• Biden signed a bill making the bald eagle the official national bird of the United States.
• The bald eagle, an iconic American symbol, was endangered but has since recovered.
• The bill received bipartisan support and was backed by eagle advocates.

One prominent member of American society received a promotion with bipartisan support this holiday season: The bald eagle is now the official bird of the United States, a proclamation nearly 250 years in the making.

On Christmas Eve, President Joe Biden signed into law a bill that amended title 36 of the United States Code and designated the bald eagle as the official national bird. The bill was sponsored by Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat from Minnesota, and co-sponsored by fellow Minnesota Democrat Tina Smith, as well as Republican Senators Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming and Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma. The bill was introduced on June 20, 2024 — which is also National American Eagle Day.

"The bald eagle has long been a symbol of freedom and patriotism for our nation," Senator Mullin said in a statement touting the bill's passage. "It's only fitting we officially designate the bald eagle the national bird of the United States. I was glad to join my colleagues in leading this bipartisan effort and appreciate the House's swift consideration."

Bald eagles have had a long — and somewhat rocky — history in the US. The bird was officially adopted as part of the country's Great Seal in 1782 and has since become synonymous with patriotism and other American values. But bald eagles teetered on the verge of extinction in the 1900s, and the species was designated as endangered in 1967. Since then, the species has soared to recovery; as of 2020, there were 316,700 bald eagles in the US, although over 40 bald eagles succumbed to bird flu in 2022. More recently, bald eagles have made headlines for adopting rocks, stealing pizza, and fostering abandoned chicks.

The move to officially enter the bald eagle into law drew support from eagle advocates, who have been pushing for the measure. A press release from The National Eagle Center crowed "The Bald Eagle Is Ready To Spread It Wings And Soar As The Country's Official Bird."

"This is an exciting day. The Bald Eagle has symbolized American ideals since its placement on the Great Seal in 1782," Preston Cook, the cochair of the National Bird Initiative for the National Eagle Center and author of "American Eagle – A Visual History of Our National Emblem," said in a statement. "With this legislation, we honor its historic role and solidify its place as our national bird and an emblem of our national identity."

• Swiss snowboarder Sophie Hediger died in an avalanche in Arosa, Switzerland.
• Hediger was snowboarding with a companion, who alerted rescue services. She was found buried under the snow.
• She was a rising star, securing World Cup podiums in the 2023-2024 season.

Sophie Hediger, who represented Switzerland in the 2022 Olympics in Beijing, died in an avalanche in Arosa, Switzerland on Monday. She was 26.

According to a police report, Hediger was snowboarding with another person on a closed black diamond slope in Arosa, a town and a resort in eastern Switzerland. She left the closed slope and was caught in an avalanche.

Hediger's companion contacted rescue services, who found her buried under the snow about two hours later. Efforts to revive her were unsuccessful, and she died at the scene.

The Zurich native had been making waves in the snowboarding world, securing her first two World Cup podium finishes in the 2023-2024 season. In late January, she placed second in a Word Cup race in her home country. The next month, she earned third at an event in Gudauri in Georgia.

She also represented Switzerland at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, where she competed in snowboard cross.

Walter Reusser, the chief executive of Swiss Ski, said in a statement, "For the Swiss Ski family, the tragic death of Sophie Hediger has cast a dark shadow over the Christmas holidays. We are immeasurably sad. We will honor Sophie's memory."

Tributes from teammates, coaches, and fans poured in following the news of her death.

Hediger's teammate and friend Aline Albrecht wrote on Instagram, "With you I lose my best friend."

Another teammate, Sina Siegenthaler, wrote: "Keep on shredding in the clouds."

The Swiss snowboard cross team mourned the loss of their athlete.

Oxess, who makes the board that Hediger used, wrote, "Her passion for the mountains and her dedication to the sport touched everyone who had the privilege of knowing her."

A pet food company in Oregon has issued a voluntary recall of its raw and frozen products, as state officials investigate the bird flu death of a cat that they linked to its food.

The big picture: Northwest Naturals' recall of its 2lb Feline Turkey Recipe brand also prompted Los Angeles County health officials to warn pet owners not to feed their animals raw food.

Driving the news: Testing conducted by health officials confirmed a house cat in Washington County, Ore., "contracted H5N1 and died after consuming the raw frozen pet food," per a statement the Oregon Department of Agriculture (ODA) issued on Tuesday.

• "Tests confirmed a genetic match between the virus in the raw and frozen pet food and the infected cat," the statement added.

Details: The recalled product is packaged in 2-pound plastic bags with "Best if used by" dates of May 21, 2026 and June 23, 2026, per a statement from Northwest Naturals.

• The product was sold through distributors in Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Washington and the Canadian province of British Columbia.
• Public health officials are monitoring household members who had contact with the dead cat, but the ODA said no human cases of HPAI had so far been linked to this incident.

What they're saying: "We are confident that this cat contracted H5N1 by eating the Northwest Naturals raw and frozen pet food," said ODA State Veterinarian Ryan Scholz in a statement.

• "This cat was strictly an indoor cat; it was not exposed to the virus in its environment, and results from the genome sequencing confirmed that the virus recovered from the raw pet food and infected cat were exact matches to each other."

Zoom out: The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health said in its advisory that it recently confirmed H5 bird flu in four house cats that consumed recalled raw milk and became sick and died in incidents currently under investigation.

• "Public Health is also investigating additional possible cases of H5 bird flu in three house cats from a different household," the department said.
• "Public Health is awaiting confirmatory testing. These cats were not known to be exposed to raw milk, however public health is investigating other possible sources of infection, including raw meat."

Go deeper: CDC reports first severe human case of bird flu in U.S.

Princess Kate Middleton joined Prince William, their kids and more members of the royal family on their annual walk to Christmas Day church service in Sandringham.

The royals have a longstanding tradition of enjoying an annual family stroll to St Mary Magdalene Church near Sandringham House on Christmas Day, and they carried on with the custom on Wednesday, December 25, despite the family’s recent hardships.

Kate, 42, decked out in a festive green coat and matching hat, and William, also 42, walked alongside their children: Prince George, 11, Princess Charlotte, 9, and Prince Louis, 6. King Charles and Queen Camilla led the royal family’s Christmas Day walk while greeting well-wishers, with pregnant Princess Beatrice joining the event with husband Edoardo Mappelli Mozzi and his son Christopher, 8.

The outing comes nearly one year after Buckingham Palace revealed Charles, 76, and Kate’s, 42, respective health issues. Both of the royals were hospitalized in January — Charles underwent a “corrective procedure” for a benign prostate enlargement and Kate had a “planned” abdominal surgery.

Charles reflected on the royal family’s challenging year during his annual speech on Wednesday.

“I am speaking to you today from the Chapel of the former Middlesex Hospital in London – now itself a vibrant Community space – and thinking especially of the many thousands of professionals and volunteers here in the United Kingdom and across the Commonwealth who, with their skills and out of the goodness of their heart, care for others – often at some cost to themselves,” he said. “From a personal point of view, I offer special, heartfelt thanks to the selfless doctors and nurses who, this year, have supported me and other members of my family through the uncertainties and anxieties of illness, and have helped provide the strength, care and comfort we have needed.”

Charles continued: “I am deeply grateful, too, to all those who have offered us their own kind words of sympathy and encouragement. … All of us go through some form of suffering at some stage in our life, be it mental or physical. The degree to which we help one another — and draw support from each other, be we people of Faith or of none — is a measure of our civilization as Nations. This is what continually impresses me, as my family and I meet with, and listen to, those who dedicate their lives to helping others.”

In February, Buckingham Palace confirmed that Charles was diagnosed with cancer during his hospital stay the previous month, though the type and stage has remained private. As a result, he “commenced a schedule of regular treatments” and postponed his public duties for the time being. Charles eventually stepped back into his public role in April as he continued to receive treatments.

As for Kate, in March — and after months of online speculation and conspiracy theories — she announced she had been diagnosed with an undisclosed form of cancer and was in the “early stages” of “preventive chemotherapy” treatments. She added at the time that the news came as a “huge shock,” noting that she and William had “been doing everything we can to process and manage this privately for the sake of our young family.”

Kate subsequently confirmed in September that she had completed treatment, emphasizing that the “last nine months” had been “incredibly tough for us as a family.” She shared that she was doing everything she could “to stay cancer free,” although her “path to healing and full recovery” was still “long.”

Later that month, Kate returned to her public-facing royal duties for the first time since her health scare.

Keep scrolling for photos of the entire royal family from their traditional walk to St. Mary Magdalene Church:

The recall comes after a customer complained about a ‘foreign material’ in their eye drops

The NFL has not been shy about its pursuit of making its product as widely available as possible. Earlier this year, the league took another step toward its goal by striking a three-year deal with streaming giant Netflix. 

There was plenty of excitement leading up to the NFL's Christmas Day doubleheader on Netflix, but there were also some concerns. The streamer was facing pressure to ensure that issues that popped up during the livestream of last month's bout between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul did not resurface on Wednesday.

While the streaming quality did not appear to falter leading up to kickoff and at least through the first half of the game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Pittsburgh Steelers, there were some minor hiccups during the pregame coverage.

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Pregame co-host Kay Adams' microphone appeared to be off for a few seconds at the start of the show. At a later point, ESPN personality Mina Kimes was interrupted by a seemingly unscheduled advertisement for the upcoming season two premiere of Netflix's popular show "Squid Games."

Cameras did eventually cut back to the pregame show after the ad.

Pregame coverage began a couple of hours before the Chiefs and Steelers kicked off at 1 p.m. ET.

Once the action got underway, another noticeable miscue surfaced. The scorebug listed just two remaining timeouts for the Steelers, despite Pittsburgh being in the midst of its opening drive. The error was corrected a short time later.

NETFLIX UNDER PRESSURE WITH CHRISTMAS DAY NFL SLATE AFTER TYSON-PAUL STREAMING DEBACLE

The defending Super Bowl champions held a 13-7 lead over Pittsburgh at halftime.

Netflix earned the rights to stream at least one holiday game in 2025 and 2026, according to the terms of the multiyear deal with the NFL.

"Last year, we decided to take a big bet on live — tapping into massive fandoms across comedy, reality TV, sports and more," Netflix Chief Content Officer Bela Bajaria said in a news release in May shortly after the Christmas Day package of games was announced.

"There are no live annual events, sports or otherwise, that compare with the audiences NFL football attracts. We’re so excited that the NFL’s Christmas Day games will be only on Netflix."

Music superstar and Houston native Beyoncé is scheduled to perform at halftime of the Houston Texans-Baltimore Ravens game at NRG Stadium later on Wednesday.

Netflix paid an estimated $150 million for the rights to the games, per Bloomberg. The streamer and the NFL have had an ongoing relationship over the past couple of years.

The docuseries "Quarterback" was released on Netflix in 2023, and "Receiver" premiered on the streaming platform last month. While the former focused on three different signal-callers at different points of their careers, the pass-catching series follows four wideouts and one tight end.

In keeping with previous deals, the agreement with Netflix allows games to be shown on broadcast television in the competing teams' home markets. The league-owned NFL+ streaming service will allow fans in the U.S. to watch the games via their mobile devices.

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• Recruiters say Wall Street firms are planning to hire more tech talent next year.
• Jobs at AI companies like Nvidia and OpenAI, or ones that work with their products, are highly sought after.
• Recruiters Ben Hodzic and Matt Stabile outline how jobseekers can stand out in the hiring process.

It's been a tough year for software engineers on the job market, but one bright spot is starting to emerge on Wall Street for technologists looking for a new gig.

Banks, hedge funds, and investment firms bullish on AI are expected to hire more tech talent in the new year, according to two headhunters who recruit engineers and data scientists for finance firms. That's good news for jobseekers in these sectors, which were long considered to be recession-proof careers but were hit this year with waves of layoffs, job freezes, and hiring cutbacks.

Ben Hodzic, a managing director at recruitment firm Selby Jennings who finds talent for hedge funds and investment banks, told Business Insider there's "a lot of optimism" around AI in financial services.

"Financial services institutions are slowly adopting their workflows and they've come to a reality where you need the right talent to actually build and implement and manage those products," he said.

In some cases, the hiring spree is already happening. Jamie Dimon, the boss of America's biggest bank JPMorgan Chase, said earlier this year that he's anticipating adding thousands of jobs related to AI in the next few years. Hedge fund and proprietary-trading firms are shelling out as much as $350,000 in annual salaries for top-tier AI researchers and engineers. Meanwhile, private-equity firms have been "clamoring" to hire AI operating executives to improve their portfolio companies.

Hodzic said the rosier outlook stems from a desire to build AI tools in-house and boost worker productivity in areas like wealth advisory, investment banking, and trading. More clarity on the direction of macroeconomic factors, like inflation and the impacts of the US election, is also providing tailwinds for banks looking to invest in human capital in 2025, he said.

While AI is expected to drive an uptick in tech hiring, the technology is also changing what it takes to get a tech job on Wall Street. BI spoke with recruiters to find out how candidates should adapt and what they need to do to stand out.

They outlined some of the industry's most in-demand skills, explained why having Big Tech experience might not get you that far anymore, and shared the companies that hiring managers want to see on resumes. They declined to disclose specific client activity due to privacy agreements.

Here's what software engineers need to know to get hired on Wall Street

Big Tech experience will only get you so far

A few years ago, Matt Stabile, a tech recruiter who works with buy-side firms including Two Sigma and Susquehanna International Group, could almost guarantee an interview with a hiring manager if a candidate was coming out of a FAANG company.

"Now, due to overhiring and layoffs, those resumes seem to be a dime a dozen," Stabile told BI.

It's true that Big Tech companies have shed thousands of workers this year, flooding the job market with resumes touting the same companies, like Meta and Amazon. And only certain divisions of Big Tech companies on a resume will catch hiring managers' eyes, like Google's DeepMind, for instance, Stabile said.

Nvidia, OpenAI, and Anthropic are all the rage

Finance firms witnessing the AI transformation from the sidelines want to get in on the action and build their own homegrown solutions. That's created demand among hedge-fund clients to ask for technologists specifically from Nvidia, Hodzic told BI.

"There's definitely an inherent need for people to understand the infrastructure side as well, how to actually construct the computer in the right way to be able to process some of this information and what quality of chips are needed in order to actually produce the output they're looking for," Hodzic said.

Stabile is seeing the same, with hiring managers getting excited to see talent coming from the $3.6 trillion chipmaker, AI startup Anthropic, and ChatGPT-maker OpenAI. He said these are the resumes that are getting through and being considered over all the others.

Even if you haven't worked at any of these companies, Stabile said experience and exposure to their software tools is still a highly sought after skill. He specifically highlighted the Nvidia Triton Inference Server, an open-source software that's key to deploying and executing AI workloads, Nvidia TensorRT-LLM, used to optimize the performance of large language models, and Nvidia Fleet Command, which is important for scaling AI deployments.

Highlight your migration experience

If you haven't worked at a large AI company, or haven't worked with their latest products, not all hope is lost.

Wall Street banks especially rely heavily on legacy technologies. Some are built on codebases that have likely been around longer than the developer working on it has been alive. To be clear, that hasn't stopped financial firms from building entire businesses and offerings on modern technology.

What that has introduced, however, is the need to ensure that systems old and new can work together and exist in the same environment without introducing bugs or dependency issues. And in the case of firms moving on-premise systems to the public cloud, sometimes entire back-end systems have to be rebuilt.

As a result, hiring managers often light up when candidates can talk about their experience with software migrations, Selby Jennings' Hodzic said. If you've shifted data or software from one system to another, or translated code from one language to another, be sure to bring it up during the interview process.

"People who can demonstrate that engineering skillset of recreating and reconstructing things are really sought after," Hodzic said. "I think what a lot of clients want are people who can come in and show them what's not working well, how to iterate and how to improve, and then actually do it."