Good morning. With National Poetry Month coming to a close, we thought it’d be nice to share one of our favorite poems with you all:

Roses are red,

Violets are blue,

Though aren’t violets… violet?

This poem’s untrue.

Also, a huge thanks to Miquette N. for the awesome poem recommendation for today, which you can check out in the Pastry-Sized Poems section below.

And now, THE NEWS!

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news takes 4.91 minutes to read.

“A leader leads by example, not by force.”

–Sun Tzu (544 B.C. – 496 B.C.)

By the next time you read The DONUT, a majority of new US mortgage loans will be recalculated to carry higher fees for borrowers with good credit, as well as lower fees for borrowers with poor credit. This is due to new laws for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that come into effect on May 1 (Monday).

☝️ First things first: Fannie Mae (est. 1938) and Freddie Mac (est. 1970) were both created by Congress with the stated goals of providing liquidity, stability, and affordability to the US mortgage market. The two companies are technically shareholder-owned, but have been run by the federal government since the 2007-09 recession.

• Neither Fannie Mae nor Freddie Mac offers mortgages directly to US consumers. Instead, they achieve their stated goals by buying and guaranteeing mortgages on the secondary market that were initially issued by other lenders (typically banks and credit unions).
• And because these lenders want to sell to Fannie and Freddie, they end up structuring their mortgages to align with the two companies’ standards. In recent years, more than 95% of all new US mortgage loans conformed to criteria established by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which collectively own about half of the entire ~$11 trillion domestic mortgage market.

🤔 So, what are the new changes?... Starting on Monday, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are altering their standards to increase upfront fees for borrowers with good credit (680 FICO score or above), as well as decrease fees for borrowers with poor credit (679 or below).

For example:

• A buyer with a credit score of 740 who makes a 20% down payment on a home would see their fee climb from 0.5% to 0.875% of the overall purchase price.
• Another buyer who has a 640 credit score and is also making a 20% down payment would see their fee drop from 3% to 2.25% of the home’s purchase price.

📝 Bottom line: According to the federal agency that oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – which is run by an appointee of President Biden – these changes are aimed at “facilitating equitable and sustainable access to homeownership" by making homes more affordable for lower-income Americans.

📊 Flash poll: How do you feel about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s upcoming changes to the way its mortgage fees are calculated?

Strongly agree

Agree/Somewhat agree

Neutral

Disagree/Somewhat disagree

Strongly disagree

🇹🇷 Turkish President Recep Erdogan canceled several days of planned campaigning after falling ill on live TV. Erdogan, who faces a presidential election on May 14, has remained out of public view since a TV interview of his abruptly ended late Tuesday due to what his campaign described as a severe stomach bug. Recent polling suggests the upcoming election will be the toughest contest yet for Ergodan, who’s been serving either as Turkey’s PM or president since 2003.

🇮🇷 The Iranian government seized a Turkish oil tanker headed for the US. In a statement to Iranian state media, officials accused the tanker of colliding with an Iranian ship in the Persian Gulf and attempting to escape before it was captured and impounded yesterday. The US military condemned Iran’s seizure of the Chevron-chartered oil tanker, calling it a violation of international law. Over the past two years, Iran has seized at least five commercial ships sailing in the Middle East, including two Greek tankers as retribution for the US seizing an Iranian tanker in Greek waters.

🇻🇦 Pope Francis will allow women to vote at an influential bishops’ meeting for the first time. The new rules grant five religious sisters voting rights at the synod, a council of ~300 bishops that formally advises the Pope, the next time it meets in October. Pope Francis also announced that the synod will gain an additional 70 non-clerical voting members from the religious community, with an emphasis on “the presence of young people” and women among this group.

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Time will remove its digital paywall on June 1, making all of the magazine’s online content – including its 100-year archive – free to the public, per a new report from Axios.

🤔 Why now?... The decision is actually the latest in a series of changes made at the company since 2018 – which is when Salesforce founder Marc Benioff and his wife Lynne purchased the media brand from the Meredith Corp. for $190 million. With Benioff’s counsel, the company has successfully diversified its income streams and reduced its dependence on subscription-based revenue.

• Since its 2020 launch, Time Studios, the publisher’s TV and film arm, has brought in over $100 million in docuseries sales to streamers like Netflix, HBO, and Amazon (including the $30 million sale of jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy to Netflix).
• The company’s events business was on pace to bring in over $10 million in revenue last year, per Ian Orefice, president and COO of Time and Time Studios.

Aaaand don’t forget NFTs. Time started selling digital artwork in 2021. By April of 2022, it had made over $10 million in profit from NFT sales. For context, the site currently generates an estimated $7.2 million/year in digital subscription revenue.

📸 Big picture: Not everything is changing at Time. The company will continue to charge for its timeless (the pun was intended, and we are sorry) print magazine, which has about 1.3 million paid subscribers.

💬 Quoted… “It was a friendly conversation.”

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell was tricked into talking with a pair of Russian comedians who were impersonating Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, a spokesperson for the US central bank confirmed yesterday. The spokesperson said that “no sensitive or confidential information was discussed” during the prank call.

• Clips of the video conversation with Powell were posted online yesterday by the two Russian comedians, who have done the same thing to other world leaders. Fed officials said some of the clips appear to have been edited and that the matter was referred to law enforcement.

🚫📰 Stat of the Day: 320 years = how long Wiener Zeitung, the world's oldest current newspaper, has published a daily print edition (aka since 1703). That is, until Austria’s parliament passed a law yesterday ordering the state-run paper – which used to report on Mozart when he lived in 18th-century Vienna – to transition to a once-monthly print edition alongside a daily online version.

🤯 Did You Know?... 2023 is the first year in history where the total number of female CEOs in the S&P 500 (41) isn’t lower than the combined number of CEOs with the name John/Jon or James, per a new Bloomberg analysis.

📖 Worth a Read: How BeReal missed its moment → (The Verge)

• ☝️ Before Japanese startup ispace’s lunar lander apparently crashed into the Moon’s surface on Tuesday, it snapped this pic of an “Earthrise” that depicts a total lunar eclipse occurring over Australia.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 💰📈 US markets closed up across the board yesterday (S&P: +2.0%; Dow: +1.6%; Nasdaq: +2.4%). | US GDP grew at a 1.1% annual rate in Q1 of this year, down from 2.6% the previous quarter, the Commerce Department reported yesterday.
• 🚗 Lyft will lay off 1,072 employees, the company revealed in an SEC filing yesterday; that’s about 26% of its workforce. | 👕 Gap announced plans to lay off 1,800 employees mostly from its headquarter locations and other leadership roles.
• 📦📊 Amazon reported first quarter earnings yesterday that beat industry expectations across the board, but warned of a growth slowdown in its highly-profitable cloud unit; the company’s stock initially spiked ~10% in after-hours trading but later fell below its closing value.

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SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 🔵 Rihanna will play Smurfette in Paramount’s 2025 Untitled Smurfs Animated Film, the singer announced yesterday; Rihanna will also write and perform music for the film.
• 🙏 Jerry Springer, the host of the The Jerry Springer Show and one-time mayor of Cincinnati, died yesterday at 79 years old.
• 🏈1️⃣ The 2023 NFL Draft kicked off yesterday with the Carolina Panthers selecting Alabama QB Bryce Young with the No. 1 overall pick. | Ravens QB Lamar Jackson signed a new 5-year, $260 million contract extension, making him the highest-paid player in league history on an annual basis.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 🧬 Certain regions of genomes – aka the DNA instructions organisms need to develop and grow – have stayed the same across all mammal species over millions of years of evolution, per a series of 11 peer-reviewed studies published yesterday in Science.
• 🚀🪐 The European Space Agency’s Jupiter icy moons explorer (JUICE) spacecraft, which has a mission of searching for alien life on Jupiter’s moons, switched on its science instruments for the first time yesterday. (Background)
• 🪱 Scientists have figured out how California blackworms are able to quickly disentangle from an intertwined group of up to 50,000 individual specimens, per a study published yesterday in Science.

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MISCELLANEOUS

• 🗽🤝 NY Gov. Kathy Hochul reached a tentative agreement with state lawmakers on a new $229 billion state budget for next fiscal year; among other things, the budget would change the state’s bail laws and increase the statewide minimum wage starting in 2024.
• ⚖️ E. Jean Carroll, the writer suing former President Donald Trump in civil court over allegations that he raped her in the mid-1990s, took the stand for a second day of testimony yesterday.
• 🗳️ West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice (R) announced plans to run for the Senate seat currently occupied by Democrat Joe Manchin in 2024. (From the Left | From the Center | From the Right)

CLICKBAIT

• 🐋 Humpbacks spotted having a whale of a time at underwater ‘day spa.’

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Our weekly news quiz is live. In just two minutes or less...

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

By rupi kaur

1. cry it. walk it. write it. scream it. dance it out of your body.

2. if after all that you are still spiraling out of control ask yourself if sinking into the mud is worth it

3. the answer is no

4. the answer is breathe

5. sip tea and feel your nervous system settle

6. you are the hero of your life

7. this feeling doesn’t have power over you

8. the universe has prepared you to handle this

9. no matter how dark it gets the light is always on its way

10. you are the light

11. walk yourself back to where the love lives

After Angela Rafuse lost both of her grandparents in 2019, she was left to decide what to do with their beloved cat, Mackenzie.

• “At the time, there wasn’t any other option other than a family member to adopt her or to put her into a shelter,” said the animal lover. “I didn’t want her to spend her final years in a shelter, so I decided to adopt her."

🐱 Meet Mackenzie.. Angela started sharing some of 14-year-old Mackenzie's quirky videos online, and the cat soon became a mini TikTok celebrity. 

• It was Mackenzie's story that inspired Angela to establish My Grandfather's Cat, a non-profit organization that helps seniors and terminally-ill people find loving homes for their pets after their passing. 
• My Grandfather's Cat recently celebrated its 100th adoption🥳.

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

☝️ Recipe #1:

• Chicken thighs
• Garlic Cloves
• Ginger
• Gochujang
• Soy sauce
• Rice vinegar
• Sesame oil
• Brown sugar
• Sweet chilli sauce
• Spring onions
• Jasmine rice

✌️ Recipe #2:

• Red chillies
• Ginger
• Garlic cloves
• Fish sauce
• Lime
• Caster sugar
• Water
• Coriander
• Lemongrass
• Sirloin steak
• Vegetable oil
• Peanuts
• Carrots
• Basil
• Mint
• Spring onions
• Cherry tomatoes
• Daikon
• Cucumber

3️⃣ Recipe #3:

• Dark chocolate
• Butter
• Sugar
• Eggs
• Vanilla bean paste
• Flour
• Salt
• Brown & granulated sugar
• Bicarbonate of soda
• Dark chocolate chips
• Salted caramel
• Vanilla ice cream

(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.)

Start referring.👇

☝️ Recipe #1: Korean BBQ chicken

✌️ Recipe #2: Thai beef salad

3️⃣ Recipe #3: Brookie ice cream sandwiches