🏈Cowboys win, tied for first; A $50k drone light show; Sands rolls dice with land purchase

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📣NEWS OF THE DAY:

The Dallas Cowboys defeated the Philadelphia Eagles, 33-13, last night. The team's fifth consecutive victory earned it a first-place tie with the Eagles in the NFC East at 10-3. 

Dak Prescott talks $h!t in a humorous Ryan Reynolds' non-profit commercial. His message about colon cancer screening adds new meaning to his line of scrimmage refrain of “here we go.”

Keller's Preston Ward, chief pilot for Sky Elements Drone Shows, knows how to light up the holiday sky... to the tune of $50k. His family holiday light display features 400 drones and won the top prize in ABC's Great Christmas Light Fight. The display included 20,000 pixel-pushed lights, eight moving heads, talking Christmas trees, and drones that flew 400 feet to create 300-foot wide images that could be seen for five miles. Click here to see the video of the winning entry (drones start at the 4-minute mark).

Eggscelent idea: Tarrant Area Food Bank received a Christmas gift of 4,320 dozen eggs thanks to Tarrant County Judge Tim O'Hare and the Texas Rangers World Series win. Maricopa County (Arizona) Board of Supervisors Chairman Clint Hickman's family is in the egg business, and after losing a bet to O'Hare, called in a favor from Cal-Maine Foods, an egg producer that operates in Texas. 

Fort Worth is expanding its network of Flock Safety camera systems to include automated gunshot detectors across five square miles. The city has more than 150 cameras that automatically scan license plates to help police find cars connected to crimes. A new phase of the technology includes automatic detectors that can pinpoint where a gunshot came from, alerting officers in the area and turning any nearby cameras in that direction. NBC 5 explains how it works. 

Last July, an entity tied to the Las Vegas Sands family bought a 108-acre property in Irving near the former home of the Dallas Cowboys, according to The Dallas Morning News. Two weeks ago, Sands majority shareholder Miriam Adelson and her son-in-law struck a $3.5B deal with Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban to acquire a controlling stake. A spokesman for Sands said the property purchase is unrelated to the deal with the Mavs. Cuban and Sands officials said they would like a new arena in a complex that could eventually include a casino. Cuban has said the team won’t leave Dallas after the sale.

a la Warren Buffett:  GameStop Corp. disclosed an unorthodox plan for its roughly $900 million in cash and equivalents: allow its billionaire chief executive to buy stocks of other companies. There are lots of critics. 

Circle back in time: The movie Wall Street, starring Academy Award Best Actor winner Michael Douglas and Charlie Sheen, and directed by Oliver Stone, was released on December 11, 1987.

Today in history: 2008 - Bernard Madoff, an investment manager, was charged with defrauding clients of as much as $50 billion in one of the largest swindles in Wall Street history.

American Airlines has filed an appeal against the anti-competitive ruling on its Northeast Alliance with JetBlue. Aiming to keep future joint ventures possible, lawyers argue that the court wrongly terminated a beneficial arrangement that increased flights, seats, and options for consumers without raising prices.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded The University of Texas at Arlington a $1.1 million grant to train and mentor three multi-level cohorts of interdisciplinary researchers in mathematical and computational techniques to address questions in cancer biology, computational neurology and vector-borne diseases.

Tree-mendous profits: Christmas trees are big business, with 3,000 tree farms across the U.S. selling 12 million trees a year, and another 3 million natural trees and 20 million artificial trees imported annually. The wholesale price of an imported tree, artificial or natural, was $22 last year, with a retail price between $80 and $100, a 300-to-400 percent markup. With 15 million natural trees and 20 million artificial trees sold, it’s a $3 billion annual business. 

People on the move:

• Tarrant County Community College: Hires Pam Anglin as VP of Finances

• FAA: Promotes Dr. Nikki Fowler to Manager

• Trailrunner: Names Amanda Bush, Managing Director

• Cushman & Wakefield: Names Chris Hipps as Texas Managing Principal

Snippets:

• Not a nectarine: Pantone's color of the year for 2024 is Peach Fuzz — taking the title from Viva Magenta, a Barbie-pink hue selected for 2023.

• They’re our type: A collection of vintage typewriters is heading to auction Dec 15 at Heritage Auctions. Devices owned by Ernest Hemingway to Hugh Hefner are in the mix.

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