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Non-alcoholic beer is on track to overtake ale as the second-largest beer category by volume worldwide this year, according to a new projections from industry tracker IWSR.

While overall beer volume fell roughly 1% in 2024, volume for its non-alcoholic counterpart grew 9% worldwide, according to IWSR. The category’s growth accelerated in 2018 and has continued to outstrip the broader beer market since then.

IWSR is projecting that no-alcohol beer will grow by 8% annually through 2029, while ale’s volume is expected to slide 2% annually in that same period.

Despite recent growth, no-alcohol beer is far from becoming the top-selling beer category globally and only holds about 2% of worldwide beer market share. With 92% market share, lager is far and away the largest beer category and still growing, albeit at a slower pace than non-alcoholic beer.

No-alcohol beer has gained popularity as more consumers cut back on their alcohol consumption, prompting brewers to invest in zero-proof alternatives. The trend is particularly striking across younger age cohorts; Gen Z drinks less than prior generations at the same age, and millennials hold the largest share of no-alcohol drinkers, according to IWSR. Younger drinkers use buzzwords like “sober curious” and “damp lifestyle” to describe moderating their alcoholic intake, rather than abstaining entirely.

Additional fuel for the trend comes from the companies making non-alcoholic beers, which have gotten better at mimicking the taste of their alcoholic twins. Practically every major beer brand, from Diageo’s Guinness to Heineken and Anheuser-Busch InBev’s Budweiser, has rolled out a zero-proof version over the last five years.

Non-alcoholic beer’s worldwide retail sales surpassed $17 billion in 2023, according to Bernstein. Looking at global markets, Germany, Spain and Japan bought the most non-alcoholic beer that year. The U.S. landed in sixth place for its no-alcohol beer sales, although its ranking falls much further when measured by overall sales penetration.

Much of the growth in the U.S. is fueled by Athletic Brewing, now the top-selling no-alcohol beer brand. The upstart, which was founded in 2018, holds 17% of the category’s volume share, edging out AB InBev’s Bud Zero and Heineken’s 0.0 version. Just three years earlier, Athletic held only a 4% share. The company was reportedly valued at roughly $800 million in its latest funding round in 2024.

Even non-alcoholic beer hasn’t been immune from the rash of celebrity-backed alcohol brands. Actor Tom Holland launched Bero, retired basketball star Dwyane Wade co-founded Budweiser Zero with AB InBev and podcast host and actor Dax Shepherd created Ted Segers.

Nvidia shares jumped on Thursday after posting a positive set of earnings, sparking a rally in global semiconductor stocks.

Shares of Nvidia were 6% higher after the company posted better-than-expected earnings and revenue on Wednesday, even as it took a hit from U.S. semiconductor export restrictions to China.

Nvidia has been seen by investors as a bellwether for the broader semiconductor industry and artificial intelligence-related stocks, with its latest strong numbers sparking a rally among global semiconductor names.

Nvidia’s earnings helped boost other chip names, with Taiwan Semiconductor, AMD and Qualcomm all up about 1%.

In Japan, Tokyo Electron closed more than 4% higher, while SK Hynix, which is a supplier of high bandwidth memory to Nvidia, was nearly 2% up at the close of markets in South Korea.

In Europe, ASM International, BE Semiconductor Industries and ASML were all in positive territory.

The semiconductor industry has faced a number of headwinds from uncertainty around tariff policy in the U.S. and chip export restrictions to China.

Companies such as ASML, which makes machines that are critical for manufacturing the most advanced chips, have seen billions wiped off their value as a result.

Nvidia on Wednesday said it wrote off $4.5 billion of H20 chip inventory that it couldn’t ship to China because of export curbs, saying it also calculated $2.5 billion of lost revenue as well.

The restrictions on China do not seem to be going away.

The U.S. has ordered a number of companies, including those producing chemicals and design software for semiconductors, to stop shipping goods to China without a license, according to a Reuters report on Thursday.

Despite this, Nvidia still managed to post financial results for the April quarter that beat market expectations, allaying fears that demand for its graphics processing units, which have become key for training huge AI models, is dwindling.

Marriage for same-sex couples has been legal across the United States since the Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges decision a decade ago. While Democratic support for gay nuptials has risen steadily since that landmark 2015 ruling, Republican support has tumbled 14 points since its record high of 55% in 2021 and 2022, according to a Gallup report released Thursday.

In the latest Gallup poll, 41% of Republicans and 88% of Democrats said marriages between same-sex couples should be “recognized by the law as valid, with the same rights as traditional marriages.” This 47-point gap is the largest it has been since Gallup first started asking the question in 1996. The report found 76% of independents and 68% of all U.S. adults surveyed backed marriage rights for same-sex couples.

A separate question about whether “gay or lesbian relations” are “morally acceptable or morally wrong” found a similar political trend, with 86% of Democrats, 69% of independents and 38% of Republicans answering answering “morally acceptable.”

When broken down by nonpolitical subgroups, women, younger people and college graduates were more likely to support gay marriage and find same-sex relations morally acceptable than men, older people and those who did not graduate college.

The Gallup report’s authors noted that the “widening political divide suggests potential vulnerabilities in the durability of LGBTQ+ rights” in the country.

The report cited Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ concurring opinion in the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling — which overturned the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade abortion rights decision — that stated the high court ”should reconsider” some of its past rulings, including the 2015 same-sex marriage decision.

And, as NBC News reported earlier this year, lawmakers in at least nine states have introduced measures to try to chip away at same-sex couples’ right to marry.

The Trump administration said in court filings Wednesday that it was working to bring back a Guatemalan man who was deported to Mexico in spite of his fears of being harmed there, days after a federal judge ordered the administration to facilitate his return.

The man, who is gay, was protected from being returned to his home country under a U.S. immigration judge’s order at the time. But the U.S. put him on a bus and sent him to Mexico instead, a removal that U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy found likely “lacked any semblance of due process.”

Mexico has since returned him to Guatemala, where he is in hiding, according to court documents.

In a court filing Wednesday, government lawyers said that a so-called significant public benefit parole packet had been approved and was awaiting additional approval from Homeland Security Investigations. The designation allows people who aren’t eligible to enter the U.S. to do so temporarily, often for reasons related to law enforcement or legal proceedings.

Officials in the Phoenix field office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, spoke with the man’s lawyers over the weekend and are working to bring him back to the U.S. on a plane chartered by ICE, the court filing said.

An earlier court proceeding had determined that the man, identified by the initials O.C.G., risked persecution or torture if returned to Guatemala. But he also feared returning to Mexico, where he says he was raped and extorted while seeking asylum in the U.S., according to court documents.

Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin, who called Murphy a “federal activist judge,” said O.C.G. was in the country illegally, was “granted withholding of removal to Guatemala” and was instead sent to Mexico, which she said was “a safe third option for him, pending his asylum claim.”

Murphy’s order last Friday adds to a string of findings by federal courts against recent Trump administration deportations. Those have included other deportations to third countries and the erroneous deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an El Salvadoran who had lived in Maryland for roughly 14 years, working and raising a family.

Murphy’s order last Friday adds to a string of findings by federal courts against recent Trump administration deportations. Those have included other deportations to third countries and the erroneous deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an El Salvadoran who had lived in Maryland for roughly 14 years, working and raising a family.

The U.S. Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return to the U.S. from a notorious Salvadoran prison, rejecting the White House’s claim that it couldn’t retrieve him after mistakenly deporting him. Both the White House and the El Salvadoran president have said they are powerless to return him.

SALT LAKE CITY — When Utah Republicans passed a ban on gender-affirming health care for children and teens in 2023, they argued it was needed to protect vulnerable kids from treatments that could cause long-term harm.

Years later, the results of a study commissioned under the same law contradict that claim, and the Republican-led Legislature is facing pressure to reconsider the restrictions.

Utah’s Department of Health and Human Services and experts from the state’s leading health organizations concluded from a study of thousands of transgender people that gender-affirming care generated “positive mental health and psychosocial functioning outcomes.”

Policies that prevent access to hormone therapy for minors cannot be justified based on scientific findings or concerns about potential regret in the future, the report states.

The agency is not taking a position on whether lawmakers should lift the statewide ban on hormone therapy and surgeries for minors. But it reminded lawmakers that they had intended for the prohibition to be temporary until the state could conduct its own research.

Utah is among 27 states that have adopted laws restricting or banning gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors, who Republican politicians have made a political lightning rod. Federal judges have struck down bans in Arkansas, Florida and Montana as unconstitutional, though a federal appeals court has stayed the Florida ruling. The law in Kansas is not yet being enforced.

Some Utah Republicans said they were open to considering the findings of the study, while others were quick to dismiss it.

In a joint statement, the House sponsor of the 2023 law banning gender-affirming care and the chair of the Legislature’s interim health committee said they “intend to keep the moratorium in place.”

“Young kids and teenagers should not be making life-altering medical decisions based on weak evidence,” said Republican Reps. Katy Hall and Bridger Bolinder. “Simply put, the science isn’t there, the risks are real, and the public is with us.”

All major medical organizations in the U.S. consider gender-affirming care to be safe, effective and medically necessary for transgender youth. But polling shows that Republicans’ restrictions on transgender kids’ access to care resonate with voters, according to a recent survey by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Senate President Stuart Adams said he is committed to reviewing the report. The Republican leader has suggested previously that children and teens are too young to consent to the treatments.

Children questioning their gender identity generally receive counseling and may be prescribed puberty-blocking drugs or hormones. Gender-affirming surgeries, such as operations to transform the chest or genitals, are rarely performed on minors.

“The future and safety of kids are paramount,” Adams said. “That is why Utah enacted a law to safeguard the long-term health and well-being of minors while providing time to carefully examine the evolving medical landscape surrounding novel and irreversible procedures for minors. I appreciate the Utah Department of Health and Human Services for evaluating the available evidence.”

Utah Democratic leaders Rep. Angela Romero and Sen. Luz Escamilla are urging their Republican colleagues to take more time to review the more than 1,000-page report before deciding the future of the ban.

Under the law, children who had already been diagnosed with gender dysphoria before January 2023 were allowed to continue receiving hormones. The University of Utah shut down its health clinic for LGBTQ+ youth earlier this month after the law significantly decreased its number of patients. Doctors who provide gender-affirming care to minors in violation of the ban could lose their licenses and face criminal charges.

The report prepared for lawmakers acknowledged certain risks associated with gender-affirming care, including an increase in some types of benign brain tumors. But experts highlighted the positive impact of such treatments in mitigating the risk of suicide among transgender youth.

“Patients that were seen at the gender clinic before the age of 18 had a lower risk of suicide compared to those referred as an adult,” the report states. “When left untreated, individuals with gender dysphoria may experience psychological and social harms.”

The report in Utah contrasts with one issued earlier this month by President Donald Trump’s administration that questioned widely accepted treatment standards from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health. U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. did not release information about who authored the report, and major medical groups said they were not consulted.

Trump’s guidance urges greater reliance on behavioral therapy rather than medical interventions for children who experience a disconnect between their gender identity and their sex assigned at birth. It follows an executive order Trump issued days into his second term that says the federal government must not support gender transitions for anyone under age 19.

Savannah Chrisley shared early moments with her disgraced reality TV star father, Todd Chrisley, on Wednesday after he received a presidential pardon and was released from federal prison.

The 27-year-old, clad in a pink Make America Great Again hat, took to Instagram to connect with her nearly 3 million followers during what appeared to be the ride home from prison with her dad, who has been incarcerated for about three years.

“We’re getting home, as I puke the whole way,” she said through laughs, holding a plastic bag. “I’ve got Todd over here being dramatic.”

From behind the camera, Todd Chrisley replies: “I didn’t have to deal with this in prison.”

In a second video posted to her Instagram story, Todd Chrisley, 56, encourages his daughter to feel his arm muscles.

With the camera pointed away from her father’s face and toward his lower body and open snacks in the car, Savannah grabs her father’s arm and says, “Y’all, I’m not going to lie — it’s hard.”

President Donald Trump issued pardons for Todd and Julie Chrisley, 52, Savannah Chrisley’s mother, on Wednesday.

The pair, known for their roles on the TV show “Chrisley Knows Best,” were convicted in 2022 of defrauding banks of over $30 million to maintain their extravagant lifestyle.

Todd Chrisley was sentenced to 12 years in prison that year after an Atlanta jury found him guilty of fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy to defraud the United States. Julie Chrisley was sentenced to seven years for similar crimes.

Savannah Chrisley — who spoke at the Republican National Convention in July — was pivotal in petitioning for her parents’ release, a process she started before Trump’s second inauguration. The Chrisleys formally requested a pardon in February.

An attorney for the Chrisleys, Alex Little, said on Wednesday that the pair was “prosecuted because they were celebrities.”

In a separate Instagram post on Wednesday, Savannah Chrisley thanked the Trump administration for accomplishing the “impossible.”

“This fight was never just about us. It’s about every family torn apart by injustice,” she wrote. “Every parent, every child, every person who’s been silenced or shattered by a system that too often forgets the humanity behind the headlines.”

The Chrisleys’ former accountant, Peter Tarantino, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Wednesday that he also plans to petition Trump for a presidential pardon. Tarantino was found guilty alongside the Chrisleys in 2022 and sentenced to three years in prison.

An attorney for Tarantino did not return a request for comment.

Scores of Palestinian men, women and children raced across a dusty expanse toward an aid warehouse in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday. A few minutes later, a few emerged with bags and boxes of food.

Those were the desperate scenes that marked the first turbulent week of a new U.S. and Israel-backed plan for aid distribution in the enclave.

The United Nations World Food Programme said in a statement Wednesday that “hordes of hungry people” broke into its Al-Ghafari warehouse in central Gaza’s Deir al-Balah attempting to get supplies being prepared for distribution.

The UNWFP cited “initial reports” that at least two people were killed and several more injured in the incident. NBC News was not immediately able to independently verify those details.

An Israeli military spokesperson said they were not aware of their forces being connected to the reported deaths, or of any shots being fired by troops.

Those reported deaths came after chaotic events Tuesday, when thousands of hungry Palestinians flooded a controversial new aid distribution center set up by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation — or GHF — which is tasked with distributing supplies in the U.S. and Israel-backed plan that came into effect Monday.

In that case, Israeli soldiers fired live rounds into the air to disperse crowds, with the GHF seeking to quell concerns over its rocky first week of operations in a news release Wednesday.

The GHF rejected the claims of Gaza’s Hamas-run government media office that three Palestinians were killed, 46 others injured and seven people missing after the incident. The foundation said that no one was killed while trying to access its distribution site.

A spokesperson for GHF said in an emailed response to NBC News that the account was “completely false” and that nobody had been injured or killed during the foundation’s first three days of operations.

NBC News was not immediately able to verify the facts on the ground.

GHF was tasked with distributing aid in Gaza after Israel earlier this month lifted an almost three-month-long blockade barring the entry of food, medicine and other vital supplies following warnings of rising starvation in the enclave.

Under the plan, aid will be distributed from at least four distribution points in southern Gaza, with the aim of expanding with additional sites.

The United Nations, which has refused to participate in the plan, has condemned the initiative as a “distraction” that undermines a long-standing humanitarian framework in Gaza. The U.N. says the effort poses a threat to the independence of aid operations, while simultaneously displacing Palestinians en masse to Gaza’s south.

Israel has maintained that a new aid distribution system was necessary, alleging that Hamas was diverting supplies. The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and other humanitarian groups have told NBC News that they have not seen evidence of aid being diverted to Hamas or other armed groups during the war.

Israel has long been deeply critical of the United Nations and its work in the Gaza Strip and the broader Palestinian territories.

United Airlines has a new friend in Queens.

The airline is returning to New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport again, this time through a partnership with JetBlue Airways.

The partnership, called Blue Sky, will allow JetBlue customers to earn frequent-flyer miles on United and vice versa. It also includes reciprocal loyalty benefits like priority boarding and roomier seats for travelers with elite status.

Some aspects of the partnership, which the carriers announced Thursday, will begin as early as the fall, though the airlines didn’t provide exact timing. They also did not provide financial details of the deal.

JetBlue’s leaders have long said they need a partnership to better compete against larger airlines like United and their shared rival Delta Air Lines.

The new partnership stops short of the flight coordination that JetBlue had in its former alliance in the Northeast with American Airlines, which was struck down by a federal court on antitrust grounds two years ago. Last year, a judge blocked JetBlue’s plan to buy struggling budget carrier Spirit.

“This collaboration with United is a bold step forward for the industry — one that brings together two customer-focused airlines to deliver more choices for travelers and value across our networks,” JetBlue CEO Joanna Geraghty said in a news release.

United left JFK in 2015, and current CEO Scott Kirby has called that a mistake because moving transcontinental flights to Newark allowed American to win over some corporate clients. It briefly returned in 2021, thanks to a Covid-era lull in traffic at the airport, where capacity is normally tightly controlled by the Federal Aviation Administration.

United left JFK again in 2022 because it wasn’t able to secure longer term slots there.

Kirby has repeatedly said he wants the airline to return to JFK. The carrier has struggled in recent weeks with air-traffic staffing shortages and congestion at its Newark hub.

Under the new agreement, United will be able to fly up to seven daily round-trip flights at congested Kennedy Airport, giving it more breadth in the New York City area, though the new operation will still be dwarfed by United’s main hub in the area at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey.

United’s JFK flights will begin in 2027 at the earliest, the carriers said. JetBlue, meanwhile, will get eight flights at Newark. United didn’t say which routes it plans to operate at JFK, though its last foray was for service to Los Angeles and San Francisco.

They airlines called the swap a “net neutral exchange.”

Moscow has done little to dispel that reputation of slow-balling the president in recent days. Putin is yet to deliver a memorandum for a peace agreement that he promised shortly after the two leaders spoke on the phone over a week ago.

The Kremlin insists the document is in its final stages and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Wednesday proposed fresh direct talks with Ukraine on June 2 at which he said Moscow would hand over its proposal.

Ukraine’s Defense Minister Rustem Umerov accused Russia of delaying the process Wednesday on X, calling on the Kremlin to deliver its memorandum beforehand and pointing out that Kyiv had already done so.

Other advocates of tougher measures against Russia say the U.S. and its allies ought to target Russia’s “shadow fleet” of around 500 shipping vessels used to export Russian oil around the world that has largely evaded oil price cap sanctions imposed by the U.S. and European Union.

White House officials previously feared such a move could trigger higher energy prices with potentially damaging political and economic consequences, but the E.U. and Britain did just that last week as they announced a new raft of sanctions on Russia.

The Biden administration in its final weeks in January also sanctioned 183 Russian vessels.

Such vessels have largely slipped under the West’s gaze by avoiding any contracts for Western services as well as certain types of insurance.

“Russia’s shadow fleet strategy circumvents sanctions by avoiding reliance on Western service providers in the export supply chain, rather than concealing the origins and destinations of their cargoes,” Harvard University Russian oil expert Craig Kennedy said in a recent analysis.

Sanctions have already affected Russia’s oil export revenues: the market price for Urals oil has slipped to $65 a barrel from a peak of $100 a barrel in 2022, shaving an estimated $142 billion off the Russian economy, according to the Kyiv School of Economics.

But that figure has not been as large as previously hoped, said the Harvard Davis Center’s Kennedy.

Timothée Chalamet has dominated screens this year. No, we’re not talking about “A Complete Unknown” or “Dune: Part Two.” We’re talking about NBA broadcasts showing him sitting courtside at New York Knicks playoff games.

The Academy Award-nominated actor and New York native has seemingly been at Madison Square Garden every night of the Knicks’ magical postseason run to the Eastern Conference finals. Sometimes he’s with his girlfriend, Kylie Jenner, and her sister Kendall Jenner. Other times he’s next to Ben Stiller or Bad Bunny or down “celebrity row” from Spike Lee, Larry David and Tracy Morgan.

This season, with the franchise enjoying its best success in more than two decades, some of the most famous people on the planet are out in full force to show support — or simply be seen. Which celebrities are sitting courtside is a topic discussed almost as much as the basketball occurring a few feet away from them.

On Thursday night, the Knicks face the Indiana Pacers down 3-1 and on the verge of elimination. It could be the final time Jalen Brunson and Co. take the Madison Square Garden floor this spring. And also the A-listers.