Good morning and welcome to Wednesday. May the Fourth be with us all.👽🌌

• Random Star Wars fact: Yoda was almost played by a monkey.

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today's news takes 4.09 minutes to read.

"By seeking and blundering we learn."

–Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)

A record 4.54 million people voluntarily quit their jobs in March, per the Labor Department’s latest Job Openings and Labor Turnover report released yesterday, up from 4.35 million people the month before.

📝 By the numbers…

• Quits are at record highs in leisure and hospitality, construction, and manufacturing.
• There are currently 5.6 million more jobs than unemployed workers, accounting for an all-time high of 3.4% of the labor force. (Put another way, there are now two jobs available for every unemployed worker.)
• Job openings increased in the South but fell in the Northeast, Midwest and West.

☝️ One interesting thing: A recent report from the ADP Research Institute, which surveyed more than 32,000 workers in November 2021, found 64% of the global workforce have already, or would consider, looking for a new job if their employer wanted them back in the office full-time.

📸 The big picture: Job openings surged to record highs throughout 2021 and have since stabilized at levels nearly twice as high as the pre-pandemic norm. Yet the number of Americans looking for work recovered at a much slower clip, leaving the labor market with a massive gap between supply and demand that's persisted into 2022, Business Insider reports.

📈 Zoom out: The Fed is expected to raise interest rates by half a percentage point later today.

💉🫀 Researchers from University Medical Center Utrecht in the Netherlands have developed an mRNA-based treatment that could one day reverse damage caused by heart attacks.

• The scientists’ work was inspired by the mRNA technology used by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna in their Covid vaccines; the researchers aim to use a similar method to deliver mRNA ‘messengers’ that instruct a patient’s heart cells to repair themselves after a heart attack.
• Their most recent study, which was presented at a conference last Friday, focused on whether mRNA could be delivered directly to the heart muscle; in clinical trials on mice, the researchers found mRNA successfully reached their heart cells ~24 hours after injection.

📸 Big picture: mRNA-based treatments are a fairly new technology – the first vaccine to hit the market came in 2020 to protect against Covid, though shots for other diseases were tested in mice as early as the 1990s. The biggest hurdle to overcome was that mRNA would quickly degrade before it could deliver its ‘message’ to cells.

• The solution only came-about recently thanks to advances in nanotechnology; new lipid nanoparticles were developed to wrap the mRNA like a bubble and preserve it long enough to enter cells.

👩‍🔬 Zoom out: Researchers are in the process of developing and testing new mRNA treatments to combat HIV, cancers, autoimmune and genetic diseases, and more.

🎾 Sports: Tennis greats Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray have all spoken out in recent days against Wimbledon's decision to exclude Russian and Belarusian players from this year's tournament; the move prevents the men’s world #2 and #8 players from competing, along with the women’s world #4, #15, and #18.

🌍 International relations: Russia doubled down yesterday on its comments implying that Adolf Hitler had Jewish ancestry, a claim asserted by Hitler’s lawyer but denounced by many historians; Moscow also accused the Israeli government – which had demanded an apology – of supporting a “neo-Nazi regime in Kyiv.”

🛢️ Oil and gas: BP reported a $25.5 billion charge related to its decision to exit its Russia holdings, including its nearly 20% stake in government-controlled oil producer Rosneft. It’s by far the biggest financial hit of any company leaving Russia after its invasion of Ukraine.

• Slovakia and Hungary said yesterday they wouldn’t support EU sanctions that included a full embargo on Russian oil, asserting that it’s impossible for them to switch away from such imports by the end of the year due to technology constraints. 
• It’s unclear whether they would receive exemptions from a potential bloc-wide ban.

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⚖️ Late Monday, Politico published a leaked draft opinion from the Supreme Court indicating that it’s set to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 precedent establishing a constitutional right to an abortion.

• The 98-page opinion was marked as a first draft, but also labeled the opinion of the court – implying a majority of justices had agreed with it.
• The draft – written by Justice Samuel Alito and dated from February – was confirmed as authentic yesterday by Chief Justice John Roberts, who ordered an investigation into the leaker. 
• It’s the first time in modern history that a SCOTUS draft ruling has been leaked publicly while a case was still pending.

✋ Yes, but… The draft doesn’t necessarily represent the Court’s ultimate decision in the case, or even the majority’s current thinking. When Chief Justice John Roberts cast the deciding vote to uphold the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) in 2012, it was later leaked that he changed his vote late in the ruling process.

🇺🇸 Zoom out: If the Court does overturn Roe v. Wade, abortion would immediately become illegal in at least 13 states that have passed “trigger” laws, per Axios; at least 17 states plus DC have similar laws that would come into effect to protect abortion rights in the same scenario.

👀 Looking ahead... The Supreme Court’s official decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the case challenging Roe, is expected in late June or early July.

• ☝️ A set of 240 rare medieval manuscripts, including a list of rules for the order of the Knights Templar, has been digitized by the National Library of Scotland and made available online.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 🚘💰 EV-maker Rivian will receive $1.5 billion in incentives and tax credits for building an assembly plant near Atlanta; in exchange, Rivian has agreed to create 7,500 jobs and invest $5 billion by 2028.
• 🪙 The SEC is increasing the number of employees in its crypto enforcement unit from 30 to 50.
• 🐦 Elon Musk has told potential Twitter investors he could take the social media company public agai​​n within three years of buying it, per the WSJ.

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 📱 Instagram is reportedly experimenting with full-screen vertical home feeds similar to TikTok.
• 📺 Paramount Plus now has nearly 40 million subscribers; ~7 million new subs joined in Q1.
• 🇷🇺🏀 The Biden administration said yesterday that WNBA star Brittney Griner is being wrongfully detained by the Russian government, a shift in language from previous public statements. (Read background on the story.)

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 🔬 An international team of researchers say they’ve discovered the genetic cause of lupus in a new peer-reviewed study; this research could facilitate the development of new treatments; the disease currently has no known cure.
• 🌿 A new peer-reviewed study found people who smoke cannabis more than once a month have an increased risk of heart disease and heart attack, but also identified a mechanism and molecule that may counteract the risk.

EVERYTHING ELSE

• 🏟️ A Garth Brooks concert at LSU Saturday night officially registered as an earthquake as the crowd sang along to "Callin’ Baton Rouge."
• 🇺🇦 The first evacuees from the eastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol have reached relative safety in a nearby town occupied by local forces.
• 🗳️ Ohio and Indiana held the second and third primaries of the 2022 midterm election season yesterday. (From the Left | From the Right)

💬 Quoted… “A laptop for the face."

• Facebook reportedly plans to release a new high-end virtual reality headset later this year codenamed Project Cambria; it’s believed to have tech specs similar to that of a Chromebook, and will use Meta’s own Android-based operating system.

🫀 Stat of the Day: The WHO estimates that 17.9 million people died from heart disease in 2019, representing almost a third of all human deaths.

🤯 Did You Know?... The NFL’s Baltimore Ravens are named after The Raven, a poem written by Edgar Allen Poe (who lived and died in Baltimore).

📖 Worth a Read: How to Overcome Multitasking Madness → (WSJ)

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It was 1945, in the heat of WWII, when a group of American GI’s spotted a freshly baked birthday cake sitting on the windowsill of an Italian home near their camp. Overwhelmed by its decadence, the soldiers swiped it from the windowsill and dashed, leaving then 13-year-old Meri Mion without a dessert for her special day.

• Meri was absolutely crushed, and for seventy-seven years has never forgotten the events of that fateful cake-less birthday.

🎂 Baking amends... Meri recently celebrated her ninetieth birthday, and her party was certainly a special one. 

• She was honored in a ceremony by US soldiers, and then presented with a gorgeous chocolate cake to make up for the one lost all those years ago. 
• Meri wiped away tears as she shared, "We will eat that dessert with all my family remembering this wonderful day that I will never forget." 

🤔 Riddle me this… What do Alexander the Great and Winnie the Pooh have in common?

🌎 GeoGuessr, DONUT style… What city is this?👇

(keep scrolling for the answers)

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🤔 Riddle: The same middle name

🌎 Geoguessr: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil