⏱Mask off?

Apr 28, 2021

Hello and welcome to 90 Second News issue #169. Today is Wednesday April 28th.

Good morning everyone, and welcome to hump day! It’s practically Friday, right?

In a press conference yesterday, President Biden and the CDC issued new guidelines that stated that Americans who have been fully vaccinated no longer need to wear their masks outdoors in most situations. The president called this a step towards getting “life in America closer to normal” by the target date of July 4th for the reopening of the country. This policy follows a sharp decline in the number of cases and deaths in the country as the vaccine rollout continues to move quickly.

As automobile manufacturers continue to enter the EV market, battery tech has been one of the biggest issues. Ford announced yesterday that they’re solving that problem by building the batteries themselves by opening a $185M battery-development center in southeast Michigan within the next year. Ford CEO Jim Farley is particularly excited about producing the tech inhouse, stating, “I think electrification is a game changer in terms of the mix of products we sell.”

As a part of its continued push towards additional forms of audio, Spotify announced yesterday that it would begin rolling out paid podcast subscriptions. This new ability will allow creators to place specific episodes under a paywall as “subscriber-only” content for creator selected prices of $2.99, $4.99, or $7.99. In addition, Spotify will not take any portion of the proceeds for the first two years (Spring 2023), and then will only take 5% moving forward from that date.

Qin Shuren, a Chinese citizen who was living in American, was arrested back in 2018 under felony charges for procuring more than $100k in US Marine technology for Chinese military research labs. According to court records, Shuren plans to plead guilty to those charges through a plea agreement with the US attorney’s office in Boston. This agreement will have prosecutors dropping several charges, and asking the court to prescribe the lower end of the sentencing guidelines, which could be as few as seven years in prison.

Have a great rest of your day, and we’ll see you tomorrow bright and early!

-The 90 Second News Team

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