The following is a rundown of the day’s news drawn from other media sources with topics curated just for Money and Markets readers: personal security and freedom, immigration, and business and technology.
Personal security and freedom
Hidden Snipers Will Be Deployed in Super Bowl Stadium
“If you have an active shooter or you have anyone who may have a bomb, snipers have a better angle then anyone who is on the ground to actually hit that target. It’s an entire team that communicates,” former FBI agent Jonathan Gilliam explains.
MSNBC Apologizes for Controversial Tweet about Conservatives and Cheerios
“Maybe the rightwing will hate it, but everyone else will go awww: the adorable new #Cheerios ad w/ biracial family,” read the tweet, which linked to an MSNBC.com story on the new ad. MSNBC has deleted the tweet and fired the author.
Millions of Dollars in Phony $100 Bills Flooding the Big Apple
Federal officials are tracking the mules who smuggle bogus bills into the country and distributing an alert to New York businesses, banks and security industry personnel that teaches how to detect the fake C-notes.
Yahoo Email Account Passwords Stolen
Yahoo didn’t say how many accounts have been affected. Yahoo is the second-largest email service worldwide, after Google’s Gmail, according to the research firm comScore. There are 273 million Yahoo mail accounts worldwide, including 81 million in the U.S.
U.S. Seeks Death Penalty for Marathon Suspect
The announcement by federal prosecutors that they will seek the death penalty against the man accused in the Boston Marathon bombing came as no surprise to people who lost limbs or suffered other injuries in last year’s attack.
Immigration
Immigration Officials Warn of Amnesty ‘Overload’
The officers who would be charged with approving millions of applications from illegal immigrants for legal status warned Congress this week that they can’t handle the workload, and said the change would guarantee criminals and others would be approved to remain in the country.
House GOP to Obama: Let’s Do a ‘Year of Action’ Together
The letter does not include any language on immigration, though a press conference was consumed with questions from reporters on the topic. Speaker John Boehner continued his silence on forthcoming immigration “principles,” saying he needs to discuss the issue with the Republican conference.
‘Principles’ Allow Illegal Aliens to Stay in U.S.
Top Republicans circulated a tightly held one-page memo titled “standards for immigration reform” toward the tail-end of a day that include strategy conversations about Obamacare, the economy and the national debt.
Sen. Cruz: House GOP’s Amnesty Push Will Ruin Hopes of Retaking Senate
Amnesty is wrong in any circumstance, and if we are going to fix our broken immigration system — and we should — it makes much more sense to do so next year, so that we are negotiating a responsible solution with a Republican Senate majority.
Business and technology
Zuckerberg Gains $3.2 Billion as Facebook Soars on Mobile
The CEO spent the last year adding more ways for advertisers to reach consumers as users spend more time on wireless devices. Mobile promotions accounted for $1.25 billion in the latest quarter, representing 53 percent of ad sales, up from 49 percent in the prior period.
Pending Home Sales Plunge, Surprising Economists
Signed contracts to buy existing homes dropped 8.7 percent in December as abnormally cold weather hit much of the U.S., according to a new report from the National Association of Realtors. The plunge caught economists by surprise. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast pending home sales would tick up 0.3 percent.
Google: Mechanical Parts to Replace Biological Human Body
According to Ray Kurzweil, director of engineering at Google, the biological parts of our body will be replaced with mechanical parts and this could happen as early as 2100. He believes technology will be able to boost our brainpower, giving us true superhuman capabilities.
NASA to Make Water on Moon and Oxygen on Mars
The device, which is yet to be selected, would pull carbon dioxide from the planet’s atmosphere, filter out dust and other particles and prepare the gas for chemical processing into oxygen. The demonstration also could include actual oxygen production, the report said.
Larry King: CNN’s ‘Got Problems’
“Put Spongebob on CNN — 24 hours — until a big story breaks. Then we break into Spongebob, and go to the hurricane, and then back to Spongebob,” he said, referring to the hit cartoon Spongebob Squarepants.
Best wishes,
The Money and Markets Team
