• ☝️ You’re looking at some of the 25 winning images from Capture the Atlas‘ annual Northern Lights Photographer of the Year competition.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

in partnership with Switzerland Tourism

• 📉 US markets fell across the board (S&P: -0.6%; Dow: -0.5%; Nasdaq: -0.6%). | 📉 Nvidia shares closed down 2.6% after China opened an investigation into the chipmaker's potential violations of antimonopoly law.
• ⚖️ Rupert Murdoch's attempt to amend his trust to ensure his eldest son Lachlan receives control of his media empire was unsuccessful; a judge ruled yesterday the father and son had acted in "bad faith" in their effort to amend the trust.
• 💼 McKinsey promoted its smallest group of partners in years. | 🍫 Mondelez is reportedly exploring a takeover of chocolate-maker Hershey. | 🍏 Apple topped the Wall Street Journal’s list of the best-managed companies of 2024.

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SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 🏆 The 2025 Golden Globe nominations were released; crime musical Emilia Pérez led the pack with 10 nods.
• 📰 LA Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong announced plans to add an AI-powered “bias meter” to the publication’s news articles starting in January.
• 🥽 Apple’s Vision Pro might add support for PlayStation VR controllers; the companies have met to discuss a potential partnership, per Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

in partnership with Paleovalley

• 🤖📹 OpenAI released Sora, its latest AI video-generation model that generates high-definition clips based on a prompt or image.
• 🤖🧠 AI-powered brain scans were twice as accurate as doctors at reading the brain scans of patients who suffered strokes in a new study.
• 👃⚔️ Barbarian warriors who battled the ancient Roman Empire likely snorted stimulants before or during battle, per archaeologists who recovered 200+ small, spoonlike objects.

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MISCELLANEOUS

• ⚖️ Daniel Penny was acquitted of criminally negligent homicide in the 2023 chokehold death of Jordan Neely, a 30-year-old homeless man, on a NYC subway train.
• 🇭🇹 Haiti gangs killed over 180 mostly elderly people under orders from a warlord who suspected them of giving his son a severe illness via witchcraft, per UN officials.
• 🧑‍⚖️📱 TikTok is asking a federal appeals court to temporarily halt a law that could ban the platform from US app stores next month as it prepares an appeal to the Supreme Court. (Background)

CLICKBAIT

• ❄️🏘️ America’s Most Beautiful Small Towns for a Winter Getaway.