🌎 An Israel-Ukraine aid package

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The US will try to push Israel and Ukraine aid through Congress this week. The package would be well over $2 billion, but it’s likely to come up against Republican backlash—and face delays without a House Republican leader.

Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping are meeting this week. The Russian leader is traveling to Beijing for China’s Belt and Road Forum, which starts Tuesday.

Eli Lilly’s diabetes treatment Mounjaro helped people with obesity lose 60 pounds on average. The drug, tirzepatide, is similar to Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic and Wegovy.

The opening of Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour movie was a smash. It could even beat Joker (2019) as October’s all-time highest opening—not to mention several other films, including the biggest concert film of all time, which it’s already handily trounced.

Disney turns 100 years old today. It’s hard to say whether Walt Disney would have predicted his namesake kicking off its centennial by going all in on sports betting.

We’re apparently never going to give up on AR glasses

It doesn’t matter that Google abandoned its Glass smart specs this year after a decade of botched attempts to make them cool, or that Apple has struggled with its own version of virtual eyewear—Microsoft won’t abandon the dream to make augmented reality glasses mainstream.

Microsoft hopes a new patent will fix a charging issue that has plagued AR glasses—a swappable battery design and an internal charge storage that allows wearers to extend their usage even after the battery charge is depleted, making them usable for long periods of time even when there’s no convenient way to charge.

But are people really ready for the next frontier in communication beyond smartphones? Quartz’s Faustine Ngila looks at how Microsoft’s new technology might charge up new interest in an old aspiration.

Amazon’s Prime Day sales are a peek into holiday spending

Amazon’s October Prime Day sales outpaced last year’s, but they couldn’t beat July’s Prime event—and big ticket items weren’t what buyers were reaching for.

“Consumers are spending and likely purchasing the same number of gifts for the holidays, but we will likely see a lower dollar value per gift,” Natalie Kotlyar, a national retail and consumer business practice leader at advisory firm BDO, told Quartz. Inflation is making Americans more cost conscious, and Amazon’s Prime Day results shed some light on what this looks like in practice:

$55.86: The average spend per order, down from July’s Prime Day sales

22%: Items purchased that were priced under $20

25 million: Items sold on day one

2nd: Time Amazon has held Prime Day in October

Meta doesn’t want Threads to be about news, but its users do

Threads—Meta’s competitor to X—was never intended to be a news site. But after Hamas attacked Israel and misinformation related to the war flooded Elon Musk’s X, journalists jumped ship for Threads to report on the conflict. Quartz’s Ananya Bhattacharya explains why even as Meta tries to distance itself from news, news keeps showing up on Meta’s doorstep.

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🌚 What will happen if you look at the solar eclipse without glasses

🌏 How countries around the world are trying to regulate AI

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Surprising discoveries

Taco Bell is trying out chicken nuggets. “This is like truly a very premium nugget. It’s not a chicken nugget patty you might get at some fast-food restaurants. This is very much more elevated.” 🤔

And if you’re looking for more elevated food, try out the world’s largest charcuterie board. It weighed just under 770 lbs (350 kg), but we’re a little disappointed there was no giant leg of jamón at its center.

NASA is sending another spacecraft to another asteroid. This one is nearly entirely made up of metal (well, the spacecraft, yes, but the asteroid, too).

After a certain point in life, longevity is more about genes than habits. A person’s ability to live to 100 is at least 50% determined by genetics.

The majority of adults in the US say they have between one and four close friends. And that becomes even more likely the younger they are.

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Our best wishes for a productive day. Send any news, comments, truly very premium nuggets, and shavings of serrano to [email protected]. Today’s Daily Brief was brought to you by Morgan Haefner.