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Talk of NYC: Mike Bloomberg and Graydon Carter Threw the Kind of Party No One Throws Anymore (Washington Post)

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Former NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg played host this week at Lower Manhattan's Perelman Performing Arts Center - an imposing marble-walled cube steps from the World Trade Center (to which he'd donated $130 million during its building phase) - to celebrate former Vanity Fair editor-in-chief Graydon Carter's memoir, 'When the Going Was Good: An Editor's Adventures in the Last Golden Age of Magazines.'

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Toasting Carter in a speech, Mike teased: "It's a great book, but I've only read a quarter of it. I hope it gets better."

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In his speech, Bloomberg told the tale of his and Carter's "complicated relationship" before becoming friends. For years, Carter very publicly opposed Bloomberg's ban on indoor smoking as New York's mayor. Carter once compared the smoking ban to something like "when a husband returns home after the honeymoon and announces to his bride that he has decided henceforth they will be vegans," Bloomberg said. (Tony Danza laughed the loudest.)

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But Carter had eventually quit smoking, "So now, after all these years, I'd just like to say to him, 'You're welcome,'" Bloomberg added.

March Madness Latest.

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Go Blue Devils!

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Duke Holds Off Arizona While Texas Tech Rallies Past Arkansas in Sweet 16 OT Thriller (Yahoo! Sports)

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The NCAA tournament Sweet 16 is underway and Thursday's games featured some of the best teams in the bracket.

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It was all chalk early in the evening as No. 1 Florida and No. 2 Alabama both delivered blowout wins. The Tide in particular had themselves a night, breaking the record for most points in an NCAA tournament game (113), most 3-pointers by a team in a tournament game (25) and most 3-pointers attempted (51). Alabama guard Mark Sears led the way with 34 points while shooting 10-for-16 from 3-point range.

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But the later set of games delivered plenty of drama.

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No. 1 Duke led by double figures most of the night before a furious rally by Caleb Love and Arizona forced the Blue Devils to close out the game down the stretch. Love finished with 35 points while Duke's Cooper Flagg put on a show of his own with 30 points, seven assists, six rebounds and three blocks in the win.

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Up next: Later today, Michigan State goes up against Ole Miss and Tennessee against Kentucky in the next round of Sweet 16 games.

Future of Public Health.

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Dramatic Revamp: RFK Jr. to Lay Off 10,000 Federal Health Workers (Bloomberg)

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Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced sweeping cuts to the department he leads, the latest step by the Trump administration to dramatically shrink the size of the US government’s workforce and responsibilities.

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Kennedy plans to cut 10,000 employees, and combined with other departures from buyouts, the reductions mean the agency will employ 62,000 workers down from 82,000. The secretary also intends to consolidate the department’s 28 divisions into 15 and cut regional offices from 10 to five.

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HHS said it plans to lay off 3,500 employees at the Food and Drug Administration, but those cuts will not include drug, medical device or food reviewers or inspectors. And the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) workforce will be cut by around 2,400 people. 

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Narrowing the CDC's focus to infectious disease is a "prescription for disaster," former director Tom Frieden said, noting that its efforts have saved lives from leading causes of death including cancer, heart attacks and drug overdoses.

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"The decision to hollow out CDC makes Americans and the world less safe," Frieden said.

What I'm Reading.

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Check out the podcast: Click here to listen to the AI-generated audio companion to today's Daily Read newsletter. And 'Follow' the Sheekey Daily Read podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts to listen and be notified when the latest are available. 

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Boost from Major Upset: Democrat Wins Pennsylvania State Senate District Held by GOP for Decades (New York Times)

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Democrat James Andrew Malone, a small-town mayor, won a surprise victory on Tuesday in a special election for the Pennsylvania State Senate, narrowly prevailing in a district that Donald Trump won by 15 points last fall.

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Math from the Majority: Trump Pulls New York Representative Elise Stefanik’s UN Nomination to Protect GOP Majority (Bloomberg)

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Infrastructure Warning: Trump Considers Killing Big Energy Projects in Dem States (Politico)

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A list circulating inside the Energy Department suggests cutting funding for the development of four hydrogen production hubs in mostly Democratic-leaning states while maintaining funding for three hubs spread across mostly red states.

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The cuts, if carried through, would politicize the federal funds that Congress and the Biden administration awarded to seven regional applicants as part of the bipartisan infrastructure law.

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Market Watch: Liability Management and Looking Beyond US Investments to Europe, Asia (Morning Porridge - Bill Blain)

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Expert financial commentator Bill Blain's 'Morning Porridge' newsletter had a good take on where markets are headed: "Most of the folk I’ve spoken with recently reckon the US stock market remains on course for a downer year."

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"They agree the negative effect of tariffs, increasing anti-American sentiment, and Europe’s need to build new geopolitical relationships, will seriously impact the value of US stocks in terms of US firms’ global sales, profitability, the American-exceptionalism premium, and that there is a diversification need to trade away from US investments into other jurisdictions. Heck, even Americans I spoke to yesterday agreed with that analysis. I am going to spend some time in next few weeks looking at diversification trades into other economies, including Europe and Asia."

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Stock Rally Continues: European Banks Have Best Quarterly Streak Since Financial Crisis (Bloomberg)

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Big Shake: Magnitude 7.7 Quake, Strongest in Myanmar in a Century, Also Rocks Thailand, Vietnam (Bloomberg)

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Coming Soon to Streaming: Bloomberg Originals Series 'An Optimist’s Guide To The Planet With Nikolaj Coster-Waldau' Lands Season 2 (Deadline)

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The Art of Perfect Vibes: How NYC's Hottest Restaurants Got That Way (Bloomberg)

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So what’s the winning formula for a top-tier place, one that attracts diners across an array of demographics (like Torrisi in SoHo, pictured below)? It’s an almost mystical combination of buzzy energy plus good - often great - food, supercharged with cozily familiar hospitality, Bloomberg's Kate Krader writes. Underpinning this delicate concoction are interiors designed to be cool but not trendy, delivering an immersive sense of authenticity even at brand-new establishments.

Weekend Guide.

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New Book Out This Week: 'Nobody's Fool' by Harlan Coben

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Best-selling author Harlan Coben launched his new novel on Tuesday, and what may surprise fans is where the inspiration for it came from: "This new book is actually about Adeel Akhtar’s character Sami Kierce in (the now hit-series from Netflix along with the book of the same name) 'Fool Me Once' one year after the events of that series," Coben said in an interview. "And what’s weird is that the Sami Kierce character, and his wife, weren’t major characters in the 'Fool Me Once' book. So it’s almost more of a sequel to the TV series than the book. I don’t know any time that’s ever happened. Certainly, it hasn’t happened in my career."

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Weekend Watch: 'Canadian Bacon' (Amazon Prime Video)

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If you're wondering how US-Canada relations could get any weirder... they already did, in 1995. John Candy’s 'Canadian Bacon' is the only movie where the US declares war on Canada - mostly because the president needs a distraction and the Canadians are just too polite to fight back. Sound familiar?

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It’s satire, it’s absurd, and somehow, it’s feeling a little too relevant again. Stream it this weekend and enjoy the brilliance of John Candy barking, "There’s a time to think, and a time to act. And this, gentlemen, is no time to think!"

Best of Late Night.

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On the continuing 'Signalgate' scandal plaguing the Trump administration: 

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"Who could ever have guessed that the host of Weekend Fox and Friends would be bad at running the military? I mean, imagine how lifelong military professionals must feel? If this was the 90’s this would be like suddenly having to take orders from Kathy Lee."

-- Jimmy Kimmel

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"Don’t we have a situation room for this? Or did Trump turn that into a golf course?"

-- Jimmy Kimmel

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"The Trump administration is saying, 'Hey, everybody makes mistakes; we learned a lesson. From now on we will move all top-secret communication to TikTok, where it’s safe.'"

-- Jimmy Kimmel

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"Trump just announced that Elon Musk will be in charge of investigating the group chat leak. That’s how you know this is serious, Trump is bringing in his boss."

-- Jimmy Fallon

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"Meanwhile, today Trump held an emergency meeting to decide what scandal he is going to introduce to make this scandal go away."

-- Jimmy Fallon