Good morning. On today’s docket:

• 💥 An Israel-Hamas update
• 🌶️ There’s a new hottest pepper in the world
• 😬 New York Mets owner Steve Cohen’s pocketbook is hurting

… and more.

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news should be about a 4.93-minute read.

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“Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.”

–Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

Major US cities from coast to coast are struggling to accommodate an influx of migrants who initially entered the US via the southern border, then were sent on buses across the country.

🤔 What’s going on?... Nearly a dozen cities – including NYC, Chicago, Philadelphia, LA, and Denver – have reported a spike in their legal migrant population since last spring, which is when Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) began busing the first of 50,000+ migrants to these self-titled “sanctuary cities” in a campaign to reduce the burden on towns along the southern border.

Initially, Democratic leaders in those cities denounced Gov. Abbott’s actions and vowed to be more welcoming. But some officials have reversed course in recent months, due to their cities’ infrastructure being overwhelmed by too many new arrivals.

• Both NYC Mayor Eric Adams and NY Gov. Kathy Hochul asked the Biden administration to enact stricter border controls and called for migrants to stop entering the US over the past month.
• Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker held a call with the White House this month to discuss how the city’s growing migrant population is straining housing and social services.
• Denver this month reduced the amount of time during which migrants can seek temporary shelter due to overcrowding, with the city averaging 300 new migrant arrivals via bus each day since early September.

📸 Big picture: US Border Patrol encountered a record-high ~2.4 million people crossing the southern border in both fiscal years 2022 and 2023, with roughly one-third of those encounters coming from migrants who attempted to enter the US multiple times.

• The overall figure is elevated compared to the previous decade, when Border Patrol recorded less than half-a-million encounters each year with the exception of 2019 (when encounters rose to ~860,000).

📊Flash poll (long-form): In your opinion, how should the US approach immigration?

• Click here to leave a response.

💥 Israel-Hamas war update: President Biden flew to Israel last night to meet with Middle Eastern world leaders in an attempt to prevent the ongoing war from spreading to other countries or militant groups, as well as to secure the release of ~200 Israeli hostages held by Hamas. The US military has also notified ~2,000 troops to prepare for a potential deployment to support Israel. In the Gaza Strip, an explosion yesterday at a local hospital killed more than 500 Palestinians (mostly civilians), with Hamas blaming the incident on an Israeli airstrike and Israel’s military saying it was a misfire by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, another militant group based in Gaza.

🇮🇳 India’s Supreme Court rejected the legalization of same-sex marriage. The ruling, which said the issue of same-sex marriage should be decided by India’s Parliament, comes five years after justices overturned colonial-era laws which criminalized homosexuality across India. As part of yesterday’s order, the Supreme Court also declared that transgender Indians can marry as long as one partner identifies as a man and the other a woman, and ordered the federal government to ensure certain fundamental protections for India’s LGBTQ+ citizens (including equal access to goods and services).

🇲🇽 Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel reportedly ordered its members to stop making fentanyl. The cartel, which is the leading exporter of fentanyl to America, says its recent ban on the drug came after increasing pressure from US law enforcement to dismantle the organization due to fentanyl’s impact on Americans. The illegal opioid can be fatal in doses as low as 2 mg, and is responsible for nearly 70% of the 107,000 overdose deaths in the US each year, per CDC data.

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The NHTSA this week opened a probe into Cruise, an autonomous driving subsidiary of General Motors, after reports of multiple incidents involving pedestrian injuries and the company’s driverless vehicles.

The incidents in question:

• A pedestrian was struck by a hit-and-run driver, which deflected them into a separate lane in front of a Cruise vehicle. The AV braked hard, but still made contact with the pedestrian and ended up trapping them for a period of time.
• A Cruise AV moving at ~1.4 mph struck a pedestrian who stepped into a crosswalk after the stoplight had turned green, allowing the car to proceed.

The NHTSA has also identified two further incidents from videos posted online. The agency’s probe applies to all 594 Cruise vehicles.

📸 Big picture: Cruise and Waymo, an autonomous driving subsidiary of Alphabet, are currently operating driverless taxi services in Phoenix and San Francisco, and are both in the process of rolling out said driverless taxis to more cities.

But, while some say things are going well, others say existing driverless cars are operating about as smoothly as a 35-year-old Midwestern road. There have been multiple reports of driverless vehicles in San Francisco making unexpected stops in travel lanes, impeding/colliding with emergency vehicles, hanging out in construction zones, and driving on sidewalks, in addition to doing a terrible job escaping from the police.

This week, on the YouTube show Hot Ones, Ed Currie, a chili pepper breeder and founder of the PuckerButt Pepper Company, showcased the hottest pepper in the world – Pepper X.

🌶️ How hot are we talking?... Pepper X, in addition to being Elon Musk’s favorite pepper, measures an average of 2.7 million Scoville Heat Units (the Scoville scale was created in 1912 to measure how many times capsaicin – the substance responsible for the burning heat taste – needs to be diluted).

The previous record holder, the Carolina Reaper (also developed by Currie) averaged 1.6 million SHUs. For context, a jalapeño measures between 2,000–8,000 SHUs, while a serrano can range between 10,000–23,000 SHUs.

There are only five people in existence that have eaten an entire Pepper X, Currie being one of them. The experience?

• “I was feeling the heat for three-and-a-half hours. Then the cramps came,” Currie told the AP. “Those cramps are horrible. I was laid out flat on a marble wall for approximately an hour in the rain, groaning in pain.”

🥵 Looking ahead… As a proprietary blend, Pepper X won’t be sold to the public. Meaning the only way to introduce your taste buds to unbearable pain that hurts so good (and your body to potential cramps that don’t hurt as good) will be through sold hot sauces.

🤔 Fun fact: Much of a pepper's heat is concentrated in the interior white placenta that holds the seeds, not the seeds themselves.

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💬 Quoted… “People stop me on the street all the time and say, ‘I didn’t know you speak Mandarin.’”

Thanks to a new AI tool, NYC Mayor Eric Adams – who only speaks English – has been able to send thousands of foreign-language robocalls to local residents who speak Spanish, Yiddish, Mandarin, Cantonese, and Haitian Creole.

• These multilingual robocalls are part of NYC’s new Artificial Intelligence Action Plan, a first-of-its-kind program that aims to evaluate AI tools, boost AI skills among city employees, and support “responsible implementation of these technologies to improve quality of life for New Yorkers.”

💰⚾ Stat of the Day: NY Mets owner Steve Cohen, whose team missed the playoffs this season, is paying a combined total of $70 million for Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer to pitch for the Astros and Rangers, respectively, in the ongoing American League Championship Series. (Sorry, Mets fans😬.)

🤔 Did You Know?... SPIDER FACT WARNING: There have been a total of zero confirmed deaths due to spider bites in Australia since 1979, after effective antivenoms were developed for the country’s only two poisonous species (funnel-web and redback spiders).

📰 Worth a Read: The secret life of Jimmy Zhong, who stole – and lost – more than $3 billion → (CNBC)

• ☝️ Disney Imagineers recently unveiled a new child-sized bipedal robot that – in addition to looking suspiciously similar to Pixar’s famous jumping lamp – can walk unassisted across difficult terrain, remain balanced after being shoved, and jump on top of anything resembling the letter “I.”

BUSINESS & MARKETS

in partnership with RYSE

• 💰 US markets closed mixed (S&P: -0.01%; Dow: +0.04%; Nasdaq: -0.3%). | 📈 Shares of VF Corp, owner of North Face and Vans, closed up 14% on news activist investor Engaged Capital took a stake in the company. | 🏦 Goldman Sachs reported a 33% decline in profit for Q3.
• 📱 T-Mobile is automatically raising prices for an unnamed number of customers unless they opt out.
• 🪙 Binance.US, the US division of crypto exchange Binance, halted withdrawal of dollars by its clients from the platform according to its updated terms.

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SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• ⚾ MLB Playoffs (best of seven): The Phillies took a 2-0 series lead against the Diamondbacks in the NLCS, while the Rangers hold a 2-0 series lead over the Astros in the ALCS.
• 📺🥊 Paramount’s Showtime is dropping all sports coverage at the end of this year, ending 37 years of programming based mostly around boxing and MMA.
• ⚖️ Alec Baldwin is expected to face new involuntary manslaughter charges over the 2021 killing of Rust cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, New Mexico prosecutors revealed yesterday; it comes six months after initial criminal charges against Baldwin were dropped.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

in partnership with Spoak

• 🛰️ NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope recently detected silica, a common element on Earth, in the atmosphere of an exoplanet for the first time.
• 📝 Marc Andreessen, co-founder of VC giant Andreessen Horowitz, published a “Techno-Optimist Manifesto” this week expressing strong faith in the net-positive power of technology for human civilization (it’s 5,000+ words, so buckle up).
• 🦠🔬 Cancerous cells in the human body use a newly-discovered and unique technique to influence other surrounding cells into turning cancerous, per a new peer-reviewed study.

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MISCELLANEOUS

• 🚭 The FDA moved one step closer to enacting a new rule that would ban menthol cigarettes and flavored cigars across the US. | 🚫 The Biden administration announced a series of new measures restricting the sale of advanced AI chips to China, Iran, Russia, and other countries.
• 📝 The FBI published its 2022 crime report on Monday; violent crime fell across the US to reach pre-pandemic levels, while homicides remained 25% higher compared to 2019.
• 🏛️ Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) failed to win the 217 votes needed to become House Speaker in an initial election held yesterday; a second ballot on Jordan’s candidacy is scheduled for later this morning. (Background | From the Left | From the Center | From the Right)

CLICKBAIT

• 🏙️❤️ The best & worst US cities for singles.

💭 Imagine this... You're on a train heading towards Strasbourg, France, for a work trip when all of a sudden, you find yourself in the happiest place on Earth. 

🏰 It's not a dream: This exact scenario happened to hundreds of members of the European Parliament when a mistaken signal rerouted their train to Marne-la-Vallée, the stop for Disneyland Paris.

• “‘When magic comes to life’ – will Disney’s slogan soon be that of the European Parliament?” tweeted (X'd?🤔) Emmanuel Foulon, who works with the parliament’s press team.
• But, alas. The mix-up only caused a 45-minute delay before the parliament members were back on track to their scheduled destination.

How it works: We provide an incorrect stat. Then you guess whether the actual number is over or under the stated value.

1. 🔠 120: Tiles in a standard game of Scrabble.
2. 🪐⛈️ 250 years: How long scientists think the “Great Red Spot," an ongoing storm on Jupiter, has existed.
3. 🦪 0.1%: Chance of finding a pearl in an oyster.

(keep scrolling for the answers)

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What to do: Copy your unique link below, then send it to anyone who you think would like the DONUT. Once you hit each milestone, you'll get an email with a link to claim your prize. (Pro tip: there's no need to ration points, you're entitled to a prize at each tier.)

Start referring.👇

1. 🔠 Under; 100 tiles.
2. 🪐⛈️ Over; scientists estimate the storm has existed for at least 358 years.
3. 🦪 Under; it's roughly a 1 in 10,000 chance (0.01%).

*$0 commission trading is available only to U.S. residents trading in the U.S. markets through Moomoo Financial Inc. Other fees may apply. For more information, visit moomoo.com/us/pricing. Accolades are not indicative of future performance. More information on the award can be found here.