In today’s edition:

• 🏭 The world’s largest carbon removal plant is open for business
• 🍟 Fast food vs. fast casual – a battle is brewing
• 🎓 America’s top issues, according to college students

… and more.

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news should be a ~5.17-minute read (1,374 words).

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“A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.”

–Lao Tzu (6th-century B.C.)

The world’s largest carbon removal plant is now open for business. This week, Swiss climate tech company Climeworks officially began operating its Mammoth plant in Iceland, which represents a stepping stone to even bigger carbon removal plans in the US.

Mammoth is the latest industrial plant built to suck carbon dioxide out of the air like a giant vacuum cleaner, a process known as direct air capture (DAC). To keep the captured CO2 from escaping, Climeworks partnered with local company Carbfix to lock the gas away deep underground, where it eventually becomes solid rock.

• Once construction is fully completed later this year, Mammoth will be able to capture ~36,000 metric tons of CO2/year – nearly 10x as much as its predecessor, which formerly held the world record.
• However, that’s a relatively small figure in the grand scheme of emissions reduction, considering Microsoft alone emitted ~13 million metric tons of CO2 in 2022.

Climeworks and similar companies are taking advice from Matthew McConaughey and looking to pump those rookie numbers up. How? By turning their attention to the US, where the federal government is distributing $3.5 billion in funds from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law for the development of at least four DAC hubs. Each of these projects has a goal to capture at least 1 million metric tons of CO2/year.

• Two such projects have received a collective $1.2 billion in government funding to date, including an initiative in southwestern Louisiana that uses Climeworks’ DAC technology.

👀 Looking ahead… If all of the 22 proposed DAC projects around the world come to fruition, they could remove 12 million metric tons of CO2 by the end of the decade, per a BloombergNEF analysis. Overall, the global carbon capture industry is projected to reach 279 million metric tons of CO2 removal/year by 2030.

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🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia’s Noem, the world’s biggest construction project, is working through some issues. Noem is a planned, built-from-scratch megacity in western Saudi Arabia featuring a number of construction projects worth hundreds of billions of dollars. The most ambitious of these is “The Line” – a pair of Empire State Building-sized skyscrapers designed to run 105 miles long, aka the length of Delaware, and house 9 million people. Saudi Arabia recently downsized the Line’s first phase – from 10 miles of construction by 2030, to 1.5 miles – amid reports that its projected overall cost has ballooned from $500 billion to $2+ trillion.

💥 Israel-Hamas war: In an interview yesterday, President Biden said the US will stop sending offensive weapons to Israel if the country launches a full-scale invasion of the Gazan city of Rafah, which Israel says is Hamas’ last stronghold in the region. The comments came hours after White House officials confirmed the US has halted a planned shipment of weapons to Israel and is reviewing other proposed arms deals in an effort to prevent a Rafah invasion.

🇫🇮 Finland banned political strikes longer than 24 hours. In addition to placing a time limit on political strikes, the new law also introduces fines for disrupting Finland’s labor market, effective starting in July. The measure came as strikes by Finnish trade unions, who oppose the government’s recent labor market reforms, have disrupted the country’s economy in recent months.

The draw of fast food has always been simple: it’s fast, easy, and cheap. But the third value prop is increasingly starting to go by the wayside.

• A recent FinanceBuzz report found fast-food prices have risen 60% on average between 2014 and 2024. For context, inflation was ~30% over that same period.

These price increases have been especially pronounced since Covid. According to a recent analysis from TheStreet, the cost of 30 popular items at six prominent fast-food chains increased an average of 77.4% between December 2019 and March 2024.

Fast-casual dining chains are seeing an opportunity to steal market share. Dine Brands, which owns Applebee’s and IHOP, is currently working on an ad campaign designed to draw consumers away from fast food and toward its brands. “The Whole Lotta Burger for $9.99 – if you can have our burger for $10, which is great quality… and eat in our restaurant, in our experience, why would you eat a $10 burger out of a paper bag in your car?” Dine Brands CEO John Peyton told CNBC.

And Applebee’s/IHOP aren’t the only casual dining chains utilizing this approach. Chili’s recently rolled out an ad campaign that calls out the Big Mac and other fast-food burgers for their prices.

Bottom line: As inflation continues to squeeze households, consumers are being more wary with their discretionary spending – leaving brands to compete for a bigger piece of a smaller pie.

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"Hakuna Matata" means no worries. 

But, unlike the song, students are burdened with some worries about the current state of America. Healthcare, education, and the economy are among the most important issues of concern for US college students, according to new polling data from Generation Lab.

By the numbers: The survey, conducted May 3-6, asked 1,250 college students from two- and four-year schools across the country to select up to three issues they consider most important to them, out of a list of nine options.

• Healthcare reform (40%), educational funding/access (38%), and economic fairness/opportunity (37%) were the most selected issues…
• …followed closely by racial justice and civil rights (36%), climate change (35%), and gun control/safety (32%).
• College students’ least important priorities were immigration policies (21%), national security/terrorism (15%), and the conflict in the Middle East (13%).

👆 One interesting thing: Only a small minority of college students (8%) said they had participated in either side of the ongoing protests over the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, the survey found.

💬 Quoted: “We found five, and then we found a general format that could potentially produce at least five additional proofs.”

• Calcea Johnson and Ne’Kiya Jackson, two college freshmen who discovered a groundbreaking new, trigonometry-based method for proving the Pythagorean theorem as high school seniors, are back at it again. In a new 60 Minutes interview, the duo said they’ve uncovered at least five more proofs centered around the simple equation – A^2 + B^2 = C^2 – that’s haunted the nightmares of math students for decades.

🫀 Stat of the Day: A surprisingly large percentage of American adults – even on the younger side – are at risk of developing heart disease, per a study published yesterday in JAMA. Researchers found 89.8% of US adults over the age of 20 are in the early, middle, or late stages of a recently defined syndrome that leads to heart disease, with that figure including the 9.2% who have the disease already.

🤔 Did You Know? Roughly 85% of all RVs sold in the US are manufactured in Indiana, with two-thirds of that production coming from Elkhart County alone.

📰 Worth a Read: The company that makes every other company’s vibe → (The Hustle)

• ☝️ The Olympic torch traveled across the Mediterranean Sea from Greece to France yesterday; it'll make ~400 stops on its journey from Marseilles to Paris, where it will arrive in time for the Opening Ceremony on July 26.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

in partnership with Hedonova

• 💰 US markets closed mixed (S&P: -0.0%; Dow: +0.4%; Nasdaq: -0.2%); the Dow rose for its sixth straight session.
• 🪙 FTX said it will fully repay all of its creditors, except the government, in cash plus interest.
• ⚖️ The fraud, conspiracy, and racketeering trial of Bill Hwang, the founder of now-defunct Archegos Capital Management, whose $36 billion collapse in 2021 led to billions in investor and bank losses, began yesterday. (Read more) | ⚖️ The DOJ is reportedly investigating whether Tesla committed securities or wire fraud by misleading investors and consumers about its vehicles' self-driving capabilities.

*From our partners: 🌎📈 The fund with alternate investments diversified across the world… Rare paintings in Japan. Cocoa farms in Ghana. Data centers in Singapore. Office property in Yunan. Hedonova gives you exposure to investments normally inaccessible to everyday investors. Learn more about Hedonova.

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 📺 Warner Bros. Discovery is reportedly planning new cost cuts, as well as a Max price-hike. | 📰 The NY Times added 210,000 new subscribers in Q1, largely users who signed up for bundles; the news org now has ~10.5 million subscribers overall, up ~8% from a year earlier.
• ⚾ Ippei Mizuhara, MLB star Shohei Ohtani’s former interpreter, will plead guilty to bank fraud and tax evasion; Mizuhara has been accused of stealing ~$17 million from the baseball player and using it to place illegal bets; he faces up to 33 years in prison. | 🏀 Denver Nuggets center Nikola Jokić won the NBA MVP for the third time in the past four seasons.
• 🦚 A new TV mockumentary series set in The Office universe will soon debut on Peacock; the show, which follows a struggling Midwestern newspaper, was put together by The Office creator Greg Daniels and Nathan For You co-creator Michael Koman.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

in partnership with Slumber

• 🤖🔍 OpenAI is reportedly designing an AI-powered search product that will compete directly with Google.
• 🐳 Sperm whales employ a system of communication much more sophisticated than previously believed, per a new study.
• 🚀 Boeing Starliner's first crewed mission to the International Space Station has been rescheduled for May 17. (What’s the big deal?)

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MISCELLANEOUS

• ⚡🍋 Panera is phasing out its Charged Lemonade, a highly caffeinated beverage that has been blamed for at least two deaths in lawsuits.
• ⚖️ Elizabeth Holmes, the convicted Theranos fraudster, had her prison sentence reduced for the second time; she’s now scheduled for release in 2032. | ⚖️ Former President Trump’s classified documents trial in Florida was postponed indefinitely due to various pretrial issues. | ⚖️ A Georgia appeals court agreed to hear former President Trump’s appeal of a disqualification ruling that allowed Fulton County DA Fani Willis to remain on Trump’s election interference case.
• 🏛️ The House voted 359-43 to block a resolution from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) seeking to remove House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) from his leadership role.

CLICKBAIT

• 🤔🎹 Was Ludwig van Beethoven's deafness caused by lead exposure?

We bring you the most unusual, off-the-wall and occasionally laugh-out-loud headlines from this week.

• Zero regrets: Firefox power user kept 7,500 tabs open for two years → (TechSpot)
• Vultures deemed 'too drunk to fly' after dumpster diving taken to 'rehab' center → (Fox News)
• To fend off tourists, a town in Japan is building a big screen blocking the view of Mount Fuji → (Associated Press)
• Zoo In China Stages Phony Panda Exhibit In Which Two Dogs With Dyed Fur Were The Main Attraction → (NY Post)
• Alligator visits bank drive-through, 'did not have an account' → (UPI)

Yesterday, we covered a growing amount of research indicating that while mental health awareness campaigns are helpful for some young people, they can also have a negative impact on adolescents as a whole.

❓ Our question to you: In your opinion, are younger Americans overexposed to the subject of their mental health?

• 👍 Yes: 60%
• 👎 No: 23%
• 🤷 Unsure/other: 17%

Click here to read more of the best longform responses.

+Note on sample size: We received 3,895 votes and 352 longform responses.

The Glendale, Arizona, Fire Department got a unique call asking for help earlier this year. The task? Rescue a goat that got onto someone's roof.

🐐 Something you don't see every day... The homeowner first called animal sanctuary owner Lisa Buccigrosse, who then got in touch with the fire department to assist with the rescue.

• After carefully corralling the goat around the rooftop, the animal was safely rescued and returned to its owner.

Which country, pictured above, is the most mountainous in the world in terms of area covered?

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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.

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Bhutan, which is 98.8% covered by mountains