| Greetings, QuickTake readers! In this edition: How to fund a divided government, why pregnancies could get shorter, and the search for life in a wad of chewing gum.  Johnson to outlaw Brexit delay U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson upped the ante on his election promise to "get Brexit done" by making a 2020 Brexit legally impossible to block. As newly elected MPs were sworn into Parliament Tuesday, Johnson's team was amending the divorce bill to put an end to years of "deadlock, dither and delay" by ensuring the U.K. will leave the EU next year and will not extend the transition period beyond December 31, 2020. The move risks a no-deal crash out of the EU at the end of next year if trade talks fail, aka, "another cliff-edge situation," according to European Commission officials. More: - The pound slumped the most since January on the news and erased all of its gains since Thursday.
- The U.K. is due to leave the EU by Jan. 31 after Johnson's Conservative party scored an emphatic win in the general election.
- Currently, the post-Brexit transition period can be extended by up to two years, if both the U.K. and EU members agree.
$ignificant figures $1.4 trillion. The U.S. House passed a 2,371-page spending plan to fund the government through September that provides money for both Trump's border wall and gun-violence research. $10.4 billion. The Sackler family pulled billions from Purdue Pharma in the decade after execs pleaded guilty to misleading consumers about OxyContin's risks, an audit found. 30 years. The animated series "The Simpsons" first aired on Fox on Dec. 17, 1989, and has become the longest-running scripted primetime series in history. Highly quotable "Nightmarish precedent." Mitch McConnell spurned Democrats' push for new impeachment testimony in the looming trial because it'd "invite future Houses to paralyze future Senates." "Can surely never be a traitor." Pakistan's military claimed due process was "ignored" after ex-president and military chief Perves Musharraf was sentenced to death for treason. "Work flat out." Boris Johnson banned MPs from attending the World Economic Forum in Davos so they can focus on "delivering for the people, not champagne with billionaires." This is not normal Newborn risks. Climate change is shortening pregnancies, a study found, estimating that 25,000 premature births each year between 1969-1988 were due to hot weather. That could jump to 42,000 per year by 2100.  The future is now Stone Age chewing gum. Scientists have recovered the DNA of a Danish girl from her teeth marks on a 5,700-year-old lump of tar, marking the first time an entire genome was extracted from anything other than bone.  What's good Don't mess with these guys. To fend off nighttime foxes from thousands of free-range turkeys, a U.K. farm has enlisted a heard of vigilant alpacas whose guard-dog instincts have kept the poultry death toll at zero.  Now that you're caught up... Tell your friends to sign up to receive the QuickTake newsletter five days a week, and follow us on Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook. Before you go: Despite death threats, this female tattoo artist is taking on Afghanistan's ultra-conservative patriarchy, one inked patron at a time. Thanks for reading!
-Andrew Mach | 
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