What happened
Paramount Skydance yesterday settled an antitrust lawsuit with 12 states challenging its $111 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, clearing the merger’s last major obstacle. The states, led by California, had argued that combining the two major Hollywood studios plus streaming giant HBO Max and a host of cable channels would harm competition, cut film production and raise consumer prices. There were also concerns about combining CNN and Paramount’s CBS News division under David Ellison, an ally of President Donald Trump.

Who said what
California Attorney General Rob Bonta (D) said the settlement was “not a vote of support for this merger,” but it “resolves our antitrust concerns” by “guaranteeing massive investment” of $1.5 billion in “domestic film production and providing enforceable guardrails to help keep cable prices competitive.” The five-year deal also includes $47.5 million for workers affected by the merger and a “News Editorial Independence Board” to “insulate” CBS News and CNN from “corporate intervention in newsroom decisions, a demand from several of the attorneys general,” said NPR. “How much power the board will wield remains unknown,” The New York Times said. 

What next?
A federal judge must approve the agreement, The Wall Street Journal said, but Paramount “expects to close the deal in about two weeks.”

What happened
CNN, Politico and MS NOW yesterday filed a federal lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump’s decision to ban them from the White House. CNN is one of five networks in a rotating pool that provides live coverage of presidential events, and, to demonstrate their objections to Trump’s press ban, the other four — ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox News — stopped their cameras indefinitely. 

Who said what
“As far as I know, there is no precedent either for a president to ban cameras or networks — or for networks to boycott an event in solidarity,” Hunter College presidential media expert Harold Holzer told The New York Times. “Thrilled to see it.” 

With the network cameras off, Trump was “inaudible” during yesterday’s ribbon-cutting ceremony for his new White House helicopter landing pad, Axios said. Trump tried to “shrug off the lack of network TV coverage,” The Associated Press said, but he has “long crowed about how the new helipad” would “impress Chinese President Xi Jinping” when he arrives tomorrow.

What next?
None of the major networks traveled to New York with Trump, “nor were they planning to be present at his meetings with foreign counterparts” at the U.N. General Assembly today, the Times said. “If the dispute remains unresolved,” the “most television-addicted president in history” will host Xi “without network cameras present.”

To be loved is to be smelled, at least according to the manosphere. In the newest internet trend, young men are “pheromonemaxxing,” opting to forgo hygiene rituals to emphasize their natural body odor and attract mates. The science behind human pheromones, however, is wishy-washy at best, and maximizing odor may also be putting their love life in a funk.

A spinoff of the looksmaxxing trend, pheromonemaxxing is based on the idea that “natural body odor may contain chemicals that influence attraction” and that a person’s scent could make them “more appealing to a potential mate,” said NBC News. Partaking in the trend involves “ditching deodorant, skipping showers” and in a gross escalation for the most committed, “drinking their own urine to ‘sweat out toxins,’” said Vice. 

Sex pheromones in some animals do attract mates, but pheromonemaxxing relies on the belief that humans are “like ants, moths, mice and other animals known to secrete pheromones,” said Forbes. Unfortunately, human mate-finding is far more complex.

Scientists have yet to find conclusive evidence about whether humans have or are able to detect pheromones. But even if humans do have pheromones, thumbing your nose at showering doesn’t mean you can “select for what remains on your body and what doesn’t,” said Forbes. It is “hard to selectively remain dirty.” Sweat can become a “cozy breeding ground for bacteria,” Australian researchers Samuel Cornell and Rob Brooks said at The Conversation. And that mixture will “start to cause a stench.”