Good morning. We pride ourselves on curating the news for you. But sometimes, it’s best to check in with Google and see what’s topping the daily search trends list:

1. First day of spring
2. Shaq
3. Indiana basketball
4. Dairy Queen free cone day
5. Mexico vs Japan Baseball

Nice! And now, for everything else, THE NOOZ.

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news takes 4.98 minutes to read.

"No person becomes rich unless they enrich others."

–Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919)

Oral arguments were held yesterday in Hatchett v. Internet Archive, a potentially watershed case for fair use and copyright law in the US.

⚖️ The basics: The case was filed in 2020 by four prominent book publishers, including HarperCollins and Penguin Random House, against Internet Archive, a non-profit digital library providing free access to digitized books, videos, images, games and websites (via the Wayback Machine).

In this case, the publishers take issue with the Internet Archive’s Open Library, a collection of about 1.4 million digitized books lent out via a lend-like-print practice called “controlled digital lending,” or CDL.

• CDL operates under the same rules as physical lending: only one person can borrow the digital book at a time, the scans are DRM-protected, and if the digital copy is loaned out, the physical counterpart cannot circulate.

And that right there is the crux of the issue. According to the plaintiffs, the Open Library and CDL are “willful digital piracy on an industrial scale.” E-books, they argue, are not the same as books, but instead a separate product that must be acquired specifically from whoever licenses that product (usually the publishers or a third party vendor like Overdrive).

In fact, the publishers say the IA isn’t a library at all, but a commercial enterprise masquerading as a library for financial gain.

🖐️ On the other hand: The IA disagrees, claiming that CDL constitutes fair use under copyright law and there’s no difference between a physical book and its digital counterpart – both are taken out by many people, one at a time.

👀 Looking ahead… Both sides now await a summary judgment from the court. If one cannot be reached, the case will head to trial.

🇨🇳🤝🇷🇺 Xi Jinping began a three-day summit with Vladimir Putin in Moscow yesterday. Discussions between the Chinese and Russian leaders are expected to focus mainly on the ongoing war in Ukraine. Since Russia invaded a little over a year ago, China has helped shield Moscow from Western sanctions by significantly increasing the imports of Russian oil and the exports of technologies like microchips. After meeting with Putin, Xi plans to speak with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky about potentially negotiating an end to the ongoing war, per multiple sources.

🌏 A new UN climate report found the world will likely miss its global temperature goal. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's assessment, released yesterday, concluded that humanity still has a chance to limit global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, as laid out in the Paris Agreement. However, to do so would require the world to collectively cut 60% of its emissions by 2035 (since the world has already warmed by 1.1°C when compared to average temps from 1850-1900).

🇮🇳 The Indian state of Punjab has blocked internet access and text messaging, amidst its search for a missing fugitive. The ongoing statewide ban, which covers ~27 million people, can be traced back to Sikh separatist Amritpal Singh – a popular figure within a movement seeking to establish a sovereign Sikh-run state in Punjab. On Friday, Singh drove through central Punjab with a caravan of followers, prompting state officials to block mobile internet service in a bid to avoid mass protests and curtail what it called “fake news.” For local residents, the shutdown isn’t anything new: in each of the past five years, Indian officials have ordered blackouts more frequently than any other government.

+Update: French President Emmanuel Macron’s government narrowly survived a no-confidence vote held yesterday in response to his plan to raise the minimum retirement age.

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On Friday, Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon signed a bill outlawing the use of all abortion medications, after it was passed by the state’s GOP-controlled legislature last month. This makes Wyoming the first US state to enact an explicit ban on abortion pills.

💊 More details… Starting July 1st, it will be a misdemeanor crime in Wyoming to distribute, sell, or prescribe any abortion medication – though women who seek medication abortions for themselves won’t be criminally prosecuted.

The new law also carves out some other exceptions:

1. Doctors can prescribe medication abortions if they’re necessary to protect a woman from an “imminent peril that substantially endangers her life or health.”
2. Ditto for when medication abortions are needed to treat a "natural miscarriage according to currently accepted medical guidelines."
3. Finally, the measure doesn’t apply to the use of morning-after pills to prevent pregnancy.

🇺🇸 Zoom out: Medication abortions, which account for more than half of all US abortions, have become an increasingly contentious topic in recent months.

• A group of 20 Republican state AGs published a letter in February threatening Walgreens and CVS with legal consequences if they continued to dispense abortion medication in those states.
• And last week, a Texas judge heard arguments in a federal suit that could effectively outlaw mifepristone, one of two pills used in medication abortions – even in states where abortion is legal. The judge’s decision is expected within the next week or two.

+Dive deeper: From the Left | From the Center | From the Right

Yesterday, Netflix announced plans to nearly double the number of games available on its app by the end of this year. This includes new additions like the Monument Valley franchise, and an Ubisoft sequel to The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot.

🎮📱 Background: Netflix launched its games service as a free add-on for all subscribers in November 2021. The company has released 55 titles since then, with an additional 40 planned for this year – and 86 others currently in development. Many are based on hit Netflix shows, like Stranger Things, Too Hot to Handle, and Narcos, while others are original works.

Right now, all Netflix games are mobile-only and have to be downloaded via the App Store or Google Play Store – though unlike most other mobile games, there aren’t any ads or in-app purchases.

• The streaming giant is also working on a cloud gaming service that would eventually allow Netflix games to be played on TVs and PCs.

📸 Big picture: If Netflix is putting on The Hunger (for) Games, its subscribers would be like the residents of District 12 – having none of it. 99% of all Netflix subscribers have never tried any of their games, per an August 2022 analysis by Apptopia. (Though to be fair – with more than 230 million subscribers worldwide, 1% still amounts to ~2.3 million gamers.)

💬 Quoted… "We don’t want spring break in our city. It’s too rowdy, brings too much disorder and is simply too difficult to police.”

Following two separate and unrelated fatal shootings this past weekend, authorities in Miami Beach are closing the door on spring break. Mayor Dan Gelber imposed a curfew in the city Sunday night – which restricts travel from just before midnight until 6 am – and plans to extend these restrictions for the coming weekend.

• And much like an experienced roofer, this isn’t the first time the city has dropped the hammer. In fact, Miami Beach has imposed a curfew during spring break over each of the past four years (last year’s went into effect after five people were injured in shootings in the city).

🏠💼 Stat of the Day: The share of work being conducted from home in the US is now 27.7%, per new data from WFH Research. That’s down from 61.5% in 2020 – but considerably up from 4.7% in 2019.

🤯 Did You Know?... If you have a child in the 4th grade, your entire family can get into any US National Park for free for a whole year. (See? Kids are good for something, after all😉.)

📖 Worth a Read: TikTok Creators Contemplate Life After Possible Ban → (WSJ)

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• ☝️ You’re looking at some of the winners from the 12th annual Mobile Photography Awards; the contest is the longest-running international competition open exclusively to photos shot and edited on mobile phones.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 💰 US markets closed up across the board yesterday (S&P: +0.9%; Dow: +1.2%; Nasdaq: +0.4%).
• 📉 Amazon will lay off ~9,000 employees, the company announced yesterday; the move follows ~18,000 job cuts that were announced in November; the company has ~1.5 million employees. | Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz stepped down yesterday, two weeks earlier than planned; he’s expected to testify in front of a Senate committee later this week regarding the coffee giant’s treatment of union organizing efforts.
• 👟 Foot Locker will close 400 stores by 2026, the company announced yesterday; the shoe store is aiming to become more relevant to young consumers by relaunching its retail brands and introducing experiential new store concepts.

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SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• ⚡ Shazam! Fury of the Gods opened domestically to $30.5 million this past weekend, meeting analysts’ expectations; the sequel brought in about 43% less than the original Shazam!’s opening.
• ⚖️ Three men were found guilty yesterday in the murder of rapper XXXTentacion.
• ✌️🍿 Marvel Studios exec Victoria Alonso exited the company yesterday; she’s worked as an executive producer on every MCU film since The Avengers (2012).

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• ⚡🪐 Rolls-Royce landed a $3.5 million contract from the UK Space Agency to develop a working demo of a lunar nuclear reactor; if successful, the tech would be used to power an eventual base on the Moon. | Two of Uranus’ moons may have oceans of water beneath their surface that are actively blasting plumes of material into space, per a new study presented at last week’s Lunar and Planetary Science Conference.
• 🩺 Microsoft and its subsidiary Nuance Communications announced a new AI clinical notes application for health-care professionals; the GPT-4-powered app will automatically generate clinical notes following a patient’s visit.
• 🦠🦝 A new study that has yet to be peer-reviewed found evidence suggesting Covid first originated with raccoon dogs that were illegally sold in Wuhan. (What are raccoon dogs?)

EVERYTHING ELSE

• 🍎💉 A new USDA rule aimed at improving the transparency and standards of products labeled “organic” went into effect yesterday. | California announced a new $50 million contract with nonprofit drugmaker Civica Rx to create a state-owned brand of insulin that’ll be sold for $30/month.
• ⚖️ A New York federal judge ruled yesterday that the US Virgin Islands and women who accused the late investor Jeffrey Epstein of sexual abuse can proceed with a lawsuit claiming JPMorgan Chase and Deutsche Bank AG knowingly benefited from Epstein’s sex trafficking scheme.
• 🏛️🚫 President Biden vetoed a bill yesterday that would have repealed a federal rule allowing retirement fund managers to consider environment, social, and governance (ESG) principles in their investment decisions; it’s the first veto of Biden’s term. (Background | From the Left | From the Center | From the Right)

CLICKBAIT

• 😀🏫 The happiest colleges in the US, based on students’ selfies.

*Sponsored post

Yesterday we covered the growing trend of school districts across America filing lawsuits against social media companies, accusing them of contributing to an ongoing youth mental health crisis.

❓ Our question to you: Do you think social media is the No. 1 factor behind America’s recent uptick in teens experiencing mental health problems?

• 👍 Yes: 57%
• 👎 No: 26%
• 🤷 Unsure/other: 17%

Click here to read some of the best responses (warning: we were working to get some website issues fixed around the time of send, so the hyperlink may throw up a 404 error for a brief period of time).

+Note on sample size: We received 9,607 votes and 895 longform responses.

Idaho resident David Rush holds over 250 world records. The serial record-breaker has an electrical engineering degree from MIT and an MBA from Boise State; he breaks records in an effort to promote STEM education. 

🍿Hand-eye coordination... Most recently, David claimed the record for most popping popcorn caught in both hands in 1 minute, catching 36 kernels from a pan as they popped. 

• According to UPI, David credited his son for holding the pan still, "even when an errant popcorn kernel flew down his shirt during the attempt."

❓ Trivia: What’s the point of no return around the edge of a black hole called (from which nothing, not even light, can escape)?

🦏 True or False?... A group of rhinoceros is called a crash.

🤔 Riddle Me This… Who can you never live with?

(keep scrolling for the answers)

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❓ Trivia: The event horizon

🦏 T/F: True

🤔 Riddle: Your neighbor

**The Parallel Flight sponsor block was written and/or published as a collaboration between The DONUT's in-house sponsored content team and a financial partner of The DONUT. Although the piece is not and should not be construed as editorial content, the sponsored content team works to ensure that any and all information contained within is true and accurate to the best of their knowledge and research. The DONUT may receive monetary compensation from the issuer, or its agency, for publicizing the offering of the issuer’s securities. This content is for informational purposes only and is not intended to be investing advice. This is a paid ad. Please see 17(b) disclosure linked in the campaign page for more information.