Our daily journey around the world

🌌 2024 will bring the most intense northern lights displays in over two decades, scientists say. The Sun is projected to reach the peak of its 11-year solar activity cycle between January and October 2024, causing the northern lights to appear further south across the globe due to higher chances for solar flares, coronal mass ejections, and other forms of Sun-induced space weather. The current 11-year cycle is expected to produce significantly more solar activity – aka more instances of aurora borealis – than the previous cycle, which was the weakest in the past 100 years.

💥 Israel-Hamas war update: Israel’s military continued to hit the Gaza Strip with airstrikes yesterday, as its ground forces began pushing into Gaza City after fully surrounding the area last week. Hamas-controlled Gaza health authorities said more than 10,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have died since the war began on October 7. More than 1,400 people in Israel died in the attacks that sparked the war, while 24 Israeli soldiers have been killed since ground operations began in Gaza late last month. The heads of 18 humanitarian organizations issued a joint statement yesterday calling for an “immediate humanitarian cease-fire,” with UN officials saying the war has killed the highest number of its workers of any single conflict.

🇺🇸🇨🇳 Major US law firms are downsizing in China. Nearly half of the 73 largest US law firms in China shrank their domestic attorney presence over the past decade, per a new Reuters report. The firms cited a wide range of reasons for pulling back from China, including struggles to rebound from Covid, an ongoing property sector crisis, and new privacy restrictions limiting the transfer of sensitive data outside China.