Good morning and welcome to Wednesday. On today’s docket:

• Is America changing how it thinks about college?
• Microsoft announces its gaming presence with authority
• And space diamonds are apparently a thing

⏰🚀 Ready, Set, Go: Today's newsletter takes 4.25 minutes to read.

"Thinking will not overcome fear but action will."

–W. Clement Stone (1902-2002)

🎮 Microsoft agreed to buy Activision Blizzard – maker of Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, Candy Crush, Overwatch, Diablo, and more – in an all-cash deal valuing the video game publisher at $68.7 billion. Microsoft plans to add many of Activision’s games to Xbox Game Pass once the deal closes.

• This is the software giant’s largest-ever acquisition by a wide margin, topping its 2016 purchase of LinkedIn by more than $40 billion.
• It’s also the largest acquisition in gaming history by far, breaking a record set last week when Take-Two Interactive agreed to buy mobile games giant Zynga for $12.7 billion.
• Earlier this week, the WSJ reported that Activision had fired or disciplined more than 80 employees since July as part of efforts to address sexual harassment and other misconduct allegations, including an ongoing lawsuit filed by California regulators and an open SEC investigation. Thousands of other employees have demanded that CEO Bobby Kotick resign.

+The magic number: If finalized, the deal would make Microsoft the world's third-largest gaming company by revenue after Tencent and Sony.

+Into the metaverse?... Microsoft's new CEO of Gaming, Phil Spencer, has argued that the quickest route into the metaverse is through infrastructure that game platforms like Minecraft have already created.

🗼🙅‍♀️ Yesterday, AT&T and Verizon agreed to delay turning on 5G service at some towers after airlines warned the rollout would cause flight cancellations. Both companies will still activate the majority of new 5G towers, but limit launches around major airports.

This is the third time AT&T and Verizon have postponed 5G service deployment. Earlier this month, both companies agreed to implement "buffer zones" around 50 airports and hold off on service rollout until today.

• The 5G C-Band service sits next to frequencies used by key instruments on modern aircraft, and the FAA has warned it could interfere with those systems.
• Airlines could still cancel flights as they await details from regulators following the announcements from Verizon and AT&T. They’ve said that operations would face significant disruption if the FAA moves forward with its current plan to impose flight restrictions addressing the agency’s safety concerns.
• "... on a day like yesterday, more than 1,100 flights and 100,000 passengers would be subjected to cancellations, diversions or delays," reads a letter signed by the CEOs from American, United, Delta, and eight other carriers. It also says that upon further review, proposed measures the two sides agreed to earlier this month were not sufficient.
• AT&T and Verizon say 5G tech is safe and has been proven in more than 40 other countries, albeit at much lower power levels than what's planned in the US.

+A key detail to note: AT&T and Verizon won significant 5G airwave rights in an $80 billion government auction last year.

+Go deeper: What is 5G?

🦠 The Biden administration’s website for ordering and distributing rapid tests is expected to officially launch later this morning. 

Other virus-related news:

• The omicron surge has yet to peak nationwide despite some states in the Northeast seeing a plateau of new cases, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said on Sunday. The variant made up ~99.5% of all new cases for the week ending Saturday, per the CDC.
• New evidence from nearly 70,000 patients in Southern California suggests omicron has a 74% lower risk of ICU admission and a 91% lower risk of death than delta.
• ​​Paxlovid, Pfizer’s new Covid pill, was effective against omicron in laboratory tests, according to three separate unpublished studies.
• A ‘first-of-its-kind’ preliminary study from Israel found a fourth shot of Pfizer/Moderna’s vaccine boosts antibodies to even higher levels than the third, but still isn’t enough to prevent omicron infections (though it still prevents severe outcomes).

+More Covid news: ​​Some people are genetically predisposed to losing their sense of smell during or following infection, according to new research.

Here are the facts:

• Women are responsible for 83% of household purchasing decisions
• 1,800 businesses in the US are started by women every day.
• Globally, women account for over $20 trillion in annual spending.
• 17% of Black women are either running or starting a new business.
• 50% of business owners in Latin America and the Caribbean are women.

And one more:

• Only 2.4% of all VC funding goes to companies with all-female founding teams.🤔

That's where TheWMarketplace comes in…

💰🌎 It's an online platform with only women-owned products and services, so you can shop until you drop knowing that your money is staying with women entrepreneurs.

• You can also directly support teen entrepreneurs via The Startup Squad!

🙌 There's no minimum order amount, no membership fees, and shipping is included in every price. (We're looking at you, Prime…)

Make a difference with your dollar at TheWMarketplace.

💬 Quoted… "If you own a hamster, you should keep your hamsters at home, do not take them out… Do not kiss your pets."

• The news: Hong Kong ordered a mass cull of ~2,000 hamsters after several of the rodents and a pet store employee tested positive for Covid, saying they couldn't exclude "the possibility that the shopkeeper was in fact actually infected from the hamsters."

💰 Stat of the day… Puerto Rico received court approval yesterday to leave bankruptcy through the largest restructuring of US municipal debt ever, writing down $30.5 billion in public debts.

🤯 Did you know?… You used to be able to rent out the entire country of Liechtenstein on Airbnb for $70,000 per night.

• Liechtenstein measures ~61.7 square miles and has 35,000 inhabitants. ​​According to its Airbnb profile, the country could accommodate between 450 and 900 people, has 500+ bedrooms and 500+ bathrooms.

📖 Worth a read… The Algebra of Wealth

• 👆 Sotheby’s Dubai is auctioning off a 555.55-carat black diamond called “The Enigma”; it’s believed to have come from outer space.
• 📉 All three major US stock indexes fell more than 1% yesterday. (Dow: -1.5% | S&P: -1.8% | Nasdaq: -2.6%)
• 🚫 YouTube will stop making most of its original shows.
• 🚗 Ford signed a five-year agreement with payment processor Stripe to “transform the automotive e-commerce and payments experience.”
• 🍿 Daniel Radcliffe will star as "Weird Al" Yankovic in a biopic coming to the Roku Channel; Yankovic is writing and producing the film.

+I like to move it: The 2022 Grammys have been rescheduled from January 31 to April 3.

Roughly two years into the pandemic, both community colleges and universities alike are dealing with declining enrollment and the growing popularity of other post-secondary learning opportunities – and potential students are facing perpetually rising tuition and student debt.

🔢 By the numbers: There are nearly 1 million fewer college students in the US than before the start of the pandemic, according to new data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.

• The proportion of high-schoolers considering a four-year education has dropped 23% since the pandemic began, according to a survey by nonprofit ECMC Group.
• More than half of students now believe they can succeed with a post-high school education of three years or less.

🎓 What are some alternatives?… A new national survey found 4% of American adults (~8 million people) are currently enrolled in a tech bootcamp – which, if true, would represent roughly half of all US college enrollment for last semester.

• There are also career colleges, aka technical or trade schools. Those run by ECMC Group in Georgia, Florida, and Texas reported a collective 20% increase in students in 2020 and 16% last year.

📸 The big picture: While the pandemic is blamed as the primary reason for college enrollment declines over the past two years, falling birth rates are expected to play a much larger role in US citizen enrollment going forward.

• Births fell 17% across the US from 2007 through 2020, meaning the current downturn in undergraduate enrollment will likely accelerate once that population starts reaching college age in a few years.

On a scale of 1 to 5: How important do you think a college degree is to future success?

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

+Note: A written response isn't required – all you need to do is click one of the links above, and your vote is recorded. Poll results and the best comments for each response will be featured in tomorrow's newsletter.

When Angelina Gonsalves went to check her mail last month, she was astonished to find a letter written by her deceased husband postmarked from 1945. 

• When he wrote the letter all those years ago, John Gonsalves was a 22-year-old WWII Army sergeant stationed in Bad Orb, Germany. 

📬 Lost & found... The letter was addressed to his mother, who had also passed on. USPS eventually established Angelina as John's next-of-kin and delivered it to her for safekeeping, adding that it's "uncertain" where the letter had been all this time.

• "It was a weird feeling — like he was standing there, reading it to me," said Angelina, who was married to John for 61 years before his passing. "I smiled when I saw his beautiful handwriting." 

What's the only country that displays the Bible in its national flag?

A) The Vatican

B) Brazil

C) Poland

D) The Dominican Republic

(keep scrolling for the answer)

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D) The Dominican Republic

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