The gunman who was killed by an off duty police officer after opening fire at a US shopping mall on Christmas Eve, has been identified. He was convicted criminal and rapper, Daquan Antonio Westbrook, aka ‘Donkey Cartel.’ The Daily Mail reports: Westbrook, 18, reportedly got into an argument with a group of men at a Journey’s store inside the Northlake Mall in Charlotte, and stormed after them while pulling out a gun from inside his pants – a moment one shopper managed to get a photo of in the middle of the terrifying incident.

Dialing the wrong phone number is not just an earthly occurrence. A British astronaut confined to the boundaries of outer space managed it on Christmas. Canoe News reports: British astronaut Tim Peake tweeted an apology on Christmas Day from the International Space Station after calling a wrong number. He wrote “I’d like to apologize to the lady I just called by mistake saying ‘Hello, is this planet Earth?’ — not a prank call — just a wrong number!” I’d like to apologise to the lady I just called by mistake saying ‘Hello, is this planet Earth?’ – not a prank call…just a wrong number!

Back in 2012, the bullish thesis for US housing (the one everyone was hoping for, instead of the fake housing "recovery" driven by the parking of dirty foreign oligarch money in NYC triplexes aka the new Swiss bank account, the private equity distressed rental property bid, and bank subsidies courtesy of the delay in the foreclosure pipeline) was that all those millions of young Americans aged 18-34 would finally move out of their parents' houses and start households of their own.

There are many observations to be made about the dramatic shifts shown in the chart below which demonstrates the top 20 companies by market cap over the past decade, but what, to us, stands out the most are two things:

1. after a decade of being either the world's biggest or second largest market capitalized company, Exxon has tumbled to 5th spot, something it did not do even during the peak of the financial crisis; and
2. after five years of being in the top spot, it is time for someone to finally dethrone the world's most popular smartphone maker.

Submitted by Erico Matias Tavares via Sinclair & Co.,