Good morning. All of our writers have safely returned home from The DONUT: Antarctica. They have zero news to report, and all they’re talking about is a new food idea they came up with called “hot cream.” They pitched it as “if you have ice cream when you’re hot, you’re gonna want hot cream when you’re cold.”

We’ve sent them all home for the rest of the week to sleep things off.

Do y’all have any ideas for foods or products that are similar to – or better than – “hot cream”? Please reply and we’ll feature some in an upcoming newsletter.

Now, it's time for some New Zealand without the “ealand,” aka Newz!

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news takes 4.92 minutes to read.

“If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will escape a hundred days of sorrow.”

–Chinese proverb (Unknown)

After retiring from the NFL in 2016, Peyton Manning was inundated with offers to coach, become a broadcaster, and more. He rejected them all. Manning was done being the center of attention – always the bride, he longed to be the…er, bridesmaid (feels like a joke he’d make).

Fast forward to today, and Manning is running Omaha Productions, one of the fastest-growing media companies in the world.

🏈🤝 Driving the news: Per a Bloomberg report published yesterday, Omaha Productions has closed ~$10 million in funding from Peter Chernin, a media-mogul and former right-hand man of Rupert Murdoch, in a deal valuing the company at $400 million.

Though staying out of the limelight hasn’t exactly been easy. In fact, Omaha’s first two successes – ESPN’s Peyton’s Places and the “Manningcast” – both have Manning’s name right in the title.

But like the universe itself, things at Omaha are expanding – especially after the recent funding. Some projects coming down the pipeline:

• Quarterback: A Netflix docuseries following NFL quarterbacks Patrick Mahomes, Kirk Cousins, and Marcus Mariota – all of whom were mic’d up for every single game of the 2022-23 season.
• The Einstein Challenge: Two experts compete to see who can better explain a complicated idea to a panel of children. Einstein will air on The HISTORY Channel.
• What Are The Odds?: In development at NBC, Odds is a workplace comedy set in a Vegas sports book about all the non-sports bets – friends, spouse, and job – we make in life.

📺 Zoom out: Manning certainly isn’t the first athlete with dreams of an entrepreneurial second act. And while there are plenty of success stories – LeBron James' SpringHill Entertainment, for example – not all such ideas go to business heaven. In 2006, former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling founded the video game company 38 Studios. Six years and one game release later, the company went bankrupt.

🇳🇬 Nigerian chef Hilda Effiong Bassey set a new world record after cooking for 100 straight hours. The 27-year-old chef, known on social media as Hilda Baci, started cooking last Thursday and spent the next four-plus days making a combined 55 Nigerian recipes, from jollof rice to bean flour akara. Bassey said her efforts were aimed at showcasing how hard-working Nigerian women are, as well as shining a spotlight on the local cuisine.

🌎 There’s a 98% chance at least one of the next five years will be the hottest on record. That’s according to a World Meteorological Organization report published yesterday, which also found there’s a 66% chance Earth will breach the 1.5°C warming threshold set in the 2015 Paris Agreement for the first time ever by 2027. Overall, the five-year period between 2023 and 2027 is projected to be the warmest such span since instrument records began in the mid-19th century.

🇨🇳 One of China’s leading comedy show companies was fined $2.1 million for a joke told by one of its comedians. In his routine this past weekend, comedian Li Haoshi, known by the stage name House, said the way his two adopted stray dogs behaved while chasing a squirrel reminded him of a military slogan from President Xi Jinping: “Fight well, win the battle.” The joke, which drew laughter from the live audience, was later shared online and received criticism from military officials, leading to a fine along with the suspension of Li’s job status and social media account.

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More and more auto manufacturers are ditching AM radio in their new cars. But yesterday, a bipartisan group of lawmakers in the House and Senate unveiled a new bill that would force automakers to keep AM radio in the vehicles they sell to Americans at no additional charge.

The bill’s sponsors, including Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Ed Markey (D-MA), argue that AM radio is too important of a tool during large-scale emergencies for automakers to abandon it.

• AM radio features several unique characteristics – like lower frequencies and wavelengths – allowing it to pass through solid objects and travel further than FM radio waves.
• As a result, AM radio is currently home to FEMA’s National Public Warning System, which delivers emergency alerts to US residents in times of local and national crisis.

🔀 On the flip side… At least eight major car manufacturers – including Ford, Tesla, BMW, Volkswagen, Mazda, and Volvo – have announced plans to eliminate AM radio from most new vehicle models, especially EVs. The group’s arguments are two-fold:

1. The widespread popularity of internet streaming apps and HD radio delivered via FM bands has made AM radio obsolete.
2. AM radios are fundamentally incompatible with EV motors, since interference created by the electric powertrain gets picked up by the radio and distorts its sound.

📸 Big picture: Though EVs may be trying to kill the AM radio star, the frequency band still puts up numbers. More than 82 million Americans listen to AM radio each month, per the most recent data from Nielsen.

This month, food-tech startup Pairwise is rolling out a new variant of kale-like mustard greens that are genetically engineered to be less bitter than the original plant, representing the first US food product created with CRISPR tech to hit the market.

🥬 Some quick background: Mustard greens contain a multitude of vitamins and minerals, but have a bitter peppery flavor when eaten raw – so to make them more appetizing, they’re typically cooked before being consumed.

But a few years back, Pairwise came up with the idea – and subsequently raised $115 million – to genetically modify mustard greens so they would retain their health benefits and taste much better to the average shopper when eaten raw.

• Once its CRISPR-edited product hits grocery store shelves later this summer, Pairwise predicts it’ll replace less-nutritious greens like lettuce in the salads of millions of Americans.
• The startup’s ultimate goal is to harness CRISPR tech to make already-healthy foods more convenient and enjoyable. Case in point: Pairwise has announced future plans to develop pitless cherries and seedless blackberries/raspberries, which it says will be available to US consumers year-round, regardless of season (which, for this cherry-loving writer who can only get them four months outta the year, would be huge).

📝 Bottom line: Pairwise’s modified mustard greens technically could have been created using regular, low-tech breeding methods – aka selecting parent plants with certain traits to produce more desirable offspring – though the addition of CRISPR sped up the process from over a decade to just four years.

💬 Quoted… “[A] near-catastrophic car chase.”

A spokesperson for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle said the couple was pursued by “a ring of highly aggressive paparazzi” in NYC yesterday, resulting in a more than two-hour car chase featuring multiple near-collisions with other drivers and pedestrians.

• Though according to the NYPD’s account of the situation, things were slightly less exciting. Law-enforcement sources told NBC News that the incident was “a bit chaotic,” but nobody was in danger during the pursuit.

📈 Stat of the Day: The overall mortality rate for Americans between the ages of 1 and 19 rose by 10.7% from 2019 to 2020, then by 8.3% the following year, per a new analysis of government data. This marks the largest increase over a two-year period since the federal government began tracking such statistics more than half-a-century ago, and wipes out more than a decade of previous declines.

🤯 Did You Know?... There’s a 103-acre forest in Utah that’s made up of one single living organism. The organism in question, an individual quaking aspen tree called Pando, is between 8,000 and 12,000 years old, with nearly 50,000 individual “stems” that each measure up to 80 feet tall.

📖 Worth a Read: Why Salvador Dalí is the most faked artist in the world → (The Hustle)

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• ☝️ The Codex Sassoon, a 1,100-year-old near-complete Hebrew Bible (the oldest in existence), sold for $38.1 million yesterday at a Sotheby’s auction in NYC; it represents the second-most expensive historical document ever sold at auction, behind a rare copy of the US Constitution that fetched $43.2 million in 2021.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 💰 US markets closed up across the board yesterday (S&P: +1.2%; Dow: +1.2%; Nasdaq: +1.3%).
• 🚀 Virgin Orbit, the now-bankrupt rocket company, received a $17 million “stalking horse” bid for its rocket-carrying aircraft from aerospace company Stratolaunch. | 🚗 Uber will soon allow teenagers under 18 in select cities to request and take rides on their own.
• ⚖️ Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes was ordered by a judge yesterday to begin serving her 11-year prison sentence no later than May 30; separately, the judge also ordered Holmes and former Theranos COO Sunny Balwami to pay $452 million in restitution to the victims they defrauded.

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SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 👩‍🍳 Selena Gomez announced plans to helm two new shows on the Food Network. | 🏆🎭 The Tony Awards will move forward with an unscripted broadcast on June 11, its originally-scheduled date, after the on-strike WGA writers agreed to not picket the event, per The Hollywood Reporter.
• ❌ Google will soon delete any account that hasn’t been accessed in over two years; this includes removing all data tied to Gmail, Docs, Photos, and other apps, with the exception of YouTube videos.
• ⚽️ Manchester City defeated Real Madrid 4-0 (5-1 aggregate) to advance to the Champions League final against Inter Milan on June 10.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 🗽🌆 New York City is sinking at a rate of 1-2 millimeters per year due to the combined 850,000-ton weight of its buildings, per a new study published in Earth’s Future.
• 🧠🐶 While humans’ domestication of dogs thousands of years ago initially shrunk the size of their brains relative to wolves, modern breeding efforts have resulted in modest cognitive growth in dogs over the past century and a half, per a new peer-reviewed study published in Evolution.
• 💊🚫 The US is facing a near-record number of drug shortages, with new data from the University of Utah showing a total of 300+ active shortages nationwide.

MISCELLANEOUS

• ⚖️ The top federal prosecutor in Massachusetts resigned yesterday after a new report found she committed serious ethical misconduct, including using her position to help the election effort of a fellow Democrat.
• 🎓 Bryan Kohberger, the 28-year-old Ph.D. student suspected of murdering four University of Idaho students late last year, was indicted by a grand jury on four counts of first-degree murder yesterday.
• 💊 A federal appeals court heard arguments yesterday in a case challenging the FDA’s approval of mifepristone – one of two pills used in medication abortions, which make up over half of all US abortions. (Background | From the Left | From the Center | From the Right)

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Yesterday we covered a GOP-led House report detailing previously-undisclosed evidence that Joe Biden’s family members, associates, and their related companies received over $10 million from foreign entities between 2015 and 2017.

❓ Our question to you: Do you think the US government should enact stricter reporting requirements for the business dealings of elected officials’ family members?

• 👍 Yes: 75%
• 👎 No: 11%
• 🤷 Unsure/other: 14%

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

+Note on sample size: We received 9,354 votes and 886 longform responses.

We bring you the most unusual, off-the-wall and occasionally laugh-out-loud headlines from this week.

• Loch Ness Monster hunter: I thought this job would be easier → (BBC News)
• Locals force council to fill in potholes by drawing penises around them → (Wales Online)
• Police searching for someone yelling "help" find a goat instead → (WLTX)
• Umpire rescues catcher from dust devil during youth baseball game → (UPI)
• 'Chonkosaurus,' plump Chicago snapping turtle captured on video, goes viral → (AP News)

Sixteen-year-old George Tindale is a regular magnet fisher around his home in Grantham, England.

• On one of his recent expeditions, George was shocked when he pulled a small safe out of the river. After finally prying the metal box open, he found himself staring at thousands of dollars in cash.

💰🔎 Search party... With help from his parents, George tracked down the rightful owner of the money thanks to a few bank slips in the safe. The owner, Rob Everett, worked right there in town, and said the safe had been stolen from his business twenty-two years ago.

• "I just felt there are some really nice and good people in this world," Rob shared after getting his safe back. "They could have kept the money... They wanted to return the contents and the goods to the rightful owners and I think that says a lot about humanity.”

Note: an earlier version of this story ran on April 27, 2022. Our Positive DONUT writer Kailyn is currently deep in 50-hour/week rehearsals for another slate of upcoming live shows in Europe (which is taking a lot of her focus).

The Sahara, pictured above, is the hottest desert in the world – but not the largest. That title belongs to which desert?

(keep scrolling for the answer)

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