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🇭🇳 Hernández walks free and thanks Trump as critics seethe. Former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández is home after a pardon. He left an American prison days after President Donald Trump wiped his drug-trafficking sentence. Hernández had been convicted in New York of helping move tons of cocaine north. In Tegucigalpa, supporters waved flags and chanted his name outside the airport. Families of victims of cartel violence called the homecoming an insult. Anti-corruption activists say the pardon undercuts years of regional justice work. Washington diplomats now have to explain how a convicted trafficker became a symbol of second chances.

🚤 Hegseth invokes “fog of war” after strike on stricken boat. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is defending a lethal follow-on strike near Venezuela. American forces hit a disabled vessel after an earlier attack on a suspected drug boat. Critics say survivors in the water should have been presumed hors de combat. Hegseth told reporters that commanders faced incomplete information in rough seas. He argued the crew still posed a threat to nearby aircraft. Military lawyers are now fielding questions about how the law of armed conflict applies at sea. Human rights groups see the episode as a precedent-setting test case.

💰 Dell couple bets $6.25B on “Trump Accounts” for kids. Billionaires Michael and Susan Dell pledged $6.25B to boost new “Trump Accounts” for children. The program will deposit $1K into investment accounts for kids born between 2025 and 2028. The Dells will add $250 for up to 25M American children under 11. Funds must go into an index fund tied to the overall stock market. The money targets ZIP codes where median family income is $150K or less. Supporters say it could widen stock ownership beyond the wealthiest 1%. Anti-poverty experts note it does not replace cuts to Medicaid, food assistance, or child care.

😴 Doodles, closed eyes, and a misspelling mark Trump’s last 2025 Cabinet. President Donald Trump’s final Cabinet meeting of 2025 doubled as a mood board. Cameras captured one Cabinet secretary sketching cartoons in a notebook. Another appeared to nod off as colleagues delivered prepared talking points. A nameplate on the conference table included a conspicuous spelling error that social media quickly magnified. Trump alternated between policy boasts and off-script riffs about critics. Staffers in the room described the atmosphere as more farewell tour than strategic session. The visuals offered a closing snapshot of a government that often treated optics as the real agenda.

🚨 Altman hits “code red” as ChatGPT faces tougher rivals. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has declared a “code red” push to improve ChatGPT. He says engineers are racing to cut hallucinations and weird failures. Rival models from Alphabet ($GOOGL) and Anthropic are grabbing attention with longer context and sharper reasoning. Enterprise customers now ask fewer wow questions and more reliability questions. Altman is promising faster updates, better safety tools, and more customization knobs. Developers are being reassigned toward bug-hunting and evaluation work. The scramble shows how quickly yesterday’s miracle chatbot became today’s anxious incumbent.

🎧 Apple Replay crowns “APT.” as 2025’s most-played song. Apple ($AAPL) says Rose and Bruno Mars' "APT." tops its Replay 2025 chart. The streaming recap ranks the most-played tracks globally on Apple Music. The song rode a year of TikTok clips, radio spins, and festival sets. Replay also highlights individual listeners’ top artists, albums, and genres. The feature arrives as platforms lean on personalized year-end data dumps to keep subscribers hooked. Competing services answer with their own “wrapped” playlists and shareable graphics. The annual charts now double as both music history and marketing campaign.

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