Raul Castro of Cuba to step down

CEO of Gravity Payments Dan Price announced six years that was raising the minimum annual salary of employees to $70,000. He took a cut into his own package. The move drew scorn from conservative voices. A Fox host called Price the ’lunatic of all lunatics.’ Rush Limbaugh called it ’pure, unadulterated socialism’. Today, Price’s company is worth $10 billion and the company has grown multifold.

Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) declared that he would no longer wear a face mask in the US Capitol or on the Senate floor. He said he decided this because ’everybody working in the Senate’ have received Covid-19 vaccinations. Talking to CNN, Cruz also referred to an earlier CDC guidance that said: ’Fully vaccinate people can visit with other fully vaccinated people indoors without wearing masks.’

The French parliament adopted legislation Thursday that deems sex with a child under the age of 15 as rape and punishable by up to 20 years in jail. The final vote for the bill was unanimous. The age of consent was previously 15. However, a ’Romeo and Juliet’ clause allows for consensual sexual relations between a minor and an individual up to five years older.

A woman from California suspected of killing her 3 kids said Thursday that she drowned them to keep them away from their father. ’I drowned them...I didn’t want them to be further abused,’ said Liliana Carrillo. Court filings showed there was a bitter custody dispute between Carrillo and the children’s father, Erik Denton. Carrillo hasn’t been charged with the deaths pending further investigation.

Following the mass shooting in Indianapolis which left eight people dead, Vice President Kamala Harris has called for an end to gun violence. She also said that President Joe Biden is expected to address the shooting later, on Friday. Authorities said they are trying to determine the motive behind the attack in Indianapolis, which also left many people injured.

According to the latest Global Fund Manager Survey by Bank of America, 74% of respondents believed bitcoin to be a bubble. Just 16% expressed confidence that it is not a bubble. Comparatively, only 7% think the stock market is a bubble. The results come from a survey of 200 panelists with $533B in assets under management. About 10% said they think bitcoin will outperform in 2021.

Indianapolis police confirmed that at least 8 people were shot and killed at a FedEx facility near the airport Thursday night. The alleged shooter also died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. At least four others were hospitalized, while two were treated at the scene and released. The scene was declared a ’mass casualty, Level 1.’ An investigation is ongoing.

President Biden signed an order which speeds up refugee admissions, but has decided on maintaining fiscal year 2021 admissions at 15,000. The cap was set by the Trump administration, and is far below the 62,500 figure proposed to Congress earlier this year. The order would also open up slots to refugees from regions excluded by Trump. The order represents a retreat for the Biden administration.

Amazon has announced that it is setting up a $250 million fund that will focus on digitizing small and medium businesses in India. A part of the fund will also be used for R&D in agriculture and healthcare technologies in the country. Amazon India also reiterated its long-term commitment towards the Indian government’s ’self-reliant India’ initiative called ’Aatmanirbhar Bharat.’

A Hong Kong court sentenced several of the city’s leading pro-democracy campaigners to between 8 and 18 months in prison over their roles in 2019 protests. Among those sentenced was Jimmy Lai, 72, who founded the pro-democracy Apple Daily newspaper. The judge said the defendants ’deliberately defied the law’ and the unauthorized protests posed ’a direct challenge to the authority of the police.’

A Mexican lady, 70, was beaten and dragged across a bus in LA by an attacker who mistook her for Asian American. The victim was trying to get off a city bus Friday when another female passenger hurled an anti-Chinese slur at her. The assailant then grabbed the elderly woman to the front of the bus and pummeled her. Yasmine Beasley, 23, a black woman, was arrested on felony battery charges.

China reported a first-quarter GDP of 18.3%, slightly below expectations of a 19% increase. The surge in growth comes off a contraction in the first quarter of last year, when the economy shrank by 6.8% during the height of the outbreak of Covid-19. Retail sales rose 34.2% in March, while industrial production rose 14.1%.

A civil lawsuit has been filed by Liberty University against Jerry Falwell Jr. It has sought millions in damages after the two parted ways acrimoniously last year. The University alleged that Falwell crafted a ’well-resourced exit strategy’ from his role as president and chancellor in the form of a 2019 employment agreement, and had withheld key details about a personal scandal from the school.

The administration of President Joe Biden is planning on investing $1.7 billion into tracking and combating COVID-19 variants. The move comes amid new strains making up about half of all infections across the nation. The plan will earmark funds for improving genomic sequencing of COVID-19 samples, which helps scientists identify variants and ’potentially deadly mutations.’

With IBM aiming to automate more business processes, the company announced that it will acquire process mining company myInvenio. While the terms of the deal were not disclosed, IBM said myInvenio could use its platform to find the best business processes to automate with AI. IBM has built out its automation portfolio for its AI unit and its hybrid cloud.

The Pentagon said a recently leaked video of flashing, triangle-shaped objects that flew over a US warship is real after a documentary filmmaker and a journalist released the footage and several other mysterious photos. Pentagon said photos and videos were taken by US Navy personnel. However, it declined to label them Unidentified Aerial Phenomena – the government term for UFOs.

Dell’s shares rose by as much as 9 percent after it announced that it will go ahead with a plan to spin off shares of VMware in a deal that should happen in the fourth quarter. It is believed that the move will help Dell pay down debt. VMware will collectively distribute a cash dividend worth $11.5 billion to $12 billion to shareholders, with Dell being set to receive $9.3 billion to $9.7 billion.

Due to his role in the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, billionaire media tycoon Jimmy Lai has been imprisoned by the authorities. The founder of opposition newspaper Apple Daily appeared in court on Friday. He is among the several activists to have been found guilty of being a part of ’unauthorized assemblies’ back in 2019. Jimmy Lai was sentenced to 14 months imprisonment due to the same.

Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, the speaker of Iran’s parliament, said his country has started enriching uranium up to 60% purity in response to the sabotage at its Natanz nuclear facility. The attack, widely believed to have carried out by Israel, blew up the power grid, which affected some of the site’s centrifuges. However, Qalibaf didn’t say the amount of uranium Iran would enrich up to 60%.

Jon Schaffer, who is reportedly a member of the Oath Keepers militia group, and was among the ’first five or six’ rioters to enter the U.S. Capitol Building on Jan. 6, has agreed to take a plea deal. Officials further reported that he has agreed to cooperate against others involved in the riot. He has been accused of spraying police officers with a pepper-based bear spray irritant.

Scientists have grown human cells in monkey embryos in a laboratory, in a study that has spurred a fresh debate into the ethics of such experiments. The embryos, known as chimeras, are organisms whose cells come from two or more ’individuals’, in this case, a long-tailed macaque and a human. The work could pave the way in addressing the severe shortage in transplantable organs.

Former Republican President George W. Bush has urged bipartisan action on several immigration measures. The former president has also called for a restoration of ’the people’s confidence in an immigration system that serves both our values and our interests.’ He has also advocated for embracing the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

Coinbase, the biggest US crypto exchange, is set to list on the Nasdaq on Wednesday. The listing is by far the biggest yet of a cryptocurrency company. Private market transactions had valued the company at around $68B this year, versus $5.8B in September. The crypto market remains buoyant ahead of the listing - Bitcoin is currently trading over $64000 with the entire market at $2.3 trillion.

Steps have been taken by the United States in order to prevent cyberattacks as well as other hostile acts from Russia. Due to this, the country resorted to banning Russian diplomats and President Joe Biden went on to announce a series of sanctions as well. This has resulted in Russia threatening the US claiming that they might strike back against the country.