• ☝️ Four people in Southern California were arrested and charged with insurance fraud after they claimed their cars were trashed by a bear – but videos submitted to the insurance company allegedly show a person in a bear suit instead.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

in partnership with Cornbread Hemp

• 💰 US markets fell across the board (S&P: -0.6%; Dow: -0.5%; Nasdaq: -0.6%). | 💼 Initial jobless claims fell by 4,000 to 217,000 last week (vs. the 225,000 analysts forecast); it's the lowest level in six months. | 🗣️ Fed Chair Jerome Powell gave a speech on the US economic outlook yesterday. Watch/read it here.
• 🐭 Disney posted strong Q4 results buoyed by streaming growth and a strong summer box office.
• 🚗 Advance Auto Parts is closing 500+ stores and divesting another 200 independent locations as part of a turnaround bid.

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SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 🏈 Jon Gruden, the former Raiders and Buccaneers head coach, signed a multiyear deal to join Barstool Sports. And it’s got him feelin’ nicey. | 📺 Craig Melvin was tapped to replace longtime TODAY show co-anchor Hoda Kotb.
• 🏀🤝 Adidas inked a NIL deal with 16-year-old basketball star Kaleena Smith, marking the company’s first signing of a women’s high school hoops player.
• 📲 Bluesky, a social media site with a similar design to X, has added ~1.3 million new signups since the US election last Tuesday; meanwhile, X saw 115,000+ web users deactivate their accounts the day after the election, the highest recorded total in the Musk era by a factor of 2x.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

in partnership with Nuts.com

• 🤖📲 Google’s Gemini AI chatbot launched its first app for Apple’s App Store this week. | 🤖🧓 O2, the UK’s largest mobile phone network operator, launched a voice-based chatbot that mimics the voice of an elderly person and aims to waste the time of phone scammers.
• 🚫🚀 Eric Berger, a senior space reporter at Ars Technica, says there’s an “at least 50-50” chance that NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket "will be canceled" due to budget overruns and delays, per his inside sources.
• 🇦🇶🌴 The first-ever amber discovered in Antarctica provides evidence that rainforests once existed near the South Pole between 83 million–92 million years ago. | 💧☄️ A meteorite rediscovered in a drawer at Purdue University in 1931 contains evidence of liquid water being present on Mars 742 million years ago, per a new study. | 🪸 The world’s largest known coral was discovered in the waters of the Solomon Islands; with a circumference of 600 feet, the 300-to-500-year-old organism is visible from space.

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MISCELLANEOUS

• 🏛️🏥 President-elect Trump yesterday nominated Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to serve as Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. (From the Left | From the Center | From the Right)
• 🛸🏛️ A slate of four witnesses – including former gov’t and military officials – provided new testimony to Congress regarding UFO/UAP sightings; several claimed the US gov’t is shielding information on UAPs from the public. | 🗳️ The FBI raided the apartment of Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan; the NY Times reports the raid is part of an FBI probe into whether US users illegally placed bets on Polymarket, which allowed bets on the US election.
• 🇳🇿 New Zealand’s parliament temporarily suspended voting on a controversial bill after an opposition lawmaker started a haka and proceeded to rip up a copy of the bill. | 🌧️🇪🇸 Southern Spain has experienced severe thunderstorms in recent days, with some areas receiving a month’s worth of rain in 24 hours; it comes two weeks after Spain saw deadly flooding in the same general area.

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