Good morning. It’s great to be back in your inbox. Hope you all had a better long weekend than Duke fans😉.

In today’s edition:

• 🤔 An update on TikTok’s situation
• 🗣️💰 The minimum-wage debate, revived
• 🌐 A new scientific breakthrough could drastically speed up the internet

… and more.

Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news should be about a 5.21-minute read (1,387 words).

P.S. First time reading? Subscribe here for free.

“Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.”

–Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)

TikTok is like a partygoer bent over backwards trying to pass under an elevated bar – currently in limbo.

Right now, a bill is sitting in the Senate that, if passed, would force ByteDance, the China-based owner of TikTok, to sell the video app within six months or face a ban from all US phones. And, while many experts and even some senators say the bill’s passage is a toss-up, the sharks are already circling.

Some of TikTok’s potential suitors:

• Consortium bids. Former Treasury Secretary and successful Hollywood producer Steven Mnuchin, former Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick, and Shark Tank star Kevin O’Leary are each reportedly working to put together an offer.
• Rumble. In mid-March, the online video platform shared a statement from its CEO offering to join other parties seeking to buy and operate the app in the US.
• Previously interested buyers, like Oracle or Microsoft. However – this could bring additional issues, since any tech giant purchasing TikTok will almost certainly be scrutinized by antitrust regulators.

The intrigue: TikTok’s algorithm, aka its “secret sauce,” was created in China, meaning the country's government would have to sign off on the technology being sold to a US company – which is about as likely as Caitlin Clark or Angel Reese missing a wide-open layup. To get around this, Mnuchin in his pitches to investors has reportedly floated the idea of rebuilding the app’s algorithm from the ground-up.

👀 Looking ahead… The Senate is expected to try and rework the recently passed House proposal when it returns from Easter recess next week. And, while the situation plays out, TikTok isn’t standing idly by. The app recently launched a $2.1 million TV ad campaign across the US to #KeepTikTok.

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🇮🇱 Israel had an eventful past few days. 1) On Thursday, Israel’s Supreme Court froze funding to ultra-Orthodox seminaries unless their students forgo a religious exemption from mandatory service in Israel’s military; 2) Tens of thousands of Israelis gathered in Jerusalem on Sunday to protest against PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s government (☝️), marking the largest protest since the Israel-Hamas war began; 3) Syria and Iran accused Israel of launching a missile attack yesterday on an Iranian diplomatic building in Damascus, which killed several top officers overseeing Iran’s covert operations in the Middle East.

🌍 Eastern Europe experienced a record two-and-a-half-day GPS jam. The attacks, which began on March 22, disrupted satellite navigation systems for 1,600 aircraft across Sweden, Germany, and Poland. The interference blocked all GPS service for the flights, forcing pilots and air traffic controllers to use less-effective navigational methods and increasing the risk of an accident. Experts say Russia is likely behind the unprecedented GPS jamming, given its recent history of similar, shorter attacks.

🇹🇷 Turkey's main opposition party won local elections across the country. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AK Party earned 36% of the popular vote in municipal elections held on Sunday, compared to a record-high 38% for the opposition Republican People’s Party. It marks the first time Erdogan's party didn’t win the popular vote since it started participating in elections in 2002. Analysts attribute the party’s decline in popularity to a cost-of-living crisis driven by 60+% annual inflation.

Yesterday, California’s new fast-food minimum wage law went into effect. Fast food restaurants in the state are now required to pay their workers a minimum of $20/hour, up from $16/hour previously.

• This new law applies to all fast food establishments that have sixty or more locations across the nation with at least one being in California, KQED reports.

On one hand: The state’s fast-food workers will see a meaningful pay bump that would’ve otherwise taken years to achieve (if ever). The UK implemented a minimum wage law in 1999, and, in a recent study to mark its 25th anniversary, the independent Low Pay Commission said workers would’ve been ~$7,500/year worse off had the policy not been introduced and pay rose in line with average wages.

On the other: For consumers, higher prices are on the menu. Chipotle, McDonald’s, Starbucks, Jack in the Box, and Shake Shack are all planning to raise prices, with some franchisees also laying off employees or cutting their hours.

🤔 Innnnteresting: Bloomberg reported in late February that California’s new minimum-wage law would not apply to Panera Bread, since restaurants producing and selling bread as a stand-alone menu item were exempt – a stipulation that would’ve benefitted a wealthy donor of Governor Gavin Newsom. However, the Newsom administration later said the law does apply to Panera Bread because the restaurant does not make dough on-site.

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One of the biggest first world probs? A slow internet connection. But that could soon be a relic of the past, thanks to a new breakthrough from UK researchers.

In a recent experiment, scientists from Aston University achieved download speeds of 301 million megabits/second using traditional fiber optic cables – or 1.2 million times faster than the average US broadband performance (242 Mbps).

And, while the number itself is remarkable, the researchers say the novel method they used is the truly exciting part.

The breakthrough: The researchers, using custom-built devices, figured out a way to send data via new wavelengths of light that were previously inaccessible in fiber optic cables (how fiber optic cables work). The scientists described their new wavelength bands as “equivalent to different colors of light being transmitted down the optical fiber.”

• Thanks to these new “colors” of light, the researchers were able to transmit far greater amounts of data in a shorter period of time compared to traditional methods.
• This solution is especially noteworthy because it works on most existing fiber optic cables, and doesn’t require any new infrastructure to drastically improve internet speeds.

👀 Looking ahead… The researchers’ next goal is to refine the method so that it can be rolled out by internet providers. For context, if implemented widely, scientists say the system would make downloading movies and large files near-instantaneous. Or put another way: you could download The Flash in a…really short amount of time.

💬 Quoted… “I’m not surprised that people are coming to watch… We are in a moment with women’s basketball.”

• If Women’s March Madness were a Tupac song, it would be “All Eyez on Me.” The tournament’s second round averaged 1.4 million viewers across ESPN platforms, representing a 121% increase from last year and making it the most-watched second round in history. And, while viewership data from the Sweet Sixteen and Elite Eight have yet to be published, all evidence points to another record-setting weekend, thanks to last night’s highly anticipated rematch between Iowa’s Caitlin Clark and LSU’s Angel Reese. Clark’s No. 1-seeded Hawkeyes ended up prevailing 94-87, and will face off against the No. 3-seeded UConn Huskies in the Final Four this weekend. No. 1 South Carolina will play No. 3 North Carolina State in the other contest.

⚖️🪙 Stat of the Day: FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison on Thursday for fraud, conspiracy, and money laundering related to the crypto exchange’s $8 billion collapse. SBF’s sentence is among the longest in US white-collar crime history, ranking behind Bernie Madoff (150 years) but ahead of Enron’s Jeffrey Skilling (24 years) and Theranos’ Elizabeth Holmes (11 years).

🤔 Did You Know?... ~40% of the US population can trace their ancestry back to immigrants who entered America via Ellis Island.

📰 Worth a Read: How Gen Z Is Becoming the Toolbelt Generation → (WSJ)

• ☝️ Easter Sunday celebrations across the globe this weekend included mass at the Vatican presided by Pope Francis, the annual Easter Parade and Bonnet Festival in New York, and the White House Easter Egg Roll in…DC.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

in partnership with Binoid

• 💰 US markets closed mixed yesterday (S&P: -0.2%; Dow: -0.6%; Nasdaq: +0.1%).
• 📉 Shares of Trump Media, the former president’s newly public social media company, closed 21% lower yesterday after it reported a net loss of $58.2 million last year and revenue of $751,500 in Q4 2023.
• ✉️✈️ The US Postal Service announced plans to make UPS its primary partner for moving cargo by air, replacing FedEx which had provided the service for 20+ years.

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SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 🏀 The men’s Final Four is set: No. 1 UConn will play No. 4 Alabama, while No. 1 Purdue will face off against No. 11 North Carolina State; action tips off on Saturday.
• 🎶 Beyoncé's Cowboy Carter, aka her first country music album, set a handful of streaming records on Spotify and Amazon Music following its release on Friday. (Background)
• 🍿 Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire earned $80 million at the domestic box office, marking this year’s second-highest opening weekend behind Dune: Part 2 ($81.5 million). | 🙏 Chance Perdomo, an actor known for his starring roles in Gen V and Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, died following a motorcycle crash at age 27.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

in partnership with Scott Kemper Imagery

• 🗣️🤖 OpenAI announced a new tool called Voice Engine that can recreate a person's voice from a 15-second recording; OpenAI said it’s taking "a cautious and informed approach" to the tool’s release, given its high risk for abuse. | 🏭🤖 Microsoft and OpenAI are reportedly planning to build a ~$100 billion data center by 2028 that will include an AI supercomputer called “Stargate.”
• 📧🎂 Google’s Gmail – which many people initially thought was an April Fool’s joke – celebrated its 20th birthday yesterday.
• 🌕🌱 NASA will try cultivating crops on the Moon for the first time as part of its upcoming Artemis III mission, which will return humans to the lunar surface for the first time since 1972.

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MISCELLANEOUS

• 🚫🕵️ Google agreed to destroy data on millions of users’ web searches as part of a settlement in a lawsuit claiming Google Chrome tracked the “Incognito” browsing mode without users’ knowledge. | 🌐📲 AT&T notified 73 million current and former customers that their data may have been stolen after the company found their sensitive information on the “dark web.”
• ⚖️ Alex Murdaugh, the former South Carolina attorney who’s currently serving a life sentence for killing his wife and son, was sentenced to 40 years in federal prison for stealing from clients and his law firm.
• 🚛 The US Environmental Protection Agency finalized new rules aimed at cutting greenhouse gas emissions from heavy-duty vehicles like semi-trucks and buses.

CLICKBAIT

• 🤔📅 The many possible origins of April Fools' Day.

... here comes Spider Lamb. Animal rescuer Natalie Renot recently saved the life of this little angel👆, who she's lovingly named Spider Lamb.

Spider Lamb was born with five legs, and was covered in maggots when Natalie found him neglected at a nearby farm. 

• After he was rushed to the vet in critical condition, Spider Lamb is now stable and expected to make a full recovery. 

💬 What they're saying: “He definitely has some abnormalities," veterinarian Dr. Jason Gulas told WLOX. "He might not be normal compared to other lambs, but I think that he will live a normal-for-him life."

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

1. Arist
2. Calc
3. Doc
4. Flu
5. Hered

(keep scrolling for the answers)

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1. Arist = Excellence (e.g., aristocracy)
2. Calc = Stone (calcium)
3. Doc = Teach (indoctrinate)
4. Flu = Flow (fluency)
5. Hered = Heir (hereditary)