Good morning, and welcome to the first DONUT of October. On the docket:

• ✅ Government shutdown, averted
• ⚖️ Sam Bankman-Fried’s fraud and conspiracy trial kicks off this week
• 🔮 The Vegas Sphere is open for business

… and more.

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news should be about a 4.37-minute read.

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"True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us."

–Socrates (470 - 399 B.C.)

On Saturday, Congress approved a bipartisan stopgap funding bill to temporarily avoid a government shutdown. It was signed into law by President Biden roughly half-an-hour before the midnight deadline.

🏛️🕚 How we got here: Earlier in the day, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) told fellow Republican lawmakers that he planned to reverse course and support bipartisan legislation in the Senate to temporarily keep the government open for 45 more days.

McCarthy’s announcement came after weeks of unsuccessful attempts to pass a reduced federal budget that all House Republicans could agree on. It also carried one stipulation: the House’s stopgap funding bill wouldn’t include $6 billion in aid to Ukraine, a measure many Republicans support and many Democrats oppose.

• After receiving McCarthy’s proposal, House Democrats deliberated for several hours over whether to accept the elimination of Ukraine aid, during which time Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) pulled a fire alarm.
• Bowman claims the incident was accidental, while Republicans accused him of stalling to give the Senate time to pass its own stopgap measure with Ukraine aid included (which ultimately failed).

The House eventually voted 335-91 to pass McCarthy’s stopgap funding bill, with all but one Democrat voting in favor and nearly half of Republicans voting against. Several hours later, the Senate approved the legislation by an 88-9 margin.

👀 Looking ahead… The measure signed into law by President Biden will fund the federal government through November 17, setting up another showdown over the 2024 budget just ahead of Thanksgiving.

• Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), part of a group of House Republicans pushing for a smaller federal budget, said yesterday he intends to call a vote to remove McCarthy as House Speaker over his support for the stopgap funding bill.

📊 Flash poll: Do you agree with House Speaker McCarthy’s decision to cut $6 billion in Ukrainian aid from the stopgap government funding bill?

Yes

No

Unsure/other

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🇬🇧 The UK government committed $104 million to build the world’s most powerful laser. Scientists say the new *Dr. Evil voice* laser beam, dubbed the Vulcan 20-20, will be "a [frickin’] million, billion, billion times brighter" than the Sun in the Sahara Desert, with each pulse delivering more power than the entire UK National Grid in a trillionth of a second. Once construction of the Vulcan 20-20 is complete in 2029, it will be used by scientists (and definitely not Dr. Evil) to gain insights into the fundamental properties of all matter, with a particular focus on essential products like batteries.

🇪🇸⚽ Spanish prosecutors charged FC Barcelona with “active bribery.” The soccer club is accused of paying more than $7.3 million to companies linked with the former vice president of Spain’s national refereeing committee between 2001 and 2018, per court documents made public late last week. Spanish prosecutors allege Barça executives paid the refereeing official to influence La Liga matches in the team’s favor, while the club claims the payments were for “technical advice” and didn’t violate league rules. If convicted, Barça could potentially be banned from football altogether, per The Telegraph.

🇫🇷 France is investigating LVMH CEO Bernault Arnault for alleged money laundering. French prosecutors said they opened a probe into Arnault, the world’s second-richest man with a net worth of ~$167 billion, after receiving an alert from the country’s anti-money-laundering unit in 2022 over what it considered to be suspicious money transfers between Arnault and a Russian businessman. A lawyer representing Arnault called the investigation absurd and unfounded.

Jury selection begins tomorrow in the fraud and conspiracy trial of Sam Bankman-Fried, the 31-year-old cofounder of FTX who oversaw the collapse of the once third-largest crypto exchange (valued at $32 billion at its peak).

SBF has pleaded not guilty to all seven charges he’s facing. If convicted, several of the counts would come with maximum sentences of 20 years in prison.

🪙 Background: For length’s sake, we decided to focus this piece on details of the upcoming trial (otherwise it’d feel longer than the return flight back home after a weekend in Vegas). But here’s a great TechCrunch article explaining how the FTX saga got to this point.

⚖️ What to expect over the next six-ish weeks:

• SBF’s defense: Daniel Richman, professor of law at Columbia University and former federal prosecutor, told Wired that in white-collar cases, there are only a few defenses: “It wasn’t me, I didn’t mean it, and the people that say I did are lying.” Based on interviews prior to his arrest and legal motions ahead of his trial, SBF appears to be teeing up the ‘ole “I didn’t mean it” defense playbook.
• Testimony from FTX/Alameda employees: FTX cofounder and former CTO Gary Wang, and Alameda Research’s former CEO, Caroline Ellison – the latter of which SBF had a romantic relationship with – both pled guilty in December 2022 to federal criminal charges in relation to the FTX collapse. They’re cooperating with prosecutors and should be major witnesses in the trial.

💬 Quoted… “Little did anyone know that it is this incident right here that would ultimately lead to the retaliatory shooting and death of Tupac Shakur.”

On Friday, Duane “Keffe D” Davis was arrested and charged with the 1996 murder of 25-year-old rapper Tupac Shakur in Las Vegas. Prosecutors allege Davis orchestrated a plot to kill Tupac in retaliation for an attack by the rapper and others on Davis’ nephew earlier that night.

• Las Vegas detectives say they had pieced together most of the circumstances leading to Tupac’s shooting within the first few months of their initial investigation in 1996, but lacked admissible evidence to seek charges until Davis admitted to the crime in a series of public interviews in 2018, as well as in his 2019 memoir.

🔮 Stat of the Day: $2.3 billion = the final construction cost to build the Sphere, Las Vegas’ newest concert spot, which ranks as the most expensive entertainment venue in city history. The Sphere’s opening concert (pictured above☝️) was held by U2 on Friday, kicking off the band’s 25-show residency in front of “the highest-resolution LED screen on Earth.” (Background)

🤔 Did You Know?... Curious how much money you’d need to literally buy the world? Well, the global stock market was worth a combined $109 trillion as of Q2 2023 (and that's only publicly traded companies).

📰 Worth a Read: The man who thinks he can live forever → (TIME)

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• ☝️ New York City was hit with a torrential downpour on Friday that dropped up to 8.7 inches of rain across the city, causing severe flooding in many areas; no deaths or injuries were reported, with most city operations resuming on Saturday.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

in partnership with Tugboat

• 💰 US markets closed mixed on Friday (S&P: -0.3%; Dow: -0.5%; Nasdaq: +0.1%); ​​the S&P 500 and Nasdaq posted their biggest monthly percentage drops of the year in September, while all three major indexes saw their first quarterly declines this year in Q3.
• 🧸📈 Toys R Us announced plans to open as many as 24 new stores in the US as early as next year.
• ✈️ United Airlines pilots approved a new contract with compensation increases of as much as 40% over four years; the carrier is the last of the three largest U.S. airlines to seal a deal with its pilots during an industry shortage. | 🤝 JetBlue reached an agreement to raise flight attendant pay; it also secured union support for its Spirit merger.

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SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• SCOREBOARD: 🏌️ Ryder Cup: Europe defeated Team USA by a score of 16.5-11.5 in Rome over the weekend. 🏈 CFB: No. 19 Oregon St. upset No. 10 Utah by a score of 21-7, while No. 20 Ole Miss beat No. 13 LSU in a 55-49 shootout; see other highlights from the weekend (link). | 🏈 NFL: The Bills beat the Dolphins 48-20 behind 5 TDs from QB Josh Allen, while the Eagles needed overtime to defeat the Redskins 34-31 (full Week 4 recap).
• 🤝 The XFL and USFL, two American spring football leagues, announced plans to merge and begin playing together next year.
• ⚖️ A Tennessee judge officially ended the Tuohy family’s conservatorship over former Ole Miss and NFL player Michael Oher, whose story is the subject of Oscar-winning film The Blind Side. (Background)

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

in partnership with Meowtel

• 🤖 Knowledge workers significantly degrade the quality of their work by asking OpenAI's GPT-4 to perform tasks it didn't train for, and then failing to spot the errors in its results, per a new study of 750+ strategy consultants from Harvard Business School.
• 🧬 A team of US and Swiss scientists managed to cure “irreversible paralysis” in mice with complete spinal cord injuries using a new gene therapy treatment, according to a new study published in Science.
• 🪱🌾 Earthworms contribute to roughly 6.5% of the world's annual grain production – a category that includes wheat, rice, maize, and barley – per a new study published in Nature Communications.

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MISCELLANEOUS

• 🎰 The Powerball jackpot rose to $1.04 billion after the latest drawing on Saturday night, marking the fourth-highest prize in the lottery’s history.
• 🙏 Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) passed away on Thursday at the age of 90; CA Gov. Gavin Newsom will now appoint a temporary replacement ahead of an election to fill the seat in 2024.
• 🏛️ The Senate unanimously voted to approve an official dress code for its members; the vote came weeks after Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer chose to stop enforcing the unwritten requirement.

CLICKBAIT

• 🌮 Yelp’s top 100 US taco spots in 2023.

Monday: Nobel Prize Week begins

Tuesday: Hunter Biden to be arraigned on three criminal gun charges; MLB playoffs start with Wild Card Series games; Mean Girls Day (it's October 3rd)

Wednesday: Nationwide test of the US Wireless Emergency Alert System (around 2:20 pm ET)

Thursday: National Do Something Nice Day

Friday: September jobs report; The Exorcist: Believer hits theaters nationwide; Drake's For All The Dogs drops

On Friday, we covered how major US streaming services are rolling out a series of changes aimed at growing, retaining, and monetizing their subscriber bases, as many Americans start to feel subscription fatigue.

❓ Our question to you: Out of all the streaming services to which you’re subscribed (if you have multiple), which are you least likely to cancel?

• Netflix: 26%
• Amazon Prime Video: 20%
• Disney+: 11%
• Hulu: 10%
• Apple TV+: 9%
• Max: 8%
• Paramount+: 8%
• Other: 8%

Click here to read some of the best responses.

+Note on sample size: We received 12,526 votes and 1,235 longform responses.

🤝 The collab we didn't know we needed... Pokémon is teaming up with the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam in an effort to teach the younger generations about the legendary Dutch painter. 

• Starting this week, the museum will feature a number of Pokémon-themed exhibits showcasing the mythical creatures in Van Gogh's classic impressionist style. 
• The unique Pokémon exhibit is a part of the museum’s 50th anniversary celebration.

💬 What they're saying: “This collaboration will allow the next generation to get to know Vincent van Gogh’s art and life story in a refreshing way," said Emilie Gordenker, general director of the Van Gogh Museum.

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

1. Burs
2. Calli
3. Fid
4. Hypo
5. Hyper

(keep scrolling for the answers)

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1. Burs = Pouch (e.g., bursitis, bursary)
2. Calli = Beautiful (calligraphy)
3. Fid = Trust (confidence, fidelity)
4. Hypo = Under (hypothermia, hypoglycemia)
5. Hyper = Over (hyperbole, hyperthermia)