Good morning, and a happy Friday to all you Dunkers around the world! As we head into the weekend, remember: Dunk responsibly.

THE NEWS!

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news takes 4.95 minutes to read.

“Dude, sucking at something is the first step towards being sorta good at something.”

–Jake the Dog; Adventure Time (2010-2018)

This week, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum (R) signed a pair of bills into law that effectively prohibit any transgender girl or woman from joining a female sports team in grades K-12 or college.

📝 Some quick background… Gov. Burgam previously vetoed a nearly-identical measure in 2021, saying he did so because “there has not been a single recorded incident of a transgender girl attempting to play on a North Dakota girls’ sports team.”

But the issue went before the GOP-controlled state legislature again earlier this year – and this time, it passed with a veto-proof majority.

📸 Big picture: With the move, North Dakota joins 20 other Republican-led states that have enacted similar restrictions preventing trans women and girls from participating in women’s sports.

• Proponents of the bills argue athletes who were born male have inherent advantages when it comes to athletics, and shouldn’t be allowed to compete against cisgendered women – aka women whose gender matches their sex at birth – in order to preserve the competitive integrity of women’s sports.
• Opponents contend that, in many cases, the measures represent a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist, and are part of an agenda to erase and exclude trans individuals from participation in all aspects of public life.

🏛️ Over on Capitol Hill: Last week, the Biden administration proposed a new rule under Title IX that would prohibit schools from enacting “one-size-fits-all” policies that categorically ban trans athletes in colleges and K-12 education. Instead, schools would only be allowed to restrict trans athletes from participating for the sake of certain specific goals, which include “ensuring fairness in competition or preventing sports-related injury.”

📊 Flash poll: In your opinion, should trans girls and women be allowed to compete in women’s sports?

Yes

No

Unsure/other

🇫🇷 Hundreds of thousands of French residents participated in the 12th nationwide day of protests since mid-January. Union activists stormed the headquarters of French luxury goods maker LVMH yesterday, calling for President Emmanuel Macron to shelve his plan to raise the country’s minimum retirement age and tax the rich more instead. The latest wave of protests occurred one day before France’s highest court is set to rule on the legality of Macron’s retirement-age plan, in a case that represents the last official hurdle before it can be implemented (background).

🇮🇳 The Indian government announced a new state-run fact-checking agency for social media. The new unit has the power to label any piece of information related to the government that’s posted on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram as “fake, false or misleading” – upon which the offending post will be removed. Social media companies that fail to comply with the new agency will risk losing protections that safeguard them from legal action against any content posted by users (aka the Indian version of Section 230 in America).

🇷🇺 Jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has fallen ill, in what may be a case of poisoning. That’s according to a spokesperson for Navalny, who said an ambulance was called for the jailed politician this past weekend after he experienced abnormally severe stomach pain. Navalny, who’s serving an 11.5-year prison sentence for charges he says were trumped up to silence him, posted on Twitter earlier this week saying he had been moved back into solitary confinement and forced to endure "extremely hellish" conditions.

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It’s still April, but Christmas might have come early for Washington football fans. A group led by Josh Harris, who owns the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers and the NHL’s New Jersey Devils, has agreed in principle to buy the Washington Commanders for $6.05 billion, multiple sources reported yesterday.

If confirmed, the deal would end the tenure of longtime Commanders owner Dan Snyder, who has been plagued by a number of scandals leading to investigations from the NFL, Congress, and other government agencies. (*Josh Harris bursts through wall like the Kool-Aid Man, “there’s a new Commander in town!”*)

It would also set a new record for the most-expensive sports franchise ever sold, eclipsing the $4.65 billion price tag that Walmart heir Rob Walton paid last August for the NFL’s Denver Broncos.

📈 Zoom out: Much like Troy and Gabriella in High School Musical, American sports franchise values over the past few years have been soooaaarrrrrinn’. Some examples:

• Since 1996, the average NHL team has seen its value go up by 1,112%.
• From 2012 to 2021, the average NBA franchise appreciated 387%.
• From 2014 to 2022, the average value of a NFL franchise more than tripled to reach $4.47 billion.

And the list doesn’t stop there. The franchise fee to join the National Women’s Soccer League was set at between $2 million and $5 million in 2021 – but this year, that figure jumped to $50 million (and was paid by groups in both San Francisco and Boston).

In 2021, Apple made an estimated 1% of the world’s iPhones in India. According to a Bloomberg report published yesterday, that number is now up to almost 7%.

🔼 Driving the increase: To put it bluntly, Apple wants to decrease its dependence on China, which currently accounts for the creation of over 95% of Apple’s iPhones, AirPods, Macs, and iPads. With geopolitical tensions between the West and China on the rise, particularly around Taiwan, Apple has some concerns about what might happen to its supply chain.

• The biggest company in the world got a taste of this problem when, in late 2022 right before the holiday season, Apple had to delay some of its iPhone 14 shipments by several weeks following a string of Covid-related shutdowns in the Chinese city of Zhengzhou, aka “iPhone City.”
• These delays contributed to Apple reporting its second Q4 revenue loss since 2007, when the iPhone was first released.

👀 Looking ahead… Apple’s most aggressive timeline has it moving up to 25% of iPhone production to India by 2025. And the tech giant’s move to India isn’t just about the creation of the iPhone – it wants to sell its smartphones there too. Apple will open India’s first two Apple stores in Mumbai and Delhi next week.

💬 Quoted… “We entrust our members with a lot of responsibility at a very early age.”

The FBI arrested a 21-year-old Massachusetts Air National Guardsman yesterday in connection with the leak of around 100 highly-classified US documents, aka the biggest intel breach in a decade, which was first made public last week.

• Government officials declined to reveal a possible motive, but the AP reported that accounts of other members in the private Discord group where the documents were initially leaked described the 21-year-old IT specialist as motivated by bravado, rather than ideology.

🙅‍♀️📺 Stat of the Day: 49% = the percentage by which total cancellations of streaming services, like Netflix, Disney+, etc., rose in 2022 compared to the previous year, per new data from subscriber-measurement firm Antenna. (Side note: Unplugging the ethernet cable doesn’t actually cut the cord. Definitely not talking from experience.)

🤯 Did You Know?... A scene in Star Wars Episode II – Attack of the Clones and a scene in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets share the exact same music; they also share the same composer: the legendary John Williams.

📖 Worth a Read: Meet the World’s Least Ambitious AI → (The Atlantic)

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• ☝️ The first-ever image of a black hole – captured four years ago by a global network of radio telescopes – has been touched-up by an AI program to provide a more accurate visual representation.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 💰 US markets closed up across the board yesterday (S&P: +1.3%; Dow: +1.1%; Nasdaq: +2.0%).
• 🏦🏘️ Banks lost an average of $301 per mortgage they finalized in 2022, per a new Mortgage Bankers Association report; that’s down from a profit of $2,339 per new mortgage loan in 2021.
• 🕵️‍♂️🪙 FTX has recovered a total of $7.3 billion in assets and is considering whether to restart the crypto exchange, the company’s lawyer said yesterday; that’s up over $800 million since January.

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SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 🏆 The Peabody Awards announced its nominees for a range of categories yesterday; the entertainment noms include Reservation Dogs, Severance, Abbott Elementary, and Andor.
• 🤖 Insider will start experimenting with AI as a “word processing aid” for writing its stories, the publisher’s CEO wrote in a memo to employees yesterday.
• 🏈 The NFL announced a new quarterback-specific helmet designed to protect the player from concussions; it’ll be available – but not required – for the upcoming season.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 🐙👅 Octopuses hunt by tasting with their tentacles, each of which contains its own “brain” with more neurons than the animals’ central nervous system, per a pair of new peer-reviewed studies published Wednesday in Nature.
• 💉🇬🇭 Ghana became the first country to approve a new malaria vaccine from Oxford University that appears to be more effective than any previous version (though final-stage trial data has yet to be published); malaria kills 600,000+ people each year, most of them children in Africa.
• 🪐🚀 The launch of the European Space Agency’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) mission was delayed by 24 hours due to a risk of lightning; it’s now scheduled to blast off at 8:14 am ET today. (Background)

MISCELLANEOUS

• 🌧️ Fort Lauderdale, Florida, declared a state of emergency yesterday after a “1-in-1,000-year” precipitation event dumped nearly 26 inches of rain on the area over a 24-hour period.
• 🚨 San Francisco police arrested a local tech executive in connection with the fatal stabbing of Cash App founder Bob Lee earlier this week; officials said Lee and the suspect knew each other.
• 🧑‍⚖️ The DOJ said it will ask the Supreme Court to intervene after a lower court let the FDA's approval of the abortion pill mifepristone remain in effect but imposed some restrictions on its use. (Background | From the Left | From the Center | From the Right)

CLICKBAIT

• 🎲⚔️ A game of Monopoly ends in a sword fight.

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It’s time to find out – our weekly news quiz is live.

• Test your mettle against the team.

When Fergie the camel was rescued from a home in Colorado, her new owner Brandon Nobles didn't realize she had an affinity for french fries. 

🍟 Fergalicious... The animal was recently spotted walking through an In-N-Out burger drive-thru line in Vegas, waiting for her favorite potato treats. 

• The 14-year-old camel is often featured on Brandon's Insta enjoying local restaurants and attractions – though the Nevada local says french fries are her favorite.

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

☝️ Recipe #1:

• Water
• Yeast
• Flour
• Eggs
• Sugar
• Salt
• Butter
• Raisins
• Cinnamon
• Milk

✌️ Recipe 2:

• Flour
• Baking soda
• Salt
• Sugar
• Butter
• Lemon zest
• Sour cream
• Eggs
• Lemon juice
• Powdered sugar

3️⃣ Recipe #3:

• Olive oil
• Scallions
• Parsley
• Eggs
• Heavy cream
• Black pepper
• All-butter puff pastry
• Cream cheese
• Smoked salmon
• Chopped dill

(keep scrolling for the answers)

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☝️ Recipe #1: Cinnamon-swirl raisin bread

✌️ Recipe 2: Lemon pound cake

3️⃣ Recipe #3: Mini salmon quiches

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