Extra, Extra
Columbia Quake: “Colombian President Abelardo de la Espriella — who just took office on Friday — convened an emergency committee to address the damage. The Colombian government has declared a state of national disaster, and rescue soldiers are being deployed to affected areas of the country.” At least 111 are dead following a 7.4 magnitude earthquake in Colombia. Here’s the latest from CNN and The Guardian.
+ In the Red: “During the World Cup soccer final in New Jersey last month, Zach Witkoff, co-founder of President Trump’s cryptocurrency company, took in the action from a luxury suite. Joining him was a man who had made the president, and all the company’s co-founders, much richer. Two years earlier, the man, Guren ‘Bobby’ Zhou, was a failed hardwood flooring retailer in Britain who had come under investigation there for money laundering and presided over the collapse of a small crypto start-up. Then seemingly out of nowhere, he became one of the biggest buyers of tokens from Mr. Trump’s company, World Liberty Financial.” NYT (Gift Article): Trump Crypto Took $100 Million From a Businessman With Red Flags. (Headline also works this way: Businessman Invests $100 Million via Middlemen with Red Flags into a President with Red Flags in an Industry with Red Flags.)
+ Veggie Fails: We interrupt the constant flow of diarrhea stories to bring you the following. Taylor Farms issued a recall for over a dozen items, including salsa and guacamole, over Salmonella risks.
+ Truth or Glare: “DarkSky International, Environment America, the American Bird Conservancy and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility called on the FCC to overturn a decision last month authorizing Reflect Orbital to launch its Earendil-1 demonstration satellite, which will carry a 59-foot-wide mirror to reflect sunlight onto a specific spot on the planet during periods of darkness.” Environmental groups challenge FCC approval of startup’s plan to beam on-demand sunlight from space. (The last thing this administration is going to rule against is a mirror.)
+ You Are the Product: “It’s really just leveraging this incredible AI and software that Palantir has to allow us to move so much faster and to be so much smarter with the data we have today. And…take a lot of the anonymous interactions we have today and turn those into known relationships…The more known relationships we have, the more data we create, the more signals we create, the more actionable intelligence we have.” America’s largest newspaper chain, USA Today Co., partners with Palantir to analyze audience data as search traffic falls.
+ Cohnheads: “Ignore the rules, do what you want to do, don’t leave a paper trail, don’t keep a calendar, never do things in writing, and, if somebody gets onto you, rat out other people to save yourself. Delay, delay, delay, ’cause grand juries have a limited time, and you can run out the clock. And call in the news media. Make up a fantastic story … And that’ll be the news story. It’ll put the government on the defensive.” Kai Bird and Susan Goldmark in The New Yorker: How Roy Cohn taught Donald Trump Everything.
+ Execution Style: “One of Ferney’s working mottos is, ‘Our job is to execute, not judge.’ Given that she and her business partner are routinely tasked with fulfilling the whims of those who think nothing of laying out $2.25 million for a weeklong yacht rental on the Côte d’Azur (as recently happened), this makes a kind of cockeyed sense.” She Makes the Impossible Happen for Her Ultrarich Clients.
