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Skimm for November 12th

Skimm’d at Starbucks after sharing a Peppermint Mocha. Lucky you. Buy one holiday drink, get one free to share. Sharing is caring.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“Singles Day” – The name of a holiday in China. Think Black Friday meets the anti-Valentine’s Day. It was yesterday, and e-commerce giant Alibaba did a record $14.3 billion in sales. Proving all you need is love. Or a credit card.

MIZZOU

THE STORY

Racial tensions at the University of Missouri are still high.

CATCH ME UP.

Over the last few months, there’s been a series of racist incidents on campus. A lot of students and faculty felt like the administration really botched its response, and called for the school’s president to resign. Weeks of protests – including a hunger strike from one grad student, and a boycott from dozens of members of the football team — resulted in the president packing his bags, and the school’s chancellor getting demoted earlier this week.

SO WHAT HAPPENED NOW?

Yesterday, online threats and rumors of violence led the school to bulk up security on campus, and some teachers to cancel class altogether. Then, police arrested two students at different state universities for allegedly making separate online “terroristic” threats – one of them specifically against black Mizzou students.

theSKIMM

Mizzou student activists have been using the name “Concerned Student 1950,” in reference to the year the first black students enrolled at the University of Missouri. Earlier this week, one of those students – now 89-years-old – said he was glad to see the protesters are bringing change to campus, but was sorry that they had to fight for it in the first place.

REPEAT AFTER ME...

WHAT TO SAY WHEN YOU WAKE UP READY TO TAKE ON THE DAY...

So did the Kurds. Earlier today, they launched a US-backed operation to take back Sinjar from ISIS. Sinjar: a town in northern Iraq that sits on a key ISIS supply route. It’s also where last year thousands of Yazidis — a small religious minority in northern Iraq — were rescued from ISIS by the Kurds after being trapped on a mountain. Yesterday, some Yazidi forces joined the Kurds in the offensive. The US-led coalition has been crowded out lately by Russia and Iran joining the ISIS fight in a big way. Taking back Sinjar would be a huge W, since it’s between Syria and Mosul – Iraq’s second largest city, and basically ISIS HQ in the country.

WHAT TO SAY WHEN YOUR NEWLY MARRIED FRIEND ASKS IF YOU’RE SEEING ANYONE SPECIAL…

Yes, thank you. Yesterday, AB InBev (think: Budweiser) and SABMiller (think: Miller Lite) defined the relationship. The two companies are becoming one huge beer company in a deal valued at more than $105 billion. They’ve been flirting for months, and now the new company will sell one in every three beers worldwide. When the talks were first announced, some people said ‘ever heard of antitrust laws?’ To which the companies said ‘ugh, fine.’ SABMiller agreed to get rid of its $12 billion stake in MillerCoors, another big name in beer. Which gives it much better odds at getting the OK from regulators. Cheers.

WHAT TO SAY WHEN YOU HEAR YOUR THIRD COUSINS ARE STAYING AT YOUR HOUSE FOR THANKSGIVING…

Gotta love family. Yesterday, two nephews of the First Lady of Venezuela were arrested in Haiti . That’s because they were apparently trying to sneak 800 kilograms of cocaine into the US. Casual. The nephews had just arrived by private jet when they were reportedly turned over to the DEA and flown straight to New York. Probably not in the same style. This comes as US investigators have been giving top-level Venezuelan officials some serious side-eye for reportedly dabbling in money laundering and drug trafficking in the US. In recent years, Venezuela’s socialist government has been facing on-and-off protests for being unable to revive the country’s struggling economy. So no, this isn’t a good look.

WHAT TO SAY WHEN THE MAGIC 8 BALL SAYS ‘OUTLOOK NOT SO GOOD’…

Theranos knows how you feel. The Silicon Valley blood testing startup (valued at $9 billion) has been having a rough couple of months. The company – founded by 31-year-old Elizabeth Holmes – made a name for itself by developing a blood test technology that it says works with just a finger prick. Holmes is the youngest self-made female billionaire in the world. Then last month , the Wall Street Journal published an article alleging that Theranos doesn’t actually use the new technology for most of its tests. Holmes said the report was “full of falsehoods.” But then a few weeks ago, Walgreens put a partnership with Theranos on hold. And then earlier this week, the WSJ reported that the grocery chain Safeway is dropping its $350 million dollar deal with the company that would have opened clinics offering Theranos blood tests. In response to this new report, Theranos says ‘speaking of a finger prick…’ it’s “disappointed to see yet another inaccurate WSJ article.”

THING TO KNOW

Fish gape: The new duck face. A pose favored by selfie lovers everywhere. Think: mouth slightly open, eyes staring at the camera. Soul slowly dying.

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SKIMM BIRTHDAYS

*indicates Skimm’bassador. Cake cake cake cake.

Skimm Grandma Fran Schechter (Neponsit, NY); *Kelsey Muldoon (Denver, CO); *Jenn O’Mara (Philadelphia, PA); *Namrata Singh (Houston, TX); *Catherine Christ (Palmdale, CA); *Katy Hallman (Columbia, SC); *Chandni Jaggi (College Station, TX); *Kirsten Horton (Memphis, TN); *Lyndsey Jefferson (London, England); *Lindsay Barta (Tampa, FL); *Lori Dobrin (Camarillo, CA); *Mary Raymond (Nashville, TN); *Victoria Lannom (Chicago, IL); *Jennifer MacDonald (Freeport, ME); *Shannon Burgess (San Diego, CA); *Stacey Young (Syracuse, NY); *Leslie Stine (Waynesboro, PA); *Carrie Rickenberg (Edgewater, NJ); *Kandice Miles (Spartanburg, SC); *Cicely Lewis (Fairfax, VA); *Isabel Lanaux (New Orleans, LA); Colin Strickland (Oklahoma City, OK); Amanda Usher (New York, NY); Nicole Bleuel(San Francisco, CA); Bianca Cesaratto (Madison, WI); Lalit Gurnani (San Francisco, CA); Jessica Weingarten (Roslyn, NY); Kathryn Lentych (South Bend, IN); Anne Summa (San Diego, CA); Megan Zilis (New York NY); Devin McDonnell (Baltimore, MD); Talia Ziskroit (New York, NY); Harpreet Sawhney (West Windsor, NJ)