Good morning. MGM Resorts is currently experiencing a cyberattack that’s rendered its corporate email, restaurant reservation software, digital room keys, and hotel booking systems unusable. The company disclosed on Wednesday that the attack represents a material risk to it doing business (obviously).

But how did hackers infiltrate MGM’s systems? To impact the entire company that much they’d need an uber-complex and technically sophisticated way in, right??

Wrong. The ALPHV/BlackCat ransomware group, which claimed responsibility for the hack this week, said it only took a 10-minute phone call + some social engineering tactics to infiltrate the systems. Per a post from the group’s X account: "All [we] did to compromise MGM Resorts was hop on LinkedIn, find an employee, then call the Help Desk."

Stay vigilant out there, folks.

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news should be about a 4.95-minute read.

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"Never say never. Because limits, like fears, are often just an illusion."

–Michael Jordan (b. 1963)

On Wednesday, a federal judge temporarily blocked an order issued last week by New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) that suspended the right to carry guns in Albuquerque, calling it a violation of residents’ 2nd Amendment rights.

⏪ Some quick background: New Mexico, which is an open-carry state, has seen an uptick in gun violence in recent years. It currently has the third-highest firearm mortality rate among all US states, at 27.8 per 100,000 residents, with ~60% of such deaths attributed to suicide.

The trend has been particularly visible in Albuquerque, the state’s largest metro area, where a record 196 homicides have occurred since the start of 2022 (the vast majority of which involved firearms).

• Last Friday, Gov. Grisham issued an emergency health order suspending the right to openly carry or conceal guns in Albuquerque for a 30 day “cooling-off period,” citing local firearm mortality statistics as well as the recent shooting deaths of three children.

The order sparked bipartisan backlash. Earlier this week, Albuquerque’s local county sheriff and the state attorney general – both of whom are Democrats – refused to enforce the governor’s order or defend it in court, saying it clearly violates the 2nd Amendment.

Republican state lawmakers also denounced the law as an infringement on the constitutional rights of New Mexico citizens, and called for impeachment proceedings against Gov. Grisham (which would require buy-in from Democrats).

👀 Looking ahead… Gun owners and civil rights groups have filed at least a half-dozen lawsuits challenging the Albuquerque gun ban, prompting Wednesday’s court order deeming the law unconstitutional and temporarily blocking it from being enforced while legal battles play out.

📊 Flash poll: Do you agree with NM Gov. Grisham’s emergency health order to suspend the right to carry guns in Albuquerque for a “cooling-off period”?

Yes

No

Unsure/other

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🇮🇹 Venice was not added to UN’s list of endangered World Heritage sites, despite a recommendation from experts. Italy was warned in July that a panel of experts voted to add Venice, a World Heritage Site since 1987, to the UN’s endangered list due to the risks posed by climate change, mass tourism, and overdevelopment. But after Venice officials announced several new conservation efforts over the next two months, including an entry tax for non-overnight visitors, a majority of UN member states voted yesterday to keep the “City of Canals” off the endangered list.

🏦💶 The European Central Bank raised interest rates to a new record high. Yesterday’s decision to hike rates from 3.75% to 4.0% marked the central bank’s tenth straight rate increase, though a majority of ECB officials say they expect to hold rates steady for the foreseeable future, since the current level should be sufficient to tame inflation. The rate hike came days after a government report found average inflation across the eurozone – the 20 EU countries that use the euro currency – will be roughly 5.6% in 2023.

🇨🇳🤝🇻🇪 China and Venezuela upgraded their diplomatic ties to an “all-weather” partnership. Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro met with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday to sign a series of bilateral cooperation agreements across a wide range of areas, including oil, trade, finance, education, tourism, and civil aviation. President Maduro also said Beijing agreed to train some Venezuelan citizens as astronauts and eventually send them to the moon on a Chinese spacecraft.

Two weeks from today, the Sphere – a 366-foot-tall orb located in Las Vegas with the ability to project virtually any image/scene onto itself – will host its first concert.

And it’s been a long time coming.

🔮 Background: The project – the brainchild of Knicks’ owner James Dolan – began the better part of a decade ago, with the goal of building an event venue boasting 17,500 seats, an interior wallpapered with “the highest-resolution LED screen on Earth,” and a glowing exterior that made it look in early renderings like a fireball dropped from the sky, Bloomberg reports.

And the proposed spectacle didn’t stop there.

• During the day, the Sphere would sit as a tourist attraction, outdoing a giant-screened IMAX theater experience with its own superpumped arsenal of “immersive entertainment” flourishes, including wind effects, temperature shifts, seats shaking, and scents wafting through the building, per Bloomberg.
• Then at night, the plan was to invite the world’s bigger musical acts to perform and experiment with the Sphere’s novel technology.

This vision is about to become a reality. U2 will be headlining a series of kickoff shows that begin September 29. And after that point, the Sphere, which cost ~$2.3 billion to construct, will be open for business, with another one currently being constructed in London. Which begs the question – is this the future of in-person entertainment?

Waiting at the airport and feel a burning desire to make an oat milk latte at a do-it-yourself coffee bar, then drink it in an Osaki massage chair while savoring high-end Korean BBQ and a smattering of different finger foods? Hit up an airport lounge.

But if you’re having trouble choosing which one to enter, that’s understandable. Because the airport lounge arms race is in full swing.

• Chase has opened two airport lounges, with more scheduled to debut this year.
• American Express, the lounge pioneer, has 15 such facilities for travelers and is expected to open two more this year.
• Capital One currently has one lounge open to the public, with at least two more slated to open this year.

📈 Driving the race… Young folks want travel-related perks – free lounge access is listed in the top three – and data shows these perks are a key reason why people get and keep premium credit cards.

• Despite its high fee, the Platinum Card has become American Express’ most popular product among millennials and Gen Z, partially due to its travel perks, the AP reports.
• Chase execs say 70% of demand for cards with fees is driven by millennials and Gen Z.

📸 Big picture: Credit card companies aren’t the only ones catering to travelers who want to hang out in a bathrobe and kick their feet up in between connecting flights. Delta, United, and American Airlines have also built extensive lounge networks and are investing in building more – all while increasingly restricting who can access them to combat complaints of overcrowding.

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💬 Quoted… “[We] have to be sensitive about antitrust considerations.”

Google is currently in the midst of a historic antitrust trial. But the company, which controls ~90% of the online search market, has reportedly been preparing for this moment for about two decades. Government lawyers allege that as far back as 2003, Google employees were instructed by execs to use specific phrases to ensure they don’t come across like monopolists. Some examples:

• Avoid discussions of “scale” and “network effects”
• We do not “leverage” anything
• We don’t “lock up” or “lock in” our users/partners
• We don’t “bundle” or “tie” products together
• Avoid metaphors involving wars or sports, winning or losing

📉 Stat of the Day: The official poverty rate for Black Americans declined to 17.1% in 2022, the lowest on record dating back to 1959, according to Census data released Tuesday. For reference: Asian Americans’ poverty rate was 8.6%, white Americans’ rate was 10.5%, Hispanic Americans’ rate was 16.9%, American Indians/Alaskan Natives’ rate was 25.0%, and the rate for people of two or more races was 12.2%.

🤔 Did You Know?... The king cobra snake isn’t technically a cobra – the species’ name comes from its propensity to eat other snakes, cobras included.

📰 Worth a Read: Inside Exxon’s Strategy to Downplay Climate Change → (WSJ)

• ☝️ You’re looking at a rare – but not unheard of – natural interaction between two species native to the forests of Japan, in which a macaque monkey playfully rides on the back of a sika deer.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

in partnership with Moomoo

• 💰 US markets closed up across the board (S&P: +0.8% | Dow: +1.0% | Nasdaq: +0.8%). | 📈 Arm Holdings, the SoftBank-owned chip giant, raised ~$5 billion at a $54.5 billion valuation in its IPO late Wednesday; Arm shares closed yesterday up nearly 25%.
• 🛒 Global retailers lose roughly $100 billion each year due to policy abuses like return fraud and coupon stacking, per a new study by anti-fraud company Riskified.
• 🪧🚗 The United Auto Workers union officially went on strike against the Big Three US automakers at midnight last night; the strike is projected to cost the US economy at least $5.6 billion over its first ten days.

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SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 📺 Real Time with Bill Maher will air new episodes on HBO starting next week following a four-month hiatus due to the ongoing writers strike; Drew Barrymore also brought back her daytime talk show this week following a similar pause.
• 🛸 Rick and Morty co-creator Justin Roiland inappropriately pursued nearly a dozen young fans, one of whom accuses him of sexually assaulting her, per a new NBC News report; Roiland pleaded not guilty to felony domestic battery and false imprisonment charges this past January, with the case later being dropped.
• 🏈 The Philadelphia Eagles beat the Minnesota Vikings 34-28; see full NFL Week 2 schedule and predictions.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

in partnership with EnerHealth

• 🐖 A genetically-modified pig kidney successfully functioned inside a human body for about two months, marking the longest-ever documented case of its kind.
• 💊 The psychedelic drug MDMA (aka Molly) taken alongside therapy appears effective at treating the symptoms of PTSD, per a new Phase 3 clinical trial; the company behind the trial plans to apply for FDA approval in the coming weeks.
• 🛸 NASA hired a new UFO research director, but opted to keep their identity a secret over fears of harassment.

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MISCELLANEOUS

• 💰 Between $100 billion and $130 billion worth of pandemic-era unemployment insurance payments were fraudulent, per the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office; that figure represents 11%-15% of all such payments.
• 🧑‍⚖️ A federal judge struck down the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which has allowed ~600,000 young undocumented immigrants to avoid deportation and work legally in the US, for the second time in two years; the case is expected to end up before the Supreme Court. (From the Left | From the Center | From the Right)
• 🏛️ Hunter Biden, son of President Joe Biden, was indicted on three federal gun charges yesterday; it comes two months after the collapse of a plea deal in which Hunter would have pleaded guilty to misdemeanor tax charges and avoided prosecution for the gun charges. (From the Left | From the Center | From the Right)

CLICKBAIT

• 😊 America’s happiest states in 2023.

In 2017, an anonymous resident of Pombal, Portugal, found a few mysterious fossils in his backyard while finishing construction work, so they called a research team to come collect the pieces.

• A five-year-long excavation ensued, and scientists now believe the remains of the largest sauropod dinosaur ever found in Europe were hiding in the resident's backyard.

🔦 The ultimate treasure hunt: Sauropods were four-legged herbivorous dinosaurs with long necks and tails. So far, an “important set of elements of the axial skeleton” has been collected from the 82-foot-long dino.

Coming at you hotter than the sidewalks of Phoenix, it’s the DONUT’s weekly news quiz.

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

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

☝️ Recipe #1:

• Lamb
• Garlic
• Ginger
• Sunflower oil
• Onion
• Cumin
• Nigella seeds
• Madras spice paste
• Basmati rice
• Curry leaves
• Lamb/chicken stock
• Paneer
• Spinach

✌️ Recipe #2:

• Spinach
• Strawberries
• Pecans
• Feta
• Red onion
• Poppy seed dressing

3️⃣ Recipe #3:

• Bread
• Eggs
• Milk
• Vanilla extract
• Cinnamon
• Cream cheese
• Honey

(keep scrolling for the answers)

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☝️ Recipe #1: Lamb biryani

✌️ Recipe #2: Spinach strawberry salad

3️⃣ Recipe #3: Stuffed French toast pockets