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A home safe lets you keep your important information and small valuables in one convenient, private, burglar-proof location. Spend more for a fire- and water-resistant safe, and you can keep these items secure in most catastrophic events.

A break-in, flood, or house fire can cause you to lose things that can’t be easily replaced: Private and personal data, documents, electronics, heirlooms, and keepsakes. Especially if you are in a place prone to natural disasters like hurricanes and wildfires, you should consider moving these nine things into a home safe and out of your safety deposit box, wallet, and drawers.

Why a home safe and not a safe deposit box at a bank?

There are many reasons why a fireproof safe at home is preferable to a bank box. It’s not a good idea to store original copies of documents you may require immediate access to, such as passports, in a safe deposit box.

Bank safe deposit boxes are only accessible during branch operating hours and are typically sealed when the bank receives a death notice. To open a sealed safe deposit box, estate representatives must provide court papers to the bank.

FDIC insurance does not cover cash in a safe deposit box. The FDIC only insures the deposits in bank accounts, but not the contents of their safe deposit boxes.

Tip: Items in your home are typically covered by your renter or homeowners insurance policy, and the contents of a bank safe deposit box are rarely covered.

What should you store in a fireproof safe?

This is just a selection of the precious objects and important documents that many people have lying around the house or otherwise stored inappropriately that could cost a lot of time and money to replace. Installing a fireproof, waterproof safe now might prove more cost-effective than replacing all these items (and dealing with the hassle of insurance companies).

1. Safety deposit box keys

While we’re suggesting moving some items into a home safe, you may still keep other items at the bank. So, if you do store valuables in a bank safe deposit box, you’ll want to make sure you keep the keys to it in a secure place.

Tip: Keep copies of car and house keys. They aren’t expensive to replace (unless you lose your last copy, of course), but in the wrong hands, they provide easy access to your home, car, garage, and shed.

2. Cash and credit cards

The most obvious item to keep in a safe, after safe deposit box keys, is cash. Even if you only keep small amounts around the house for emergencies, it’s better off somewhere protected instead of in a sock drawer.

Infrequently used debit cards, credit cards, and key cards — these little bits of plastic easily melt and get lost without notice. Carry only the cards you use; you can’t lose what you don’t have in your purse or wallet.

3. Social Security cards, passports, and original birth certificates

COVID-19 shutdowns keep many people from accessing important identifying documents, such as passports and birth certificates, that were stored in banks. While these documents certainly need to be secured, they shouldn’t be anywhere you can’t access them readily. After all, these documents can be a hassle and time-consuming to replace.

Passports and original birth certificates are essential to proving your identity, birth date, and citizenship, and can also stand in for all ID purposes if your wallet or purse is stolen or lost. Your Social Security card is vital to establish eligibility for benefits.

Tip: When traveling abroad, experts advise carrying a photocopy of your passport and leaving the original in a hotel safe.

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In August, a clandestine team of C.I.A. officers slipped into Venezuela with a plan to collect information on Nicolás Maduro, the country’s president, whom the Trump administration had labeled a narco-terrorist.

The C.I.A. team moved about Caracas, remaining undetected for months while it was in the country. The intelligence gathered about the Venezuelan leader’s daily movements — combined with a human source close to Mr. Maduro and a fleet of stealth drones flying secretly above — enabled the agency to map out minute details about his routines.

It was a highly dangerous mission. With the U.S. embassy closed, the C.I.A. officers could not operate under the cloak of diplomatic cover. But it was highly successful. Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a news conference that because of the intelligence gathered by the team, the United States knew where Mr. Maduro moved, what he ate, and even what pets he kept.

That information was critical to the ensuing military operation, a pre-dawn raid Saturday by elite Army Delta Force commandos, the riskiest U.S. military operation of its kind since members of the Navy’s SEAL Team 6 killed Osama bin Laden in a safe house in Pakistan in 2011.

The result was a tactically precise and swiftly executed operation that extracted Mr. Maduro from his country with no loss of American life, a result heralded by President Trump amid larger questions about the legality and rationale for the U.S. actions in Venezuela.

Mr. Trump has justified what was named Operation Absolute Resolve as a strike against drug trafficking. But Venezuela is hardly as big a player in the international drug trade as other countries. Officials had previously told congressional leaders that their objective in Venezuela was not regime change. And Mr. Trump has long said he opposes U.S. foreign occupations.

Yet on Saturday, the president proclaimed that American officials were in charge of Venezuela, and that the United States would rebuild the country’s oil infrastructure.

In contrast to messy U.S. interventions of the past — by the military in Panama or the C.I.A. in Cuba — the operation to grab Mr. Maduro was virtually flawless, according to multiple officials familiar with the details, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the plans.

In the run-up, Delta Force commandos rehearsed the extraction inside a full-scale model of Mr. Maduro’s compound that the Joint Special Operations Command had built in Kentucky. They practiced blowing through steel doors at ever-faster paces.

The military had been readying for days to execute the mission, waiting for good weather conditions and a time when the risk of civilian casualties would be minimized.

Amid the heightened tensions, Mr. Maduro had been rotating between six and eight locations, and the United States did not always learn where he intended to stay until late in the evenings. To execute the operation, the U.S. military needed confirmation that Mr. Maduro was at the compound they had trained to attack.

In the days leading up to the raid, the United States deployed increasing numbers of Special Operations aircraft, specialized electronic warfare planes, armed Reaper drones, search-and-rescue helicopters, and fighter jets to the region — last-minute reinforcements that analysts said indicated the only question was when military action would happen, not if.

The United States had made other moves intended to ratchet up the pressure on Mr. Maduro and prepare for the raid to capture him. A week earlier, the C.I.A. had carried out a drone strike on a port facility in Venezuela. And for months, the U.S. military has conducted a legally disputed campaign that has destroyed dozens of boats and killed at least 115 people in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific.

In recent days, Mr. Maduro tried to head off an American raid, offering the United States access to Venezuelan oil, Mr. Trump said Saturday. A U.S. official said the deal, offered on Dec. 23, would have had Mr. Maduro leave the country for Turkey. But Mr. Maduro angrily rejected that plan, the official said. It was clear, the official added, that Mr. Maduro was not serious.

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Whooping cough cases are sweeping in the U.S., with tens of thousands infected and at least 13 people dead from the bacterial infection this year. While the infection rate is lower than last year, it remains above typical prepandemic years, and the number of deaths has risen.

The respiratory infection, also known as pertussis, is characterized by a severe, violent cough that can leave people—especially infants—struggling to breathe. Although rarely fatal, its lingering symptoms have earned it the moniker of the “100-day cough.”

The disease is caused by the bacterium Bordetella pertussis, which emits toxins into a person’s respiratory tract, making early treatment with antibiotics vital to managing the infection. The bacterium is easily spread between people, both through direct contact and droplets from the mouth or nose.

As of December 20, the U.S. and its territories has seen 27,871 diagnosed cases of whooping cough so far this year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Last year at this time, the number was 41,922, a staggering increase after four years of less than 10,000 cases annually during the peak of the COVID pandemic. In the years between 2003 and 2019, the U.S. typically saw between 10,000 to 20,000 cases annually; the highest rate during that time was in 2012, with 48,277 cases.

At least 13 people have died of pertussis so far this year, according to a recent report from the Pan American Health Organization. Provisional CDC data from last year noted 10 deaths from the infection.

Public health experts fear that the sustained high rates of whooping cough this year, after last year’s spike, may be a symptom of declining vaccination levels.

The DTaP vaccine protects infants and young children from pertussis, while the Tdap vaccination offers protection for older children and adults. Both shots also protect against tetanus and diphtheria. The CDC has traditionally recommended these vaccinations from the age of two months; under the agency’s guidelines, children should receive four doses in their first two years and a total of six doses before reaching age 13. But for children born in 2021, the most recent group for whom data are available, only 79 percent had received four shots of DTaP by the age of two.

Whooping cough is most dangerous among infants under a year old, and public health experts also recommend that pregnant people get a Tdap vaccine to transfer antibodies to newborns. All adults are also advised to get a Tdap vaccine every 10 years to ensure continued protection.

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In the aftermath of his spectacular falling out with President Donald Trump last year, Elon Musk blasted the Republican Party as a corrupt force that was “bankrupting” the United States of America.

But now, after months in the political wilderness, the volatile tech baron has indicated that he will once again devote his enormous fortune to electing GOP politicians, this time ahead of the midterm elections in 2026.

“America is toast if the radical left wins,” declared Musk on X Thursday. “They will open the floodgates to illegal immigration and fraud. Won’t be America anymore.”

Musk’s post quoted, and seemingly confirmed, another post from a conservative influencer who claimed that Musk was “going all-in” on funding Republicans this year.

That echoed reports from December that Musk had begun cutting “big checks” for congressional Republicans following a reconciliation dinner with Vice President J.D. Vance.

It is all a far cry from Musk’s promise last July to plough his billions into a new “America Party” designed to break what he described as a bipartisan consensus in favor of government borrowing.

“When it comes to bankrupting our country with waste and graft, we live in a one-party system, not a democracy,” Musk claimed at the time. “Today, the America Party is formed to give you back your freedom.”

Those plans quickly faltered as one of the world’s foremost over-promisers, who has a long history of failed projects and missed deadlines, ran up against the boring, difficult work of actually getting a new party off the ground.

By August, The Wall Street Journal was reporting that Vance had persuaded Musk to back off his plans for a third party, causing him to cancel a planned call with political gurus.

On Monday, The Washington Post further detailed Vance’s months-long backroom effort to patch up the relationship between Trump and Musk, though the peace reportedly remains delicate.

Musk, currently the world’s richest human with an estimated fortune of $726 bilion, donated more than $290 million to help elect Trump and other Republican candidates in the 2024 election cycle.

But the two men’s relationship explosively unraveled last June after Musk claimed that Trump was covering up his alleged ties to Jeffrey Epstein, and Trump threatened to revoke all Musk’s government contracts.

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To those “who view this administration with distrust or disdain,” Mr. Mamdani said, “I promise you this. If you are a New Yorker, I am your mayor. Regardless of whether we agree, I will protect you, celebrate with you, mourn alongside you and never, not for a second, hide from you.”

The star-studded ceremony at City Hall featured two avatars of the progressive wing of American politics who had helped propel Mr. Mamdani to the mayoralty: Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a fellow Democrat representing parts of Queens and the Bronx, delivered opening remarks, and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont administered the oath of office, with Mr. Mamdani, the city’s first Muslim mayor, resting his hand on two Qurans held by his wife, Rama Duwaji.

The message from the stage was unmistakable: In New York City, the left is ascendant. And to national Democratic leaders struggling to regain the party’s footing, Mr. Mamdani’s victory and the excitement surrounding it may suggest a path forward.

“New York, thank you for inspiring our nation,” Mr. Sanders said. “Thank you for giving us, from coast to coast, the hope and the vision that we can create government that works for all, not just the wealthy and the few.”

The event took place before thousands of well-wishers who flooded the plaza in front of City Hall and poured into a section of Broadway more typically closed off for parades down the Canyon of Heroes, but this time for the inauguration of a self-described champion of the underrepresented.

Amid the sea of knit caps, there were union emblems, Democratic Socialists of America apparel and the occasional kaffiyeh. Attendees stuffed hand warmers into gloves and shifted from foot to foot to warm their toes.

The midday event followed a significantly more modest and subdued swearing-in ceremony just after midnight, during which Mr. Mamdani legally became mayor of New York City.

The subsequent public ceremony and adjoining block party captured how many New Yorkers have hungered for a more earnest-seeming, more hopeful alternative to 21st-century American politics, and have been eager to turn the page on the cronyism and self-regarding swagger of the Eric Adams mayoralty.

After much equivocation, Mr. Adams, who once called himself the future of the Democratic Party, attended Thursday’s ceremony, and Mr. Mamdani spoke kindly of his ascent from an impoverished background to mayor of New York City. But when Mr. Mamdani nodded to mayors he admired from the past, Mr. Adams was not among them.

Shortly after the ceremony ended, Mr. Mamdani traveled to Brooklyn to announce that he had enacted several executive orders, including one that revoked all prior executive orders issued after Sept. 26, 2024, the date of Mr. Adams’s indictment.

“That was a date that marked a moment when many New Yorkers decided politics held nothing for them,” Mr. Mamdani said at a news conference in the borough.

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Mamdani New York Maor 2026

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The new year has arrived, and so have the Quadrantids. The first meteor shower of 2026 is known for its bright fireballs and bolides—large meteors that explode in the atmosphere in dramatic fashion, sometimes raining meteorites onto Earth below.

The Quadrantids are an annual shower running from November through early January. This year, the Quadrantids will peak on the night of January 3 through the early hours of January 4. Best viewed from the Northern Hemisphere, the ideal time to get outside and try to spot some of these luminous fireballs is in the predawn hours on January 4, according to NASA. Unfortunately, a full moon rises the night before, so the moon’s light may interfere with your ability to see these shooting stars.

To have the best chance of spotting a meteor, look for the Quadrantids’ radiant—the point of the sky where they appear to originate. First observed in 1825, the meteor shower radiates from an obsolete constellation called Quadrans Muralis—named by a French astronomer in 1795, it was left out of the International Astronomical Union’s list of official constellations in 1922. Instead, look for Ursa Major, or the Big Dipper, and gaze toward the end of its handle.

he Quadrantids don’t come from the stars, however. Unlike other meteor showers, which tend to be caused by debris falling from comets, the Quadrantids are produced by an asteroid, 2003 EH1. Discovered in 2003, the asteroid may actually be a dead comet, NASA notes. Some astronomers think there may also be a second object that contributes to the meteor shower, a comet called 96P/Machholz.

If you can get outside in the early hours of January 4, move as far as you safely can from bright light sources, such as street lamps and buildings. Give your eyes 30 minutes to adjust to the dark, and look toward the northern sky. Then just be patient!

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Galaxies in our universe seem to be achieving an impossible feat. They are rotating with such speed that the gravity generated by their observable matter could not possibly hold them together; they should have torn themselves apart long ago. The same is true of galaxies in clusters, which leads scientists to believe that something we cannot see is at work. They think something we have yet to detect directly is giving these galaxies extra mass, generating the extra gravity they need to stay intact. This strange and unknown matter was called “dark matter” since it is not visible.

Dark matter

Unlike normal matter, dark matter does not interact with the electromagnetic force. This means it does not absorb, reflect or emit light, making it extremely hard to spot. In fact, researchers have been able to infer the existence of dark matter only from the gravitational effect it seems to have on visible matter. Dark matter seems to outweigh visible matter roughly six to one, making up about 27% of the universe. Here’s a sobering fact: The matter we know and that makes up all stars and galaxies only accounts for 5% of the content of the universe! But what is dark matter? One idea is that it could contain “supersymmetric particles” – hypothesized particles that are partners to those already known in the Standard Model. Experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) may provide more direct clues about dark matter.

Many theories say the dark matter particles would be light enough to be produced at the LHC. If they were created at the LHC, they would escape through the detectors unnoticed. However, they would carry away energy and momentum, so physicists could infer their existence from the amount of energy and momentum “missing” after a collision. Dark matter candidates arise frequently in theories that suggest physics beyond the Standard Model, such as supersymmetry and extra dimensions. One theory suggests the existence of a “Hidden Valley”, a parallel world made of dark matter having very little in common with matter we know. If one of these theories proved to be true, it could help scientists gain a better understanding of the composition of our universe and, in particular, how galaxies hold together.

Dark energy

Dark energy makes up approximately 68% of the universe and appears to be associated with the vacuum in space. It is distributed evenly throughout the universe, not only in space but also in time – in other words, its effect is not diluted as the universe expands. The even distribution means that dark energy does not have any local gravitational effects, but rather a global effect on the universe as a whole. This leads to a repulsive force, which tends to accelerate the expansion of the universe. The rate of expansion and its acceleration can be measured by observations based on the Hubble law. These measurements, together with other scientific data, have confirmed the existence of dark energy and provide an estimate of just how much of this mysterious substance exists.

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What is it?

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• Inauguration Day: The public inauguration ceremony featuring Mr. Mamdani, the city’s first Muslim and South Asian mayor, is taking place hours after he was officially sworn in during a brief private event held shortly after midnight.

• Other oaths: The city’s comptroller, Mark Levine, and public advocate, Jumaane Williams, were also sworn in.

• Special guests: Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York spoke of New Yorkers’ “courage” and “ambition” during opening remarks, and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont will administer a ceremonial oath of office to Mr. Mamdani.

 

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Mayor Zohran Mamdani

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The recent surge in the use of GLP-1 weight-loss drugs has propelled addiction-adjacent terms such as “food noise” and “food cravings” into common vernacular. But can food actually be addictive? Now some neuroscientists and food behavior researchers are trying to understand if food—particularly ultraprocessed foods—can be addictive in the same way as other known substances, such as cigarettes, alcohol, and cocaine.

For foods to be potentially addictive, “they’re created in a way that is most palatable and most delicious,” says Alex DiFeliceantonio, an appetitive neuroscientist at Virginia Tech. “When you look at the food environment, those tend to be ultraprocessed.”

Scientific American spoke with DiFeliceantonio about research unpacking whether food addiction is real, whether certain types of foods might have more addictive qualities, and how related eating disorders can be addressed.

What does it mean to have a “food addiction”?

When we’re thinking about food addiction and looking qualitatively at what people are eating when they are saying that they can’t stop eating, we have to put it in the framework of a substance use disorder. These disorders affect life in an untenable way. Food addiction isn’t in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) like substance use disorder is, but there is a proposal to have it put in the DSM.

We typically look to the Yale Food Addiction Scale for clinical evaluation. The scale was designed to assess the same criteria as the substance use disorder criteria in the DSM. The scale also contains what we call clinical indicators that a person is experiencing symptoms of an addiction, and those symptoms are poorly affecting life, such as the ability to engage in social situations or engage in aspects of work or life. If we accept that food addiction exists—if you give the Yale Food Addiction Scale to large population-level studies and do it across multiple countries internationally—we generally find that around 12 percent of people [experience] it.

A combination of factors can lead to an addictive behavior. And the most common is the addictive potential of the substance combined with the vulnerability of the person. We think about both of those things with food, too: ingredients that could have addictive potential and the people who could be most vulnerable. We also look at food attributes, such as high refined carbohydrate content, which is known to trigger reward pathways in the brain

Other aspects of substance-use-disorder criteria include loss of control over intake and highly patterned intake. That’s what we see in binge-eating disorder. Binge-eating disorder and food addiction are not the same thing, but they share similarities. If we look at the foods people report consuming when they binge eat, they tend to be things that would be classified as ultraprocessed—things like pizza, ice cream, candy, chips. They’re very rarely things like fruit, nuts, beans.

What do you consider an ultraprocessed food?

There are multiple definitions. I would say the one most studied and what we use in my lab is the NOVA [“new” in Portuguese] definition; it has four levels, and the fourth is ultraprocessed foods.

The NOVA level-four foods contain ingredients or processing methods that are not available to the home cook. You can think about additives like stabilizers, cosmetic additives that enhance color or flavor, or emulsifiers to maintain texture. If you add vitamin D or calcium—types of nutritional fortification—that doesn’t make a food a NOVA ultraprocessed food by itself. Ultraprocessed might also refer to foods produced with an industrial method, like making starch slurries that are then extruded, puffed, subjected to high heat, or molded in ways that you really wouldn’t be able to make in your kitchen.

Why might ultraprocessed foods in particular fire up reward pathways in the brain?

The current scientific thinking is we have one reward system and lots of different things that can be rewarding. All addictive drugs increase dopamine in the striatum [a brain region beneath the cerebral cortex that is involved in motor and reward processing]. This has been the dogma since 1988 with [a paper by pharmacologists Gaetano Di Chiara and Assunta Imperato]. It’s the same thing [with certain foods]. If you infuse sugar and fat into the oral cavity of an animal, you see an increase in dopamine. If you infuse these things directly into the gut [of animals], you also see increases in dopamine. There is no agreed-upon threshold in which we say a substance that is addictive must increase dopamine in the striatum by x amount.

Modern ultraprocessed foods started to become widespread in the U.S. around the 1950s. Those foods are acting on a reward system that evolved to deal with natural rewards from the environment.

When we’re thinking about food addiction, we know that there are certain levers or ways to highly activate the reward system, and ultraprocessed foods seem to access the most levers. They elevate levels of sodium, fat, and refined carbohydrates in the body. And this is aided in various ways—with emulsifiers, with texture changes, with flavor changes—ultraprocessed foods are made to be the most palatable, the most delicious. We don’t think about broccoli as an addictive substance; we think about foods that contain enough of these potentially addictive nutrients in combination to be addictive substances.

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