The state of California will allow theme parks and sports stadiums in the state to welcome back visitors sooner than expected under new guidance unveiled Friday, the Los Angeles Times' Luke Money and Rong-Gong Lin II report. While the changes don't mean such facilities can operate at full capacity right away, they do reflect the state's growing sentiment that it is now possible to resume certain activities as COVID-19 case rates decline and as the vaccine rollout continues to ramp up, the authors note. Beginning April 1, amusement parks in California will be eligible to reopen with limited capacity in counties that are in the red tier, also known as the second-strictest of the state's four-category reopening roadmap, the authors say. Companies that operate theme parks in California include Disney (DIS), Cedar Fair (FUN), SeaWorld (SEAS), and Six Flags (SIX). Reference Link

Standard General LP, which owns a 9.2% interest in Tegna, is ramping up its push for board seats at the company a year after investors spurned its call for change as the COVID-19 pandemic took hold, Bloomberg's Scott Deveau reports. Standard General CEO Soo Kim told Bloomberg in an interview that his slate of nominees would bring ample industry experience and diverse points of view to Tegna's board. Kim claims that Tegna has benefited from the firm's activism even without the firm having representation on the board, Deveau notes. Reference Link

Most Senate Democrats agreed to cut weekly federal unemployment benefits to $300 a week from the $400 passed by the House as part of a $1.9T COVID-19 relief bill, the Wall Street Journal's Kristina Peterson, Andrew Duehren, and Richard Rubin report. Most Democratic senators agreed to cut the benefits but extend them through October 4 instead of August 29, the authors say, noting that Democrats also proposed making the first $10,200 of the 2020 benefits nontaxable. Reference Link

No fewer than 30,000 organizations across the U.S., including a large number of small businesses, towns, cities, and local governments, have in the past few days been hacked by an aggressive Chinese cyber espionage unit centered on stealing email from victim organizations, KrebsOnSecurity reports, citing multiple sources. The espionage unit is exploiting four newly-found flaws in Microsoft (MSFT) Exchange Server email software, and has seeded hundreds of thousands of victim organizations globally with tools that give hackers total remote control over impacted systems, the report says. Such recent hacks may well end up far eclipsing the damage done by the SolarWinds (SWI) hacks, the report notes. Reference Link

American Airlines (AAL) said that a Boeing (BA) 737 MAX aircraft bound for Newark Liberty International Airport declared an emergency after the pilot shut down one engine over a potential mechanical problem, Reuters' David Shepardson reports. The airline's Flight 2555 from Miami landed safely in Newark without incident, with the company saying the issue was related to an engine oil pressure or volume indicator, and not the results of anything related to the MCAS system, the author notes. Reference Link