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Overnight Briefing & General Reality Check - Apr 23, 2020
April 23, 2020
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The coronavirus has affected all sorts of businesses, but one that's going belly up faster appears to be various print publications, like newspapers and magazines. Of course, newspapers depend on delivery men as well as shops and stalls being open for people to buy or pick up the publication. But that's the endpoint. At the beginning, there has to be advertisers to pay for the printing in the first place. And because of the drop in advertising money, it appears a bunch of publications are going to wind up in the dumper. Playboy, which went from a monthly to a quarterly, says it's Spring 2020 magazine will be its last print edition. Other magazines are either skipping issues or taking a hiatus, because many people are merely depending on TV (and radio) for their news and entertainment. Streaming, for example, has become huge and Netflix announced on Tuesday that it's added 15.77 million new paid subscribers globally, well above the 7 million it had expected. That's up 23-percent, while Hulu subscribers are up 20-percent as well. Disney's streaming service Plus now has shot past 50 million subscribers... and it just launched in November.
CNN President JEFF ZUCKER issued a memo yesterday saying staffers should not expect to return to their offices until the end of summer. Most of them have been working from home for the past six weeks anyway due to the coronavirus pandemic. In fact, CNN reports only about 10% of staff is working in CNN offices worldwide.
Coronavirus pay cuts, take 1: The folks at FOX said yesterday co-chairman RUPERT MURDOCH and CEO LACHLAN MURDOCH will forgo their salaries and other senior-level members will take 50-percent pay cuts as the company copes with the coronavirus.
The ventilator which was used by British physicist STEPHEN HAWKING before he passed away in 2018 has been donated to a UK hospital in Cambridge, to help treat patients with coronavirus. Hawking’s daughter, LUCY, said: “After our father passed away, we returned all the medical equipment he used that belonged to the NHS (National Health Service), but there were some items that he bought for himself. We are now passing them to the NHS in the hope they will help in the fight against COVID-19.”
Passwords stolen: FOX News reports nearly 25-thousand email addresses and passwords belonging to members of the World Health Organization, the , the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as well as others have been posted online.
The SITE cybersecurity group, which monitors online extremism and terrorist groups, said the stolen information was released Sunday and Monday and almost immediately used to incite harassment and hate from various far-right extremists. Of course, many people use simple passwords, like 12345, and apparently 48 users simply had the word "password" as their password.
Finally, West Point officials say PRESIDENT TRUMP will be delivering their commencement speech for the graduating class at the U.S. Military Academy on June 13. No word on whether the graduating class will have to view the speech from their dorm rooms or the online campus video service, but at this point, West Point officials say the Class of 2020 will be returning to the campus in time for the ceremony. It's Trump’s first visit to West Point as graduation speaker.
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