Good morning. It's been a busy week here at DONUT Studios; thanks for answering Wednesday's call to submit your pitches for giving classic stories a modern movie makeover. After much hemming and, frankly, too much hawing, we've decided to greenlight the following projects:

• The Wonderful Winner of Odds - A Vegas Miracle
• A Christmas Karen
• Around the World in a More Reasonable Number of Days

It has, however, come to our attention that just because the source materials for these films are in the public domain, the rest of the movie still costs money to produce? Like, a lot of money. Did you know it cost at least $250 MILLION dollars to make Avatar 2? That's just too much. If we had that kind of dough laying around, we'd already be the first news brand to be headquartered in space.

Anyways. This was an oversight on our part. We messed up, and we are sorry. We're going to take some time away (the weekend) to be with our families and read Making Movies For Dummies. We’ll be back on Monday healed, healthy, and hectic.

Till then…. have a groovy and also great weekend!

P.S. Shoutout to reader Saydde P. for providing the ideas behind two of the three "greenlit" films, and an anonymous submitter for the other one.

⏰🚀 Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news takes 3.84 minutes to read.

“Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.”

–Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC)

New York City will begin hospitalizing homeless people who appear to be mentally ill and pose a serious risk to themselves or others, Mayor Eric Adams announced this week. Per Adams, the effort is meant to address a “mental health crisis” among NYC’s homeless population.

🗽🏥 More details… NYC emergency workers were already able to involuntarily hospitalize mentally ill individuals who pose a danger to others. This new directive expands that policy to include mentally ill people whose inability to meet their own basic human needs means they’re a danger to themselves.

• An estimated 3,400 New Yorkers were homeless and sleeping outside of shelters as of this past January. Studies have shown a large majority of that population struggles with mental illness or other severe health problems.
• Mayor Adams called on NYC officials from the police, fire, and health departments to remove such individuals from the streets and subways, then bring them to hospitals for extended care.

✋ Yes, but… Some lawmakers and civil rights groups have voiced concerns over the yet-to-be-defined process by which NYC officials will decide whether a homeless individual is mentally ill and poses a danger to themselves. A spokesperson for Mayor Adams’ office said the determinations would be made “case by case,” but didn’t offer further details.

📸 Big picture: NYC’s move brings it in-line with nearly all US states, who individually have laws in place recognizing that a person’s failure to meet their basic needs due to mental illness is a basis for intervention.

About 30% of the 100,000+ people in America who are chronically homeless also have mental health conditions, per the latest federal data.

📊 Flash poll: Do you agree with NYC Mayor Adams’ new directive to address mental health among the city’s homeless population? (Click a link below to record your vote + see a follow-up question.)

Yes

No

Unsure/other

🇨🇳 China loosened some Covid restrictions across the country following anti-government protests. In the central city of Zhengzhou, where some 200,000 employees live and work in “iPhone City” for Apple supplier Foxconn, authorities lifted a five-day lockdown. Residents of the southern city of Guangzhou returned to work yesterday for the first time in weeks, and in Chongqing, a city of 32 million in southwest China, officials announced an end to mass Covid testing and lifted lockdowns across half the city.

🇪🇺✈️ Starting next year, passengers on flights within the EU won’t be required to place any 5G-enabled phone, laptop, or other device into airplane mode. The European Commission announced the change this week, after setting aside a specific 5G frequency band that won’t interfere with any electronic devices on the plane. The service likely won’t be free, since it involves connecting to networks from multiple countries, which generates roaming costs.

🇺🇦 Nearly 7.9 million Ukrainians have moved to neighboring countries since late February, when Russia invaded the country. That’s per a new estimate from the UN Refugee Agency published yesterday. Separately, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said at least 6,655 Ukrainian civilians have died and 10,368 have been injured over that same period, with most of the casualties attributed to Russian missile strikes.

+More Russia/Ukraine news: The EU asked its 27 member-states yesterday to cap the price of Russian oil at $60 per barrel, well under the current international average of $87/barrel.

🏀📖 Every athlete has a story worth sharing, and Press Sports is the platform that lets them. The community consists of MS/HS/College athletes, coaches, parents, fans, and more. Athletes get recognized on a safe platform that promotes maturity, sportsmanship, and positivity – and cuts out the negativity of social media.👏

🏃‍♀️ Exposure can make the difference in athletes being noticed by the right people and organizations. Press Sports lets athletes share their sports moments with 350,000 users and counting.

👶⚾ Parents can document their child’s sports journey from a young age. And sports trainers, coaches, and scouts can discover talent, connect with athletes, promote programs, and build their personal brands.

• Recruiters and players from every level of college athletics use Press Sports.

🏆 Press Sports has a 4.9/5 rating across 10,800+ reviews, and is being hailed as “The best social media app for young athletes” and an “Amazing way to get exposure”.

Join the movement at Press Sports today.

Earlier this week, Amazon launched “Create with Alexa,” a new AI tool for kids that generates animated stories. Though a better name may have been “Madlibs with Alexa,” given how the feature – which is only available on Echo Show devices for now – actually works.

To begin, all a child has to say is “Alexa, make me a story.” Amazon’s virtual assistant then walks the user through a series of prompts to determine the overall theme (space, underwater, or enchanted forest), protagonist, and color scheme, as well as obtain various adjectives to pepper the story with flavor.

From there, using a series of generative AI models, Alexa creates a five- to 10-line story based on the user’s prompts. The tale is split across five unique scenes, complete with background images, animations, sound effects, music, and more.

• Amazon even says that if the child chooses the same prompts again next time, the story will be different.
• There are also content safeguards in place to prevent… adult words and themes from being inserted. So you can rest easy – the character of Daddy The Scaredy Cat is sure to have an age-appropriate adventure each time.

🗣🤖🖼 Bottom line: In January 2021, OpenAI unveiled DALL-E, the world’s first-ever AI-powered text-to-image generator. Less than two years later, billions of people now have access to the tech – whether through this new Alexa feature, TikTok’s AI Greenscreen, or the more advanced and research-focused Stable Diffusion 2.0.

The College Football Playoff will officially expand from four to 12 teams beginning in 2024, the organization behind the event announced yesterday. That’s two years sooner than previously planned.

🏈 Background: The reasons driving the CFP’s expansion to more teams are fairly simple. More teams = more opportunities = more games = more hype = more money. The new playoff format, which ups the overall number of games from three to 11, is projected to more than 3x the money that conferences currently earn from the event, per APNews ($600 million/year → $1.9 billion/year).

And while this new format was already approved starting in 2026, many university presidents and chancellors on the CFP’s Board of Managers pushed to move the plans up. But until recently, there was one major holdout: The Rose Bowl. The so-called “Granddaddy of Them All” reportedly wanted a guaranteed exclusive broadcast window on New Year’s Day, but ultimately capitulated without securing the special treatment.

🏆 How it’ll work: Starting in December 2024, the playoffs will be made up of six conference champions ranked highest by the selection committee, as well as the six highest-ranked non-conference champions (twelve teams total). The winner-take-all tournament ensues from there, with the top-four ranked teams all getting a bye.

+It’s championship week in college football: Click here for a guide to this weekend’s biggest games, and how they’ll impact the playoff hunt.

💬 Quoted…​​ “Do you have what it takes to do the impossible? A virulent vehemence for vermin?... And most importantly, the drive, determination and killer instinct needed to fight the real enemy?”

Get ready to welcome the hero NYC both needs and deserves: Rat Person. The city recently listed a job posting for a rat czar, who will be responsible for exterminating the city’s rodents. Per the listing, the ideal candidate has a “general aura of badassery,” and is highly motivated and “somewhat bloodthirsty.”

• The role comes with an annual salary between $120,000 and $170,000.

🐦 Stat of the Day: Over the past month, Twitter has gone from about 7,500 employees to around 2,300, per Insider.

🤯 Did You Know?... Your energy expenditure when walking backwards is nearly 40% higher than walking at the same speed forwards.

📖 Worth a Read: How WALL-E Invented the iPad → (Slate)

• ☝️ You’re looking at Giphy’s most popular gif of 2022, showing Emmy-winning actress Zendaya in HBO’s Euphoria.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 🍿 ​​Netflix plans to expand its group of subscribers who provide early feedback on content from its current base of 2,000+ to include tens of thousands of users around the world starting early next year, sources told the WSJ.
• ✈️ Delta is increasing the price for access to its Sky Club airport lounges and adding other restrictions starting next year, citing too much demand for the lounges.
• ⛽📉 The average price for a gallon of gas in the US has dropped below the price it was before Russia invaded Ukraine earlier this year, per AAA ($3.47).

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• ⚽ Japan upsets Spain as both teams move onto the round of 16; Croatia and Morocco are also moving on, while Germany got knocked out for the 2nd World Cup in a row.
• 📚🌈 LeVar Burton, longtime host of Reading Rainbow, will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award at the first annual Children & Family Emmys.
• 👸🏽❄️ Disney is working on an Indian princess musical, Deadline reported yesterday, with Bend It Like Beckham director Gurinder Chadha at the helm. | “Cocaine Bear” released a trailer Wednesday; the Elizabeth Banks-directed film is based on the true story of a bear that died from an overdose of cocaine.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 🌎 Nearly one million stillbirths around the world each year can be attributed to air pollution, per the first such global study published in Nature Communications.
• 🌕☄️ Austin-based construction startup ICON was awarded a $57.2 million grant by NASA to figure out how to print 3D structures on the Moon; it’s part of the space agency’s Artemis mission, which aims to build the first-ever lunar base. | A giant asteroid impact similar to the one that wiped out dinosaurs on Earth unleashed a megatsunami on Mars some 3.4 billion years ago, a new peer-reviewed study suggests.
• 👶🧓 Disney researchers created a new neural network that can alter the visual age of actors in TV or film; the process is reportedly less costly and time-consuming than previous methods.

EVERYTHING ELSE

• 🇫🇷🇺🇸 President Biden welcomed French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife yesterday for the first state dinner of Biden’s administration.
• 🏛️🚂 The Senate passed legislation with a 80-15 vote yesterday that would force a tentative rail labor agreement and thwart a national strike, sending it to President Biden’s desk; a separate vote on adding seven days of paid sick leave to the agreement failed. (Background | From the Left | From the Center | From the Right)
• ⚖️ The Supreme Court agreed yesterday to review the Biden administration’s effort to reinstate its student debt relief plan, but declined to immediately revive the program. (Background | From the Left | From the Center | From the Right)

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It’s a bird, it’s a plane – no wait, it’s the DONUT’s weekly news quiz.

Find out how your news superpowers stack up against our team.

UK-based startup JoiPaw has made it its mission to help dogs stay mentally stimulated when their owners are out of the house. In plain English: the company makes video games for dogs – especially elderly ones. 

• Mental stimulation is one of the most effective ways to fight doggie dementia, aka canine cognitive dysfunction.

Below are three lists of ingredients. All you have to do is give us the completed dish they make.

☝️ Recipe #1:

• Flour
• Baking soda/powder
• Butter
• Sugar
• Egg

✌️ Recipe #2:

• Sweet potatoes
• Brown sugar
• Margarine
• Orange juice
• Cinnamon
• Marshmallows?!

3️⃣ Recipe #3:

• Sour cream & mayo
• Frozen spinach
• Water chestnuts
• Soup mix

(keep scrolling for the answers)

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What to do: Copy your unique link below, then send it to anyone who you think would like the DONUT. Once you hit each milestone, you'll get an email with a link to claim your prize. (Pro tip: there's no need to ration points, you're entitled to a prize at each tier.)

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☝️ Recipe #1: Sugar cookies

✌️ Recipe #2: Sweet potato marshmallow casserole

3️⃣ Recipe #3: Spinach dip