📌 Happy New Year, Chief Justice, More

New Year's Eve celebrations and fireworks around the world rang in 2025.

In New York City, Mickey Guyton sang John Lennon's "Imagine" right before the countdown, as New York City Mayor Eric Adams helped launch the traditional Times Square ball drop.

Umbrellas were not allowed in Times Square on New Year's Eve, as officials urged people to leave behind their backpacks, alcohol, coolers and chairs. Once midnight arrived, the crowd was singing and dancing to 'New York, New York" under falling confetti.

In other parts of the world, heavy rain and gusty winds canceled New Year's Eve events in Britain. Despite bad weather, the fireworks show went as scheduled in London, where Big Ben provided a stunning backdrop.

In Paris, the weather was more welcoming as the Champs-Élysées closed to traffic, becoming a massive pedestrian zone for party-goers to watch fireworks and a light show that projected "2025" onto the Arc de Triomphe.

In Japan, a large light display lit up a building in Tokyo with the words "Happy New Year 2025." Japan is celebrating the new Year of the Snake, a rebirth in reference to the reptile's shedding skin.

US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts on Tuesday warned about a rising number of threats to the judiciary's independence.

Roberts said he felt compelled to highlight several areas of "illegitimate activity" that went far beyond informed criticism and debate concerning judicial rulings, which he said, "threaten the independence of judges on which the rule of law depends.”

Those areas of threats, he said, include a significant uptick in violent threats and online intimidation directed at judges, disinformation about court cases magnified by social media, and cyber threats posed by foreign state actors.

In the past five years, the US Marshals Service has investigated over 1,000 serious threats against federal judges, Roberts wrote. In some extreme cases, judicial officers have been issued bulletproof vests, he said.

Roberts cited risks from hackers and foreign state actors spreading disinformation to distort judicial decisions and create discord. He condemned suggestions by elected officials to disregard federal court rulings, calling them dangerous and unacceptable.

Roberts did not specify cases but referenced recent controversial Supreme Court rulings, including revisiting

Roe vs Wade

to reduce abortion rights and the issue of presidential immunity. The report did not address recent ethics controversies involving Supreme Court justices and calls for reforms.

Greece plans to launch a government-operated app designed to enhance parental oversight of their children’s mobile devices.

The app comes after a recent survey conducted by KMOP, a prominent Greek research organization, revealed that 76.6% of children aged 9–12 regularly access the internet via personal devices, with 58.6% engaging with social media daily.

Dimitris Papastergiou, Greece's minister of digital governance, said the Kids Wallet app, due to launch in March, aims to safeguard children under 15 from the risks of excessive and inappropriate internet use.

"It's a big change,” Papastergiou said. “The Kids Wallet application will do two main things: It will make parental control much easier, and it will be our official national tool for verifying the age of users.”

Papastergiou said the app's dual functionality will integrate advanced algorithms to monitor usage and apply strict authentication processes. Papastergiou said the government plans to have the children's app pre-installed on smartphones sold in Greece by the end of 2025.

Researchers examined how parents reconcile spanking with societal norms that reject violence against adults and pets.

The study recruited 286 US parents of children up to eight years old. Participants were asked to provide their definitions of spanking and rate the severity of spanking compared to other terms like “hitting,” “smacking,” and “slapping.”

90% agreed with a definition of spanking that included the term “hitting,” yet many viewed spanking as less severe than hitting. On defining spanking, about one-third explicitly used words like “hitting” or “striking,” while others referenced milder terms like “smacking” or “swatting.”

In evaluating the acceptability of hitting within families, parents were more likely to find hitting children (30%) acceptable compared to hitting pets (17%), spouses (1%), or elderly parents (0%).

Parents often justified spanking as a necessary disciplinary measure, particularly when other methods failed, or as a means to ensure children’s safety in specific situations.

Nearly one-third of parents reported that completing the survey prompted them to reconsider their views on spanking. Many highlighted the comparison between hitting children and other forms of family violence as a catalyst for this change, with some expressing regret about past instances of spanking.

The world’s biggest online dating company is launching an AI assistant that it claims will “transform” online dating.

Match Group has announced an AI assistant that will perform core dating tasks such as selecting the photos it calculates will garner the most responses and recommend what prompts and information to put in a bio. It will also help a user choose the perfect partner.

The AI will conduct a spoken interview with the user to establish what they want to get out of their dating experience and will suggest what messages to send to people they are matched with based on interests. AI will provide “effective coaching for struggling users” failing to attract more attention to their profile.

The technology is not without its critics. Anastasiia Babash, a PhD candidate and a member of the international Ethical Dating Online project, said: “There’s a risk that it could result in [users] losing the ability to engage in real, spontaneous conversations and … build genuine connections.”

She also questioned companies’ ability to safeguard personal data and to address biases that “reinforce stereotypes or even discriminate against certain groups based on factors like race, gender, or socioeconomic status.”

Faye Iosotaluno, the chief executive of Tinder, said his company had been taking a careful approach to AI about how it handles data, but it was committed to bringing it into the mainstream. “It does have a chance to really revolutionize how users are engaging. We want to be super thoughtful about that.”

Thousands of protesters gathered overnight in Belgrade and other Serbian cities to demand political reforms and justice.

The protesters put New Year’s celebrations to the side to demonstrate against corruption and substandard construction practices following the collapse of a concrete canopy in the northern city of Novi Sad’s central train station on Nov. 1, which resulted in 15 fatalities.

Students from Belgrade universities organized the protest under the slogan “There is No New Year — You Still Owe Us for the Old One.”

The loud crowd, chanting “We Want Justice,” went silent at 11:52 p.m. with 15 minutes to honor the victims of the Novi Sad tragedy. Many were holding banners with a red handprint, which has become a symbol of the antigovernment protests, telling the authorities that they have blood on their hands.

The anti-government protesters emphasized that, despite the festive season, their commitment to seeking justice remains unwavering. Thousands of people also gathered in Novi Sad and the southern city of Nis for parallel gatherings also led by university students in those cities.

Serbia’s public prosecutor on Monday indicted 13 people, including a former minister, over the collapse of the canopy. The protesters say the indictment does not include charges of possible corrupt deals during a renovation of the Novi Sad train station that was part of a wider deal with Chinese companies.

A concerned neighbor with a drone helped rescue a dog that spent nearly a day stranded on the thin ice on a New Jersey lake.

The 20-month-old pooch, named Brooklyn, was spotted on the thin ice covering Lake Parsippany and appeared to be too afraid of strangers to venture off the ice.

Neighbor Kishan Patel attached some chicken to his drone and attempted to lure Brooklyn to shore, and it initially appeared to be working, but Brooklyn fled back out onto the lake when she spotted the rescuers on shore.

Once the sun went down, Patel used his drone to pinpoint Brooklyn's location for a police officer who went out onto the ice. The officer was able to find the canine, who fled to shore — and kept on fleeing. Brooklyn was safely found the next morning on a resident's porch.