The Defining Culture Visuals of 2025Three photo editors from the Culture desk share their favorite images from 2025. By Jolie Ruben, Amanda Webster, Maridelis Morales Rosado, Gabby Bulgarelli, Sutton Raphael, Lauren Pruitt and Luke PiotrowskiDecember 26, 2025
Israeli soldier rams Palestinian man while he’s prayingAn Israeli reservist soldier ran over a Palestinian man while he was praying in the occupied West Bank on Thursday, according to the Israeli military and CNN’s review of the footage, hours after the soldier fired gunshots in the area.
But at night, he’s working on Kings Carey–his personal project. He focuses on single vineyards and single varietals, looking to find the purest expression of his home region in Santa Barbara. Made in the Champagne method from all Pinot Noir—very French of them—grown in Santa Barbara County. $70Kate Dingwall is a sommelier and wine writer. Her work frequently appears in Wine Enthusiast, Eater, Forbes.com, Vogue, and Food & Wine, and she pours wine at one of Canada’s top restaurants.
This, in turn, almost guarantees that a small or medium-sized country would find itself unable even to aspire to anything resembling independent agency—to being an actor in the international order. They will neither subscribe entirely to any outsider’s vision of world order nor accept any claims of primacy, international leadership, or spheres of interest. The side that will be better able to manoeuvre to occupy the space in between will determine the future course of world order. Whatever the new world order ends up looking like, it will not be a world order held together by Western ‘values’, as has been the case for several centuries. 39 Ilham Aliyev, ‘Remarks to the ADA University International Forum on Facing the New World Order’, President.az (9 April 2025), https://president.az/en/articles/view/68514.
Season three of The White Lotus aired earlier this year, and was, in many ways, the most jaw-dropping of the lot. AdvertisementOnce you’re done bingeing, there’s also the celebrity series which once again made for compulsive viewing. Stream it on: NetflixLong Story ShortLong Story Short NetflixOK, we’re just going to say it, Long Story Short is probably our favourite new show of 2025. Stream it on: NetflixAndorDisneyAdvertisementAt this point, if we’re being totally honest, there’ve been so many Star Wars spin-off movies and TV shows that the thought of another one is a bit of a hard sell – but Andor remains one of the most popular with both fans and critics. Stream it on: Disney+Stranger ThingsNetflixAdvertisementAlright, this one is potentially a bit of a cheat given there’s still one episode to go in the current season.
By Toni Odejimi, Rafael Romo, CNN(CNN) — A lucky Powerball ticket holder in Arkansas has won an estimated $1.8 billion jackpot, the second largest in US lottery history, after matching all six numbers in Monday’s drawing. The lucky ticket holder has 180 days — about six months — to claim their prize, Sharon Strong, executive director of the Arkansas Lottery, told CNN on Friday. Keeping the windfall privateArkansas is one of a growing number of states that allow lottery winners to remain anonymous. New Jersey, Georgia, and Arizona have anonymity laws, while Florida allows winners to claim prizes through a blind trust or LLC. Strong, Arkansas Lottery executive director, agrees.
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Goodbye to the MetroCard that transformed how New Yorkers traveledNew York City’s MetroCard transformed one of the world’s busiest transit systems and is set to be phased out by December 31, 2025. CNN’s Meena Duerson talks about how the MetroCard’s introduction 30 years ago expanded access for New Yorkers, and how the little yellow card has become as symbolic as the city’s famous landmarks.
They can come back to you, even at unlikely times.” This line from the book is something I felt occasionally. -Samidha JainThe Maniac by Benjamin LabatutThis was a difficult book to read, especially the first 80-odd pages. The book was a pick for our book club and is a fictionalised biography of the mathematician John von Neumann. I started it late in December 2024 and carried it into early January 2025, and, in a way, the book became the bridge between the two years. -Jasodhara BanerjeeLives Not Lived by Monika BhattiLives Not Lived also came to me via an Instagram page I follow, and it ended up becoming the only book I read in 2025.
Israeli soldier rams Palestinian man while he’s prayingAn Israeli reservist soldier ran over a Palestinian man while he was praying in the occupied West Bank on Thursday, according to the Israeli military and CNN’s review of the footage, hours after the soldier fired gunshots in the area.
Investors are about to wager hundreds of millions on a startup with very little revenue, betting that AI is hot enough to turn an open-source codebase into a thriving business. Spun out of UC Berkeley from the lab of Databricks co-founder Ion Stoica, vLLM has in recent weeks been pitching investors on raising money to commercialize a popular open source codebase that speeds up large language models, and squeezes better performance out of AI chips. Four sources have independently told Forbes that vLLM’s co-leader Simon Mo has been taking meetings around Silicon Valley looking to raise $60 million now and at least $100 million in a second tranche. Mo did not respond to a request for comment.
The latest Forbes AI Workforce Report 2025 has sent ripples through the global economy, unveiling a paradoxical landscape of labor. The "massive reskilling shift" involves an estimated 120 million workers globally who will need retraining by 2027. The long-term success of this transition depends on whether the 12 million roles can be filled quickly enough to offset the social friction caused by localized job losses. Final Reflections: A History in the MakingThe Forbes AI Workforce Report 2025 serves as a definitive marker in the history of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The net gain of 11.95 million roles is a cause for celebration, but it comes with the heavy responsibility of global reskilling.
Lee, J. K. et al. & Lee, J. K. Stochastic detection of interior design styles using a deep-learning model for reference images. Baduge, S. et al. Interior Design. & Lee, J. K. An approach to implementing automated modeling of interior design object using Spatial information training model - focused on an implementation example of automated layout system for ceiling light object.
Of course, everyone paying any type of attention knows that this isn’t really useful logic, since politics is rarely beholden to the reasonable opinions of knowledgeable people. Just about every president has their poll numbers rise and fall with the gas prices. Of course, this is a dangerous game to play: Republican candidate Newt Gingrich will look like a mighty (mightier?) fool if the gas prices fall in August just as the election season really gears up. What politicians (and ourselves) need to realize is that bringing the moon to earth would certainly kill us all.
