Areas of the U.S., including the South and Southeast, are likely to see frigid air that could break records by mid-month, along with potentially blockbuster winter storms.
Threat level: Pieces of the polar vortex are projected to swirl southward out of northern Canada and into parts of the U.S. during early and mid-January.
Major energy companies doubled down on oil and gas in 2024, slowing down — and at times reversing — climate commitments, in a shift they're likely to stick with in 2025.
Why it matters: Big European energy companies that invested heavily in the clean energy transition found their stocks lagging U.S. rivals Exxon and Chevron, which kept their focus on oil and gas, Reuters reports.
This year's epic, relentless news cycles were driven by months of near-unprecedented political violence and uncertainty — plus the Olympics, according to Axios' annual analysis of Google Trends data.
Why it matters: Even in a wild election year, America's short attention span for news led to dramatic ups and downs in search trends as the media pivoted from one major story to the next.
Authorities in Kazakhstan are investigating the cause of an Azerbaijan Airlines plane crash in the country, which killed 38 people and injured 29 others on Christmas Day.
The big picture: Flight J2-8243 was diverted while en route from Baku, Azerbaijan's capital, to Grozny in southern Russia.
Azerbaijan has demanded that Russia admit its guilt over a Christmas Day plane crash that killed 38 people, the country's President Ilham Aliyev said on Sunday.
The big picture: Russian President Vladimir Putin apologized to Aliyev for the Azerbaijan Airlines crash occurring in Russian airspace, but a Kremlin statement made clear he wasn't accepting responsibility for the incident.
A severe storm system that's killed at least four people as it unleashed multiple tornadoes was moving into parts of the central-southern Appalachians, Mid-Atlantic and Southeast on Sunday.
The big picture: Dozens of tornadoes were reported across Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina and Texas over the weekend, causing delays and some cancelations at airports across the region during a busy weekend of holiday travel.
