Good morning. Quick – what’s the largest country in the world by area?

Did ya guess Russia? Russia is the answer.

Quick – what’s the second largest country after Russia?

It’s sort of a stumper, huh. India maybe? China? The US of America?

Nope. It’s Canada.

And even that isn’t technically correct. Antarctica is the second largest land mass, but it’s not included on the list because no one’s inhabited it… yet!

That’s right, dunkers – The DONUT has embarked on a voyage to take Antarctica. More soon.

Till then, NEWS.

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news takes 4.75 minutes to read.

“Goodness is the only investment that never fails.”

–Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

On Saturday, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D) vetoed a bill that would ban most abortions in the state after 12 weeks, instead of the current 20-week limit. The move is widely expected to be overturned by North Carolina’s state legislature, where Republicans hold a veto-proof majority.

📝 Some quick background… After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last summer, a 2019 NC law banning abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy took effect statewide. Then, last week, state Republicans approved a new measure that would narrow the legal window for abortions by an additional eight weeks.

The bill also carries two exceptions:

1. In the case of rape or incest, abortion is allowed for up to 20 weeks.
2. For “life-limiting” fetal anomalies, the window for abortions is extended to up to 24 weeks.

📸 Big picture: A total of 44 US states currently have laws on the books prohibiting most or all abortions after a certain point of pregnancy, per data gathered by the NY Times.

• 14 states ban abortions regardless of the length of pregnancy
• 1 state bans abortions after six weeks of gestation (Georgia)
• 4 states limit abortions to the first 15-20 weeks of pregnancy
• 10 states ban abortions after 22-24 weeks of pregnancy
• 15 states restrict abortions past the point of “fetal viability” – a definition that’s decided on a case-by-case basis, but typically refers to the period after 23-24 weeks of pregnancy.

In 2020, roughly 81% of all US abortions occurred within the first nine weeks of pregnancy, per the most recent CDC statistics. An additional 12% occurred between 10 and 13 weeks of pregnancy, 6% more took place between 14 and 20 weeks, and the final 1% occurred after that.

📊 Flash poll: In your opinion, what rules should be in place regarding abortion?

Legal anytime during pregnancy

Legal up until 21-24 weeks

Legal up until 15-20 weeks

Legal up until 10-14 weeks

Legal up until 6-9 weeks

Legal only in exceptional circumstances (rape/incest, health of the mother is threatened)

Illegal/never allowed

🇳🇵⛰️ Pasang Dawa Sherpa scaled Mount Everest for a record-tying 26th time yesterday. Since making his first successful ascent of Everest in 1998, the now-46-year-old Nepali Sherpa guide has reached the summit, some 29,032 feet above sea level, nearly every year since. With yesterday’s successful climb, Pasang Dawa Sherpa has now matched a record set by mountain guide Kami Rita – though Rita is also climbing on Everest right now, with a record-setting 27th summit attempt expected later this month.

🇹🇷 Turkey appears headed for a presidential election runoff. With more than 96% of votes counted as of late last night, incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan led opposition rival Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu by a margin of 49.44% to 44.86%, per state-owned news agency Andalou (via Reuters). Since none of Turkey’s four presidential candidates are on track to earn at least 50% of the vote, a runoff election featuring Erdogan and Kılıçdaroğlu (the top-two vote getters) is widely expected to occur on May 28. In other election news: Thailand’s two main opposition parties secured an upset victory over their military-aligned rivals in nationwide parliamentary elections held yesterday.

🇮🇱🇵🇸 Israel and a Palestinian Islamic militant group agreed to a ceasefire late Saturday. The Egypt-brokered agreement ended five days of fighting between the two sides, which left a total of 33 Palestinians dead in Gaza – including 13 civilians – and at least two civilians dead in Israel. Despite a barrage of missile strikes from Gaza that came hours after Saturday’s 10 p.m. ceasefire deadline, both Israeli and Palestinian officials said yesterday that the agreement appeared to be holding up.

🔎🤔 Do you spend more time scrolling through streaming options than actually watching? Are you ready to finally reclaim the precious free time you waste browsing every evening?

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For many of Hollywood’s biggest studios, today marks the beginning of “upfronts” – a time-honored tradition of wooing advertisers with previews of TV’s upcoming shows. Except this year… isn’t going according to plan. 

📺 Background: Started in 1962 – back when there were only three TV networks – the upfronts are much like a Costco for advertisers, who get a discount for buying ads from studios in bulk ahead of the upcoming season, aka “up front.”

And also like Costco, the upfronts make bank. Last year, linear TV networks sold over $20 billion in advertisements, a 5.8% increase from the year before.

❌ But this year… the writer’s strike happened. Meaning late night’s Seth Myers and Jimmy Kimmel won’t be delivering their usual monologues, since there’s no one to write them. Same goes for the actors, who are expected to be no-shows as they stand in solidarity with the writers.

• Changes as a result of the writer’s strike have left studios scrambling. Paramount last week backed out of the upfronts entirely – Netflix then snagged the open slot, only to cancel its in-person upfronts to live-stream the event instead (likely out of fear of writer protests).

🤯 But wait, there’s more! Last Friday, Elon Musk announced that he’d found Twitter’s new CEO: Linda Yaccarino, the now-former head of ad sales for NBCUniversal. According to her team, Yaccarino had been in back-to-back rehearsals preparing for the upfronts as recently as the night prior. Shortly after Musk’s announcement, though, NBCUniversal announced Yaccarino was leaving the company effective immediately.

💬 Quoted… “There is a significant risk that at some point in the first two weeks of June, the government will no longer be able to pay all of its obligations.”

In a report published Friday, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said the US government will likely default on its debts in early June if Congress fails to raise the federal debt limit before then.

• The CBO’s latest prediction is earlier than its previous estimate of July, which the agency said is due to lower-than-expected revenue from federal tax payments in recent months.

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

⚖️🤑 Stat of the Day: The US Supreme Court legalized sports gambling nationwide five years ago yesterday. Since then, Americans have legally wagered over $220 billion on sports, generating over $17 billion in revenue for sportsbooks and $3 billion in state and local taxes.

🤯 Did You Know?... Liam was the most popular baby name for US boys in 2022 for the sixth straight year, while Olivia was the most popular baby girl’s name for the fourth straight year, per new data from the Social Security Administration.

📖 Worth a Read: Don’t Throw Shohei Ohtani Your Best Pitch – He Might Steal It → (WSJ)

🍩😉 And no, we don’t mean binge-eating donuts! Lingopie is the only platform using your favorite TV shows to teach languages. They've added dual 'clickable' subtitles and other interactive features to popular programming, so you can learn while you watch.

• Effective for any level, beginner to advanced
• Learn the “real way” a language is spoken; slang and informal language
• Boosts comprehension, a sore spot of other language platforms
• Choose from 9 languages
• Immerse in culture by learning customs, behaviors, and gestures
• Alleviates guilt from staying up all night watching TV (at least you’re learning!)

😌 Best of all, Lingopie makes language learning stress-free and relaxing. Because life is busy, and the last thing we want after a long day is homework… which most language learning feels like. Lingopie changes that, and also has tons of shorter content for when you’re low on time👍.

Learn language the low-stress way with Lingopie. Sign-up and get a free 7-day trial.

• ☝️ Doc Ock IRL: A Japanese robotics company called Jizai Arms has developed a set of up to six attachable robotic limbs that can be controlled by the user wearing them.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 💰 US markets closed down across the board last Friday (S&P: -0.2%; Dow: -0.03%; Nasdaq: -0.4%).
• 🚗⚡ Tesla was ordered by Chinese regulators on Friday to fix the software in over 1 million of its cars; starting on May 29, the EV-maker will send “over-the-air” software updates to the cars.
• 🤝🤑 Fanatics, an online sports retailer, agreed yesterday to buy the US-arm of sports betting company PointsBet for about $150 million; the deal will reportedly allow Fanatics to offer sports betting in at least 15 states.

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SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 🍿 Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3. earned about $60 million at the domestic box office on its second weekend; sales dropped 49% from its debut, the third-strongest “hold” for a superhero movie ever.
• 🏀 The Boston Celtics will play the Miami Heat in the NBA’s Eastern Conference Finals after winning Game 7 against the Philadelphia 76ers last night; the LA Lakers will play the Denver Nuggets in the Western Conference Finals. | The Memphis Grizzlies suspended Ja Morant on Sunday after a video of him holding a gun appeared on social media for the second time this year.
• 🚫📺 The Tony Awards won't be televised this year due to the writers strike; they were originally scheduled to air on CBS and stream on Paramount+. | 📰🤝 Forbes agreed to sell an 82% stake in the company to Austin Russell, the 28-year-old CEO of Luminar Technologies, in a deal valuing Forbes at $800 million; per Axios, a majority of Russell’s purchase may be covered by foreign funding.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 🪐🌕 Saturn is set to reclaim the title of most moons in the solar system, after the International Astronomical Union on Friday announced plans to recognize 62 newly-discovered moons later this month; the recent findings bring Saturn’s total count to 145, surpassing Jupiter’s 95 total moons.
• 🤖💬 AI startup Anthropic has expanded the context window for Claude, its flagship constitutional AI model, from roughly 6,750 words to 75,000 words; Claude can now read and process the entirety of The Great Gatsby in around 22 seconds, Anthropic said.
• 💥🌌 Astronomers have identified the “largest” cosmic explosion ever observed in terms of total energy released; the fireball, which is 100x the size of our Solar System, has been visible in the night sky for the past three years; over that time it’s released 100x as much energy as our Sun will in its entire 10-billion-year lifetime.

MISCELLANEOUS

• 🎤🌍 Swedish singer Loreen was declared the winner of the 2023 Eurovision Song Contest on Saturday; Loreen, who previously won Eurovision in 2012, is the second performer ever to win twice, joining Ireland’s Johnny Logan.
• 🇨🇳🌐 The Chinese Communist Party allegedly "maintained supreme access" to data belonging to TikTok-parent ByteDance, including data stored in the US, per a lawsuit filed Friday by Yintao Yu, a former head of engineering for ByteDance's US operations.
• 🎓💰 The ongoing repayment pause on all federal student loans will end “no later than June 30,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said on Friday.

CLICKBAIT

• 🛣️ The US states with the worst drivers, ranked.

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On Friday, we covered the American Psychological Association’s first-ever health advisory regarding how to guide US children and teens’ use of social media.

❓ Our question to you: Would you be in favor of requiring kids and young teens to undergo training before creating a social media account?

• 👍 Yes: 70%
• 👎 No: 16%
• 🤷 Unsure/other: 14%

Click here to read more of the best responses from Friday’s poll.

+Note on sample size: We received 9,523 votes and 809 longform responses.

Monday: International Day of Families

Tuesday: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman testifies before Congress for the first time; NBA 2023 Draft Lottery

Wednesday: NHL Conference Finals begin

Thursday: Weekly unemployment claims

Friday: President Biden is scheduled to attend the G7 Leaders’ Summit in Hiroshima; Fast X hits theaters

👆Meet Bobi, a dog in Portugal who is celebrating his birthday in a big way: by winning two Guinness World Records. 

Bobi is turning 31 this year, officially making him both the world's oldest living dog and the oldest dog ever recorded. 

• His owner, Leonel Costa, has been around for Bobi's entire life, after adopting him when Leonel was only eight years old. 

🗯 What he's saying: "Bobi is special because looking at him is like remembering the people who were part of our family and unfortunately are no longer here, like my father, my brother, or my grandparents who have already left this world," Leonel said. "Bobi represents those generations."

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

1. Acr
2. Bac
3. Fact
4. Glob
5. Mill

(keep scrolling for the answers)

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Start referring.👇

1. Acr = Height (e.g., acrobat, acrophobia)
2. Bac = Rod-shaped (bacteria)
3. Fact = Make (factory, manufacture)
4. Glob = Sphere (global, globule)
5. Mill = Thousand (millennium, million)