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Lead On 18 December 2025, late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel opened his Wednesday show by lampooning President Donald Trump after the White House announced an unexpected national address at 9pm ET. Kimmel framed the speech as a surprise primetime interruption that displaced season finales on major networks and used the moment to mock the administration’s recent … Read more

Lead U.S. consumer prices rose at a slower annual pace in November, with the Labor Department reporting a 2.7% year‑over‑year increase on Thursday. Grocery prices climbed 1.9% from a year earlier, while overall inflation eased from 3.0% for the 12 months ending in September. Government price collection was interrupted in October by a shutdown, and … Read more

Lead: On Dec. 18, 2025, the Bank of England trimmed its base rate by 25 basis points to 3.75 percent after official data showed consumer price inflation slowed to 3.2 percent in November. The decision, taken in central London, was the sixth reduction in roughly 18 months and was welcomed by the government as a … Read more

Lead Kristin Cabot, the woman who appeared on a Kiss Cam embrace with her boss at a Coldplay concert on July 16, 2025, has given her first extended account since the footage went viral. The short TikTok clip drew roughly 100 million views within days and sparked widespread condemnation, doxxing and threats. Cabot says she … Read more

Lead Diplomats meeting in Doha this week say the U.S.-backed ceasefire in Gaza depends on two linked moves: an international stabilization force on the ground and the disarmament of Hamas. The Trump administration has outlined a role for multinational troops to support demilitarization, but many potential contributors reject using force to seize weapons. Qatar and … Read more

Lead: Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid leader Dr. Mehmet Oz will hold a Department of Health and Human Services press briefing at 11 a.m. Thursday to unveil measures that would sharply restrict gender-affirming care for people under 18. Officials say the actions will use Medicare and Medicaid rules … Read more

On the second day of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, a longtime aide to President Vladimir V. Putin, Dmitri N. Kozak, refused an order to demand Ukraine’s immediate capitulation, according to people close to him. Kozak, who worked with Mr. Putin for roughly three decades and is 67 years old, later told associates he did … Read more

On Dec. 18, 2025, Pope Leo XIV appointed Bishop Ronald A. Hicks, 58, to succeed Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan as archbishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York. The move, announced by the Vatican, replaces a prominent and politically visible prelate with a pastor whose record in Joliet, Illinois, stresses quiet governance and pastoral … Read more

Lead Astronomers monitoring the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS report a faint, wobbling jet of gas and dust tied to the object’s rotation as it approaches Earth. The observation, made with the Two-meter Twin Telescope at Tenerife’s Teide Observatory, pins the comet’s spin at about 14–17 hours and is described in a paper submitted to Astronomy & … Read more

On Thursday, Dec. 18, 2025, CNBC host Jim Cramer published a short checklist of the top 10 items he said traders should monitor as U.S. markets prepare to close the week. The list, issued on CNBC’s platform, flags macroeconomic data, corporate earnings, and market-structure signals that Cramer identified as likely to move sentiment and intraday … Read more

Lead Apple released iOS 26.2 last week, and users across social platforms reported widespread frustration with slower performance, confusing interface changes and unexpected battery alerts. A longtime late-adopter who only moved to smartphones in 2013 describes an accidental upgrade that transformed daily phone use into a source of irritation. Online conversation—from Reddit threads to Bluesky … Read more

Researchers in Sweden reporting in Neurology found that adults who consumed 50 grams or more of high-fat cheese daily had a statistically lower risk of developing dementia over roughly 25 years of follow-up. The analysis used data from the Malmö Diet and Cancer cohort, tracking 27,670 participants between baseline dietary assessment and dementia diagnoses; 3,208 … Read more

Lead: The U.S. Consumer Price Index for November rose 2.7% on a year‑over‑year basis, below the 3.1% figure economists had expected, according to a delayed Bureau of Labor Statistics release on Dec. 18, 2025. Core CPI, which excludes food and energy, increased 2.6% year over year versus a 3.0% forecast. The report covers the period … Read more

Lead: NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) calculations show interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS reaches its nearest point to Earth early on Dec. 19. The JPL Horizons solution pins closest approach at 1 a.m. EST (0600 GMT) on Dec. 19, at about 1.8 astronomical units away — roughly 168 million miles (270 million kilometers). The comet poses no … Read more

Lead: The Financial Times reports that Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), the owner of Truth Social, has agreed to a merger valued at $6 billion with a fusion energy company that counts Google as a backer. The deal, disclosed in press reporting, would link a politically charged social-media business with a developer of advanced … Read more