Good morning. Wood frogs in Alaska can hold their pee for 8 months.

Now THAT is a good superhero origin story.

Whereas THIS is THE NEWS.

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news takes 3.92 minutes to read.

“No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another.”

–Charles Dickens (1812-1870)

We’re more than a year and a half away from the next presidential election. But 2024 is starting to come into focus, thanks to new polling data published in recent weeks.

🔴 On the Republican side… The latest national polls show former President Trump has widened his lead over Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, while all other GOP candidates are trailing by a wide margin (including former SC Gov. Nikki Haley and former VP Mike Pence).

Some notable examples:

• A Yahoo News/YouGov poll published last week found Trump leading DeSantis 47% to 39%, up from a four-point lead for Trump the previous month.
• An Emerson College poll from late last month found 55% of Republican voters supported Trump versus 25% for DeSantis.
• GOP polling firm Echelon Insights found Trump was beating DeSantis by a 46% to 31% margin as of late February, compared to a two-point lead for Trump in January.

🔵 On the Democratic side… While a recent AP/NORC poll found nearly two-thirds of registered Democrats don’t want President Biden to run for a second term (62%), the White House has consistently said Biden intends to seek reelection in 2024 alongside VP Kamala Harris. And according to top Democratic Party officials, Biden’s internal support is so strong that there won’t be any primary debates this upcoming election cycle.

• If Biden doesn’t end up running again, he would become the sixth president in US history to not seek reelection while still being eligible for another term (and the first since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1968).

📸 Big picture: A hypothetical 2024 presidential matchup featuring Joe Biden against either Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis would be a toss-up, though all other potential GOP nominees currently trail Biden by at least a five-point margin, according to the latest polling data.

📊 Flash poll: If the 2024 presidential election were held today, which party would you vote for?

Republican

Democrat

A third party

I'm not planning on voting/too young

Unsure

🇧🇾 A court in Belarus sentenced Ales Bialiatski, the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize winner, to 10 years in prison on Friday. Bialiatski, who founded human rights organization Viasna, was among the thousands of Belarusians who were detained in 2020 while protesting against President Alexander Lukashenko following disputed national elections. A Minsk court found Bialiatski and two of his colleagues guilty of smuggling money from abroad to finance the anti-government demonstrations, though opponents of Lukashenko’s government said the charges were politically motivated.

🌊 The UN ratified the first international agreement on ocean protection in over four decades on Saturday. The new High Seas Treaty, which aims to place 30% of the world’s seas and oceans into protected areas by 2030 in order to safeguard marine nature, was agreed upon after nearly two decades of negotiations between UN member-countries. This agreement focuses on the "high seas," aka the 60% of the world's oceans that lie outside of national boundaries; currently ~1% of those areas are protected. The protected areas established by the treaty would place limits on how much fishing, shipping, and deepwater mining can take place within the region. A recent international study found ~10% of all global marine species are currently at risk of extinction.

🇮🇳 Foxconn, Apple’s largest supplier, plans to invest $700 million in a new manufacturing plant in India, Bloomberg first reported. The facility will mainly manufacture iPhone parts and create 100,000 new jobs in the Indian state of Karnataka. Apple has been shifting its production away from China in recent years due to disruptions from the country’s strict zero-Covid policy, as well as to avoid any risk from political tensions between Beijing and Washington, per Reuters. Some 90% of Apple’s products are currently made in China, but the tech giant has committed to moving 25% of its production to India by 2025.

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Creed III dominated the US box office this weekend, grossing $58.6 million in ticket sales, a record-high for the nine-film Rocky franchise. It’s also the highest non-inflation-adjusted sports film opening of all time *historic post-opening fist pump*.

🥊 But this triumph all started back in 1976… The road to Creed III began almost fifty years ago, when an unknown actor named Sylvestor Stallone wrote a script called Rocky in three days. He then pitched the script to some producers while auditioning for a different film.

And while Stallone didn’t get the part he was auditioning for, the producers loved the script and offered him $360,000 for it on one condition: he couldn’t play the lead. Stallone refused, and eventually the producers relented and gave him $1 million to make the film.

🍿🏆 The rest was history. Rocky became the highest grossing movie of the year, bringing in over $117 million at the box office (an inflation-adjusted $515 million); it also won three Oscars, including Best Picture. Stallone went on to make five sequels: Rocky II, III, IV, V, and Rocky Balboa.

• In 2015, the series was revived with Creed, a spin-off about the son of Apollo Creed, Rocky’s rival in the first two films.
• Michael B. Jordan played the lead role of Adonis Creed in all three Creed films. He also made his directorial debut for Creed III.

👀 Looking ahead… Up next in the Rocky Cinematic Universe (RCU): Drago, a film about Rocky’s infamous Russian opponent in Rocky IV.

💬 Quoted…​​ “LDogg.”

What disgraced Malaysian businessman and current fugitive from justice Jho Low used to call Leonardo DiCaprio; the two had developed a relationship that led to Low investing $100 million in DiCaprio’s 2013 film The Wolf of Wall Street.

• That’s per previously undisclosed government documents published by Bloomberg, which show the FBI also interviewed Kim Kardashian and other celebrities in an effort to claw back the billions that Low allegedly stole from Malaysia's 1MDB fund before going on the run.

🤖🚘 Stat of the Day: 68% = the percentage of US drivers who say they're afraid of fully self-driving cars, up from 55% a year ago, according to a new poll from AAA; some 23% of drivers said they're unsure of self-driving cars and 9% said they trust them. And, uh, this may have something to do with why.

🤯 Did You Know?... From colonial times until just after World War II, all apartment leases in New York City used to expire on the same day every single year (May 1), which local residents called Moving Day.

📖 Worth a Read: The inside story of how ChatGPT was built, from the people who made it → (MIT Technology Review)

📊💻 Because when we use websites and apps, they collect our personal data/sensitive info – and then sell it to data brokers. These brokers then sell it to marketers, institutions, and cyber criminals, resulting in robocalls, increased rates, and denied loans. 

But hey, that’s the price of admission?🤷‍♀️

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• ☝️ Nearly half a million Americans from Kentucky to Michigan were without power last night due to an ongoing winter storm that’s killed at least 13 people so far; the storm system started by dumping several feet of snow on California’s mountains late last week, and has been pushing east ever since.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 💰 Arm, a Softbank-owned UK chip designer, plans to raise at least $8 billion in a US markets-only IPO that’ll likely happen later this year. | 🎮 Microsoft will secure EU approval for its acquisition of Activision-Blizzard, per Reuters.
• 🚗 New auto sales for February came in at 1.14 million vehicles; that’s up ~9% from February 2022, per LMC Automotive.
• 🏦 FTX can’t locate around $8.9 billion worth of customer funds, the company revealed in a public presentation; it marks the first official tally of how much money is missing from the crypto exchange.

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 🥊🦵 MMA legend Jon Jones won the UFC heavyweight championship on Saturday; it was his first fight in three years.
• 🏀 The NBA is investigating a social media post that appears to show Memphis Grizzlies star Ja Morant holding a gun; the team said Morant will sit for at least the next two games.
• 🏎️ The 2023 F1 season kicked off this weekend with the Bahrain Grand Prix; Max Verstappen took first place; Fernando Alonso rallied back from 6th place to take 3rd in his first race with Aston Martin.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 🌌 A team of international astronomers has discovered the closest known black hole to Earth; it’s located some 1,600 light-years away, or three times closer than the previous record holder.
• 👽 Scientists at four of the world’s top universities – Cambridge, Harvard, UChicago, and ETH Zürich in Switzerland – announced a new initiative on Saturday that’s tasked with looking for signs of extraterrestrial life.
• 🧬 The process of evolution (aka natural selection) may actually predate life itself, a new peer-reviewed study suggests.

EVERYTHING ELSE

• ✈️ A passenger onboard a private jet was killed on Friday after the plane experienced severe turbulence over New England, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.
• ⚖️ Former S. Carolina attorney Alex Murdaugh was sentenced to life in prison without parole on Friday for the murders of his wife and son.
• 💊 Walgreens said it won’t distribute abortion pills by mail across 20 US states, including several where abortion is legal, in response to a recent letter from those states’ Republican attorneys general warning of legal consequences. (From the Left | From the Center | From the Right)

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On Friday, we covered what’s expected to be the first veto of Biden’s presidency in the coming days, which will be used to stop the reversal of a law allowing retirement fund managers to direct their clients’ investments based on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) considerations.

❓ Our question to you: How do you feel about Biden’s expected veto?

• 👍 Strongly agree: 27%
• 📈 Agree/Somewhat agree: 16%
• 🤷 Neutral: 16%
• 📉 Disagree/Somewhat disagree: 15%
• 👎 Strongly disagree: 26%

Click here to read some of the best responses.

+Note on sample size: We received 7,717 votes and 673 longform responses.

Monday: The Jewish holiday of Purim begins at sundown

Tuesday: Oklahoma residents vote on legalizing recreational marijuana; Holi, the Hindu festival of colors, starts at sundown

Wednesday: International Women's Day

Thursday: Weekly unemployment claims; Norfolk Southern Railway's CEO to testify before Senate committee

Friday: South by Southwest (SXSW) festival kicks off in Austin, TX

+This weekend: Daylight saving time begins on Sunday; we're "springing forward" an hour

A runaway sheep recently hitched a ride home on a public bus in Brighton & Hove, UK.

🚌🎶 The sheep on the bus goes "baa baa baa"... Bus driver Martine Patey was on her first-ever Rail Replacement route late last month, when she spotted a panicked sheep on the road. 

• After pulling the bus over and throwing on her high-vis vest, Martine was able to wrangle the animal using her purse strap as a lasso. 
• As she waited for the police to arrive, Martine kept the sheep in her bus so it couldn't escape again. And all's well that ends well: she ended up driving the animal safely back to its farm before continuing on her route. 

Guess the definitions of the following Greek/Latin root words.

1. Dict
2. Grad
3. Ode
4. Purg
5. Omin

(keep scrolling for the answers)

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1. Dict = Speak (e.g., dictate, dictionary)
2. Grad = Step (graduate, grade)
3. Ode = Path (odometer, diode)
4. Purg = Cleanse (purge, purgatory)
5. Omin = Creepy (ominous, abominable)