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| Good morning, Daily Briefing readers! Happy Thursday! We can expect another intense day in Minnesota as the murder trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin will continue with more testimony. |
| On the lighter side, it's one of the best days of the year for sports fans across the country: Major League Baseball's Opening Day. Finally, we urge you to keep your guard up for practical jokes, tricks, pranks, stunts, hoaxes and other silly antics because it's April Fools' Day! |
| Steve and Fatima are here with Thursday's news. |
| Let's get started with some items that people are talking about this morning. |
| ⚖ Four people, including a child, were killed after a suspect opened fire at an office building in Orange, California, on Wednesday evening, police said. A police spokeswoman also told reporters the suspect in the shooting was injured and taken to a local hospital and is in critical condition. Officers recovered one gun, she said. |
| 🌎 U.S. Border Patrol agents rescued two young children – a 3-year-old girl and a 5-year-old girl – who smugglers dropped from a 14-foot-high border wall and abandoned in New Mexico, officials said. |
| ⚖ A Florida woman was repeatedly raped and assaulted in front of her young son by Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell in 2008 in Naples, Florida, according to a lawsuit filed last week. The suit also contains a story where, during a trip, Epstein ushered the woman to a waterway filled with alligators and warned her that she would end up being eaten by the reptiles if she told anyone what he had done . |
| ⚾ In an interview on ESPN on Wednesday night, President Joe Biden said that he would "strongly support" moving the 2021 MLB All-Star Game out of Atlanta after the state of Georgia enacted a sweeping Republican-sponsored overhaul of state elections. |
| 🎶 Crab, Black Swan, Chameleon, Grandpa Monster and Piglet competed on Wednesday's episode of Fox's "The Masked Singer." Grandpa Monster was revealed to be the contestant going home this week. And the reveal shocked judge Nicole Scherzinger. "I cannot believe that!" she said before lying across the panel's table. |
| 🎧 On today's 5 Things podcast, reporter Joel Shannon talks about older Americans who are reuniting with loved ones after vaccinations. You can listen to the podcast every day on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or on your smart speaker. |
| Here's what's happening today: |
Chauvin murder trial enters fourth day following bodycam footage viewing |
| The Derek Chauvin murder trial enters its fourth day Thursday, a day after jurors watched four police body-cam videos . In the videos, George Floyd, a Black man, could be heard pleading for his life and saying "I can't breathe." The videos also revealed Chauvin defended his tactics after an ambulance left the scene, remarking to a bystander that Floyd was "a sizable guy" and "probably on something." Jurors also heard from Cup Foods employee Christopher Martin, 19, who took the counterfeit $20 from Floyd – the incident that led to the call to police that brought Chauvin and the other officers to the scene. Martin said he "saw Derek with his knee on George's neck on the ground" during his testimony. "If I had just not taken the ($20) bill, this could have been avoided," Martin added. Other witnesses Wednesday included: |
| • | Cup Foods customer Christopher Belfrey, 45, said he was "startled" by what he saw and began recording on his phone. | | • | Charles McMillian, a 61-year-old man who lives near Cup Foods, broke down on the witness stand at one point as he recounted his memories. | | • | Minneapolis firefighter and trained EMT Genevieve Hansen, 27, returned to the stand, saying she thought Floyd "needed medical attention" and "officers didn't let" her into the scene. | |
| Chauvin has been charged with second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter in the May 2020 death of Floyd. |
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April Fools' Day is here: Will other companies follow Volkswagen's lead? |
| April Fools' Day, the annual tradition every April 1 where people and brands become pranksters, returns Thursday. The origins of the day probably date back hundreds of years, author Alex Boese said last year. In the 21st century, corporations began using the day as an opportunity to make joke advertisements go viral, Boese added. Due to the severity of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, some companies, including Google, reconsidered their gags. But if Volkswagen's recent stunt is any indication, companies may be less shy with pranks in 2021. The automaker said Monday that it was changing its U.S. name to "Voltswagen" in a nod toward the company's heightened commitment to electric vehicles. Major news outlets, including USA TODAY, reported on the decision. The company then admitted it was an April Fools' joke. Volkswagen is not changing its name. A spokesman acknowledged the stunt upset some people in a statement Wednesday and apologized. |
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What else people are reading: |
| 🔵 Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden, has seen his fair share of ugly things, such as his alcohol and drug addiction that sent him spiraling for years. But he's seen a lot of beautiful things, too – namely the love he shares with his father and brother Beau Biden, who died of glioblastoma in 2015. Hunter Biden wrote about all of that and more in his aptly named new memoir, "Beautiful Things." |
| 🔵 Facebook took down an interview with Donald Trump conducted by his daughter-in-law Lara Trump for her show "The Right View." A company spokesman said the video was not permitted on Facebook and Instagram because of the former president's indefinite suspension from the platforms after the deadly Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6. |
| 🔵 The maker of the Cottonelle, Scott and Viva brands has announced that it will hike prices on "a majority of its North America consumer products business," including toilet paper and baby care items. Kimberly-Clark Corp. blamed rising commodity costs for the increases. |
| 🔵 A newly discovered species of meat-eating dinosaur in Argentina has been named the "one who causes fear" by the scientists who found a well-preserved skull of the ancient beast. The Llukalkan aliocranianus was "likely among the top predators" during the Late Cretaceous Period because of its formidable size, extremely powerful bite, very sharp teeth, huge claws and keen sense of smell. |
| 🔵 This week, Gwyneth Paltrow revealed her "guide to everyday skin care and wellness" in a video for Vogue. The actress and businesswoman, 48, said she doesn't slather on sunscreen, but instead likes to put some on her nose and "the area where the sun really hits." Some viewers took to social media to denounce her advice . Dr. Caroline Robinson, a dermatologist, told USA TODAY using sunscreen as "a spot treatment, sparingly, or 'just where the sun hits' ... is a very dangerous message." |
Newsmakers in their own words: Looking at Biden's $2 trillion plan |
| "If 2021 is the sugar high, 2022 is about a training plan to get fit for the long term." |
| – Gregory Daco, chief economist of Oxford Economics |
| While the $1.9 trillion COVID relief measure is putting billions of dollars in consumers' pockets now, President Joe Biden's $2 trillion plan to upgrade the nation's infrastructure is intended to increase productivity for the long run by bolstering crumbling transportation networks and investing in research and development projects, for example. Daco estimates the economy will expand by 3% next year and Biden's plan would tack on another half a percentage point. |
MLB opening day – a national holiday |
| The 2021 baseball season gets underway Thursday, with all 30 teams scheduled to start on the same day for the first time since 1968. The Los Angeles Dodgers won the World Series in 2020 after an abbreviated 60-game season, but the league is on track to play a full 162-game slate in 2021. Thursday's matchups include the New York Yankees and Toronto Blue Jays in a battle of AL East contenders and the Washington Nationals facing the New York Mets with Cy Young winners Max Scherzer and Jacob deGrom set to pitch. |
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Millions in the US face severe weather |
| About 30 million people were in the risk areas for severe weather as of Wednesday, according to the National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center. Damaging winds and tornadoes were main threats from Mississippi to the Carolinas, but heavy rain could also trigger additional flooding in Tennessee. The Weather Service also issued a flash flood watch for parts of Tennessee and surrounding states. Meanwhile, a blast of unusually cold air is poised to roar across the eastern U.S. over the next couple of days. In the eastern U.S., temperatures will be 15 to 25 degrees below average, the weather service said, and even colder wind chill values will enter the Southeast, Appalachians, and interior sections of the Northeast on Thursday. Freeze warnings and frost advisories are also in effect across portions of the Midwest and South for both Thursday and Friday mornings. And further north, in some parts of upstate New York, there could be as much as a foot of snow Thursday and into Friday. |
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Chuck Lorre's controversial new sitcom set to debut |
| Writer/producer Chuck Lorre's new CBS sitcom "The United States of Al," which faced a backlash even before its first episode , premieres Thursday (8:30 p.m. ET). "Al" centers on the friendship between Riley (Parker Young), an ex-Marine trying to adjust to life outside the service, and his unit's Afghan interpreter, Awalmir, aka Al (Adhir Kalyan). Earlier this month, many on social media took issue with the fact that Kalyan is not Afghan; others worried the show would whitewash and stereotype relations between U.S. military members and Afghans. Executive producer Reza Aslan urged critics to wait until they see the show before weighing in. |
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ICYMI: Some of our other top stories published Wednesday |
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