Part of our “News That Matters“ Series, “Friday Update” is a weekly feature that offers brief overviews of important news that might have been overlooked in the course of a busy week. Here’s what you may have missed in the period January 15 through January 17, 2025.
@WEATHER
Coat? Scarf? Hat? Gloves? Think About How Cold It Is Outside? Start Taking Off Coat and Hat.
The National Weather Service said that Arctic air will spread South and East from the Rockies starting on Friday. The bitter cold temperatures willl continue through next week and snow squalls are possible.
Temperatures will fall precipitously in the Plains on Friday, crossing the Deep South and Great Lakes areas Saturday night and hit the Eastern Seaboard on Sunday.
The NWs said to expect “dangerously cold wind chill temperatures,” which could reach -40° F, the one point where at which they intersect. They are equal at -40 ° C and -40 ° F.
Expect “brief and intense bursts of snow and gusty winds in snow squalls” in many areas. This could lead to reduced visibility and deteriorating road conditions across the northern Plains into the Rockies through Friday.
A Starbucks in British Airways’ Terminal 5 at London Heathrow
@DEADLINE
Starbucks Closes the Door on Open-Door Policy
Starbucks announced it was ending a policy first introduced in 2018 whereby guests could enjoy the ambience of a Starbucks coffee shop without being required to make a purchase.
At the time, Starbucks said that it had told its workers to consider anyone who walks into its stores a customer, “regardless of whether they make a purchase.”
The new policy states that Starbucks spaces “are for use by our partners and customers” – and warns miscreants that they will be asked to leave.
Since that rule was put into place, however, staff and customers alike have had to contend with unruly and even dangerous behavior in stores. In 2022, the chain was forced to close numerous stores around the country – including six in Los Angeles and six in its hometown of Seattle – for repeated safety issues, including drug use and other disruptive behaviors that threatened staff.
The ubiquitous coffee shop also introduced rules for guest conduct that forbade guests from bringing in and consuming outside alcohol. Smoking, vaping, drug use, and panhandling were forbidden and grounds for immediate ejection.
Starbucks spokesman Jaci Anderson said the new rules are designed to help prioritize paying customers and said that most other retailers already have such rules.
“We want everyone to feel welcome and comfortable in our stores,” Anderson said. “By setting clear expectations for behavior and use of our spaces, we can create a better environment for everyone.”
The American Symphony Orchestra and the Bard Festival Chorale acknowledging the audience’s standing ovation at the conclusion of the concert last spring
Archive of Arnold Schoenberg Music Destroyed in L.A. Wildfire
The archive holding the publicly available work of the great twentieth-century composer Arnold Schoenberg was destroyed last week when the wildfires in Southern California burnt down the warehouse holding printed scores and sheet music. No original manuscripts were lost in the conflagration, but the loss could spell trouble for orchestras, chamber music ensembles, and other groups and individuals who had planned to perform some of Schoenberg’s works.
The printed music was owned by Belmont Music Publishers, a company founded by his heirs. “It’s brutal. We lost everything,” Larry Schoenberg, the composer’s son, told a reporter.
The fire also destroyed Schoenberg memorabilia, including photographs, letters, posters, books, and arrangements by other composers of Schoenberg pieces.
Arnold Schoenberg left for the United States from Paris while on vacation, without returning either to his home in Berlin or to his native Austria.
Upon arriving in the United States, where he remained for the rest of his life, he changed the spelling of his surname, Schönberg, to the alternate spelling Schoenberg. [Editor’s note: The letter “ö” is one of the four letters found in German but not in English and it can be replaced by the digraph “oe” in cases where a typewriter or typeface does not have the “ö”.]
FBT and The Travelist Editorial Director and Chief Music Critic Jonathan Spira said that has played an extraordinary role in making Schoenberg’s music available to the public. Last year, the American Symphony Orchestra performed his oratorio “Gurrelieder” last year at Carnegie Hall, using scores from Belmont, adding that he was present in the audience. To the classical music world, Spira said, the loss was a catastrophe. “The music Belmont offered was difficult if not impossible to find elsewhere.”
The White House in Washington, D.C.
Biden Seeks Legacy-Cementing Moves Trump Can’t Undo
This is not how a lame duck typically displays his lameness: President Joe Biden is determined to cement his legacy before his term of office expires on January 20 and he is using the power of the presidency to effect tremendous change that his successor will find difficult if not impossible to reverse.
To that end, he’s designated national monuments in California, commuted the sentences of virtually everyone on federal death row, he removed Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, thwarted a Japanese company’s wish to acquire U.S. Steel, and extended temporary protected status to nearly one million immigrants.
While it’s not unusual for outgoing presidents to issue numerous proclamations, Biden’s efforts have been unusually wide-ranging, a result of his belief that President-elect Donald Trump represents a unique threat to American traditions and to democracy.
@IN BRIEF
Toyota to Pay $1.6 Billion to Settle Emissions Fraud
Toyota 4Runner TRD Pro and Nightshade Edition
Toyota Motors’ Hino Motors truck agreed to pay $1.6 billion to settle charges that it deceived regulators about the amount of emissions released by its engines. Hino used altered emissions test data to get approval to import and sell more than 110,000 diesel engines to the United States, most of which were installed in heavy-duty trucks made by Hino, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Walgreen’s to Close 500 Stores in 2025
Major pharmacy chain Walgreen’s said that it will be is closing about 500 stores in the United States as part of the number of closings it announced late ast year. Locations on the chopping block include those in Chicago and San Francisco.
Mercedes-Benz and Google Partner on In-Vehicle AI
Mercedes-Benz and Google Cloud announced that the two will expand their partnership to give greater conversational capabilities to the MBUX, short for Mercedes-Benz user experience, Virtual Assistant. MBUX going forward will be powered by Google Cloud’s new Automotive AI agent built using Gemini on Vertex AI. The agent is designed specifically for the automotive sector and can tap into Google Maps in order to give drivers more detailed and far more conversational replies about tourist sites, navigation, points of interest, and more.
Does He, or Doesn’t He? Only His Aging Specialists Know for Sure
Bryan Johnson, the tech industry executive who has spent millions in an attempt to get his body look like his teenage son’s, announced he was discontinuing his use of Rapamycin after determining that it was actually having the opposite effect. Rapamycin, which is also known as sirolimus, is a drug that is typically used to treat a number of conditions ranging from including organ transplant rejection to cancer and to rare lung diseases. It’s also being studied as a potential anti-aging treatment. The decision came after a new pre-print was published indicating that Rapamycin “one of a handful of supposed longevity interventions to cause an increase/acceleration of aging in humans across 16 epigenetic aging clocks,” Johnson said.
Jesse Sokolow, Timothy Perry, Jonathan Spira, Kurt Stolz, and Paul Riegler contributed to this issue of Midweek Update.
(Photos: Accura Media Group)
