Axios

Major U.S. stocks plummeted Friday, with the Dow sinking 665 points, amid signs that strong wage growth may lead to increased interest rates and inflation.

Why it matters: Today was the worst day for stocks since June 2016, after the Brexit vote in Britain. The plunge could signal that the equity markets had overheated after a remarkable 14 months sparked by booming consumer confidence and the promise of a major tax cut after Donald Trump was elected.

The health care industry added roughly 295,000 jobs in 2017, based on preliminary federal figures, employing 15.9 million people. Hospitals boosted their payrolls by more than 86,000 people last year, or about 30% of all added health care jobs.

By the numbers: The health care jobs engine continues to hum along. The 2017 growth compares with 251,000 added jobs in 2016, 440,000 in 2015 and 293,000 in 2014. But economists say the rising employment in health care is not necessarily a good thing.

HQ, the popular live trivia app, has raised $15 million at a valuation of more than $100 million in a new funding round from Founders Fund, the venture capital firm co-founded by Peter Thiel, according to Recode.

The nitty-gritty: The app, which recently began regularly surpassing more than a million players, had difficulty finding funding after Recode reported last year on the "alleged bad behavior" of its co-founders, Rus Yusupov and Colin Kroll. The pair, who also co-founded the video app Vine and moved to Twitter following its acquisition, faced reports of poor management and "creepy behavior" during their stint at the social media giant.

Charter Communications added roughly 15,000 customers to its video subscription package in the fourth quarter of 2017, the first time the network has added video subscribers since acquiring Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks in 2016.

Why it matters: Charter CEO Tom Rutledge warned that while these acquisitions would cause a dip in subscriber numbers in the short-term, they would eventually help the company develop stronger relationships with video customers. Those cable bets now seem to be paying off.

Dell Technologies on Friday morning confirmed that it is exploring either an IPO or a reverse merger with VMWare, in which it already holds an 82% stake.

Why it matters: Dell's move to go private in 2013 was the largest tech buyout in history, and its 2016 purchase of EMC was the largest tech merger in history. Whatever it decides this time could also set records.

• Go deeper: Dell, debt and dilemmas

A group of female record executives is calling for the resignation of Recording Academy president Neil Portnow, who sparked a backlash by saying after Sunday's Grammy Awards that female musicians must "step up" for more representation, per the Hollywood Reporter's Patrick Shanley.

Two top editors at the New York Daily News have been fired after being accused of sexual harassment, per the New York Post. Both were suspended last week.

The details: The paper’s managing editor, Rob Moore, was accused last December of bullying and sexual misconduct by at least four former female employees of the Daily News, the Post reports. Sunday editor Alexander "Doc" Jones was escorted from the paper’s offices after allegations surfaced that he forcibly kissed younger staffers at off-site meetings, according to the Post.

HBO added over 5 million domestic digital subscribers across its HBO and Cinemax services in 2017 — it's largest annual increase ever, the company announced in an SEC filing Thursday.

Why it matters: The increase is a result of a years-long overhaul of the company's content distribution strategy to broaden their subscription base so that they don't need to charge cable and satellite companies more to carry their content.

Veteran newsman Dan Rather warned that President Trump's "relentless campaign to undermine the public's trust in the press" is unprecedented and "the mark of an autocratic regime and an autocratic leader. We know from history what the dangers are."

Threat level: Rather, speaking at the Upfront Summit in Los Angeles, said that we are not in Adolf Hitler territory, even in his early years, but added "there are indications that could be the direction in which we are heading."

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba is helping fund India's largest online grocer, Bigbasket, with a $300 million dollar investment, reports Bloomberg. The company plans to utilize the funds for building farmer networks, warehouses, and delivery infrastructure in the more than two dozen cities it operates in.

Why it matters: India's current retail market is valued at more than $900 billion, with grocery shopping accounting for roughly $600 billion of that, Bigbasket co-founder and CEO Hari Menon told Bloomberg. But the expansion of grocery e-commerce in the country is hindered by the lack of refrigerated trucks, warehouses and fundamental logistics.

Airbnb will not go public in 2018, according to a statement from CEO Brian Chesky. The news came within an announcement that chief financial officer Laurence Tosi is leaving the home-sharing juggernaut, while legal and business officer Belinda Johnson will become chief operating officer.

Why it matters: Airbnb seemed poised to break Silicon Valley's "unicorn" IPO drought, following last week's addition of outgoing American Express CEO Ken Chenault as an independent director and news that the company will soon release its first "annual stakeholder report."

Newsweek Media Group, the publisher of Newsweek and the International Business Times, has allegedly been purchasing low-quality online traffic, a fraudulent move that helped the media company meet the requirements of a major ad buy from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau with IBT, BuzzFeed reports, citing a new report released on Thursday by Social Puncher, an ad fraud watchdog.

What (allegedly) happened: Social Puncher's report claims that IBT supplemented a drop in organic search traffic to its website with paid traffic that used redirected traffic from pop-up or pop-under ads from pirate streaming sites. The vast majority of the ads for the CFPB were served this way, making it likely that real people never saw them — or immediately clicked away — while still allowing IBT to meet the buy's traffic requirements.

CBS Corp.'s board today is expected to discuss a merger with Viacom, setting the stage for a possible reunion between two companies that were split apart in 2005 by Sumner Redstone.

Why it matters: Even though we've heard this siren song before, there are two big differences this time around: A pressure-inducing trend of mega-media mergers, including AT&T/Time Warner and Disney/Fox, and declining share prices for both CBS and Viacom.

N.Y. Times Quote of the Day ... Delrisa Sewell-Henry, a home health aide, on the long, haphazard commutes she and other home health workers in New York City face on public transportation:

When you make $13 an hour and you have to pay rent and buy groceries, you can’t afford an Uber. I can barely afford a seven-day MetroCard.

"Tackling the Internet’s Central Villain: The Advertising Business" — N.Y. Times "State of the Art" column by Farhad Manjoo":

[T]he online ad machine is ... a vast, opaque and dizzyingly complex contraption with underappreciated capacity for misuse — one that collects and constantly profiles data about our behavior, creates incentives to monetize our most private desires and frequently unleashes loopholes that the shadiest of people are only too happy to exploit.