crazy lack of information," said NSO chief executive Shalev Hulio. "They say that the list was leaked, but where was it leaked from? Don't tell me who leaked it, but where did it leak from? Who does it belong to? Who held it? Why don't we have this information? This is the absurdity here."

• "If you take NSO's entire history, you won't reach 50,000 Pegasus targets since the company was founded. Pegasus has 45 clients, with around 100 targets per client a year. In addition, this list includes countries that aren't even our clients and NSO doesn't even have any list that includes all Pegasus targets - simply because the company itself doesn't know in real-time how its clients are using the system."

👁️ On the horizon... The Pegasus Project published a new story exposing more details surrounding Pegasus each day for the past week (through Saturday) – though it's unclear how much longer they'll continue to do so.

🌙 Put A Ring On It

Image: ALMA

Using the ALMA observatory in Chile, researchers discovered a “circumplanetary disk” around a planet ~370 light-years away.

• Translation: We could be watching moons form in real time.

Although scientists have detected more than 4,400 exoplanets (planets outside our solar system), they've found no circumplanetary disks - until now - since the planets all reside in fully developed solar systems.

• A circumplanetary disk is a ring-shaped accumulation of gas, dust, asteroid fragments, and other matter caught in orbit around a planet. These are the materials out of which moons may form.
• The rings of Saturn, a planet with more than 80 moons, represent the remnants of an ancient circumplanetary disk. 

Keep reading.

Images: CNN

Florence "SeeSee" Rigney, a nurse at MultiCare Tacoma General Hospital in Washington, is celebrating her well-earned retirement after working for over 70 years.

• The 96-year-old graduated from nursing school in the late 1940s – which is around the time penicillin was first publicly introduced. 🤯

SeeSee tried to retire in her 60’s - as most do - but couldn’t stand “sitting around.” So she went back to work for the hospital part time for another 30 years.

• "She's continued to be a dedicated nurse and an incredible resource to her colleagues and community,” shared the hospital president. “It's humbling to stop and think about the thousands and thousands of lives she's cared for."

Keep reading.

Who's the longest-lived President of the United States?

A) George H.W. Bush
B) Bill Clinton
C) Gerald Ford
D) Jimmy Carter

(keep scrolling for the answer)

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D) Jimmy Carter 

On March 22, 2019, Jimmy Carter surpassed George H.W. Bush (94 years 171 days) to become the longest-living U.S. president in history. He is currently 96 years old and will turn 97 on October 1.