US stock market to close Jan. 9 on Carter’s day of mourning

FINANCE

US stock markets will close Jan. 9, in observance of a national day of mourning for former president Jimmy Carter. The New York Stock Exchange, Nasdaq Inc.’s US equities exchanges, and Cboe Global Markets Inc. will shut, the companies said. CME Group Inc., operator of US-based equity and interest-rates markets, had not yet commented on its plans. The closures are part of a long-standing American tradition in which financial institutions halt operations following the death of a US president. Carter died Dec. 29 at 100 and was the longest-living US president in history. The most recent national day of mourning came on Dec. 5, 2018, for the funeral of President George H.W. Bush. “The NYSE will respectfully honor President Carter’s lifetime of service to our nation by closing our markets on the National Day of Mourning,” Lynn Martin, president of NYSE Group, said in a statement. NYSE will also fly the US flag at half-staff during the mourning period, the statement said. — BLOOMBERG NEWS

TECH

Greece announced plans on Monday to enhance parental oversight of mobile devices in 2025 through a government-operated app, that will help get digital age verification and browsing controls. Dimitris Papastergiou, the minister of digital governance, said the Kids Wallet app, due to launch in March, was aimed at safeguarding children under the age of 15 from the risks of excessive and inappropriate internet use. The app will be run by a widely used government services platform and operate in conjunction with an existing smartphone app for adults to carry digital identification documents. “It’s a big change,” Papastergiou told reporters, adding that the app would integrate advanced algorithms to monitor usage and apply strict authentication processes. “The Kids Wallet application will do two main things: It will make parental control much easier, and it will be our official national tool for verifying the age of users,” he said. A survey published this month by a Greek research organization KMOP found that 76.6 percent of children aged 9-12 have access to the internet via personal devices, 58.6 percent use social media daily, and 22.8 percent have encountered inappropriate content. Many lack awareness of basic safety tools, such as the block and report buttons, authors of the study said. Papastergiou said the government was hoping to have the children’s app pre-installed on smartphones sold in Greece by the end of 2025. — ASSOCIATED PRESS

DEALS

Vivid Seats Inc., the online ticketing marketplace that went public through a blank-check vehicle in 2021, is exploring a sale after receiving takeover interest, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The stock rose as much as 20 percent. The StubHub and SeatGeek competitor is working with an adviser to gauge interest from potential suitors, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing confidential information. Vivid Seats has attracted takeover interest from private equity firms, the people said. The Chicago-based company’s deliberations are ongoing and there’s no certainty they will lead to a transaction, the people said. Vivid Seats was up 15 percent to $4:35 at 10:32 a.m. in New York trading Monday, giving the company a market value of about $904 million. The stock had fallen 40 percent in the past year before Monday’s gains. Vivid Seats’s merger with Horizon Acquisition Corp., backed by Todd Boehly’s Eldridge Industries, valued the combined company at $1.95 billion. Eldridge owns approximately 41 percent of the firm’s Class A shares, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. A spokesperson for Vivid Seats said it doesn’t comment on “rumors or speculation.” A representative for buyout firm GTCR, which also owns a minority interest in the company, declined to comment. An Eldridge representative didn’t respond to requests for comment. — BLOOMBERG NEWS

SOCIAL MEDIA

President-elect Donald Trump and his allies have vowed to squash an online “censorship cartel” of social media firms that they say targets conservatives. Already, the president-elect’s newly chosen regulators at the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission have outlined plans to stop social media platforms like Facebook and YouTube from removing content the companies deem offensive — and punish advertisers that leave less restrictive platforms like X in protest of the lack of moderation. “The censorship and advertising boycott cartel must end now!” Elon Musk, the owner of X, whom Trump has appointed to cut the federal budget, posted on his site last month. In Europe, social media companies face the opposite problem. There, regulators accuse the platforms of being too lax about the information they host, including allowing posts that stoked political violence in Britain and spread hate in Germany and France. Trump’s return to the White House is expected to widen the speech divide that has long existed between the United States and Europe, setting up parallel regulatory systems that tech policy experts say could influence elections, public health, and public discourse. That’s putting social media companies in the middle of a global tug-of-war over how to police content on their sites. — NEW YORK TIMES

ROBOTICS

They don’t get fruitcakes or Christmas cards from grateful patients, but for decades robots have been helping doctors perform gallbladder removals, hysterectomies, hernia repairs, prostate surgeries, and more. While patients lie unconscious on the operating table, robotic arms and grippers work on their bodies at certain stages in these procedures ― all guided by doctors using joystick-like controllers, a process that minimizes human hand tremor. Now, a team of Johns Hopkins University and Stanford University researchers has reported a significant advance, training robots with videos to perform surgical tasks with the skill of human doctors. The robots learned to manipulate needles, tie knots, and suture wounds on their own. Moreover, the trained robots went beyond mere imitation, correcting their own slip-ups without being told ― for example, picking up a dropped needle. Scientists have already begun the next stage of work: combining all of the different skills in full surgeries performed on animal cadavers. A new generation of more autonomous robots holds the potential to help address a serious shortage of surgeons in the United States, the researchers said. Presented at the recent Conference on Robot Learning in Munich, the research comes almost four decades after the PUMA 560 became the first robot to assist in the operating room, helping with a brain biopsy in 1985. The new work is currently undergoing review for publication in a journal. And the next-generation surgical robots will need to demonstrate safety and effectiveness in clinical trials and receive approval from the Food and Drug Administration before they can become a fixture in hospitals. — WASHINGTON POST