🌎 The King of Piracy

The US Space Command is moving its HQ to “Rocket City”

Biscuits and sweet tea are not included. President Trump announced Tuesday that the Space Command’s headquarters will relocate from Colorado Springs, Colorado, to Huntsville, Alabama, a city long known as “Rocket City” for its aerospace roots.

Fighting for space

The announcement marks the end of a years-long tug-of-war between Colorado and Alabama over who gets the prestige (and jobs) that come with hosting US military space power.

• In 2021, the Air Force initially chose Huntsville as the future home of Spacecom under the previous Trump administration.

• However, in 2023, President Biden overturned the decision, making Spacecom’s temporary HQ in Colorado Springs its permanent base.

After Biden’s reversal, government watchdogs found that the Air Force itself still preferred Huntsville, seeing it as the more cost-effective choice (see report). Still, senior Spacecom officials pushed back, warning that relocating could cause staff losses and jeopardize military readiness.

Home sweet home

Now that Spacecom’s HQ is officially settled, it will resume its mission of protecting US satellites and overseeing space-based military operations at Redstone Arsenal, which is already home to NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and the Army’s Space and Missile Defense Command.

• The relocation is expected to bring up to 1,800 jobs and a huge amount of federal spending to Huntsville.

• Colorado, on the other hand, could lose an estimated $1 billion per year, according to its chamber of commerce.

Legal challenges await: Colorado's Attorney General, Phil Weiser, announced plans to file a lawsuit contesting Spacecom's move to Alabama, saying he’s “pretty confident” in his ability to reverse the decision.

The world’s largest illegal sports platform has shut down

Long live the Robin Hood of sports streaming (if Robin Hood laundered ad money). The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE)—backed by major streaming heavyweights like Netflix, Disney, Amazon, and DAZN—announced Wednesday that Streameast is officially offline for good.

The king of piracy

Streameast was no small fry; even Lebron James was seen using the site. Over the past year, it drew a staggering 1.6 billion visits and averaged more than 136 million monthly visits. Across over 80 domains:

• Streameast offered pirated access to top-tier leagues, including the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, F1, UFC, the Premier League, UEFA competitions, boxing matches, MMA fights, and more.

The shutdown couldn’t have come at a better time for Streameast’s competitors (many of whom backed ACE in the shutdown), as the NFL season kicked off just a day after the announcement.

How were they taken down?

ACE said it worked with Egyptian authorities to put the site out of business, eventually leading up to a sting operation executed at an office just outside Cairo:

• During the raid, law enforcement arrested two individuals on copyright and money-laundering charges.

• Authorities also confiscated three laptops, four smartphones, cash, $123,000 in credit cards, and around $200,000 in cryptocurrency.

Initial investigations revealed the site made north of $6 million in ad revenue since 2010, which was funneled through a UAE shell company and may have been used to purchase real estate in Egypt.

The shutdown won’t stop people from pirating: A 2025 Brand Finance poll found 43% of sports fans across 13 countries had considered watching illegal streams, while a 2023 YouGov study showed 11% of adults actually pirated content in the past year, often due to high subscription costs.

Kraft-Heinz is splitting into two companies

But how could you separate hot dogs from ketchup? Food giant Kraft Heinz is officially splitting into two separate companies after spending nearly a decade as a merged entity.

Why separate?

Kraft Heinz executives said the company’s 56 product categories were simply too much to manage. They also noted that health-conscious consumers are moving away from processed foods, and price-sensitive shoppers increasingly choose store-brand alternatives.

To better manage those challenges, the company is reorganizing by creating a new entity called Global Taste Elevation Co., which will house top-performing brands:

• This includes Heinz, Philadelphia cream cheese, and Kraft Mac & Cheese.

• Meanwhile, lower-performing products like Maxwell House, Oscar Mayer, Lunchables, and Kraft Singles will be grouped under a separate company called North American Grocery Co.

Kraft Heinz’s struggles reflect a wider trend among packaged food giants, with companies like Keurig Dr Pepper and Kellogg’s also splitting their businesses to help retain customers.

The good, the bad, and the ugly

When Kraft and Heinz merged in 2015, their $46 billion deal was the largest in the food industry at the time, creating the world’s fifth-largest food and beverage company.

• The merger was orchestrated by legendary investor Warren Buffett and Brazilian investment firm 3G Capital.

• Known for its ruthless cost-cutting strategies, 3G quickly started workforce reductions, resulting in thousands of layoffs.

According to investors, those job cuts ultimately hurt the brand, along with consumers preferring cheaper, healthier alternatives. Since 2020, the company’s net revenue has declined each year, and its stock price has fallen roughly 70% since the 2015 merger.

So, is splitting up the company a good idea? Warren Buffett doesn’t think so. The investor expressed disappointment over Kraft Heinz's decision to split, stating that the merger was "not a brilliant idea" and that it wouldn't solve the company's underlying issues.

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Video game movies are Hollywood’s newest cash cow

I mean, who sells more tickets than a die-hard fanbase? Earlier this week, Paramount Pictures and Activision officially announced a live-action Call of Duty movie, pouncing on the rising trend of video game movies thriving at the box office.

Profiting off pixels

The military video game series Call of Duty (or COD, as many of you know it) has sold over 500 million copies since 2003, making it the second-best-selling video game franchise of all time, behind only Mario.

With movie studios increasingly churning out spin-offs and sequels to profit from large, pre-existing fan bases, Hollywood execs are coming to realize that video game IPs offer the same opportunity.

Now, Paramount is crossing its fingers that COD will join a list of video game titles killing it on the big screen:

• Universal’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie surpassed $1 billion globally in 2023, while Warner Bros.’ A Minecraft Movie earned $957.7 million earlier this year.

• Not to mention, Paramount knows how to spin pixels into profits. Its three Sonic the Hedgehog movies have raked in more than $1.2 billion worldwide, and there’s a fourth film on the way.

Paramount's CEO, David Ellison, emphasized the high hopes he has for the success of the movie (and the sequel potential of COD’s 23 main titles), drawing parallels to Top Gun: Maverick, which was a huge hit in theatres.

COD is just the beginning

As the film industry begins to see how big a cash cow popular video game franchises and their audiences eager for adaptations are, moviegoers can expect a surge of video game-based films coming soon:

• Hollywood studios are already developing adaptations of Death Stranding, Elden Ring, The Sims, Street Fighter, Gears of War, The Legend of Zelda, and a Resident Evil reboot.

Looking ahead: The announcement of a COD film has already generated a huge amount of buzz, with fans eager to see how the franchise's intense action and storytelling will translate to the big screen.

Aldi is becoming America’s favorite grocery store

Because who doesn’t love making grocery shopping a treasure hunt? As customers increasingly seek out low prices, the German discount grocer is undertaking its largest US expansion yet, with new locations planned across multiple states.

Fueling the demand

Aldi’s growth strategy isn’t unfounded. Visits to the grocer surged 7% in the first half of 2025. That’s nearly quadruple the 1.8% increase seen across the grocery industry as a whole, at a time when overall trips to supermarkets have largely stagnated.

What do they plan to do with all the extra foot traffic? Open over 225 new stores by the end of this year:

• That would bring its total to around 2,600 locations, making Aldi the third-largest grocery chain in the country by number of stores, behind Walmart and Kroger.

To support its rapid expansion, Aldi is investing over $9 billion over the next half-decade and plans to increase its US store count even further to around 3,200 by 2028.

What’s Aldi’s secret?

It’s mainly centered around its low prices. Roughly 90% of Aldi’s items are private label. That gives the retailer tighter control over costs and pricing, allowing it to consistently undercut national brands and appeal to budget-conscious shoppers.

But shoppers aren’t just going to the grocer for low prices:

• Aldi stores average just 20,000 square feet (less than half the size of a typical supermarket), which entices shoppers who are tired of navigating endless aisles of choices.

• Plus, like other discount retailers, Aldi taps into the “treasure hunt” shopping experience with its rotating “Aldi Finds” aisle, where customers can discover new discounted items each week.

There’s only one problem: Major food makers continue to take legal action against Aldi’s copycat strategy. Most recently, Mondelez (the company behind Oreos) sued the grocer this summer, alleging its private-label snacks look way too similar to its own packaging.

Catch up on this week’s weird news

 > During China’s massive victory parade in Beijing earlier this week, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin were heard discussing immortality. You know, normal world leader stuff.

 > A new study shows ancient impacts from 4.5 billion years ago shattered Mars’s internal structure, preventing it from forming neat, onion-like layers seen inside Earth.

 > UCLA engineers have developed a wearable brain-computer interface that enables paralyzed users to control a robotic arm and cursors with assistance from AI.

 > The Iberian harvester ant queen, which mates with other species to produce an army of worker ants, is the first known organism able to give birth to two distinct species, according to scientists.

 > A new WSJ-NORC poll shows more than 70% of Americans doubt that hard work alone leads to success—the highest level of skepticism recorded in 15 years.