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Blueprint Medicines director Coats sells $1.87 million in stockMcGhie scores 27, UC San Diego downs La Salle 72-67Merry Christmas and happy holidays from all of us here at CTNewsJunkie! ‘Tis the season for gratitude and giving. As such, THANK YOU all for reading and supporting public service journalism. We believe in our work and can’t wait to continue, although we are going to take a couple of days off this week starting tomorrow and go with a similar cadence next week for the New Year’s holiday. It’ll be a light publishing schedule as we recharge a bit and prepare for the 2025 legislative session that starts Wednesday, Jan. 8! And since I would be remiss if I didn’t mention it, we are supporting by both advertising and subscriptions to our Morning Coffee & Politics email, as well as memberships from folks who just want to support us. We’re not a nonprofit but subscriptions are deductible! Thanks again for your support. Watch for some new coverage offerings in 2025!

Cover Five: What to make of wild week around Nebraska football, and 5 biggest impact signees

The basketball arena at East Webster High School will host 17 high school basketball games over the next two days. Friday marks the beginning of the East Webster Christmas Classic and head coach Jon Ginn of the Wolverines has made his list and checked it twice. “I think it's going to be a good tournament,” Ginn said. “I think folks that show up will be well entertained. We've got some good matchups.” The boys action tips off at 10 a.m. Friday with Oak Hill Academy against Sebastopol and will be followed up by an all-area matchup at 1 p.m. between Starkville Academy and Choctaw County. The other boys games on the first day are Lafayette against Grenada at 2:30 p.m., Lamar School against Louisville at 5:30 p.m. and East Webster against Pillow Academy at 8:30 p.m. In boys outings on Saturday, Senatobia plays Choctaw County at 10:45 a.m., Oak Hill Academy sees Lafayette at noon, Lamar School takes on Pillow Academy at 2:30 p.m., East Union squares off against Starkville Academy at 5:30 p.m. and East Webster hosts DeSoto Central at 8:30 p.m. For more on this story, read our news edition from Friday, December 27 or click here to subscribe to our e-edition.

Attorneys want the US Supreme Court to say Mississippi’s felony voting ban is cruel and unusualStocks closed higher on Wall Street as the market posted its fifth straight gain and the Dow Jones notched another record high. The S&P 500 rose 0.3 per cent. The benchmark index’s 1.7 per cent gain for the week erased most of its loss from last week. Wall Street has steadied after a volatile few weeks. Credit: AP The Dow rose 1 per cent as it nudged past its most recent high set last week, and the Nasdaq composite rose 0.2 per cent. The Australian sharemarket is set to climb, with futures pointing to a rise of 52 points, or 0.6 per cent. Markets have been volatile over the last few weeks, losing ground in the runup to elections in November, then surging following Donald Trump’s victory, before falling again. The S&P 500 has been steadily rising throughout this week to within close range of its record. It’s now within about 0.5 per cent of its all-time high set last week. Loading “Overall, market behaviour has normalised following an intense few weeks,” said Mark Hackett, chief of investment research at Nationwide, in a statement. Several retailers jumped after giving Wall Street encouraging financial updates. Gap soared 12.8 per cent after handily beating analysts’ third-quarter earnings and revenue expectations, while raising its own revenue forecast for the year. Discount retailer Ross Stores rose 2.2 per cent after raising its earnings forecast for the year. EchoStar fell 2.8 per cent after DirecTV called off its purchase of that company’s Dish Network unit. Smaller company stocks had some of the biggest gains. The Russell 2000 index rose 1.8 per cent. A majority of stocks in the S&P 500 gained ground, but those gains were kept in check by slumps for several big technology companies. Nvidia fell 3.2 per cent. Its pricey valuation makes it among the heaviest influences on whether the broader market gains or loses ground. The company has grown into a nearly $US3.6 trillion ($5.5 trillion) behemoth because of demand for its chips used in artificial-intelligence technology. Intuit, which makes TurboTax and other accounting software, fell 5.7 per cent. It gave investors a quarterly earnings forecast that fell short of analysts’ expectations. Facebook owner Meta Platforms fell 0.7 per cent following a decision by the Supreme Court to allow a multibillion-dollar class action investors’ lawsuit to proceed against the company. It stems from the privacy scandal involving the Cambridge Analytica political consulting firm. All told, the S&P 500 rose 20.63 points to 5,969.34. The Dow climbed 426.16 points to 44,296.51, and the Nasdaq picked up 42.65 points to close at 2,406.67. European markets closed mostly higher and Asian markets ended mixed. Crude oil prices rose. Treasury yields held relatively steady in the bond market. The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.41 per cent from 4.42 per cent late Thursday. In the crypto market, bitcoin hovered around $US99,000, according to CoinDesk. It has more than doubled this year and first surpassed the $US99,000 level on Thursday. Retailers remained a big focus for investors this week amid close scrutiny on consumer spending habits headed into the holiday shopping season. Walmart, the nation’s largest retailer, reported a quarter of strong sales and gave investors an encouraging financial forecast. Target, though, reported weaker earnings than analysts’ expected and its forecast disappointed Wall Street. Loading Consumer spending has fueled economic growth, despite a persistent squeeze from inflation and high borrowing costs. Inflation has been easing and the Federal Reserve has started trimming its benchmark interest rates. That is likely to help relieve pressure on consumers, but any major shift in spending could prompt the Fed to reassess its path ahead on interest rates. Also, any big reversals on the rate of inflation could curtail spending. Consumer sentiment remains strong, according to the University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index. It revised its latest figure for November to 71.8 from an initial reading of 73 earlier this month, though economists expected a slight increase. It’s still up from 70.5 in October. The survey also showed that consumers’ inflation expectations for the year ahead fell slightly to 2.6 per cent, which is the lowest reading since December of 2020. Wall Street will get another update on how consumers feel when the business group The Conference Board releases its monthly consumer confidence survey on Tuesday. A key inflation update will come on Wednesday when the US releases its October personal consumption expenditures index. The PCE is the Fed’s preferred measure of inflation and this will be the last PCE reading prior to the central bank’s meeting in December. AP The Market Recap newsletter is a wrap of the day’s trading. Get it each we e kday afternoon . Save Log in , register or subscribe to save articles for later. World markets Wall Street Shares Most Viewed in Business Loading

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President-elect Donald Trump’s latest threat to slap huge tariffs on countries that try to move away from the “mighty U.S. dollar” inadvertently highlights the intractable contradiction at the heart of U.S. trade and economic policy. Trump has repeatedly stated that he wants to boost U.S. competitiveness and reduce its yawning trade deficit, which he blames on other countries’ unfair economic practices. But how can he do that while simultaneously preserving the dollar’s strength and unrivaled status as the world’s reserve currency, which has for decades helped fuel American consumers’ purchasing power? His “America First” goals of expanding domestic energy production and deepening the country’s status as the world’s leading tech hub could, all else being equal, lead to an appreciating exchange rate. But this would be at odds with his other “America First” goal: boosting U.S. manufacturing. This isn’t a partisan conundrum. President Joe Biden has spent trillions of dollars over the last four years in an effort to boost U.S. manufacturing, green energy production, and other key sectors. Meanwhile, the greenback has continued to strengthen, which hasn’t made U.S. exports more attractive. Vice President Kamala Harris would be facing the same dilemma had she won last month’s presidential election. But it’s especially tricky for Trump, who has been more vocal in his criticism of countries like China, Mexico and Canada which run huge trade surpluses with the U.S., and more bombastic about his ability to fix those imbalances. A weaker dollar and lower interest rates would be two of the most obvious tools to do that. But as he made clear in his social media post on Saturday, he also wants to protect the dollar’s global hegemony and preserve its relative value. Something has to give. The U.S. has run a trade deficit for nearly 50 years, consistently sucking in more imports than it exports. Manufacturing has been declining as a share of the economy for almost as long, notably since China was admitted into the World Trade Organization in 2001. The U.S. trade deficit last year was around 3.0% of GDP, much smaller than the record 5.7% of GDP reached in the mid-2000s, but still large. And in nominal terms, which Trump focuses on more, it is an even bigger at $773 billion. The deficit is consistent with the dollar’s status as the preeminent currency in global trade, financial market trading and international foreign exchange reserves. No other currency comes close to being as dominant, even as the dollar’s share of global FX reserves has eroded in recent years. The trade deficit is offset by a surplus in the U.S. capital account, as China and others have plowed their surpluses back into U.S. bonds and stocks. If the trade deficit were reduced, so too would the capital account surplus and attendant demand for U.S. assets from abroad. All else being equal, this would put upward pressure on bond yields and interest rates. Nodding to the symbiotic relationship between the U.S. trade deficit and capital account surplus, Michael Pettis, a senior fellow at Carnegie China, pointed out on the platform X on Saturday that the U.S. cannot simultaneously cut its trade deficit and increase the global dominance of the dollar, because these impose “diametrically opposed” conditions. Rebalancing the global economy so that the U.S. runs smaller trade deficits and has a stronger manufacturing sector, while China and other large net exporters increase domestic consumption and cut their trade surpluses, would ultimately require major global FX adjustments. And U.S. consumers might not be pleased with this outcome, having benefited enormously in recent decades as the trade deficit has sucked in cheap goods from abroad, from clothes to electrical appliances and everything in between. “You are implicitly asking U.S. consumers to accept a loss of purchasing power and a willingness to pay more for imported goods in order to give support to the manufacturing sector,” says Joe Brusuelas, principal and chief economist at RSM. That’s a tall ask. And given the role purchasing power played in the recent election, it’s likely one the president-elect won’t actually want to make. Source: Reuters (By Jamie McGeever; Editing by Paul Simao)

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The Xreal One Series features the X1 chip which is the company's first self-designed processor for its glasses. Xreal Xreal on Wednesday launched its latest generation of augmented reality (AR) glasses as it looks to fend off competition from the likes of Meta and Snap . The company, which is backed by Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba , is hoping to capitalize on the growing interest in AR glasses. The Xreal One Series features the X1 chip which is the company's first self-designed processor for its glasses and marks a big step for the product's capabilities. Xreal talks up the ability for wearers of its glasses to be able to connect to devices such as a phone, laptop or games console, and see their content on a huge digital screen in front of them. The previous generation of Xreal's product required a companion device called the Beam for connections to a device, but the latest chip means that the Beam is not required. "I think that it's the biggest upgrade in Xreal history and probably the biggest upgrade for the entire consumer AR glasses [sector]," Chi Xu, CEO of Xreal, told CNBC in an interview. The X1 chip was in the works for three years, Xu said, adding that he sees it as a way to increase the capabilities of the glasses to differentiate from the competition. "We have to step up to define a chip that is really defining some of the new features for these types of glasses," Xu said. Xreal is one of the biggest players in the AR glasses space, but it is facing intense competition from the likes of Snap, which unveiled a new set of its Spectacles in September , as well as Facebook parent Meta's continued efforts with the Meta Ray-Ban product . Meanwhile, CNBC reported this year that Qualcomm is working on a set of glasses with Google and Samsung. Xreal is among the companies that are betting on glasses — rather than large headsets like Apple's Vision Pro or the Meta Quest — to be the mass-market winners in AR. "People have started to realize a headset doesn't make sense, we need to go to lighter form factors to the glasses category," Xu said. "But the challenge for glasses is can we push the limit to deliver a headset experience on a much smaller form factor?" The Xreal One and Xreal One Pro start at $499 and $599 respectively. AR, which refers to a technology that overlays digital content over the real world, has been hyped up over the last few years. However, the market had not exploded like many had predicted. Large headsets have proved too expensive or uncomfortable and firms including Xreal and Meta are focusing on how they can make the experience with glasses more compelling. There is also still a lack of content and killer use cases for the product, an issue Xu said needs to change before the product category reaches a wider user base. The CEO added that this begins with good hardware. "We need a platform, we need an ecosystem to improve the experience because we don't have any content yet. But in order to have the developers getting excited ... you need to have good hardware to begin with," Xu told CNBC. Xu said the company is expecting to sell 500,000 units of its previous products in 2025, roughly doubling the figure of this year.

AP News Summary at 6:46 p.m. EST