'Connections' December 29: Hints and Answers for Puzzle #567
Judge allows charges to proceed against 5 in connection with Liam Payne's death
The Argentinian Public Prosecutor's Office revealed Monday that five people had been charged in connection with the death of singer Liam Payne.
abcnews.go.com
Choking emergency? How to do the Heimlich maneuver — and when to avoid it
A Mass General Brigham emergency care doctor shares step-by-step guidance on how to administer the Heimlich maneuver to adults, children and yourself in a choking event.
foxnews.com
Watch Courtney Stodden marry husband Jared Safier in intimate wedding video
Courtney Stodden and Jared Safier are giving Page Six’s “Virtual Reali-Tea” an intimate look inside their last-minute Palm Springs, Calif., nuptials. From emotional vows to tender moments with loved ones, watch the reality star and the TV producer tie the knot in their personal wedding video — shared exclusively with us. Check out the full...
nypost.com
James Franco kicked a chair, stormed off set after bad Oscars hosting reviews with Anne Hathaway: report
"He was upset because the reviews were not good. He was in a bad mood.” — Paul Rust.
nypost.com
Gonzaga men's basketball charter nearly collides with departing Delta flight in scary scene at LAX
The Gonzaga men's basketball team's charter plane was almost demolished by a Delta flight taking off at LAX on Friday, leading to an FAA investigation.
foxnews.com
Russia rejects Trump team’s proposed peace deal for Ukraine
Russia's foreign minister Monday rejected the peace proposal being floated around by President-elect Donald Trump's team to end the war in Ukraine.
nypost.com
Los Lakers envían a D’Angelo Russell a los Nets por Dorian Finney-Smith y Shake Milton
Los Lakers de Los Ángeles enviaron al base D’Angelo Russell a los Nets de Brooklyn a cambio del alero Dorian Finney-Smith y el base Shake Milton.
latimes.com
Why Ohio State's Emeka Egbuka draws inspiration from a former Oregon linebacker
Ohio State wide receiver Emeka Egbuka grew up an Oregon fan, a fandom that was strengthened when his mentor, Fotu Leiato, went on to play for the Ducks.
latimes.com
Craig Conover said he was working to be ‘husband material’ weeks before Paige DeSorbo split
The "Summer House" star announced their breakup on her podcast Monday, telling listeners it was "the right decision for both of [them]."
nypost.com
Jimmy Carter dies at 100: Letters to the Editor — Dec. 31, 2024
NY Post readers discuss Jimmy Carter's death at age 100.
nypost.com
How Jimmy Carter Lost His Job and Found His Mission: A Personal Remembrance
I saw up close how, after his election defeat, this complex man improbably rebounded to be crowned "America's greatest ex-president."
newsweek.com
‘Monday Night Football’ Schedule: Start Time, Channel, Where To Watch Tonight’s 49ers-Lions ‘MNF’ Game Live
The Lions and 49ers collide on Monday Night Football!
nypost.com
‘Guardian Angels’ founder slams New York sanctuary city policies after woman set on fire
After announcing his citizen law enforcement group, the “Guardian Angels," would be returning to patrol the New York subway, Curtis Sliwa is pushing back against New York Mayor Eric Adams and slamming the city’s migrant sanctuary policies, saying: “We’re in a crime crisis."
foxnews.com
Meghan McCain Reveals She Is 'Blessed, Lucky, and Relieved' After Health Scare
Political analyst Meghan McCain revealed a recent health scare, using the experience to urge women to prioritize their health.
newsweek.com
Whales Suddenly Wash Ashore on Long Island: What to Know
There have been emergency warnings for whales as an increased number are washing ashore on the East Coast.
newsweek.com
Libs giddy over US flags at half-staff to mark Jimmy Carter’s death even during Trump inauguration
"Carter is a hero, even on his way out,'' a Trump basher wrote on X.
nypost.com
Jimmy Carter the terrible, distorting reality in Gaza and other commentary
Jimmy Carter “was a terrible president but an even worse former president,” thunders National Review’s Philip A. Klein
nypost.com
LeBron James says he could — but won't — play at a high level for 5-7 more years
The NBA's all-time scoring leader turned 40 on Monday and reflected on his career. He also says he plans to retire with the Lakers.
latimes.com
Deion Sanders Slams Rumors About Preferences in Shedeur, Shilo NFL Landing Spot
Deion Sanders has called out reports that he would prefer his sons Shedeur and Shilo Sanders to play for a specific NFL team.
newsweek.com
TikTok is headed for a ban — but can Trump still save it?
Donald Trump’s account on TikTok displayed on a phone screen are seen in this illustration photo taken in Poland on December 26, 2024. | Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto/Getty Images With the TikTok ban poised to go into effect in January, President-elect Donald Trump once again waded into the debate over the app’s future this past weekend. Trump, who has sounded a much more favorable note on TikTok in the last year, is now calling for the Supreme Court to delay the implementation of a potential ban, which is set to take effect on January 19. In April 2024, Congress passed a law banning “foreign adversary controlled applications” from platforms like the Apple and Google app stores, which would effectively force TikTok’s parent company ByteDance to either sell the app or see it barred in the United States. The law received extensive bipartisan support amid national security concerns about surveillance and meddling by the Chinese government, but has been challenged on First Amendment grounds. Prior to Trump’s weekend request, the Supreme Court had already agreed to hear a case about the ban on an expedited schedule and will weigh oral arguments on January 10. Now, Trump is urging a pause on the policy so he can have time to find a “negotiated resolution.” Trump’s recent statement is the latest indication that he’s interested in protecting the app, despite previously backing a ban himself. That change of heart could be due to a slew of factors, including that TikTok offered him a way to reach young male voters during the election — something he has suggested when asked about the ban — and that one of his biggest donors, Jeff Yass, is a major investor in the app’s parent company. Regardless of the rationale, he’s now signaled multiple times that he intends to advocate for the app’s survival. “I have a little bit of a warm spot in my heart. I’ll be honest,” he said in mid-December. If the Supreme Court upholds the law, there are multiple ways Trump could try to save the app, former Justice Department attorney Alan Rozenshtein told Vox. He notes that the way the policy is written gives the president significant discretion in how it’s interpreted, meaning Trump could direct his attorney general not to enforce the law or even say that ByteDance has divested of the app when it hasn’t. Vox sat down with Rozenshtein, who is also a University of Minnesota law professor specializing in national security and tech, to walk through these potential scenarios and how likely each of them is. Broadly, Rozenshtein notes, the president-elect has wide-ranging authority he could use to protect TikTok in some form. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. Li Zhou Can the Supreme Court actually pause or delay the law? Alan Rozenshtein Yes, because the Supreme Court can do anything, but they shouldn’t based on existing law. Li Zhou Can you elaborate on that? Alan Rozenshtein In order to pause the law, to keep it from coming into force, the general standard is that the person seeking the pause has to show a reasonable likelihood of success on the merits. So it’s not enough just to say, “Hey, this law is coming into effect, please pause it so I can challenge it.” It’s, “I’m probably going to win anyway. So please pause it while I convince you that, in fact, I will win.” Li Zhou Trump’s argument is not necessarily that he’d win when it comes to repealing the law. It’s just that he wants time to try to navigate the situation and figure out a different resolution. Alan Rozenshtein Yeah, it’s just not how it works. Li Zhou If the Supreme Court decides to overturn the law or pause it — can we expect it to do so prior to the January 19 deadline? Alan Rozenshtein What the Supreme Court could do, and I suspect it will do, and that’s why they timed it this way, is they will do oral argument, they will go back, they will vote. I suspect there will be at least five, if not more, votes to uphold the law. The Supreme Court will announce that immediately, or the next day or two weeks later. And then they will say an opinion is forthcoming. We will know the answer very quickly. We won’t know the reason for some time. Li Zhou Will users still be able to access the app if a ban goes into effect on January 19? Alan Rozenshtein The law prohibits the app stores from distributing the app, but it does not require the app stores to go into your phone and delete the app. So if you have the app, you have the app. The bigger issue is actually around the cloud service provider Oracle. So TikTok runs on Oracle servers in the United States, like when you go to TikTok.com, right? Like the actual machine you’re accessing is owned and operated by Oracle. And so, on January 20, presumably Oracle shuts those computers off because it has to. What happens then? Presumably, TikTok, if it thinks it’s about to go dark, will have a contingency plan in place to shift its services from US cloud service providers to global cloud service providers … so there’s all these technical questions. Li Zhou The other issue is that if there are no updates to TikTok over time, it eventually becomes unusable and obsolete, right? Alan Rozenshtein That’s the theory. Li Zhou If the Supreme Court decides to uphold the law, what are the ways you see Trump being able to step in and save the app? Alan Rozenshtein So number one, he can get Congress to repeal the law. That would obviously be the cleanest and most effective thing he could do, but I doubt that he’ll be able to do it. The law was passed with broad bipartisan consensus. It would require Congress to reverse a vote they had taken not even a year ago, and I just don’t think he has the votes. I don’t think he really wants to spend his political capital on this in his first 100 days. He’s already gonna have trouble getting anything done. The second thing he could do is he could direct his attorney general not to enforce the law. The law works by penalizing the app stores and cloud service providers who work with TikTok up to $5,000 per user, and he could just direct [prospective] Attorney General Pam Bondi to not enforce the law. That sort of thing is his constitutional prerogative. But the problem there is that the law would still be in effect, and these companies will still be violating it. So if you’re a general counsel of Apple, and you say, “Hey, I read on Truth Social that Trump is not going to enforce the law,” I’d say definitely don’t bank on that for obvious reasons. The third thing he could do is declare that the law no longer applies. And the way he could do that is through the provision of the law that defines what a qualified divestiture is. [Editor’s note: As one part of the law reads, “The term ‘qualified divestiture’ means a divestiture or similar transaction that—(A) the President determines, through an interagency process, would result in the relevant foreign adversary controlled application no longer being controlled by a foreign adversary.”] If you focus on those first few words [of the statute], “the President determines,” that raises some possibilities in terms of how you read the statute. [One way] to read it is to say that the statute gives a lot of discretion to the president to determine what counts as a “qualified divestiture.” On that view, the president could — especially if ByteDance shifts the papers around, moves some assets from Company A to Company B, basically gives Trump enough legal cover — to declare, “Well, I no longer think that ByteDance owns TikTok.” Now, whether or not that’s actually true is a separate question, but it might be difficult to challenge a determination that Trump makes under this provision, even if it’s not actually based on reality. That’s the thing you can do most easily that would be the most effective. The fourth thing is he could try to facilitate a sale. Now, the problem has never been on the demand side. It’s not that there aren’t American buyers who wouldn’t happily buy TikTok. It’s on the supply side. [The question is]: will the Chinese government permit ByteDance to sell TikTok with or without the algorithm? So I think it would really be Trump as a diplomat going and trying to strike a deal with [Chinese leader] Xi Jinping. The thing is, I don’t know if Trump can do it. I don’t know if he wants to do it. Li Zhou For option three that you laid out, I’m curious: If there was a challenge to Trump making a claim that divestiture has happened but it hasn’t really happened, what would that look like? Where would it come from, and what would the grounds be? Alan Rozenshtein So the challenge would say: The statute gives the president some role in determining the divestiture, but it doesn’t allow the president to lie. Now, the harder part is bringing the case itself. So there’s a principle in American law called standing, which is that if you want to sue in federal court, at least, you have to be the right kind of person to sue based on the thing you are alleging. So in particular, you have to be concretely and individually injured by something. Well, who can be injured, right? So it’s not gonna be just a random person. It’s not Congress. There are two categories I could think of. One is competitors of TikTok, so Mark Zuckerberg could sue, saying, “I own Instagram Reels.” And competitors are allowed to sue when they think the government is illegally benefiting a competitor of theirs, but that would require Zuckerberg to go and sue Donald Trump, and everything we know about Silicon Valley’s current posture is that they don’t want to piss off the president. The other people that could sue are the affected parties themselves. So Apple and Oracle could sue, not to challenge the divestiture determination, but to clarify, to seek what’s called a declaratory judgment, to clarify the legal obligations. But that still would involve them suing and making it possible that Trump would lose, and that might annoy Trump. So there’s a small universe of people that could sue, and they have other reasons to not necessarily want to sue. Li Zhou Theoretically, if one of the parties you mentioned does decide to move forward with a lawsuit, how likely do you see that being a successful case that upholds the law? Alan Rozenshtein I think a lot depends on if it’s obvious that Trump just announced a divestiture where nothing had happened. I think the courts would probably strike that down. If ByteDance does some things that plausibly make the case that something like a divestiture has occurred on the margins, I could imagine courts deferring to the president saying, “Look, you know, this question of whether or not TikTok is controlled by a Chinese company is very fact-specific. It implicates national security and foreign policy determinations. Congress gave the president a role, and the president is exercising that role. We’re not going to second-guess that.” Li Zhou What do you see as the most likely scenario from here on out? Alan Rozenshtein I think the Supreme Court will uphold the law. And then I think through some combination of a sale of something, maybe without the algorithm, plus Trump declaring some stuff, probably there will be something like TikTok that continues [in the US], but exactly in what shape is very unclear.
vox.com
Greece Developing App to Curb Excessive Internet Use by Young People
Greece's minister of digital governance said Kids Wallet app aims to safeguard children from excessive and inappropriate internet use.
newsweek.com
What to know about tonight's "black moon"
It may sound spooky, but a black moon is nothing ominous.
cbsnews.com
Smith withdraws from appeal of classified docs case against Trump's co-defendants
Special counsel Jack Smith has withdrawn from his appeal of the classified documents case against Donald Trump's co-defendants and referred the case to state prosecutors.
abcnews.go.com
Norovirus Outbreaks Surge to Highest Levels Since 2012
The CDC reported 91 outbreaks in the week of December 5, a record high for this time of year.
newsweek.com
Arkansas’ Fernando Carmona breaks silence after outrage over his ‘dirty’ moment at Liberty Bowl
Arkansas lineman Fernando Carmona broke his silence after being chided for stepping onto the ankle of a Texas A&M player during the Liberty Bowl.
nypost.com
Jack Smith Hands Over Trump Mar-a-Lago Case
Smith handed over the remnants of the case to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida
newsweek.com
Bills to Start Josh Allen in Meaningless Week 18 Game vs Patriots
Despite not playing for anything, the Bills are electing to keep Josh Allen on the field in the season finale.
newsweek.com
Trinidad and Tobago Declares State of Emergency Over Rising Crime
To curb gang killings and a rise in homicides, the measure empowers the military to make arrests and allows the authorities to enter suspects’ homes without warrants and deny them bail.
nytimes.com
LeBron James cumple 40 años: un vistazo a los hitos estadísticos de la NBA a esa edad
LeBron James cumple 40 años el lunes, y la estrella de Los Angeles Lakers está a punto de unirse a una pequeña lista de jugadores de la NBA que han estado en la liga a esa edad.
latimes.com
Northern lights may be visible in parts of the U.S. New Year's Eve
Solar storms may bring northern lights to several states in the northern U.S. just in time for New Year's Eve
cbsnews.com
Justin Baldoni calls Blake Lively's claims 'false and destructive,' lawyer says new lawsuit will expose truth
Justin Baldoni plans to sue "It Ends With Us" co-star Blake Lively over her sexual harassment allegations. The actress claimed she experienced a toxic workplace on the movie set.
foxnews.com
US Treasury Targeted by Chinese Hackers in 'Major' Incident, Agency Says
Earlier this month, a White House official said that at least eight U.S. telecom companies had been breached by a Chinese hacking company.
newsweek.com
Dungeons & Dragons causes controversy with rule change over identity
Some Dungeons & Dragons gamers are frustrated by new rule changes in which character traits have been "divorced from biological identity," in an apparent attempt to be more inclusive.
foxnews.com
Every 3D Zelda Game, Ranked from Worst to Best
The 3D Zelda series has had its ups and downs, but most games in the series are pretty great.
newsweek.com
How the Ugly Shoe Got Chic
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.From a young age, I respected the Croc. But somewhere along the way, I got the message that my favorite orange clogs were not chic, and I moved on.Then, something remarkable happened. After years of being periodically trendy, comfy shoes took off during the early pandemic. Crocs started selling like crazy. Last year, Birkenstock went public. And elite designers have started collaborating with mass-market comfort brands, sometimes festooning their joint creations with ribbons or pearls. A series of such collaborations has emerged over the past few years: Miu Miu x New Balance, Cecilie Bahnsen x Asics, Collina Strada x Ugg, Sandy Liang x Salomon, and Simone Rocha x Crocs, to name a few. Multiple pairs of tricked-up Crocs clogs have appeared on runways lately, and Fendi x Red Wing boots graced the runway at Milan Fashion Week. Birkenstock has collaborated with designers including Jil Sander, Proenza Schouler, and Manolo Blahnik. At this point, nearly every canonical American comfort-shoe brand has paired up with a runway designer.Yes, many of these shoes are not conventionally beautiful, and that’s part of the fun. The fashion world has a long-standing fascination with ugliness, Emily Huggard, who teaches a class on fashion collaborations at the Parsons School of Design, told me. Designer brands such as Collina Strada and Simone Rocha, both of which have collaborated with mainstream shoemakers, play with themes of grotesquerie and beauty, she noted. Beyond shoes, fashion designers have recently been returning to the grungy, oversize, jagged silhouettes of the 1990s and early 2000s. After a yearslong reign of sleek, minimalist looks, fashion’s extravagantly ugly era is upon us. Ugliness is, of course, subjective: As the fashion critic Vanessa Friedman noted earlier this year, “One person’s ugly shoe is another person’s footwear treasure.”At least some of high fashion’s interest in working with big comfort-shoe brands is about reaching new audiences. Many of these luxury brands are small—almost certainly not as widely known as mall mainstays such as Crocs and Mephisto. Plus, making a shoe that functions well requires special expertise, which big brands such as Asics and New Balance can provide to smaller, independent collaborators, Thomaï Serdari, a marketing professor at NYU’s business school, told me in an email. From the mainstream brands’ perspective, such collaborations make them seem cool and relevant—and there’s little to lose. As Crocs’ chief marketing officer told The New York Times last year, experimentation isn’t so risky when your shoes are already pretty controversial.People do actually want to buy some of these shoes: The Simone Rocha x Crocs collaboration, for example, sold out swiftly. The pure shock factor likely helps—Is that a Croc covered in pearls? And because they’re so wacky, such shoes generate rapt, if sometimes quizzical, coverage in fashion magazines. Some shoppers buy the shoes as a way to demonstrate a winking insiderness, or to signal that they’re very online (the collaborations are frequently hits on social media). The high price of high-fashion shoe collaborations may also be part of the appeal. As the Substack newsletter Blackbird Spyplane put it in a September edition about four-figure sneakers, at a time when clothes “seem either criminally cheap or nauseatingly expensive,” $1,500 Loro Piana x New Balance sneakers may be “substantially ‘about’ their own hideous pricetags.”Not all of these collaborations are unappealing or even in-your-face—those Loro Piana sneakers are pretty subdued—but the mix of high-low is core to the concept. That balance takes skill to pull off. I am personally unlikely to pay hundreds or thousands for a designer version of the shoes I rocked when I was 12. But there’s something undeniably fun about the whimsy, and at times ugliness, of these creations.Related: Cool people accidentally saved America’s feet. How Nike turned running shoes into fashion Here are four new stories from The Atlantic: The rise of the union right Jimmy Carter was a lucky man. What the left refused to understand about women’s sports 77 facts that blew our minds in 2024 Evening Read Illustration by Arsh Raziuddin* What Not to WearBy Ellen Cushing As long as people have been able to dress in color, we’ve been desperate to do it better. In the mid-19th century, advances in dyeing technology and synthetic organic chemistry allowed the textile industry, previously limited to what was available in nature, to mass-produce a rainbow’s worth of new shades. The problem was, people began wearing some truly awful outfits, driven to clashy maximalism by this revolution in color. The press created a minor moral panic (“un scandale optique,” a French journal called it), which it then attempted to solve. An 1859 issue of Godey’s Lady’s Book, the most widely read American women’s magazine of the antebellum era, promised to help “ill-dressed and gaudy-looking women” by invoking a prominent color theorist, the French chemist Michel-Eugène Chevreul, and his ideas about which colors were most “becoming” on various (presumably white) women. Chevreul died in 1889, 121 years before Instagram was invented, but had the platform been available to him, I think he would have done very well on it. Read the full article.Culture Break Laura Letinsky / Gallery Stock Watch. Check out these six acclaimed movies with roughly 90-minute runtimes.Read. “Case Study,” a short story by Weike Wang:“Her father is back in the ER. His second time this month. The first was a short stay.”Play our daily crossword.When you buy a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.
theatlantic.com
D.C. U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves to resign before Trump takes office
Graves led what the Justice Department has called the largest investigation it has ever conducted: prosecuting those who participated in the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
washingtonpost.com
Israel and Hamas Each Claim Wins in Fierce Fighting in Northern Gaza
As the renewed clashes in the north of the enclave neared the three-month mark, there was no sign of them abating.
nytimes.com
US Attorney Matthew Graves to resign after failing to charge Hunter Biden, letting DC crime run rampant
DC US Attorney Matthew Graves announced Monday that he will resign before President-elect Donald Trump retakes the White House — likely avoiding an involuntary departure after controversial decisions not to criminally charge first son Hunter Biden and most local crimes.
nypost.com
Heinous double-murderer spared death sentence by Biden now wants to be freed, arguing ‘compassionate release’
Brandon Council was sentenced to death for the 2017 murders of two South Carolina bank employees and mothers during a bloody robbery.
nypost.com
Jonathan Toews Considering NHL Return Following Massive Health Issues
The former Chicago captain eluded to resuming his NHL career.
newsweek.com
Nvidia closes $700M Run:ai acquisition after regulatory hurdles
Nvidia completed the deal after a series of antitrust roadblocks.
nypost.com
Biden closes government as 'mark of respect' for late former President Jimmy Carter
President Biden on Monday signed an executive order closing executive offices of the government for late former President Jimmy Carter's funeral on Jan. 9.
foxnews.com
Mom shocked by young son’s mismatched PJs in Christmas photo: ‘My kid was never part of the plan’
"I'm, like, 'OK, cute, but why doesn't my son have on the same pajamas as everybody else?'" she questioned.
nypost.com
NYPD releases photo of mystery person in scramble to solve case of abandoned baby girl stuffed in tote bag
The footage, released early Monday, shows the unidentified person walking on the rain-drenched Morrisania sidewalk Sunday morning with their hood pulled up over their head, wearing a black face mask and carrying a green tote bag.
nypost.com
2024’s best albums and songs: Beyoncé, Sabrina Carpenter, more
There was a lot of incredible music that came out this past year, with most of it stemming from the pop world. Beyoncé, Charli XCX, and Kendrick Lamar were just some of the big names on our ‘best’ list. Watch the full video to see who else was named and where they ranked. Subscribe to...
nypost.com
It’s Your Last Chance to Save on Paramount+ — Sign Up for $2 per Month
Head into 2025 with streaming savings!
nypost.com
Texas' Arch Manning shoots down transfer rumors ahead of CFP game
Texas Longhorns quarterback Arch Manning shot down rumors he planned on entering the transfer portal once the 2024-25 season was finished.
foxnews.com