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| Happy Friday, Daily Briefing readers! Congrats on making it through another week! Now is a good time to test your knowledge of the week's events, or just get a nice recap through USA TODAY's news quiz. |
| There is lots to look forward to today. For one, March's job report is expected to bring some good news on this Good Friday. And for the two winning teams that come from tonight's NCAA women's Tournament Final Four, this definitely will be a great day. |
| Steve and Fatima are here with Friday's news. |
| Let's get started with some news items that people are talking about this morning. |
| 🌎 A passenger train smashed into a vehicle on its tracks and partially derailed outside a rail tunnel in Taiwan on Friday. Police said at least 48 people were killed and over 100 more were injured. This was the island's worst railway disaster in decades. |
| ⚖ Updates in the trial of ex-Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin: Two paramedics told jurors Thursday that George Floyd appeared to be in medical distress or dead when they arrived at the scene. Also, David Pleoger, the Minneapolis Police Department supervising officer the day Floyd died, was asked when the restraint should have ended. He replied, "When Mr. Floyd was no longer offering up any resistance to the officers, they could have ended their restraint." |
| ⚖ Also on Thursday in the Chauvin trial: Courteney Ross, George Floyd's girlfriend, gave jurors an intimate glimpse of a "mama's boy," amateur athlete, restaurant lover and struggling drug user. |
| ⚖ A Chicago police officer has been placed on administrative duty after fatally shooting a teenager in an incident labeled by one official as an "armed confrontation." The boy was Adam Toledo, identified by the medical examiner's office as a 13-year-old white male, lived in the city's largely Hispanic Little Village neighborhood on the West Side." |
| ⚾ It was Opening Day in Major League Baseball on Thursday and outside of one game postponed due to weather (Orioles-Red Sox) and another called due to COVID-19 issues (Mets-Nationals), every team in the league played Game 1 of 162. Some of our USA TODAY Sports friends followed the action all day and night, including the Mariners' come-from-behind, extra-inning walkoff win over the Giants, which didn't end until about 2 a.m. ET. |
| 📺 During an episode of "Wheel of Fortune" earlier this week, a contestant named David added the word "and" to his guess to a puzzle during a crossword round and it cost him a win. Some fans of the game show aren't happy about it. |
| 🎧 On today's 5 Things podcast, education reporter Alia Wong talks about kids returning to active shooter drills at school. You can listen to the podcast every day on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or on your smart speaker. |
| Here's what's happening today: |
Economists optimistic about jobs report releasing Friday |
| Economists expect the March jobs report released Friday to show that the economy added a robust number of jobs, according to the data firm FactSet. The firm reports 614,000 jobs were added last month and the unemployment rate fell from 6.2% to 6%. Some economists are even more optimistic: Joe Brusuelas, chief economist at the tax advisory firm RSM, is predicting 1 million added jobs for March. These projections come after February also saw hiring accelerate, with employers adding 379,000 jobs across the U.S. However, the optimism also arrives as the number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits rose by 61,000 last week to 719,000, signaling that many employers are still cutting jobs. |
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What else people are reading: |
| 🔵 Police say the suspect in the Wednesday evening massacre that left four dead, including a 9-year-old boy, at an Orange, California, office building knew his victims and locked gated entryways into the office suite before opening fire . Victims were found in various areas of the building, including the boy, who was found dead in the arms of a woman believed to be his mother, officials said. |
| 🔵 A Houston family – including a woman, her two children and her nephew – has been charged with sex trafficking after forcing waitresses working at a bar to engage in commercial sex acts from 2007-2020. |
| 🔵 The cost of blocking shipping for almost a week through the Suez Canal, one of the most crucial waterways on Earth, apparently comes in at right around $1 billion. And Egypt could soon try to collect the bill. |
| 🔵 Mark-Paul Gosselaar is reflecting on a racially insensitive "Saved by the Bell" episode that "would never get made" now. He said this week he "cringed" while rewatching a 1990 episode called "Running Zack." |
Christians across the globe kick off the holy weekend |
| Friday is a big day for Christians around the world as they begin observing the holy weekend with Good Friday. The weekend starts by commemorating the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, and the weekend concludes with Easter Sunday. For the second consecutive year, Easter and other spring holiday plans have to be altered due to the pandemic . "This is a situation where people really need to very carefully navigate their risk with their family and their friends," said Maimuna Majumder, a computational epidemiologist and faculty member at Harvard Medical School. |
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Also new this morning |
| 🔵 With vacation travel strongly rebounding as more Americans are vaccinated against the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, several airlines are eliminating travel waivers put in place when travel evaporated during the coronavirus pandemic. |
| 🔵 Demi Lovato's seventh studio album "Dancing with the Devil... The Art of Starting Over," was released Friday and it serves as a companion to her explosive YouTube docuseries "Dancing with the Devil." Our friend Patrick Ryan examines the revealing standout songs from the lofty 19-track album. |
NCAA Women's Final Four tips off |
| The Final Four of the NCAA women's basketball Tournament tips off Friday evening, when No. 1 seeds Stanford and South Carolina face off (ESPN, 6 p.m. ET). Both teams cruised to the Final Four by winning all of their NCAA Tournament games by double figures. On the other side of the bracket, UConn will square off against Arizona (ESPN, 9:30 p.m. ET). Unlike South Carolina and Stanford, both UConn and Arizona have dealt with close calls in this tournament. In the Elite Eight, UConn held off No. 2 Baylor, winning 69-67 in controversial fashion , while Arizona had to hold on to beat No. 11 BYU in the second round. The winners of Friday's games will meet for the National Championship on Sunday. |
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Stimulus checks coming for some Social Security recipients, others |
| Starting Friday, relief payments as part of President Joe Biden's American Rescue Plan will begin going to Social Security and other federal beneficiaries who didn't file a 2020 or 2019 tax return and didn't use the Non-Filers tool last year, the Internal Revenue Service said. These payments will go to Social Security retirement, survivor or disability, Supplemental Security Income and Railroad Retirement Board beneficiaries. The agency projects that the majority of these payments will be sent electronically and received by April 7. The IRS sent out relief checks to more than 4 million Americans the third round of payments made under Biden's plan, the agency said Thursday. That brings the total disbursed payments from the latest stimulus package to more than 130 million payments, worth about $335 billion. The payments, which total up to $1,400 each per individual, were distributed mostly by direct deposits and paper checks. |
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Newsmakers in their own words: Roy Williams retires as coach of UNC |
| "I love coaching, working the kids on the court, the locker room, the trips, the 'Jump Around' (pregame) music, the trying to build a team. I will always love that. And I'm scared to death of the next phase. But I no longer feel that I'm the right man." |
| – Former University of North Carolina men's basketball coach Roy Williams during his retirement news conference. |
| Williams, 70, announced his retirement Thursday after 33 seasons as a Division I head coach. He won three NCAA Tournament titles at North Carolina, his alma mater and finishes his career with 903 victories (third all-time). He advanced to the Final Four nine times and was inducted to the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 2007. |
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Chrissy Teigen on the cover of People's 'The Beautiful Issue' |
| Chrissy Teigen will grace the front of People magazine's "The Beautiful Issue " for a cover story that hits newsstands Friday. It delves into her evolved definition of beauty, facing racism growing up and her heartbreaking miscarriage last year. Teigen, who is of Thai-Norwegian descent, said she wants to follow her Thai tradition in remembering her son, Jack, who died at 20 weeks of her pregnancy. She was hospitalized with excessive bleeding before the miscarriage. She added that it's important for her children, Luna and Miles, to stay connected with their late brother and always "embrace the ones that we've lost" based on her tradition. |
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ICYMI: Some of our other top stories published Thursday |
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| Contributing: The Associated Press |
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