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Today’s top stories

Syrians are transitioning from celebrating the ousting of long-time dictator Bashar al-Assad and the toppling of his regime to thinking about the huge challenges facing the war-torn country. Ahmed al-Shara, who is at the forefront of the rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, is at least nominally in charge of the country. Here are five things to watch as Syria looks toward a new future.

• 🎧 “What is quite extraordinary is they seem to now be handling a relatively managed handover of power,” NPR’s Ruth Sherlock tells Up First. A new transitional government has been formed, which includes some politicians from the old regime. Soldiers conscripted into military service are being pardoned, and leaders are working to dismantle the regime’s feared security apparatus. Sherlock visited the Sednaya prison, one of the most feared complexes known for torture and mass executions. It is now open, and rebels have released prisoners. Many of those who were imprisoned are still missing, and the facility is full of their loved ones looking for clues as to where they may be.
• ➡️ More than a million Syrians now live in Germany after fleeing Syria due to violence under Assad’s regime. Now, many are debating whether to return. Some Syrians share their thoughts with NPR’s Rob Schmitz about whether to go back.
• ➡️ Journalist Austin Tice went missing 12 years ago during a reporting trip in Syria. After the fall of the Assad regime, there has been increased hope that he is still alive. U.S. officials say they are working with sources on the ground to get information about Tice.

Investigators and some extremism researchers are looking into whether there’s evidence of a clear ideology behind the UnitedHealthcare CEO’s killing after details about suspect Luigi Mangione surfaced online. Mangione is a member of a prominent Maryland family, graduated top of his class from an elite prep school and received two Ivy League school degrees. He reportedly suffered a major back injury and underwent surgery a couple of years ago.

• 🎧 Mangione had several social media accounts, including one on Goodreads where he posted an excerpt from the writings of Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, NPR’s Odette Yousef says. One of the photos on his X account is an X-ray of a spine with four large screws inserted. It isn’t certain that this is his X-ray. His digital footprint doesn’t clarify much because it cuts off in the spring. Police found a handwritten note conveying a deep anger towards the healthcare industry and a feeling that someone had to take action, Yousef says.
• ➡️ Brian Thompson, the UnitedHealthcare CEO, was likely killed with a ghost gun. Here’s what they are and how they are made.

Two separate judges blocked the $24.6 billion merger deal for Kroger and Albertsons yesterday. One of the cases was brought by federal regulators while the other was presented by the Washington state attorney general. It would have been the biggest grocery merger in U.S. history. Now, after two years of delays, its fate is unknown.

• 🎧 The block is technically temporary and Kroger and Albertsons could keep fighting and appeal, NPR’s Alina Selyukh says. The state judge ruled the merger violated state consumer protection law and the federal case blocked the merger nationwide. Government lawyers argued the merger would leave shoppers worse off. Kroger and Albertsons made the case that the merger was a matter of survival and that their biggest rivals are not conventional supermarkets but giants like Walmart and Costco. The companies say they are disappointed and disagree with the decision and are currently weighing their options going forward.

Life advice

It can be hard to know what to say to someone whose loved one has died. You want to show love and support, but you also know there isn’t much you can say to heal their pain. If you feel at a loss for words, psychologist and grief consultant Mekel Harris and author of Grief is Love Marisa Renee Lee have some dos and don’ts when expressing condolences.

• ❤️ Don’t start anything with “at least.” This phrase may minimize your friend’s experience and could impose a viewpoint that may not ring true.
• ❤️ Saying “no need to respond” releases the grieving person from any pressure or expectation to reply.
• ❤️ Clichés like “time heals all wounds” can sound hollow and impersonal.
• ❤️ Keep reaching out, even months after the death. Grief is a long road, and each person heals at their own pace.

Check out the more tips here.

Picture show

Clockwise, from top left: Laura Forer, Michelle Alette, Domenique Rice, Jen Loga, Dr. Patty Ng and Marise Angibeau-Gray

Nancy Borowick

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Nancy Borowick

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Nancy Borowick found that photography was therapeutic for her after she lost both of her parents within 364 days of one another. It continued to have healing power when she found herself deep in depression 13 months after the traumatic birth of her son. Borowick turned to social media to ask others about their experiences with birth trauma. One grandmother asked her, “Are you looking for stories about stillbirth?” The question prompted her to start The Loss Mother’s Stone, a project she hopes will draw awareness to women’s stories, educate Americans and destigmatize the conversation between doctors and patients.

3 things to know before you go

After The Onion was named the winning bidder for Alex Jones’ assets at a bankruptcy auction last month, the losing bidder tried to stop the sale, saying the process was rigged and “fatally flawed.”

Joe Buglewicz/Getty Images

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1. A bankruptcy judge has rejected a bid by The Onion’s owners to buy Alex Jones’ Infowars, saying the offer and process were flawed.
2. New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy signed a new law Monday that limits how a book can be banned in schools and public libraries and protects librarians from lawsuits. (via WHYY)
3. The U.S.’ first state-sanctioned facility for people to use illegal drugs under medical supervision opened yesterday in Rhode Island. The facilities are part of an effort to prevent overdoses. (via The Public’s Radio)

This newsletter was edited by Suzanne Nuyen.

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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

Microsoft’s artificial intelligence head Mustafa Suleyman is building a new team focused on consumer health by hiring staff from a similar unit he once led at Google DeepMind, as the rival companies race to create lucrative applications from the cutting-edge technology.

Suleyman, a British entrepreneur who co-founded DeepMind in 2010, has hired Dominic King, the former head of DeepMind’s health unit and a UK-trained surgeon, as vice-president of Microsoft AI’s new London-based health team.

He has also poached Christopher Kelly, a clinical research scientist at DeepMind and a neonatal intensive care doctor at Evelina Children’s Hospital in London, as well as two others from his time at the AI start-up.

Microsoft’s new consumer AI health division comes as tech groups rush to turn generative AI into a staple of everyday life, in a bid to drive revenues from the fast-developing technology. Sir Demis Hassabis, co-founder and chief executive of DeepMind, is also focused on healthcare, such as leading spin-off AI group Isomorphic Labs, which is working on drug discovery.

Health has become one of the growth areas in the AI boom. Consumers have often turned to the web for health-related queries, and a Deloitte survey this year found that 48 per cent of respondents asked generative AI chatbots such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot or Claude health-focused questions.

These include questions about specific health conditions, symptoms and mental health. Microsoft AI’s health unit will focus on these types of consumer health applications using generative AI.

The US tech group, which hired Suleyman earlier this year, confirmed the creation of its new unit. “In our mission to inform, support and empower everyone with responsible AI, health is a critical use case,” said Microsoft. “We continue to hire top talent in support of these efforts.”

Google DeepMind’s health operation, founded by Suleyman, started in 2016 and grew to a team of more than 100 people based in London. The unit had signed a five-year partnership with 10 UK NHS hospitals to process the medical data of 1.6mn patients, and launched an app to monitor patients’ vital signs.

However, DeepMind was later embroiled in controversy over its work for the UK health sector amid concerns about the security of patient data. This led to Suleyman’s unit being spun off in 2019 by parent company Alphabet into a Google unit in California headed by David Feinberg, the former chief executive of Geisinger, one of the US’s largest private health groups.

Suleyman left DeepMind that same year, taking up a new policy role at Google’s California headquarters before leaving in 2022 to do a stint as a venture investor. He later created AI start-up Inflection.

In March, Microsoft hired Suleyman from Inflection as well as most of its staff, including Karén Simonyan, co-founder and chief scientist of Inflection, and a former DeepMind researcher himself.

Other recent hires for Microsoft’s AI health unit include Peter Hames, the former chief executive of UK digital health start-up Big Health and Bay Gross, co-founder of digital healthcare provider Cityblock Health.

As part of his broader team, Suleyman has also employed former DeepMind colleagues Nando de Freitas and Trevor Back, who led the start-up’s health research team. However, both de Freitas and Back will not work specifically on Microsoft’s health applications.

A Texas bankruptcy court ruled on Tuesday that The Onion‘s acquisition of Alex Jones‘ disinformation empire, Infowars, could not move forward, dealing a blow to the satirical newspaper. The most surreal media merger in recent memory is now set to disintegrate — at least for now — after almost a month of legal wrangling.

“I don’t think it’s enough money,” U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez wrote in a late-night decision, per NBC News. “I’m going to not approve the sale.” Judge Lopez has left it up to trustee Christopher Murray to decide what to do next. It’s possible that there could be another auction, in which the Onion could once again place bid for the embattled conspiracy theorist’s publication. He could also decide to reexamine the Jones-associated company First United American, which offered a revised bid that has not yet been disclosed, per the AP.

In 2022, Jones was ordered to pay a total of nearly $1.5 billion in civil damages to the families of victims in the deadly 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, Connecticut. Jones had falsely and repeatedly claimed on Infowars that the massacre was a hoax, smearing parents of children who were killed as “crisis actors” — incendiary attacks that saw the grieving families subjected to years of harassment and intimidation by viewers who believed Jones’ lies. In the course of multiple defamation lawsuits brought against him and Infowars’ parent company, Free Speech Systems, Jones testified that, contrary to his earlier statements, the Sandy Hook shooting was “100 percent real.”

This year, having failed to pay what he owed the victims’ families, Jones asked a judge to convert his personal bankruptcy to a Chapter 7 to liquidate his assets, including the Infowars brand, in order to at least partially cover the massive settlement. The court ruled in September that he could put Free Speech Systems up for auction.

The process took a surprising turn in November, when The Onion revealed that it had placed the winning bid in the court-ordered auction. It was another attention-grabbing stunt for the beloved parody publisher, which had just three months earlier revived its print edition under new parent company Global Tetrahedron, a firm with a jokingly ominous name created to acquire the title from its previous owner in April, with former NBC News reporter Ben Collins stepping in as CEO of the paper. The Onion announced that it would relaunch Infowars and its social channels in January 2025 as sources of irreverent comedy rather than paranoiac diatribes, vowing “to end Infowars’ relentless barrage of disinformation for the sake of selling supplements and replace it with The Onion’s relentless barrage of humor for good.” The brand also partnered with the gun control activism nonprofit Everytown for Gun Safety on an ad deal for the revamped Infowars.

Jones was apoplectic over the sale and aired a broadcast that saw him raving that “imperial troops” were storming his studio to seize it from him. That didn’t happen, and a company with links to the right-wing firebrand soon mounted a legal challenge to the takeover: First American United Companies, affiliated with Jones’ dietary supplements business, alleged that The Onion had bid only $1.75 million for Infowars, compared to its offer of $3.5 million, and had therefore won the auction through collusion and fraud. Murray, the bankruptcy trustee overseeing the liquidation of Free Speech Systems, said the First American bid was actually “inferior,” as the total value of The Onion‘s deal stood at $7 million — because most of the Sandy Hook families had agreed to receive a percentage of revenues from an Onion-owned Infowars instead of cash from the sale itself. (These were the only two sealed bids in the auction.)

Meanwhile, Elon Musk — who a year ago made the controversial decision to reinstate Jones’ account on X, formerly Twitter, despite his permanent suspensions from nearly every other social media platform — also took action against the purchase. In legal objection to the sale filed by X in November, the company pointed out that according to its user agreement, they are the owner of Jones’ and Infowars’ accounts on the site, and have no obligation to turn them over to an entity that purchases Free Speech Systems’ collective assets. The unusually aggressive move was a stark reminder that users of such websites do not have ultimate control of their profiles, and threw a potential wrench in The Onion‘s scheme to turn Jones’ digital footprint into a mockery of everything he stands for.

Murray testified on Tuesday before Judge Lopez of the U.S. District and Bankruptcy Court of the Southern District of Texas that The Onion‘s offer should be approved over First American’s. In his own testimony, auctioneer Jeff Tanenbaum defended the sale process when Jones’ lawyers pressed him over not holding a live auction.

Jones himself did not attend court this week but used his show to continue complaining about the prospect of The Onion wresting control of his once lucrative conspiracy theory factory. “I can’t imagine the judge would certify this fraud,” he told his audience on Tuesday. “I mean it’s head-spinning the stuff they did and what they claimed.”

Now that the judge has spoken, it’s up to Christopher Murray to decide what happens next — and whether the cathartic punchline of the Sandy Hook families having some say over Infowars’ fate could finally come to pass.