Good morning. In today’s edition:

• 📉 US crime decline
• 💼 Booming jobs report
• 🍟 McDonald’s caviar

…and much more.

Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news should be a ~3.77-minute read (1,002 words).

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“Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.”

–Vince Lombardi (1913-1970)

Gamers might finally have the ultimate comeback to all those “go touch grass” comments.

Spending just ~20 hours playing a cognitive training video game can significantly reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia at older ages, a new study suggests.

The findings, published this week, come from rare long-term research that’s been running since the 1990s.

How it went down

Researchers enrolled 2,802 adults over age 65 and randomly assigned them to one of three cognitive training programs: speed training, memory training, or reasoning training. Participants completed up to ten small-group sessions, with half receiving periodic “booster” sessions over the next three years.

Two decades later, only one group stood out:

• Participants who completed the “speed training” game, which focuses on quickly identifying and reacting to visual information, saw their dementia risk drop by ~25% over a 20-year follow-up period.
• The memory and reasoning programs showed no statistically meaningful effect.

It’s still an open question why speed training worked, and the others didn’t. One leading theory is that it taps into implicit learning—automatic and reflexive brain systems—rather than conscious memorization or logic.

The potential impact: Dementia is projected to affect ~42% of Americans over the age of 55 at some point, with no known drugs on the market that reliably prevent the condition.

In other dementia-preventing news: Consuming 1-2 cups of tea or 2-3 cups of coffee daily is associated with a 14%-18% lower risk of developing dementia—but only if those hot drinks are caffeinated, per a newly published long-term study of ~132,000 healthy adults.

Big carriers treat you like a cash cow, and want you to use as much data as possible.

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That's right, they pay you to put down your phone. Users cut their screen time by 17% on average. No gimmicks, no gotchas. Just rewards for reclaiming your life from the algorithm.

Data collected from 67 of the nation's biggest police departments shows declines across every major violent-crime category last year, according to a new report from the Major Cities Chiefs Association.

Why it matters: If similar declines show up in broader national data still to come, the US homicide rate in 2025 could be the lowest recorded since at least 1900, according to the Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ).

By the numbers: Rates also declined across all four major categories of violent crime over the past year:

• Robberies fell by roughly 20%.
• Aggravated assaults dropped nearly 10%.
• Gun assaults and robberies tumbled 22%.

Drug crimes were the only category to increase, though they remained below 2019 levels.

The data reinforces other studies that found significant drops last year. A recent CCJ report found a 21% drop in the homicide rate from 2024 to 2025, based on data from 35 US cities.

Driving the trend: Experts say a complex web of factors is responsible for America’s plummeting homicide rate since a recent surge during Covid.

• These include changes in policing strategies, incarceration rates, expanded mental health treatment, and young people spending increasingly more time at home and less out in public.
• Improvements in life-saving medical care have also reduced homicide rates over time.

Looking ahead…While official FBI data has yet to be released, early estimates suggest the national homicide rate could land near 4.0 per 100,000 people, its lowest level in over a decade.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 💼 US economy added 130,000 jobs last month, while the unemployment rate ticked down to 4.3%, according to the Labor Department’s January jobs report; wages rose a higher-than-expected 0.4% for the month and 3.7% annually.
• 🍟 McDonald’s reports better-than-expected earnings and revenue for Q4 2025; its recent Grinch meal—which included special edition socks—led to McDonald’s highest-ever sales day and briefly made it the world’s largest sock-seller, CEO Chris Kempczinski revealed.
• 🥫 Kraft-Heinz pauses work on planned split into two independent companies; new CEO Steve Cahillane says the company will instead invest ~$600 million in new marketing and product-development efforts.

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 🥈 Team USA wins five medals across five different sports on the same day at the Winter Olympics for the first time ever.
• 🎭 The Mummy 4 with Brendan Fraser announces May 2028 release date. | Jennifer Hudson to produce the Broadway revival of Dreamgirls.
• 🚫 Talent agency Wasserman loses multiple artists over the past week—including Chappell Roan, Abby Wambach, and Dropkick Murphys—following new evidence linking the agency’s CEO to Jeffrey Epstein.

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SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• ⚛️ America’s largest particle collider officially wraps up operations after 25+ years of studying subatomic particles; the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider was the second-largest of its kind in the world, behind only CERN’s Large Hadron Collider.
• 🦎 Scientists uncover 307-million-year-old fossil from a new football-sized species that’s one of the earliest known plant-eating land vertebrates.
• 🌎 Earth formed under a perfect balance of chemical conditions allowing it to retain two elements essential for life as we know it (phosphorus and nitrogen), new study suggests.

US, WORLD & POLITICS

• 🙏 School shooting in remote northern British Columbia, Canada, leaves six people dead and 25 injured, with two more people found dead at a nearby home; 18-year-old woman believed to be the shooter was also found dead from an apparent self-inflicted wound; it marks one of the deadliest gun attacks in Canada's history.
• ✈️ FAA temporarily closes airspace around El Paso, Texas, overnight Tuesday; DoD says closure came after “Mexican cartel drones breached US airspace” and were shot down; multiple news reports say the closure stemmed from a disagreement between the FAA and DoD over drone-related laser weapons testing in the area.
• 🚢 Pentagon reportedly tells second aircraft carrier strike group to prepare for deployment to the Middle East as the US military readies for a potential attack on Iran.

👆 Introducing: McDonald’s caviar. The fast-food giant unveiled a limited launch of McNugget Caviar this week in partnership with Paramount Caviar, with the custom Valentine’s Day kits selling out online just seconds after launching.

🤔 Did you know? Kleenex was originally developed as a gas mask filter during WWI. After the war, the company softened the material and marketed it as a facial tissue for removing cold cream. Consumers had another idea—using it to blow their noses—and by the 1930s, Kleenex repositioned itself as the disposable handkerchief we know today.

📰 Worth a read: The economics of dog shows

🖱️ What we’re clicking:

• What’s the origin of Valentine’s Day?
• The crazy jumps that make this American the world’s best figure skater
• The most popular destinations for solo travelers

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Yesterday we covered how age-limit proposals are making the rounds again in Washington, where working well past the traditional retirement age has become the norm for many of America’s top elected officials.

❓ Our question to you: Would you be in favor of enacting a maximum age limit for elected US officials?

• Yes: 85%
• No: 9%
• Unsure/other: 6%

Click here to read some of the most thoughtful longform responses.

+Note on sample size: We received 870 votes and 148 longform responses.

Which two European countries share Lake Geneva?

🌊 Wildlife officials in Florida recently rescued a manatee trapped inside a storm drain after discovering it completely by chance. Crews then spent several hours drilling a manatee-sized hole into the concrete before safely freeing the sea cow.

Switzerland and France

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