Axios

A New Mexico judge ordered Meta to pay $25 billion in penalties Wednesday after a jury found in September that the social media giant misled users about their data privacy.

Why it matters: The penalties come nearly a decade after the Cambridge Analytica scandal first broke and signal that Big Tech can face significant financial consequences for misleading users about their privacy.

Dozens of Israeli Air Force fighter jets conducted a sortie on Monday, flying as far as the Iranian border, according to Israeli and U.S. officials.

Why it matters: The operation, more than 800 miles away from Israel, took place a week before the Israeli elections and on the same day Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Israel's Ovda Air Base. The sortie wasn't connected to Hegseth's visit.

• While some Israeli and U.S. officials said the sortie wasn't unusual and that it was meant to deter Iran, it could have led to a miscalculation, triggering an Iranian response and reigniting the war.

Traders are betting that oil prices will remain elevated for longer than they anticipated just weeks ago, threatening to prolong the inflationary pressures that businesses and consumers have weathered for months.

Why it matters: Oil inventories have helped cushion the blow from disrupted Middle Eastern supplies, but much of that buffer has been depleted since the war began.

• The possibility of sustained price pressures into next year throws into doubt the logic that central banks traditionally rely upon to look through energy price shifts — that they represent a one-time shift in relative prices, not an ongoing inflationary process.