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👋 Hi friends,
Welcome to the latest edition of Newley’s Notes, a weekly newsletter containing my recent Wall Street Journal stories, must-read links on tech and life, and funny dog videos.
Tweet of the week, above: from my colleague Anthony DeRosa on Friday.
✍️ I’m proud to say that my colleague Jeff Horwitz and I won a “Best in Business” award from SABEW (the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing) for our coverage of Facebook in India.
You can find more info on the SABEW website here, and judges’ comments here.
Here are 10 items worth your time this week:
1) 👉 Reuters has the latest from what is “the worst outbreak of Israeli-Palestinian violence in years”: Israel bombs Hamas Gaza chief’s home as fighting enters seventh day. [Reuters]
2) 💻 A fuel pipeline operator paid hackers approximately $5 million in ransom, according to people familiar with the matter, after being shut down in a cyberattack. [WSJ]
3) 🙅♂️ Dozens of state attorneys general want Facebook to stop its plans for a version of Instagram for kids. [CNN]
4) 🦠 Axios: “The COVID lab-leak theory goes mainstream.” [Axios]
5) 🇨🇳 China Lands on Mars in Crowning Moment for Space Program [WSJ].
6) 🛸 Ezra Klein: “Even if You Think Discussing Aliens Is Ridiculous, Just Hear Me Out.” (Separately, look for a new “60 Minutes” report on UFOs airing today.)
7) 🏙 “While the ‘15-minute city’ model promotes neighborhood-level urban planning, Sweden is pursuing a hyper-local twist: a scheme to redesign every street in the nation.” [Bloomberg CityLab]
8) 🦑 “A seaside town in Japan has raised eyebrows after it used funding from an emergency Covid–19 relief grant to build a giant statue of a squid.” [BBC News]
9) 🤓 Digital tool of the week: Push to Kindle lets you send “news stories, blog posts and other web articles to your Kindle for a better reading experience.” [Five Filters]
10) Highly clickable: a Map of Reddit, by Andrei Kashcha [Github]
•••
🦴 Dog-related video of the week:
“An Extremely Rare Triple Snoot Boop.” [Reddit]
💡 Quote of the week:
“What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday, and present thoughts build our life of tomorrow: our life is the creation of our own mind." — Buddha
•••
👊 Fist bump from Hong Kong,
Newley