Good morning and welcome to Monday. Today’s newsletter is like successfully killing a fly next to your mom: Wham, bam, thank you, ma'am.

Let’s do this.

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today's news takes 4.18 minutes to read.

"Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone."

–Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)

Following three years of maintenance, upgrades and pandemic delays, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), aka the world’s largest particle accelerator, is gearing up for its third – and most powerful – experimental period to date.

🤔 Why it’s a big deal… This new experimental stretch could finally reveal the long-sought "right-handed" versions of ghostly particles called neutrinos, find the elusive particles that make up dark matter, and even help to explain why the universe exists at all, LiveScience reports. So…. yeah. A pretty bfd.

⚙️⚛️ How it works: The Large Hadron Collider does just what it says on the box: smashes hadrons together at 99.99% the speed of light. Observations of the instruments have generated more than 2,000 scientific papers on many areas of fundamental particle physics.

📝 Some LHC fun facts…

• It’s the largest machine in the world; 17 miles in circumference and runs about 330 feet under the surface, spanning the border of France and Switzerland. It took 20 years of planning and $8 billion to complete.
• The most powerful supercomputer in the world; set to generate 40,000GB of data each day – or in other words, enough to download Titanic 20,000x times over (not that anyone would want to).
• Gets more than 100,00x hotter than the Sun…. but also reaches temps of -456°F.🥵 ➡️🥶

👀 Looking ahead… If all initial tests and checks starting this month go well, scientists will begin experiments in June and slowly ramp up to full power by the end of July.

🇫🇷🗳️ French President Emmanuel Macron defeated conservative populist challenger Marine Le Pen to win re-election yesterday, with projections as polls closed showing him winning 58% to 42%.

• Once his victory is officially confirmed this afternoon, the 44-year-old Macron will be the first French president to win a second term since 2002, when Marine Le Pen’s father was defeated by then-President Jacques Chirac.
• At the top of President Macron’s upcoming agenda is a plan to streamline France’s complex pension system and raise the country’s retirement age to 65 from 62, per the WSJ.
• President Macron says the move is necessary to fund lower taxes and boost government spending on the country’s public healthcare system.
• France is the only EU member on the UN Security Council, and has the only nuclear arsenal in the entire 27-nation bloc.
• French Prime Minister Jean Castex last week said his government would resign if Macron won re-election to provide a "new impetus" for Macron's centrist La Republique En Marche party ahead of parliamentary elections in June.

+Dig deeper: From the Left | From the Right

⚾ The Detroit Tigers’ Miguel Cabrera made history on Saturday, becoming the first Venezuelan-born player in MLB history to reach 3,000 hits.

• Cabby is the 33rd player to ever reach that plateau, and just the seventh player in history to achieve both 3,000 hits and 500 home runs.
• Miggy was 20 years old when he made his major league debut with the Marlins in 2003, helping them win the World Series that year; Cabrera’s lifetime .310 batting average over his 20-year career is tops among all active MLB players.
• In 2012, he won the Triple Crown (leading the American League in batting average, home runs and RBIs), the first time anyone had achieved the feat in 45 years.

👀 Looking ahead... New members have joined the 3,000-hit club roughly once every four years dating back to the 1970s, but don’t expect to see another induction anytime soon. After Cabrera, there are only three active players within 1,000 hits of the milestone – and they’re all over the age of 38.

+Over to Japan: 20-year-old right hander Roki Sasaki's record streak of 52 consecutive batters retired – 17+ perfect innings – ended on the first pitch of his appearance yesterday.

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🇺🇦 On Friday, Russia's military officially said it wants to seize all of the Donbas region and southern Ukraine (as far as south as Moldova) to form a land bridge to Crimea as part of "the second stage" of its invasion.

• Also on Friday, Ukrainian officials said Moscow had captured 42 villages in the Donetsk region over the previous 24 hours.
• Russian forces killed at least eight people, including a 3-month-old baby, in missile strikes targeting the key port city of Odesa on Saturday, per Ukrainian officials. 
• Why is Odesa so important? Sea cargo makes up 70% of all of Ukraine's imports and exports, and the port city processes three-quarters of that, according to Bloomberg.
• Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv yesterday as most of the country celebrated Orthodox Easter; it’s the highest-level visit by US officials since the war began.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin’s girlfriend, a 39-year-old former Olympian gymnast, was reportedly spared from US sanctions imposed several weeks ago in a last-minute decision for fear it could further escalate tensions between the two countries, per the WSJ.

+The latest news: From the Left | From the Right

• ☝️ Amazon won approval for its HQ2 to be located on a 10-acre site in Pentagon City, Virginia; the new office is expected to welcome 25,000+ workers when it’s complete.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 🐦 Twitter’s board is reportedly taking a second look at Elon Musk’s takeover offer after the billionaire officially lined up financing for the bid, per the WSJ.
• ❒ Jack Dorsey, CEO of the company formerly known as Square, has a new job title: Block Head.
• 🚇 Elon Musk’s Boring Company, which wants to build tunnel networks for intra-city transit, raised $675 million at a ~$5.7 billion valuation.

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 🏀 The NBA playoffs continued over the weekend; no team has punched their ticket to the next round just yet, but the Celtics are carrying a 3-0 series lead into tonight’s game against the Nets.
• 🍿 Universal’s The Bad Guys captured the No. 1 spot at the domestic box office this weekend, earning $24 million; Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore fell to third place with $14 million in its second weekend.
• 🏒 Montreal Canadiens legend Guy Lafleur, who led his team to five Stanley Cup titles, passed away at 70.
• 🥊 Tyson Fury defeated Dillian Whyte to retain the WBC world heavyweight title; hints at retirement afterward.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 🚀 Gloyer-Taylor Laboratories has developed ultra-lightweight cryogenic tanks that have a 75% mass reduction compared with other aerospace cryotanks; in other words, a 12 kg tank from GTL is able to hold over 150 kg of hydrogen.
• 🪐 New peer-reviewed research suggests there are shallow pockets of water beneath the surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa, boosting the potential for extraterrestrial life.

EVERYTHING ELSE

• 🇨🇳🦠 Shanghai officials said 39 Covid patients died on Saturday, more than three times Friday’s toll; China and North Korea are the only countries in the world still following a zero-Covid policy.
• 🏛️ Former Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, the longest-serving GOP senator in history, passed away at 88. (From the Left | From the Right)
• 🇪🇺 European lawmakers reached an agreement on the Digital Services Act, a law that will force Big Tech firms to quickly rid their platforms of illegal content like hate speech and disinformation or face fines of up to 6% of their global annual revenue. (From the Left | From the Right)

💬 Quoted… “They had a standard of life that was beyond any expectation.”

• Saudi princes have sold more than $600 million worth of real estate, yachts, and artwork in the US and Europe since the kingdom’s de facto ruler tightened the purse strings of the ultrawealthy ruling family, the WSJ reports.

💼 Stats of the Day: Roughly 20% of all high school referees – an estimated 50,000 people – quit between 2018 and 2021, per the National Federation of State High School Associations.

• 60% of officials surveyed in 2020 said their top reason for quitting was verbal abuse from parents and fans.

🤯 Did You Know?... During World War II, Boeing made an entire false suburb near Seattle, WA, to hide its airplane production plants, which were buried deep underground.

📖 Worth a Read: Science vs. God: Understanding Reality → (BigThink)

Monday: Piers Morgan debuts new show with an interview of former President Trump

Tuesday: Apple and Microsoft report earnings

Wednesday: Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom Hashoah) begins this evening; Meta reports earnings

Thursday: First round of the NFL Draft; Amazon, Apple, and Twitter report earnings

Friday: New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival begins

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Ben Miller is a 9-year-old boy who's quite the entrepreneur. 

The young Idahoan has raised nearly $2,000 for his local humane society to help save as many animals as possible. How? With a good old-fashioned lemonade stand. 

🐕‍🦺🐈❤️💸 Man on a mission... Ben spent hours on end making and selling his lemonade, along with a host of cookies and other baked goods. And after the Idaho Humane Society highlighted his efforts on their social media pages, people from all across the state made the trek to Ben's stand for some refreshing treats. 

• "He always had a big heart," Ben's mom told CNN of her son's impressive donation. "It really just blew me away." 

🎥🍿 At the movies with the DONUT... Can you name the five highest-earning male actors of 2021?

(keep scrolling for the answers)

👆 Check out the referral prizes you can get just for introducing people you know to little old us. Just copy your unique link below, and then send to anyone you think would like the DONUT.

1. Daniel Craig ($100 million)

2. Dwayne Johnson ($50 million)

T3. Will Smith ($40 million)

T3. Denzel Washington ($40 million)

5. Leonardo Dicaprio ($30 million)

Source: Variety