Three news stories summarized & contextualized by analytic journalist Colin Wright.

Hollywood actors reach deal with studios to end strike

Summary: The Hollywood actors union, SAG-AFTRA, announced on Wednesday that they’ve reached a tentative deal with major studios, ending a 118-day strike and a longer 148-day shutdown across much of the industry.

Context: The union said that the deal is valued at over a billion dollars and will, among other things, protect their members from the threat of AI; that longer shutdown kicked-off when the Hollywood writer’s union went on strike in May, and they were able to reach a deal in September, but because the actors were still striking, most productions didn’t immediately pick back up, and though the actor’s strike officially ended yesterday it’ll probably be January before production restarts on most shows and films because of the complexities of aligning schedules, booking studio space, and the like.

—Axios

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FDA approves new version of diabetes drug Mounjaro for weight loss

Summary: A version of pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly’s diabetes treatment, Mounjaro, has been approved to be sold as a weight-loss drug in the US by the FDA under the name Zepbound.

Context: This is just the latest diabetes drug to be approved for chronic weight management in the US, the first of which was Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy, a rebranded, higher-dose version of its diabetes medication, Ozempic; Wegovy has been incredibly popular and profitable for Novo Nordisk, and both drugs operate on similar principles, basically helping people who struggle to lose weight and with the many medical downsides that come with obesity by mimicking hormones that help people feel full; these drugs have performed well in tests, seem to have relatively minor side-effects—at least compared to the obesity-related issues patients otherwise face—and have helped folks lose up to a quarter of their total weight when combined with dietary changes and exercise; both drugs are fairly expensive at around $1,000 per month, though, and aren’t currently covered by insurance.

—The Associated Press

US strikes Iran-linked facility in Syria in round of retaliation

Summary: Following a wave of rocket and drone attacks against American forces and defenses in Iraq and Syria, the US has launched airstrikes against a facility used by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard in Syria.

Context: This is mostly notable because Iran has been backing relatively minor attacks against US defense infrastructure across the Middle East for a while now, and these attacks have slightly increased in scope and scale since Israel’s counterattack in Gaza began about a month ago, suggesting that while a feared, more formal attack from Iran against Israel and its allies in the region might not be forthcoming, a subtle, deconstructed version of the same might be ongoing.

—The New York Times

A new report has found that the 12 month period ending in October 2023 was the hottest such period on record, and that a huge portion of the human population experienced, firsthand, the impact of that human-amplified average temperature range.

—Axios

25,000-14,000

Approximate age, in years, of parts of a pyramid in Indonesia that was recently radiocarbon dated, making it the oldest known pyramid in the world.

That compares with the Great Pyramid of Giza, which is thought to be around 4,600-years-old, and the Pyramid of Djoser, which is thought to have been built sometime around 2630 BCE.

—Phys.org

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