China Syndrome: The US says it has reached an agreement with China for the return of an underwater drone the Chinese navy snatched out of international waters in the South China Sea. The Pentagon says the drone was being used for scientific research.

A Chinese statement said, “In order to prevent this device from posing a danger to the safe navigation of passing ships and personnel, the Chinese lifeboat adopted a professional and responsible attitude in investigating and verifying the device.”

President-elect Donald Trump tweeted that maybe the Chinese should just keep the drone. He didn’t say why. One day soon he’s going to be in charge.

Heavy Weather: Three people died yesterday in a 55-vehicle pileup on Interstate 95 in Baltimore. Police said a gas tanker flipped, causing the chain reaction. Tractor-trailers and cars were crunched and skewed all over the highway. A total of at least six people are dead in several states as a result of weather-related accidents.

In Los Angeles, one person was killed and five were injured when a 100-foot eucalyptus tree fell on a wedding party.

Victory Tour: The President-elect wrapped up his series of “thank you” rallies for supporters in Mobile, Ala. yesterday. “It was going to go down as the single greatest defeat in the history of politics, and three weeks later it was one of the single greatest victories,” Trump told the cheering crowd.

He continued his diatribe against television news saying, “They got paid a lot of money. They don’t know what the hell they’re talking about, folks.”

Trump has yet to hold a press conference as President-elect. So far he’s given no indication that he will deal with the press differently from his open hostility during the campaign.

In Transition: Trump has picked right-wing South Carolina Rep. Mick Mulvaney, a founding member of the House Freedom Caucus that brought down Speaker John Boehner, to be budget director. “He’s a tremendous talent, especially when it comes to numbers and budgets,” Trump said in a statement. His fiscal conservativism could conflict with other members of the Trump cabinet, including Trump himself.

The Sports Page: The University of Minnesota football team has ended its strike after assurances from the university that 10 players suspended after being accused of sexual assault will be treated fairly. The team will play in the Holiday Bowl Dec. 27^th.

The Munchies: Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper has advice for states that are legalizing recreational marijuana: watch out for the edibles. “We didn’t regulate edibles strongly enough at first,” Hickenlooper told the Los Angeles Times.

It’s not the stuff you smoke, Hickenlooper says, it’s the powerful pot brownies, gummy candies, and lollipops that are dangerous and have had some people, particularly children, coming down in the middle of next week.

The Obit Page: Dr. Henry Heimlich, the man who invented the simple maneuver of putting pressure on the diaphragm to pop an object out of the windpipe of a choking victim, has died at age 96. Before Heimlich discovered a way to use air in the victim’s lungs to clear their throat in the 1970s, it wasn’t uncommon for people to choke to death at the dinner table.

He was an interest man with some theories that were considered crackpot. He believed that the introduction of malaria and its resulting high fevers could help patients with HIV, Lyme, and other diseases.

Heimlich used his choking maneuver for the first time himself just last May, to save a fellow resident in a Cincinnati nursing home. He said, “I didn’t know I really could do it until the other day.”

Diary Entry: It’s always been the belief that the famous young diarist Anne Frank and her family were betrayed, leading to their arrest in their hiding place in a house in Amsterdam during World War II. But a new theory has it that the Frank family was discovered by accident during the investigation of two neighbor men for ration card fraud. Frank wrote in her diary that because of the arrests, “We have no coupons.” She died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

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