Welcome to Scoop, where you get the Scoop on this week's news. My name is Jenna, and this is

Smarter News. Well, hi, everyone. Welcome to Scoop. It is January 5th, 2026. Just even saying that out loud,

it hits home. I can't even believe we're five days in already. Think of everything that's happened so far. We thought last year was busy. We all have to

burn some sage, knock on wood, toss salt over our show. Whatever you need to do, whatever feels

appropriate. We're already starting the year off in quite an interesting

new cycle. I'm excited to see you. I hope you're off to a great start to the new year. That brings

all sorts of different feelings, doesn't it? One of the things I was thinking about as we were going

from New Year's Eve to New Year's Day as I was really getting down to myself because typically

I have a pre-recorded podcast that will say, hey, these are the stories that we're thinking about going into the new year. Here's our top three. Here's our top five. Here are the things that we thought were important last year. Here's where they ended up. And also, here's what we're thinking about in the new year. And I was bummed. I didn't get a chance to do that. Life got a little bit crazy. As we know, between Thanksgiving and Christmas, don't try to get anything done. I mean, you're asking for it. So I did have this done. I was trying to take a break from social media. I was trying to take a break. But you know, there's also end of the year things you have to do as a business owner, so it wasn't really happening. But I have this story for you.

We're going to get into all the important stories. We're going to talk about. There's also end of the year things you have to do as a business owner, so it wasn't really happening.

But I have this story for you. We're going to get into all the important stories.

We're going to talk about what's going on overseas with different terrorist targets and overlook story.

We're going to talk about fraud in Minnesota because that's been a big viral story over the last few weeks.

And of course, we're going to spend the bulk of our time on Venezuela. Right now, as I'm recording this,

the one-time de facto leader of Venezuela, Nicholas Maduro, is set to appear in a federal court

in New York City. And it's very interesting who is representing him. Can you imagine getting a lawyer, how that process probably worked? That's what I want to know. Do you get a call? How do you figure that part out? We're going to get to all of that. So we've got a lot of big stories in front of us. But the reason why I'm bringing up this particular personal story is it's related to the news. What we all just received in the last several days is a reminder that

whatever we think is the big story of the year, whatever we think is going to happen, we always

have to have some humility that we're not in charge, that there's always something that's

unexpected that develops in news and in our lives. So as I was coming into 2026, one of the big

topics that's on my mind is

artificial intelligence. I've been thinking a lot about this and trying to do a series for

smarter news because to me, artificial intelligence is such an important technology to understand,

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