• ☝️ You’re looking at the winners of the sixth annual Milky Way Photographer of the Year competition, hosted by travel blog Capture the Atlas.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 💰 US markets closed up across the board yesterday (S&P: +0.2%; Dow: +0.03%; Nasdaq: +0.4%); the S&P 500 closed at Its highest level of 2023.
• 🥇 Walmart topped the Fortune 500 list for the 11th year in a row after taking in $661 billion worth of revenue in 2022; Amazon placed second for the fourth year running, with Exxon Mobil, Apple, and UnitedHealth Group rounding out the top five.
• 🪙 The SEC sued Coinbase yesterday, accusing America’s largest crypto exchange of violating federal laws that require it to register as an exchange and be overseen by the agency; the move comes one day after the SEC sued Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, alleging that it illegally mishandled customer funds and failed to prevent US users from signing up. (Background)

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

in partnership with Katio Dogio

• 👑⚖️ Prince Harry spent five hours on the witness stand giving testimony yesterday, as part of a lawsuit alleging that several British tabloids hacked the cell phone voicemails of dozens of high-profile UK figures; Harry is scheduled to resume his testimony today.
• ⚾ Rangers pitcher Jacob deGrom will require Tommy John surgery, cutting short his first season with Texas after signing a 5-year, $185 million deal this past offseason.
• 🍿 The Little Mermaid grossed $3.6 million in its first 10 days of release in China, by far the worst showing among Disney’s live-action adaptations; Chinese social media sites and newspapers have widely criticized Disney’s casting of Ariel, per The Hollywood Reporter.

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SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

in partnership with Slumber

• 🌌🦠 NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has detected the most distant complex organic molecules – aka those containing carbon – ever observed, located in a galaxy more than 12 billion light-years away, per a study published Monday in Nature.
• 🫁 Taking an experimental AstraZeneca drug called Tagrisso after lung cancer surgery reduced patients’ overall risk of death by 51%, per a new late-stage study led by researchers at Yale University.
• 🦍 The origins of masturbation can be traced back to a number of primate species who lived at least 40 million years ago, per a peer-reviewed study published yesterday in the UK journal Proceedings of The Royal Society B.

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MISCELLANEOUS

• 🌁🔥 Air quality ratings across all five of NYC’s boroughs rose above the level considered unhealthy for humans yesterday; health officials attributed the rise to smoke from ongoing wildfires in Canada; other states across the Midwest and East Coast are also warning residents to take precautions against incoming smoke.
• 💊 Pharma giant Merck filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration yesterday; it alleges Medicare’s new powers to reduce prescription drug prices under the Inflation Reduction Act are “tantamount to extortion.”
• 🗳️ Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie filed paperwork yesterday declaring his candidacy for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. (From the Left | From the Center | From the Right)

CLICKBAIT

• 🤖🎮 They plugged GPT-4 into Minecraft — and unearthed new potential for AI.

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