• ☝️ You’re looking at some of the best science images of 2024, as selected by the journal Nature’s visuals team.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

in partnership with Live It Up

• 📉 US markets fell across the board (S&P: -0.4%; Dow: -0.6%; Nasdaq: -0.3%). | 🛍️ US retail sales increased 0.7% in November, above both analysts' expectations (0.6%) and October's 0.5% rise.
• 📹 Walmart employees in some stores are now wearing body cameras; the tech, widely used in law enforcement, has been expanding into retail to help deter conflict and prevent theft.
• 💰 Databricks, a privately held data analytics firm, raised $10 billion in financing at a $62 billion valuation. | 🤝 Honda and Nissan are reportedly holding merger talks.

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SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• ⚽🏆 The Vermont Catamounts’ men’s soccer team won the school’s first-ever national championship game in any sport with a walk-off goal Monday evening. | 🥊 Conor McGregor will fight Jake Paul in a future boxing exhibition match in India.
• 🥇📲 Temu was the most downloaded free app on the App Store this year, per Apple.
• 🎖️ The US Navy awarded Tom Cruise its top civilian honor for “outstanding contributions” with his roles in Top Gun and other films. | 🐶🍿 Bluey is getting a feature film that’ll stream on Disney+ starting in 2027.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

in partnership with Commons

• 🐷🏥 An Alabama woman recently received the third-ever pig kidney transplant in the US, in a successful operation that freed her from eight years of dialysis.
• 🤖📹 Google's DeepMind unveiled Veo 2, the latest update to the company’s AI-generated video platform, which is aimed at competing with OpenAI’s Sora tool. | 🤖🌊 Militaries around the world are developing new unmanned underwater drones.
• 💊 US pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) received payments from drugmakers like Purdue Pharma in return for not restricting opioid painkiller prescriptions, per a New York Times investigation.

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MISCELLANEOUS

• 🏛️🚁 Four federal agencies – the Pentagon, FBI, DHS, and FAA – published a joint statement Monday night reiterating their stance that recent drone sightings across the Northeast don’t pose a security risk.
• 💰⚡ The Biden admin will provide a record $15 billion low-interest loan to California utility giant PG&E to support projects aimed at fighting climate change and improving the electrical grid. | ⚖️ A former FBI informant pleaded guilty to fabricating his claim that President Biden and his son Hunter accepted bribes from Ukrainian energy company Burisma.
• 🇩🇪 German Chancellor Olaf Scholz lost a vote of confidence in Germany’s parliament, prompting him to dissolve parliament and trigger early national elections (set for February).

CLICKBAIT

• 💡 The 50 greatest innovations of 2024.