• Wendy Altschuler has traveled around the world with her husband and three sons.
• Her kids agree that Japan has been their favorite destination.
• Sumo wrestling was the highlight of their trip.

My kids have been fortunate to enjoy the benefits of my main work perk as a longtime travel writer: accumulating airline miles.

Of all of the places we've traveled around the world — including Peru, Greece, Dominican Republic, Thailand, India, Singapore, UAE, and Aruba — Japan remains the absolute favorite for all three of my boys.

During our summertime trip to Japan, we explored incense-heavy shrines, wandered through gardens bursting with hydrangeas, marveled at castles, indulged in street food, met wild monkeys, and sauntered through a bamboo forest. The kids made it clear that Japan lights up all five of your senses — no matter what age you are.

We all enjoyed finding a beach full of smooth pottery pieces, remnants from a long-ago shipwreck; and watching a crazy robot show in Tokyo with swirling lights and loud music while eating dinner.

But the highlight of their trip was learning about sumo wrestling.

The whole family tried sumo wrestling

In Nara, near Kyoto and Osaka, we encountered sacred deer that bowed when we fed them crackers. It was near there, at the foot of Mt. Nijo in Katsuragi City, where I had another quest for my boys — to learn about Japan's oldest sport: Sumo wrestling.

Katsuragi is the origin of sumo, Japan's national sport with 1,500 years of history. At Kehayaza Sumo Museum, we took our shoes off and sat in a box seat on top of cushions to watch.

We were the sole spectators at the event that aims to educate visitors on the art of sumo. Rather than attend a Grand Sumo Tournament, which can be difficult to visit with only six tournaments held each year, the museum is much more open, affordable, and accessible for families on a year-round basis.

There was beautiful singing, a display of flags, and rice throwing to purify the elevated ring, which was made of clay and covered in rough sand. Two massive rikishi, or sumo wrestlers, entered the circular ring, the dohyo, wearing only a mawashi, or loin cloth. We observed as the two athletes lifted and stomped each leg, slapped their stomachs, and prepared for the match.

They learned about Japanese culture

Sumo originated as a ritual dance to entertain the gods at shrine festivals. Nowadays, professional sumo has six divisions. Wrestlers move up the ranks depending on their skill, and their pay increases as they progress and evolve. The Grand Champion, or Yokozuna, is an exclusive title that can earn the wrestler 2.8 million yen, or $18,000 per month, per the South China Morning Post.

Tickets for standard seats to the tournaments start at around 2,500 yen and go up to around 20,000 yen for ringside seats. Box seats, which accommodate four people, can cost up to 60,000 yen per box.

A benefit of visiting the museum is that entrance is free for visitors with foreign passports.

We all stepped into the ring

With eyes wide, my boys were dialed in as the straight-faced men collided while endeavoring to push each other to the ground or out of the ring to win the match. We were told that in sumo, often, the opponents aren't the same size or weight, like in American boxing, which allows spectators to root for an underdog.

After the match, my husband was asked if he wanted to try. He cautiously stepped into the ring with the largest of the two wrestlers and went through the entire ritual — tossing the rice in the air, bowing, clapping, crouching down with his fists on the ground, mirroring the correct footwork, and facing his opponent. I went next. Then each of my boys got a chance to test their mettle.

While a referee — dressed in a long red and gold robe, black pointed hat, white belt, and holding a small paper fan — officiated, my boys followed the ceremonial tasks and squared off with their skilled challenger. I'll never forget how the athlete, who seemed so imposing when he was brawling with his opponent, morphed into a playful fellow when my kids each entered the ring.

When the near-naked wrestler picked up my firstborn son, who was 12 at the time, and swung him around by his mawashi, I roared with laughter. I still smile when I think about how high-pitched the wrestler's giggle was, completely contrasting his size and power.

My youngest pressed firmly into his challenger's belly, not moving him an inch, and then, par for the course, he became airborne, just like his older brother. My middle son took a different strategy: he stood on his tippy toes and went for the shoulders, attempting to drive his adversary off balance.

The final match was unfair: all three boys were against their dad. After the match, we thanked the sumo wrestlers for the immersive education.

Later, at home, I organized a postcard writing project in which short travel stories were mailed to isolated seniors. My youngest wrote about getting in the ring with a 400-pound sumo wrestler in Japan: "I was only 8, I obviously lost."

Philadelphia Eagles linebacker Nakobe Dean has been carted off the field during the Wild Card matchup against the Green Bay Packers with an apparent injury.

Professor Robert Wilson told Newsweek that Trump's rhetoric seems to suggest he won't take the threat climate change has on wildfires "seriously."

Senator John Barrasso said he expects any aid funding that is approved for Californians amid wildfires will have "strings attached."

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• With Trump's inauguration fast approaching, more details about DOGE have emerged.
• Musk, who Trump tapped to co-lead DOGE, may become a "special government employee."
• SGEs have less stringent ethics rules — to a degree — compared to regular federal employees.

With President-elect Donald Trump set to take office next week, a key detail has emerged regarding the Department of Government Efficiency, the forthcoming commission that Tesla CEO Elon Musk will co-lead alongside businessman Vivek Ramaswamy.

Some DOGE staffers who are expected to work unpaid for six months before returning to their more lucrative jobs would be classified as "special government employees," and Musk could be among them, The New York Times reported.

A special government employee is an individual who can be paid or unpaid and is categorized as a temporary worker. The federal government can employ that individual for no more than 130 days amid a consecutive 365-day span.

The designation is significant because special government employees — who are generally brought in to offer outside expertise to the federal government — are subject to more limited conflict of interest rules compared to regular federal employees.

When Trump tapped Musk, the wealthiest man in the world, to co-lead DOGE, government watchdogs, and some Democratic politicians questioned how he could handle such a role given potential conflicts of interest involving SpaceX, Tesla, and X.

Musk's omnipresence within Trump's political orbit in recent months has only reinforced those concerns. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts sent a letter to Trump's transition team asking if the tech executive would adhere to conflict-of-interest rules in his forthcoming role.

"Putting Mr. Musk in a position to influence billions of dollars of government contracts and regulatory enforcement without a stringent conflict of interest agreement in place is an invitation for corruption on a scale not seen in our lifetimes," Warren wrote at the time.

"Currently, the American public has no way of knowing whether the advice that he is whispering to you in secret is good for the country — or merely good for his own bottom line," she added.

Musk in 2024 spent over $250 million to help send Trump back to the White House and aid other GOP candidates in their respective races.

Business Insider reached out to Trump's transition team for comment.

• A former Disney employee agreed to plead guilty to altering allergen info on restaurant menus.
• Michael Scheuer admitted to the hack, as well as adding swastikas to the memus.
• He faces up to 10 years in prison for his charges, according to the plea agreement.

A former menu production manager for Disney World has admitted to altering allergen information and adding swastikas to menus as part of a plea agreement.

Federal authorities charged Michael Scheuer in October with causing the transmission of a program, information, code, or command to a protected computer and intentionally causing damage. Disney had fired Scheuer months earlier for misconduct, according to the criminal complaint.

In a plea agreement filed Friday in Florida federal court, first reported by Court Watch, Scheuer pleaded guilty to hacking and one count of aggravated identity theft. He faces a maximum of 10 years and a mandatory minimum of two years in prison for the charges.

The plea says the government agreed to recommend that Scheuer receive a downward adjustment on the length of his sentence for agreeing to take responsibility for the charges.

Scheuer also agreed to pay restitution to his victims, including Disney.

The agreement says that Scheuer changed allergen information on some of Disney's menus to falsely show that items were safe for people with allergies, which "could have had fatal consequences depending on the type and severity of the customer's allergy."

Scheuer also admitted to changing the regions of wines on some menus, some of which he changed to the locations of mass shootings, the plea agreement says.

"Scheuer also added or embedded images to one or more menus, including in one instance a swastika," the document says.

On some Disney menus that contained a QR code to show a digital version of the menu, Scheuer changed the code to direct to a website promoting the boycott of Israel, the document says. Manufacturers printed some menus with the falsified QR codes, but caught the change before they were distributed.

By the end of his hacking campaign, Scheuer had impacted "nearly every menu in the system," according to court documents.

"The entire repository of menus had to be reverted to older versions and brought up to date manually," the agreement says.

Scheuer's attorney, David Haas, did not immediately return a request for comment from Business Insider. Haas told CNBC that Scheuer is "prepared to accept responsibility for his conduct."

"Unfortunately, he has mental health issues that were exacerbated when Disney fired him upon his return from paternity leave," he told the outlet.

Disney did not immediately return a request for comment about Scheuer's plea agreement.

Disney became embroiled in a separate controversy involving food allergens in 2024 when a widowed husband filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the entertainment giant. The lawsuit said the man's wife experienced a "severe acute allergic reaction" and died after eating at a restaurant operated at Disney Springs.

Lawyers for Disney asked an Orange County court to dismiss the lawsuit because the husband previously purchased theme park tickets and signed up for a free Disney+ trial, but criticism from the public caused them to reverse course.

• Jamie Dimon urges incoming president Donald Trump to prioritize immigration policy in his second term.
• Trump has said he plans to conduct mass deportation in his second term.
• Dimon also advocates for education reform and doubling the earned income tax credit.

With Donald Trump set to take office in about a week, top Wall Street leaders are coming forward with advice.

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon honed in on immigration policy when asked what advice he'd give Trump for his second presidential term in a CBS News interview posted Sunday. "Get immigration, border security right," he said. "Then proper immigration after that."

Since his debut on the political stage, Trump has been outspoken about immigration policy. On the campaign trail last year Trump said he would carry out the "largest domestic deportation in American history." He also plans to end birthright citizenship, build new ICE detention centers, and reinstate his first-term policies. During his first term in office, he curtailed legal immigration rates, signed an executive order that suspended several types of work visas, including H-1B visas, which are crucial for the tech industry, and completed hundreds of miles of construction on a border wall between the US and Mexico.

Dimon says he agrees with Trump's big-picture view on immigration. "You could talk about specifics and disagree, but the concern around border security, obviously, every country in the world is concerned about that," he said.

Beyond immigration, Dimon says he wants to see changes to our education system. "I would love to see high schools, community colleges, and colleges measured on what is the outcome of the kid being educated. Like do they get a job that's well paying, not do they do math well," he said. "I believe that would put a lot more pressure on schools to teach skills that can give you really good paying jobs." That includes jobs in fields like data analytics, manufacturing, nursing, compliance, and financial skills, he said.

He's also in favor of eliminating tax breaks, even for the wealthy. He proposed doubling the earned income tax credit: a refundable tax credit for low to moderate-income workers, particularly those with children. "That alone would put a lot more money into the pockets of people who are working who are lower income, it would go into their communities, into their families," he said.

The New York Jets interviewed Rex Ryan for their head coaching position, but have reportedly already passed on the former head coach.

• Dana White grew the UFC into a multibillion-dollar company after acquiring it in 2001.
• In that time, White also became a close ally of President-elect Donald Trump.
• Now, he is joining Meta's board of directors.

Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO Dana White has been on quite the journey over the last two decades.

From managing MMA fighters to appearing at the Republican National Convention three times to support President-elect Donald Trump, White has become a global figure in both sports and politics.

And now he's entered the sphere of Big Tech, joining the board of directors at Mark Zuckerberg's Meta.

Here's how White went from a small-time trainer to the board of one of the world's most influential tech companies in just a few years.

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Las Vegas Raiders edge rusher Maxx Crosby is a huge fan of the UFC, and he revealed that the UFC's bosses think he would be a huge hit in the Octagon.

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Los Angeles County continues to face "critical fire conditions" after firefighters have battled deadly wildfires for days that have razed entire neighborhoods.

The big picture: The death toll rose to at least 16, per the L.A. County medical examiner's Saturday evening update. Another 16 have been reported as missing, Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said during a Sunday briefing.

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• Over 100,000 residents remain under evacuation orders, and over 12,000 structures have been destroyed.

State of play: The Kenneth, Sunset and Lidia fires have been 100% contained, Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a Sunday update.

• The Hurst Fire was at 89% containment Sunday mornig, per Cal Fire.
• The Palisades and Eaton fires, the biggest of the blazes, were 11% and 27% contained, respectively.
• Eleven of the reported deaths have been attributed to the Eaton Fire, while the remaining five have been categorized with the Palisades Fire.
• Newsom announced he's deployed a further 1,000 California National Guard personnel to the Los Angeles area, taking the number assisting in firefighting efforts to 2,500.

Situation report: Red flag warnings for much of Los Angeles and Ventura counties are set to remain in place until Wednesday as gusty winds and low relative humidity persist, the National Weather Service's LA office said Sunday morning.

• NWS expects the offshore Santa Ana winds that have been making fighting the fires extremely difficult to pick back up after a brief reprieve, which could complicate firefighters' efforts to contain the flames.
• Dry vegetation coupled with "prolonged extreme fire conditions" will support "rapid spread and erratic behavior" of new or existing fires, per NWS. The Eaton Fire may be less affected by strong winds than the other blazes.

By the numbers: Nearly 42,300 customers in Los Angeles County were without power Sunday at 4 pm ET, per PowerOutage.us.

Context: Parts of Southern California are experiencing their driest start on record.

• An overlap of rare climate factors is in part to blame for the rapidly spreading blazes, as the bone-dry region grapples with the worst high wind event in Southern California since 2011, per Axios' Andrew Freedman.
• While the fires are not the largest wildfires the state has faced, they are among the most destructive on record.

Go deeper: Why fire hydrants ran dry as wildfires ravaged Los Angeles

Editor's note: This a breaking news story. Please check back for updates.

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