Catch up on the day’s stories: Soaring AC bills, Uno’s enduring popularity, the rise of Dr Pepper
CNN
CNN’s 5 Things PM brings you the stories you might have missed during your busy day.
👋 Welcome to 5 Things PM! Step aside, Pepsi. After years of steady growth, Dr Pepper is now the No. 2 soda brand in the United States. The peppery drink with a devoted following capitalized on our taste for sweet and spicy. Coke still holds the top spot by a comfortable margin with 19.2% of the soda market. Here’s what else you might have missed during your busy day: 1️⃣ Soaring AC bills: Your electric bills this summer might make you hot under the collar — with good reason. Temperatures are already soaring in some cities, and cranking your thermostat down to keep cool will cost you more this year. 2️⃣ Auto-brewery syndrome: A woman never drank, yet her breath reeked of alcohol. She told doctors that she had a gut feeling something was wrong. For two years they didn’t believe her — neither did her husband — but it turns out she was right. 3️⃣ Industry icon: Sticking with the beer theme, America’s oldest craft brewer closed last summer after 127 years. Now an unexpected buyer wants to bring Anchor Brewing back to life. 4️⃣ Road to recovery: For decades, Michigan Central Station epitomized Detroit’s urban decay and economic struggles. After six years of renovations, the former rail hub will reopen to the public this week as a symbol of the Motor City’s resurgence.
A California woman told police that Trump Cabinet pick Pete Hegseth physically blocked her from leaving a hotel room, took her phone, and then sexually assaulted her even though she “remembered saying ‘no’ a lot,” a police report obtained by CNN shows.
For more than a decade, Chinese students have flocked to the United States, drawn by the prestige of an overseas education and the glamor of the American Dream. But that’s changing now – and recent statistics suggest the allure may be wearing off.
After rarely being seen in public in the two weeks since he delivered a brief, 46-second victory speech on election night, JD Vance reemerged this week to play one of the most important roles he will be expected to fill as Donald Trump’s No. 2: His point person on Capitol Hill.
A Florida man was arrested Wednesday and charged in a plot to bomb the New York Stock Exchange this week, according to the FBI.
The Senate on Wednesday voted down an effort led by Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders to block a series of planned US weapons sales to Israel.
Republicans on the House Ethics Committee fell in line behind GOP leaders and voted not to release the results of their investigation into Donald Trump’s attorney general pick, Matt Gaetz, despite growing calls from the Senate GOP to make the findings public ahead of his confirmation hearing.
Senate Democrats have confirmed some of President Joe Biden’s picks for the federal bench this week in the face of President-elect Donald Trump’s calls for a total GOP blockade of judicial nominations – in part because several Republicans involved with the Trump transition process have been missing votes.
A former University of Virginia student pleaded guilty Wednesday to fatally shooting three football players and wounding two other students on the Charlottesville campus in 2022.
Donald Trump is considering a right-wing media personality and people who have served on his US Secret Service detail to run the agency that has been plagued by its failure to preempt two alleged assassination attempts on Trump this summer, sources familiar with the president-elect’s thinking tell CNN.
The United States has vetoed a UN Security Council resolution that called for an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire in Gaza, on the grounds it would not have secured the release of hostages.
A Democratic election official in Pennsylvania offered an impassioned apology Wednesday for claiming “precedent by a court doesn’t matter anymore in this country” to justify counting about 600 faulty ballots in defiance of state Supreme Court rulings.