Good morning, and a giant DONUT welcome to the ~7,000 new readers joining us today! It’s Friday and you know what that means: everyone gets doughnuts, coffee, and fast, impartial news that's actually enjoyable to read.

🍩☕📰🍩☕📰🛴🦄🍩☕📰🍩☕📰

Also – has anyone seen a unicorn riding a scooter? Not asking for any reason (we definitely didn’t lose our unicorn at the scooter store). Though just to say it, we didn’t think it would want to use a scooter since it's already got four horse legs, but yeah, if you see it plz let us know, thx!

And now, as always, the N E W S.

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news takes 4.88 minutes to read.

“The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.”

–Eric Hoffer (1902-1983)

Yesterday, Axios/Ipsos published the latest installment of its American Health Index, which every few months asks 1,000+ US adults what they think is the biggest threat to American public health.

And in this go-round, gun violence rose by nine percentage-points from the previous survey in February, eclipsing the opioid crisis as Americans’ No. 1 public health concern.

The full results:

• Access to guns/firearms: 26%
• Opioids and fentanyl: 25%
• Obesity: 20%
• Covid, unsafe driving, alcohol abuse, and smoking (tied): Each came in at 3%, for a combined total of 12%
• Cancer: 8%
• Something else: 8%

📸 Big picture: A record-high 48,000 Americans died of gun-related injuries in 2021, split roughly equally between homicides and suicides, per the latest available CDC data. But despite increasing fatalities, the rate of gun deaths in America – a stat that accounts for population size – came in below levels previously seen in the 1970s through 1990s.

Overall, the leading causes of death in the US last year were:

1. Heart disease; 700,000 deaths
2. Cancer; 608,000 deaths
3. Unintentional injury (including drug overdoses and car accidents); 218,000 deaths
4. Covid; 187,000 deaths
5. Stroke; 163,000 deaths

📊 Flash poll: In your opinion, what’s currently the No. 1 threat to American public health?

Access to firearms

Alcohol abuse

Cancer

Covid

Loneliness

Obesity

Opioids and fentanyl

Smoking/tobacco products

Social media

Unsafe driving

Something else/other

💋 The earliest recorded kiss dates back ~4,500 years to Mesopotamia. Previous research had suggested that romantic kissing first began ~3,500 years ago in modern-day India, but a new review paper published yesterday in Science describes clay tablets from ancient Mesopotamia that show the act of kissing. These predate similar Indian texts by ~1,000 years, though the husband-and-wife team behind the research stressed kissing “did not emerge abruptly or in a specific society,” and was likely practiced in multiple ancient cultures around that time.

🇨🇦 Canada’s central bank said high levels of household debt pose a major risk to the country’s financial system. In an annual report published yesterday, the bank said Canadian households who took on a mortgage over the past three years are carrying 17% more credit-card debt, on average, than those who took out a mortgage during the preceding three years. The bank also expressed concern over what will happen in the near future as existing mortgages start to feel the impact of recent interest-rate hikes (since under Canadian law, mortgages are renewed with new interest rates after a certain period).

🌏 Each El Niño costs the global economy an average of $3.4 trillion, per a new study. The peer-reviewed findings, published yesterday in Science, attempted to capture El Niño’s overall cost by calculating the total amount of money that’s diverted away from technology and innovation, and towards recovery and rebuilding efforts. The study did so by simulating what world GDP would’ve been without a certain El Niño event, then comparing that to actual GDP – though many outside economists pushed back on the Dartmouth researchers’ conclusions.

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OpenAI launched a free ChatGPT app for US iPhone users yesterday, representing the first official mobile version of its revolutionary AI chatbot.

📱🤖 How it works: Like the website, users must first log in after downloading to access the chatbot. But unlike the website, ChatGPT’s new smartphone app now accepts voice inputs as well as text, similar to Apple’s Siri or Amazon’s Alexa (or the robot from Her, which doesn’t scare us at all).

• All US iPhone users running iOS 16 can access ChatGPT’s base features, aka GPT-3.5, by downloading the app and creating an account for free.
• OpenAI also offers a $20/month subscription that gives mobile and/or desktop users access to the improved GPT-4 chatbot, which has a range of upgrades over the free version including faster response speeds and increased input capacity (25,000 words, up from 3,000).

The ChatGPT iPhone app began rolling out to US users yesterday, and will expand to other countries within the next few weeks. A version of the app for Android phones is also coming “soon,” OpenAI said.

📈 Big picture: ChatGPT first launched to the public on November 30. It quickly became the fastest-growing consumer application in history, per investment bank UBS, attracting an estimated 100 million users within the first two months – far faster than second-place TikTok, which took nine months to reach a user base of that size.

For a long time, ESPN has been in a monogamous relationship with cable TV. But according to a WSJ report published yesterday, it seems like the Disney-owned channel is ready to head out on its own, take some “me time”, make a few emo playlists, etc. Ya know, the usual breakup stuff.

📺 Background: ESPN has had its own streaming app, ESPN+, since 2018. But much of the channel’s best programming – NBA and NFL games, for example – can only be accessed via the ESPN cable broadcast.

Enter: “Flagship,” the internal code name for ESPN’s covert plan to sell all of itself to consumers as a standalone streaming app, per the WSJ. And the plan appears to be full steam ahead: the network has already locked in at least two (not yet revealed) major sports leagues to allow direct-to-consumer access via their app.

• Though ESPN would still be available via cable, experts predict many customers will switch over to the much-cheaper ESPN app. Which, for cable companies, could become a big problem.

🐭 Zoom out: In other Disney news, the company announced yesterday it will no longer be moving forward with the construction of a $1 billion Florida office complex that would have brought an estimated ~2,000 jobs to the Sunshine State. The decision comes amid the company’s ongoing feud with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

💬 Quoted… “I copy and paste your responses in [ChatGPT] and [it] will tell me if the program generated the content.”

This week, a number of seniors at Texas A&M University–Commerce who had already walked the stage at graduation were temporarily denied their diplomas, after a professor wrongly accused his entire class of using ChatGPT to write their final assignments.

• In an email to his class, the professor said he’d put their papers through ChatGPT and asked the chatbot whether it had created the work – and ChatGPT claimed to have authored every single one.
• But many students have pushed back on the professor’s claims, saying he clearly misused the software, since it isn’t even capable of detecting such material (and will claim to have authored just about anything).

👑🇬🇧 Stat of the Day: $201 million = the estimated amount that the UK government spent on Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral and the prior 10 days of mourning, the treasury revealed yesterday.

🤯 Did You Know?... It’s a federal crime for most Americans to own any part of a bald eagle – even a single feather.

📖 Worth a Read: Mothers’ lives in ancient Greece weren’t easy – but celebrations of their love have survived across the centuries → (The Conversation)

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• ☝️ You’re looking at an exact “Digital Twin” of the Titanic, jointly created by deep-sea investigators Magellan and filmmakers Atlantic Productions, as part of what they called the largest underwater scanning project in history.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 💰 US markets closed up across the board yesterday (S&P: +0.9%; Dow: +0.3%; Nasdaq: +1.5%).
• 🏘️ Sales of existing US homes fell 3.4% in April, reaching a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.28 million, the National Association of Realtors said yesterday; sales also fell 23.2% compared to April 2022, the biggest annual decline in over 11 years.
• 🚗 Hyundai and Kia agreed yesterday to pay a $200 million settlement in a class-action lawsuit relating to the TikTok-inspired thefts of both cars, known as the “Kia Challenge.” (Background)

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SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 🏀 The Denver Nuggets defeated the LA Lakers 108-103 last night to take a 2-0 series lead in the Western Conference Finals; in the Eastern Conference, the Celtics face off against the Heat at 8:30 pm ET tonight (series tied 1-1). | 🎾 Rafael Nadal will miss the French Open with an injury; he also said he expects 2024 will be his final season before retiring.
• 📺 YouTube will soon launch unskippable 30-second ads during top content on its TV app, the Alphabet-owned company announced yesterday. | 👥 Netflix has almost 5 million global active users on its ad-tier, the streamer revealed yesterday.
• 🍿🏎️ Fast X opens in theaters across the country today; also new to theaters this weekend is the Robert De Niro comedy About My Father.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 🧠💻 Paradromics received a Breakthrough Device designation from the FDA yesterday for its new brain-computer interface; the Neuralink competitor is aiming to launch its first human clinical trials in the first half of next year.
• 🎶👀 A musician’s traumatic brain injury caused him to develop a rare condition called synesthesia through which he could “see” music, per a new peer-reviewed study published in Neurocase.
• 💉🦠 A universal flu vaccine based on new mRNA technology has entered a Phase I human clinical trial, the National Institutes of Health announced this week.

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MISCELLANEOUS

• 📗 Walter Isaacson, a renowned author who’s spent the last two years at the side of Elon Musk – and was physically present at several pivotal moments, including the Twitter acquisition – announced a new book about the Twitter/Tesla/SpaceX CEO.
• ⚖️ The Supreme Court yesterday ruled that Twitter and Google were not liable for terrorism-related content found on their platforms. | 🏛️ Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), 89, who returned to the Senate last week after a three-month absence due to shingles, has suffered complications including brain inflammation and facial paralysis, her office confirmed yesterday. (From the Left | From the Center | From the Right)
• ✍️📱 Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte signed a first-of-its-kind law on Wednesday banning TikTok from all devices in the state; the ban is slated to take effect on January 1, but has already been challenged in court under the First Amendment. (Background | From the Left | From the Center | From the Right)

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Always educational, sometimes challenging, but never disappointing: it's the DONUT's weekly news quiz.

Test your mettle against our team.

One-hundred-year-old Califonia resident Johanna Carrington has loved dogs her whole life.

Distraught after the passing of her pup Rocky, Johanna hoped she could find another dog to fill the space in her home and her heart, but worried her advanced age might get in the way. 

🐶🧓🏻 Cue, Gucci... Thankfully, a neighbor recommended a senior dog rescue close by, and Johanna was paired up with 11-year-old Chihuahua named Gucci. 

“He came to the house like he’d been here before. It was remarkable,” she told Today. “He saw me sitting on my chair, jumped up on me and sat on my lap. He made himself very, very comfortable. He was just our baby right away.”

• Now the two are inseparable, and Johanna is finding her joy again.
• “It was quiet and sad, and then Gucci brought joy into the house," said Johanna's daughter Debbie.

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

☝️ Recipe #1:

• Shredded chicken
• Frozen peas and carrots
• Salt & pepper
• Sauteed garlic
• Red Lobster Cheddar Bay biscuit mix
• Milk
• Chicken stock
• Cream of chicken soup
• Butter

✌️ Recipe #2

• Extra-virgin olive oil
• Shallots
• Garlic cloves
• Salt & pepper
• Orzo
• Dry white wine
• Sugar snap peas
• Frozen peas
• Parmesan
• Butter
• Lemon juice
• Pesto

3️⃣ Recipe #3:

• Pork chops
• Feta cheese
• Parmesan cheese
• Olive oil
• Lemon, juiced & zested
• Tuscan seasoning
• Cloves garlic

(keep scrolling for the answers)

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1. ☝️ Recipe #1: Chicken cobbler
2. ✌️ Recipe #2: Spring orzotto
3. 3️⃣ Recipe #3: Mediterranean pork chops