TCU has hired Mike Buddie away from Army West Point as its ninth athletic director, betting on a fundraiser and former major-league pitcher to steer the Horned Frogs through college sports’ upheaval.
Airstrikes across Gaza killed at least 12 people on the first day of 2025, most of them women and children, Palestinian officials said, while Israel warned Hamas of blows “not seen in Gaza for a long time.”
Saudi Arabia put six Iranian nationals to death in Dammam for smuggling hashish, prompting Iran to summon the Saudi ambassador and accuse Riyadh of violating consular law.
Josh Stein took the oath as North Carolina’s 76th governor — and its first Jewish governor — in a small Raleigh ceremony, pledging to put the state’s people over its politics.
Colorado has begun licensing healing centres and facilitators for regulated psilocybin therapy, becoming the second U.S. state after Oregon to let adults use the psychedelic under supervision.
In his New Year message, Pope Francis called for a firm commitment to respect life from the womb to old age, and urged wealthy nations to cancel the debts of the poorest countries in the Jubilee year.
Carter’s open “born again” faith made him a political sensation in 1976 and then, as evangelicals drifted right, a cautionary tale. His Sunday school marathons in Plains told the fuller story.
Arnold Rüütel, who presided over Estonia’s break with Moscow as its last Soviet-era leader and later, as president, took the country into the EU and NATO, died on New Year’s Eve at 96.
Berlin police made about 400 arrests as emergency crews were pelted with fireworks; five men died in fireworks accidents across Germany, reviving demands for a ban on private pyrotechnics.
The new year opens with six planets strung across the evening sky and delivers two total lunar eclipses, a pair of partial solar eclipses, three supermoons and strong aurora chances in 2025.
