Top stories
Spotify’s year-end Wrapped rolled out in early December 2025 with a new, attention-grabbing metric: a user’s “listening age,” an estimate of which historical era of music a listener engaged with more than their peers. The feature identifies a five-year span of songs that a person played disproportionately and converts that period into an implied age, … Read more
On Dec. 4, 2025 (updated 2:10 p.m. ET), the federal Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) postponed a decisive vote on whether to change the long-standing recommendation that newborns receive a hepatitis B vaccine within 24 hours of birth. Committee members raised sharp objections to the evidence presented, accusing some speakers of selective use of … Read more
Lead: U.S. equity benchmarks traded with little net change on Thursday as investors positioned for the Federal Reserve’s policy decision on Dec. 10 in Washington, D.C. Recent labor-market signals — a surprising slide in private payrolls from ADP and an unexpectedly low weekly initial jobless claims reading of 191,000 for the week ending Nov. 29 … Read more
Lead An independent inquiry concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin was morally responsible for the 2018 Novichok poisoning that led to Dawn Sturgess’s death. Sturgess, a 44-year-old mother of three, died in July 2018 after being exposed in June 2018 to a nerve agent concealed as a perfume bottle. The substance had been discarded following … Read more
Dec. 4, 2025 — Several European public broadcasters announced on Thursday that they will not participate in next year’s Eurovision Song Contest after the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) decided not to suspend Israel’s entry. Spain’s RTVE, Ireland’s RTÉ, the Netherlands’ AVROTROS and Slovenia’s public broadcaster said they will withdraw from the Vienna contest in May, … Read more
Lead The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has accepted a congressional request to investigate Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte after a November letter from top Senate Democrats asked for a review of his recent referrals of several officials to the Department of Justice. The referrals named New York Attorney General Letitia James, Sen. Adam … Read more
National Signing Day concluded this week, and most programs finalized the bulk of their classes on Wednesday. Several high-profile prospects in the Midlands region remain unsigned, with a mix of delayed decisions and planned signings stretching into the days after the official deadline. One of the major storylines was LSU’s heralded defensive-line group, which drew … Read more
Lead: A research team published in Science Advances (2025) that they fashioned working 3D-printing nozzles from mosquito proboscises, removed from euthanized insects under a microscope and bonded into plastic tips with UV-curable resin. Tests in the lab produced prints with line resolution between 18 and 22 microns and included 600-micron honeycomb lattices, a microscale maple … Read more
Lead: Cyclone Ditwah left a trail of flooding and destruction across Sri Lanka in early December 2025, with officials reporting more than 480 confirmed deaths as waters recede. Initial government estimates place reconstruction costs between $6 billion and $7 billion, an onerous burden for a nation still recovering from a 2022 economic collapse and decades … Read more
Paramount Skydance lawyers sent a Dec. 3, 2025 letter to Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav alleging the company’s sale process is unfair and ‘‘tainted,’’ and that it appears to favor Netflix. The dispute follows second-round bids submitted on Dec. 1, 2025 from Paramount Skydance (an all-cash offer for the whole company), Netflix and Comcast … Read more
Lead: New research published in Communications Earth & Environment links a major volcanic event around 1345 to the arrival of the Black Death in Europe beginning in 1347. The study finds evidence that large sulfur injections into the stratosphere cooled climates, triggering crop failures and a Mediterranean famine from 1345–1347. Those shortages prompted Italian city‑states … Read more
Lead: On December 4, 2025, Israeli forces conducted strikes on sites in southern Lebanon identified as Hezbollah positions, and issued evacuation notices to nearby villages. The warning specifically referenced Jibaa and Mahrouna and ordered residents to move at least 300 meters away from designated target areas. The incidents follow earlier clashes in the border region, … Read more
On Dec. 4, 2025, the U.K. government announced fresh sanctions and summoned Russia’s top diplomat in London after a judicial inquiry concluded that President Vladimir Putin authorised the 2018 Novichok operation that led to the death of Dawn Sturgess. The inquiry tied the same operation to the March 2018 poisoning of former Russian double agent … Read more
Lead: Paramount, led by David Ellison, sent a forceful letter to the Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) board this week alleging the studio’s sale process is “tilted and unfair,” raising fresh tension in a crowded bidding contest. The correspondence, delivered via Paramount’s lawyers at Quinn Emanuel, questions whether Netflix has received preferential treatment as second-round offers … Read more
Consumer Reports’ 2026 Brand Report Card, released on Dec. 4, 2025, shows Tesla rising sharply in U.S. brand rankings, moving from No. 18 last year to No. 10 this year. The shift follows improvements in several reliability measures and sustained strength in powertrain performance across Tesla’s line, Consumer Reports said. The organization attributes part of … Read more
