Good morning. The results are in from yesterday’s poll, and – surprise! – DONUT readers prefer their water to be just as cool as they are.

Here’s a full breakdown (question – what is your preferred temperature for drinking water?):

• The coldest of ice cold: 31%
• Chilled, but in a chill no-big-deal way: 35%
• Room temp: 19%
• Warm like warm milk: 8%
• Hot like you could make tea with it: 7%

Now, from us to all you Nat King Cools out there, NEWS.

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

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"Whatever you do in life, surround yourself with smart people who'll argue with you."

–John Wooden (1910-2010)

In a social media post published yesterday, former President Donald Trump said he’s received a letter from the Justice Department notifying him that he’s the target of special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Such “target letters” are commonly sent by the DOJ to notify someone that they’re the subject of a federal investigation nearing its end, and to give them a chance to testify before a grand jury prior to prosecutors seeking an indictment.

🏛️🗳 A deeper dive... It’s currently unclear what specific charges Trump might face, or when he could be officially indicted. But based on interviews by Smith’s prosecutors and subpoenas issued by the grand jury over the past few months, the focus has been on three main areas:

1. Trump’s potential involvement in an alleged scheme to convince Republican electors from some states to certify Trump as the victor instead of Biden – even though more votes went to Biden.
2. Whether Trump illegally pressured VP Mike Pence to reject Biden’s electors when Congress gathered to confirm the election results on January 6, 2021.
3. If Trump violated federal law by fundraising off false claims of election fraud.

⚖️ Zoom out: DOJ special counsel Jack Smith’s office is also currently prosecuting Trump on a separate, 37-count indictment accusing the former president of retaining classified government documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort and obstructing officials’ efforts to retrieve them.

• The first pretrial hearing in that case was held yesterday, but ended without an official decision on when the trial will begin.

📊 Flash poll: In your opinion, should Trump be indicted on federal charges over his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election?

Yes

No

Unsure/other

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🇦🇺 An Australian man and his dog were rescued after three months stranded at sea. Timothy Shaddock, 54, and his dog Bella were discovered aboard an incapacitated catamaran by a Mexican tuna boat that was traveling through the Pacific Ocean ~1,200 miles from land, the boat’s owners said on Monday. Shaddock told Australia's 9News television that he and his dog survived on raw fish and rainwater after a storm damaged his vessel and wiped out its electronics back in April.

🇰🇵🇺🇸 North Korea detained a US soldier who crossed its southern border without authorization yesterday. US military officials confirmed the soldier is Private 2nd Class Travis King, who had served time at a detention facility in South Korea and was released about a week ago. King was escorted to a South Korean airport yesterday for a flight back to America to face disciplinary action – but after parting ways with his escort at Customs, King left the airport and somehow joined a tour group at the North Korean border, then crossed into the country once he got there, per US officials.

🇮🇷 Iran’s morality police resumed patrols following a 10-month hiatus. Iranian authorities on Sunday announced a new campaign to force all domestic women to cover their hair with a hijab, prompting Iran’s morality police – which are tasked with enforcing such laws – to return to the streets. The morality police had pulled back from operating last September, following mass anti-government protests that began after 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died in their custody. The demonstrations largely stopped earlier this year following a police crackdown in which 500+ protesters were killed and nearly 20,000 were arrested – though many Iranian women have continued to flout the official dress code, especially in major cities.

Unlike John Mellencamp, Chipotle wasn’t born in a small town. But many of its new locations are about to be.

According to an interview given by CFO Jack Hartung, the fast-casual restaurant chain is eyeing an expansion into small-town USA, with plans to open 700-800 new locations in smaller markets across North America. This represents around one-fifth of the ~3,800 new restaurants Chipotle expects to open across the continent.

• About 18 months ago, company execs began crunching numbers on restaurants the company had built in smaller US markets, like Camden, Delaware, and Staunton, Virginia – and were impressed with their performance, according to the WSJ. 

When Chipotle comes to town, residents pay attention. Four of the five best openings for Chipotle restaurants over the past year occurred in smaller markets, including San Angelo, Texas, and El Centro, California. Some of the new restaurants in these smaller markets open with 2x-3x the sales of an average Chipotle, Hartung said.

And according to Placer.ai, a data firm that monitors consumer movements, when a new Chipotle location opens, sit-down chains such as Texas Roadhouse tend to experience declines in foot-traffic, while fast-food spots such as McDonald’s and Chick-fil-A also register a drop.

🌯🌏 Big picture: Chipotle is also eyeing an international push. On Tuesday, the fast-casual restaurant chain announced its first international franchising deal, starting with four locations in Dubai and Kuwait.

Shares of Microsoft rose 4% yesterday to close at a new company record. Driving the rally? Three new AI-related announcements.

• Visual search capability has been added to Bing Chat. Built on OpenAI’s GPT-4 model, this feature lets anyone using Chat upload images and search the web for related content.
• Developers using Microsoft’s Azure cloud-computing platform will be able to build AI-powered software using Meta’s Llama 2 large language model – not just OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 or GPT-4. (Pretty self-explanatory.)
• Generative AI subscriptions are coming to the Microsoft 365 suite. For $30/user, companies will be able to add generative AI to products such as Word, Excel, and Teams.

And even though announcements #1 and #2 are impactful, it’s announcement #3 that has investors drooling.

Around 345 million people are currently using Microsoft 365 (paid seats), and last year it generated ~$64 billion in revenue for the company. CNBC reports that with the new $30/month AI add-on, monthly prices for enterprise customers could increase by as much as 83% – resulting in a significant amount of additional revenue.

🤖♟️ Your move, Google: Worldwide market share of office suite tech is split between Google’s G Suite and Microsoft 365, with G Suite controlling ~48% of the global market and Microsoft 365 holding ~46%.

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💬 Quoted… “[The term] 'Taco Tuesday' should belong to all who make, sell, eat and celebrate tacos."

• Using this argument, Taco Bell filed a petition in May aiming to cancel the “Taco Tuesday” trademark that its small Wyoming-based competitor, Taco John’s, has owned since 1989. And – after Taco John’s said yesterday that it’ll abandon its longtime registration with the US Patent and Trademark Office – the fast-food giant now has its wish.

⚽ Stat of the Day: Yesterday, Inter Miami managing owner Jorge Mas said the club expects Lionel Messi’s arrival to double its revenues over the next 12 months, as well as boost the team’s valuation from $600 million to at least $1.3 billion over the same period.

🤔 Did You Know?... Detroit is the largest US city to ever declare bankruptcy, with between $18 billion and $20 billion in total debt at the time of filing; the declaration occurred exactly ten years ago yesterday.

📰 Worth a Read: How Popping Open a Can Became the Sound of Summer → (Smithsonian Magazine)

• ☝️ This 125-million-year-old fossil shows a dinosaur being attacked by a small mammal a third of its size; scientists say fossil evidence suggests the smaller mammal was preying on the weakened, larger dino when the two were suddenly entombed by lava.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 💰 US markets closed up across the board yesterday (S&P: +0.7%; Dow: +1.1%; Nasdaq: +0.8%).
• 🏘️📉 Evergrande, a Chinese real estate giant, revealed total losses of $81 billion over the past two years in a long overdue earnings report.
• ❌🌐 Google is starting a new pilot program where some employees will be restricted to internet-free desktop PCs to reduce cyberattack risk.

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

in partnership with Life Atlas

• 🚨 Las Vegas police executed a search warrant this week in connection with the unsolved 1996 murder of rapper Tupac Shakur. | 🌿 Model and TV personality Gigi Hadid was arrested in the Cayman Islands for marijuana possession earlier this month; she was promptly released and later paid a $1,000 fine.
• 🦚📈 Peacock, NBCUniversal's streaming service, raised prices for the first time.
• 🍿 Barbie and Oppenheimer are projected to earn a combined $260+ million at the global box office this weekend; Warner Bros./Mattel’s pink-themed comedy is expected to lead the way with $165 million. | 💣💥 On an unrelated-but-semi-related note: Christopher Nolan wants Oppenheimer to be a cautionary tale for Silicon Valley.

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SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

in partnership with Wonder Tools

• 🐬🐋 Aquatic mammals like orcas, dolphins, and whales are essentially incapable of evolving to live on land ever again, per a new peer-reviewed study published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
• 🌐 The Biden administration yesterday announced a new cybersecurity label for commercial smart devices; the US Cyber Trust Mark will signify to consumers that devices stamped with it meet certain federal security standards.
• 🚀 Virgin Galactic announced the crew for its first-ever private space tourism flight, which is scheduled to launch as soon as August 10; the crew includes a former Olympian canoeist, as well as the first mother-daughter pair to travel to space together.

*From our partners: 🙌 Tools that make being creative and productive easier… Join 26,000 Wonder Tools subscribers and get the best resources, sites, and apps straight to your inbox – for FREE. Subscribe to Wonder Tools today and get their top 100 useful sites and apps.

MISCELLANEOUS

• 🌡️ Phoenix, AZ, set a new all-time record with 19 consecutive days where temperatures reached at least 110°F; the city’s low temp yesterday was in the 90s for a ninth straight day, also a new record. (Background)
• 🏥 Nearly three million Americans have been cut from Medicaid coverage since April, when Covid-era protections expired, per new data published Monday; roughly 75% of them may still be eligible but failed to renew their insurance in time.
• 🇲🇽 US officials apprehended 99,545 individuals at the Mexico border last month; it’s the first time this figure has fallen below 100,000 since February 2021; it also marks a 42% decline since May, when the Biden admin implemented a series of new immigration policies to replace the pandemic-era Title 42. (From the Left | From the Center | From the Right)

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• 🇺🇸 Every US state's highest (and lowest) rated tourist attraction, based on millions of reviews.

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University of Michigan senior Cassidy Beach was studying abroad on the island of South Caicos in the West Indies, when she stumbled upon a message in a bottle. 

After running back to join her classmates and break open the bottle, she and the others were shocked to find a letter in perfect condition inside, dated September 30, 2004.

✍️ Meeting the author... The letter was signed by Nantucket fisherman Pennel Ames.

• As it turns out, the retired fisherman had a bit of a thing for throwing letters into the ocean – he and his wife released hundreds of messages in bottles over a six-year stretch in the early 2000s. Their letters have since been found all over the world.

🌍 It's a small world... Cassidy reached out to Pennel after finding the letter back in April, and it turned out both of them would be on the East Coast this summer. They met up in Nantucket last week to swap travel stories and discuss the adventures of Pennel's other letters.

(keep scrolling for the answers)

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1. The Shawshank Redemption (1994; rated 9.3/10) 
2. The Godfather (1972; rated 9.2/10)
3. The Dark Knight (2008; rated 9.0/10)