Hello! Here’s everything you need to know on Thursday.
1. The US president is on the way back from a surprise trip to Iraq. Trump paid a visit American troops in a war zone for the first time.
2. The Dow blasts past 1,000 points in a session to post its biggest point gain ever. After five days of turmoil, stocks have come storming on back from Wall Street’s worst-ever Christmas Eve.
3. Trump reaffirms decision to pull US forces out of Syria. Trump has said that “the generals” asked for more time on the ground to fight Islamic State militants, but Trump resisted.
4. Amazon won Christmas in 2018. The universal marketplace said it sold a record number of smart home devices among a stack of other merchandise over the 2018 holiday season.
5. Japan is hunting whales for money again. But amid the uproar, a former Australian environmental minister says they “never put their harpoons down.”
6. The ‘deportation bus’ politician from Georgia is behind bars. Republican state Sen. Michael Williams was jailed after being indicted on insurance-fraud charges.
7. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been discharged from the hospital after surgery for lung cancer. The indefatigable octogenarian Supreme Court justice is recuperating at home.
8. An impeachment-originated market implosion is ‘something you really can’t model for’. Hedge funds are scrambling at the sudden prospect of a Trump impeachment and how to play it.
9. A longtime Apple analyst thinks 2019 will feature a comeback. Next year could be when the iPhone maker reclaims its crown as top tech stock, according to Gene Munster, a managing partner at Loup Ventures.
10. NASA captured images of a massive ‘blue’ sand dune sprawling across Mars. And the photos are actually quite something.
And finally …
Business Insider’s international correspondent Harrison Jacobs says the $1 billion hotel considered ‘the most luxurious in the world’ definitely lives up to the hype.
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