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It's been a long time coming, but Alex Ovechkin can finally call himself the NHL's all-time leading scorer with number 895 on Sunday.
The 39-year-old overtook Wayne Gretzky's mark of 894 goals after scoring in the second period of the Washington Capitals game against the New York Islanders on Sunday in Elmont, New York.
Ovechkin rocketed a wrist shot past goalie and fellow Russian Ilya Sorokin as the left winger's family and Gretzky looked on at UBS Arena. It was a power play goal, which was fitting – no one in NHL history has ever scored more power play goals than the Russian ace.
Ovechkin netted his 42nd tally of the season, which is the third most in the league as Washington trails 4-1 in the third period.
The game paused after Ovechkin's goal for a ceremony to recognize his achievement.
Ovechkin thanked his teammates, the Capitals organization, coaches, his family, the fans and yes, Sorokin, for letting him get the record.
“It's a team sport. Without my boys, I would never stand there and obviously I would never pass a great one. … We did it, boys, we did it,” Ovechkin told the crowd.
“Thank you, (Ilya Sorokin) to let me score 895 … and the last thing, all of you fans, for all the world, Russia, we did it, boys, we did it. It's a history!”
The fans chanted “Ovi! Ovi! Ovi!” after he finished speaking.
Gretzky told the fans he doesn't think Ovechkin's record, the one he held for more than 31 years, will be broken.
“We're here today to celebrate this guy here, number eight. I can tell you firsthand I know how hard it is to get 894. Eight-ninety-five is pretty special,” Gretzky said.
“They say records are made to be broken, but I'm not sure who's going to get more goals than that.”
Gretzky jokingly told Capitals owner Ted Leonsis when he broke the goals record, he was given a Rolls-Royce and the owner is going to have to think of a gift for his star.
In his 20th NHL season, many had been waiting for him to overtake the record this year. The Russian finally did so having played the same amount of games — 1,487 — that Gretzky managed during his 21-year career.
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While many had expected Ovechkin to break the record this season, the broken fibula he sustained in November delayed his march toward what many once considered an unassailable mark. The Capitals star, though, recovered quickly to get back on track.
In March, Ovechkin announced a charity partnership which would see him donate money after every goal he scores until the end of his career to raise funds for pediatric cancer research.
Ovechkin has played all 20 of his NHL seasons with Washington, leading the team to its only Stanley Cup win in 2018. Earlier this year, he joined Gordie Howe as the only NHL players in history to rack up 20 goals in 20 straight seasons.
He has also amassed nine seasons of 50+ goals – including a career-high 65 in 2007-08 –been named an All-Star 12 times, league MVP three times, and in 2017 was honored as one of the best 100 NHL players of all time.
A year later, he lifted the Stanley Cup for the first time as his Capitals dispatched the expansion Las Vegas Golden Knights in five games.
This is a breaking story and will be updated.
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Energoatom CEO, Petro Kotin, says ‘major problems' need to be overcome before it can safely generate power
It would be unsafe for Russia to restart the occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant and would take Ukraine up to two years in peacetime if it regained control, the chief executive of the company that runs the vast six-reactor site has said.
Petro Kotin, chief executive of Energoatom, said in an interview there were “major problems” to overcome – including insufficient cooling water, personnel and incoming electricity supply – before it could start generating power again safely.
The future of the Zaporizhzhia plant, Europe's largest nuclear reactor, is a significant aspect of any negotiations to end the war in Ukraine. Seized by Russia in spring 2022 and shut down for safety reasons a few months later, it remains on the frontline of the conflict, close to the Dnipro River.
Russia has said it intends to retain the site and switch it back on, without being specific as to when. Alexey Likhachev, head of Russian nuclear operator Rosatom, said in February it would be restarted when “military and political conditions allow”.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump has expressed an interest in taking control of it, though this possibility is considered very remote.
Kotin said Energoatom was prepared to restart the plant but it would require Russian forces to be removed and the site to be de-mined and demilitarised.
He said such a restart by Ukraine would take anywhere “from two months to two years” in an environment “without any threats from militaries”, while a Russian restart during wartime “would be impossible, even for one unit [reactor]”.
Kotin said the six reactors could only be brought online after the completion of 27 safety programmes agreed with Ukraine's nuclear regulator, including testing the nuclear fuel in the reactor cores because it had exceeded a six-year “design term”.
That raises questions about whether Russia could restart the plant after a ceasefire without incurring significant risk. The plant was already unsafe, Kotin said, given that it was being used as “a military base with military vehicles present” and there were “probably some weapons and blasting materials” present as well.
Russia has acknowledged that it has placed mines between the inner and outer perimeters of the plant “to deter potential Ukrainian saboteurs” while inspectors from the IAEA nuclear watchdog have reported that armed troops and military personnel are present at the site.
Last month, the US Department of Energy said the Zaporizhzhia plant was being operated by an “inadequate and insufficently trained cadre of workers”, with staffing levels at less than a third of prewar levels.
The US briefing said Ukrainian reactors, though originally of the Soviet VVER design, had “evolved differently” from their Russian counterparts and “particularly the safety systems”. Russian-trained specialists acting as replacements for Ukrainian staff were “inexperienced” in operating the Ukrainian variants, it said.
Kotin said an attempt to restart the plant by Russia would almost certainly not be accepted or supported by Ukraine. It would require the reconnection of three additional 750kV high-voltage lines to come into the plant, he said.
A nuclear reactor requires a significant amount of power for day-to-day operation, and three of the four high-voltage lines came from territories now under Russian occupation. “They themselves destroyed the lines,” Kotin said, only for Russia to discover engineers could not rebuild them as the war continued, he added.
Only two lines remain to maintain the site in cold shutdown, a 750kV line coming from Ukraine, and a further 330kV line – though on eight separate occasions shelling disrupted their supply of energy, forcing the plant to rely on backup generators.
Experts say a pumping station has to be constructed at the site, because there is insufficient cooling water available. The June 2023 destruction by Russian soldiers of the Nova Kakhova dam downstream eliminated the easy supply of necessary water from the Dnipro river.
Two civilians were reportedly killed by Russian missile attacks on Sunday, including one in a ballistic missile strike in an eastern district of Kyiv; while Russia said it captured a border village near Sumy in north-east Ukraine.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia had launched more than 1,460 guided aerial bombs, nearly 670 attack drones, and more than 30 missiles over the past week. The Ukrainian president said: “The number of air attacks is increasing.”
US-brokered ceasefire talks have only achieved limited results thus far. Both sides agreed to stop attacking energy targets, though each accuses the other of violations; while a maritime ceasefire agreed to by Ukraine has not been accepted by Russia.
A Russian official involved in the negotiations said on Sunday that diplomatic contacts between Russia and the US could come again as early as next week.
Energoatom CEO, Petro Kotin, says ‘major problems' need to be overcome before it can safely generate power
It would be unsafe for Russia to restart the occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant and would take Ukraine up to two years in peacetime if it regained control, the chief executive of the company that runs the vast six-reactor site has said.
Petro Kotin, chief executive of Energoatom, said in an interview there were “major problems” to overcome – including insufficient cooling water, personnel and incoming electricity supply – before it could start generating power again safely.
The future of the Zaporizhzhia plant, Europe's largest nuclear reactor, is a significant aspect of any negotiations to end the war in Ukraine. Seized by Russia in spring 2022 and shut down for safety reasons a few months later, it remains on the frontline of the conflict, close to the Dnipro River.
Russia has said it intends to retain the site and switch it back on, without being specific as to when. Alexey Likhachev, head of Russian nuclear operator Rosatom, said in February it would be restarted when “military and political conditions allow”.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump has expressed an interest in taking control of it, though this possibility is considered very remote.
Kotin said Energoatom was prepared to restart the plant but it would require Russian forces to be removed and the site to be de-mined and demilitarised.
He said such a restart by Ukraine would take anywhere “from two months to two years” in an environment “without any threats from militaries”, while a Russian restart during wartime “would be impossible, even for one unit [reactor]”.
Kotin said the six reactors could only be brought online after the completion of 27 safety programmes agreed with Ukraine's nuclear regulator, including testing the nuclear fuel in the reactor cores because it had exceeded a six-year “design term”.
That raises questions about whether Russia could restart the plant after a ceasefire without incurring significant risk. The plant was already unsafe, Kotin said, given that it was being used as “a military base with military vehicles present” and there were “probably some weapons and blasting materials” present as well.
Russia has acknowledged that it has placed mines between the inner and outer perimeters of the plant “to deter potential Ukrainian saboteurs” while inspectors from the IAEA nuclear watchdog have reported that armed troops and military personnel are present at the site.
Last month, the US Department of Energy said the Zaporizhzhia plant was being operated by an “inadequate and insufficently trained cadre of workers”, with staffing levels at less than a third of prewar levels.
The US briefing said Ukrainian reactors, though originally of the Soviet VVER design, had “evolved differently” from their Russian counterparts and “particularly the safety systems”. Russian-trained specialists acting as replacements for Ukrainian staff were “inexperienced” in operating the Ukrainian variants, it said.
Kotin said an attempt to restart the plant by Russia would almost certainly not be accepted or supported by Ukraine. It would require the reconnection of three additional 750kV high-voltage lines to come into the plant, he said.
A nuclear reactor requires a significant amount of power for day-to-day operation, and three of the four high-voltage lines came from territories now under Russian occupation. “They themselves destroyed the lines,” Kotin said, only for Russia to discover engineers could not rebuild them as the war continued, he added.
Only two lines remain to maintain the site in cold shutdown, a 750kV line coming from Ukraine, and a further 330kV line – though on eight separate occasions shelling disrupted their supply of energy, forcing the plant to rely on backup generators.
Experts say a pumping station has to be constructed at the site, because there is insufficient cooling water available. The June 2023 destruction by Russian soldiers of the Nova Kakhova dam downstream eliminated the easy supply of necessary water from the Dnipro river.
Two civilians were reportedly killed by Russian missile attacks on Sunday, including one in a ballistic missile strike in an eastern district of Kyiv; while Russia said it captured a border village near Sumy in north-east Ukraine.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia had launched more than 1,460 guided aerial bombs, nearly 670 attack drones, and more than 30 missiles over the past week. The Ukrainian president said: “The number of air attacks is increasing.”
US-brokered ceasefire talks have only achieved limited results thus far. Both sides agreed to stop attacking energy targets, though each accuses the other of violations; while a maritime ceasefire agreed to by Ukraine has not been accepted by Russia.
A Russian official involved in the negotiations said on Sunday that diplomatic contacts between Russia and the US could come again as early as next week.
Servings of 250ml and 175ml are becoming rarer in restaurants and bars as customers opt for smaller tastings
It may be a sign of changing tastes, of a health-conscious nation, or yet another example of the cost of living crisis encroaching on our few simple pleasures – but it seems the large glass of wine may soon be a thing of the past.
While a 250ml option used to be commonplace, it is becoming harder to find on the menus of bars and restaurants up and down the country as venues increasingly favour smaller 125ml servings.
At high-end restaurants, which would have tended to offer diners a choice of small or medium 175ml servings, there is a notable shift. Only one of the 20 top Michelin-starred restaurants now serves a medium: the Ledbury in Notting Hill. At the rest, diners are offered 125ml or a whole bottle at 750ml.
Hannah Crosbie, the Guardian's wine critic, said it was something she had noticed and “found quite interesting”.
“Any time there's a big changing of tides or a notable difference in the way we drink wine, it really is a reflection of the culture and how we're drinking now,” she said. “First of all, I'd say it's reflective of people just drinking less generally.”
Crosbie said it felt “like a more health-conscious decision” but could sometimes be a convenient excuse to have a glass of wine instead of skipping it altogether. “Instead of not getting wine, you get a smaller glass of wine.”
Another reason, Crosbie said, was that consumers were increasingly trying wines they would not have tried in the past.
“The average person – particularly in metropolitan areas, not speaking for the whole of the country – is now more adventurous with their wine choices than they've ever been,” she said. “So instead of perhaps having a bottle and just sticking on one wine for the entire night, they would instead want to try lots of different things and, again, in order to keep on top of what they were drinking, they would just have smaller glasses so they could try as much as they can.”
She cited the rise of bars focusing on natural wines – those that are typically organic and use minimal processing – as these “tend to have much smaller bistro ISO-style glasses [smaller wine glasses for tasting] and that naturally lends itself to a smaller serve.”
Jono Hawthorne, the chef patron at Chef Jono at V&V in Leeds, agreed and added that price was also a huge factor. He still serves large glasses but has noticed a trend towards customers wanting smaller glasses of higher-priced wines.
“The rise of smaller wine bars, especially natural and low-intervention wine, has led to more expensive wines being offered to customers,” said Hawthorne, who worked at Michelin-starred restaurants such as Noma and the Box Tree and competed on MasterChef: The Professionals before running his own kitchen.
Price is something he is conscious about when it comes to his own customers, offering affordable fine-dining options including creative five-course menus priced at £45. “If you put a 250ml glass of wine on a menu, it would be the price of a bottle to some people,” he said.
But the good news for those unsatisfied by smaller servings is that chains such as Wetherspoon's, Pizza Express and All Bar One appear to be resisting the trend.
“A small glass of wine doesn't sound right, does it?” said Sanda Anlezark, over a bottle shared with her friend Jean Collingwood in All Bar One in Manchester city centre. The pair, 20 years retired from careers in advertising sales, were taking advantage of a Thursday deal at the chain where buying two glasses gets the rest of the bottle free – and were surprised to hear that wine sizes appeared to be shrinking.
Collingwood agreed. “The best thing is when you don't have to ask, the person behind the bar goes … [she nods, conspiratorially] … and brings you a large.”
What if you went to a bar that only served small glasses? “It wouldn't bother me,” said Anlezark. “You'd get a bottle.”
Days of heavy rains have led to rapidly swelling waterways and prompted a series of flood emergencies from Texas to Ohio
Another round of torrential rain and flash flooding on Saturday hit parts of the US south and midwest already heavily waterlogged by days of severe storms that also spawned deadly tornadoes. Forecasters warned that rivers in some places would continue to rise for days.
Day after day of heavy rains have pounded the central US, rapidly swelling waterways and prompting a series of flash flood emergencies from Texas to Ohio. The National Weather Service (NWS) said dozens of locations in multiple states were expected to reach major flood stage, with extensive flooding of structures, roads, bridges and other critical infrastructure possible.
At least 16 weather-related deaths have been reported since the start of the storms, including 10 in Tennessee.
A 57-year-old man died on Friday evening after getting out of a car that washed off a road in West Plains, Missouri. Flooding killed two people in Kentucky – a 9-year-old boy swept away that same day on his way to school, and a 74-year-old whose body was found Saturday inside a fully submerged vehicle in Nelson County, authorities said.
Also on Saturday a five-year-old died at a home in Little Rock, Arkansas, in a weather-related incident, according to police. No details were immediately provided.
Tornadoes earlier in the week destroyed entire neighbourhoods and caused at least seven deaths.
And interstate commerce is affected – the extreme flooding across a corridor that includes the major cargo hubs in Louisville, Kentucky, and Memphis could lead to shipping and supply chain delays, said Jonathan Porter, the chief meteorologist at AccuWeather.
The outburst comes at a time when nearly half of NWS forecast offices have 20% vacancy rates after Trump administration job cuts – twice that of just a decade ago.
Louisville mayor Craig Greenberg on Saturday said the Ohio River rose 5ft (about 1.5 meters) in 24 hours and would continue to swell for days.
“We expect this to be one of the top 10 flooding events in Louisville history,” he said.
Flash flood emergency and tornado warnings continued to be issued across Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee, with more heavy rains and damaging winds in the mix.
In north-central Kentucky, emergency officials ordered a mandatory evacuation for Falmouth, a town of 2,000 people in a bend of the rising Licking River. The warnings were similar to catastrophic flooding nearly 30 years ago when the river reached a record 50ft (15 meters), resulting in five deaths and 1,000 homes destroyed.
In Arkansas, weather officials pleaded with people to avoid travel unless absolutely necessary due to widespread flooding.
BNSF Railway confirmed that a railroad bridge in Mammoth Spring was washed out by flood waters, causing the derailment of several cars. No injuries were reported, but there was no immediate estimate for when the bridge would reopen.
Since Wednesday more than a foot of rain (30.5cm) has fallen in parts of Kentucky, and more than 8in (20cm) in parts of Arkansas and Missouri, forecasters said Saturday.
Forecasters attributed the violent weather to warm temperatures, an unstable atmosphere, strong wind shear and abundant moisture streaming from the Gulf.
At least two reports of observed tornadoes were noted Friday evening in Missouri and Arkansas, according to the National Weather Service. One, near Blytheville, Arkansas, lofted debris at least 25,000ft (7.6km) high, according to the NWS meteorologist Chelly Amin. The state's emergency management office reported damage in 22 counties from tornadoes, wind, hail and flash flooding.
Recession fears are mounting, and anxiety is high – but the president remains unmoved by criticism of his trade plans
Since Donald Trump returned to the White House, Americans have grown used to high drama and rapid-fire headlines, as executive orders from the Oval Office have reshaped the US, from stripping back LGBTQ rights to gutting environmental regulations amid a sense that America is slipping into authoritarianism.
But even against that backdrop, last week stood out, as Trump launched a fierce global trade war, imposed tariffs on its trading partners and triggered a global market meltdown, including on Trump's own cherished Wall Street, where hundreds of billions of dollars of stock values evaporated.
Now, with all eyes nervously on Monday's markets amid fears that the calamitous drops will continue, recession fears are mounting in America. JP Morgan analysts last week boosted their odds on a global recession to 60% and Americans are bracing for a return of inflation – the thing that above all else likely doomed Trump's predecessor, Joe Biden.
But Trump remained unmoved by market drops and the global political condemnation – and even rare criticism from his own Republican party – saying now is a “great time to get rich” and that “China played it wrong – they panicked”.
On the streets of New York too, there was panic among some. In Washington Square Park, two sisters from Detroit were sitting on a park bench nearby the magnolia trees now in bloom. Kathleen, a primary school teacher, said she worried about whether there was a plan in place before changes are made.
“I want to be optimistic, but I live under an umbrella of worry with this administration,” Kathleen said. “I worry about the leadership, worry about a lack of continuity within the leadership, and so many changes at once without a plan.”
Her sister, Elizabeth, said she'd grown so anxious she'd stepped back from the news. “Our mum definitely had a huge jump in anxiety over this past week over her investments. She worked hard for those and she lives on them – a retired schoolteacher, and the drop in stocks very much impacts her day-to-day feeling of security.”
But Leo Ezekiel, 39, had a different perspective. As a financier, he wasn't so worried about the stock markets. “It's mostly that big corporations are deciding to sell off, and that will affect people, but in the long run, if stocks go down, it gives room for them to move up. It's part of the game – and it's always been like that in the United States.”
Trump made his move because he dreams of a return of American manufacturing might, convinced that tariffs will force factories home to the US, even though almost all economists think that is highly unlikely.
Yet, for such a momentous decision which has rattled the entire world economy, Trump reportedly only made up his mind at the last minute. According to the Washington Post, Trump didn't arrive on an exact plan until just three hours before the Rose Garden announcement.
The “liberation day” announcement from the White House was a choreographed event, and his speech drew cheers from audience, largely made up cabinet members and blue-collar workers from manufacturing sectors that have for decades been economically pummeled by foreign competition. He offered up a vision that tariffs would bring back an older American economy, reopening factories and returning prosperity to ordinary workers.
“Taxpayers have been ripped off for more than 50 years,” Trump complained “But it is not going to happen any more.”
Vice-President JD Vance said: “We've seen closing factories, we've seen rising inflation. We've seen the cost of housing so high that most Americans can't afford to buy a home right now,” Vance said. “President Trump is taking this economy in a different direction.”
America's largest trading partners, Mexico, Canada, China, Germany, and Japan, were less enthusiastic, to say the least. China has announced retaliatory duties of 34%; the Canadian prime minister Mark Carney announced a limited set of counter-measures and called the US moves a “tragedy” for 80 years of “free and open exchange of goods and services”, led by the US.
The British PM Keir Starmer said nothing would be “off the table” when it came to the UK's response to the tariffs – the UK imports $76.2bn in US services – but that “just as with defence and security” the world was “entering a new era” in economy and trade.
It is one where answers to even the most basic questions remain unknown. Will Trump's tariffs on US trade partners go down as an act of economic self-sabotage? Or are tariffs merely a negotiating ploy to influence other nations – war by other means? Or is Trump finally getting to express his long-held economic view that the US has been making bad deals for decades?
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The next few months may provide some clues. But, in an effort to get ahead of the US tariffs coming into effect next week, some effects were already being felt. The cost of flying goods into the US from China are reported to have risen 40% in four weeks. One car factory in Canada has already shuttered.
On Friday, Jerome Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, warned that Trump risked stoking even higher inflation and slower growth. “It is now becoming clear that the tariff increases will be significantly larger than expected,” he said. “The same is likely to be true of the economic effects, which will include higher inflation and slower growth.”
As the financial markets continued to convulse on Friday, the Washington Post reported that Trump is unbowed by negative headlines, criticism from foreign leaders, and was determined to listen to a single voice to secure what he views as his political legacy. That voice was of course his own.
“He's at the peak of just not giving a fuck any more,” a White House official with knowledge of Trump's thinking told the newspaper. “Bad news stories? Doesn't give a fuck. He's going to do what he's going to do. He's going to do what he promised to do on the campaign trail.”
But even some former Trump economic officials privately expressed doubts that returning the US to an era of manufacturing self-sufficiency was likely impossible.
The author Michael Wolff, who has published four books about Trump in power, says the US president will now be keenly gauging how his interruption into global trade norms is going down, with updates and live-action replays provided by aides. Trump, Wolff says, is likely caught between two opposing instincts.
“It's great for him – he's dominating the news once again. Nobody is talking about anything else except tariffs. Suddenly, tariffs, an arcane piece of trade policy, are the most dramatic thing in the world that he's imbued with reality-show stuff. He'll be really pleased with that.”
But on the other hand, Wolff predicts, Trump will be watching the financial markets. “He'll have the business guys calling up saying: what the fuck are you doing? I'm sure he hasn't come to any conclusion. So on the one hand it's great – he's the world's leading guy again. On the other, it might collapse in on him.”
And that, he adds, is the essence of Trump. “He's fundamentally self-destructive, but that self-destructive impulse is exactly what keeps him at the forefront of the news.”
CNN's Jake Tapper pressed Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins about tariffs imposed by the Trump administration, questioning why Heard Island and McDonald Islands, an uninhabited Australian territory, is facing tariffs.
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Garment workers in countries such as Cambodia among those who fear they will lose pay cheques if companies move production elsewhere
“This is very messed up. If Trump wants Cambodia to import more American goods: look, we are just a very small country!”
Khun Tharo works to promote human rights in the Cambodian garment sector, which employs about 1 million people – many of them women.
“I think they are very concerned about their jobs, and I think they are very concerned about their monthly pay cheque. And that has significant effects on the livelihoods of their dependent family,” says Tharo, programme manager at the Centre for Alliance of Labor and Human Rights (CENTRAL), a Cambodian workers' rights organisation.
One of the most wilfully destructive aspects of Donald Trump's shock and awe trade policy is the imposition of punitive tariffs on developing countries across Asia, including rates of 49% for Cambodia, 37% for Bangladesh, 48% for Laos.
For decades Washington had championed economic development through trade. Now, at the same time as slashing overseas aid budgets and retreating from its role in supporting developing nations, it is ripping up that idea entirely.
In its place, Trump intends to impose his will on the US's trading partners. Some are all but powerless to exact concessions, given their small size, and dependence on the mighty American market. Cambodia hastily offered to cut tariffs on US goods on Friday, in a bid to propitiate Washington.
Contrary to Trump's bombast about the US being “pillaged”, the tariffs are not in any sense “reciprocal”.
Instead, they relate to the size of the US goods trade deficit with each country, and the value of its exports. (Side note: the 10% paid by the UK has nothing to do with Labour's negotiating flair – it just came out of the fact that Britain buys about as much stuff from the US as it sells the other way).
Ironically, many of the countries in the global south hit by Trump had benefited from preferential schemes offering low or zero tariffs, precisely because building up exporting capacity is an accepted path to development.
Alice Oyaro, the chief executive at the charity Transform Trade, which works with producers in some of the worst-hit countries, says: “Our biggest concern is that the additional costs are pushed down to those in the supply chain who are least able to pay. Small farmers exporting everything from green beans to cocoa, and women workers in Bangladeshi factories are already finding it hard to make ends meet. They will see their incomes squeezed even more.”
Tiny Sri Lanka, which has an economy 0.3% of the size of the US's, faces a 44% tariff despite being bailed out by the International Monetary Fund two years ago and continuing to negotiate debt restructuring deals with its creditors.
“It's a highly vulnerable situation,” says Ajith D Perera, the chair of the Asia Pacific Trade Agreement (APTA) Chamber of Commerce and Industry. “Sri Lanka will lose export income and see a hit to GDP and employment – and that comes at a time when it is just coming out of bankruptcy.”
He fears the scale of the tariffs could compromise Sri Lanka's ability to meet the conditions of the IMF bailout deal. Trade is meant to be a key prop for growth, as it rebuilds its shattered economy.
“I think the fundamentals have been challenged by the US decision,” he says. “25% of Sri Lanka's exports go to the US and 70% of that is garments. I think the government needs to start discussions with the IMF immediately.”
As his warning suggests, there is a risk that a grim side-effect of Trump's trade war will be to exacerbate the debt crises already hitting heavily indebted poorer nations.
Even countries that have escaped the most punitive tariff rates could still be hit hard if the prospect of a global downturn depresses the value of the commodity exports on which many rely.
Keir Starmer and other leaders of the developed world have been preoccupied with their own domestic responses since Wednesday's bombshell briefing in the White House Rose Garden.
But the severity of the probable impact for the global south calls for a concerted approach, too – albeit one that will have to bypassWashington.
Most of the hardest-hit countries can already trade tariff-free with major markets under projects such as the EU's Everything But Arms programme and the UK's Developing Countries Trading Scheme, which are designed to help the poorest nations to develop through trade.
But if Trump's tariffs stick, multinational brands focused on the US are likely to switch production rapidly to countries hit with lower rates. One garment buyer in India told me on Friday she was already hearing of factory owners in Bangladesh being told by US brands that they would now be manufacturing their sweaters in Peru, which has a rate of just 10%.
The social dislocation in some of these hardest-hit economies could be profound, if such rapid shifts result in mass layoffs.
And the case for debt write-offs, already clear, may become all the more pressing, if the resulting the looming global downturn sweeps vulnerable countries over the edge.
The fact that the British government's deep cuts to the aid budget now sit alongside a probable global economic downturn and heavy US penalties for exporters in developing countries makes that decision all the more shameful.
Back in Cambodia, Tharo says: “The industry right now seems to be in a little bit of a hectic situation. The government is also extremely worried because they are not seeing any alternative markets at the moment. And we don't have significant goods to be exported to any other country.
“Trump doesn't care,” he sighs.
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A 17-year-old Palestinian boy died following “likely prolonged malnutrition” in an Israeli prison, according to an autopsy carried out by an Israeli pathologist.
The teenager, Walid Khalid Ahmad, is the first minor to have died in Israeli custody since the conflict between Hamas and Israel started in October 2023, according to the Palestinian Prisoners' Society (PPS).
He died in Israel's Megiddo Prison on March 22, according to his family and a joint statement by the PPS and the Palestinian Commission of Detainees' Affairs.
Ahmad was arrested on September 30 last year in his home in Silwad, a Palestinian town northeast of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. His father Khalid said that he was detained based on alleged offenses between 2020 and 2023 that included throwing stones and Molotov cocktails.
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Walid and his family deny the accusations made against him. The PPS told CNN the teenager was not charged, and court hearings were repeatedly delayed.
Five days after Ahmad died, his body was examined at the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute in Tel Aviv, according to a copy of the autopsy report that his family shared with CNN.
The autopsy report described signs of severe weight and muscle loss, including loss of muscle mass at the temples, a sunken appearance at the abdomen and “almost absent muscle mass or subcutaneous fat on trunk and extremities.”
“Autopsy findings suggest that Walid suffered from extreme, likely prolonged malnutrition as observed by his deeply cachectic state and complaints of inadequate food intake since at least December 2024,” it said. “It needs to be noted that malnutrition increases the risk of infectious complications including severe sepsis,” it added.
CNN did not receive an immediate response from the Israel security service or the Israel Defense Forces about why the teenager was arrested last September and whether he had been formally charged. The Justice Ministry referred inquiries back to the Prison Service.
The PPS told CNN that Ahmad is not only the first minor to die in Israeli custody since October 2023, but also since 1967. CNN cannot verify the assertion.
At least 63 Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank have so far died in Israeli detention since the start of the latest conflict, the PPS said, including at least 40 from Gaza.
The Israeli Prison Service told CNN that “upon receiving the initial report on the detainee's condition, a medical team was called to the scene and responded as required.”
“As in any case of the death of a prisoner, an investigative team was appointed to examine the incident. Upon completion of the investigation its findings will be forwarded to the authorized authorities,” it said.
Khalid, Ahmad's father, told CNN that on September 30 last year, Israeli forces “stormed the house” at around 3:30 a.m. and arrested his son.
The family was allowed to attend several court hearings in the case, which were held remotely by video conference calls, he said.
Israeli authorities continue to hold Ahmad's body, Khalid told CNN.
The family was informed of his death on March 24, two days after he died, Khalid said, adding that days later, he received a phone call from the medical team that conducted the autopsy, who told him “the painful truth” behind his son's death.
An avid athlete, Ahmad did not suffer from any known illnesses before his detention, his father said, pointing to his treatment in custody as the cause of his son's death.
“Walid was a young man with great values,” Khalid said. “What happened was unexpected.”
The Commission on Detainees' Affairs and the PPS said Walid's death was “proof of the horrific level of abuse faced by detainees inside Israeli occupation prisons, including hundreds of children.”
Israel has ramped up arrests in the occupied West Bank since the latest war began, PPS said, with some 15,700 arrests so far recorded by its count.
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Trinity Rodman enjoyed the perfect return to the US Women's National Team (USWNT) on Saturday, scoring after just five minutes in a 2-0 victory over Brazil, her first international game since last year's Olympic gold medal match.
The 22-year-old had not featured for the USWNT in almost eight months, having aggravated a long-standing back issue during a game for the Washington Spirit in September.
But she looked like she had never been away on Saturday, deftly poking the ball into the bottom right corner from 10 yards out after a good run from Alyssa Thompson, before briefly pretending she had hurt her back again as part of her celebration.
“The medical staff was freaking out, but I felt like I had to do it,” Rodman smiled per AP. “It felt so good to be in this atmosphere again, to be with the team. The stadium was crazy.”
Manager Emma Hayes was, at least in the moment, less impressed with the prank.
“I didn't think she was pretending,” she grimaced afterwards, per AP. “I will have a word with her, because that was like a ‘cry wolf' moment. I turned to the physios and said, ‘Her back's hurting,' instantly. And then I realized she was tricking us.”
Rodman, an Orange County native, clearly relished the opportunity to return to international action in front of 32,303 fans in Los Angeles, in the first ever women's professional sports event held at SoFi Stadium.
So too did fellow Californian Thompson who, having provided the assist for Rodman, forced goalkeeper Lorena into a smart save in the 17th minute. Ally Sentnor went even closer to doubling the advantage four minutes later when she was played in by Thompson, but she too was denied by the onrushing goalkeeper.
Brazil returned for the second half with renewed impetus and hit the bar twice within six minutes of the restart – first through Ludmila, and then through Giovana Queiroz.
But in the 66th minute it was the home team which claimed the decisive second goal, captain Lindsey Heaps emphatically converting from the penalty spot after Lily Yohannes had been brought down in the area by Ludmila.
The 2-0 victory meant a clean sheet for debutant goalkeeper Phallon Tullis-Joyce, who impressed with six saves in the match.
“I think it shows where this group is going,” said Heaps, per AP. “Our group is just getting better and better, and there's not massive gaps between players. These young guns coming in … it's such a cool thing for us to see.”
Having played out one rematch of Paris 2024's gold medal game, both teams meet again on Tuesday, April 8, for the second match of the two-game friendly series.
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Republicans are growing anxious about an emerging Texas primary engulfing one of their longest-serving senators, fearful that a hugely expensive intraparty feud will have major ramifications across the map in next year's midterms.
And they want President Donald Trump to stop it.
Behind the scenes, Senate GOP leaders have personally asked Trump to back Sen. John Cornyn, who has occupied his seat for more than two decades and narrowly lost his bid to become Senate majority leader last fall.
But the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, is sending loud signals that he plans to enter the race, endearing himself to MAGA loyalists who want Trump to back the controversial firebrand.
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Adding to Cornyn's challenges: Texas Rep. Wesley Hunt is now also making moves to enter the GOP primary and has privately contended to White House political advisers that he's the only one who can win both a primary and a general election, according to a person involved in the discussion.
All that has added up to one overriding fear: that a Texas Senate GOP primary could end up costing their party at least $100 million, siphoning money from other critical battlegrounds, according to several Senate GOP sources. Plus, they worry that a wounded GOP nominee could end up giving Democrats a chance in what would otherwise be a long-shot pickup opportunity as former Rep. Colin Allred weighs another Senate run.
Top Hill Republicans hope Trump can help clear the field with a Cornyn endorsement. Senate Majority Leader John Thune confirmed to CNN that he's spoken to Trump about it in recent weeks.
“I'm hoping that in the end, he can,” Thune said when asked about Trump supporting Cornyn. “Obviously we're supporting Sen. Cornyn. He's done a great job for Texas and for the country. And we need him back.”
The battle puts Trump at the center of the simmering feud between the party's insurgent and establishment wings that has dominated GOP primary politics since the 2010 midterms, forcing him to pick sides and risk angering some of his most loyal supporters.
Cornyn, 73, a longtime fixture in Texas politics with deep ties to the business and donor community, has taken steps to try to align himself closely with the president, including a launch video featuring footage of Trump praising him from 2019 and even posting a photo on X of him reading “The Art of the Deal.”
In an interview last week, the Texas senator told CNN he is “prepared” for a primary fight, but he would not comment on Paxton or Hunt until they formally enter the race. (He said he would speak “endlessly” about Paxton if he jumps into the race.)
Asked about Trump, Cornyn said he speaks to the president regularly and believes he will “make an endorsement when he's ready.”
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“I have a very good relationship; look forward to supporting him and his agenda as I always have,” Cornyn said of Trump. Asked whether the president's backing could make a difference in the race, Cornyn said: “I think his endorsement would be important, yeah.”
But both Paxton and Hunt have tried to show daylight between Cornyn and Trump.
In perhaps the clearest sign of his intentions to run against Cornyn, Hunt argued the senior senator was ready to “move on” from Trump after the 2020 elections.
“Now, he's scrambling to rewrite history — hoping voters will forget he ever turned his back on the very movement that built our momentum and delivered the majority for Republicans, specifically the Senate,” Hunt, a hard-right Republican and combat veteran, told CNN.
“The United States Senate is not a retirement community. It's a battleground for the soul of this nation,” said Hunt, 43, who won his Houston-area House seat in 2022. “And in times like these, President Trump doesn't need fence sitters — he needs warriors.”
And Hunt is now benefiting from a seven-figure ad buy from an outside group looking to bolster his name ID across the state, something that will be critical given how infrequently House candidates win statewide in Texas.
Behind the scenes, multiple conservatives are making the case to Trump's political team to ditch the long-serving senator — some equipped with private polling showing Cornyn losing in a primary, according to three people familiar with the outreach. They argue Cornyn has lost the GOP base in recent years, after voting with most Republicans and all Democrats to certify Joe Biden's election win and partnering with Democrats to pass a major gun safety bill, a move that came in the wake of the Uvalde school massacre in 2022.
“There are high-level people who are behind Paxton in a way they're generally not in primary challenges,” said one Senate GOP operative.
But this person also outlined a scenario that is worrying national leaders, describing Paxton as a “very rough general election candidate in what looks like could be a bad cycle.”
After previously criticizing Trump over the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, Cornyn worked through the last election cycle to rebuild his ties with the president, appearing with him at a campaign event in Nevada — and waiting on the tarmac last October when the president arrived in Austin for a podcast interview with Joe Rogan. Cornyn often points to his work as the Republican whip during Trump's first term to help usher through the 2017 tax law and many of his nominees, including to the Supreme Court, and boasts of voting with Trump more than 90% of the time in his first term.
Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, who leads the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and his team have made this case to White House officials, according to a person familiar with the discussion. And Scott has made clear to Hunt that they are fully behind Cornyn as their nominee when the pair met in recent weeks, according to two people briefed on that meeting.
The goal: curtail GOP primaries and focus the party's limited resources on critical pickup opportunities such as Georgia, Michigan and New Hampshire — while defending Republican seats in places like Maine and North Carolina.
“We worked hard to try to clear primaries to try to minimize the amount of money spent in Republican primaries, and that strategy proved effective and allowed us to pick up the United States Senate in the last cycle,” Sen. Steve Daines of Montana, who led the NRSC in the 2024 cycle, told CNN last week. “So any time we can try to minimize the impact of a primary like in Texas, that's going to help us win the general election.”
Cornyn, for his part, recently told CNN he can defeat any possible challengers: “There's a reason why I've won 19 contested elections: Always be prepared.”
Democrats, meanwhile, are salivating at the idea of running against Paxton, who is a lightning-rod figure in Texas. Paxton, 62, was nearly removed from office by fellow Texas Republicans less than a year ago amid a long-running federal corruption probe. (Those charges were dropped by the Biden administration in its final weeks in office, and Paxton has denied wrongdoing.)
But the cloud of allegations will undoubtedly give Paxton's opponents ample fodder in a Senate campaign, according to GOP and Democratic operatives.
Allred, a former congressman who lost by 8 points to GOP Sen. Ted Cruz last year, is “seriously considering” another run and will make a decision this summer, according to a person familiar with his thinking.
In a recent memo obtained by CNN, the Texas Democratic Party praised Allred's race against Cruz, in which Allred overperformed the 2024 presidential nominee, Kamala Harris, in “nearly every county, demographic and metric” and did “particularly well” in the competitive turf along the Texas border that would be critical to a 2026 race.
New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who leads the Senate Democrats' campaign arm, said her party is building a “blue wave” because of “anger” toward Trump.
“A large blue wave can affect any state,” she told CNN when asked last week about her party's chances to pick up the Texas seat.
But many conservatives discount talk that Allred could win in a state that hasn't elected a Democrat statewide since 1994. And given that, they argue Texas should elect an unyielding conservative firebrand — like Paxton, dismissing his political baggage.
Indeed, as conservatives flocked to Washington in February for the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, a small band of MAGA supporters arrived early to hear Trump's longtime political ally Caroline Wren talk about the right's potential 2026 primary targets.
In her view, moderate GOP Sen. Susan Collins wasn't a worthy target because of Maine's blue tilt: “Let's just leave her alone. Don't waste your time.”
Then she turned to Texas. “But how about John Cornyn in Texas? He's up. Who would like to see a Sen. Ken Paxton?” she said as the crowd cheered.
It's that burst of right-wing enthusiasm that has put Republicans on Capitol Hill in an awkward spot when asked about Cornyn's reelection bid.
A number of Republicans in the delegation refuse to say whether they will back Cornyn, with some clearly waiting for Trump to tip his hand and others unsure how the primary fight will shape up.
“I'm gonna stay out of that minefield,” Rep. Keith Self, a Texas GOP member of the House Freedom Caucus, told CNN.
Cruz has been noticeably silent — even though Cornyn raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Cruz's reelection bid last year. Cruz's initial silence is reminiscent of Cornyn's 2014 reelection, when the senior senator faced a tea party-inspired challenger whom he vanquished in the primary. Cruz stayed neutral in the primary before backing Cornyn in the 2014 general election.
Twice in recent weeks, Cruz refused to respond when asked whether he'd back Cornyn. Asked by CNN last week whether he would endorse Cornyn, Cruz said: “Call the press office.” And then he let the elevator doors close when asked whether he had spoken to Paxton or Hunt about their potential bids.
But a Cruz spokesperson didn't respond to requests for comment.
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The film, combined with The Little Mermaid, created more carbon emissions than some major airports do in a year
At a screening of the new Snow White movie in London last month, influencers walked through an artificial fairytale forest, complete with a full-size thatched cottage filled with models of furry animals. In the US, Disney paraded an actual bunny in a brown knitted jumper down the red carpet at the film's Hollywood premiere.
But the film's theme of being at one with nature seems not to have extended to the real-life environment, with company documents showing the making of Snow White generated more greenhouse gas emissions in the UK than the latest Fast & Furious film, despite the latter's reliance on an array of gas-guzzling cars.
Analysis of more than 250 sets of filings from the Walt Disney Company reveals that the live action remakes of Snow White and another animated classic, The Little Mermaid, created more pollution than any of its other movies made in the UK since 2019, when the environmental reporting requirement was introduced.
It obliges companies to disclose the emissions generated in the UK, so the global total may be higher. The Little Mermaid, for example, was also filmed in Sardinia, while the Fast and Furious film-makers travelled to Italy and the US.
The combined emissions for Snow White and The Little Mermaid are higher than the annual amount produced by Birmingham and Luton airports. Each movie generated higher emissions than the annual total for Blackpool Pleasure Beach and London's O2 Arena, where the Snow White influencer event took place.
Snow White is the latest live-action Disney film and stars West Side Story actor Rachel Zegler in the leading role and Wonder Woman's Gal Gadot as the evil queen. It has been far from a fairytale for the company, plagued by controversy about everything from the outspoken politics of the lead actor to the role of the seven dwarves. The film is reportedly on track to make a loss of about $115m (£89m), with total takings of just $145m against a cost of about $260m.
Despite being made by an American studio, both Snow White and The Little Mermaid were filmed at Pinewood Studios, just outside London. Studios filming in the UK get up to 25.5% of their spending reimbursed under government plans to incentivise the industry. As part of this process, accounts must be filed for the production company behind each movie, showing the cost of making the movie and the emissions generated in the UK.
These accounts show that by the end of 2023, Disney had received £44.9m in return for making Snow White in the UK and £49.7m for The Little Mermaid.
Emissions are measured in tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e) and are divided into three categories, known as scopes. The first one covers emissions from fuel directly used to produce the movie, for example by generators powering cameras and heaters. The second scope covers emissions generated by the creation of the electricity used during production. Scope three shows indirect emissions which are generated by suppliers of goods and services.
Scope three emissions are largely outside the control of the companies being measured, so many, including airports, don't list them on their accounts. Scope three for airports includes emissions from the planes that use them, so if this were included they would have a much higher total than films.
In scope one and two Snow White generated 3,153 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. The Little Mermaid generated 5,127 tonnes, to give a combined total of 8,279.6 tonnes. This compares with 7,829 tonnes for Birmingham airport in 2023-24, 6,243 for Luton in 2023 and 3,351 for East Midlands in 2023-24, according to their latest data.
Major productions are known in the movie industry as “tentpoles”. A source close to Disney said last year that a total of around 2,600 tCO2e “is right in line for what the emissions for a tentpole production should be”. The Little Mermaid is double that (taking into account all three scopes) and Snow White is 62% higher.
The latter was filmed extensively on location, which increases the need for portable generators. Fuel for these accounted for the majority of the energy usage during the making of both movies, though it could have been higher. This is because the movie-makers used battery-powered generators and hybrid ones partly powered by batteries.
They also tapped into mains power when possible and the accounts add that the “electricity supply at Pinewood was switched to a renewable supply via a green tariff in 2020 (reductions from this switch are not included in these calculations)”.
They also state that production staff rented electric cars and “charter flights were only used for full crew moves where they are less carbon intensive than booking hundreds of commercial flights”
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Biggest day of demonstrations yet by an opposition movement trying to regain momentum – key US politics stories from 5 April
Crowds of people angry about the way Donald Trump is running the country marched and rallied in scores of American cities on Saturday in the biggest day of demonstrations yet by an opposition movement trying to regain its momentum after the shock of the US president's first weeks in office.
The so-called “Hands Off!” demonstrations were held in more than 1,200 locations in all 50 states by more than 150 groups, including civil rights organizations, labor unions, LBGTQ+ advocates, veterans and elections activists.
Demonstrators voiced anger over the administration's moves to fire thousands of federal workers, close social security administration field offices, effectively shutter entire agencies, deport immigrants, scale back protections for transgender people and cut funding for health programs.
Here are the key stories at a glance.
People across the US took to the streets on Saturday to oppose what left-leaning organizations called Trump's “authoritarian overreach and billionaire-backed agenda”.
Organizers estimated that more than 500,000 people demonstrated in Washington DC, Florida and elsewhere.
Read the full story
Demonstrators estimated to be in the tens of thousands gathered in Washington on Saturday in a display of mass dissent against Trump's policies that organizers hoped would snowball into a rolling cycle of protests.
Anger with Trump and his billionaire lieutenant, the SpaceX and Tesla leader Elon Musk, was expressed in a sea of placards and banners on the Washington mall. Multiple messages denounced the two men for shuttering government agencies, cutting jobs and services and – in often graphic terms – for threatening the survival of US democracy.
Read the full story
The Democratic senator Cory Booker took a version of his record-breaking Senate floor speech on the road Saturday to a town hall meeting in a New Jersey gymnasium, calling on people to find out what they can do to push back against Donald Trump's agenda.
Booker took questions at suburban New Jersey's Bergen Community College the same day that more than 1,200 ‘Hands Off' demonstrations took place around the country. The town hall event was punctuated both by celebratory shouts of “Cory, Cory” as well as at least a half-dozen interruptions by protesters.
Read the full story
Barack Obama has called on US citizens, colleges and law firms to resist Trump's political agenda – and warned Americans to prepare to “possibly sacrifice” in support of democratic values.
“It has been easy during most of our lifetimes to say you are a progressive or say you are for social justice or say you're for free speech and not have to pay a price for it,” Obama said during a speech at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, on Thursday.
Read the full story
Washington is revoking all visas for South Sudanese passport holders and blocking new arrivals, secretary of state Marco Rubio said on Saturday, complaining the African nation is not accepting its nationals expelled from the US.
The state department “is taking actions to revoke all visas held by South Sudanese passport holders and prevent further issuance to prevent entry”, Rubio said in a statement.
Read the full story
Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University student activist who led campus pro-Palestinian rallies and is now resisting the Trump administration's deportation efforts, has accused the university of laying “the groundwork for my abduction” and called on the student body to continue demonstrations and protests.
Khalil, a green-card holder who is in custody in Louisiana as his case moves through the courts, was detained on 8 March. The Trump administration is seeking to deport him under a provision in federal immigration law that permits the state department to deport non-citizens considered to be a threat to US foreign policy.
Read the full story
Trump's presidential administration has acknowledged and apologized after it says it accidentally informed some Ukrainian refugees fleeing their country's invasion by Russia that they needed to leave the US because their legal status was being revoked.
About 240,000 Ukrainians have been settled in the US as part of the Uniting for Ukraine – or U4U – program launched during Joe Biden's presidency. But according to CBS News, some resettled Ukrainians received emails this week telling them that the US Department of Homeland Security would be terminating their legal protections.
Read the full story
Ted Cruz, the US senator from Texas, has warned that his fellow Republicans risk a “bloodbath” in the 2026 midterm elections if Donald Trump's “liberation day” tariffs cause a recession.
Cruz also warned that the president's tariffs, if they stay in place for long and are met by global retaliation on American goods, could trigger a full-blown trade war that “would destroy jobs here at home, and do real damage to the US economy”.
Read the full story
Another round of torrential rain and flash flooding on Saturday hit parts of the US south and midwest already heavily waterlogged by days of severe storms that also spawned deadly tornadoes. Forecasters warned that rivers in some places would continue to rise for days.
New York state officials have told the Trump administration that they will not comply with its demands to end diversity, equity and inclusion practices in public schools, despite the administration's threats to terminate federal education funding.
Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) will pause shipments of its UK-made cars to the US for a month as it considers how to mitigate the cost of Trump's tariffs. The 25% tariff imposed by the US on imported cars and light trucks took effect on 3 April.
Catching up? Here's what happened on 4 April 2025.
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For weeks, US airstrikes have pounded Houthi targets in Yemen, hitting oil refineries, airports and missile sites, with President Trump vowing to use “overwhelming force” until the US achieves its goal of stopping the Houthis from targeting shipping in the Red Sea.
The Houthis began the campaign in solidarity with Palestinians when Israel went to war in Gaza in October 2023. The group has carried out more than 100 attacks and have sunk two vessels. The result: 70% of merchant shipping that once transited the Red Sea now takes the long route around southern Africa.
The US says the campaign is working. National Security Advisor Mike Waltz said that multiple Houthi leaders had been killed.
But every round of strikes provokes more defiance.
The Houthis are what one veteran Yemen-watcher calls the honey badgers of resistance, referring to the belligerent mammal known for its fearless attitude toward predators. Bitten by a cobra, they get up minutes later and attack the snake.
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While as many as 80 Houthi military officers may have been killed, according to analysts, the senior echelon of its military and political leadership appears intact. So are at least some of its missile-launching sites. Since mid-March, the Houthis have launched a dozen ballistic missiles at Israel, and barrages of drones and missiles at US navy ships. While none caused major damage, the threat remains.
CNN reported on Friday that the total cost of the US military's operation against the Iran-backed Houthi militants in Yemen is nearing $1 billion in just under three weeks, according to three people briefed on the campaign, but the attacks had so far had limited impact on destroying the group's capabilities.
“We are burning through readiness — munitions, fuel, deployment time,” said one official.
Far from being cowed, the Houthis have threatened to extend their range of targets to the UAE, which backs the rival government to the Houthis in Yemen's Civil War. Similarly, Saudi officials say the Kingdom's air defenses are on high alert.
“The dozens of airstrikes on Yemen will not deter the Yemeni Armed Forces from fulfilling their religious, moral, and humanitarian duties,” said a Houthi spokesman earlier this week.
There's no doubt that the US campaign has degraded the Houthis' capabilities. Michael Knights, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute, says he suspects the Houthis “have lost a lot of drone manufacturing capability, and there does seem to be more effective interdiction of resupply shipments coming via the sea and via Oman. So the Houthis are not comfortable.”
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But history shows that the Houthis have an extraordinarily high tolerance for pain. And the Trump administration's determination to eradicate the threat they pose may ultimately require a ground offensive.
“The Houthis are just inured to being at war with a first world military,” Knights says.“They're ideological, but they're also very tough tribal fighters from northern Yemen.”
The Houthis' ability to survive is helped by an elaborate smuggling network that brings in missile parts and other equipment. Last year, hidden among cargo on one intercepted ship, air frames and fins for artillery rockets, small turbojet engines and hydrogen fuel cells were discovered, according to an investigation by Conflict Armament Research (CAR).
Such equipment could enable Houthi UAVs to carry larger payloads and to travel for far longer periods. That would “greatly extend the potential threat posed by the Houthis,” CAR reported.
The Houthis survived several offensives during the long presidency of Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen, then a Saudi offensive ten years ago, followed by more recent Israeli, UK and US airstrikes.
Ahmed Nagi, a senior analyst on Yemen at the International Crisis Group, says Israel and western powers lack a deep understanding of the Houthis. “Their opaque leadership and internal structure have created persistent gaps in intelligence.”
Another Yemen expert, Elisabeth Kendall, questions the endgame of the US campaign. “The Houthis have been bombed tens of thousands of times over the past decade and remain undeterred. So one is left thinking that the bombing is largely performative: let's show the world - we'll do it because we can.”
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Coercing the Houthis, Knights told CNN, is “really, really difficult.”
“They are an extremely aggressive movement. The best way to end them permanently is to overthrow them, remove them from the capital, remove them from the Red Sea coast.”
Regional diplomatic sources, as well as analysts, say that ultimately only a ground offensive can dislodge the Houthis, who currently control the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, its major port, Hodeidah, and much of northern Yemen.
Ahmed Nagi, a senior analyst on Yemen at the International Crisis Group, says the US is wrong to believe that airstrikes can compel the Houthis to back down. “This approach failed under the Biden administration and is unlikely to succeed under the Trump administration.”
“Their logic is shaped by years of war; they see resilience as a form of strength and are driven to prove they are not easily deterred.”
“The only times I've ever seen the Houthis go to the negotiating table or compromise has been when they've been threatened with the realistic prospect of defeat on the ground: territorial loss, loss of control of populations and loss of access to the Red Sea coastline,” said Knights.
That briefly happened in 2017 when forces backed by the United Arab Emirates threatened Houthi access to the Red Sea, critical for the Houthis' revenue and military supplies.
The Houthis, if anything, may actually be relishing US strikes. They are a “direct answer to the Houthi prayers to have a war with the US,” said Farea Al-Muslimi, a Yemeni research fellow at Chatham House. The group “wants to drag the US into a larger regional escalation.”
The Houthis are fighting for control of Yemen against the internationally recognized government that controls part of the south and is supported mainly by the UAE. The unanswered question is whether forces loyal to that government can take the fight to the Houthis. “They're already trained and equipped,” says Knights. But there are doubts about their unity.
Analysts do not expect the US to put any troops on the ground, beyond a handful of special forces to help direct airstrikes. The US would perhaps provide [Yemeni forces] “with a bit of logistics, certain key munitions,” Knights says.
The UAE would be “quietly supportive” as it has long supplied the Aden-based government, he adds.
The Saudi perspective is less clear. Knights believes Riyadh is apprehensive about the Houthis retaliating with long-range drones and missiles against its infrastructure. But the US has accelerated deliveries of anti-missile defenses to Saudi Arabia in recent months.
The US will have to say to Riyadh: “We are going to protect you in the same way that we protected Israel in 2024 from the two rounds of Iranian strikes,” says Knights.
Regional diplomatic sources say preparations are underway for a ground operation that would be launched from the south and east, as well as along the coast. A coordinated offensive could also involve Saudi and US naval support in an attempt to retake the port of Hodeidah.
“Whether such an operation is feasible remains unclear, as the past decade has shown mixed outcomes, successes in some areas and failures in others,” Nagi told CNN.
From day one, President Trump and other US officials have linked the campaign against the Houthis to Iran. Trump said he would hold Iran responsible for “every shot” fired by Houthi rebels and it would face “dire” consequences for any attacks by the Yemeni militants.
So far it hasn't, and it's unclear whether Tehran can simply order the Houthis to stop firing. While very much part of Iran's axis of resistance, the Houthis retain considerable autonomy.
Trump continues to warn Iran that it will face a massive bombing campaign if it doesn't do a deal to limit its nuclear and ballistic missile programs. For the administration, the Houthi campaign and the “maximum pressure” campaign on Tehran are two sides of the same coin.
The Iranians are treading carefully, offering moral support to their ally in Yemen. Former Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander Mohsen Rezaee hailed “the barefooted resistance forces of Yemen, who will bring advanced American warships to their knees.”
But the Iranian leadership does not want to be seen providing further military support for the Houthis right now as it tries to work out Trump's mixture of small carrot and large stick.
The US appears ready to expand its campaign. B-2 bombers and KC-135 refuelling planes have arrived on the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. That may presage strikes on hardened targets in Yemen but may equally be a signal to Iran.
The next few weeks may be a crucial test of the honey badgers' resilience.
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Kevin Hassett claims tariffs will not have a big effect on US consumers and there will be no ‘political coercion' over interest rates
Starmer orders economic reset amid Trump's tariff mayhem
More than 50 countries have reached out to the White House to begin trade talks, the US national economic council director Kevin Hassett has told ABC News' This Week programme. He said:
I got a report from the USTR last night (the office of the US trade representative) that more than 50 countries have reached out to the president to begin a negotiation.
But they are doing that because they understand that they bear a lot of the tariff.
And so I don't think you will see a big effect on the consumer in the US because I do think that the reason why we have a persistent, long run trade deficit is these people have very inelastic supply.
They have been dumping goods into the country in order to create jobs say in China.
Hasset denied that the tariffs were part of a strategy by Trump to crash financial markets to pressure the US federal reserve to cut interest rates, insisting there were would be no “political coercion” of the central bank.
As we have been reporting throughout the day, goods imported from dozens of countries and territories are now going to be taxed at sharply higher rates, and that is expected to drive up the costs of everything from cars to clothes to computers.
These tariffs – which can run as high as 50% - are meant to punish countries for trade barriers that Trump says unfairly limit US exports and cause it to run huge trade deficits.
It is unclear whether the tariffs will be long lasting or if Washington will lower or drop them in response to other countries negotiating to reduce their own tariffs and other trade barriers.
US retail giants predicted that prices were “highly likely” to start rising for US almost immediately after a 25% duty came into effect on exports from Mexico to the US.
Americans have been warned to brace for higher prices more generally too, with households fearing a recession in the future and higher inflation because of tariffs.
Trump's team has said any short term shock to the economy will be worth the net positives of the tariffs, which the US president claims will help bring manufacturing back to the states and boost tax revenues.
In response to whether the market disruption was always part of the plan by Donald Trump's administration, treasury secretary Scott Bessent told NBC's Meet The Press on Sunday:
“Look, the markets are organic animals. And you never know what the reaction is going to be. One thing that I can tell you, as the treasury secretary, what I've been very impressed with is the market infrastructure, that we had record volume on Friday.
And everything is working very smoothly so the American people, they can take great comfort in that. And in terms of the market reaction, look, we get these short-term market reactions from time to time. The market consistently underestimates Donald Trump.
I remember that in 2016, the night President Trump won, the market crashed. And it turned out he was going to be the most pro-business president in over a century, maybe in the history of the country. And we went on to very high after-inflation returns for the next four years.”
Donald Trump's 10% tariff on all imports from many countries, including the UK, has come into force after 48 hours of turmoil.
The Guardian's Aneesa Ahmed and Reuters reports:
US customs agents began collecting the unilateral tariff at US seaports, airports and customs warehouses on Saturday, with higher levies on goods from 57 larger trading partners due to start next week – including from the EU, which will be hit with a 20% rate.
Trump's sweeping changes have roiled global markets, with China, hardest hit by the tariffs, announcing a slew of countermeasures, including extra levies of 34% on all US goods and export curbs on some rare earth minerals.
“The market has spoken,” the Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said in a post on Facebook on Saturday.
Despite the turmoil, Trump has continued to champion his “liberation day” tariffs.
For the full story, click here:
The European Union is prepared to defend its interests with proportionate countermeasures against US president Donald Trump's tariffs and will work with partners towards this end, Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said on Sunday after a telephone call with UK prime minister Keir Starmer.
Von der Leyen also said the 27-country bloc is committed to working closely with Britain on security and defence and that she was concerned about Russia's stalling of peace efforts in Ukraine.
She will meet Starmer in London on April 24 on the occasion of the International Summit on the Future of Energy Security.
US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick said that the tariffs imposed by Donald Trump will remain “for days and weeks.”
Speaking to CBS News's Face the Nation, Lutnick said:
“There's no postponing. They are definitely going to stay in place for days and weeks.”
He also said that some barren islands including the Heard and McDonald Islands which have also been hit by Trump's tariffs and are mosly populated by penguins were also included on the list so countries could not use them as a loophole.
“What happens is, if you leave anything off the list, the countries that try to basically arbitrage America, go through those countries to us,” he said.
The EU is prepared to defend its interests with proportionate countermeasures against Trump's tariffs, the bloc's commission president Ursula von der Leyen said on Sunday after a telephone call with Keir Starmer, the UK's prime minister.
Here is part of the readout of the call:
The President expressed her deep concern over the tariffs announced by President Trump on 2 April and the harm they pose to all countries—both through their direct and indirect effects, including on the world's poorest nations.
Recognising that the tariffs represent a major turning point for the United States, she reaffirmed the EU's commitment to engaging in negotiations with the US, while making clear that the EU stands ready to defend its interests through proportionate countermeasures if necessary.
At the same time, she emphasised her determination to work with partners in responding to this new reality for the global economy, acknowledging that each trading partner will act in accordance with its own priorities.
Trump last week put the EU into a group of 60 countries subject to higher so-called “reciprocal” tariffs. He is imposing a 20 percent tariff on EU goods coming into the US.
Von der Leyen has said the EU has a “strong plan” to retaliate against the steep levies but would prefer to negotiate.
As my colleague Jennifer Rankin notes in this story, EU officials have not ruled out retaliatory measures on US services, such as suspending intellectual property rights. In theory, retaliation could target US tech companies, banks and financial service providers.
My colleague Edward Helmore has written a story about how recession fears are mounting in America in the wake of Trump's tariff announcement last week. Here is an extract from his piece:
JP Morgan analysts last week boosted their odds on a global recession to 60% and Americans are bracing for a return of inflation – the thing that above all else likely doomed Trump's predecessor, Joe Biden…
On the streets of New York there was panic among some. In Washington Square Park, two sisters from Detroit were sitting on a park bench nearby the magnolia trees now in bloom. Kathleen, a primary school teacher, said she worried about whether there was a plan in place before changes are made.
“I want to be optimistic, but I live under an umbrella of worry with this administration,” Kathleen said. “I worry about the leadership, worry about a lack of continuity within the leadership, and so many changes at once without a plan.”
Her sister, Elizabeth, said she'd grown so anxious she'd stepped back from the news. “Our mum definitely had a huge jump in anxiety over this past week over her investments. She worked hard for those and she lives on them – a retired schoolteacher, and the drop in stocks very much impacts her day-to-day feeling of security.”
More than 50 countries have reached out to the White House to begin trade talks, the US national economic council director Kevin Hassett has told ABC News' This Week programme. He said:
I got a report from the USTR last night (the office of the US trade representative) that more than 50 countries have reached out to the president to begin a negotiation.
But they are doing that because they understand that they bear a lot of the tariff.
And so I don't think you will see a big effect on the consumer in the US because I do think that the reason why we have a persistent, long run trade deficit is these people have very inelastic supply.
They have been dumping goods into the country in order to create jobs say in China.
Hasset denied that the tariffs were part of a strategy by Trump to crash financial markets to pressure the US federal reserve to cut interest rates, insisting there were would be no “political coercion” of the central bank.
As we have been reporting throughout the day, goods imported from dozens of countries and territories are now going to be taxed at sharply higher rates, and that is expected to drive up the costs of everything from cars to clothes to computers.
These tariffs – which can run as high as 50% - are meant to punish countries for trade barriers that Trump says unfairly limit US exports and cause it to run huge trade deficits.
It is unclear whether the tariffs will be long lasting or if Washington will lower or drop them in response to other countries negotiating to reduce their own tariffs and other trade barriers.
US retail giants predicted that prices were “highly likely” to start rising for US almost immediately after a 25% duty came into effect on exports from Mexico to the US.
Americans have been warned to brace for higher prices more generally too, with households fearing a recession in the future and higher inflation because of tariffs.
Trump's team has said any short term shock to the economy will be worth the net positives of the tariffs, which the US president claims will help bring manufacturing back to the states and boost tax revenues.
Donald Trump's 10% tariff on all imports from many countries, including the UK, has come into force. It will likely push up prices for consumers around the world. Some countries are facing additional levies on imports.
Some of the highest tariffs will be put on imports from Asian countries, including China, India, South Korea and Japan. EU exports will also have a 20% tariff.
World leaders are mulling over how best to respond to the sweeping tariffs, which risk sparking a global trade war and recession.
Indonesia and Taiwan said on Sunday they won't impose retaliatory tariffs while Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is heading to Washington to meet Trump to try to get the president to lower his levies.
Vietnam's leader has reportedly requested a delay of “at least 45 days” to tariffs due to be imposed on Wednesday (Trump has slapped a 46% duty on Vietnamese goods coming into the US – the sixth-highest rate announced last week).
India also does not plan to retaliate against Trump's 26% tariff on its exports into the US, according to reports.
The EU is likely to approve its first set of targeted countermeasures on up to $28bn (£21.7bn; €25bn) of US imports in the coming days.
In the UK, which has been hit by Trump's 10% “baseline” tariff, Keir Starmer said he's ready to use industrial policy to “shelter British business from the storm”. “Old assumptions can no longer be taken for granted. The world as we knew it has gone. We must rise to meet the moment,” the prime minister said. Darren Jones, chief secretary to the Treasury, said the era of globalisation as we knew it has “come to an end” in the wake of the new tariffs.
Ted Cruz, the US senator from Texas, has warned that his fellow Republicans risk a “bloodbath” in the 2026 midterm elections if Donald Trump's “liberation day” tariffs cause a recession.
Cruz also warned that the president's tariffs, if they stay in place for long and are met by global retaliation on American goods, could trigger a full-blown trade war that “would destroy jobs here at home, and do real damage to the US economy”.
“A hundred years ago, the US economy didn't have the leverage to have the kind of impact we do now. But I worry, there are voices within the administration that want to see these tariffs continue for ever and ever,” he added.
The Texan's comments, made on his Verdict podcast on Friday, were a further sign that the imposition of global “reciprocal” duties on imported goods is causing unease among Republicans.
The Republican US senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa introduced bipartisan legislation on Thursday to grant Congress more power over placing tariffs on US trading nations. The bill, co-sponsored by the Democratic senator Maria Cantwell, would “reaffirm” the role of Congress in setting and approving trade policy.
You can read the full story here:
Crowds of people angry about the way Donald Trump is running the US rallied in scores of American cities on Saturday in the biggest day of demonstrations yet by an opposition movement.
The so-called “Hands Off!” demonstrations were held in more than 1,200 locations in all 50 states by more than 150 groups, including civil rights organizations, labor unions, LBGTQ+ advocates, veterans and elections activists.
Demonstrators voiced anger over the administration's moves to fire thousands of federal workers, close social security administration field offices, effectively shutter entire agencies, deport immigrants, scale back protections for transgender people and cut funding for health programs.
Coming days after Trump's tariff announcement, gatherings were also held outside the US, including in the European capital cities of London, Paris and Berlin, with many protestors there also expressing anger over the president's new trade policies. Here are some pictures of the demonstrations:
India does not plan to retaliate against Donald Trump's 26% tariff on its exports into the US, an Indian government official told Reuters, citing ongoing talks for a deal between the countries.
Narendra Modi's administration has looked into a clause of Trump's tariff order that offers a possible reprieve for trading partners who “take significant steps to remedy non-reciprocal trade arrangements”, said the official, who declined to be named as the details of the talks are confidential.
New Delhi sees an advantage in being one of the first nations to have started talks over a trade deal with Washington, and is better placed than Asian peers like China, Vietnam, and Indonesia, which have been hit by higher US tariffs, a second government official told the news wire, also declining to be named.
While the US appears set to avoid reciprocal tariffs from India, Taiwan and Indonesia the response from the European Union could be very different as it discusses imposing extra duties on US goods this week. China has already imposed 34% retaliatory tariffs.
One of the most wilfully destructive aspects of Donald Trump's shock and awe trade policy is the imposition of punitive tariffs on developing countries across Asia, including rates of 49% for Cambodia, 37% for Bangladesh, 48% for Laos.
For decades Washington had championed economic development through trade. Now, at the same time as slashing overseas aid budgets and retreating from its role in supporting developing nations, it is ripping up that idea entirely.
In its place, Trump intends to impose his will on the US's trading partners. Some are all but powerless to exact concessions, given their small size, and dependence on the mighty American market.
Alice Oyaro, the chief executive at the charity Transform Trade, which works with producers in some of the worst-hit countries, says: “Our biggest concern is that the additional costs are pushed down to those in the supply chain who are least able to pay. Small farmers exporting everything from green beans to cocoa, and women workers in Bangladeshi factories are already finding it hard to make ends meet. They will see their incomes squeezed even more.”
You can read the full piece from our economics editor here
Vietnam's leader has requested a delay of “at least 45 days” to tariffs due to be imposed by the United States on 9 April, according to a copy of a signed letter seen by Agence France-Presse, the wire service reported on Sunday.
The south-east Asian nation is facing 46% US tariffs, one of the highest levels imposed by Donald Trump.
To Lam called on Trump in the letter to assign a representative to work with Vietnam's deputy prime minister, Ho Duc Phoc, on resolving the issue, adding that he hoped to meet Trump personally in Washington at the end of May.
Taiwan's president has now said there are no plans for reciprocal trade tariffs against the US.
Reuters reports that the 32% tariffs on Taiwanese goods announced by Donald Trump do not apply to semiconductors, a major export for the country.
Meeting executives from small and medium-sized companies at his residence, the president, Lai Ching-te, said given Taiwan's dependence on trade the economy would inevitably have a hard time dealing with the tariffs, but that he thought the impact could be minimised.
“In the face of the US ‘reciprocal tariffs', Taiwan has no plans to take tariff retaliation, and there will be no change in the investment commitments of enterprises to the United States as long as they are in the national interest,” he said, in comments provided by his office.
Taiwan's TSMC, the world's largest contract chipmaker, last month announced an additional $100bn investment in the US.
Taiwan will now work to remove trade barriers and have other companies gradually increase their US investments. “In the future, in addition to TSMC's increased investment, other industries, such as electronics, information and communications, petrochemicals, and natural gas will be able to increase investment in the US and deepen Taiwan-US industrial cooperation,” Lai said.
As we mentioned in an earlier post, Taiwan, for whom the US is the island's most important international backer in the face of mounting Chinese pressure over Beijing's sovereignty claims, has not announced any retaliatory tariffs.
But the country's president, Lai Ching-te, said his government will remove trade barriers and Taiwanese companies will gradually increase their domestic investments. We will give you more information on this as we get it.
Taiwan, which faces a new 32% tariff rate from the US, has already announced T$88bn ($2.67bn; £2.1bn) in assistance for affected companies.
Taiwan runs a large trade surplus with the US. Taiwanese officials have repeatedly said trade with America has been skewed by strong demand for Taiwanese technology products, such as advanced semiconductors - a sector dominated by the island.
Elon Musk, who heads the so-called department of government efficiency as one of Donald Trump's closest advisers, has said he hopes to see complete freedom of trade between the US and Europe.
The Tesla CEO and owner of X was speaking via video-link at a congress in Florence of Italy's right-wing, co-ruling League Party on Saturday. He was being interviewed by Italy's hard-line deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini.
“At the end of the day, I hope it's agreed that both Europe and the United States should move ideally, in my view, to a zero tariff situation, effectively creating a free trade zone between Europe and North America,” the billionaire said.
“And more freedom for people to move between Europe and North America, if they wish,” Musk said, adding, “that has certainly been my advice to the president”.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said on Thursday that the US's trade tariffs were a mistake but their impact should not be overestimated and the reaction needed to be carefully considered.
The Bank of Italy said on Friday the euro zone's third largest economy would grow by just 0.5% this year, less than half the government's 1.2% forecast made in September.
High-debt Italy has committed to bringing its deficit below the EU's 3% of gross domestic product ceiling in 2026 from 3.4% in 2024, a task made harder by its faltering economic growth.
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A video has emerged showing the final moments of more than a dozen Palestinian emergency workers shot dead by Israeli troops in Gaza last month, casting doubt on Israeli claims that soldiers opened fire on vehicles “advancing suspiciously.”
The video is filmed from the front of a vehicle and shows a convoy of clearly marked ambulances moving along a road at dawn, with headlights and flashing emergency lights on.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) says the video was found on the phone of one of the 15 ambulance and relief team members killed by the Israeli military.
Their bodies were found in a mass grave more than a week after they were reported as missing. Eight of the 14 bodies recovered from the site in the southern Rafah area were identified as members of the PRCS, five as civil defense, and one as a UN agency employee, PRCS said in a statement.
The deaths sparked international condemnation, and the footage appears to contradict the assertion by the Israeli military that some vehicles were moving suspiciously without lights.
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The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) asserted last week that “several uncoordinated vehicles were identified advancing suspiciously toward IDF troops without headlights or emergency signals. IDF troops then opened fire at the suspected vehicles.”
After the video emerged, the IDF repeated that the incident was being investigated – the first results of which were presented internally on Sunday.
“All claims, including the documentation circulating about the incident, will be thoroughly and deeply examined to understand the sequence of events and the handling of the situation,” it said Saturday.
The video shows the convoy stopping when it comes across another vehicle at the side of the road – which the PRCS says was an ambulance that had been sent earlier to help injured civilians. Two of the rescuers who get out of the vehicles are wearing uniforms. A fire truck and an ambulance at the scene are marked with the PRCS insignia.
Almost immediately there is intense gunfire, which can be heard hitting the convoy. The video ends, but the audio continues for five minutes.
The paramedic filming, identified by the PRCS as Rifaat Radwan, is heard repeatedly saying the “shahada,” which Muslims recite when facing death. He asks God for forgiveness and says he knows he is going to die.
At one point he says: “Forgive me mom, this is the path I chose – to help people – I swear I didn't choose this path but to help people.”
The voices of others in the convoy can also be heard, as well as those of people shouting commands in Hebrew. It's not clear who they are or what they are saying.
The IDF said the findings of the investigation were presented to Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir on Sunday.
The investigation includes information from Israeli aerial surveillance video that has not been made public, an Israeli military official told CNN previously.
Asor began re-investigating the incident after footage emerged contradicting IDF soldiers' description of the vehicles as moving with their lights off, the Israeli military official said. That information came directly from IDF soldiers involved in the attack, who initially testified that the ambulances had their lights off, the official said.
According to the military official, troops from the Golani infantry brigade had set up an ambush along a road in the early hours of March 23. Around 4:30 a.m., they opened fire on a first vehicle, killing two individuals and detaining another who the IDF claims were Hamas internal security officials. Roughly two hours later, at approximately 6 a.m., the ambulance convoy arrived in the area.
Soldiers were told by drone operators that the vehicles were advancing “in a suspicious manner,” the military official said, adding that soldiers involved in the attack claimed to investigators that they opened fire after being surprised by the convoy stopping on the side of the road and by individuals getting out of their vehicles quickly.
After seeing the bodies of more than a dozen uniformed emergency responders on the ground, the troops said they still believed they had successfully carried out the attack following efforts to verify the identities of some of the deceased, the military official said.
The Israeli military has yet to provide any evidence for its claim that nine of the emergency workers killed were militants.
The IDF said on April 1 that “following an initial assessment, it was determined that the forces had eliminated a Hamas military operative, Mohammad Amin Ibrahim Shubaki, who took part in the October 7 massacre, along with eight other terrorists from Hamas and the Islamic Jihad.” The IDF did not offer proof of the identity of the alleged terrorists.
CNN has obtained from the PRCS the names of 14 of those killed; none is identified as Mohammad Shubaki. The PRCS said the name of the fifteenth man killed – an UNRWA employee – was withheld out of respect for his family but was not the name given by the Israeli military.
An Israeli military official told CNN last week that Israeli forces buried the bodies of the workers because they expected it would take time to coordinate their retrieval with the PRCS and the United Nations. Israeli officials have not explained why their emergency vehicles were also buried, citing the ongoing investigation.
Satellite imagery from March 23, first published by Al Jazeera Arabic and analyzed by CNN, shows Israeli army vehicles surrounding a cluster of five ambulances from the PRCS and Civil Defense.
Another satellite image, also published by Al Jazeera and analyzed by CNN, dated March 25, shows an Israeli tank, an excavator, and other military vehicles at the same location.
Where the ambulances once stood, remnants of vehicles protruded from disturbed ground.
This story has been updated to reflect comment from an IDF official.
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Ross Gerber, a major Tesla investor and co-founder of Gerber Kawasaki Wealth Management, joins CNN's Jessica Dean to discuss President Donald Trump's global tariffs and how the markets are reacting to them.
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No map. No smartphones. No expressways. Just two motorbikes and some basic Japanese.
These are the rules American game streamer Ludwig Ahgren and his YouTuber buddy Michael Reeves have imposed on themselves as they embark on a journey to traverse Japan on motorbikes.
The friends ditched the smartphones that are a staple of their generation and set off without so much as a guidebook.
That left them no option but to mingle with locals to get directions, sparking encounters that have unlocked a full display of friendliness from Japanese people.
The journey from Cape Sata at the southern tip of Kyushu to Cape Soya, the northernmost point of Hokkaido, is about 2,000 miles – or it would be, if they hadn't gotten lost already.
It took them two weeks to complete the trip, according to a finale video posted Saturday on Ahgren's YouTube channel. A team had been responsible for tracking the pair and uploading videos of the journey since they hit the road two weeks ago, enjoying some of Japan's most unique scenery, culture and cuisine along the way.
It was no easy quest, acknowledged Ahgren, one of the world's most successful game streamers with 6.7 million subscribers on YouTube. “We are doing this the hard way,” he quipped in a video before hopping on his motorbike.
“I've realized I have become addicted to this thing,” he said in the video, referring to his smartphone. “But now, I can't use it to go on Yelp to find the best place to eat, Google Maps to figure out how to get there, Google Translate to figure out what to order when I get there.”
CNN reached out to the pair during their trip but did not hear back – probably a sign they didn't have their smartphone on.
They cruised through the bustling capital Tokyo, the tree-blanketed countryside of Miyazaki, fed crackers to deer in Nara, and caught a glimpse of cherry blossoms in Shizuoka – where they also ate a picnic against the backdrop of Mount Fuji.
Throughout their journey, they sampled an abundance of Japanese food from udon noodles to okonomiyaki, a savory pancake dish from Osaka. When they fell behind schedule, they grabbed quick bites from Japan's ubiquitous convenience stores or cup noodles from vending machines.
But the journey was not without its setbacks.
With no map, they mistook Miyazaki in southeastern Kyushu for Shikoku, Japan's fourth-biggest island, which is linked by bridges to the country's major island. They turned up in the city, only to find they could not be more lost.
The pair also hoped to check out a sumo wrestling match. They decided to park the bikes and travel by public transport but, without a smartphone, it took them three hours to navigate Japan's notoriously headache-triggering train system.
When they eventually arrived at Osaka's Edion Arena, they saw a sign, written in English. “Tickets sold out,” it said.
Ahgren initially relied on instinct to guess what Japanese people were saying, according to his YouTube videos. Locals went out of their way to help, doing everything they could to overcome the language barrier.
“Ichiban” – meaning “number one” or “the best” – became Ahgren's favorite Japanese word when he asked for hotel and restaurant recommendations, and “nan-jikan” – “how many hours?” – when he needed information about his journey.
One man bought the pair coffee at a convenience store before giving them directions with his car. And a woman tried to explain to them that the nearest hotel was next to a sports ground by gesturing a baseball swing.
But by day eight, Ahgren was touting how staff at a restaurant complimented him on his language skills with “nihongo jouzu” – “good Japanese.”
“They freaking said it,” he said proudly in a video.
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Ahgren and Reeves' style of travel strikes a stark contrast to a group of influencers who previously raised eyebrows in the country for their disruptive stunts.
Jeffrey Hall, special lecturer at Kanda University of International Studies in Japan, said there has been rising sentiment in the country against misbehaving tourists – including social media influencers – as the number of visitors hit a record high.
“There is a phenomenon of people who come here to make content that is provocative and annoying to other people around them… That particular type of nuisance YouTuber or nuisance influencer have really damaged the image of foreign influencers in general,” he said.
They included American live-streamer Ramsey Khalid Ismael, better known by his online alias “Johnny Somali,” who was arrested in late 2023 for breaking into a construction site in Osaka. He also sparked outrage by posting videos of himself taunting commuters about the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
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That year, a railway company also launched a probe against four popular YouTubers over their stunt to evade fares on public transport, according to local media.
But Ahgren and Reeves' trip had spotlighted parts of Japan less well known by international tourists, and their use of simple Japanese would be appreciated by locals, Hall said.
Ahgren, who often points the camera away when talking to people, is different from the “nuisance travelers,” as he shows better understanding of social norms, one of which is not to film people without their permission, he added.
“That's something that a lot of American streamers do without even thinking of the consequences, but in Japan people value their privacy very much,” he said.
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Fox News Digital was on hand for the opening of first lady Melania Trump's White House Garden Tours on Sunday, April 6, 2025. Here are some of the beautiful scenes on the tour.
Washington, DC – A time-honored White House tradition has taken place again this April as first lady Melania Trump invited Americans to the White House grounds to view the beautiful gardens in early bloom. Sunday's skies were mostly cloudy with highs near 60F and the sun was peeking through — so the threat of spring showers kept no one away.
Americans lined up early in the morning to view the Trump White House gardens across the South Lawn.
Previously scheduled for both Saturday and Sunday, the tours were rescheduled to Sunday due to "an abundance of caution and to ensure the safety of all within proximity to public demonstrations planned near the White House," according to a press release.
FIRST LADY MELANIA TRUMP ANNOUNCES REOPENING OF PUBLIC WHITE HOUSE TOURS
On the tour, visitors can view the flower garden, The Rose Garden, the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden, the Kitchen and Cutting Garden, and the Children's Garden.
The White House grounds comprise the oldest continually maintained landscape in the U.S.
A general view of the White House Garden Tour in Washington, D.C., on Sunday, April 6, 2025. Americans lined up to enjoy the spring scene. (Yuri Gripas for Fox News Digital)
Currently, there are 33 commemorative plantings.
"Since the 1870s, most presidents have planted a commemorative tree while they were in office," the National Park Service says. "The White House Gardens are constantly changing with the seasons and administrations."
Nicholas Clemens, director of communications at The Office of the First Lady, told Fox News Digital, "We are proud to continue the longstanding tradition of Spring Garden Tours by inviting the public to enjoy the beauty and history of the White House grounds."
A young family takes in a spring garden scene at the White House in Washington, D.C., on Sunday, April 6, 2025. (Yuri Gripas for Fox News Digital)
"It's a special opportunity for visitors of all ages to experience the gardens that have been cared for by dedicated staff and enjoyed by generations of first families," he added.
Placed around the grounds are photos of first lady Melania Trump and President Donald Trump along with photos of previous first families in the gardens.
President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump are shown in some of the pictures on the White House Garden Tour on Sunday, April 6, 2025. Pictured as well are other first families from years past. (Yuri Gripas for Fox News Digital)
First lady Melania Trump, shown on election night, Nov. 5, 2024, with her husband, President Donald Trump, is honoring the tradition of the White House Spring Garden Tours. (Alex Brandon / AP)
The tour on Sunday also offered the last chance for the public to view the Southern magnolia tree said to have been planted by President Andrew Jackson.
The nation's seventh president served from 1829 to 1837.
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President Trump recently said that the tree is in "terrible condition" and needs to be removed due to the safety hazards it presents.
The Southern magnolia tree said to have been planted by President Andrew Jackson can be seen above, at left, with signage around it. (Yuri Gripas for Fox News Digital)
The Jackson tree was seen propped up with wires on Sunday to ensure the safety of both the building and the visitors.
During the tour, crowds swarmed "The Beast," snapping photos of the well-known presidential limousine.
"The Beast" was parked on the South Lawn of the White House on Sunday, April 6, 2025. (Yuri Gripas for Fox News Digital)
The White House partners with the Trust for the National Mall in raising private donations and recruiting volunteers for the tour.
Julie Moore, spokesperson for the Trust for the National Mall, told Fox News Digital that they're honored by the partnership and "help care for the iconic White House Gardens all year long."
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"This is a wonderful event that invites visitors to enjoy the beauty and history of the White House gardens," she said, "and to enjoy the work we do to preserve them for the next generation."
See more pictures of the White House Spring Garden Tours from Fox News Digital, below.
Visitors were given a copy of the White House Spring Garden Tour pamphlets with information about the grounds. (Yuri Gripas for Fox News Digital)
The Kitchen Garden provides locally grown vegetables, fruits and herbs for the first family and White House guests. It was established in 2009. (Yuri Gripas for Fox News Digital)
Visitors on Sunday, April 6, were able to view the White House bee hive. (Yuri Gripas for Fox News Digital)
Visitors walked through the South Lawn to view the White House gardens. (Yuri Gripas for Fox News Digital)
A patio area is seen along the White House Spring Garden Tour in Washington, D.C., on Sunday, April 6, 2025. (Yuri Gripas for Fox News Digital)
A band played live music on Sunday while visitors walked through the White House gardens and enjoyed the spring scene. (Yuri Gripas for Fox News Digital)
The garden tour is separate from the White House tour.
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The south grounds of the White House will open again to the public for another weekend in the fall, as per usual arrangements.
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Billionaire Elon Musk said Saturday he hoped in the future the United States and Europe could create “a very close, stronger partnership” and reach a “zero-tariff zone.” He made his remarks via videolink to delegates at Italy's League party's congress in Florence.
President Donald Trump returns to his Mar-a-Lago club from Trump National Golf Club, Sunday, April 6, 2025, in West Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
From left, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick follow President Donald Trump to board Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House en route to Florida, Friday, March 28, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick holds a chart as President Donald Trump speaks during an event to announce new tariffs in the Rose Garden at the White House, Wednesday, April 2, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
White House trade adviser Peter Navarro arrives before President Donald Trump speaks during an event to announce new tariffs in the Rose Garden of the White House, Wednesday, April 2, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
President Donald Trump meets with Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Oval Office of the White House, Feb. 4, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)
Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni arrives in St. Peter's Basilica at The Vatican to attend a mass presided over by Archbishop Rino Fisichella, Wednesday, April 2, 2025, for late Saint Pope John Paul II on the 20th anniversary of his death. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Top administration officials said Sunday that more than 50 countries targeted by President Donald Trump's new tariffs have reached out to begin negotiations over the sweeping import taxes that have sent financial markets reeling, raised fears of a recession and upended the global trading system.
The higher rates are set to be collected beginning Wednesday, ushering in a new era of economic uncertainty with no clear end in sight. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said unfair trade practices are not “the kind of thing you can negotiate away in days or weeks.” The United States, he said, must see “what the countries offer and whether it's believable.”
Trump, who spent the weekend in Florida playing golf, posted online that “WE WILL WIN. HANG TOUGH, it won't be easy.” His Cabinet members and economic advisers were out in force Sunday defending the tariffs and downplaying the consequences for the global economy.
“There doesn't have to be a recession. Who knows how the market is going to react in a day, in a week?” Bessent said. “What we are looking at is building the long-term economic fundamentals for prosperity.”
Trump's tariff blitz, announced April 2, fulfilled a key campaign promise as he acted without Congress to redraw the rules of global trade. It was a move decades in the making for Trump, who has long denounced foreign trade deals as unfair to the U.S. He is gambling that voters will be willing to endure higher prices for everyday items to enact his economic vision.
Countries are scrambling to figure out how to respond to the tariffs, with China and others retaliating quickly.
Top White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett acknowledged that other countries are “angry and retaliating,” and, he said, “by the way, coming to the table.” He cited the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative as reporting that more than 50 nations had reached out to the White House to begin talks.
Adding to the turmoil, the new tariffs are hitting American allies and adversaries alike, including Israel, which is facing a 17% tariff. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to visit the White House Monday, with his office saying the tariffs would be a point of discussion with Trump along with the war in Gaza and other issues.
Another American ally, Vietnam, a major manufacturing center for clothing, has also been in touch with the administration about the tariffs. Trump said Vietnam's leader said in a telephone call that his country “wants to cut their Tariffs down to ZERO if they are able to make an agreement with the U.S.” And a key European partner, Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni, said she disagreed with Trump's move but was “ready to deploy all the tools — negotiating and economic — necessary to support our businesses and our sectors that may be penalized.”
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick made clear there was no postponing tariffs that are days away.
“The tariffs are coming. Of course they,” he said, adding that Trump needed to reset global trade. But he committed only to having them “definitely” remain “for days and weeks.”
In Congress, where Trump's Republican Party has long championed free trade, the tariff regiment has been met with applause but also significant unease.
Several Republican senators have already signed onto a new bipartisan bill that would require presidents to justify new tariffs to Congress. Lawmakers would then have to approve the tariffs within 60 days, or they would expire.
Wyoming's John Barrasso, the No. 2 member of the Senate's GOP leadership, said Trump is “doing what he has every right to do.” But, he acknowledged, “there is concern, and there's concern across the country. People are watching the markets.”
“There'll be a discussion in the Senate,” Barrasso said of the tariffs. “We'll see which way the discussion goes.”
Trump's government cost-cutting guru, billionaire businessman Elon Musk, had been relatively silent on Trump's tariffs, but said at a weekend event in Italy that he would like to see the U.S. and Europe move to “a zero-tariff situation.” The comment from the Tesla owner who leads Trump's Department of Government Efficiency drew a rebuke from White House trade adviser Peter Navarro.
“Elon, when he is on his DOGE lane, is great. But we understand what's going on here. We just have to understand. Elon sells cars,” Navarro said. He added: “He's simply protecting his own interest as any business person would do.”
Lawrence Summers, an economist who was treasury secretary under Democratic President Bill Clinton, said Trump and his economic team are sending contradictory messages if they say they are interested in reviving manufacturing while still being open to negotiating with trade partners.
If other countries eliminate their tariffs, and the U.S, does, too, he said, “it's just making a deal, then we don't raise any revenue nor do we get any businesses to relocate to the United States. If it's a permanent revenue source and trying to get businesses to relocate to the United States, then we're going to have these tariffs permanently. So the president can't have it both ways.”
Bessent was on NBC's “Meet the Press,” Hassett and Summers appeared on ABC's “This Week,” Lutnick and Barrasso were on CBS' “Face the Nation” and Navarro was interviewed on Fox News Channel's “Sunday Morning Futures.”
Associated Press writers Giada Zampano in Rome and Fatima Hussein in Jupiter, Florida, contributed to this report.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
French far-right leader Marine Le Pen delivers her speech during the French far-right party national rally near the parliament in Paris, Sunday, April 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)
A woman holds a poster reading “in the name of the people - Marine president” during the French far-right party national rally near the parliament in support of Marine Le Pen in Paris, Sunday, April 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)
French far-right leader Marine Le Pen delivers her speech during the French far-right party national rally near the parliament in Paris, Sunday, April 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)
French far-right leader Marine Le Pen, left, delivers her speech with Jordan Bardella during the French far-right party national rally near the parliament in Paris, Sunday, April 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)
French far-right leader Marine Le Pen delivers her speech during the French far-right party national rally near the parliament in Paris, Sunday, April 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)
People attend at the French far-right party national rally near the parliament in support of Marine Le Pen, in Paris, Sunday, April 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)
The leader of France's National Rally (RN) Jordan Bardella attends at the French far-right party national rally near the parliament in support of Marine Le Pen in Paris, Sunday, April 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)
People gather during a leftist demonstration at Place de la République, denouncing what organizers called a “Trumpist turn” by Le Pen's National Rally (RN) party, while supporters of French far-right leader Marine Le Pen were gathering to protest her conviction for embezzlement and a five-year ban on running for office, Sunday, April 6, 2025 in Paris. (AP Photo/Jeffrey Schaeffer)
The leader of France's National Rally (RN) Jordan Bardella delivers his speech during the French far-right party national rally near the parliament in support of Marine Le Pen in Paris, Sunday, April 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)
French far-right leader Marine Le Pen arrives as she attends at the French far-right party national rally near the parliament in Paris, Sunday, April 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)
French far-right leader Marine Le Pen delivers her speech during the French far-right party national rally near the parliament in Paris, Sunday, April 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)
The leader of France's National Rally (RN) Jordan Bardella arrives as he attends at the French far-right party national rally near the parliament in support of Marine Le Pen in Paris, Sunday, April 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)
PARIS (AP) — Convicted of embezzling public funds and banned from running for office, far-right politician Marine Le Pen stood unshaken before a sea of French flags in Paris on Sunday. “For 30 years I have fought against injustice,” she told the crowd. “And I will continue to fight.”
Thousands of supporters gathered at Place Vauban, near the golden dome of Les Invalides and the tomb of Napoleon, for what was billed as a protest — but observers said it had all the markings of a campaign rally.
The National Rally, Le Pen's party, organized the event in response to what it calls a politically motivated verdict. But with chants of “Marine Présidente!” and “They won't steal 2027 from us,” the message was clear: this was more than a protest. It was a show of populist defiance aimed squarely at France's institutions.
The leader of France's National Rally (RN) Jordan Bardella arrives as he attends at the French far-right party national rally near the parliament in support of Marine Le Pen in Paris, Sunday, April 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)
At the heart of that charge stood Jordan Bardella, Le Pen's 29-year-old protégé and president of the National Rally. His speech was fiery, accusing France's judges of trying to silence the opposition.
“March 29 was a dark day for France,” he said, referencing the date of Le Pen's conviction. “The people must be free to choose their leaders — without interference from political judges.”
Though he claimed the party would respect democracy, Bardella denounced magistrates' unions and warned of “a system determined to crush dissent.” Supporters carried signs reading “Justice taking orders” and “Stop the judicial dictatorship.” Others wore “Je suis Marine” (“I am Marine”) shirts or compared Le Pen to U.S. President Donald Trump, who was convicted of civil fraud: “Trump can run — why not Marine?”
“The system's not broken — it's rigged,” said Alice Triquet, a 26-year-old bartender. “If they can do this to her, what stops them from coming after anyone who doesn't think like them?”
One woman raised a handmade scale of justice, its arms bent and broken — a symbol of what Le Pen's supporters see as a justice system turned against the people.
A woman holds a poster reading “in the name of the people - Marine president” during the French far-right party national rally near the parliament in support of Marine Le Pen in Paris, Sunday, April 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)
Le Pen was found guilty of using European Parliament funds to pay party staff in France — a scheme the court described as “a democratic bypass.” She was sentenced to four years in prison, including two under house arrest and two suspended, and banned from public office for five years, effective immediately. Her appeal is expected next year.
The reaction has been sharply divided. While National Rally supporters denounce the ruling as politically motivated, many outside the party see it as legitimate accountability. “I challenge the notion that there is a tsunami of support for Le Pen on this issue,” said John Goodman, Ph.D., director of Syracuse University's flagship program in France.
He also criticized the unusually rapid pace of Le Pen's appeal. “Her appeal has been fast-tracked so it can be heard in the summer of 2026, well before the 2027 presidential election, and significantly faster than a typical criminal case,” Goodman said.
French far-right leader Marine Le Pen delivers her speech during the French far-right party national rally near the parliament in Paris, Sunday, April 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)
On the other side of the Seine, hundreds gathered for a counter-rally led by left-wing parties, warning that France's far right is embracing U.S.-style authoritarianism.
“This is bigger than Marine Le Pen,” said Green Party leader Marine Tondelier. “It's about defending the rule of law from people who think justice is optional.”
Placards read “No Trumpism in France” and “Anti-fascist response.” Meanwhile, former Prime Minister Gabriel Attal addressed supporters at a meeting of the center-right Renaissance party in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis, calling the moment “a test of the Republic.” Former PM Edouard Philippe stood by his side.
Though police were out in force, only minor clashes were reported.
People gather during a leftist demonstration at Place de la République, denouncing what organizers called a “Trumpist turn” by Le Pen's National Rally (RN) party, while supporters of French far-right leader Marine Le Pen were gathering to protest her conviction for embezzlement and a five-year ban on running for office, Sunday, April 6, 2025 in Paris. (AP Photo/Jeffrey Schaeffer)
Beyond the legal battle, Sunday's gathering of the National Rally revealed a deeper strategy. Party leaders have spent the week accusing judges of plotting a “judicial coup.” They've called the sentence a political “execution.” The goal is not just to overturn the ruling — it's to convince voters the legal system itself can't be trusted.
It's a page from the Trump playbook: paint the courts as biased, the system as broken, and frame any legal setback as an attack on democracy. The ballot box becomes the only authority that matters.
“The judges wear robes, but they're just politicians in disguise,” said Claude Morel, 68, a pensioner from the southern city of Marseille. “Let the people decide.”
People attend at the French far-right party national rally near the parliament in support of Marine Le Pen, in Paris, Sunday, April 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)
Le Pen may be barred from running — for now — but her political machine is far from finished. Bardella, long seen as her polished understudy, is stepping into the spotlight with growing confidence and sharpened rhetoric.
“We will be here tomorrow,” he told the crowd. “And we will be stronger.”
Sunday's rally was more than a show of strength. It was a test: can the far right convince enough French voters that justice is no longer neutral, and that only they can return power to the people?
How that question is answered may shape not only the 2027 presidential race — but the future of French democracy.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. ©2025 FOX News Network, LLC. All rights reserved. Quotes displayed in real-time or delayed by at least 15 minutes. Market data provided by Factset. Powered and implemented by FactSet Digital Solutions. Legal Statement. Mutual Fund and ETF data provided by Refinitiv Lipper.
Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., on DOGE cuts, claims over Social Security fraud and the impact of President Donald Trump's tariffs.
White House Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett doubled down on the effectiveness of President Donald Trump's tariffs on Sunday, saying dozens of countries are now seeking to open negotiations and U.S. manufacturing is booming.
Hassett made the claim during an appearance on ABC News' "This Week" with host George Stephanopoulos. He said that over 50 countries have already said they want to negotiate new trade agreements with Trump's administration since the tariffs hit last week, though he acknowledged there may be short-term pain for consumers.
He pointed to the decrease in prices that has existed since China entered the World Trade Organization in 2000, arguing that the loss of jobs outweighs the low prices.
"If cheap goods were the answer, if cheap goods were going to make Americans' real wages better off, then real incomes would have gone up over that time. Instead, they went down because wages went down more than prices went down. So we got the cheap goods at the grocery store, but then we had fewer jobs," he said.
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Kevin Hassett, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, speaks to members of the media outside the White House in Washington, D.C. (Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Hassett added that he has received "anecdotal word" that some U.S. auto plants are adding second shifts to their work schedules in response to the tariffs.
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Stephanopoulos then pressed Hassett to explain why Russia wasn't targeted with any additional tariffs.
"There's obviously an ongoing negotiation with Russia and Ukraine, and I think the president made the decision not to conflate the two issues. It doesn't mean that Russia in the fullness of time, is going to be treated wildly different than every other country," Hassett responded.
President Donald Trump shocked the world with his massive wave of tariffs last week.
"But Russia's one of the only countries, one of few countries that is not subject to these new tariffs, aren't they?" Stephanopoulos pressed.
"They're in the middle of a negotiation, George, aren't they?" Hassett countered. "Would you literally advise that you go in and put a whole bunch of new things on the table in the middle of a negotiation that affects so many American and Ukrainian and Russian lives?"
Russia was left unscathed by President Trump's wave of tariffs last week. (Mikhail Metzel/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)
"Negotiators do that all the time," Stephanopoulos argued.
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"Russia is in the midst of negotiations over peace that affects really thousands and thousands of lives of people and that's what President Trump's focused on right now," Hassett said.
Anders Hagstrom is a reporter with Fox News Digital covering national politics and major breaking news events. Send tips to Anders.Hagstrom@Fox.com, or on Twitter: @Hagstrom_Anders.
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After a devastating tornado ripped through the town on Wednesday, Dyersburg (Tenn.) residents had to take shelter three more times on Saturday due to tornado warnings as they prepared for possible flooding from heavy rains earlier. (AP video by: Obed Lamy)
An Owen County Search and Rescue vessel passes by the flooded community of Monterey, Ky., on Sunday, April 6, 2025. (Ryan C. Hermens/Lexington Herald-Leader via AP)
An Owen County Search and Rescue vessel passes by the flooded community of Monterey, Ky., on Sunday, April 6, 2025. (Ryan C. Hermens/Lexington Herald-Leader via AP)
A car is stuck in floodwaters near the corner of Cowden Street and Tanglewood Avenue as heavy rain falls, Saturday, April 5, 2025, in Memphis, Tenn. (Patrick Lantrip/Daily Memphian via AP)
The rising waters of the Licking River touch the basketball hoop at Max Goldberg Park, Saturday, April 5, 2025, in Falmouth, Ky. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
Vehicles go around a downed tree on Cooper Street as heavy rain falls, Saturday, April 5, 2025, in Memphis, Tenn. (Patrick Lantrip/Daily Memphian via AP)
An aerial view of debris floating down the Kentucky River as vehicles drive over a bridge Saturday, April 5, 2025, in Frankfort, Ky. (AP Photo/Jon Cherry)
Floodwaters inundate homes and vehicles in Shannon Hills, Ark., Saturday, April 5, 2025, as a second day of storms brought widespread flooding to the region. (Colin Murphey/Arkansas Democrat-Gazette via AP)
Carole Smith walks through her flooded home on Saturday, April 5, 2025, in Frankfort, Ky. (AP Photo/Jon Cherry)
Pendleton County personnel use a boat to cross Max Goldberg Park after cutting power from a utility pole as the rising Licking River overflows its banks, Saturday, April 5, 2025, in Falmouth, Ky. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
Floodwaters enter a garage in a home on the banks of the Ohio River on Saturday, April 5, 2025, in Louisville, Ky. (AP Photo/Jon Cherry)
A resident is brought to dry land by boat after being rescued from flood waters by emergency responders from the Benton, Conway and Shannon Hills fire departments and the Pulaski County Emergency Management team in Shannon Hills, Ark., Saturday, April 5, 2025, as a second day of storms brought widespread flooding to the region. (Colin Murphey/Arkansas Democrat-Gazette via AP)
A flooded home is seen from the banks of the Ohio River on Saturday, April 5, 2025, in Louisville, Ky. (AP Photo/Jon Cherry)
The flooded first floor of Wes Anderson's home is seen as the rising Kentucky River flows outside on Saturday, April 5, 2025, in Frankfort, Ky. (AP Photo/Jon Cherry)
Fog rolls in over a flooded road near the banks of the Kentucky River on Saturday, April 5, 2025, in Frankfort, Ky. (AP Photo/Jon Cherry)
Kris Searcy and her dog, Nash, walk through flood waters on Saturday, April 5, 2025, in Louisville, Ky. (AP Photo/Jon Cherry)
NASHVILLE (AP) — Rivers rose and flooding worsened Sunday across the U.S. South and Midwest, threatening communities already waterlogged and badly damaged by days of heavy rain and wind that killed at least 18 people.
From Texas to Ohio, utilities scrambled to shut off power and gas, while cities closed roads and deployed sandbags to protect homes and businesses.
In Kentucky, downtown Frankfort, the state's capital, was inundated.
“As long as I've been alive — and I'm 52 — this is the worst I've ever seen it,” said Wendy Quire, the general manager at the Brown Barrel restaurant.
As the swollen Kentucky River kept rising on Sunday, officials closed roads and turned off power and gas to businesses in the city built around it, Quire said. “The rain just won't stop. It's been nonstop for days and days,” she said.
Forecasters warned that flooding could persist for days, as torrential rains lingered over many states, including Kentucky, Tennessee and Alabama. Tornadoes are possible in Alabama, Georgia and Florida, forecasters said.
The 18 reported deaths since the start of the storms on Wednesday included 10 in Tennessee. A 9-year-old boy in Kentucky was caught up in floodwaters while walking to catch his school bus. A 5-year-old boy in Arkansas died after a tree fell on his family's home and trapped him, police said. A 16-year-old volunteer in Missouri firefighter died in a crash while seeking to rescue people caught in the storm.
The National Weather Service said on Sunday dozens of locations in multiple states were expected to reach a “major flood stage,” with extensive flooding of structures, roads, bridges and other critical infrastructure possible.
There were 521 domestic and international flights cancelled within the U.S. and more than 6,400 delayed on Saturday, according to FlightAware.com, which reported 74 cancellations and 478 delays of U.S. flights early Sunday.
The storms come after the Trump administration has cut jobs at NWS forecast offices, leaving half of them with vacancy rates of about 20%, or double the level of a decade ago.
Officials warned of flash flooding and tornadoes Saturday across Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee and Kentucky. All of eastern Kentucky was under a flood watch through Sunday morning.
In north-central Kentucky, emergency officials ordered a mandatory evacuation for Falmouth and Butler, towns near the bend of the rising Licking River. Thirty years ago, the river reached a record 50 feet (15 meters), resulting in five deaths and 1,000 homes destroyed.
The NWS said 5.06 inches (nearly 13 centimeters) of rain fell Saturday in Jonesboro, Arkansas — making it the wettest day ever recorded in April in the city, dating back to 1893.
As of early Sunday, Memphis had received 14 inches (35 centimeters) of rain since Wednesday, the NWS said. West Memphis, Arkansas, received 10 inches (25 centimeters).
Forecasters attributed the violent weather to warm temperatures, an unstable atmosphere, strong winds and abundant moisture streaming from the Gulf.
In Dyersburg, Tennessee, dozens of people arrived Saturday at a storm shelter near a public school in the rain, clutching blankets, pillows and other necessities.
Among them was George Manns, 77, who said he was in his apartment when he heard a tornado warning and decided to head to the shelter. Just days earlier the city was hit by a tornado that caused millions of dollars in damage.
“I grabbed all my stuff and came here,” said Mann, who brought a folding chair, two bags of toiletries, laptops, iPads and medications: “I don't leave them in my apartment in case my apartment is destroyed. I have to make sure I have them with me.”
Izaguirre reported from New York. Associated Press writers Bruce Schreiner in Shelbyville, Kentucky, Andrew DeMillo in Little Rock, Arkansas; Adrian Sainz in Memphis, Tennessee, and Sophia Tareen in Chicago, contributed to this report.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Houston's Ja'Vier Francis (5) celebrates with teammates after Houston beat Duke in the national semifinals at the Final Four of the NCAA college basketball tournament, Saturday, April 5, 2025, in San Antonio. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)
Houston's L.J. Cryer (4) celebrates with teammates after Houston beat Duke in the national semifinals at the Final Four of the NCAA college basketball tournament, Saturday, April 5, 2025, in San Antonio. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)
Florida celebrates their win against Auburn in the national semifinals at the Final Four of the NCAA college basketball tournament, Saturday, April 5, 2025, in San Antonio. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)
Florida forward Thomas Haugh celebrates after their win against Auburn during the second half in the national semifinals at the Final Four of the NCAA college basketball tournament, Saturday, April 5, 2025, in San Antonio. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)
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SAN ANTONIO (AP) — Florida has gone from being picked to finish sixth in the rugged Southeastern Conference to pushing all the way to the final Monday night of the season.
Florida celebrates their win against Auburn in the national semifinals at the Final Four of the NCAA college basketball tournament, Saturday, April 5, 2025, in San Antonio. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)
Now the Gators face a Houston team that just pushes teams around with its suffocating defense.
Houston's L.J. Cryer (4) celebrates with teammates after Houston beat Duke in the national semifinals at the Final Four of the NCAA college basketball tournament, Saturday, April 5, 2025, in San Antonio. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)
Big 12 champion Houston and Florida will meet in the national championship game in the Alamodome to wrap up only the second NCAA Tournament when all the No. 1 seeds made it to the Final Four.
Still, this title game matchup is quite a surprise, and features two teams that haven't been this far in a long time. BetMGM Sportsbook had Florida listed as a 1 1/2-point favorite.
The Cougars (35-4) won their semifinal game Saturday night by overcoming a 14-point deficit in the final eight minutes for a 70-67 stunner over Duke and freshman sensation Cooper Flagg, the AP national player of the year.
That was after Florida (35-4), with AP All-America guard Walter Clayton Jr. scoring 34 points, only had to come back from eight points down after halftime in its 79-73 win over SEC rival Auburn.
Houston, which has an 18-game winning streak, is in its first national championship game since back-to-back appearances in 1983 and 1984 during the Phi Slama Jama era.
This is Florida's first since winning its back-to-back titles in 2006 and 2007 under Billy Donovan. The Gators, with third-year coach Todd Golden, have an 11-game winning streak since a loss at Georgia at the end of February.
“It's pretty incredible,” Golden said. “In three years, been fortunate to build a great staff that is aligned, that works really hard for each other. Then we've just accumulated a great group of guys on our roster. It took a little bit to get all these pieces together. But to a man, they all pull the same direction.”
The Cougars have won 30 of their last 31 games since two overtime losses over three days in a tournament in Las Vegas at the end of November. Their only loss since was 82-81 in OT on Feb. 1 to Texas Tech, an Elite Eight team. Their other loss this season: 74-69 to Auburn in the second game.
Coach Kelvin Sampson and Houston also made the Final Four four years ago, losing to eventual champion Baylor in the national semifinal in the NCAA tourney in a bubble in Indianapolis because of the COVID-19 pandemic. L.J. Cryer, now Houston's leading scorer, was a freshman for the Bears on that title team.
Now the Cougars will play for a championship after being the first Texas team to make a Final Four held in the Lone Star State — after so much talk about the other teams that made it to San Antonio.
“This whole year, I've been trying to stay off social media and stuff like that. I really don't see those type of things,” Cryer said. “I try just to listen to coach Sampson, and he believed we were the best team in the tournament, so that's the only person I listened to.”
Florida forward Thomas Haugh celebrates after their win against Auburn during the second half in the national semifinals at the Final Four of the NCAA college basketball tournament, Saturday, April 5, 2025, in San Antonio. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)
Florida entered Saturday's semifinals ranked No. 2 in KenPom's adjusted offensive efficiency by scoring 129.1 points per 100 possessions, and Clayton had his second 30-point game in a row. He is the leading scorer in this NCAA tourney with 123 points (24.6 per game) and has made 18 of 32 shots (.563) with 8 of 16 3-pointers the past two games.
Houston was ranked first in adjusted defensive efficiency at 87.4 points per 100 possessions, and was one of only four schools — all the teams that made the Final Four — to rank among the KenPom.com top 10 for both offense and defense. The Cougars were at 123.9 points to rank 10th offensively.
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This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. ©2025 FOX News Network, LLC. All rights reserved. Quotes displayed in real-time or delayed by at least 15 minutes. Market data provided by Factset. Powered and implemented by FactSet Digital Solutions. Legal Statement. Mutual Fund and ETF data provided by Refinitiv Lipper.
Republican Ohio Rep. Michael Rulli speaks to Fox News Digital about how President Donald Trump's recent tariffs are already revitalizing Rust Belt communities.
U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer will announce Sunday that he understands the rationale behind President Donald Trump's tariffs and that the West is entering a new economic era.
"The world has changed, globalization is over and we are now in a new era," the prime minister's office said in a statement to the Sunday Times. "We've got to demonstrate that our approach, a more active Labour government, a more reformist government, can provide the answers for people in every part of this country."
The statement comes after Trump announced new tariffs on dozens of countries around the world on Wednesday, including a 10% levy on goods from the U.K.
TARIFF STOCK SHOCK: NASDAQ HITS BEAR MARKET; S&P, DOW SINK
President Donald Trump and U.K. Prime Minster Kier Starmer (Getty Images)
While Starmer will still argue that tariffs are wrong, according to the Sunday Times report, the prime minister will also admit that he understands the rationale behind Trump's move and why such policies have become increasingly popular with voters.
"Trump has done something that we don't agree with, but there's a reason why people are behind him on this," the prime minister's office said in the statement.
Starmer is expected to emphasize the failures of free trade and mass migration specifically during the address on Sunday, the report said, arguing that it has failed millions of voters.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer is expected to announce a new economic era for the U.K., according to reports. (Leon Neal/Getty Images)
MUSK SAYS HE HOPES FOR 'ZERO TARIFFS,' FREEDOM OF TRADE ZONE BETWEEN US AND EUROPE
Meanwhile, the report noted that Trump ally Elon Musk seemingly publicly broke with the president during a video interview for an event in Italy Saturday, saying he hopes, eventually, for a "zero-tariff" solution between the U.S. and Europe one day.
"At the end of the day, I hope it's agreed that both Europe and the United States should move, ideally, in my view, to a zero-tariff situation, effectively creating a free-trade zone between Europe and North America," he said.
Musk also called for there to eventually be more "freedom" of movement between the two continents, an apparent break from Trump's hard line on immigration.
Elon Musk said he hopes for a zero-tariff solution between the U.S. and Europe. (Brendan Smialkowski/AFP via Getty Images)
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"That's what I hope occurs, and also more freedom of people to move between Europe and North America if they wish," Musk said. "If they wish to work in Europe or wish to work in America, they should be allowed to do so, in my view. So that has certainly been my advice to the president."
The White House did not immediately respond to a Fox News Digital request for comment.
Michael Lee is a writer for Fox News. Prior to joining Fox News, Michael worked for the Washington Examiner, Bongino.com, and Unbiased America. He has covered politics for more than eight years.
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Panelists Michael Brown, Steve Duncan and Mica Trevino discuss the 29 cartel members extradited to the U.S. from Mexico on ‘The Will Cain Show.'
Two people are behind bars after the latest arrests of suspected thieves from Mexico allegedly nabbing millions of dollars of Nike sneakers in elaborate railroad heists in the Mojave Desert.
On March 27, the Hualapai Nation Police Department in Arizona pulled over the driver of a maroon Chevy Tahoe "suspected to be involved in train robberies in the area," according to a statement from the agency.
As officers conducted the traffic stop, eight people jumped out of the car and fled. Police said they located stolen Nike shoes nearby, and the driver of the vehicle, a man from Mexico, was arrested.
SINALOA CARTEL'S CARGO TRAIN NIKE SHOE HEIST LATEST IN LONG-STANDING TREND: LAW ENFORCEMENT
Nike sneakers on display at the newly renovated JD Sports store at Westfield Stratford City in London July 30, 2024. (Reuters/Mina Kim)
During the investigation, police pulled over a woman driving a white Toyota 4Runner for failing to yield to an emergency vehicle.
Upon approaching that vehicle, officers "observed evidence of criminal activity" also linked to the train robberies, according to police.
TRUMP ADMIN REVEALS LIST OF CARTELS AND GANGS TO BE DESIGNATED TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS
The woman was ordered out of the vehicle by officers, and, despite initially complying, she reentered the vehicle and sped away, police said. As she attempted to evade authorities, she allegedly struck a patrol officer, who was not injured.
The woman dodged police for approximately 80 miles before losing control of her vehicle in a construction zone and smashing into a guardrail near the Arizona-California border, police said. She was ejected from the vehicle and transported to a hospital with minor injuries.
The female suspect evaded police for approximately 80 miles before her car smashed into a guardrail near the Arizona-California border March 27. (Hualapai Nation Police Department)
Both suspects were in the U.S. illegally and have been booked into the Mohave County Adult Detention Center.
The Mohave County Sheriff's Office and the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment.
The heist comes as authorities have seen a rise in railroad heists targeting Nike shoes between California and Arizona over the past two years.
Members of the Sinaloa Cartel raided a BSNF train Jan. 17, according to Homeland Security Investigations. (AFP Photo/Robyn Beck)
In February, a grand jury returned an indictment against 11 defendants, including nine illegal immigrants, from a theft of Nike merchandise being shipped through northern Arizona, according to the Department of Justice.
Authorities said the Sinaloa Cartel stole hundreds of thousands of dollars in Nike shoes from a moving BNSF train in Arizona in January.
EXCLUSIVE: GOP MOVES TO AUTHORIZE TRUMP TO WAGE WAR ON CARTELS THROUGH MILITARY FORCE
People visit a Nike store on 5th Avenue during the holiday season in New York City Dec. 9, 2022. (Reuters/Eduardo Munoz)
"Criminal organizations that specialize in stealing from trains, which consist primarily of Mexican citizens with connections to the Mexican State of Sinaloa, have used the technique of cutting air hoses to control where trains with valuable cargo come to a stop," the DOJ said in a statement. "This act is very dangerous and can cause the trains, which travel up to 70 miles per hour, to derail."
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Thieves will often leave boxes of stolen goods along railroad tracks for a second crew to pick up and transport to California, where the products will be sold online, according to federal prosecutors.
Nike did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment.
Julia Bonavita is a U.S. Writer for Fox News Digital and a Fox Flight Team drone pilot. You can follow her at @juliabonavita13 on all platforms and send story tips to julia.bonavita@fox.com.
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Fox News Digital spoke in New York City to anti-Trump protesters participating in nationwide 'Hands Off' demonstrations against the administration's policies on tariffs, government downsizing and immigration.
NEW YORK– Over 1,200 protests spanning all 50 states took place on Saturday, rallying against President Donald Trump's administration, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), reciprocal tariffs, federal layoffs and immigration reform.
Fox News Digital spoke with protesters in New York City about why they were demonstrating, what they hoped their protesting would accomplish and if they had been personally affected by DOGE.
"[I'm] protesting how horrible things have become in our country," said May, who lives in Manhattan and held a sign she was reusing from protesting Trump's first term. "I mean, we've been taken over by a bunch of robber barons who are trying to take away all of our rights, benefits, and liberty."
May joined thousands of others in New York City's Bryant Park, who also carried signs which opposed budget cuts and Project 2025, while supporting Planned Parenthood and chanting critiques against the administration.
TRUMP ADMIN RIPS BLUE CITY CRIME IN VOW TO CLEAN UP DANGERS FOR COMMUTERS: 'THIS IS NOT HUMANE'
Yalena said an "ideal America" is one that's going to give more rights to more people. (Fox News Digital)
"I am protesting what is happening with this blessed country, the democracy that was advanced democracy now in transition to a dictatorship, and we are almost in a fascist state right now — only because the rule of law is bending right now, and it may break," shared Yalena, who is from Ukraine and has lived in the U.S. for over three decades.
One resident from Ridgewood, Queens, Mary, held a sign that stated "Stop Republican Chaos."
"I am outraged," Mary said. "The Republicans in Congress are enabling Trump to do many, many things. Everything he's doing is wrong, and they know it, and they are enabling it. The Republicans must go. They're causing chaos. People have to vote blue for every office, always."
When asked what she hoped the protest would accomplish, Marty from Yonkers, who considers herself to be "a proud higher education ‘diversicrat,'" said she wanted people to know that everyone is "ticked off."
"I mean, this isn't just you sitting at home in your jammies being ticked off. A lot of people are, and it goes back to ‘you don't agonize, organize,'" she told Fox News Digital.
Last weekend, over 200 "Tesla Takedown," protests were also organized around the U.S. to rally against Trump-appointed DOGE head, Elon Musk, and the department's related budget cuts.
WATCH: PROTESTERS RAIL AGAINST 'MALIGNANT PRESENCE' ELON MUSK DURING 'TESLA TAKEDOWN' DEMONSTRATIONS
Josh hopes the protest acts as a call to organize the working-class people of America. (Fox News Digital)
Several protesters, including Josh from Queens, said they hadn't been personally affected by the DOGE budget cuts, but noted that everyone knew someone who had — especially in education and science.
"I have a lot of friends who are teachers [and] the cuts from the Department of Education are pretty scary … I work directly with special needs students, and I'm worried that some of that funding might be cut as well," he told Fox News Digital.
Trump has seen his poll numbers slip in recent weeks, although he has generally seen better numbers thus far than at any point during his first presidency. His administration has moved at a breakneck pace since January on his initiatives, and Trump's team has remained confident that his various moves on issues from trade to immigration to government downsizing will benefit the nation long-term.
Wendy, a professor living in New Jersey, said she was particularly concerned about cuts to higher education and science.
"I know scientists who have had grants cut, significant grants cut," she said. "Grants that help get women into science, and girls interested in science and grants that help move science and knowledge forward in the United States."
On DOGE's "Agency Efficiency Leaderboard," which details which government agencies have saved the most from canceled contracts and other methods to cut costs, the Department of Education ranks in second place. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) ranks in 13th place, as of March 30.
ELON MUSK AND DOGE TEAM SIT DOWN WITH BRET BAIER IN 'SPECIAL REPORT' EXCLUSIVE
Over 1,200 protests spanning all 50 states took place on Saturday to rally against the second Trump administration. (Fox News Digital)
According to DOGE, it claims on its site it has saved Americans $140 billion, or $869.57 per taxpayer, while critics say it's been opaque about its methodology and accounting.
"I haven't been affected, but I used to work at the NIH and a lot of my colleagues have been fired as a result, so scientific research is being halted because of DOGE," said one unnamed, masked protester, holding a sign which had the scientific symbol for "resistor."
"Hands Off!" is a grassroots movement supported by civil rights groups, labor unions and other advocacy organizations and is described on its website as a "nationwide mobilization to stop the most brazen power grab in modern history." The protests that took place this weekend are being regarded as the largest nationwide display of opposition since Trump began his second term and occurred just after the Trump administration implemented a baseline duty of 10% on all imports to the U.S.
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The White House and Musk did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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Fox News Flash top sports headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com.
Golf influencer Paige Spiranac is not afraid to flaunt what she's got and on Friday she sent a clear message with a shirt she wore while chatting with a friend.
Samantha Marks posted a photo of Spiranac's shirt while the two talked on FaceTime. Marks wrote on X that she just noticed what it said.
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Paige Spiranac warms up on the driving range prior to Tour Championship at East Lake Golf Club on Aug. 28, 2024, in Atlanta, Georgia. (Ben Jared/PGA Tour via Getty Images)
Spiranac had, "Yes they're real," emblazoned across her chest.
Spiranac has been clear about working on her fitness goals and clapped back at a critic last week on X who was upset that the golfer was showing off a little more than what was in her golf bag.
"I went from having my back connect to my thighs to this," Spiranac wrote on X while contrasting photos of what she looked like at the start of her golf career and what she looks like now. "It's not the biggest peach now but I've been working harder than I ever have in the gym and also with my diet.
"Heck yeah I'm going to show it off! I'm proud of my body and how hard I've been working to achieve my fitness goals."
She's routinely fired back at comments about her golf attire and the way she's dressed. In an interview with Sports Illustrated in September 2023, she explained why she wears what she does.
Paige Spiranac speaks onstage during the Fanatics Fest NYC at Jacob Javits Center on Aug. 17, 2024, in New York City. (Roy Rochlin/Getty Images for Fanatics)
KORN FERRY GOLFER RYAN MCCORMICK TAPES MOUTH SHUT DURING TOURNAMENT TO HELP WITH ANGER MANAGEMENT
"I was a gymnast before I switched into golf," the former All-Mountain West Conference golfer said. "I was so comfortable wearing spandex and very little of it because that's just what you wear when you're wearing a leotard and you're competing.
"When I switched into golf, we were struggling a little bit financially and so I didn't have the luxury to go out and buy a whole new golf-appropriate wardrobe. And so, I wore what was in my closet which was workout clothes. That's just how I learned to play the game."
In July 2023, she called out the "hypocrisy" of comments in a video showing two half-naked baseball players on the mound. She noted that the players weren't getting negative comments about what they were doing.
"Interesting how different the reaction is online when men choose to show off their bodies," she wrote on X at the time. "Not one comment on this video calling them attention whores or sluts. Just a ton of women saying baseball is now their favorite sport but those same women harshly judge me. The hypocrisy lol."
Paige Spiranac attends the Mark Wahlberg Youth Foundation Celebrity Invitational Gala on Dec. 2, 2023, in Las Vegas. (Gabe Ginsberg/Getty Images)
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Spiranac has more than 4 million followers on Instagram and another 1.6 million on TikTok.
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Ryan Gaydos is a senior editor for Fox News Digital.
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Fox News Flash top sports headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com.
The two preeminent coaches in women's college basketball will meet in Sunday's NCAA Division I women's basketball national championship game.
Geno Auriemma has coached UConn to 11 national titles, while South Carolina head coach Dawn Staley has led the Gamecocks to three championships – including the 2024 title. UConn and South Carolina will battle for the 2025 championship in Tampa, Florida, later Sunday.
Staley is one of college basketball's high-profile figures, and she has often shared her thoughts on whatever issue the sport may be contending with at a given moment. Amid the Gamecocks' pursuit of back-to-back national titles, Staley spoke out on the narratives surrounding UConn star Paige Bueckers as it relates to the framework of women's college basketball.
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Head coach Dawn Staley of the South Carolina Gamecocks during the Texas Longhorns game at the NCAA semifinal game at Amalie Arena on April 4, 2025, in Tampa, Florida. (Ben Solomon/NCAA Photos via Getty Images)
Staley pointed out the narratives surrounding former Iowa Hawkeyes star Caitlin Clark when she spoke about the conversations currently being thrown around about Bueckers.
Clark's individual accomplishments during her rise to stardom over the last couple of years dominated media coverage. Clark was largely, and in some instances solely, credited with women's basketball's steep rise in popularity.
UCONN STAR PAIGE BUECKERS' LACK OF POPULARITY IN TOURNEY HAS RACIAL COMPONENT TO IT, EX-NBA PLAYER SUGGESTS
When speaking about Bueckers and the pursuit of her first career championship, Staley suggested there was a tendency "to forget the narrative about what (South Carolina players) have been able to do, going for their third (national championship) in four years."
Head coach Dawn Staley of the Gamecocks gestures during the Georgia Lady Bulldogs game at Colonial Life Arena on Feb. 18, 2024, in Columbia, South Carolina. (Jacob Kupferman/Getty Images)
"Sometimes we create these narratives about great players – Caitlin was one of them; Paige is one of them right now – and we tend to forget the narrative about what our kids have been able to do, going for their third in four years," Staley said during a press conference on Saturday.
"There's a sentimental narrative about Paige. A great freakin' player. Anybody would start their franchise with Paige because of her efficient way of playing, because she's a winner, because she cerebrally just knows the game, just has an aura about her. And she'll be the number one pick in the WNBA draft. And she'll be an Olympian. She'll be all those things. But when you put a narrative out there, everybody sees that, and it puts us at a disadvantage, whether you want to believe so or not. Officials see it. It's all over TikTok. It's all over ‘SportsCenter.' It's all over all of that."
"And she's a great player but just because you're a great player doesn't mean you need to win the national championship to legitimize it. Paige is legit. She was legit from the moment she stepped on this stage or prior to, in Minnesota. Her career is legendary. She will leave a legacy at UConn whether she wins one or not."
Staley then pointed to South Carolina's experience during last year's run to the national title.
"I just want to put it out there. I can't not address it because it's happening. It happened to us last year. Everything was about Caitlin Clark and her legacy and her ability to win a national championship. Yet we were coming into this thing undefeated, doing something that's unprecedented at the time, because it's hard. It's hard. We find ourselves back here in a similar situation."
UConn guard Paige Bueckers passes the ball during the Sweet 16 game against Oklahoma, Saturday, March 29, 2025, in Spokane, Washington. (AP Photo/Jenny Kane)
Staley then expressed her hopes for a more balanced approach.
"I want the sentiments to be about our players and what our players have been able to do – equally, because there's room to do both," she said. "We can raise Paige up because she deserves that and raise our players up because they deserve that. And that's not talked about enough. There's room for it in our game. Room for Jose. Room for our game, for all of us to be covered. Let's not choose a history, one's history over another program's history. Let's not choose one player over another player's history because we're all creating history for our game."
On Saturday, ESPN included quotes from Staley's media session in an article covering the Bueckers narrative. The network's women's hoops X, formerly known as Twitter, account, also shared a post with a link to the story.
"Dawn Staley says narrative around Paige Bueckers and her quest to win a title has overshadowed South Carolina's feats," the post on X read. Staley took issue with how her comments were being presented and responded to the post. "LIES! Fix your headline, please!" the South Carolina wrote on X.
South Carolina went undefeated last season and defeated Clark and the Hawkeyes in the championship game. Iowa also came up short in the 2023 national title game, as LSU dominated the Hawkeyes in that year's title game.
Iowa's Caitlin Clark during the LSU game at American Airlines Arena Dallas. (Greg Nelson /Sports Illustrated via Getty Images)
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Clark never won a championship during her college career. Nevertheless, she is widely viewed as one of women's college basketball's greatest players – which seems to speak to Staley's point about Bueckers not needing to "win the national championship to legitimize" a player's greatness.
South Carolina and UConn tip off at 3 p.m. ET at Amalie Arena.
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Chantz Martin is a sports writer for Fox News Digital.
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Incoming Deputy Assistant to the President for Minority Outreach Lynne Patton speaks on how she'll serve the Trump administration and opens up about her personal story of perseverance on 'My View with Lara Trump.'
Incoming Deputy Assistant to the President for Minority Outreach Lynne Patton is looking forward to spearheading her new role to ensure President Donald Trump builds upon his promises to support Black, Latino and other traditionally left-leaning communities that showed up to the polls in droves to cast ballots for him last November.
Sitting down for an exclusive interview that aired during "My View with Lara Trump" on Saturday, she outlined what transformations she intends to make upon taking the reins next month, and expressed her gratitude for the opportunity to facilitate change.
TRUMP APPOINTS ALICE MARIE JOHNSON ‘PARDON CZAR' DURING BLACK HISTORY MONTH EVENT AT WHITE HOUSE
Lynne Patton and President Donald Trump in the Oval Office. (My View with Lara Trump/Screengrab)
"I think when you see him [Donald Trump] announcing Alice Johnson as the pardon czar, I think, when you see him announcing Paula White as [the leader of] the faith-based initiative inside the West Wing, it's clear that you're going to see a lot of collaborating going on," she said.
In her downtime, Patton is working with Ja'Ron Smith, the architect of what she called the "most comprehensive criminal justice reform in over 30 years" from the first Trump administration.
VAN JONES PRAISES TRUMP FOR ‘VERY GOOD' CHOICE WITH NEW PARDON CZAR PICK
Lynne Patton, then-Vice President of the Eric Trump Foundation, delivers a speech on the third day of the Republican National Convention on July 20, 2016 at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, Ohio. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
"I look forward to seeing where we can take that to the Second Step Act," she added, referencing the First Step Act, a bipartisan federal prison reform bill passed by Congress and signed into law during Trump's first term in 2018.
Patton's conversation with Lara Trump also ventured into her journey to becoming a Republican after 9/11, contrasting with her Democratic parents and how the Trump family helped her find her way after struggling with substance abuse and addiction.
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Taylor Penley is an associate editor with Fox News.
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Vice President JD Vance elaborates on U.S. relations with European nations and more during an exclusive interview on ‘The Ingraham Angle.'
Following Vice President JD Vance's warning that Europe was at risk of ‘engaging in civilizational suicide,' the continent has come under the microscope for largely failing to deal with mass migration from mostly Third World countries. Associated with that has been a massive rise in violent crime and a failing economy.
Freedom of speech is under attack as many complain of a two-tier justice system and, making things even more problematic, Europe's economy is not performing as expected.
The U.K.'s economy has remained stagnant for the last three years with no growth in per capita income. "The country has pathetic performance, says Ben Habib, chairman of the Great British Political Action Committee, and former co-deputy leader of Reform UK. "The U.K. has become even worse than Europe."
TODDLER KICKED OUT OF NURSERY SCHOOL FOR BEING TRANSPHOBIC: 'THIS IS TOTALITARIAN INSANITY'
The Houses of Parliament in London, England, on Friday, Sept. 23, 2022. (Chris J. Ratcliffe/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Migration is now a national talking point. Immigration increased to between 1.2 and 1.3 million in 2022 and 2023, up from around 800,000 before the pandemic. It's causing friction.
"National togetherness is now being torn to shreds as unprecedented levels of mass migration transform parts of our country beyond recognition," observed Conservative Party Member of Parliament Robert Jenrick in a column for the UK Conservative & Reformer Post. "We have imported ethnic and religious tensions, meaning that conflicts on the other side of the world play out on Britain's streets."
Earlier this week, the State Department said it was monitoring the case of a woman in Britain who was put on trial for holding a sign offering counseling to women outside an abortion facility in the United Kingdom.
Fox News Digital reported the woman said, "Great Britain is supposed to be a free country, yet I've been dragged through court merely for offering consensual conversation … peaceful expression is a fundamental right—no one should be criminalized for harmless offers to converse."
New Scotland Yard on October 2, 2008, in London, England. ((Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images))
Violent assaults have also marred many parts of the U.K., when compared to other members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD.) Scotland topped the list with 1,487 assaults per 100,000 people, according to data from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. England and Wales ranked number three on the list with 730 violent assaults per 100,000 residents.
Fox News Digital previously reported that Britain was facing a free speech crisis due to the new left-leaning government, overzealous policing and courts cracking down on freedom of expression. Last August, the government warned its citizens to be mindful of posting content deemed offensive and threatened imprisonment. The Crown Prosecution Service posted a warning to social media platform X, which was amplified by the government's official social media accounts, warning citizens, "Think before you post!" UNITED KINGDOM COULD BE ONLY G7 NATION NOT TO PRODUCE ITS OWN STEEL; CHINESE OWNER BLAMES TRUMP TARIFFS
French President Emmanuel Macron arrives at the White House, Monday, Feb. 24, 2025, in Washington. (Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP Photo)
France's economy has expanded in each of the last four years, but the rate of growth slowed dramatically. France also has a high debt level that will make it hard for the economy to grow fast, Venetis says.
Migration is a continuing problem in France with an influx of 317, 000 immigrants from outside the EU in 2022, up from 222,000 in 2013.
REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK: AFTERSHOCK FROM A POLITICAL 'EARTHQUAKE' AS LE PEN BARRED FROM PRESIDENTIAL RUN IN 2027
Right-wing politicians, such as those in the National Rally, are highlighting the friction that the influx of people who don't want to integrate into French society. National Rally leader Marine Le Pen, who up until this week was a leading candidate for the country's 2027 presidential election, was just given a two-year prison sentence by a French court, which found her and other party colleagues guilty of embezzling public funds. Le Pen called the sentence a ‘death sentence,' and said she felt they were "only interested" in preventing her from running for president.
Violent assaults in France ranked near the middle of the OECD list with 310 cases per 100,000 in the population.
United States Vice-President JD Vance addresses the audience during the Munich Security Conference at the Bayerischer Hof Hotel in Munich, Germany, Friday, Feb. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader)
Germany's economy has been in a recession for the last two years. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate increased to 6.3% in March, from 5.9% last April. That's partly due to soaring energy prices and competition from China.
"People are not happy about the fact that unemployment is picking up," says Konstantinos Venetis, an economist at TS Lombard. He also says the statistics mask many workers' reduced paid hours on the job. "The amount of people on this status has gone up considerably."
TRUMP CELEBRATES CONSERVATIVE PARTY WIN IN GERMANY
Migration surged to 1.6 million non-EU immigrants in 2022, up from less than half a million in 2021.Germany's right-wing populist AfD party has pushed to deport migrants seeking asylum, and its message gained traction with voters during February's national election, where it came in second with 20.7% of the vote. The winning conservative Christian Democrats party was forced to adopt stronger immigration policies as a result of AfD's success with voters.
The country had a relatively high number of violent assaults, ranking sixth in the OECD list with 630 cases per 100,000 people.
Giorgia Meloni is seen during a press conference. Giorgia Meloni, leader of the far-right and national-conservative party Fratelli d'Italia (Brothers of Italy), commented on the party's victory at the Italian elections, held on 25 September 2022, at Parco Principi Hotel in Rome. (Valeria Ferraro/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
The third-largest economy in the EU has grown every quarter since the end of the pandemic, although, like many countries, the rate of growth has slowed.
At the same time, the debt level as a percentage of GDP dropped to 135% last year versus 138% in 2022 when Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni took over.
Meloni has been credited with her hard stance on illegal migrants. In 2024, the number of migrants totaled 67,317, down almost 60% from 157,651 the previous year. The drop is at least partly due a deal between Italy and Albania to enhance border controls, creating legal ways to immigrate and deterring illegal entry to the country.
Violent assaults were low at 110 per 100,000 residents.
EUROPE'S BEST KEPT SECRET: POLAND, THE REGION'S ECONOMIC TIGER
Poland's economy grew by 2.9% last year, slightly more than the estimated 2.8% growth in the U.S., all while beefing up its defense sector and housing an influx of Ukrainians due to the Russian-Ukrainian war."Poland is a powerhouse and has national pride," Habib says. "It's a phenomenal country."
The country also has a low level of asylum requests of 9,513 and 17,038 in 2023 and 2024, respectively. That compares to 237,314 in neighboring Germany.
Polish farmers and other protesters gather in downtown Warsaw to protest the European Union's climate policies and Poland's pro-EU government, in Warsaw, Poland, on May 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)
Levels of asylum claims in Poland are likely to remain low as Prime Minister Donald Tusk doubled down on illegal immigration. Late last month (March) he temporarily suspended the rights of immigrants to claim asylum.
"I believe that it is necessary to strengthen the security of our borders and the security of Poles," said Poland's President Andrzej Duda, who signed off on the bill, as reported by Euro News.
HUNGARY SAYS IT IS WITHDRAWING FROM INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT AS ISRAELI PM NETANYAHU VISITS COUNTRY
Poland had the lowest violent assault ranking in the OECD list at two cases per 100,000
Hungarian Prime Minister and President of EU Council Viktor Orban speaks as he attends the League's annual gathering in Pontida, north of Milan, Italy, Oct. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni)
Hungary's economy suffered a setback in 2023 but is now recovering, with growth of 0.4% in the fourth quarter of last year. Analysts at Trading Economics project that the country will grow by 2.7% next year and 3.6% in 2027.
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Migration from outside Europe has remained low at 57,000 in 2022 versus 45,000 in 2023. Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban recently tweeted: "Don't be afraid to stand alone. When 26 others accepted mass migration, we built a fence and said no. Now, more and more PMs are saying exactly what Hungary said ten years ago—they've realized we were right."
Violent assaults in Hungary ranked low with 124 cases per 100,000 people.
Fox News Digital's Kristine Parks contributed to this article.
Simon Constable writes for a variety of leading publications and is a fellow at the Johns Hopkins Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health and the Study of Business Enterprise.
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Heart surgeon Dr. Jeremy London cooks a Greek-inspired chicken salad for dinner and a chia strawberry protein pudding for dessert.
If your day has gotten off track and you find yourself skipping breakfast, lunch or dinner, you've likely heard your stomach grumbling.
Do you eat then or wait until your next proper meal?
Fox News Digital spoke to nutritionists who shared key information about ideal meal timing.
BREAKFAST SHOULD BE YOUR BIGGEST MEAL OF THE DAY, HERE'S THE LATEST INSIGHT ON WHY
Dig right in …
Most Americans consume two or three meals on a given day, while more than 90% of people consume two or three snacks per day, according to research about eating frequency, said Dawn Menning, a California-based registered dietitian with the Nutu app.
More than 90% of Americans eat two or three snacks per day, according to studies. (iStock)
"Meal timing can have a significant impact on overall health due to its influence on the body's circadian rhythm (24-hour cycle), which helps to regulate metabolism, energy levels, weight and even long-term health outcomes, such as the risk of chronic diseases like diabetes and heart disease," Menning told Fox News Digital.
A great deal of research has been done to determine how meal timing impacts our health — and if intermittent fasting or time-restricted eating has more of an impact on overall health and weight compared to calorie restriction, Menning said.
HIGH-PROTEIN FOODS, ALCOHOL-FREE DRINKS TOP LIST OF HEALTH TRENDS
Research suggests that spacing meals appropriately can support stable blood sugar levels, improve digestion and enhance overall metabolic function, said Ro Huntriss, a London-based registered dietitian and chief nutrition officer of the Simple app.
Most individuals can wait four to six hours between meals to support health and weight management, Huntriss said.
Most people can wait four to six hours between meals, a nutritionist told Fox News Digital. But some people need or prefer a shorter time than that. (iStock)
Some people prefer a shorter time between breakfast and lunch and a slightly longer gap between lunch and dinner, she told Fox News Digital.
"Ultimately, it's important to take note of your hunger signals and when it feels appropriate for you to eat," she said.
COOKING AND EATING SALMON SKIN: IS THIS GOOD FOR YOUR HEALTH?
High-meal frequency (eating six or more times per day) has been linked to increased disease risk, likely due to constant fluctuations in blood sugar and insulin levels — while a longer fasting period between meals supports the body's natural processes, Huntriss said.
The window between meals should be slightly shorter, says one expert.
"By following a more structured meal pattern with appropriate fasting windows, you not only support better blood sugar regulation, you also foster metabolic flexibility and improved circadian health," she said.
A longer fasting window between meals supports the body's natural processes, an expert said. (iStock)
Yet Menning believes the window between meals should be slightly shorter. Eating every three to four hours, she said, is ideal for helping with blood sugar regulation, aiding digestion and maintaining energy levels.
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Research suggests that healthy individuals should aim for at least a 12-hour time span between dinner and breakfast the next morning, Menning said.
Curbing late evening eating is likely a good move for your health as well.
Eating at night "can negatively affect glucose metabolism and potentially increase the risk of metabolic disorders," Menning said.
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Other studies suggest that eating meals earlier and within a shorter time window has more of an effect on weight loss compared to eating meals later and in longer time windows, she said.
Eating at night "can negatively affect glucose metabolism and potentially increase the risk of metabolic disorders," said one dietitian (not pictured). (iStock)
Eating earlier in the day can improve glucose metabolism, lower inflammation and support processes like autophagy (cellular repair) and stress resistance, Huntriss said.
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"This aligns with findings that a regular meal pattern, which includes breakfast consumption and a reduced meal frequency, has positive physiological effects, such as improved gut microbiota modulation and reduced disease risk," she said.
Perri Ormont Blumberg is a contributing lifestyle reporter for Fox News Digital.
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Houston's L.J. Cryer (4) celebrates with teammates after Houston beat Duke in the national semifinals at the Final Four of the NCAA college basketball tournament, Saturday, April 5, 2025, in San Antonio. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)
Duke's Tyrese Proctor (5) loses the ball as Houston's Joseph Tugler (11) defends during the second half in the national semifinals at the Final Four of the NCAA college basketball tournament, Saturday, April 5, 2025, in San Antonio. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)
Duke forward Cooper Flagg reacts against the Houston during the second half in the national semifinals at the Final Four of the NCAA college basketball tournament, Saturday, April 5, 2025, in San Antonio. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)
Duke's Khaman Maluach (9) and a teammate leave the court after Houston beat Duke in the national semifinals at the Final Four of the NCAA college basketball tournament, Saturday, April 5, 2025, in San Antonio. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)
Duke forward Cooper Flagg walks off the court after their loss against the Houston in the national semifinals at the Final Four of the NCAA college basketball tournament, Saturday, April 5, 2025, in San Antonio. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)
Duke's Cooper Flagg (2) misses a shot as Houston's J'Wan Roberts (13) defends during the second half in the national semifinals at the Final Four of the NCAA college basketball tournament, Saturday, April 5, 2025, in San Antonio. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)
Houston's J'Wan Roberts (13) celebrates against Duke during the second half in the national semifinals at the Final Four of the NCAA college basketball tournament, Saturday, April 5, 2025, in San Antonio. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)
Duke's Cooper Flagg (2) reacts after being called for a foul against Houston during the second half in the national semifinals at the Final Four of the NCAA college basketball tournament, Saturday, April 5, 2025, in San Antonio. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)
Houston's Emanuel Sharp (21) goes up for a shot against Duke during the second half in the national semifinals at the Final Four of the NCAA college basketball tournament, Saturday, April 5, 2025, in San Antonio. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)
Duke's Cooper Flagg (2) shoots as Houston's Joseph Tugler (11) defends during the second half in the national semifinals at the Final Four of the NCAA college basketball tournament, Saturday, April 5, 2025, in San Antonio. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)
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SAN ANTONIO (AP) — Sorry guys, “Phi Slama Jama” is already taken. How 'bout something simple, like “Comeback Kids.”
“National champs” might be a possibility, too.
Houston's no-room-to-breathe defense wiped away a 14-point deficit over the final eight minutes, erased Cooper Flagg and Duke's title hopes and brought the Cougars within a win of a championship of their own Saturday night with a 70-67 stunner over the Blue Devils.
Led by Joseph Tugler's four blocks and an amoeba-like defense that smothers everything, Houston held Duke to a grand total of one field goal over the last 10 1/2 minutes. The 67 points were Duke's second-lowest output of its now-ended season.
The Blue Devils' second-to-last attempt during their contest-ending 1-for-9 stretch was a step-back jumper in the paint by Flagg that J'Wan Roberts disrupted. The last was a desperation heave by Tyrese Proctor that caught nothing at the buzzer and sent Flagg and company shuffling off in shock.
“We just had to keep that belief and keep the faith,” said L.J. Cryer, who won a title with Baylor in 2021 and led the Cougars in this one with 26 points.
This is the program's first trip to the final since 1984 — which marked the official close of the Phi Slama Jama era, a fun-and-gun dunkfest that never won the title despite the efforts of Clyde Drexler and Hakeem Olajuwon, who was at the Alamodome for this one.
Houston's Emanuel Sharp (21) goes up for a shot against Duke during the second half in the national semifinals at the Final Four of the NCAA college basketball tournament, Saturday, April 5, 2025, in San Antonio. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)
Lots has changed since then. One constant: Defense wins championship.
Houston has allowed the fewest points this season and even against Duke, with Flagg, Kon Knueppel (16 points) and a roster with five or six NBA prospects, it made things impossible down the stretch.
“Got to give them a lot of credit for what they do every single night they play,” Flagg said. “We could have been a little bit more sharp down the stretch executing some things. At the end of the day, you got to give them a lot of credit, as well.”
It was Roberts' two free throws with 19.6 seconds left that gave the Cougars their first lead since 6-5. Cryer made two more to push the advantage to three. That matched Houston's biggest lead of the night.
The Cougars (35-4), who have never won a title, will play Florida on Monday night for the championship.
Florida's 79-73 win over Auburn in the early game was a free-flowing bundle of fun. This one would've looked perfect on a cracked blacktop and a court with chain-link nets. Neither team cracked 40% shooting.
That's just how Houston likes it.
Duke's Tyrese Proctor (5) loses the ball as Houston's Joseph Tugler (11) defends during the second half in the national semifinals at the Final Four of the NCAA college basketball tournament, Saturday, April 5, 2025, in San Antonio. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)
It closed the game on a 9-0 run over the final 33 seconds, and though Flagg, the AP Player of the Year, finished with 27 points, he did it on 8-for-19 shooting and never got a good look after his 3 at the 3:02 mark put the Blue Devils (35-4) up by nine.
“Knowing going into that game that he was the player of the year, that he brought his team to the Final Four, we knew it would be challenging,” Roberts said.
Trailing 64-55, things looked dire for the Cougars. But they were just getting started.
A team that prides itself on getting three stops in a row — calling the third one the “kill stop” — strung together two stretches like that, broken up only by Flagg's 3.
Duke settled for a measly three free throws over the final 3 minutes. One came when Tugler got a technical for batting the ball from Sion James' hands as he was trying to throw an inbounds pass.
That didn't make things any better for the Blue Devils.
Duke's Cooper Flagg (2) shoots as Houston's Joseph Tugler (11) defends during the second half in the national semifinals at the Final Four of the NCAA college basketball tournament, Saturday, April 5, 2025, in San Antonio. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)
On the possession following the technical, Tugler rejected Knueppel, then Emanuel Sharp (16 points) made a 3 to cut the deficit to three.
Mylik Wilson stole the next inbounds pass and missed a game-tying 3, but Tugler tipped it in to cut the deficit to one.
Proctor missed the front end of a 1-and-1 with 20 seconds left to set the stage for the Roberts free throws.
Duke's slow walk off the court came through a phalanx of Houston fans who waved goodbye to Flagg, who will likely be off to the NBA as the first pick in the draft.
Houston held Duke to 37.5% shooting in the second half; that was nearly 20% lower than its first four games of the tournament, which included a blowout over the nation's best offense, Alabama, in the Elite Eight.
“We held that team to 67 points,” Houston coach Kelvin Sampson said, marveling at what his team had done.
The Cougars finished with six steals and six blocked shots, and a bunch more altered by Roberts and Tugler, who might be the best shot blockers to wear that Cougars uniform since Olajuwon himself.
There are no stats, however, for the heart Houston showed after the country's best player had all but buried them with 8 minutes to go.
“Cooper was not going to beat us by himself,” Sampson said. “Even when we were down 14, these guys will tell you what I was talking about in the huddle was, ‘Just hang in there, hang in there.'”
The huge comeback also netted a $1 million win for artificial intelligence. An AI disruptor bet a professional gambler that his program could do a better March Madness bracket, and it all came down to the Duke-Houston game.
Even if the Houston loses in the final, the AI bracket will get more points in the contest and the disruptor, Alan Levy, will pocket the million bucks.
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Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Car-manufacturing town in UK worries about impact of new tariffs announced by Trump
An unsold 2021 F-Type coupe sits at a Jaguar dealership in this photograph taken Sunday, May 2, 2021, in Littleton, Colo. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski, file)
New cars are parked at Royal Portbury Docks, North Somerset, England, Friday April 4, 2025. (Ben Birchall/PA via AP)
New cars are parked at Royal Portbury Docks, North Somerset, England, Friday April 4, 2025. (Ben Birchall/PA via AP)
LONDON (AP) — The maker of Jaguar and Land Rover cars is pausing shipments to the U.S. as Britain's struggling auto industry begins to respond to the 25% tax on vehicle imports imposed by President Donald Trump.
Jaguar Land Rover Automotive, one of Britain's biggest carmakers, said Saturday that the pause would take place this month.
“The USA is an important market for JLR's luxury brands,” the company said in a statement. “As we work to address the new trading terms with out business partners, we are taking some short-term actions including a shipment pause in April, as we develop our mid- to longer-term plans.”
Analysts said they expect other British carmakers to follow suit as the increased tariffs heap more pressure on an industry that is already struggling with declining demand at home and the need to retool their plants for the transition to electric vehicles.
“I expect similar stoppages from other producers as firms take stock of what is unfolding,” said David Bailey, an automotive industry expert and professor of business economics at the University of Birmingham.
The number of cars made in the U.K. dropped 13.9% to 779,584 vehicles last year, according to the SMMT. More than 77% of those vehicles were destined for the export market. U.K. factories export cars such as Nissan's Qashqai and Juke, BMW Mini, and Toyota Corolla, as well as Land Rover and Jaguar models.
New cars are parked at Royal Portbury Docks, North Somerset, England, Friday April 4, 2025. (Ben Birchall/PA via AP)
“The industry is already facing multiple headwinds and this announcement comes at the worst possible time,” Mike Hawes, chief executive of the U.K.'s Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, said last week. “SMMT is in constant contact with government and will be looking for trade discussions to accelerate as we need to secure a way forward that supports jobs and economic growth on both sides of the Atlantic.”
U.K. carmakers have already taken steps to lessen the immediate impact of the tariffs by building stockpiles in the U.S. before the increase took effect. SMMT figures show that exports to the U.S. jumped 38.5% from a year earlier in December, 12.4% in January and 34.6% in February.
“This was manufacturers like JLR trying to get ahead of the game in terms of getting inventory to the U.S. before the tariffs were implemented,'' Bailey said.
British carmakers shipped 8.3 billion pounds ($10.7 billion) worth of vehicles to the U.S. in the 12 months through September, making cars the single biggest goods export to the U.S., according to government statistics.
But cars make up a relatively small part of overall trade between Britain and the U.S., which is heavily weighted toward services.
Britain exported 179.4 billion pounds ($231.2 billion) of goods and services to the U.S. in the year through September, with services making up 68.2% of that figure.
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Private investigator Steve Ridge discusses the latest updates in the case of missing Iowa news anchor Jodi Huisentruit.
Jodi Huisentruit, a 27-year-old Iowa news anchor, vanished nearly 30 years ago. As authorities continue searching for her remains, a private investigator is pushing to unseal case records.
Huisentruit, a native of Long Prairie, Minn., was on her way to work as a morning anchor at KIMT-TV in Mason City, Iowa, when she disappeared in the early morning of June 27, 1995.
Over the years, private investigator Steve Ridge has pushed for the courts to unseal records relating to the case.
On March 27, Senior Judge James M. Drew in Cerro Gordo County ruled to partially unseal a 2017 search warrant connected to Huisentruit's disappearance, while keeping the supporting affidavit under seal to protect the integrity of the ongoing investigation.
NEWS ANCHOR'S MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE WAS CRIME OF ‘JEALOUSY': PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR
Jodi Huisentruit was a TV anchor before she disappeared in 1995. (Findjodi.com)
Ridge's attorneys, Nellie O'Mara and Jesse Marzen, sought to unseal records related to GPS tracking devices placed on two vehicles tied to John Vansice. Vansice has long been considered a person of interest in the investigation, but he has never been charged in the case.
The vehicles, a 1999 Honda Civic and a 2013 GMC 1500, were reportedly registered at the Arizona address where Vansice was living in early 2017. The vehicles did not exist at the time Huisentruit's disappeared in 1995.
Judge Drew denied the motion to reopen the court record to support unsealing the search warrant. The court ordered that the affidavit must remain sealed, since the investigation remains active.
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Private search for Jodi Huisentruit. (Steve Ridge)
The court noted that the affidavit might reveal information only the perpetrator would know, such as specific times, items found or scene details. It added that an unsealed affidavit could help potential suspects "know what to hide."
SEARCH FOR MISSING NEWS ANCHOR EXPANDS AFTER AUTHORITIES GET NEW TIP
The judge stressed that, even after 30 years, public curiosity alone does not justify jeopardizing an active investigation.
READ THE ORDER:
Huisentruit's family released a statement on the Jodi's Hope Facebook page, saying they do not support unsealing the documents.
"As a family, we've received a number of inquiries about the legal battle currently playing out in the courts with Jodi's case," the family said in a statement. "Without getting too deep into the weeds, we all agree that if the release of the information would hinder the investigation in any way, then the search warrant should remain sealed.
"We are not onboard with the information being released to the public, especially while the investigation is open and ongoing. We do recognize there are a number of differing opinions on this – we respect that and ask that you respect ours as well. At this time, this is our only public comment to make on this matter."
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Huisentruit was 27 when she disappeared in June 1995. The news anchor vanished in the early morning hours of June 27, 1995, in Mason City, Iowa.
After Huisentruit didn't make it to work by 7 a.m., Mason City Police were notified. Her vehicle was found at her apartment, along with a bent car key, her high heels and signs of a struggle.
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To date, she is believed to have been abducted, but extensive investigations have failed to uncover any concrete evidence as to what happened or where her remains could be.
Sarah Rumpf-Whitten is a U.S. Writer at Fox News Digital.
Sarah joined FOX in 2021, where she has assisted on coverage of breaking and major news events across the US and around the world, including the fallout following the "Defund the police" movement, the assassination attempts on President Donald Trump's life and illegal immigration.
She has experience reporting on topics including crime, politics, business, lifestyle, world news and more. You can follow her on Twitter and LinkedIn.
The hottest stories ripped from the headlines, from crime to courts, legal and scandal.
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Florida guard Walter Clayton Jr. celebrates after scoring against Auburn during the first half in the national semifinals at the Final Four of the NCAA college basketball tournament, Saturday, April 5, 2025, in San Antonio. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)
Auburn guard Chad Baker-Mazara vies for the ball with Florida guard Walter Clayton Jr. during the first half in the national semifinals at the Final Four of the NCAA college basketball tournament, Saturday, April 5, 2025, in San Antonio. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)
Auburn's Johni Broome (4) and Florida's Alex Condon (21) react after a play during the second half in the national semifinals at the Final Four of the NCAA college basketball tournament, Saturday, April 5, 2025, in San Antonio. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)
Florida's Walter Clayton Jr. (1) goes up for a shot as Auburn's Johni Broome defends during the second half in the national semifinals at the Final Four of the NCAA college basketball tournament, Saturday, April 5, 2025, in San Antonio. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)
Auburn forward Johni Broome vies for the ball with Florida guard Alijah Martin during the second half in the national semifinals at the Final Four of the NCAA college basketball tournament, Saturday, April 5, 2025, in San Antonio. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)
Auburn's Johni Broome (4) shoots as Florida's Alex Condon (21) defends during the second half in the national semifinals at the Final Four of the NCAA college basketball tournament, Saturday, April 5, 2025, in San Antonio. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)
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SAN ANTONIO (AP) — Two All-Americans, one chance to give their their team a chance to win a national championship.
Florida's NCAA Tournament continues thanks to more magic from guard Walter Clayton Jr. in the Gators' 79-73 victory Saturday night at the Final four. For Auburn and forward Johni Broome, their season ended in tears and frustration wrapped up in missed shots, missed dunks and a sleeve covering a sore right elbow.
As he left the court, Broome heard some quiet words from the greatest player in Auburn history, Charles Barkley.
“He thanked me for what I've done for Auburn. He told me to keep my head high,” Broome said. “Coming from a guy like him … means a lot.”
Florida (35-4) advanced to Monday night's championship game against Houston (35-4), which beat Duke 70-67 in the second semifinal.
While Clayton was stitching together another tapestry of jaw-dropping scoring, weaving through the lane for layups and popping 3-pointers over smothering defenders as he scored 34 points, Broome's strong start faded badly.
He still had his right elbow wrapped in a sleeve after an injury in the South Region final against Michigan State. Broome is a left-handed shooter and had said this week he didn't have any pain, but he often look uncomfortable, even as he muscled his way to the basket early.
Broome would sometimes clutch the elbow, or keep it at his side when he ran the court. He used his left arm to waive at the Auburn crowd to get loud, not his right.
But other times, he would grab a rebound with both hands or even scored an on a tough, right-handed layup.
“Here and there it was bothering me a little bit,” Broome said. “But nothing I couldn't deal with.”
Broome started well with 12 points in the first half, but just scored just three more on four shots in the second half. The Southeastern Conference player of the year averaged a double-double this season but finished with just seven rebounds.
His frustration showed late when he lowered his shoulder into Florida's Alex Condon and sent the Gators forward flying. Broome, who had manhandled Condon in the first half, was called for a foul.
Broome was later denied a dunk, and then missed two free throws with 2:02 to play that would have cut the Gators' lead to 71-70.
When the game ended, Broome bent over with cameras beginning to surround him to capture his reaction. He eventually stood up to shake hands, then walked off the court with his eyes red from crying and pulled up his jersey to wipe his face.
Barkley eventually stepped in with his words of encouragement.
Florida coach Todd Golden said Broome and the Tigers were more physical in the first half, but but then denied Auburn's big man the same shots in the second half.
“We stuck around and were hanging around, but felt like we were getting knocked around a little bit,” Golden said. “But we controlled the second half.”
Clayton and the Gators, meanwhile, move on to the championship game Monday night.
Clayton was virtually unstoppable again, as he scored at least 30 points for the second consecutive game, slicing through the defense for layups or popping 3-pointers even with defenders in his face.
“The guys trust me to take those shots and sometimes they fall,” Clayton said.
Clayton was 11 of 18 from the field, making 5 of 8 3-point attempts. He made all seven free throws. His 3-pointer early in the second half helped spark a 9-0 run that tied the game after Auburn looked ready to run away.
“I haven't really had time to reflect on what I've been doing,” Clayton said. “I've just been focused on winning games.”
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Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency is expected to take aim at the Department of Homeland Security in the coming days, seeking potentially major cuts to personnel across its agencies, including the US Secret Service, multiple sources tell CNN.
DHS is bracing for what could amount to significant layoffs, four sources familiar with the matter who were granted anonymity to speak freely told CNN, though no final decisions have been made, and the ultimate scale and scope has not been set.
This week, two of the sources said, there was back-and-forth negotiation and lobbying between DOGE, the White House, and Homeland Security leadership, with each of the department's components expected to be impacted differently. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, is expected to be decimated, one of the sources said.
Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement are also facing potential cuts, two of the sources said.
A senior DHS official told CNN the department is “determined to eliminate government waste that has been happening for decades at the expense of the American taxpayer. Across DHS, we will be eliminating non-mission critical positions and bureaucratic hurdles that undermine our mission to secure the homeland. Secretary Noem is determined to return DHS to its core mission of keeping America safe.”
CNN has reached out to DHS and DOGE for comment. The Secret Service declined to comment.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is expected to send an email to her department's personnel in the coming days laying out the expected cuts, with a separate email in the works detailing potential options for employees to include voluntary separations and early retirements. One of the sources made clear that Noem's name may be on that email – but it is top Trump aide Stephen Miller, DOGE and other White House staff making the key decisions.
Cuts to the Secret Service would come at a particularly challenging time for the agency, which has been strained by what top officials have cast as an unprecedented and dynamic threat environment, including two assassination attempts on President Donald Trump last summer. The agency has been wracked with low morale, burnout, low staffing, and retention issues.
The agency spent an unprecedented $2 million last February on a television recruiting advertisement, tapping blockbuster movie director Michael Bay for the ad.
Officials have repeatedly argued in testimony on Capitol Hill following the assassination attempt on Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, that the agency is underfunded and under-resourced.
Any cuts at the agency, one of the sources said, are likely to impact administrative and technical staff, but could also impact new hires and those who are within their probationary period, positions that are more easily cut. It is not expected, that source said, to immediately impact the agency's core missions and readiness – though it could in time, particularly if those in law enforcement roles need to backfill vacant support positions.
There is tremendous anxiety about what could ultimately take place at the USSS among rank-and-file staff, the sources said, and hesitancy to speak to reporters due to the threat of polygraph tests.
“It's hard for the Service to execute on a strategy, which is to bolster their resources and funding – especially in the wake of the attack on President Trump in Butler. How do they build that strategy now having to reduce a workforce?” questioned Jonathan Wackrow, a CNN contributor and former USSS agent.
Wackrow continued, “The mission is not directly impacted with what is being proposed at this moment – but it will over time. You start creating these intrinsic vulnerabilities in your workforce that could lead to another Butler.”
News of the potential cuts sent shockwaves across DHS component agencies Saturday, multiples sources said, with personnel desperately seeking clarity from their managers regarding whether they might be impacted.
At the Secret Service, senior managers told personnel Saturday that DHS was conducting a downsizing assessment for each of its component agencies, sources said, but any possible cuts remained unclear. Senior Secret Service officials also told the rank-and-file they were awaiting further clarity from DHS leadership, which they hoped to have in the coming days.
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‘Fox News @ Night' panelists Kate Monroe and Chef Andrew Gruel discuss the latest headlines on tariffs, deportations and more.
Two U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers have been charged with taking bribes to let people enter the country without showing documents at America's busiest border crossing.
CBP Officers Farlis Almonte and Ricardo Rodriguez worked at the San Ysidro Port of Entry and prosecutors say they let dozens of vehicles carrying illegal immigrants pass through without proper checks in exchange for thousands of dollars.
According to court documents unsealed Thursday, investigators found phone messages between the officers and human smugglers in Mexico. They also found large unexplained cash deposits in the officers' bank accounts.
US IMMIGRATION WILL ONLY RECOGNIZE 2 GENDERS GOING FORWARD, ENDS BIDEN-ERA PRACTICE
In one case caught on surveillance video, a car stopped at a checkpoint with two people inside, but only the driver was officially recorded as entering the U.S., prosecutors said.
A checkpoint before crossing into the United States at San Ysidro Port of Entry in Tijuana, Mexico (Francisco Vega/Getty Images)
When Almonte was arrested, investigators also allegedly seized nearly $70,000 in cash they believe his girlfriend was trying to take to Tijuana. Prosecutors say he may face more charges, including money laundering and trying to hide evidence, according to The San Diego Union-Tribune.
SOUTH CAROLINA AG TAKES ON ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT HIT-AND-RUN, PROMISES CRIMINALS 'WE'RE COMING FOR YOU'
"Any Customs and Border Protection agent who helps smugglers is breaking their oath and putting our national security at risk," said Acting U.S. Attorney Andrew Haden.
Vehicles queue at the San Ysidro crossing port in Tijuana, Baja California State, Mexico. (Guillermo Arias/AFP via Getty Images)
Rodriguez's lawyer, Michael Hawkins, said the case is still in the early stages and reminded the public that Rodriguez is presumed innocent. "We look forward to working through the current situation," Hawkins said, calling Rodriguez "hardworking and loyal."
It's not yet clear if Almonte has a lawyer. In the past two years, five CBP officers in the San Diego area have faced similar corruption charges.
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The National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), which represents CBP officers, did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Jasmine is a writer at Fox News Digital and a military spouse based in New Orleans. Stories can be sent to jasmine.baehr@fox.com
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Millions of people took part in protests against President Donald Trump and Elon Musk across all 50 states and globally on Saturday, organized by a pro-democracy movement in response to what they call a “hostile takeover” and attack on American rights and freedoms.
Over 1,400 “Hands Off!” mass-action protests were held at state capitols, federal buildings, congressional offices, Social Security's headquarters, parks and city halls throughout the entire country – anywhere “we can make sure they hear us,” organizers said. “Hands Off!” demands “an end to this billionaire power grab.”
“Whether you are mobilized by the attacks on our democracy, the slashing of jobs, the invasion of privacy, or the assault on our services – this moment is for you,” the event flyers state. “We are setting out to build a massive, visible, national rejection of this crisis.”
Nearly 600,000 people had signed up to attend the events, some of which took place in major cities like London and Paris, according to Indivisible, one of the organizations leading the movement in collaboration with a nationwide coalition that includes civil rights organizations, veterans, women's rights groups, labor unions and LGBTQ+ advocates.
Organizers say they have three demands: “an end to the billionaire takeover and rampant corruption of the Trump administration; an end to slashing federal funds for Medicaid, Social Security, and other programs working people rely on; and an end to the attacks on immigrants, trans people, and other communities.”
CNN has reached out to the White House for a statement.
During the Hands Off! protest in Washington, DC, multiple representatives took to the podium to speak about the Trump administration, including Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, who said there is no future with a president who has “the politics of Mussolini and the economics of Herbert Hoover.”
“Our founders wrote a Constitution that does not begin with ‘We the dictators,' the preamble says ‘We the people,'” Raskin said in front of a crowd of thousands gathered at the Washington Monument, holding signs condemning the administration. “No moral person wants an economy-crashing dictator who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
Rallygoers traveled from across the country in a show of force at the nation's capital over concerns of the administration's policies. Demonstrators on the National Mall chanted, “Hey ho, Trump's gotta go,” while holding signs reading “Protect our Constitution” and “Hands off our rights.”
“If you want a country that still believes in due process, we have to fight for it,” said Minnesota Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar at the Washington protest. “If you believe in a country where we take care of our neighbors, look after the poor and make sure our children have a future they can believe in, we have to fight for it.”
Florida Rep. Maxwell Frost also spoke, urging people to take action by protesting, donating to mutual aid, participating in direction action and focusing on legislative strategies.
“Throughout human history, authoritarians, they're never satisfied with the power they have, and so they test the bounds, they push the limits, they break the law, and then they look at the public to see if they're quiet or if they're loud,” said Frost
In Los Angeles, protesters marched along a 1-mile loop toward City Hall, chanting “Power to the People” and wielding signs with messages like “Hands Off Education” and “Resist, Resist.”
Since Trump took office, his administration has been vocal about its efforts to cut federal spending, regardless of who it may harm. Thousands of federal workers have been laid off or issued immediate termination notifications as part of Trump and Musk's plan to downsize the federal government.
And Musk, the world's richest man, has aggressively pushed policies to reduce spending as the head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, all while repeatedly misleading the public about federal spending.
He has also boasted that he put USAID — an agency that feeds some of the world's poorest, most desperate people and has saved millions of lives — “in the wood chipper.”
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Over 200 ‘Tesla Takedown' protests take place throughout US on ‘Global Day of Action' against Elon Musk's role with DOGE
They dismantled foreign aid programs that support fragile democracies abroad and put on leave federal workers who protect US elections at home in a move that current and former officials say abandons decades of American commitments to democracy.
The Social Security Administration, responsible for monthly benefits to around 73 million Americans, is now in turmoil after a massive reorganization, including cutting thousands of employees.
Trump and his team have also taken extraordinary measures to crack down on immigration, aggressively pressuring ICE to pick up the pace of migrant arrests and touting mass deportation plans despite the administration making multiple missteps in recent weeks, including mistakenly deporting a Salvadoran man.
“They tell us that immigrants are stealing our jobs, but they're the ones shipping jobs overseas and hiring corporate lawyers to go and union bust,” said Frost.
“They tell us that trans people are a threat to our children, but they're the ones dismantling public education. They're the ones denying the climate crisis. They're the ones poisoning our planet. They're the ones doing nothing about the national public health emergency of gun violence,” Frost added.
The Trump administration has frequently questioned climate science and said it will roll back major climate policies, including rules that target pollution from vehicles and power plants, in a major blow to America's progress on clean air, clean water and climate action. Trump has also ordered the federal government to re-evaluate its gun policies and all ongoing litigation that could restrict Americans' gun rights.
Frost called the current state of politics in America an “insidious rise of authoritarianism” fueled by “corrupt billionaires and mega corporations” who think they have a right to control all aspects of the lives of their citizens, including freedom of speech.
The arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian refugee whose green card was revoked over his involvement in demonstrations at Columbia University, has raised chilling questions about whether people can truly exercise their constitutionally protected right to free speech.
“Our communities are paying the price while the Trumps and Musks of the world cash in. It's not just about money – it's about power,” Hands Off! organizers wrote. “This administration is targeting everybody who isn't part of the 1% – veterans, kids, seniors, farmers, immigrants, transgender people, and political opponents. All to consolidate power and reward their allies.”
Although protests across the country were largely peaceful, in downtown Lafayette, Indiana, a man took a long gun out of his car and approached the crowd.
Lafayette Police say the man attempted to make a lawful turn at an intersection near the Tippecanoe County Courthouse but was blocked by protesters in the street. The man got out of his truck and, according to the police statement, was headbutted by a protester after tensions escalated between him and the crowd of demonstrators.
The man then returned to the truck and got a gun from his vehicle, which he later described as an act of self-defense, before placing it back in his truck, the statement reads.
Lafayette police officers detained the man after receiving reports that he had pointed the weapon at protesters. However, police said that after investigating the incident, they determined he had not aimed the firearm at anyone and released him.
Two federal employee union presidents spoke out on Saturday against Trump and his policies targeting federal workers at the protest in DC.
“(The) Trump administration is absolutely destroying public services in this country. That's right. They claim to be making government more efficient,” said National Federation of Federal Employees President Randy Erwin. “That is a joke, people. That is a cruel joke. They're doing the exact opposite.”
NFFE and the American Federation of Government Employees are a part of a coalition of unions that filed a lawsuit in the US District Court in San Francisco this week seeking to stop the Trump administration from ending collective bargaining rights for many federal employees.
“They thought we were easy targets. But let me tell you something about union members and veterans. We will not be intimidated. I'm a veteran myself. I'm an Army veteran. We will not be silenced. We will not bow down. We'll stand up and say hands off our union. We'll stand up and say hands off our contract,” AFGE President Everett Kelley said.
Erwin called the move by the Trump administration “the biggest assault on collective bargaining that we have ever seen in this country.”
“AFGE has been in the courts, in the media, in Congress, and here with you on the street. And not only are we in the court, but we are kicking their behind while we're in the court, and we're going to continue to kick their behind,” Kelley said.
Since taking office, Trump has sought to reshape the federal workforce. In one of his earliest moves, he ended remote work for government employees and agencies were provided guidance on how they can override union collective bargaining agreements on telework and remote work.
At least 121,361 workers have been fired from federal agencies so far, as of CNN's latest tally on March 28.
CNN's Julia Vargas Jones reported from Los Angeles. CNN's Julianna Bragg and Sarah Dewberry contributed to this report.
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Rep. Glenn Ivey, D-Md., discusses the Trump administration acknowledging it mistakenly deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador on ‘The Will Cain Show.'
The Trump administration has placed a Justice Department (DOJ) lawyer on leave for not "zealously advocating" its position in the case involving a Salvadoran man living in Maryland who was mistakenly deported last month.
Attorney General Pam Bondi's office placed Erez Reuveni, who argued for the government, in Friday's hearing in which a judge ruled Maryland father Kilmar Abrego Garcia must be returned to the U.S. by Monday, on indefinite paid leave, Fox News has learned.
"At my direction, every Department of Justice attorney is required to zealously advocate on behalf of the United States," Bondi told the New York Times in a statement. "Any attorney who fails to abide by this direction will face consequences."
Fox News Digital has reached out to the DOJ for comment.
JOHN YOO URGES TRUMP ADMIN TO ‘WORK OUT A DEAL' TO RETURN MISTAKENLY DEPORTED INDIVIDUALS
In this undated photo provided by the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, a man identified by Jennifer Vasquez Sura as her husband, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, is led by force by guards through the Terrorism Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador. (U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland via AP)
Reuveni on Friday admitted that Garcia's deportation was a mistake, according to the New York Times.
On Saturday, the Trump administration argued in an emergency appeal that U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis can't force the administration to return Garcia to the U.S.
Xinis on Friday ruled that the government must make arrangements to have Garcia back in the U.S. before Monday at midnight.
The Saturday emergency appeal seeks to temporarily stay Xinis' decision until the government has time to properly appeal the ruling.
"Late Friday afternoon, a federal district judge ordered the United States to force El Salvador to send one of its citizens – a member of MS-13, no less – back to the United States by midnight on Monday. If there was ever a case for an emergency stay pending appeal, this would be it," the government wrote in the emergency appeal reviewed by Fox News Digital.
The government also argued that it "does not have control over" Garcia now that he is in El Salvador.
"Nevertheless, the court's injunction commands that Defendants accomplish, somehow, Abrego Garcia's return to the United States in give or take one business day," the appeal said, calling it "indefensible."
An undated photo shows Kilmar Abrego Garcia. (Murray Osorio PLLC via AP)
The filing said that the "lacked the power" to require the government "on the clock, to try to force a foreign country to take a discrete action."
It added, "Abrego Garcia has been found to be a member of a designated Foreign 3 Terrorist Organization, MS-13. Given that status, he has no legal right or basis to be in the United States at all."
VANCE DOUBLES DOWN AFTER TRUMP ADMIN ADMITS ‘ERROR' SENDING MAN TO SALVADORAN PRISON
Xinis on Friday said that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's March 15th expulsion of Garcia violated the Administrative Procedures Act, since it occurred without a judicial proceeding.
The Trump administration has acknowledged Garcia's removal was an "administrative error," but has also defended it, alleging that Garcia has ties to MS-13.
"This individual is an illegal criminal who broke our nation's immigration laws. He is a leader in the brutal MS-13 gang, and he is involved in human trafficking," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a briefing on Tuesday.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said all government lawyers are required to "zealously advocate" on its behalf. (REUTERS/Nathan Howard)
"And now MS-13 is a designated foreign terrorist organization. Foreign terrorists have no legal protections in the United States of America. And this administration is going to continue to deport foreign terrorists and illegal criminals from our nation's interior," she added.
An immigration judge five years ago said Garcia, who came to the U.S. illegally in 2011 and asked for asylum, could not be deported to his home country, over concerns he would become a victim of local El Salvador gang members.
His request for asylum was denied, but he was given protection from deportation and ICE didn't appeal the decision.
Garcia's wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, who is a U.S. citizen, has vigorously campaigned for his return.
Garcia had been working as a sheet metal apprentice in Maryland and was arrested in an IKEA parking lot on March 12 while his 5-year-old son was in the car.
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His lawyers have argued the man had a Department of Homeland Security permit to work in the country, and strongly deny any gang affiliations. They also say that the government has given little evidence to back up its claim.
There was no indication how the government would comply, since he is incarcerated in an El Salvador prison under that government's custody.
Fox News' Cameron Arcand and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Fox News correspondent Bill Melugin has the latest on the deportation case on 'Special Report.'
The University of Massachusetts Amherst said Friday that five international students enrolled at the school have had their visas revoked by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
"The university has learned that, throughout the course of this week and as of tonight, five international students have had their visas revoked and student statuses terminated by the federal government," UMass Chancellor Javier Reyes said in a letter posted to the university website.
"I regret sending this news so late on a Friday; given that we learned of some of these revocations this evening, I felt it important to share this troubling news at this time."
CHINESE NATIONALS BANNED FROM US STUDENT VISAS UNDER NEW HOUSE GOP PROPOSAL
Reyes said the university wasn't notified of the changes to the students' visas, "and only became aware as a result of proactive checks in the Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) database. We will continue monitoring SEVIS for further updates."
UMass Amherst is the largest in the state's public university system.
University of Massachusetts Amherst students protesting on campus in March. (Matthew J. Lee/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
Fox News Digital reached out to UMass Amherst for comment.
Earlier this week, the president of Minnesota State University in Mankato said five international students at the university had visas revoked.
The school's president, Edward Inch, said the school found out after running a database check of international student statuses after the detention of a Turkish student at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis over a drunken driving conviction.
Other colleges around the country, including Arizona State, Cornell, North Carolina State, the University of Oregon, the University of Texas and the University of Colorado have also reported having international student visas revoked without notice.
University students Rumeysa Ozturk at Tufts and Mahmoud Khalil at Columbia were taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in separate incidents last month. (Associated Press/Ted Shaffrey)
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last week students are being targeted for involvement in protests along with others tied to "potential criminal activity."
Early last month, Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil, was arrested for his involvement in anti-Israel protests and alleged support of Hamas.
VIDEO SHOWS ARREST OF TUFTS UNIVERSITY STUDENT FOR ALLEGEDLY SUPPORTING HAMAS
And in late March, an Iranian doctoral student at the University of Alabama, whose visa had been revoked in 2023, was arrested in the middle of the night.
Although his visa was revoked, he was told he could stay in the U.S. while he remained a student, his lawyer said.
People gather for a protest in support of Mahmoud Khalil outside a federal courthouse in Newark, N.J., March 28. Khalil's lawyers are responding to a motion by the government to have Khalil's case moved to Louisiana. (Stephanie Keith for Fox News Digital)
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The Department of Homeland Security said the student, Alireza Doroudi, "posed significant national security concerns."
Last month, Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish Ph.D. student at Tufts University in Massachusetts, was arrested by immigration officers after she wrote an anti-Israel op-ed for the campus newspaper.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Protesters gathered outside the Mecklenburg County Department of Social Services in Charlotte, North Carolina Saturday to protest the administration's actions on government downsizing, the economy, human rights and other issues, joining similar rallies held across the U.S. (AP video by Erik Verduzco)
Demonstrators hold up signs during a “Hands Off!” protest against President Donald Trump at the Washington Monument in Washington, Saturday, April 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Demonstrators carry signs during the “Hands Off!” protests against President Donald Trump and Elon Musk at the Washington Monument in Washington, Saturday, April 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Protestors shout slogans as they march during a “Hands Off!” protest against President Donald Trump on Saturday, April 5, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)
Protesters form a human banner on Ocean Beach during a protest against President Donald Trump, part of the “Hands Off” rallies held nationwide, in San Francisco, Saturday, April 5, 2025./San Francisco Chronicle via AP)
Hundreds of people gather in downtown St. Joseph, Mich., Saturday, April 5, 2025, during a “Hands Off” rally held to protest the Trump administration and recent DOGE cuts. (Don Campbell/The Herald-Palladium via AP)
Protestors hold signs as they take to the streets and march during a “Hands Off!” protest against President Donald Trump on Saturday, April 5, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)
Demonstrators hold up signs during a “Hands Off!” protest against President Donald Trump at the Washington Monument in Washington, Saturday, April 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Demonstrators carry signs during the “Hands Off!” protests against President Donald Trump and Elon Musk at the Washington Monument in Washington, Saturday, April 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Demonstrators hold up signs during a “Hands Off!” protest against President Donald Trump at the Washington Monument in Washington, Saturday, April 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Demonstrators carry signs during the “Hands Off!” protests against President Donald Trump and Elon Musk at the Washington Monument in Washington, Saturday, April 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Demonstrators hold up signs during a “Hands Off!” protest against President Donald Trump at the Washington Monument in Washington, Saturday, April 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Demonstrators hold up signs during a “Hands Off!” protest against President Donald Trump at the Washington Monument in Washington, Saturday, April 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Activists protest President Donald Trump, who was a few miles away at his Trump National Golf Club, during a “Hands Off!” demonstration Saturday, April 5, 2025, in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Demonstrators march during a rally against President Donald Trump, in Anchorage, Alaska, on Saturday, April 5, 2025, as part of the nationwide “Hands Off!” protest. (Loren Holmes/Anchorage Daily News via AP)
Activists protest President Donald Trump, who was a few miles away at his Trump National Golf Club, during a “Hands Off!” demonstration Saturday, April 5, 2025, in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Pro-Palestinian protesters carrying a depiction of President Donald Trump gather at a rally before marching toward the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) headquarters, Saturday, April 5, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
Protesters carry signs and chant slogans against the policies of President Donald Trump and Elon Musk Saturday, April 5, 2025, in Miami. (AP Photo/Marta Lavandier)
Demonstrators hold signs during a “Hands Off!” protest against President Donald Trump in Portsmouth, N.H., Saturday, April 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Caleb Jones)
A demonstrator twirls a ribbon during a “Hands Off!” protest against President Donald Trump at the Washington Monument in Washington, Saturday, April 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Demonstrators hold up signs during a “Hands Off!” protest against President Donald Trump at the Washington Monument in Washington, Saturday, April 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Activists protest President Donald Trump, who was a few miles away at his Trump National Golf Club, during a “Hands Off!” demonstration Saturday, April 5, 2025, in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Activists protest President Donald Trump, who was a few miles away at his Trump National Golf Club, during a “Hands Off!” demonstration Saturday, April 5, 2025, in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Protesters carry signs and chant slogans against the policies of President Donald Trump and Elon Musk Saturday, April 5, 2025, in Miami. (AP Photo/Marta Lavandier)
Beth Maddox, of Calhoun, Ga., right, participates in a civil rights demonstrators, Saturday, April 5, 2025, in Rome, Ga. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)
Hundreds of people gather in downtown St. Joseph, Mich., Saturday, April 5, 2025, during a “Hands Off” rally held to protest the Trump administration and recent DOGE cuts. (Don Campbell/The Herald-Palladium via AP)
Crowds of people angry about the way President Donald Trump is running the country marched and rallied in scores of American cities Saturday in the biggest day of demonstrations yet by an opposition movement trying to regain its momentum after the shock of the Republican's first weeks in office.
So-called Hands Off! demonstrations were organized for more than 1,200 locations in all 50 states by more than 150 groups, including civil rights organizations, labor unions, LBGTQ+ advocates, veterans and elections activists. The rallies appeared peaceful, with no immediate reports of arrests.
Pro-Palestinian protesters carrying a depiction of President Donald Trump gather at a rally before marching toward the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) headquarters, Saturday, April 5, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
Thousands of protesters in cities dotting the nation from Midtown Manhattan to Anchorage, Alaska, including at multiple state capitols, assailed Trump and billionaire Elon Musk ‘s actions on government downsizing, the economy, immigration and human rights. On the West Coast, in the shadow of Seattle's iconic Space Needle, protesters held signs with slogans like “Fight the oligarchy.” Protesters chanted as they took to the streets in Portland, Oregon, and Los Angeles, where they marched from Pershing Square to City Hall.
Demonstrators voiced anger over the administration's moves to fire thousands of federal workers, close Social Security Administration field offices, effectively shutter entire agencies, deport immigrants, scale back protections for transgender people and cut funding for health programs.
Musk, a Trump adviser who runs Tesla, SpaceX and the social media platform X, has played a key role in the downsizing as the head of the newly created Department of Government Efficiency. He says he is saving taxpayers billions of dollars.
Asked about the protests, the White House said in a statement that “President Trump's position is clear: he will always protect Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid for eligible beneficiaries. Meanwhile, the Democrats' stance is giving Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare benefits to illegal aliens, which will bankrupt these programs and crush American seniors.”
Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign advocacy group, criticized the administration's treatment of the LBGTQ+ community at the rally at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., where Democratic members of Congress also took the stage.
“The attacks that we're seeing, they're not just political. They are personal, y'all,” Robinson said. “They're trying to ban our books, they're slashing HIV prevention funding, they're criminalizing our doctors, our teachers, our families and our lives.”
“We don't want this America, y'all,” Robinson added. “We want the America we deserve, where dignity, safety and freedom belong not to some of us, but to all of us.”
In Boston, demonstrators brandished signs such as “Hands off our democracy” and “Hands off our Social Security.”
Mayor Michelle Wu said she does not want her children and others' to live in a world in which threats and intimidation are government tactics and values like diversity and equality are under attack.
Activists protest President Donald Trump, who was a few miles away at his Trump National Golf Club, during a “Hands Off!” demonstration Saturday, April 5, 2025, in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Protesters carry signs and chant slogans against the policies of President Donald Trump and Elon Musk Saturday, April 5, 2025, in Miami. (AP Photo/Marta Lavandier)
“I refuse to accept that they could grow up in a world where immigrants like their grandma and grandpa are automatically presumed to be criminals,” Wu said.
Roger Broom, 66, a retiree from Delaware County, Ohio, was one of hundreds who rallied at the Statehouse in Columbus. He said he used to be a Reagan Republican but has been turned off by Trump.
“He's tearing this country apart,” Broom said. “It's just an administration of grievances.”
Hundreds of people also demonstrated in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, a few miles from Trump's golf course in Jupiter, where he spent the morning at the club's Senior Club Championship. People lined both sides of PGA Drive, encouraging cars to honk and chanting slogans against Trump.
“They need to keep their hands off of our Social Security,” said Archer Moran of Port St. Lucie, Florida.
Activists protest President Donald Trump, who was a few miles away at his Trump National Golf Club, during a “Hands Off!” demonstration Saturday, April 5, 2025, in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
An activist waves an American flag upside down during a “Hands Off!” demonstration in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., Saturday, April 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
“The list of what they need to keep their hands off of is too long,” Moran said. “And it's amazing how soon these protests are happening since he's taken office.”
The president golfed in Florida Saturday and planned to do so again Sunday, the White House said.
Activists have staged nationwide demonstrations against Trump and Musk multiple times since Trump returned to office. But before Saturday the opposition movement had yet to produce a mass mobilization like the Women's March in 2017, which brought thousands of women to Washington after Trump's first inauguration, or the Black Lives Matter demonstrations that erupted in multiple cities after George Floyd's killing by police in Minneapolis in 2020.
In Charlotte, North Carolina, protesters said they were supporting a variety of causes, from Social Security and education to immigration and women's reproductive rights.
“Regardless of your party, regardless of who you voted for, what's going on today, what's happening today is abhorrent,” said Britt Castillo, 35, of Charlotte. “It's disgusting, and as broken as our current system might be, the way that the current administration is going about trying to fix things — it is not the way to do it. They're not listening to the people.”
Among thousands marching through downtown San Jose, California, were Deborah and Douglas Doherty.
Deborah, a graphic designer, is a veteran of the 2017 Women's March and was nervous that fewer people have turned out against Trump this time. “All the cities need to show up,” she said. “Now people are kind of numb to it, which is itself frightening.”
Associated Press journalists Julie Carr Smyth in Columbus, Ohio, Fatima Hussein in West Palm Beach, Florida, Erik Verduzco in Charlotte, North Carolina, Nicholas Riccardi in San Jose, California, and Mark Thiessen in Anchorage, Alaska, contributed.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
President Donald Trump reads a The NY Post as he arrives at Trump National Golf Club, Saturday, April 5, 2025, in Jupiter, Fla. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Not even 24 hours after his party lost a key Wisconsin race and underperformed in Florida, President Donald Trump followed the playbook that has defined his political career: He doubled down.
Trump's move Wednesday to place stiff new tariffs on imports from nearly all U.S. trading partners marks an all-in bet by the Republican that his once-fringe economic vision will pay off for Americans. It was the realization of his four decades of advocacy for a protectionist foreign policy and the belief that free trade was forcing the United States into decline as its economy shifted from manufacturing to services.
President Donald Trump speaks during an event to announce new tariffs in the Rose Garden at the White House, Wednesday, April 2, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
The tariff announcement was the latest and perhaps boldest manifestation of Trump's second-term freedom to lead with his instincts after feeling his first turn in the Oval Office was restrained by aides who did not share his worldview. How it shakes out could be a defining judgment on his presidency.
The early reviews have been worrisome.
Financial markets had their worst week since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, foreign trade partners retaliated and economists warned that the import taxes may boost inflation and potentially send the U.S. into a recession. It's now Republican lawmakers who are fretting about their party's future while Democrats feel newly buoyant over what they see as Trump's overreach.
A screen displays financial news as traders work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Thursday, April 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Mike Pistillo Jr., center, works with other traders on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Thursday, April 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Democratic activists participated in rallies across the country Saturday in the largest demonstrations since Trump returned to office in January. “The winds are changing,” said Rahna Epting, who leads MoveOn, one of many organizing groups.
Trump is unbowed.
He has promised that the taxes on imports will bring about a domestic manufacturing renaissance and help fund an extension of his 2017 tax cuts. He insisted Thursday as the Dow Jones fell by 1,600 points that things were “going very well” and the economy would “boom,” then spent Friday at the golf course as the index plunged 2,200 more points.
The White House stayed the course Saturday. “This past November, America resoundingly rejected the business-as-usual policies coming out of D.C.,” said White House spokesman Kush Desai, adding, “The entire Trump administration is aligned on delivering on President Trump's mandate to reject the status quo.”
A worker loads rolls of steel plate at a steel market in Hangzhou in east China's Zhejiang province, Monday, March 31, 2025. (Chinatopix Via AP)
In his first term, Trump's tariff threats brought world leaders to his door to cut deals. This time, his actions so far have led to steep retaliation from China and promises from European allies to push back.
Even some Trump supporters are having their doubts.
Demonstrators hold up signs during a “Hands Off!” protest against President Donald Trump at the Washington Monument in Washington, Saturday, April 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Frank Amoroso, a 78-year-old resident of Dewitt, Michigan, said he is concerned about short-term rising interest rates and inflation, although he believes the tariffs will be good for the country in the long run.
Amoroso, a retired automotive engineer who voted for Trump, said he would give the president's second-term performance a C-plus or B-minus. “I think he's doing things too fast,” he said. “But hopefully things will get done in a prudent way, and the economy will survive a little downfall.”
Rep. French Hill, R-Ark., in a telephone town hall with constituents Thursday night, expressed reservations about the broad nature of the tariffs.
Hill, who represents a district that includes Little Rock, said he does not back tariffs on Canada and Mexico. He said the administration should instead focus on renegotiating a U.S. trade agreement with its two neighbors.
“I don't support across-the-board tariffs as a general matter, and so I don't support those, and I will be urging changes there because I don't think they will end up raising a bunch of revenue that's been asserted,” Hill said. “I wish I thought they did, but personally I don't think they will. But I do support trade diplomacy.”
Still, much of Trump's “Make America Great Again” coalition remains publicly supportive.
Doug Deason, a prominent Texas-based Republican donor, said he loves the president's tariff plan, even if it causes some economic disruption.
“He told us during the election there would be pain for every American to get this ship turned around,” Deason said. “It is hard to watch our portfolios deteriorate so much, but we get it. We hope he holds course.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., leads fellow Democrats in criticizing the Republican-backed budget plan during a news conference at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, April 3, 2025. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Susan Crawford speaks during her election night party after winning the election Tuesday, April 1, 2025, in Madison, Wis. (AP Photo/Kayla Wolf)
As Trump struggles with the economy, Democrats are beginning to emerge from the cloud of doom that has consumed their party ever since their election drubbing in November.
They scored a decisive victory in Wisconsin's high-profile state Supreme Court election on Tuesday, even after Elon Musk and his affiliated groups poured more than $20 million into the contest. New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker then breathed new life into the Democratic resistance by delivering a record 25-hour-long speech on the Senate floor that centered on a call for his party to find its resolve.
Booker told The Associated Press afterward that a significant political shift has begun even as his party tries to learn from its mistakes in the 2024 presidential election.
In this image provided by Senate Television, Sen, Cory Booker, D-N.J. speaks on the Senate floor, Tuesday morning, April 1, 2025. (Senate Television via AP)
“I think you're seeing a lot more energy, a lot more determination, a lot more feeling like we've got to fight,” Booker said. “You can't sit back any more. You can't sit on the sidelines. There's a larger, growing movement.”
Booker, a 2020 presidential candidate, acknowledged he is not ruling out a 2028 run, although he said he is focused on his 2026 Senate reelection for now.
There is broad agreement among Democrats — and even some Republicans, privately at least — that what Trump has unleashed on the global economy could help accelerate the Democratic comeback.
Ezra Levin, co-founder of the progressive resistance group known as Indivisible, has been critical of Democratic officials' response in recent weeks to Trump's leadership. But on Friday, he was somewhat giddy about the political consequences for Trump's GOP after the tariffs announcement.
President Donald Trump walks to board Marine One after speaking with reporters on the South Lawn of the White House, April 3, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
“Raising prices across the board for your constituents is not popular,” Levin said. “It's the kind of thing that can lead to a 1932-style total generational wipe out of a party.”
Peoples reported from New York. Associated Press writers Andrew DeMillo in Little Rock, Arkansas, and Isabella Volmert in Dewitt, Michigan, contributed to this report.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
President Donald Trump announced his "Liberation Day" tariffs on April 2 — and people have been reacting as global markets take a hammering.
Here's what big names in business and economics have been saying:
Joshua Bolten, the CEO of Business Roundtable, an association that represents more than 200 CEOs, said in a statement the tariffs "run the risk of causing major harm to American manufacturers, workers, families and exporters." He added: "Damage to the US economy will increase the longer the tariffs are in place and may be exacerbated by retaliatory measures."
He said the Business Roundtable "supports President Trump's goal of securing better and fairer trade deals with our trading partners" but called on him to introduce "additional reasonable exemptions" and a "transparent, predictable exclusion process."
"Never before has an hour of Presidential rhetoric cost so many people so much," Larry Summers, a former Treasury secretary, wrote on X. "The best estimate of the loss from tariff policy is now closer to $30 trillion."
Summers added that the tariffs were the most expensive and "masochistic" the US had imposed in decades.
"The price action in global financial markets in the immediate aftermath of the US tariff announcement points to major worries about global economic growth," Mohamed El-Erian, the former CEO of bond giant PIMCO and the chief economic advisor at Allianz, said on X.
"These tariffs will cause inflation in the United States; they will cause lower consumer power of US workers. The estimates are between $1,700 to $5,000 per family in terms of the costs of these tariffs," Mariana Mazzucato, an economics professor at University College London, told ITV's "Peston" program.
Boaz Weinstein, Saba Capital Management's founder, doesn't expect Trump to change course, posting on X: "I'm often wrong, but I don't see him doing a u-turn. This is not a buy-the-dip opportunity. It's a sell the dip opportunity."
"So, this tariff file is now being labeled 'Make America Wealthy Again'? What is with that adverb 'again' which is defined as 'returning to a previous condition'? The previous condition, I can tell you, was not nearly as good as the current condition, seeing as US net national net worth just reached a record level of $157 TRILLION (a cool $1.2 million per household … too bad we don't all live at the average!)," David Rosenberg, the founder and president of Rosenberg Research & Associates, said on X.
"Have tariffs really stood in the way of wealth creation in America? I think the title should simply be the truth: 'Let's Make the World Poor Again' (and then we can buy it at a discount)," Rosenberg added.
Nouriel Roubini, a professor emeritus of the NYU Stern School of Business, said the "Liberation Day" label was "Orwellian doublespeak."
"Whatever the consequences of these tariffs will be — ie lower growth and higher inflation and how much of it depending on the eventual size of these tariffs post-negotiations that will be ugly and long-drawn. There is absolutely no 'liberation' at all in them: not for US consumers, workers and businesses, let alone for the rest of the world," he said on X.
"I guess it's just possible that when we get details about the Trump tariffs they will be lower than what he just announced, but based on what he said, he's gone full-on crazy," Paul Krugman, a Nobel Memorial Prize-winning economist and former MIT and Princeton University professor, wrote in his Substack newsletter.
"If you had any hopes that Trump would step back from the brink, this announcement, between the very high tariff rates and the complete falsehoods about what other countries do, should kill them," Krugman added.
"March continued with President Trump's rapid executive orders and policy changes, as tariffs (along with their potential impact on the economy), inflation, employment and consumer spending became the main concerns of the market, which pulled back with increased trading on strong negative breadth," wrote Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst of S&P Dow Jones Indices, in a S&P Global column.
"Adding to the concern were Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) government employment reductions, as well as US layoffs, which have increased (along with retail warnings)," he added.
"The price level from all 2025 tariffs rises by 2.3% in the short-run, the equivalent of an average per household consumer loss of $3,800 in 2024$. Annual losses for households at the bottom of the income distribution are $1,700," wrote the Yale Budget Lab in a new analysis published on April 2, shortly after Trump's blanket tariff announcement.
"True, the United States is a large and dominant country. And it is a relatively closed country, meaning we depend less on trade than most other countries," said Jared Bernstein, former chief economist, in his newsletter. "That means, as Trump has correctly argued, we can hurt them more than they can hurt us. He fails to give a coherent rationale for why we need to start a trade war with Canada, Mexico, Japan, Europe, and other traditionally reliable trading partners."
"First, though they've been explicitly cavalier about the pain they're causing, higher inflation, slower growth, lower investment, falling stock prices — as of this moment, the Dow is down 1,200 points — and higher recession chances could force them to recant. But, at least so far, that may have been the way of Trump 1; it's not the way of Trump 2," he added.
"Monstrously destructive, incoherent, ill-informed tariffs based on fabrications, imagined wrongs, discredited theories and ignorance of decades of evidence. And the real tragedy is that they will hurt working Americans more than anyone else," said Justin Wolfers, economics professor at University of Michigan and public policy scholar, on BlueSky.
"If these tariffs were more targeted and on specific goods, I wouldn't be so sure we would have stagflation. But these appear to be extremely broad, so I expect higher inflation and lower or even negative economic growth," said Daryl Fairweather, Redfin chief economist, on BlueSky.
"Home construction was already going to be weak this year, but these tariffs (combined with labor problems from immigration policy) will mean fewer homes built," she added.
The latest set of tariffs is "a similar event to going off the gold standard in 1971. It's an epic event. It's not something where you can time quickly for a market bottom. It's something that we're going to have to live with as long as President Trump continues with this stance," Bill Gross, the cofounder of Pimco, told CNBC.
"I don't think he's going to back down. President Trump, to be very blunt, is a macho male, and this macho male is not going to back down tomorrow simply because the Nasdaq's down 5%," said Gross, who's also known as "Bond King."
Gross said it's not a time for investors to bottom fish, likening it to "catching a falling knife."
"Tariffs attack US trading partners but, in effect, attack US corporate profit margins first," wrote Steven Blitz, the chief US economist at GlobalData.TS Lombard. "The 40-odd years of profits rising relative to GDP has ended. The macro risk hitting markets is real, but only accentuates the devaluation process."
"Further exacerbating market volatility is redirection of foreign capital from the US to wherever multiple expansion appears more promising," Blitz wrote.
Jim O'Neill, former chief economist at Goldman Sachs, told BBC News on Friday that the "sensible" thing to do would be for the UK to speak to other members of G7, aside from the US, about lowering trade barriers between each other, particularly for cross-border services.
He said this would be "very healthy for all those countries because it's the one area of global trade that most countries haven't done enough in."
If the US wants to continue down this "kamikaze path," the UK will have to respond, O'Neill added. "It is the US which is going to be hurt more, especially in the short-term, from these rather insane moves."
"Just had a journalist ask me to explain "Liberation Day," Stephanie Kelton, author of The Deficit Myth, wrote in a post on X. "I told him it's about liberating Americans from some of the cash in their wallets."
George Saravelos, a Deutsche Bank analyst, said in a Friday note that markets were pricing in a global recession.
"This is a US-centric fiscal shock driven by the Trump administration and it is fiscal policy that can unwind it. The countries that respond the quickest and most forcefully to this shock are those whose currencies will likely be the most resilient. And, on the flipside, the more the US fiscal strategy under the Trump administration lacks visibility, the more the market will punish the dollar and US assets.
"One last point: don't expect a reluctant-to-cut Fed to support the dollar. Remember that during the European supply-shock of 2022, the ECB turned hawkish. The euro sold-off regardless because real rates and growth expectations collapsed."
Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, warned that US tariffs posed a "significant risk" to the global economy.
"We are still assessing the macroeconomic implications of the announced tariff measures, but they clearly represent a significant risk to the global outlook at a time of sluggish growth," she said in a statement on Thursday.
Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank, told Ireland's Newstalk that the tariffs would be "negative the world over."
She said Trump's move "will not be good for the global economy and it will not be good for those who inflict the tariffs and those who retaliate."
Lloyd Blankfein, the former Goldman Sachs CEO, posted on X on Friday:
"The switchboard at the WH must be burning up with gov'ts trying to surrender in this trade war. Why not give them a chance? Make the 10pct min tariff immediate but defer the "reciprocal" part 6 mos. Take the win! The Prez said he'd make us tired of winning…I'm there now!"
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Friday said that the scope of Trump's tariffs actions surpassed all expectations.
"While uncertainty remains elevated, it is now becoming clear that the tariff increases will be significantly larger than expected," Powell said at a conference for business journalists. "The same is likely to be true of the economic effects, which will include higher inflation and slower growth."
The central bank president repeatedly said it was too early to tell what the Fed's response might be.
"We've taken a step back and we're watching to see what the policies turn out to be and the ways in which they will affect the economy, and then we'll be able to act, he said."
Kevin Corinth, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning, DC-based think tank, wrote in an article published Friday that the formula behind Trump's tariffs, which puts heavy emphasis on trade deficits, makes "no economic sense."
"The trade deficit with a given country is not determined only by tariffs and non-tariff trade barriers, but also by international capital flows, supply chains, comparative advantage, geography, etc," Corinth wrote. "But even if one were to take the Trump Administration's tariff formula seriously, it makes an error that inflates the tariffs assumed to be levied by foreign countries four-fold."
In a post on X on Thursday, Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody's Analytics, warned that a recession could "hit imminently and extend until next year" should Trump continue with his tariffs and other countries retaliate.
"Real GDP will fall close to 2% peak to trough, and unemployment will increase from its current 4% to 7.5% at its peak next year. I attach a 15% probability to this dark scenario," he predicted.
Speaking to Bloomberg TV, veteran analyst Ed Yardeni said he hoped the "message that the stock market is sending to the administration is being heard."
"The market is giving a big thumbs down to this tariff policy," he added.
Brad Setser, former senior advisor to the US trade representative and fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the latest round of tariffs will be "painful."
"I think what the announcement on Wednesday showed is that the decision of the administration, not surprisingly, was to follow President Trump's instincts, not the instincts of his more moderate advisors, to go all in," Setser said on Bloomberg's Odd Lots podcast.
Setser said the goal is to "radically restructure the US and global economies using tariffs as a tool, with some flexibility perhaps to negotiate at the edges. But fundamentally, this is a test of what you can and cannot do with tariffs, and there was very little restraint, I would say, apart for, strangely enough, Canada and Mexico, USMCA, on the level of the tariffs."
Greg Daco, the chief economist at Ernst & Young, told Yahoo Finance that "the risk of a recession are very real" with the tariffs in place.
"The risks of a particularly severe recession are real, because if these tariffs remain in place on a persistent basis, you would see a drag on US economic activity worth about 1% to 1.5% of growth," he said. "In an economy that is expected to grow around 1.5%, that puts the economy essentially into stagnation. Add to that a 1% to 1.5% lift on inflation, and you have stagflation."
Douglas Irwin, the trade historian and economics professor at Dartmouth College, wrote in The Economist that Trump's tariffs "blow an enormous hole" in the trade policy that the US has advanced since World War II.
"The president now touts his tariffs as mainly 'reciprocal': 'Whatever they charge us, we charge them.' This makes them sound fair. Far from it," Irwin said.
"Perhaps the most shocking aspect of this week's events is the ability of one person to completely remake American trade policy. A situation in which the occupant of the White House can make such momentous changes on his own, unchecked, reflects serious political decay in American politics."
One day before Trump's latest tariff announcement, the economist Thomas Sowell told the Hoover Institution that the president's tariffs could lead to a global trade war.
"It's painful to see a ruinous decision from back in the 1920s being repeated," Sowell said. "If you set off a worldwide trade war, that has a devastating history."
"Everybody loses because everybody follows suit," he continued. "And all that happens is that you get a great reduction in international trade."
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When the season finale of "The White Lotus" airs on Sunday, viewers are expecting lots of questions to be answered: Will Gaitok confront Valentin? Does Piper still want to stay in Thailand? And of course, who is killed?
Audiences will also be tuning into to find out how exactly the girls' trip storyline plays out. For the last seven episodes we've seen three childhood best friends, played by Michelle Monaghan, Leslie Bibb, and Carrie Coon, struggle to bond at this luxury resort. For anyone who has desperately tried to sustain the spark with a childhood friend, this dynamic is all too familiar.
Despite growing apart, developing different values, and physically moving away from each other, childhood friends can be unexpectedly hard to let go. Why is it so challenging to call it quits with someone you talk to quarterly?
There are a few explanations, experts say. Long-term friends can symbolize a part of our former selves that we miss. They can also signal to others that we are capable of maintaining deep relationships for a long time, a quality most people like to believe they possess.
Childhood friends are evidence that we had some fun growing up, says Eman Almusawi, a therapist at A Better Life Therapy. The memories we attach to them are part of our origin stories.
"It's like a piece of our identity is woven into these connections, and when we try to move on, it can feel like we're letting go of part of ourselves," she says.
If you live in different places and are in varying stages of life, much of the conversation is rooted in the past. You might gossip about mutual acquaintances or reminisce about old romances, all in hopes of returning you to that intimate dynamic you once enjoyed.
"Instead of bringing us closer, these conversations can feel awkward and forced," Almusawi says. "It's like trying to fit into an old pair of jeans — what used to fit perfectly now feels out of place."
Having long-term friendships can also feel like "proof" that you're good at maintaining relationships, says Christie Tate, a writer and author of "BFF: A Memoir of Friendship Lost and Found." Just like a decades-long marriage is a sign of success, a decades-long friendship signals a kind of aptitude for sustaining connections.
"[It says] I've changed and grown but I'm still connected with these people," Tate says. "That says I'm a good person who is good at relationships, and to fail feels terrible."
Being the type of person who loses friends often doesn't align with the view many of us have of ourselves, she adds.
"I like the idea that I'm a person with roots and long-term relationships," Tate says. "I don't like the idea that I'm unable to hold on. That is inconsistent with the narrative I have about myself."
Even when it's clear that we just don't have much in common anymore, as is the case in "The White Lotus," sometimes it feels more painful to let go than to sit through a passive aggressive dinner.
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A crashing stock market is not part of an intentional strategy by President Donald Trump, White House National Economic Council director Kevin Hassett told ABC's "This Week" on Sunday. This came after Trump shared a link to a video on his social media platform, Truth Social, which claimed the president was causing the markets to plummet on purpose as part of his broader economic plans.
The video, which initially appeared on TikTok in March, was shared by Trump on April 4, two days after his tariffs announcement.
"Trump is crashing the stock market by 20% this month, but he's doing it on purpose. … And it could make you rich" the video said. It continued by adding that such a move by Trump would help "push cash into treasuries, which forces the Fed to slash interest rates in May. … It also weakens the dollar and drops mortgage rates. Now it's a wild chess move, but it's working."
When repeatedly questioned about whether Trump intentionally strategized a market selloff, Hasset responded, "He's not trying to tank the market. He's trying to deliver for American workers."
"It is not a strategy for the markets to crash," Hasset said.
The president's retaliatory tariffs rollout on Wednesday led to a steep market selloff due to rising fears of a protracted global trade war and a recession. The Dow Jones Industrial Average declined around 2,231 points, or 5.5%, on Friday alone — its largest drop since June 2020. The broad market S&P 500 sold off nearly 6% Friday, following a 4.8% plunge on Thursday. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite sank nearly 12% in the two days following the tariff rollout and fell into bear market territory.
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Vietnam is looking to negotiate to remove all US import tariffs as it pushes for a delay to levies announced by President Donald Trump earlier this week, a senior official said Sunday.
Bui Thanh Son, one of Vietnam's several deputy prime ministers, said during a reception for the US Ambassador to Vietnam Marc Knapper that the government was ready to work out a deal to reduce the tariffs on US goods to 0%.
He also called for a delay to Trump's 46% levy on Vietnamese imports — announced as part of Trump's "Liberation Day" tariffs — "to create an environment conducive for the two sides' tax negotiations," according to a government press release.
To Lam, the head of Vietnam's Communist Party, has sent a special envoy to the US to continue talks on the matter, Bui said.
Lam has reportedly requested that Trump postpone the tariffs by at least 45 days after April 9.
Bui's statement confirms comments made by Trump in a Truth Social post on Friday.
The president said he had held a "very productive call" with Lam, who he said told him that Vietnam wanted to make an arrangement to cut tariffs on US goods to zero.
Nike, which has key manufacturing facilities in Vietnam, saw its stock surge on the back of Trump's post.
Trump's baseline 10% tariff rates came into force Saturday. Higher rates on certain nations, such as Vietnam, are set for April 9.
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Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Sunday dismissed concerns Americans might be having about a potential impending recession and the status of their retirement plans, saying that President Donald Trump and his administration are "building the long-term economic fundamentals for prosperity."
During an interview with NBC News' "Meet the Press," Bessent called it a "false narrative" that Americans who are close to retiring may be reticent to do so after their retirement savings may have dropped this week due to the stock market downturn.
"I think that's a false narrative," he told moderator Kristen Welker. "Americans who want to retire right now, the Americans who put away for years in their savings accounts, I think they don't look at the day-to-day fluctuations."
"In fact, most Americans don't have everything in the market," Bessent added. "People have a long-term view ... the reason the stock market is considered a good investment is because it's a long-term investment. If you look day to day, week to week, it's very risky. Over the long term, it's a good investment."
More from NBC News:
Bessent said he wasn't concerned about the stock market's negative reaction this week to Trump's announcement that he was imposing tariffs as high as 54% on the U.S.' largest trading partners
"The market consistently underestimates Donald Trump," Bessent told Welker.
He added later in the interview, "Who knows how the market is going to react in a day, in a week. What we are looking at is building the long-term economic fundamentals for prosperity and I think the previous administration had put us on the course toward financial calamity."
In the days following Trump's tariff announcement, the U.S. stock market plunged, with the Nasdaq, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 marking losses that haven't been seen since the start of the Covid pandemic.
On Saturday, in the wake of the market downturn, Trump defended his tariff plan, urging consumers and investors to "hang tough."
"We are bringing back jobs and businesses like never before. Already, more than FIVE TRILLION DOLLARS OF INVESTMENT, and rising fast! THIS IS AN ECONOMIC REVOLUTION, AND WE WILL WIN. HANG TOUGH, it won't be easy, but the end result will be historic," the president wrote in a post on Truth Social.
Asked about how long Americans will have to live with this economic uncertainty and "hang tough," Bessent said that the Trump administration is "going to hold the course" to impose the tariffs and bring down inflation but didn't say how long that would take.
"This is an adjustment process," he said. "What we saw with President [Ronald] Reagan when he brought down the great inflation, and we got past the [President Jimmy] Carter malaise, there was some choppiness at that time, but he held the course, and we're going to hold the course."
Bessent added that the previous "unsustainable system" of trade was also to blame for today's economic uncertainties, telling Welker that "this has been years in the building, years in the making, this unsustainable system."
"Our trading partners have taken advantage of us. We can see that through the large surpluses. We can see this through the large budget deficits," the secretary said.
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Whether to buy cryptocurrency as a long-term holding may be the biggest decision an investor interested in digital assets has to make, but where to store crypto like bitcoin can become the most consequential.
Following the wildfires earlier this year in California, social media posts began to appear with claims of bitcoin losses, with some users showing metal plates intended to protect seed phrases burnt up and illegible or describing the complexity of recovering crypto keys stored in a safety deposit box in a bank impacted by the fires. While impossible to verify individual claims about fires consuming hard drives, laptops and other storage devices containing so-called hard and cold storage crypto wallets and seed phrases, what is certain is that bitcoin self-custody presents a unique set of security issues. And those risks are growing.
Holders of crypto typically use some form of what can be called a "wallet," and there are a few main features – whether that wallet is connected to the internet, and how much control is directly embedded in the wallet for trades and transfers. There is also the underlying issue of whether a crypto investor uses a third party for custody at all, or maintains total custody and trading control over their holdings.
The standard third-party platform "hot wallet" – think of an offering from a Coinbase or Blockchain.com – is constantly connected to the internet. Cold storage and "cold wallets," on the other hand, include hardware devices (like a USB stick) that holds private keys offline, or even just a seed phrase (a master recovery code, a collection of 12 to 24 words used to recover access to a crypto wallet) on paper/metal. Hardware wallets or offline backups of seed phrases can be used to access crypto when connected to the internet through another device.
With third-party custodial options, there are steps to help owners remain vigilant against the threat posed by cybercriminals who can gain access to an internet-connected platform, including the use of two-factor authentication, and strong passwords. The U.S. Marshals Service within the Department of Justice, which is responsible for asset forfeiture from U.S. law enforcement, uses Coinbase Prime to provide custody for its seized digital assets.
Many crypto bulls prefer to self-custody digital assets like bitcoin for some of the same reasons they are interested in cryptocurrencies to begin with: lack of faith in some forms of institutional control. Custodial wallets from crypto brokers trade convenience for the risk of exchange hacks, shutdowns, or fraud, as in the case of the high-profile implosion of FTX. And the wildfires are just one example in a recent string of global events that raise more questions about shifts in the crypto custody debate. There is the ongoing conflict in the Middle East and Russia-Ukraine war, which has led crypto bulls from overseas to re-think their approach to self-custody.
Nick Neuman, co-founder and CEO of self-custody company Casa, said physical risks in the world like a natural disaster are an opportunity to revisit how bitcoin security works, and the common security lapses folded into most peoples' practices. "Most people secure their bitcoin with one private key. If that key is on a single device or written down on paper as a seed phrase, it's a single point of failure. If you lose that key, your bitcoin is gone," he said.
It should be obvious that keeping seed phrases on paper offers the lowest level of protection against fire, yet it is common practice, Neuman said. Slipping these pieces of paper into fireproof bags or safes offer some protection, but not much, and even going the extra steps to have the seed phrases on "indestructible" metal storage plates presents a few failure points. For one, they might prove to be not so indestructible, and second, they may be impossible to locate amid the rubble.
"Logically, given the location of the fires in California and the stories being shared on X, it's highly likely bitcoin was lost," said Neuman. "Some of them are pretty convincing," he said.
Casa performs annual stress tests on seed phrase backups.
Some self-custody services, like Casa, offer multi-signature setups that reduce the risks of single-point failure. A multi-key crypto "vault" can include mobile phone keys, multiple hardware keys, and a recovery key that a company likes Casa holds on an owner's behalf.
The multi-sig custody approach allows an owner to hold a majority of keys while a trusted partner holds a minority of keys. John Haar, managing director at Swan Bitcoin, says that in such a setup, the owner would need to lose all the physical devices and all copies of the seed phrases at the same time. As long as the owner can access at least one device or one seed phrase, they would be able to recover their bitcoin. This approach should significantly limit the potential for all of the devices to be lost in an event like a natural disaster, Haar said.
"You can spread these keys across multiple regions or even countries, and you need any three of the five keys to approve a bitcoin transaction," Neuman said of Casa's five-key approach.
Jordan Baltazor, chief administrative officer at Fortress Trust, a regulated crypto custodian, says best practices that we use in other areas of personal life should apply to cryptocurrency. For one, diversification of storage approach and weighing of risks. Digital assets are no different, he says, when it comes to backing up personal and sensitive data on the cloud to ensure data against loss or corruption.
Companies including Coinbase and Jack Dorsey's Block offer products that try to merge some of these ideas, creating a more secure version of a crypto wallet that remains convenient to use. There is Coinbase Vault, which includes enhanced security steps before a user can access crypto holdings for trading. And there is Coinbase Wallet and Block's Bitkey, which have mobile apps that work like a traditional wallet making moving bitcoin around easy, but with the ability to pair with hardware wallets and added security more commonly associated with cold storage.
Bitkey hardware requires multiple authorizations for transactions for added security, similar to "multi-sig wallets." Bitkey also offers recovery tools so one of the biggest risks of self-custody — losing codes or phrases needed to recover a cold wallet — is less of an issue.
Solutions like Dorsey's may help to solve the tension between convenience and security; at minimum, they underline that this tension exists and will likely be something of a roadblock to more widespread crypto adoption. Beyond the risks out there in the form of wildfires, all kinds of natural disasters, and wars, bitcoin self-custody can be vulnerable to the biggest personal risk of all: unexpected death of the bitcoin owner. There is arguably nothing more complicated than inheritance when it comes to unlocking the crypto chain of custody.
Coinbase requires probate court documents and specific will designations before releasing funds from custody, while physical wallets offer little to no support, potentially leaving all that digital value stuck on a private key. Bitkey rolled out its inheritance solution in February for what a Bitkey executive called, "kind of a multibillion-dollar problem waiting to happen."
"People who have a material investment in bitcoin absolutely need to be thinking differently about how to protect it," Neuman said. He says that after disasters like the California wildfires, or when exchanges go bust like FTX, the industry does see more crypto holders taking action to move to more secure storage setups. "I suppose it's human nature to wait until 'bad things happen' to spur action to improve your own personal situation," he said. "But I think people would be better off if they were more proactive. Otherwise, they risk having that 'bad thing' happen to them, and then it's too late," he said.
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While there are still differing perspectives on how long it will be until certain types of quantum computing hit commercial viability, experts from big tech companies like Google and IBM as well as smaller organizations like D-Wave Quantum and TreQ generally agree on quantum's most mature, promising industry applications, which range from medical insights to last-mile delivery optimization. Yet, in a space teeming with unknowns, there's still a lot to learn about the potential fate of a world in quantum's hands.
Unlike classical computing, which processes information through bits that can exist in either zeros or ones, quantum computing is an evolving field where quantum bits (or qubits) can occupy both zero and one in a single unit. These qubits can then basically communicate with each other to further increase the speed and complexity of information processing in a calculation.
Within the field of quantum computing, there are two types of technologies. What most people refer to when they talk about it is universal gate-based models. The second model is called annealing quantum. "It's a different technology," explained Mandy Birch, CEO and founder of TreQ, a quantum systems engineering company focused on manufacturing applications.
Companies like Google, Microsoft, Amazon and IBM are aggressively pursuing gate-model quantum computing, each with different qubit technologies and strategies. D-Wave is largely working with annealing technology, which primarily serves companies that want to optimize their operations. Annealing models still have a ways to go, but unlike gate models that researchers are still developing, annealing is able to deliver commercial value today.
"It's more of a heuristic than it is an absolute solution," Birch said about annealing technology. Still, these systems can generally help companies improve operational efficiency compared to what they can achieve with classical computing systems.
"Quantum computers are capable of solving problems that are impossible for AI or supercomputers even in the best case," said Charina Chou, chief operating officer at Google Quantum AI, maker of the quantum computing processor Willow chip at the recent SXSW conference.
Here, Chou is referring to a concept called quantum supremacy, where quantum technology completes complex calculations no classical computer could realistically complete (for example, a five-minute quantum calculation might take 10 septillion years on a binary supercomputer). Alternatively, some quantum systems may achieve quantum advantage, where they simply do better than classical computing.
Scientists at D-Wave as well as institutions like Vancouver's Quantum Matter Institute published a breakthrough report in March announcing that its annealing quantum technology achieved "the world's first and only demonstration of quantum computational supremacy on a useful, real-world problem."
The company performed magnetic materials simulation in minutes with a level of accuracy that would take nearly one million years using a classical supercomputer. In an interview, D-Wave CEO Alan Baratz explained that this capability can advance technologies like smartphones and sensors.
"We use sensors in MRIs, brain scanners, heart scanners. These sensors are magnetic material," he said. "The benefit that comes from this is the ability to see things in the human body that we still can't see for better understanding, better diagnosis."
Barataz also told CNBC back in January that D-Wave is "commercial today," and companies including Mastercard and Japan's NTT Docomo are using its quantum computers in production to benefit their business operations. "Not 30 years from now, not 20 years from now, not 15 years from now," Baratz said. It is also used by Patterson Food Group to optimize workforce scheduling.
D-Wave's revenue is still low, with the most recent quarterly sales reported at $1.9 million.
Chou also pointed to the importance of quantum's advancements in the medical space. "Twenty-one years ago, my husband [...] was facing a very tough cancer diagnosis," she said. He went through chemo and radiation, neither of which worked, but he was fortunate enough to get on a clinical trial that saved him. Today, Chou's husband is an oncologist. Using quantum computing for "calculating fundamentally what is happening inside these molecules themselves" could increase our ability to solve these problems, Chou said.
On the gate-model side of the quantum equation, Birch is confident that any place a high-performance computer is important today is going to be majorly changed by quantum in the future. But she added, "I don't know if that means in five years, 10 years or 20 years."
She foresees the financial industry making use of quantum optimization, but she's particularly excited about the impact on the pharmaceutical industry, which is inherently quantum mechanical because of its use of organic compounds (actually, all matter and energy is quantum mechanical by nature).
Referring to pharmaceutical work, Birch said, "Right now, the molecular dynamics are so complex that the math quickly gets out of hand. ... But just imagine, in a drug discovery process, instead of having to do all the wet chemistry one experiment at a time, to be able to run through millions of simulations on a computer at a molecular dynamics level before you ever get into the wet chemistry and the trial."
This, she said, would give scientists a much higher probability of finding solutions, and that would also inform industries including aerospace and defense. Some worry about potential negative impact given how powerful the tech could be, but Birch said, "Technology is always neutral. It's when you put it into human hands that it does good or bad."
"Then there's more boring and ubiquitous things like optimization," Birch said. "If you can save 1% on your fuel bill if you're FedEx, UPS, that's really important."
Port logistics optimization is already in action today.
One thing that any quantum solution will likely do is perform computations using hybrid solutions that partner with supercomputers and AI computers. Some work can be done natively on quantum alone, but with all of the infrastructure that is already in place, it makes sense to use what's out there.
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President Trump's new tariff regime, formally triggered by his invocation of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, is no longer theoretical. On Saturday, a baseline 10% tariff was first applied to nearly all imports. On April 9, that will escalate to higher, individualized rates on countries with the largest trade deficits with the United States. What's being framed as a bold reassertion of U.S. economic sovereignty is a high-stakes test of the federal government's implementation capacity — one that we are plainly unprepared to pass.
The administration's expansive use of IEEPA — meant for more traditional types of national emergencies — now serves as the foundation for remaking the entire U.S. trade regime. The fact sheet accompanying the order is wide-ranging: a policy aimed at correcting global imbalances, restoring manufacturing, reshoring supply chains, confronting non-market economies, and ensuring the defense industrial base is no longer dependent on foreign adversaries.
It's a real grab bag of the greatest hits from a long list of well-known Trump grievances. But one thing the fact sheet does not offer is a coherent implementation plan. The policy goals far surpass the capacity of the current federal government to effectively and timely implement the tariffs. To impose variable tariffs across all trading partners — with hard to follow and sundry carveouts, retaliatory triggers, national security exemptions, and modification authorities — requires more than presidential intent. It demands a well-resourced bureaucracy, a clearly articulated process, and interagency coordination at a scale not seen in recent memory. And none of that is currently in place.
Agencies such as USTR, Commerce, and Treasury will be central players in standing up this structure. But it is Customs and Border Protection (CBP) — already stretched thin — that will be responsible for frontline enforcement. CBP is underfunded, understaffed, and ill-equipped to absorb this kind of policy shock. They will be asked to manage a flood of product classification disputes, origin verification challenges, and tariff compliance actions with no significant augmentation of manpower, increased systems and technological capacity, or time to prepare for execution.
CBP's own budget documents and independent oversight reports make this clear. The agency's FY2024 budget prioritized border security and fentanyl interdiction, leaving little for commercial enforcement at our ports. A 2023 GAO report highlighted long-standing staffing shortages at ports of entry, delays in processing, and inconsistent enforcement of trade rules. In effect, the agency tasked with executing the centerpiece of the administration's economic strategy is being asked to do much more, much faster, with far less than will be required.
The bureaucratic bottleneck will hit importers first, with the return of what was seen during the supply chain snarls of Covid, scores of container ships floating just off the U.S. coast as they await the clearing of backlogs at the ports. But importers won't be the only ones to suffer. U.S. businesses, retailers, manufacturers, and supply chain operators that rely on predictable flows of intermediate goods could face sudden delays, confusion, paperwork surges, and inventory gaps. That uncertainty will ultimately impact prices that consumers pay at the register.
In short order, global exporters may recognize that the U.S. enforcement architecture is ill-prepared and many may be tempted to game the system or find other tactical workarounds by transshipping through countries with lower "reciprocal" rates wherever possible — causing further delays and losses in projected revenue. That is important. The administration claims the tariffs will raise hundreds of billions of dollars and help offset tax cuts it plans to pass, but if CBP cannot consistently implement the new regime, the revenue projections will miss the mark. Worse, they could be offset by administrative costs, economic distortions, and retaliatory tariffs that hurt U.S. exporters.
Even seemingly simple questions — like whether a vehicle assembled in Mexico with Chinese parts qualifies for a blanket or component-based tariff — become minefields in the absence of clearly defined rules. And that's before retaliation starts or exemptions begin to flow in.
Some inside the administration do recognize the problem, but are reluctant to speak candidly about the challenge. Ambassador Jamieson Greer at USTR appears to be one of the few officials quietly working to bring order to this increasingly chaotic pace and structure. His background and experience from Trump's first term gives him a modicum of credibility, and his current lowkey efforts to reintroduce process discipline and clarity into the frenetic tariff policy whiplash deserves recognition. But Greer is attempting to systematize a policy environment that is being by driven by fiat and decree, the whims of the man at the top. Greer's work may be thoughtful, but the policy process of this administration, its decision making and implementation architecture is not built to function the way that it has in the past.
What's more troubling is the lack of a formal rulemaking process. No discernable public comment period was offered. It is true that IEEPA does not require one, but sound policy, particularly policy with this level of impact, could have used one. There is no visible administrative legal framework beyond citing the provisions of IEEPA that "allow" a president to take "decisive" action, no apparent mechanism for coordinating across the agencies tasked with implementing the details. What we are left with is a policy reliant on signaling over processes and structure, Truth Social post that serve as instructions to those responsible for implementation, and the brute force application of raw power and perceived leverage over realistic and achievable goals and outcomes. Uncertainty itself as the tool may serve the short-term negotiation tactical interests of President Trump, but it's a dangerous foundation for long-term trade policy and its effective implementation.
While the executive branch expands its authority, Congress continues to recede into the background. There are, to be fair, rare moments of resistance. Last week, the Senate — with the help of four Republicans (Mitch McConnell, Rand Paul, Susan Collins, and Lisa Murkowski) — voted to terminate Trump's previous national emergency declaration on fentanyl trafficking, the legal pretext for imposing a 25% tariff on Canadian imports. That narrow vote was a rare attempt at congressional oversight, an effort to claw back authority that many now realize has been misused or stretched way too far.
On Thursday, U.S. Senators Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA), senior members of the Senate Finance Committee, introduced legislation to reaffirm the key role of Congress in U.S. trade policy.
But that was the Senate. In the House of Representatives, no such courage has emerged among the Republican leadership. A few congressional members have introduced legislation to rein in the president's power to use a 1930 trade law as the basis for unilateral trade authority. But Speaker Mike Johnson and others in the Republican Party appear unwilling to challenge the executive's expanding use of trade authorities granted to it by Congress, even as the scope and complexity of these tariffs risk spiraling far beyond the federal government's ability to execute on them.
The consequences of that passivity are real, in the form of the coming delays at ports, lawsuits by importers, arbitrary or uneven enforcement, and disrupted supply chains — economic dislocation not just for foreign producers, but for the very American manufacturers and workers the policy claims to support.
The first real tariffs stress test is now underway. If implementation falters, the economic impact may be less about tariffs themselves and more about the confusion, instability, and the credibility losses that follow. Policy by proclamation is no substitute for execution, and execution, especially at this scale, requires more than belief — it requires institutions that work, systems that are ready, and oversight that functions. Right now, we have neither the capacity nor the clarity to pull this off. Congress has the tools to fix that. But time is running out.
—By Dewardric McNeal, Managing Director and Senior Policy Analyst at Longview Global, and a CNBC contributer
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Three U.S. aid workers were laid off while in Myanmar helping the rescue and recovery from the country's massive earthquake, a former senior staffer said, as the Trump administration's dismantling of foreign aid affects its disaster response.
After travelling to the Southeast Asian nation, the three officials were told late this week they would be let go, Marcia Wong, a former official at the U.S. Agency for International Development, told Reuters.
"This team is working incredibly hard, focused on getting humanitarian aid to those in need. To get news of your imminent termination — how can that not be demoralizing?" said Wong, former deputy administrator of USAID's Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance, which oversees Washington's disease response efforts overseas.
President Donald Trump's government has pledged at least $9 million to Myanmar after the magnitude-7.7 quake, which has killed more than 3,300. But his administration's massive cuts to USAID have hindered its ability to respond, while China, Russia, India and other nations have rushed in assistance.
The Trump administration has moved to fire nearly all USAID staff in recent weeks, as billionaire Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency has slashed funding and dismissed contractors across the federal bureaucracy in what it calls an attack on wasteful spending.
The three USAID workers have been sleeping on the streets in the earthquake zone, Wong said, adding that their terminations would take effect in a few months. Residents have been sleeping outside for fear of aftershocks and further building collapses.
Wong said she is in contact with remaining USAID staff and that she heard about the terminations after an all-staff meeting on Friday. Former USAID staff say most of the people who would have coordinated the response have been let go, while third-party implementing partners have lost contracts.
The U.S. State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Friday rejected criticism that Washington was slow to respond to the March 28 earthquake because USAID was dismantled.
Rather, he told reporters in Brussels, Myanmar was not "the easiest place to work," saying the military government does not like the United States and prevents it from operating in the country as it wants to.
The United Nations has said the junta was limiting humanitarian aid.
Rubio said the U.S. would no longer be the world's top humanitarian donor, calling on other wealthy nations to assist Myanmar.
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Pope Francis on Sunday made his first public appearance since being discharged from hospital two weeks ago after treatment for double pneumonia, entering St. Peter's Square at the Vatican in a wheelchair to greet crowds.
Francis, 88, had been out of public view since March 23, when he gave a short greeting before leaving Rome's Gemelli hospital after more than five weeks of treatment in the most serious health crisis of his 12-year papacy.
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An expanding tariff fight could push the US job market from meh to miserable.
Michelle Budnick, a documentary filmmaker in New York, worries that her search will get harder. The 47-year-old has been looking for full-time production work for over two years.
Budnick told Business Insider that the uncertainty created by steeper trade barriers — and the attendant specter of weaker consumer spending — will likely further reduce how much companies are willing to spend on production.
"It's like pouring tar on top of syrup. We're just going to drown under this," said Budnick, referring to workers like herself in creative fields.
While it's too soon to say precisely what economic contrails might become visible across the job market after President Donald Trump's tariff announcement on April 2, economists told Business Insider that uncertainty will likely push some employers to curtail hiring.
"It's kind of a frozen market," Andrew Flowers, chief economist at Appcast, told BI. "There's going to be even less hiring and maybe an increase in firing."
For months, the prospect of a trade war has sat like unexploded ordnance alongside some companies' business plans. Now that Trump is moving ahead with tariffs, including a baseline 10% levy, the impact could be profound.
"We're starting to see maybe more feelings that, 'Hey, this wasn't a negotiation tactic, and that these tariffs are likely here to stay,'" Cory Stahle, an economist at the Indeed Hiring Lab, told BI.
Flowers said that some of the sluggishness that has afflicted white-collar hiring for years could overtake other parts of the job market.
He said a few areas that had been strong, like healthcare, are likely to remain so. Yet industries that had been relative bright spots, including retail, transportation and warehousing, and some corners of manufacturing — one purported domestic beneficiary of tariffs — could get whacked, Flowers said.
US employers are already bringing on workers at the slowest pace in nearly a decade, Stahle said. On top of that, the number of job postings in the US has declined, he noted.
At the end of December, listings had risen to about 12% above their pre-COVID-19 levels, Stahle said. Then, from early January to the end of March, openings drifted downward to about 8.2% above their pre-pandemic levels.
Flowers said industries like finance, insurance, tech, and professional services, which he said have been experiencing a "white-collar recession" for two to three years, might not get hit as hard because they're already somewhat weak and because the impact of tariffs might be indirect.
One bright spot is that overall layoffs remain low, even with broad cuts in the offing for federal workers.
However, Flowers said, the biggest impact on workers could come from lackluster hiring.
"There will be job cuts because of these tariffs, but almost proportionally more impactful is the fact that there won't be hiring because of these tariffs," he said.
Flowers said in a worst-case scenario, where tariff retaliation spills into a tit-for-tat global trade war, layoffs would be likely.
"The steepness of the tariff rates have spooked investors and have spooked business leaders," Flowers said.
Any impact will be in addition to the job and spending cuts the White House is attempting to make in government agencies through the Department of Government Efficiency advisory group run by Elon Musk.
A White House spokesperson said in a statement to BI that tariffs are a "critical" part of the president's economic agenda.
"The administration is also slashing regulations, pushing tax cuts, and unleashing American energy to drive down energy costs — policies that will also usher in economic and job growth as they did during the first Trump presidency," the spokesperson said.
Stahle said a greater risk than the hit from tariffs could be the uncertainty they create, especially if that leads businesses to pull back on hiring and spending or pushes consumers to lock away their wallets.
"If people are feeling that it's going to absolutely destroy things, and they act off that expectation, it could end up being a self-fulfilling prophecy," he said, referring to the fallout from tariffs.
That precarious atmosphere was increasingly evident Friday. The March jobs report showed greater gains in US hiring than forecast, alongside downward revisions to job growth for the start of the year.
Yet, global markets plunged for a second day, with the benchmark S&P 500 index losing more than 10% in two days.
Many investors are now looking past pre-tariff data points and focusing instead on the prospects for a business environment where global trade might be hemmed in by protectionist tendencies.
"Month-old data increasingly feels like ancient history now," Stahle said, referring to the March jobs report.
For Budnick, the filmmaker, a key concern is that tariffs could make business owners less willing to spend on the type of content she produces. Already, she's struggled. Prior to February 2023, Budnick hadn't gone without full-time work for a dozen years.
"You wonder what the future is going to hold," she said. "Where is this going to go if people cannot support their families?"
Do you have a story to share about your job hunt? Contact this reporter at tparadis@businessinsider.com.
Jump to
I'm from Pennsylvania and studied interior design before moving to LA for work. My husband, Justin, is from Chicago and studied architecture before making the same move.
We met in 2010 at Walt Disney Imagineering, a segment of The Walt Disney Company that focuses on theme park design.
Fifteen years later, we're based in Thailand and run our own business. We love the pace of life in Asia.
It was a pivotal moment for us. Not only were we working in a different country, but we could travel all over Asia.
We started to find our love for travel and experiencing different Asian cultures, including visiting Thailand several times. We moved back to LA in 2016 but were eager to find a reason to return to Asia.
I designed interiors for private jets at Gulfstream in New York City, and Justin designed restaurants in Miami before his job took us to Singapore.
We had a lovely life there, especially in terms of safety, efficiency, and cleanliness, but we still hadn't moved on from our US-based corporate lifestyle.
We worked around the clock, barely spending much downtime together because it was all about making money to afford to live the Singapore lifestyle.
Our condo was nice, but we have a Rottweiler named Raja, and sharing common walls was also hard.
We immediately fell in love and began speaking with real estate agents because we wanted to buy a vacation home there.
Then, we started thinking about quality of life and our end goal. Did we want to keep climbing the corporate ladder, or focus on our happiness and creative freedom?
We live where some of the most recent season of "The White Lotus" was filmed.
We love the show and were thrilled to hear that season three was being filmed in Koh Samui. Several of our friends were on set as extras.
We can't wait for the finale. It's been exciting to recognize familiar places on the island featured on TV.
Our visa is called a 'Smart Visa.' Our program is designed to attract startup entrepreneurs investing in targeted industries.
Moving our dog was the most important thing. We'd had support with our relocations to Shanghai and Singapore, but we had to do it ourselves for Thailand.
Ever since we decided to move here, we haven't looked back.
House hunting in Koh Samui is very different from LA. There's no centralized database; less than 50% of properties are listed online. Many homes are sold through word of mouth.
Renovations were difficult, too. Coming from an urban environment with much more routine, structure, and predictability, getting used to doing something on an island can be challenging.
The experience made us much more adaptable and flexible. Whereas things in the past may have been frustrating, now we can laugh it off.
We took Mandarin lessons when we lived in China and thought they might help, but they've made it more confusing, as some words are similar but have completely different meanings.
We want to be conversational in Thai, but English is fairly widespread here.
We run a studio called SnobBirds. We work remotely, with most projects based in the US, Singapore, and Hong Kong. We have a truly flexible schedule and are available for clients whenever they need us.
Our work is entirely project-based, so our hours fluctuate. Some weeks are intense (60+ hours), while others are lighter (20 hours). We regularly worked 70-80 hours a week in our corporate jobs.
The biggest difference now is control — we choose projects we're passionate about and pass on those that aren't a good fit. When work slows down, we can fully embrace island life.
We do a lot of road trips and take the ferry to the mainland to drive into Thailand.
Koh Samui is quite diverse. The exposure to the international community is part of what drove us to come to this island because you get a taste of both worlds.
We came here because we wanted to experience a new culture and foods and learn a new language. We didn't want to be comfortable.
You can get great Thai food for under $10; great seafood along the coast is a little more expensive.
The food quality is excellent. However, cheese and imported beer, wine, and spirits are 50% to 75% more expensive. There's also variety, as there's a lot of international food on the island, especially from the expat community.
The community is very tight-knit. We don't know many places where you'll shop at the same grocery store in the morning with a local restaurant owner.
We bought our house in LA, now a rental, for just over $1M in 2017 by taking out a loan and 30-year mortgage. The house in Koh Samui was one-third the cost, and we purchased it outright with cash in 2023.
Our cost of living in Koh Samui is significantly lower since our house is paid off, and we share a car without a car payment.
Since we still have our house in California, if we need to split our time more for our business or family, we can.
Our families have been great about visiting us and love having the excuse to experience more of Asia.
We imagine we'll return home at some point, but there's no end date right now.
Jump to
Last week, nationwide protests targeted Elon Musk for his role in dismantling government agencies and firing federal workers through the White House DOGE Office.
This week, they are targeting the man who gave him that role: President Donald Trump.
In coordinated demonstrations that organizers said took place across all 50 states, the "Hands Off!" protest accused Trump and his administration of championing policies that benefit the rich while making life harder for everyone else.
Business Insider sent reporters to protests in different parts of the country to hear from them directly. Many said they were most worried about the economy and their retirement investments, which have dwindled in tandem with Trump's tariff announcements.
Trump says the tariffs will help jump-start US manufacturing, promote US goods, protect jobs and ultimately create more of them. He has urged Americans to wait out the initial market volatility and price increases.
That has, however, so far done little to alleviate fears. Here's what protesters told us and what surprised us the most.
As I rode the train from Brooklyn to Midtown Manhattan, the subway car filled with protesters, their cardboard signs bumping up against umbrellas on a rainy Saturday in New York.
By 1 p.m., the 42nd Street station was even more crowded than usual. Older people clutched slippery canes, and young kids clutched their parents' hands. One man wore a once trendy Harris Walz camo hat. Another waved a small American flag, an unusual display of patriotism at anti-Trump rallies.
The damp horde of protesters shuffled toward Bryant Park, and in some ways, it all felt familiar. There were chants about abortion, signs featuring the face of now-deceased Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a progressive icon, and a steady cacophony of car horns.
But some things were different this time.
For one, the crowd looked older, with middle-aged Americans seeming to outnumber the 20-somethings that dominated rallies during the pandemic. It makes sense since many Americans are watching their retirement savings dwindle in the face of crashing markets and worry that staff cuts to the Social Security Administration could impact the crucial safety net.
While the anti-government protests held during Trump's first term focused on social issues — like abortion and civil rights issues — many of the signs today targeted the economy.
Most of the people I spoke to didn't want to share their last names because they worried about their privacy in the current political environment. Yet they weren't shy about their rage and despair.
Dorothy Auer, 62, told me she wished people would get angrier.
"I've been working for over 40 years, and I looked at my investments yesterday — my retirement plan — and I literally don't think I'll ever be able to retire," she said, starting to choke up.
Wiping her eyes with her free hand — the other held a black and white sign bashing Musk — Auer told me it's distressing to see a man of such wealth "turn around and crap on us."
Jian, 33, held a sign that read, "Tariffs are killing my 401(k)," but he told me he's most upset about what's happening to his retired father.
"My dad just lost about 25% of his savings in the last three days because of the tariffs," he said.
It's not just the economy, of course, that brought thousands of people out to Midtown Manhattan.
Penny, 54, said the Trump administration affected virtually every issue she cares about. Even so, we ended up talking about Musk.
"I'm horrified that a person who wasn't born here, wasn't elected, seems to be getting carte blanche to do whatever he wants in our government," she said. "How did he get a security clearance?"
Most of those I talked to as they slowly trudged toward Madison Square Park didn't think the protest would change Trump's mind.
A few said they hoped Congress would pay attention, but more than that, people said they felt they needed to do something.
"Even if it's sort of hopeless right now, at least it's showing people that we're here," Pyare, 49, told me. "And that we don't like it."
Another week, another protest.
On Saturday, I attended the Hands Off! rally in Novi, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit where 55% of the vote went to Kamala Harris during the election. Thousands of people showed up.
The crowd was emotionally charged and united by the spirit of collective action. Many attendees said they were first-time protesters. The Tesla Takedown protests I attended last weekend seemed somber by comparison. Protesters here got loud.
"Call me Old Lady Army Fighting for Democracy," one 66-year-old woman, who didn't want to give her real name, told me. She held up a sign she had made. It was a charcoal drawing of the Statue of Liberty, whose hands covered her eyes in shame.
"I just copied this off of Facebook," she said. But to her it symbolized that "everything that our country stands for is being destroyed, and the world is looking at us."
Liana Gettel, 58, said she was outraged for several reasons, including the administration's stance on abortion. She said she had an abortion 29 years ago.
"I had lost a child. The child would not come out on its own. So I had to have a procedure. Had I not had that procedure, I wouldn't be here," she said. "And that's what they want to block, is things like that?"
Protesters targeted many different issues, including abortion, trans, and minority rights. One protester holding up a sign for trans rights said, "Trans people are just the appetizer, but everyone will be on the menu now."
The line echoed remarks made by human rights advocate Channyn Lynne Parker at the Rally for Trans Visibility in Chicago last weekend.
Unlike protests during Trump's first term, which focused on social issues, however, many people today were also worried about the president's economic policies.
Matt Watts said he was protesting Musk's takeover of Social Security and Trump's tariffs on "countries that don't deserve it." After the stock market began to take a hit from all the talk of tariffs, Watts said he took his money out of his 401(k) and invested it into a more stable fund. "I'm getting ready to retire pretty soon. I've got to count on that savings," he said.
Most protesters were middle-aged or older, but they captured some younger activists with their energy.
Yajat Verma, 18, said he hadn't known about the protest but was driving by with a friend when he saw the crowd. He decided to join in and started handing out water bottles to protesters.
"Everyone should be protesting," he said.
Protesters crowding together near the San Francisco City Hall had much to be angry about.
On one end of the 150,000 square-foot Civic Center Plaza, a man's voice boomed through the microphone about the dangers of fascism and how it was time for people to go "on the offensive."
On the other end was Michelle Gutierrez Vo, president of the California Nurses Association, warning folks about Trump's move to strip federal workers of their union rights.
With so many grievances against the current administration in the air, some protesters resorted to bullet-point lists of the issues on large signs.
That spoke to one of the concerns for Maria, a 67-year-old San Francisco resident who declined to provide her last name.
"My focus has been a lot about the environment," Maria told BI, later adding, "There's so much going on right now, but I know it's important to try and stay focused on one thing and hope other people are focused on the other things."
Maria's friend chimed in, saying she was worried about her Social Security, which she said she had been paying into for six decades.
For Frida Ruiz, 18, a student at the University of San Francisco who held a sign that read "Billionaire Cucks," Trump's stance on immigration hits close to home as a daughter of Mexican immigrant parents.
For George Chikovani, a 42-year-old SF resident, who came to protest with his wife Lisa Isola, 40, and their three-year-old and 10-months-old children, his most personal issue was the Ukraine war.
"My grandmother is from Ukraine and then I grew up in Georgia, so that cause has felt very personal to me. I still have family and friends there," Chikovani said.
At least 7,500 people gathered near city hall on Saturday afternoon, according to an officer with the San Francisco Police Department.
As my colleague observed in New York, older millennials and seniors made up large swaths of the crowd. Some came out in full costumes, sticking true to SF's colorful character.
Maria, who is also a member of Third Act, a left-leaning political advocacy group focused on mobilizing senior voters, said she was encouraged by people who came out to protest but was "hoping to see more."
"We need more younger people to come," she said.
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Cathie Wood's ARK Investment Management took advantage of the $5.4 trillion U.S. equities market sell-off and purchased over 83,000 shares of Coinbase (COIN), increasing exposure to the crypto exchange even as prices dipped sharply across the board.
The total shares purchased were worth more than $13 million, taking Friday's closing price for Coinbase.
According to ARK's daily trading disclosure for April 4, Wood's flagship ARK Innovation ETF (ARKK) bought nearly 55,000 Coinbase shares, with additional purchases coming from the ARK Next Generation Internet ETF (ARKW) and the ARK Fintech Innovation ETF (ARKF).
The timing is notable. Coinbase shares have slipped more than 12% during the market rout, while bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies showed resilience. The CoinDesk 20 (CD20) index dropped by 5.8% in the same period. The sell-off came after U.S. President Donald Trump unveiled his reciprocal tariffs against nearly every country in the world.
Read more: Bitcoin Begins to Decouple From Nasdaq as U.S. Stocks Crumble
Francisco is a reporter for CoinDesk with a passion for cryptocurrencies and personal finance. Before joining CoinDesk he worked at major financial and crypto publications. He owns bitcoin, ether, solana, and PAXG above CoinDesk's $1,000 disclosure threshold.
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Bitcoin showed signs of decoupling from stocks last week, but today's drop below $80,000 suggests BTC and altcoins are primed for a sell-off when US equities markets open.
Last week, Bitcoin (BTC) began showing early signs of decoupling from the US stock markets. Bitcoin was relatively flat over the week, while the S&P 500 plunged by 9%. The sell-off was triggered following US President Donald Trump's April 2 global tariff announcement, which escalated further on April 4 as China retaliated with new tariffs on US goods. Even gold was not spared and was down 1.9% for the week.
Alpine Fox founder Mike Alfred highlighted in a post on X that a gold bull market is bullish for Bitcoin. During previous cycles, gold led Bitcoin for a short while, but eventually, Bitcoin caught up and grew 10 times or more than gold. He added that it would not be any different this time.
Crypto market data daily view. Source: Coin360
Although the short-term outperformance of Bitcoin is an encouraging sign, traders should remain cautious until further clarity emerges on the macroeconomic front. If the US stock markets witness another round of selling, the cryptocurrency markets may also come under pressure.
A handful of altcoins are showing strength on the charts, but waiting for the overall sentiment to turn bullish before jumping could be a better strategy. If Bitcoin breaks above its immediate resistance, what are the top cryptocurrencies that may follow it higher?
Bitcoin bulls have failed to push the price above the resistance line, but they have not ceded much ground to the bears. This suggests that the bulls have kept up the pressure.
BTC/USDT daily chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
The 20-day exponential moving average ($84,241) is flattening out, and the relative strength index (RSI) is just below the midpoint, signaling a balance between supply and demand.
This advantage will tilt in favor of the bulls on a break and close above the resistance line. There is resistance at $89,000, but if the level gets taken out, the BTC/USDT pair could ascend toward $100,000.
The $80,000 is the vital support to watch out for on the downside. If this level cracks, the pair could plummet to $76,606 and then to $73,777.
BTC/USDT 4-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
The pair has been consolidating between $81,000 and $88,500. The moving averages on the 4-hour chart are sloping down marginally, and the RSI is just below the midpoint, signaling the continuation of the range-bound action in the near term.
If buyers push the price above $85,000, the pair could rally to $88,500. This level could attract sellers, but the pair may jump to $95,000 if the bulls prevail.
The bears will be back in the driver's seat if the price breaks below the $81,000 to $80,000 support zone. The pair may then dump to $76,606.
Pi Network (PI) has been in a strong downtrend since topping out at $3 on Feb. 26. The relief rally on April 5 shows the first signs of buying at lower levels.
PI/USDT daily chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
Any recovery is expected to face selling at the 20-day EMA (0.85), which remains the key short-term level to watch out for. If the PI/USDT pair does not give up much ground from the 20-day EMA, it indicates that the bulls are holding on to their positions. That opens the doors for a rally above the 20-day EMA. The pair could then jump to the 50% Fibonacci retracement level of $1.10 and next to the 61.8% retracement level of $1.26.
The $0.40 level is the critical support on the downside. A break and close below $0.40 could sink the pair to $0.10.
PI/USDT 4-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
The 4-hour chart shows that the bears are defending the 50-simple moving average, but a minor positive is that the bulls are trying to keep the pair above the 20-EMA. If the price rebounds off the 20-EMA, the bulls will attempt to kick the pair above $0.80. If they do that, the pair could travel to $1.20.
On the contrary, a break and close below the 20-EMA suggests that the bears have kept up the pressure. The negative momentum could pick up on a break below $0.54. The pair may then retest the vital support at $0.40.
OKB (OKB) turned up sharply on April 4 and closed above the moving averages, indicating that the bulls are attempting a comeback.
OKB/USDT daily chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
The up move continued, and the bulls pushed the price above the short-term resistance at $54 on April 6. The OKB/USDT pair could reach the resistance line of the descending channel, which is likely to attract sellers. If the price turns down sharply and breaks below $54, the pair may oscillate inside the channel for a few more days.
On the other hand, if buyers do not give up much ground from the resistance line, it increases the likelihood of a break above the channel. The pair could climb to $64 and then to $68.
OKB/USDT 4-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
The pair will complete an inverted head-and-shoulders pattern on a break and close above the neckline. The up move may face selling at the resistance line, but on the way down, if buyers flip the neckline into support, it increases the possibility of a break above the resistance line. If that happens, the pair could start its march toward the pattern target of $70.
Sellers will have to fiercely defend the neckline and quickly pull the price below the 20-EMA to prevent the rally. The pair may drop to the 50-SMA and thereafter to $45.
Related: Solana TVL hits new high in SOL terms, DEX volumes show strength — Will SOL price react?
GateToken (GT) has been finding support at the 50-day SMA ($22.05) for a few days, which is an important level to watch out for.
GT/USDT daily chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
The flattish moving averages and the RSI just below the midpoint do not give a clear advantage either to the bulls or the bears. A break and close above $23.18 could push the price to $24. This remains the key overhead resistance for the bears to defend because a break above it could catapult the GT/USDT pair to $26.
This positive view will be invalidated in the short term if the price breaks and maintains below the 50-day SMA. The pair may sink to $21.28 and then to $20.79.
GT/USDT 4-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
The pair turned down from the resistance line of the descending channel pattern, indicating selling on rallies. The break below the moving averages suggests the pair may remain inside the channel for some more time.
Buyers will gain the upper hand on a break and close above the resistance line. Such a move suggests that the corrective phase may be over. The pair could rally to $23.18 and then to $24.
Cosmos (ATOM) is trying to form a bottom but is facing selling at $5.15. A minor positive in favor of the bulls is that they have not allowed the price to break below the moving averages.
ATOM/USDT daily chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
If the price rebounds off the moving averages with force, it signals buying on dips. That improves the prospects of a break above the $5.15 resistance. If that happens, the ATOM/USDT pair could surge toward $6.50 and then to $7.17.
Contrarily, a break and close below the moving averages suggests a possible range formation in the near term. The pair could swing between $5.15 and $4.15 for a while. Sellers will be back in command on a slide below $4.15.
ATOM/USDT 4-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
The bulls and the bears are witnessing a tough battle at the 20-EMA on the 4-hour chart. If the price remains below the 20-EMA, the pair could tumble to the 50-day SMA and later to $4.15. Buyers are expected to fiercely defend the $4.15 level.
Instead, if the price stays above the 20-day EMA, it signals solid demand at lower levels. The bulls will then try to push the pair to $5.15. A break and close above this resistance could start a new up move.
This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.
Bitcoin showed signs of decoupling from stocks last week, but today's drop below $80,000 suggests BTC and altcoins are primed for a sell-off when US equities markets open.
Last week, Bitcoin (BTC) began showing early signs of decoupling from the US stock markets. Bitcoin was relatively flat over the week, while the S&P 500 plunged by 9%. The sell-off was triggered following US President Donald Trump's April 2 global tariff announcement, which escalated further on April 4 as China retaliated with new tariffs on US goods. Even gold was not spared and was down 1.9% for the week.
Alpine Fox founder Mike Alfred highlighted in a post on X that a gold bull market is bullish for Bitcoin. During previous cycles, gold led Bitcoin for a short while, but eventually, Bitcoin caught up and grew 10 times or more than gold. He added that it would not be any different this time.
Crypto market data daily view. Source: Coin360
Although the short-term outperformance of Bitcoin is an encouraging sign, traders should remain cautious until further clarity emerges on the macroeconomic front. If the US stock markets witness another round of selling, the cryptocurrency markets may also come under pressure.
A handful of altcoins are showing strength on the charts, but waiting for the overall sentiment to turn bullish before jumping could be a better strategy. If Bitcoin breaks above its immediate resistance, what are the top cryptocurrencies that may follow it higher?
Bitcoin bulls have failed to push the price above the resistance line, but they have not ceded much ground to the bears. This suggests that the bulls have kept up the pressure.
BTC/USDT daily chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
The 20-day exponential moving average ($84,241) is flattening out, and the relative strength index (RSI) is just below the midpoint, signaling a balance between supply and demand.
This advantage will tilt in favor of the bulls on a break and close above the resistance line. There is resistance at $89,000, but if the level gets taken out, the BTC/USDT pair could ascend toward $100,000.
The $80,000 is the vital support to watch out for on the downside. If this level cracks, the pair could plummet to $76,606 and then to $73,777.
BTC/USDT 4-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
The pair has been consolidating between $81,000 and $88,500. The moving averages on the 4-hour chart are sloping down marginally, and the RSI is just below the midpoint, signaling the continuation of the range-bound action in the near term.
If buyers push the price above $85,000, the pair could rally to $88,500. This level could attract sellers, but the pair may jump to $95,000 if the bulls prevail.
The bears will be back in the driver's seat if the price breaks below the $81,000 to $80,000 support zone. The pair may then dump to $76,606.
Pi Network (PI) has been in a strong downtrend since topping out at $3 on Feb. 26. The relief rally on April 5 shows the first signs of buying at lower levels.
PI/USDT daily chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
Any recovery is expected to face selling at the 20-day EMA (0.85), which remains the key short-term level to watch out for. If the PI/USDT pair does not give up much ground from the 20-day EMA, it indicates that the bulls are holding on to their positions. That opens the doors for a rally above the 20-day EMA. The pair could then jump to the 50% Fibonacci retracement level of $1.10 and next to the 61.8% retracement level of $1.26.
The $0.40 level is the critical support on the downside. A break and close below $0.40 could sink the pair to $0.10.
PI/USDT 4-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
The 4-hour chart shows that the bears are defending the 50-simple moving average, but a minor positive is that the bulls are trying to keep the pair above the 20-EMA. If the price rebounds off the 20-EMA, the bulls will attempt to kick the pair above $0.80. If they do that, the pair could travel to $1.20.
On the contrary, a break and close below the 20-EMA suggests that the bears have kept up the pressure. The negative momentum could pick up on a break below $0.54. The pair may then retest the vital support at $0.40.
OKB (OKB) turned up sharply on April 4 and closed above the moving averages, indicating that the bulls are attempting a comeback.
OKB/USDT daily chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
The up move continued, and the bulls pushed the price above the short-term resistance at $54 on April 6. The OKB/USDT pair could reach the resistance line of the descending channel, which is likely to attract sellers. If the price turns down sharply and breaks below $54, the pair may oscillate inside the channel for a few more days.
On the other hand, if buyers do not give up much ground from the resistance line, it increases the likelihood of a break above the channel. The pair could climb to $64 and then to $68.
OKB/USDT 4-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
The pair will complete an inverted head-and-shoulders pattern on a break and close above the neckline. The up move may face selling at the resistance line, but on the way down, if buyers flip the neckline into support, it increases the possibility of a break above the resistance line. If that happens, the pair could start its march toward the pattern target of $70.
Sellers will have to fiercely defend the neckline and quickly pull the price below the 20-EMA to prevent the rally. The pair may drop to the 50-SMA and thereafter to $45.
Related: Solana TVL hits new high in SOL terms, DEX volumes show strength — Will SOL price react?
GateToken (GT) has been finding support at the 50-day SMA ($22.05) for a few days, which is an important level to watch out for.
GT/USDT daily chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
The flattish moving averages and the RSI just below the midpoint do not give a clear advantage either to the bulls or the bears. A break and close above $23.18 could push the price to $24. This remains the key overhead resistance for the bears to defend because a break above it could catapult the GT/USDT pair to $26.
This positive view will be invalidated in the short term if the price breaks and maintains below the 50-day SMA. The pair may sink to $21.28 and then to $20.79.
GT/USDT 4-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
The pair turned down from the resistance line of the descending channel pattern, indicating selling on rallies. The break below the moving averages suggests the pair may remain inside the channel for some more time.
Buyers will gain the upper hand on a break and close above the resistance line. Such a move suggests that the corrective phase may be over. The pair could rally to $23.18 and then to $24.
Cosmos (ATOM) is trying to form a bottom but is facing selling at $5.15. A minor positive in favor of the bulls is that they have not allowed the price to break below the moving averages.
ATOM/USDT daily chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
If the price rebounds off the moving averages with force, it signals buying on dips. That improves the prospects of a break above the $5.15 resistance. If that happens, the ATOM/USDT pair could surge toward $6.50 and then to $7.17.
Contrarily, a break and close below the moving averages suggests a possible range formation in the near term. The pair could swing between $5.15 and $4.15 for a while. Sellers will be back in command on a slide below $4.15.
ATOM/USDT 4-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
The bulls and the bears are witnessing a tough battle at the 20-EMA on the 4-hour chart. If the price remains below the 20-EMA, the pair could tumble to the 50-day SMA and later to $4.15. Buyers are expected to fiercely defend the $4.15 level.
Instead, if the price stays above the 20-day EMA, it signals solid demand at lower levels. The bulls will then try to push the pair to $5.15. A break and close above this resistance could start a new up move.
This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.
The price of Ethereum (ETH), the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, has collapsed by 10%, according to data provided by CoinGecko.
The altcoin has plunged to an intraday low of $1,601, and the sell-off is seemingly getting worse.
Bitcoin, the leading cryptocurrency, has also plunged below the $79,000 level, reaching a new intraday low of $78,882.
The cryptocurrency market is getting crushed after the U.S. stock market lost more than $6 trillion in two days earlier this week.
Even though Bitcoin performed surprisingly well during the aforementioned crash, it is now showing its risk-on side once again.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here are not investment advice; they are provided for informational purposes only. The opinions expressed by our writers are their own and do not represent the views of U.Today. Every investment and all trading involves risk, so you should always perform your own research prior to making decisions. U.Today is not liable for any financial losses incurred while trading cryptocurrencies. We do not recommend investing money you cannot afford to lose.
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As the crypto market prepares for turbulence amid the tariff wars, the NFT market seems to be in a worse position.
Trading volumes are declining and marketplaces shutting down.
The once-hyped world of non-fungible tokens, which analysts once boldly projected could balloon to over $264 billion by 2032, now seems to be limping along. Weekly trading volumes have been falling like dominoes for weeks, scaring off capital and dragging the market back to levels not seen since its explosive 2020 debut.
Blockchain analytics firm DappRadar shows that trading volumes in 2021 were riding high, hitting nearly $3 billion.
Fast-forward to the first quarter of 2025. That figure has nosedived 93% to just $23.8 million as “active traders have vanished,” blockchain analyst Sara Gherghelas noted.
“This rapid growth coincided with global shifts driven by the COVID-19 pandemic, accelerating the adoption of digital platforms and pushing artists to explore innovative methods of engaging with their audiences. However, three years later, the hype around Art NFTs has significantly decreased.”
Sara Gherghelas
The data backs her up. In 2024, trading volume dropped nearly 20% from the year prior, while total sales declined 18%. As Gherghelas put it in her 2025 research, it was “one of the worst-performing years since 2020.”
In an interview with crypto.news, OutsetPR's legal officer Alice Frei implied that regulation is still a mess as “governments are still undecided on how to classify NFTs.”
In the U.S., they're often treated like securities, meaning platforms must walk a legal tightrope. In the U.K., they're seen more like collectibles under intellectual property law.
“These are examples of leading countries with clear cryptocurrency regulations; in many other countries, the situation is even more uncertain. This lack of regulatory clarity creates an environment that is ripe for fraud and erodes investor confidence. Until there is more consistency, NFT adoption will remain stagnant.”
Alice Frei
Frei also highlighted a deeper issue: beyond the worlds of cryptocurrency and gaming, NFTs are still “trying to prove that they offer real value.”
“In theory, they could revolutionize several industries — think concert tickets that prevent scalping, digital IDs for online verification, or property deeds stored on the blockchain. But in practice, most NFTs are still largely speculative assets.”
Alice Frei
Speaking of gaming, where NFTs have the most potential for mainstream use, their adoption is also struggling, Frei pointed out, recalling that Ubisoft's Project Quartz, an attempt to integrate NFTs into AAA games, was met with “resistance from players, forcing the company to shut it down.”
Frei notes that gamers are “hesitant about digital assets that feel more like currency than a genuine addition to their experience.”
If the data wasn't already bleak, March brought more bad news: a string of marketplace shutdowns added fuel to the fire. Among them, South Korean tech giant LG shut down its LG Art Lab, which was launched just three years ago at the height of the NFT mania. The company didn't share detailed reasons, only saying that “it is the right time to shift our focus and explore new opportunities.”
Just a week later, X2Y2 — a former OpenSea rival that once boasted $5.6 billion in lifetime volume — also ceased its operations, citing a “90% shrinkage of NFT trading volume from its peak in 2021” and struggles to remain competitive in the space.
Then came Bybit. The crypto exchange, still reeling from a $1.46 billion theft linked to North Korea-affiliated hackers, quietly closed its platform.
Emily Bao, head of web3 at Bybit, said the decision would allow the company to “enhance the overall user experience while concentrating on the next generation of blockchain-powered solutions.”
Amid the wave of closures, Frei says the NFT market now “feels like a revolving door.”
“Take Bored Ape Yacht Club, for example – once the pinnacle of NFT status, its prices have dramatically dropped. At the peak, a single Bored Ape sold for $400,000, but now some are barely fetching $50,000. The problem lies in the fact that many NFT projects rely on hype rather than actual utility. If people cannot see long-term value, they are unlikely to return.”
Alice Frei
Coinbase, too, seems to be pulling back. While it hasn't officially shut down its NFT platform, all signs suggest it's shifting focus. During an earnings call in early 2023, President and COO Emilie Choi indicated that the company sees “medium and long-term opportunities” in NFTs. But its real focus seems to be behind Base, its layer-2 blockchain network.
Coinbase declined to comment on its position as NFT activity continues to decline, despite multiple requests from crypto.news.
The OutsetPR legal officer thinks that with the market's current trajectory, smaller platforms are unlikely to weather the storm. “Smaller platforms will continue to shut down, leaving only a few dominant players like OpenSea and Blur,” she said.
She explained that the shift is being driven by two major forces. First, tighter regulations are on the horizon, which will likely bring an end to the “Wild West days of NFTs.” Second, the gaming sector may offer NFTs a lifeline—but it's still a narrow one. As Frei puts it, gaming may be NFTs' “last hope,” though developers will still need to avoid “pay-to-win mechanics that could turn players away.”
“The hype is over. If NFTs are to survive, they will need to prove that they offer more than just expensive pictures on the blockchain,” Frei concluded.
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Bitcoin just notched its worst first quarter in a decade, falling 11.7% as markets struggled to understand the new administration's economic agenda.
The performance ranked 12th out of the past 15 first quarters, according to NYDIG Research's data.
The drawdown invites a familiar question in crypto circles: is the cycle over? The last time bitcoin started the year this poorly was in 2015, during a prolonged slump following the 2013 peak and after the collapse of Mt. Gox, according to NYDIG. Back then, prices recovered modestly over the rest of the year before surging in 2016.
In the first quarter of 2020, amid a market sell-off tied to fears surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, BTC saw a 9.4% drawdown but then recovered to end the year up over 300%. In other years with negative Q1 returns—like 2014, 2018 and 2022—bitcoin ended the year down sharply, coinciding with the tail ends of previous bull cycles, the research note said.
This time around, the backdrop is murky. Cryptocurrency prices surged after Donald Trump won the U.S. election in November after running a pro-crypto campaign. While under the Trump administration, the sector has been gaining greater regulatory clarity, and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) backed off a number of lawsuits against crypto firms, it isn't all bullish.
Trump unveiled his reciprocal tariffs against nearly every country in the world last week, leading to a massive $5.4 trillion U.S. equities market wipeout in just two days. This led to the S&P 500 index's lowest level in 11 months and the Nasdaq 100's entry into bear market territory. While bitcoin has outperformed so far, what will happen after Monday's opening bell is unclear.
Historically, a weak Q1 doesn't always spell doom for BTC, NYDIG's data shows. The asset has bounced back in half of the years when it started in the red. The recent macroeconomic backdrop has seen analysts raise recession odds, which could test BTC's role as a “U.S. isolation hedge.”Read more: Chart of The Week: Will April Bring Good Luck or Fool's Hope for Bitcoin?
Francisco is a reporter for CoinDesk with a passion for cryptocurrencies and personal finance. Before joining CoinDesk he worked at major financial and crypto publications. He owns bitcoin, ether, solana, and PAXG above CoinDesk's $1,000 disclosure threshold.
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Bitcoin just notched its worst first quarter in a decade, falling 11.7% as markets struggled to understand the new administration's economic agenda.
The performance ranked 12th out of the past 15 first quarters, according to NYDIG Research's data.
The drawdown invites a familiar question in crypto circles: is the cycle over? The last time bitcoin started the year this poorly was in 2015, during a prolonged slump following the 2013 peak and after the collapse of Mt. Gox, according to NYDIG. Back then, prices recovered modestly over the rest of the year before surging in 2016.
In the first quarter of 2020, amid a market sell-off tied to fears surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, BTC saw a 9.4% drawdown but then recovered to end the year up over 300%. In other years with negative Q1 returns—like 2014, 2018 and 2022—bitcoin ended the year down sharply, coinciding with the tail ends of previous bull cycles, the research note said.
This time around, the backdrop is murky. Cryptocurrency prices surged after Donald Trump won the U.S. election in November after running a pro-crypto campaign. While under the Trump administration, the sector has been gaining greater regulatory clarity, and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) backed off a number of lawsuits against crypto firms, it isn't all bullish.
Trump unveiled his reciprocal tariffs against nearly every country in the world last week, leading to a massive $5.4 trillion U.S. equities market wipeout in just two days. This led to the S&P 500 index's lowest level in 11 months and the Nasdaq 100's entry into bear market territory. While bitcoin has outperformed so far, what will happen after Monday's opening bell is unclear.
Historically, a weak Q1 doesn't always spell doom for BTC, NYDIG's data shows. The asset has bounced back in half of the years when it started in the red. The recent macroeconomic backdrop has seen analysts raise recession odds, which could test BTC's role as a “U.S. isolation hedge.”Read more: Chart of The Week: Will April Bring Good Luck or Fool's Hope for Bitcoin?
Francisco is a reporter for CoinDesk with a passion for cryptocurrencies and personal finance. Before joining CoinDesk he worked at major financial and crypto publications. He owns bitcoin, ether, solana, and PAXG above CoinDesk's $1,000 disclosure threshold.
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Why the Restaurant Firm Behind Fatburger and Johnny Rockets Is Embracing Bitcoin
$81,183.00
$1,691.53
$2.05
$567.82
$0.999867
$112.03
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$1.60
$0.998091
$0.997988
$0.00005081
$1.65
$0.068888
$1.63
$0.00970886
$1.00
$2.62
$122.58
$0.999889
$13.99
$79,906.00
$2.77
$1.62
$0.446263
$0.564654
$0.11988
$0.39831
$0.00000043
$0.228314
$81,102.00
$5.24
$0.41277
$0.158656
$1.08
$0.990318
$110.58
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$1,798.87
$24.49
$0.00437664
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$0.149918
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$0.418343
Franchise owners of restaurant brands Johnny Rockets, Fatburger, Round Table Pizza, Great American Cookies, and other FAT Brands entities can now pay franchisee royalty payments in Bitcoin.
The publicly traded FAT Brands (Nasdaq: FAT), which boasts 18 different franchise concepts and more than 2,300 locations worldwide, said the move “underscores its commitment to financial and technological innovation.”
“Over the years, Bitcoin has transformed into a mainstream asset and, as a company, we see great value in expanding our forms of payments for our franchisees,” said FAT Brands COO Thayer Wiederhorn in a statement. He said that international franchisees in particular, which operate over 20% of its restaurants, may especially benefit from the shift.
“We look forward to utilizing Bitcoin as an efficient tool for streamlining and simplifying the payment process,” Wiederhorn added.
Franchisees, or those that own one of FAT Brands' quick-service, casual dining locations, can pay franchise and development fees, as well as their royalty payments by sending Bitcoin to a “crypto wallet business account,” a FAT Brands representative told Decrypt. At that point, FAT Brands can decide whether or not it wishes to sell the Bitcoin for USD, or hold it.
As for adding other payment options like Ethereum or Solana, it could “possibly” happen “in the future,” a representative for FAT Brands told Decrypt, “but we're starting with Bitcoin.”
What about paying for a Fatburger or milkshake from Johnny Rockets with Bitcoin?
“Potentially, but not today,” they replied.
The overlap of cryptocurrency and restaurants has grown in recent years. In 2024, on-chain dining rewards platform Blackbird helped bring crypto payments to some of New York's most acclaimed restaurants. Plus, fast food chains McDonald's, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut have all run collaborations in Web3.
Furthermore, there's a growing trend of publicly traded companies embracing Bitcoin as a treasury reserve asset, popularized by Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) and its outspoken chairman Michael Saylor. His firm now holds some $44 billion worth of Bitcoin, and the firm's model has inspired dozens of followers.
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Despite billions in investment, Web3 gaming has failed to capture mainstream attention or solve gaming's core issues — instead recreating the same problems it aimed to fix.
Opinion by: Daryl Xu, co-founder and CEO, NPC Labs
While gaming has been on a steady decline since the end of COVID-19 lockdowns, 2024 hit the industry especially hard, with layoffs and studio closures hitting even the most prominent studios.
While unsustainable development costs and an innovation crisis seem to be the main culprits behind the collapse, Web3 gaming emerged as a potential solution promising to return power to developers — and it raised billions of dollars in investment to do so.
Yet, despite a continued rise in crypto adoption, Web3 gaming has failed to capture mainstream players' attention or solve any of gaming's fundamental problems. Why? Early blockchains were designed for financial applications. Game developers were forced to either build on blockchains that weren't designed for their use or create their own chains that isolated themselves from the blockchain ecosystem. Either choice led to poor player experience and an overemphasis on tokenomics.
Many developers choose the latter, picking control over connectivity. Inadvertently, this resulted in walled gardens that were not dissimilar to the ones that contributed to traditional gaming's collapse.
A recent article in The New York Times revealed that over the last 30 or 40 years, video game industry executives have bet on better graphics to bring in players and profits rather than leaning on creativity. Traditional gaming development is costly, regularly exceeding $100 million per title. Indie developers often struggle to compete against large publishers who ultimately control funding and distribution.
Blockchain seemed to be a promising solution for indie studios, providing them with new avenues to raise funds and giving them control over distribution. Early Web3 gaming platforms, however, ended up recreating the same enclosed systems that blockchain was trying to fix. With high player acquisition costs and limited Web3 gamers, Web3 gaming platforms deepened their moats to prevent users from moving away. As it continued developing, Web3 gaming introduced its own problems.
The technological infrastructures of layer-1 blockchains like Ethereum and Solana were created for finance and not aligned with gaming's requirements. Beyond transaction speed, layer-2 solutions were not designed to handle gaming's unique needs either.
Game developers — attracted to Web3's funding model, promises of ownership and user engagement, are forced to either build on existing blockchains and compromise gameplay or launch their own chain — which diverts attention and resources away from what they want to do: make better games.
Recent: Web3 gaming investors no longer throwing money at ‘Axie killers'
While crypto native players may feel this is a worthwhile tradeoff, mainstream gamers want engaging experiences. A January DappRadar report showed that Web3 gaming had reached 7.3 million unique active wallets, but in speaking with the community anecdotally, approximately 10,000 of those represent the actual gaming cohort who aren't in games just to farm rewards. This number may be higher but is not more than 50,000 to 100,000 at the most.
The thing that converts mainstream users onchain isn't non-fungible tokens (NFTs) or decentralized finance, its meaningful ownership of in-asset games. Mainstream gamers have spent decades on arcade games, Nintendo or mobile games. If combined with true ownership of in-game assets, that familiarity is powerful enough to create a compelling experience for developers and gamers.
While Web3 games claim to be revolutionizing gaming, most projects aren't listening to actual gamers. In actuality, they end up competing for the same crypto-native users. Rather than focusing on fun and engaging gameplay, most Web3 games are led by crypto technology and tokenomics. Within this bubble, success in Web3 gaming meant taking crypto users from each other rather than bringing new players onchain.
With rare exceptions, the industry lost sight of what's important: making fun games that people want to play.
This misalignment also extends to game developers who want to enter Web3 to create better player experiences and sustainable revenue models. Game studios understand the potentials of Web3 but are hesitant to navigate crypto's complex systems, which require technical skills to build protocols with sufficient liquidity and user bases while delivering seamless gameplay simultaneously.
As major studios continue to struggle, Web3 has a second chance to deliver on its promise. But this time, we must rethink how games interact. We must focus on creating access for creators and players instead of building new walled gardens. This requires Web3 gaming-specific infrastructure that provides both developer control and cross-ecosystem collaboration.
The path forward is clear. We need to restore economic freedom to creators and put control back in players' hands. That means revenue models that reward collaboration instead of isolation. Most importantly, it means returning to gaming's roots — making games fun again.
The future of gaming isn't about better graphics or token incentives. It's about creating an industry where creativity and collaboration can thrive. When developers can focus on making engaging experiences instead of building moats, everyone wins.
Opinion by: Daryl Xu, co-founder and CEO, NPC Labs.
This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed here are the author's alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.
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Disclosure: The views and opinions expressed here belong solely to the author and do not represent the views and opinions of crypto.news' editorial.
A recent study by Atmos positioned the United States as a worldwide frontrunner among nations for digital asset support and integration. The nation's commitment to blockchain technology sets a precedent for tokenization/digital payment integration of the global financial sector with a progressive regulatory approach, according to a study by BoxBet.
Indeed, many large US banks such as J.P. Morgan, Citibank and other large banks such as UBS, Société Générale, the Swiss Banking Association, Banque de France, UK Regulated Liability Network, HSBC, Standard Chartered, Barclays, Lloyds, DZ Bank, Deutsche Bank, Commerzbank, Unicredit, SBI Holdings, Hitachi, SHIZUOKA BANK, TIS, NSD, Fujitsu, KDDI, MUFG Bank, Higo Bank, Kagoshima Bank, GMO Financial Holdings have launched digital asset services departments fueling the tokenization trend of the financial sector.
Adopting new digital technologies enables financial institutions to considerably reduce operating costs, enhance transparency, and offer innovative services. Vivek Raman, CEO of Etherealize, states:
“Tokenized deposits will be the largest unlock for liquidity movement within banks. While stablecoins were the first instance of mass product-market fit for the blockchain ecosystem, stablecoins are not capital efficient. Tokenizing deposits (which could be IOUs or earn interest) allows for more capital-efficient movement. We are already seeing that with SAB 121 being repealed, the desire for banks to hold tokenized assets is increasing. We think the default choice—the safest, most secure blockchain ecosystem to hold tokenized assets—is within the Ethereum economy.”
Tokenized deposits are a token representation of the traditional commercial deposits that have been converted into digital tokens on a blockchain network, where each token is backed by a retail or institutional deposit. It involves the conversion of traditional financial assets such as a certificate of deposit, or a savings account into a digital token that offers investors potential benefits like faster 24/7 round the clock transactions with smart contracts used to automate interest rates, increased liquidity, fractional ownership, transparency—eliminating any possibility of fraud or manipulation.
Instead of holding physical cash or keeping money in a bank account, investors can hold digital tokens representing their certificate of deposit or savings account amount on a secure and decentralized ledger by empowering them to participate in the digital asset ecosystem, ultimately leading to cost savings.
For example, a tokenized certificate of deposit is a digital representation of a traditional CD, which is a fixed-term cash investment with a guaranteed interest rate of return, adapted into a token that the investor can freely trade on various digital asset exchanges or platforms similar to other digital assets that are regulated under the same framework as traditional bank deposits, focusing on ensuring the underlying bank's stability and compliance with existing regulations. This gives investors more flexibility and liquidity than a certificate of deposit, which often has an early redemption penalty.
Last year, after running over a dozen proofs of concept, or PoC, with multiple global banks, technology companies, and intergovernmental organizations, UDPN launched two digital asset management systems for commercial use, designed to reshape the landscape of digital payments and assets in the financial sector:
Operating a digital asset system involves complex lifecycle management. These new digital asset systems—tokenized deposit/stablecoin management system and digital asset tokenization system—easily integrate into core banking systems and can be installed in a bank or a stablecoin operator's on-premises or cloud environment to ensure compliance and security in a regulated environment.
UDPN's solutions efficiently link to legacy systems via APIs, ensuring seamless interoperability with traditional banking infrastructures and other digital asset systems within regulated frameworks, granting institutions full data sovereignty and the flexibility to choose their underlying infrastructure and deploy digital assets and tokens on any public or private blockchain. Both solutions allow the optional ability to interoperate with other regulated digital currency systems through UDPN's infrastructure. This feature promotes seamless collaboration and integration within the digital asset ecosystem. As regulatory scrutiny intensifies around stablecoins and digital assets globally, UDPN's platforms offer a robust and compliant framework tailored for operation within regulated financial environments.
Tim Bailey, VP of Global Business and Operations, Red Date Technology, explained:
“Financial institutions and banks are embracing innovation to stay ahead by utilizing UDPN's cutting-edge tokenized deposit/stablecoin management system and digital asset tokenization system to forge the future of tokenized banking. This chart [above] is a general comparison between different types of digital currencies, such as tokenized deposits vs. stablecoins vs. retail and wholesale CDCs, not necessarily the capabilities of UDNP's tokenized deposit/stablecoin management system.”
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As Cosmos (ATOM) surges in price, the spotlight is also shining on its staking program and security issues that could pose risks to its future growth. Despite Cosmos (ATOM)'s recent 14% surge, Coldware (COLD) remains positioned as the more innovative option, especially as it continues to showcase its advanced Web3 capabilities. Let's explore how Cosmos (ATOM) is navigating its staking program while Coldware (COLD) shows promising potential with cutting-edge blockchain technology.
In contrast, Coldware (COLD) is leveraging Web3 technology to position itself as a leader in financial inclusion. The Coldware (COLD) platform's ability to offer both decentralized finance and traditional finance solutions gives it an edge over Cosmos (ATOM), whose focus remains on blockchain interoperability. By providing a seamless bridge between these two worlds, Coldware is attracting interest from whales and institutional investors who see its potential to reshape the future of finance.
Cosmos (ATOM) has made significant strides in its staking program, with numerous users locking up their assets in exchange for rewards. However, recent security concerns have brought the effectiveness and sustainability of this program into question. As Cosmos (ATOM) continues to face these challenges, it may struggle to maintain investor confidence in its staking platform. The upcoming months will be crucial for Cosmos (ATOM) as it attempts to address these concerns and reassert its dominance in the blockchain space.
While Cosmos (ATOM) has built a staking program that aims to enhance network security and incentivize long-term commitment, Coldware (COLD) takes a different approach by focusing on Web3 innovations and offering solutions that are more scalable and secure. Coldware's commitment to financial inclusion and accessibility is set to challenge Cosmos (ATOM)'s model, as it tackles not just staking but the entire financial ecosystem.
Despite the bullish trends surrounding Cosmos (ATOM), Coldware (COLD) is building a more sustainable ecosystem that aligns with the increasing demand for secure and scalable blockchain applications. With Coldware's advanced Web3 features, it is setting itself up as a dominant force in the crypto space, one that could easily overtake Cosmos (ATOM) as it continues to innovate and gain investor confidence.
The rise of Coldware (COLD), with its financial inclusion and Web3 focus, could pose a significant challenge to Cosmos (ATOM), which remains tied to a traditional staking and DeFi framework. If Coldware can maintain its momentum and continue to address the need for scalability and security, it is poised to outperform Cosmos (ATOM) in 2025. Investors and whales alike are closely watching Coldware as it accelerates its presale success and looks to dominate the market.
As Cosmos (ATOM) pushes forward with its staking program amidst security concerns, Coldware (COLD) is quietly positioning itself to take the lead in the blockchain space. Coldware's integration of Web3 technology and focus on financial inclusion presents a compelling alternative to the traditional blockchain models employed by Cosmos (ATOM). With growing support from whales and a mission that aligns with the future of decentralized finance, Coldware could soon eclipse Cosmos (ATOM) as the go-to blockchain platform in 2025
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Dogecoin could set a new all-time high (ATH) record if it matches the market cap of established cryptocurrencies like XRP and Ethereum.
The ongoing bearish trend in the crypto market has negatively impacted DOGE's price action. Recall that DOGE ranked among the early gainers in the post-election relief rally, which saw its price rise to a high of $0.4835 on December 8.
However, DOGE has lost these gains, as it currently sits around the level it traded at before the election. At the current price of $0.1693, DOGE is down 64.98% from its December 8 peak of $0.4835.
DOGE is also down 2.86% in the past seven days, 19.3% in 30 days, and 57% in three months. Despite the massive dip, DOGE investors have remained confident about the asset's prospects.
Consequently, some wonder what would happen if DOGE resumes its post-election rally and potentially matches the market cap of established cryptocurrencies like Ethereum (ETH) and XRP (XRP).
Like DOGE, XRP and ETH have experienced massive declines, losing most of their post-election gains. Nonetheless, both coins still rank among the top three non-stablecoin crypto by market cap.
While ETH sits in the second position with a market cap of $218.63 billion, XRP's valuation of $124.39 billion puts it in the third spot. However, DOGE is far in the ranking, currently ranked as the sixth non-stablecoin crypto in the market. It has a market cap of $25.17 billion.
Therefore, Dogecoin must soar 394.19% from its current valuation of $25.17 billion to match XRP's market cap of $124.39 billion. Similarly, DOGE requires a greater surge of 768.61% to equal Ethereum's $218.63 billion market cap.
As mentioned earlier, matching ETH or XRP's market cap requires DOGE to rise 768.61% or 394.19% from its current valuation.
Notably, if DOGE rises 394.19% and matches XRP's market cap, its price would increase to $0.8366. This estimate assumes Dogecoin's circulating supply remains fairly stable at 148.72 billion tokens. In the same vein, DOGE's price would spike to $1.47 per token if it surges by 768.61% to equal ETH's market cap.
Both prices–$0.8366 and $1.47–are 13.42% and 99.29% above Dogecoin's all-time high of $0.7376, respectively. Recall that DOGE hit its previous ATH on May 8, 2021. It has remained far from this level ever since.
DOGE's current price of $0.1693 represents a decline of 77.04% from its previous ATH. However, hitting the $0.8366 or $1.47 targets would potentially mark new ATHs for DOGE.
Several analysts have predicted Dogecoin's potential surge to the $0.8 and $1.4 price range. However, not everyone attached a timeline for when these predictions would materialize.
Last month, popular TradingView analyst ‘Cobra Vanguard' identified a cup-and-handle pattern on Dogecoin's chart to predict a potential rally to the $0.8 price mark. In addition, popular chatbot service ChatGPT predicted that DOGE could soar to around $1.4 if it becomes the default payment method across Elon Musk's ecosystem.
Meanwhile, Changelly set possible timelines for Dogecoin's potential surge to $0.8366 and $1.47, respectively. While the exchange expects DOGE to hit $0.8366 by June 2030, it projects that the $1.47 target would materialize the following year, specifically in August 2031.
It remains to be seen whether these predictions will play out. Factors such as increased adoption, ETF approval, and celebrity influence could pave the way for a hefty rally to lofty targets like $0.8366 or $1.47.
DisClamier: This content is informational and should not be considered financial advice. The views expressed in this article may include the author's personal opinions and do not reflect The Crypto Basic opinion. Readers are encouraged to do thorough research before making any investment decisions. The Crypto Basic is not responsible for any financial losses.
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The cryptocurrency market is all about timing. Anticipating the next big upswing isn't just about luck; it's about identifying trends, projects with real utility, and, importantly, undervalued opportunities. While Bitcoin and Ethereum continue to dominate, AI-powered cryptocurrencies are shaping up to be the stars of the next bull run.
Among these, Dawgz AI ($DAGZ), an Ethereum-based meme coin powered by AI-driven technology, is making waves as an emerging player. Unlike traditional meme coins that revel in hype, Dawgz AI combines meme culture with purposeful innovation.
By the end of this article, you'll understand why AI-driven projects like Dawgz AI could lead the pack, uncover the best altcoins to buy now, and see how the crypto game is evolving faster than ever before.
The surge of blockchain-powered AI represents one of the most exciting intersections in the tech world. With applications extending into efficiency, community engagement, and predictive analytics, projects like Dawgz AI aim for more than speculative appeal. Here's why they might dominate the next market cycle.
AI-driven cryptocurrencies are more than buzzwords; they bring actionable solutions to blockchain ecosystems. Examples include:
Projects like Dawgz AI integrate these enhancements seamlessly. Beyond being “another token,” it actively advances decentralized technology through real-world utility.
Institutional investments in AI are soaring. Major players such as BlackRock and Fidelity are increasing their stakes in AI-related crypto projects. Additionally:
This influx of investment highlights why AI-driven cryptocurrencies are top contenders in the next bull market.
Meme coins have come a long way since the early days of Dogecoin. Projects like Dawgz AI combine the lightheartedness of meme culture with tangible innovation, offering not just fun but functional utility. Here's what sets Dawgz AI apart:
For anyone considering the best cheap crypto to buy now, Dawgz AI represents the evolving potential of meme coins meeting technical innovation.
If you're hunting for high-potential investments, here's a short list of altcoins that are gaining traction. Each project bridges technological innovation and future possibilities, ensuring they don't just ride the wave of hype but sustain long-term value.
With over $3 million raised during its presale, Dawgz AI combines virality and robust tech into a smart narrative tailored for the 2025 market.
Tools from Fetch.ai are as practical as they are innovative, serving industries beyond just crypto.
SingularityNET is effectively building a democratized ecosystem of AI services, which platforms like Dawgz AI could potentially leverage.
Ocean Protocol provides essential infrastructure that could see widespread demand as AI expands.
While the above are excellent considerations, Dawgz AI stands out for integrating both functional technology and viral community power.
Dawgz AI isn't just another meme coin. Its roadmap, filled with AI-powered tools and community-focused engagement, is built to create sustained growth. Here are its standout features.
Instead of organic social media trends, Dawgz leverages machine learning to identify viral patterns, ensuring continuous momentum.
The project integrates anti-whale mechanisms and staking rewards right from the presale stage, making it much harder for bad actors to disrupt the ecosystem.
Unlike projects lacking depth, Dawgz AI has a long-term plan:
These strategies cement $DAGZ as a multi-functional and durable investment option.
Every crypto cycle transforms how we think about investing. With bold innovations that merge practicality with community engagement, AI-driven tokens like Dawgz AI aren't opportunities to overlook.
Why wait? Jump into the Dawgz AI presale today and position yourself before the next bull run commences. Early entry always makes the difference!
Some top contenders include Dawgz AI ($DAGZ) for its AI-driven advancements, Fetch.ai (FET) for automation, and SingularityNET (AGIX) for AI marketplaces.
Dawgz AI stands out as an affordable option during its presale at $0.004. It offers both technological resilience and community-driven appeal for early investors.
Investors often point to projects combining real-world utility with mass appeal, such as Dawgz AI. Its unique approach to combining AI and meme culture could catalyze exponential gains during the next bull market.
AI coins like Dawgz AI offer more than speculative gains. They drive innovations such as predictive decision-making, fraud detection, and decentralized automation.
Editor-in-Chief of CoinCentral and founder of Kooc Media, A UK-Based Online Media Company. Believer in Open-Source Software, Blockchain Technology & a Free and Fair Internet for all. His writing has been quoted by Nasdaq, Dow Jones, Investopedia, The New Yorker, Forbes, Techcrunch & More. Contact Oliver@coincentral.com
As we enter the second quarter of the year, market analysts observe conditions that could…
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Macro investor Luke Gromen says that the White House may have caused a massive change in the way that Bitcoin (BTC) trades.
In a new interview with Natalie Brunell on the Coin Stories podcast, Gromen calls attention to the America First Investment Policy, a memo released by the Trump Administration in February that aims to make the US foreign investment policies more cautious and conscious of national security.
Gromen, the founder of the macroeconomic research firm Forest for the Trees (FFTT), says that the memo essentially directs China to “take your money and go home, we don't want it here anymore.”
With all of the foreign capital invested in US markets, Gromen says the Nasdaq index will likely suffer capital outflows while Bitcoin – as a neutral global asset essentially exempt from tariffs or political agendas – will shine, breaking the correlation between the two assets.
“That, I think will ultimately be a catalyst to the separation of Bitcoin and Nasdaq, and that, I think, is starting to drive Nasdaq down – it has a long way to go because multiples are high – and in the short run, traders control the flows…
Bitcoin is levered Nasdaq, I get it; it's a high-beta Nasdaq, in the short run. If you back up to a five-year or ten-year chart, you can see very clearly these periods where Bitcoin has massively outperformed Nasdaq, but they still tend to go directionally similarly, when Bitcoin's up Nasdaq's up and vice versa…
The America First Investment Policy memo, I think, will start to break that correlation because I think right now in the short run, that correlation is holding, [but] at some point I think capital flow is going to see Bitcoin for what it is which is a neutral reserve asset linked to energy, uncontrollable by any govenment and I think it'll start siphoning some flows off from Nasdaq as America continues to say, ‘Listen, you want to invest in some factories here? Great, otherwise, get out.'
And that's a lot of capital that's got to get out, and we're seeing gold benefit already. I think what we're seeing in gold is a precursor to what we'll see in Bitcoin.”
At time of writing, Bitcoin is worth $83,233.
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Bitcoin and crypto prices have whipsawed this week as traders panic that Donald Trump's tariff war could spark a bitcoin price “crisis scenario.”
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"This is an existential threat to the banking industry, as well as to the financial system writ large," Arthur Wilmarth, a professor emeritus of law at George Washington University, told Reuters, adding that taxpayers could ultimately be on the hook.
Congress is rushing to pass major new crypto legislation in the form of a stablecoin bill that could see interest paid out to people holding the dollar-pegged cryptocurrencies, with Bo Hines, who leads Trump's Council of Advisers on Digital Assets, saying last month that the White House wants a stablecoin bill passed before August.
A stablecoin bill currently headed to the House floor prohibits stablecoin issuers from paying out interest to holders while a twin bill in the Senate' excludes interest on some types of stablecoins but falls short of banning them.
If permitted, higher-than-average interest stablecoin accounts could see people move their money out of insured bank accounts, opening them up to risk if those crypto companies were to fail.
“Stablecoins are emerging as the first real blockchain use case to be fully integrated into traditional finance, and we are witnessing the early stages of this transformation,” Hina Sattar Joshi, digital assets sales director at TP ICAP, said in emailed comments.
“Strong global momentum in stablecoins is likely to attract institutional interest in a digital asset that has long-term growth potential while acting as a credible bridge between traditional assets and crypto.”
As the two stablecoin bills are brought together by Congress in the coming weeks, lawmakers will have to choose—potentially deciding whether stablecoins will become the de facto checking account tool for both banks and crypto companies or if they'll remain a sideshow.
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"The government shouldn't put its thumb on the scale to benefit one industry over another," Coinbase chief executive Brian Armstrong posted to X earlier this week. "Banks and crypto companies alike should both be allowed to, and incentivized to, share interest with consumers."
The stablecoin market, led by Tether's $144 billion USDT, has grown rapidly in recent years, with financial technology companies and Wall Street giants from PayPal to Bank of America rushing to launch their own stablecoins, enticed by the massive $13 billion of profit Tether printed in 2024 as a result of the bitcoin, gold, U.S. Treasury bonds and other financial instruments it holds to back USDT.
"It's pretty clear there's going to be a stablecoin," Brian Moynihan, Bank of America chief executive, said in an interview at the Economic Club it was reported by DL News. “If they make that legal, we'll go into that business.”
The first quarter of 2025 was dominated by talks of the altcoin season, as is usually the case when the bull cycle is ending. In past cycles, capital tends to rotate from Bitcoin to other cryptocurrencies as investors look for maximum gain before the arrival of the bear market.
However, the story has been very different for the cryptocurrency market so far this year, with most large-cap assets failing to enjoy the same capital rotation seen in past cycles. The latest on-chain data shows that Bitcoin has continued to dominate the crypto market, outperforming all categories of altcoins.
In an April 5 post on the X platform, pseudonymous analyst Darkfost shared an interesting on-chain insight into the performance of all altcoin categories relative to the world's largest cryptocurrency. According to the online pundit, the altcoins are underperforming compared to Bitcoin in terms of market capitalization growth.
In their post, Darkfost compared the market cap growth of Bitcoin, large-cap altcoins (the top 20 largest altcoins), and mid-to-small cap altcoins by calculating the difference between their 365-day and the 30-day moving average (MAs). According to the analyst, the variation between the 365-day MA and the 30-day MA serves as an indicator of growth momentum.
Typically, when the short-term moving average (30-day MA) rises faster than the long-term moving average (365-day MA), it implies rapid market cap growth. On the flip side, a reduced growth momentum is indicated by a lagging 30-day moving average.
As observed in the chart above, Bitcoin is outpacing the large-cap and mid-to-small-cap altcoins in terms of their market cap growth. Darkfost noted that this difference in the growth ratio has reached a level last seen in October 2023, a period correlated with a brief altcoin rally and subsequently BTC's dominance.
The analyst further highlighted that when this growth ratio turns negative, it often signals that a strong correction has occurred. Historically, a negative ratio might present a potential buying opportunity for investors looking to get into the market.
As of this writing, the price of BTC stands at around $83,500, reflecting no significant movement in the past 24 hours. At the same time, the ETH token is valued at around $1,805, with no change in the past day.
While the premier cryptocurrency dropped by about 15% in the first quarter of 2025, Ethereum lost almost double its value in the same period. This gap in performance underscores how woeful the “king of altcoins” has been in the past few months.
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Opeyemi Sule is a passionate crypto enthusiast, a proficient content writer, and a journalist at Bitcoinist. Opeyemi creates unique pieces unraveling the complexities of blockchain technology and sharing insights on the latest trends in the world of cryptocurrencies. Opeyemi enjoys reading poetry, chatting about politics, and listening to music, in addition to his strong interest in cryptocurrency.
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Crypto scams are booming.
Luckily, there are crypto detectives and blockchain sleuths who track down stolen funds and help those who suspect they've been defrauded.
The business of these investigators has flourished in recent years, three of them told Business Insider, in part because scams in the crypto sphere are becoming more sophisticated and even harder for even intelligent, computer-savvy people to avoid.
Cryptocurrency crime has skyrocketed in recent years. Losses stemming from crypto investment frauds, the most common type of crypto scam, ballooned to $3.96 billion in 2023, according to data from the FBI, up 335% in two years.
Scam activity has grown an average of 24% year-over-year since the pandemic, with bad actors likely pulling in a record $12.4 billion in revenue last year, according to estimates from the analytics firm Chainalysis.
Here are investigators' top tips on how you can protect yourself from crypto scammers.
First things first: be aware that talking to strangers on the internet isn't exactly safe to begin with.
The vast majority of fraud takes place online — a digital jungle where it's hard, even for intelligent, experienced investors to tell what's a hoax and what's the real deal, according to John Powers, the president of the financial investigations firm Hudson Intelligence.
Powers, who worked as a PI for years prior to doing investigative work on the blockchain, thinks scams are becoming so good they're defining a new era of con-artistry.
"We've moved beyond the Nigerian 419 scams where the prince was contacting you by email," Powers told BI in an interview. "We're in a much different and more subtle and sophisticated place now. And it turns out that chatting online with random strangers is not necessarily a low-risk activity, especially if that seeming casual contact is actually just the tip of the spear."
He recommends people maintain healthy skepticism, particularly when talking to people or making investments online.
The risk is evident in the numbers. Pig butchering scams — one type of fraud where a scammer establishes an online relationship with someone before asking them to invest or send money — have been on the rise, with revenue from this type of fraud soaring 40% in 2024, according to Chainalysis.
Joe Greenfield, the chief forensic examiner at the investigative firm Maryman, strongly urges investors not to take anything at face value. Before sending over any info or money on the blockchain, you should check out everything you can about the situation, like researching the investment, calling the person directly, or even showing the exchange to another person in your life to get another pair of eyes on the situation.
"Assume in today's day and age that everything is a fraud. Everything's a scam until you prove otherwise to yourself," Greenfield said.
There's no such thing as a crypto exchange withholding your funds for tax reasons. There's also no such thing as an exchange requiring you to send in a fee in order to withdraw your money.
But those are common examples of fraudulent expenses scammers come up with to extort money out of their victims, according to Kyla Curley, a partner at the professional services firm StoneTurn who frequently investigates financial fraud.
Curley says she often sees clients who had been unknowingly defrauded for months, due to a scammer repeatedly making small financial asks.
In pig butchering schemes, victims can also be roped into fake relationships that involve sending payments for months — or sometimes, years —before victims finally realize they've been scammed, Greenfield adds.
"It can drag for some time before people realize, like, oh shoot. They're asking me for more money again. Maybe this isn't right."
One nightmare scenario Greenfield frequently investigates is when investors wake up and realize that their crypto wallets have been emptied overnight.
In many cases, the theft was made possible by cybersecurity weaknesses within the person's crypto storage, such as by using a cloud-based wallet, weak passwords, and setting up SMS authentication instead of an app-based verification method.
For the strongest security, he recommends using a cold storage wallet, using app-based authentication on sensitive accounts when possible, and following best-practices when it comes to picking a password.
"We've seen hundreds of millions of dollars stolen that way," he said of cases stemming from cybersecurity vulnerabilities.
Fraud victims, often strung along for months, frequently come to the realization that they've been scammed far too late. Sometimes, they choose to remain silent and not get help due to embarrassment or shame, Powers said.
But it's most useful if people get help right away.
"The sooner, the better, the faster that we can try to work with the client, try to work with the online provider if they've got one for these online wallets and their legal counsel," Greenfield said.
Curley says scam victims will also need the help of an attorney or law enforcement if they hope to recover some of their funds. Once an investigation finds a wallet on an exchange with the stolen funds, the exchange needs a subpoena order to release private information about who owns the wallet.
Be aware of how costly help could be. It's common for attorney and investigator fees to rack up in the thousands, according Powers. He added that his firm typically does not take on fraud victims who have lost less than $100,000 in crypto, which he said was in clients' financial best interests.
Curley estimates that around 20% of cases she oversees will end with a client getting at least some money back.
Unfortunately, Curley also expects scams to become more sophisticated and damaging over time, due to how rapidly scams evolve.
"It's really, really hard for probably 90% of the population to identify or even be in tune with," she said of the sophistication of some scams out there. "I think, again, with AI, we all know that's just going to get much much worse."
Jump to
BitMEX founder and crypto investor Arthur Hayes says gold and Bitcoin (BTC) are effectively replacing US Treasuries and equities as the predominant global reserve assets.
In a post on the social media platform X, Hayes says that President Trump was partially elected by Americans who feel that they didn't share in the alleged “prosperity” stemming from going off the gold standard in 1971.
Hayes says that if the White House follows through on reducing its debt and current account deficit, then other countries will be forced to finance their economies by selling their US stocks and bonds, creating a permanent change in the global financial order since finance ministers around the world won't take a chance that Trump will change his mind.
“THE END: Of US Treasuries and, to a lesser extent, US stocks as the global reserve asset. If the US current account deficit is eliminated, then foreigners do not have dollars to buy bonds and stocks. If foreigners have to juice up their own nations' economies, they will sell what they own, US bonds and stocks, to fund their nation-first policies.”
The crypto investor also notes that he believes gold and Bitcoin will emerge as the winners of a shifting global financial order.
“THE RETURN:
Of gold as the neutral reserve asset. The dollar will still be the reserve currency, but nations will hold reserves in gold to settle global trade. Trump hinted at this because gold is tariff-exempt! Gold must flow freely and cheaply in the new world monetary order.
A lot of those who had it good are in the denial stage, and share a delusion that somehow things will return to ‘normal'…
For those who want to adapt to a return to pre-1971 trade relationships, buy gold, gold miners and BTC.”
Hayes also suggests that the Trump-induced economic shockwaves may have finally broken the correlation between BTC and the Nasdaq.
“BTC hodlers need to learn to love tariffs, maybe we finally broke the correlation with Nasdaq, and can move onto the purest form of a fiat liquidity smoke alarm.”
At time of writing, BTC is trading at $83,322.
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HashKey Group Chairman and CEO Xiao Feng kicked off the 2025 Hong Kong Web3 Festival on Sunday with a keynote address highlighting blockchain technology's transformative impact on global financial infrastructure.
Speaking to an early morning crowd at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center, Xiao described blockchain as “a new generation of financial infrastructure” that fundamentally changes how financial transactions are recorded, settled and governed.
“Any industrial revolution must wait for a financial revolution,” Xiao told attendees at the four-day event hosted by his company.
Xiao emphasized historical parallels between technological and financial evolution: banking credit supported the British Industrial Revolution, stock markets enabled the electrical revolution in America, and venture capital fueled Silicon Valley's information revolution.
“Cryptocurrency finance will become the core financial innovation supporting the fourth industrial revolution.”
The executive highlighted key differences between traditional and blockchain-based finance, including the shift from bank accounts to digital wallets and the move from batch settlement systems to instantaneous transaction completion.
Xiao noted the significance of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's recent decision not to classify dollar-backed stablecoins as securities, suggesting this allows more institutions to participate in monetary creation processes.
He also pointed to major stock exchanges moving toward 23-hour trading cycles, compared to blockchain markets that operate continuously.
“Traditional exchanges will eventually need to adapt to compete with cryptocurrency markets that have operated 24/7 since day one,” Xiao predicted.
The event features several high-profile regulators, including Paul Chan Mo-po, Financial Secretary of the Hong Kong Government; Joseph H. L. Chan, Under Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury; Christina Choi, Executive Director of Investment Products at the Securities and Futures Commission; and George Chou, Chief Fintech Officer of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority.
While mainland China maintains strict prohibitions on cryptocurrencies, analysts view Hong Kong's supportive stance as a strategic testing ground for the technology's potential. This approach effectively creates a regulatory breathing space where blockchain innovations can develop under controlled conditions, potentially informing future policies across the broader Chinese economy.
The Web3 Festival continues through Wednesday with industry panels, demonstrations and networking events, bringing together blockchain developers, investors and technology enthusiasts from around the world.
Disclaimer
In adherence to the Trust Project guidelines, BeInCrypto is committed to unbiased, transparent reporting. This news article aims to provide accurate, timely information. However, readers are advised to verify facts independently and consult with a professional before making any decisions based on this content. Please note that our Terms and Conditions, Privacy Policy, and Disclaimers have been updated.
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HashKey Group Chairman and CEO Xiao Feng kicked off the 2025 Hong Kong Web3 Festival on Sunday with a keynote address highlighting blockchain technology's transformative impact on global financial infrastructure.
Speaking to an early morning crowd at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center, Xiao described blockchain as “a new generation of financial infrastructure” that fundamentally changes how financial transactions are recorded, settled and governed.
“Any industrial revolution must wait for a financial revolution,” Xiao told attendees at the four-day event hosted by his company.
Xiao emphasized historical parallels between technological and financial evolution: banking credit supported the British Industrial Revolution, stock markets enabled the electrical revolution in America, and venture capital fueled Silicon Valley's information revolution.
“Cryptocurrency finance will become the core financial innovation supporting the fourth industrial revolution.”
The executive highlighted key differences between traditional and blockchain-based finance, including the shift from bank accounts to digital wallets and the move from batch settlement systems to instantaneous transaction completion.
Xiao noted the significance of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's recent decision not to classify dollar-backed stablecoins as securities, suggesting this allows more institutions to participate in monetary creation processes.
He also pointed to major stock exchanges moving toward 23-hour trading cycles, compared to blockchain markets that operate continuously.
“Traditional exchanges will eventually need to adapt to compete with cryptocurrency markets that have operated 24/7 since day one,” Xiao predicted.
The event features several high-profile regulators, including Paul Chan Mo-po, Financial Secretary of the Hong Kong Government; Joseph H. L. Chan, Under Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury; Christina Choi, Executive Director of Investment Products at the Securities and Futures Commission; and George Chou, Chief Fintech Officer of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority.
While mainland China maintains strict prohibitions on cryptocurrencies, analysts view Hong Kong's supportive stance as a strategic testing ground for the technology's potential. This approach effectively creates a regulatory breathing space where blockchain innovations can develop under controlled conditions, potentially informing future policies across the broader Chinese economy.
The Web3 Festival continues through Wednesday with industry panels, demonstrations and networking events, bringing together blockchain developers, investors and technology enthusiasts from around the world.
Disclaimer
In adherence to the Trust Project guidelines, BeInCrypto is committed to unbiased, transparent reporting. This news article aims to provide accurate, timely information. However, readers are advised to verify facts independently and consult with a professional before making any decisions based on this content. Please note that our Terms and Conditions, Privacy Policy, and Disclaimers have been updated.
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Home » AI Meets Blockchain: UniLend and GPUs.ai Forge Strategic Alliance
In a significant advancement for the Web3 ecosystem, UniLend Finance and GPUs.ai have formed a strategic alliance designed to bridge artificial intelligence technologies with decentralized blockchain frameworks. This collaboration is expected to redefine the scope of Web3 by integrating UniLend's financial infrastructure with the high-performance AI-driven virtual computing environment offered by GPUs.ai.
Both organizations have indicated that the union is geared toward enhancing the scalability, security, and interoperability of decentralized AI applications. By leveraging their individual strengths, the partners aim to introduce flexible, scalable capabilities that will optimize the development and deployment of AI-powered solutions within decentralized systems.
At the core of this initiative lies UniLend AI's ability to design adaptive AI agents. These agents possess dynamic attributes that allow them to function across a range of industries and sectors. Developers utilizing GPUs.ai's virtual AI platform are now positioned to construct and deploy sophisticated AI-based systems more efficiently within the Web3 environment. The collaborative integration is expected to simplify the process of building AI applications, opening up broader accessibility for innovators in the decentralized domain.
A key feature of this joint initiative is a modular framework that enables seamless integration of multiple AI components. This development framework empowers both developers and enterprises to build customized AI agents more effectively. The result is improved accessibility and efficiency for those looking to implement decentralized AI systems tailored to their specific business or operational needs.
To further encourage AI adoption, the partnership has introduced the concept of a marketplace dedicated to AI agents and their associated modules. This marketplace is designed to serve as a hub where users can both commercialize and acquire AI solutions within a decentralized setting. It also facilitates the discovery and utilization of tools that enhance blockchain-based applications, making the transition into AI-enhanced operations smoother and more economically viable for users.
In addition, the collaboration includes the development of a platform capable of tokenizing AI agents. This feature enables creators to transform their AI models into digital assets that can be launched and traded within the Web3 space. Such tokenization not only supports project scalability but also offers new avenues for fundraising and market expansion. By allowing AI projects to gain exposure and financial support through token markets, the initiative is expected to stimulate further innovation in the decentralized AI landscape.
Join us in welcoming @GPUs_Ai to our ecosystem!🎊
🤖GPUs transform virtual computing by blending #AI with decentralized networks, offering secure, customizable, and efficient environments for users.
🤝 Together, we will explore innovative synergies and unlock groundbreaking… pic.twitter.com/mpFCqRdEun
— UniLend Finance (@UniLend_Finance) April 4, 2025
The partnership also lays the groundwork for the emergence of AI-based financial applications, particularly those utilizing AI asset tokenization systems. This new avenue is poised to create advanced financial products powered by artificial intelligence, reinforcing the role of decentralized finance in the next wave of technological progress.
The combined strengths of UniLend and GPUs.ai are viewed as a driving force behind the evolution of decentralized AI and finance. By integrating AI computing power with blockchain-based financial frameworks, the two entities are enabling developers and enterprises to explore novel Web3 applications. Their joint efforts are anticipated to catalyze a new era of decentralized services, underpinned by intelligent automation and blockchain security.
This collaboration not only exemplifies a progressive fusion of technologies but also sets the stage for AI's broader integration within decentralized ecosystems. As AI continues to reshape the technological landscape, its alignment with blockchain infrastructure through initiatives like this could define the future of digital innovation.
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What if it could solve all of our energy problems?
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Nestled between Hawaii and the western coast of Mexico lies the Pacific Ocean's Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ), a 4.5 million-kilometer-square area of abyssal plain bordered by the Clarion and Clipperton Fracture Zones. Although this stretch of sea is a vibrant ecosystem filled with marine life, the CCZ is known best for its immense collection of potato-sized rocks known as polymetallic nodules.
These rocks, of which there are potentially trillions, are filled with rich deposits of nickel, manganese, copper, zinc, cobalt. Those particular metals are vital for the batteries needed to power a green energy future, leading some mining companies to refer to nodules as a “battery in a rock.”
However, a study reports that these nodules might be much more than simply a collection of valuable materials for electric cars—they also produce oxygen 4,000 meters below the surface where sunlight can't reach.
This unexpected source of “dark oxygen,” as it's called, redefines the role these nodules play in the CZZ. The rocks could also rewrite the script on not only how life began on this planet, but also its potential to take hold on other worlds within our Solar System, such as Enceladus or Europa. The results of this study were published in the journal Nature Geoscience.
“For aerobic life to begin on the planet,” Andrew Sweetman, deep-sea ecologist with the Scottish Association for Marine Science and lead author of the study said in a press statement, “there had to be oxygen and our understanding has been that Earth's oxygen supply began with photosynthetic organisms. But we now know that there is oxygen produced in the deep sea, where there is no light. I think we therefore need to revisit questions like: where could aerobic life have begun?”
The journey toward this discovery began more than a decade ago when Sweetman began analyzing how oxygen levels decreased further into the depths of the ocean. So it came as a surprise in 2013 when sensors returned increased levels of oxygen in the CCZ. At the time, Sweetman dismissed the data as the result of faulty sensors, but future studies showed that this abyssal plain somehow produced oxygen. Taking note of the nodule's “battery in a rock” tagline, Sweetman wondered if the minerals found in these nodules were somehow acting as a kind of “geobattery” by separating hydrogen and oxygen via seawater electrolysis.
A 2023 study showed that various bacteria and archaea can create “dark oxygen,” so Sweetman and his team recreated the conditions of the CCZ in a laboratory and killed off any microorganisms with mercury chloride—surprisingly, oxygen levels continued rising. According to Scientific American, Sweetman found a voltage of roughly 0.95 volts on the surface of these nodules, likely charging up as they grow with different deposits growing irregularly throughout, and this natural charge is enough to split the seawater.
This discovery adds more fuel to the already-fiery debate over what to do with these nodules. Mining outfits like the Metals Company, the CEO of which coined the phrase “battery in a rock,” sees these nodules as the answer to our energy problems. However, 25 countries want the governing body—the International Seabed Authority (ISA) Council—to implement a moratorium, or at the very least a precautionary pause, so more research can be conducted to see how mining these nodules could affect the ocean. This is especially vital considering that the world's seas are already facing a litany of climate challenges, including acidification, deoxygenation, and pollution.
In response to this discovery, Scripps Institution of Oceanography's Lisa Levin, who wasn't involved with the study, highlighted why such a moratorium is so important for protecting these deep-sea nodules in a comment to the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition:
The ISA is still negotiating with key players on deep-sea mining regulations.
So while the future of the world's oceans is approaching a critical moment of conservation or exploitation, science has proven once again that disrupting these ecosystems could have consequences we can't even imagine.
Darren lives in Portland, has a cat, and writes/edits about sci-fi and how our world works. You can find his previous stuff at Gizmodo and Paste if you look hard enough.
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April 5, 2025
7 min read
Dennis Gaitsgory, Who Proved Part of Math's Grand Unified Theory, Wins Breakthrough Prize
By solving part of the Langlands program, a mathematical proof that was long thought to be unachievable, Dennis Gaitsgory snags a prestigious Breakthrough Prize
By Manon Bischoff edited by Jeanna Bryner
Dennis Gaitsgory, of the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics, has won the Breakthrough Prize in mathematics for numerous breakthrough contributions to the geometric Langlands program.
The Langlands program has been described by mathematician Edward Frankel as the “grand unified theory of mathematics.” Conceived by Robert Langlands in 1967, the program includes numerous conjectures that were intended to connect disparate mathematical realms: number theory and harmonic analysis. In the 1990s, a similar connection between geometry and harmonic analysis was noticed, and the geometric Langlands program was born. Decades later, in 2024, Dennis Gaitsgory of the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Bonn, Germany, and eight of his colleagues achieved a breakthrough. In five scientific preprint papers, consisting of nearly 1,000 pages, they proved that a large class of geometric objects is related to quantities from calculus. Gaitsgory has now been awarded the Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics, which includes a $3-million award, for this outstanding achievement.
Scientific American's German-language sister publication Spektrum der Wissenschaft spoke to Gaitsgory about his math career, the Langlands achievement and the prestigious Breakthrough Prize.
[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]
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You've been working on the geometric Langlands program for 30 years. When was the moment that you realized you'd be able to prove it?
There was a very crucial step that was always a mystery. This got solved by a former graduate student of mine, [mathematician] Sam Raskin, and his graduate students in the winter of 2022. They proved that something is nonzero. After this, it was clear that we would be able to work out a proof.
How did you feel when you realized that it could really be done?
I've always perceived it as some kind of long-term project for self-entertainment. So I obviously felt happy, but it was not like a very strong emotion or anything. It wasn't a eureka moment.
The conjecture that we proved is one particular case of something much, much bigger. It has received a lot of attention because it's one well-formulated thing. But it's just one step. I was happy that this step had been done, but there's much more to do.
So there was no champagne popping? You just sat down and continued working?
There was no champagne but something similar. When [Raskin] said that he could prove this crucial part, we made a bet: if he could really do it, I promised him a bottle of scotch.
The proof is huge, almost 1,000 pages. Did you oversee everything in it?
I wrote 95 percent of it. [That was] not for a good reason but because I had an injury from skiing, and I was just lying in bed. So what else was there to do? I was watching Star Wars with my son and writing this thing.
Do you mean you did both at the same time?
Initially, some sections in our papers were named after Star Wars episodes, but at the end, we deleted [that element], mostly out of copyright concerns. But one paper still has a quote from Star Wars: “Fear will keep the local systems in line.” It was a really good fit, because in this paper, we had to control the moduli space of local systems.
It's one thing to understand something but another to write everything down in detail. Did any problems pop up?
Of course. We had a road map, but there were still a lot of blanks to fill, many theories to be developed.
But I don't think there was a moment of actual panic. Sometimes I was not sure if one thing would require three more pages, 20 more pages or 50 more pages. There was just an uncertainty of how much more work had to be done.
Did you do all of this from your bed?
No, actually it was a cooperative process. The proof has nine co-authors: Every day I was writing to this guy and to that guy. They all have different perspectives and a slightly different kind of expertise. In some sense, it was as if I was lying in bed, and my colleagues were visiting me, so I didn't get bored. It really held my spirits up that I could talk to them by e-mail.
There are some people who go to a bar to drink; we instead just talk about math. They talk about soccer; we talk about math. It's the same thing; it's human interaction.
Speaking of human interaction, do you talk about your work with your friends and family?
No. They're not mathematicians. They can't technically understand. My wife was close by my side and knows the story and the development of the topic. She knows how these things look from the outside, but I can't describe the content [to her].
A lot of people would say that the Langlands program is one of the most complex research topics in the world. Would you agree?
The question is: What do you mean by complex? Yes, one cannot come from the street and just study this. But the same applies to what other mathematicians, such as Peter Scholze [who studies arithmetic geometry at the University of Bonn in Germany and the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics], are doing. I don't have the background to just come to a talk he is giving and understand what he says because there are lots of technical details.
It's the same here. One has to invest some effort to understand how things work, and then one should be able to understand. But that doesn't say that whatever we're doing is intrinsically more complex. I think all frontier math is equally complicated. We're all trying to push a boundary at different points.
How many people can understand the technical parts of your work?
Now the community is growing because people are studying our proof. But up until last year, apart from [my] eight co-authors, there may have been five or six people who would have the capacity to understand the technical details.
Do you wish that more people were involved in this type of research?
Yes, definitely. So far it has been a very small community: The people who pushed the boundaries were basically my former students plus Dima Arinkin [a math professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison], who is my age. He was a close friend and collaborator for many years. So some ideas get recycled. It would be just nice to have an influx of people from the outside. They could bring in something totally new. I would be very excited to see new ideas.
What could be done to get more people interested in the geometric Langlands problem?
More lectures and workshops on that topic, I guess. There will be a master class in Copenhagen, for example, in August. And there will be a conference in Berkeley, Calif. But now our research gets more attention because our proof is out. I regularly receive e-mails, mostly from younger people.
[At the time of my interview], for example, [I am set to give] a talk to a big audience of graduate students in Graz, Austria. I will talk about the foundations of derived algebraic geometry. So the graduate students want to study these foundations, and hopefully some of them will proceed to study the geometric Langlands program. But they need derived algebraic geometry to understand this. [Editor's Note: This talk was scheduled for April 2.]
So you hope to catch the interest of young students by teaching them derived algebraic geometry. How did you become interested in the Langlands program in the first place?
It was back in the 1990s, when [Alexander] Sasha Beilinson [a mathematician now at the University of Chicago] came to Tel Aviv [University], where I was a graduate student. Beilinson gave two talks; he was at the very beginning of his own work on the subject. And I was completely captivated. I had learned about the classical Langlands program..., but before his talk, I had no idea that it could be related to geometry. It was the first time I heard about it. The objects he talked about seemed so appealing to me. It was exactly the type of mathematical object that I wanted to study. And they all came together miraculously in this. And I was like, “Wow.” I had to work on that.
Does the same fascination still drive your research?
Of course things evolved. It's one thing when you're 20, another thing when you're 50. I don't know what drives me now. It's like an actual desire. It's like appetite. I want to do math. And if I can't, if I'm prevented from doing math, such as when I'm on a family vacation for a week with my kids, and I can't do math, I suffer.
Really? That happens after one week?
One week is maybe still okay. But after two weeks, I become a terrible human being.
Well, it's wonderful to find such a passion in life.
It's not really passion.
Is it maybe more like some kind of addiction?
Yes, maybe. It's more like: man needs to eat, and man needs to do math.
What are you working on now? Did you plunge into an abyss?
I am trying to generalize our work. I have several projects at different stages. There's a lot of theory to be developed, but at least we now have a program. We know what we want.
You have a new road map?
Let's say that we have the road map of desires but not a roadmap of methods like the one I [described] in 2013 [and published in 2015]. Back then, I knew exactly what needed to be proved. Now I know what I want, but I don't know how to get there.
Maybe you will get new ideas from new researchers.
That would be very nice. But I think, in some sense, it's like a Darwinian process: If the math is valuable, it will get studied. And more people will understand and get attracted. And if the math is boring, then too bad. Time will show.
This article originally appeared in Spektrum der Wissenschaft and was reproduced with permission.
Manon Bischoff is a theoretical physicist and an editor at Spektrum der Wissenschaft, the German-language sister publication of Scientific American.
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Nature Communications
volume 16, Article number: 3280 (2025)
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The rapid growth of biomedical literature poses challenges for manual knowledge curation and synthesis. Biomedical Natural Language Processing (BioNLP) automates the process. While Large Language Models (LLMs) have shown promise in general domains, their effectiveness in BioNLP tasks remains unclear due to limited benchmarks and practical guidelines. We perform a systematic evaluation of four LLMs—GPT and LLaMA representatives—on 12 BioNLP benchmarks across six applications. We compare their zero-shot, few-shot, and fine-tuning performance with the traditional fine-tuning of BERT or BART models. We examine inconsistencies, missing information, hallucinations, and perform cost analysis. Here, we show that traditional fine-tuning outperforms zero- or few-shot LLMs in most tasks. However, closed-source LLMs like GPT-4 excel in reasoning-related tasks such as medical question answering. Open-source LLMs still require fine-tuning to close performance gaps. We find issues like missing information and hallucinations in LLM outputs. These results offer practical insights for applying LLMs in BioNLP.
Biomedical literature presents direct obstacles to curation, interpretation, and knowledge discovery due to its vast volume and domain-specific challenges. PubMed alone sees an increase of approximately 5000 articles every day, totaling over 36 million as of March 20241. In specialized fields such as COVID-19, roughly 10,000 dedicated articles are added each month, bringing the total to over 0.4 million as of March 20242. In addition to volume, the biomedical domain also poses challenges with ambiguous language. For example, a single entity such as Long COVID can be referred to using 763 different terms3. Additionally, the same term can describe different entities, as seen with the term AP2, which can refer to a gene, a chemical, or a cell line4. Beyond entities, identifying novel biomedical relations and capturing semantics in biomedical literature present further challenges5,6.
To overcome these challenges, biomedical natural language processing (BioNLP) techniques are used to assist with manual curation, interpretation, and knowledge discovery. Biomedical language models are considered as the backbone of BioNLP methods; they leverage massive amounts of biomedical literature and capture biomedical semantic representations in an unsupervised or self-supervised manner. Early biomedical language models are non-contextual embeddings (e.g., word2vec and fastText) that use fully connected neural networks such as BioWordVec and BioSentVec4,7,8. Since the inception of transformers, biomedical language models have adopted their architecture, and can be categorized into (1) encoder-based, masked language models using the encoder from the transformer architecture such as the biomedical bidirectional encoder representations from transformers (BERT) family including BioBERT and PubMedBERT9,10,11, (2) decoder-based, generative language models using the decoder from the transformer architecture such as the generative pre-trained transformer (GPT) family including BioGPT and BioMedLM12,13, and (3) encoder-decoder-based, using both encoders and decoders such as BioBART and Scifive14,15. BioNLP studies fine-tuned those language models and demonstrated that they achieved the SOTA performance in various BioNLP applications10,16, and those models have been successfully employed in PubMed-scale downstream applications such as biomedical sentence search17 and COVID-19 literature mining2.
Recently, the latest closed-source GPT models, including GPT-3 and, more notably, GPT-4, have made significant strides and garnered considerable attention from society. A key characteristic of these models is the exponential growth of their parameters. For instance, GPT-3 has ~175 billion parameters, which is hundreds larger than GPT-2. Models of this magnitude are commonly referred to as Large Language Models (LLMs)18. Moreover, the enhancement of LLMs is achieved through reinforcement learning with human feedback, thereby aligning text generation with human preferences19. For instance, GPT-3.5 builds upon the foundation of GPT-3 using reinforcement learning techniques, resulting in significantly improved performance in natural language understanding20. The launch of ChatGPT—a chatbot using GPT-3.5 and GPT-4—has marked a milestone in generative artificial intelligence. It has demonstrated strong capabilities in the tasks that its predecessors fail to do; for instance, GPT-4 passed over 20 academic and professional exams, including the Uniform Bar Exam, SAT Evidence-Based Reading & Writing, and Medical Knowledge Self-Assessment Program21. The remarkable advancements have sparked extensive discussions among society, with excitement and concerns alike. In addition to closed-source LLMs, open-source LLMs, such as LLaMA22 and Mixtral23 have been widely adopted in downstream applications and also used as the basis for continuous pretraining domain-specific resources. In the biomedical domain, PMC LLaMA (7B and 13B) is one of the first biomedical domain-specific LLMs that continuously pre-trained LLaMA on 4.8 M biomedical papers and 30 K medical textbooks24. Meditron (7B and 70B), a more recent biomedical domain-specific LLM, employed a similar continuous pretraining strategy on LLaMA 2.
Pioneering studies have conducted early experiments on LLMs in the biomedical domain and reported encouraging results. For instance, Bubeck et al. studied the ability of GPT-4 in a wide spectrum, such as coding, mathematics, and interactions with humans. This early study reported biomedical-related results, indicating that GPT-4 achieved an accuracy of approximately 80% in the US Medical Licensing Exam (Step 1, 2, and 3), along with an example of using GPT-4 to verify claims in a medical note. Lee et al. also demonstrated use cases of GPT-4 for answering medical questions, generating summaries from patient reports, assisting clinical decision-making, and creating educational materials24. Wong et al. conducted a study on GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 for end-to-end clinical trial matching, handling complex eligibility criteria, and extracting complex matching logic25. Liu et al. explored the performance of GPT-4 on radiology domain-specific use cases26. Nori et al. further found that general-domain LLMs with advanced prompt engineering can achieve the highest accuracy in medical question answering without fine-tuning27. Recent reviews also summarize related studies in detail28,29,30.
These results demonstrate the potential of using LLMs in BioNLP applications, particularly when minimal manually curated gold standard data is available and fine-tuning or retraining for every new task is not required. In the biomedical domain, a primary challenge is the limited availability of labeled datasets, which have a significantly lower scale than those in the general domain (e.g., a biomedical sentence similarity dataset only has 100 labeled instances in total31)32,33. This challenges the fine-tuning approach because (1) models fine-tuned on limited labeled datasets may not be generalizable, and (2) it becomes more challenging to fine-tune the models with a larger size.
Motivated by the early experiments, it is important to systematically assess the effectiveness of LLMs in BioNLP tasks and comprehend their impact on BioNLP method development and downstream users. Table 1 provides a detailed comparison of representative studies in this context. While our primary focus is on the biomedical domain, specifically the evaluation of LLMs using biomedical literature, we have also included two representative studies in the clinical domain (evaluating LLMs using clinical records) for reference. There are several primary limitations. First, most evaluation studies primarily assessed GPT-3 or GPT-3.5, which may not provide a full spectrum of representative LLMs from different categories. For instance, few studies evaluated more advanced closed-source LLMs such as GPT-4, LLM representatives from the general domain such as LLaMA22, and biomedical domain-specific LLMs such as PMC-LLaMA34. Second, the existing studies mostly assessed extraction tasks where the gold standard is fixed. Few of these studies evaluated generative tasks such as text summarization and text simplification where the gold standard is free-text. Arguably, existing transformer models have demonstrated satisfactory performance in extractive tasks, while generative tasks remain a challenge in terms of achieving similar levels of proficiency. Therefore, it is imperative to assess how effective LLMs are in the context of generative tasks in BioNLP, examining whether they can complement existing models. Third, most existing studies only reported quantitative assessments such as the F1-score, with limited emphasis on qualitative evaluations. However, conducting qualitative evaluations (e.g., assessing the quality of LLM-generated text and categorizing inconsistent or hallucinated responses) to understand of the errors and impacts of LLMs on downstream applications in the biomedical domain are arguably more critical than mere quantitative metrics. For instance, studies on LLMs found a relatively low correlation between human judgments and automatic measures, such as ROUGE-L, commonly applied to text summarization tasks in the clinical domain35. Finally, it is worth noting that several studies did not provide public access to their associated data or codes. For example, few studies have made the prompts or selected examples for few-shot learning available. This hinders reproducibility and also presents challenges in evaluating new LLMs using the same setting for a fair comparison.
In this study, we conducted a comprehensive evaluation of LLMs in BioNLP applications to examine their great potentials as well as their limitations and errors. Our study has three main contributions.
First, we performed comprehensive evaluations on four representative LLMs: GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 (representatives from closed-source LLMs), LLaMA 2 (a representative from open-sourced LLMs), and PMC LLaMA (a representative from biomedical domain-specific LLMs). We evaluated them on 12 BioNLP datasets across six applications: (1) named entity recognition, which extracts biological entities of interest from free-text, (2) relation extraction, which identifies relations among entities, (3) multi-label document classification, which categorizes documents into broad categories, (4) question answering, which provides answers to medical questions, (5) text summarization, which produces a coherent summary of an input text, and (6) text simplification, which generates understandable content of an input text. The models were evaluated under four settings: zero-shot, static few-shot, dynamic K-nearest few-shot, and fine-tuning where applicable. We compared these models against the state-of-the-art (SOTA) approaches that use fine-tuned, domain-specific BERT or BART models. Both BERT and BART models are well-established in BioNLP research.
Our results suggest that SOTA fine-tuning approaches outperformed zero- and few-shot LLMs in most of the BioNLP tasks. These approaches achieved a macro-average approximately 15% higher than the best zero- and few-shot LLM performance across 12 benchmarks (0.65 vs. 0.51) and over 40% higher in information extraction tasks, such as relation extraction (0.79 vs. 0.33). However, closed-source LLMs such as GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 demonstrated better zero- and few-shot performance in reasoning-related tasks such as medical question answering, where they outperformed the SOTA fine-tuning approaches. In addition, they exhibited lower-than-SOTA but reasonable performance in generation-related tasks such as text summarization and simplification, showing competitive accuracy and readability, as well as showing potential in semantic understanding tasks such as document-level classification. Among the LLMs, GPT-4 showed the overall highest performance, especially due to its remarkable reasoning capability. However, it comes with a trade-off, being 60 to 100 times more expensive than GPT-3.5. In contrast, open-sourced LLMs such as LLaMA 2 did not demonstrate robust zero- and few-shot performance – they still require fine-tuning to bridge the performance gap for BioNLP applications.
Second, we conducted a thorough manual validation on collectively over hundreds of thousands of sample outputs from the LLMs. For extraction and classification tasks where the gold standard is fixed (e.g., relation extraction and multi-label document classification), we examined (1) missing output, when LLMs fail to provide the requested output, (2) inconsistent output, when LLMs produce different outputs for similar instances, and (3) hallucinated output, when LLMs fail to address the user input and may contain repetitions and misinformation in the output36. For text summarization tasks, two healthcare professionals performed manual evaluations assessing Accuracy, Completeness, and Readability. The results revealed prevalent cases of missing, inconsistent, and hallucinated outputs, especially for LLaMA 2 under the zero-shot setting. For instance, it had over 102 hallucinated cases (32% of the total testing instances) and 69 inconsistent cases (22%) for a multi-label document classification dataset.
Finally, we provided recommendations for downstream users on the best practice to use LLMs in BioNLP applications. We also noted two open problems. First, the current data and evaluation paradigms in BioNLP are tailored to supervised methods and may not be fair to LLMs. For instance, the results showed that automatic metrics for text summarization may not align with manual evaluations. Also, the datasets that specifically target tasks where LLMs excel, such as reasoning, are limited in the biomedical domain. Revisiting data and evaluation paradigms in BioNLP are key to maximizing the benefits of LLMs in BioNLP applications. Second, addressing errors, missing information, and inconsistencies is crucial to minimize the risks associated with LLMs in biomedical and clinical applications. We strongly encourage a community effort to find better solutions to mitigate these issues.
We believe that the findings of this study will be beneficial for BioNLP downstream users and will also contribute to further enhancing the performance of LLMs in BioNLP applications. The established benchmarks and baseline performance could serve as the basis for evaluating new LLMs in the biomedical domain. To ensure reproducibility and facilitate benchmarking, we have made the relevant data, models, and results publicly accessible through https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1402550037.
Table 2 illustrates the primary evaluation metric results and their macro-averages of the LLMs under zero/few-shot (static one- and five-shot) and fine-tuning settings over the 12 datasets. The results on specific datasets were consistent with those independently reported by other studies, such as an accuracy of 0.4462 and 0.7471 on MedQA for GPT-3.5 zero-shot and GPT-4 zero-shot, respectively (0.4988 and 0.7156 in our study, respectively)38. Similarly, a micro-F1 of 0.6224 and 0.6720 on HoC and LitCovid for GPT-3.5 zero-shot was reported, respectively (0.6605 and 0.6707 in our study, respectively)39. An accuracy of 0.7790 on PubMedQA was also reported for the fine-tuned PMC LLaMA 13B (combined multiple question answering datasets for fine-tuning)34; our study also reported a similar accuracy of 0.7680 using the PubMedQA training set only. We further summarized detailed results in Supplementary Information S2 Quantitative evaluation results, including secondary metric results in S2.2, performance mean, variance, and confidence intervals in S2.3, statistical test results in S2.4, and dynamic K-nearest few-shot results in S2.5.
SOTA vs. LLMs. The results of SOTA fine-tuning approaches for comparison are provided in Table 2. Recall that the SOTA approaches utilized fine-tuned (domain-specific) language models. For the extractive and classification tasks, the SOTA approaches fine-tuned biomedical domain-specific BERT models such as BioBERT and PubMedBERT. For text summarization and simplification tasks, the SOTA approaches fine-tuned BART models.
As demonstrated in Table 2, the SOTA fine-tuning approaches had a macro-average of 0.6536 across the 12 datasets, whereas the best LLM counterparts were 0.4561, 0.4750, 0.4862, and 0.5131 under zero-shot, one-shot, five-shot, and fine-tuning settings, respectively. It outperformed the zero- and few-shot of LLMs in 10 out of the 12 datasets. It had much higher performance especially in information extraction tasks. For instance, for NCBI Disease, the SOTA approach achieved an entity-level F1-score of 0.9090, whereas the best results of LLMs (GPT-4) under zero- and one-shot settings were 30% lower (0.5988). The performance of LLMs is closer under the fine-tuning setting, with LLaMA 2 13B achieving an entity-level F1-score of 0.8682, but it is still lower. Notably, the SOTA fine-tuning approaches are very strong baselines – they were much more sophisticated than simple fine-tuning over a foundation model. Continuing with the example of NCBI Disease, the SOTA fine-tuning approach generated large-scale weak labeled examples and used contrastive learning to learn a general representation.
In contrast, the LLMs outperformed the SOTA fine-tuning approaches in question answering. For MedQA, the SOTA approach had an accuracy of 0.4195. GPT-4 under the zero-shot setting had almost 30% higher accuracy in absolute difference (0.7156), and GPT-3.5 also had approximately 8% higher accuracy (0.4988) under the zero-shot setting. For PubMedQA, the SOTA approach had an accuracy of 0.7340. GPT-4 under the one-shot setting had a similar accuracy (0.7100) and showed higher accuracy with more shots (0.7580 under the five-shot setting), as we will show later. Both LLaMA 2 13B and PMC LLaMA 13B also had higher accuracy under the fine-tuning setting (0.8040 and 0.7680, respectively). In this case, GPT-3.5 did not achieve higher accuracy over the SOTA approach, but it already had a competitive accuracy (0.6950) under the five-shot setting.
Comparisons among the LLMs. Comparing among the LLMs, under zero/few-shot settings, the results demonstrate that GPT-4 consistently had the highest performance. Under the zero-shot setting, the macro-average of GPT-4 was 0.4561, which is approximately 7% higher than GPT-3.5 (0.3814) and almost double than LLaMA 2 13B (0.2362). It achieved the highest performance in nine out of the 12 datasets, and its performance was also within 3% of the best result for the remaining three datasets. The one-shot and five-shot settings showed very similar patterns.
In addition, LLaMA2 13B exhibited substantially lower performance than GPT-3.5 (15% lower and 10% lower) and GPT-4 (22% lower and 17% lower) under zero- and one-shot settings. It had up to six times lower performance in specific datasets compared to the best LLM results; for example, 0.1286 vs. 0.7109 for HoC under the zero-shot setting. These results suggest that LLaMA2 13B still requires fine-tuning to achieve similar performance and bridge the performance gap. Fine-tuning improved LLaMA 2 13B's macro-average from 0.2837 to 0.5131. Notably, its performance under the fine-tuning setting is slightly higher than the zero- and few-shot performance of GPT-4. Fine-tuning LLaMA 2 13B generally improved its performance in all tasks except text summarization and text simplification. A key reason for its performance limitation is that the datasets have much longer input context than its allowed input tokens (4096) such that fine-tuning did not help in this case. This observation also motivates further research efforts on extending LLMs' context window40,41.
Under the fine-tuning setting, the results also indicate that PMC LLaMA 13B, as a continuously pretrained biomedical domain-specific LLM, did not achieve an overall higher performance than LLaMA 2 13B. Fine-tuned LLaMA 2 13B had better performance than that of PMC LLaMA 13B in 10 out of the 12 datasets. As mentioned, we reproduced similar results reported in PMC LLaMA study34. For instance, it reported an accuracy of 0.7790 on PubMedQA with fine-tuning multiple question answering datasets together. We got a very similar accuracy of 0.7680 when fine-tuning PMC LLaMA 13B on the PubMedQA dataset only. However, we also found that directly fine-tuning of LLaMA 2 13B using the exact same setting resulted in better or at least similar performance.
Figure 1 further illustrates the performance of the dynamic K-nearest few-shot and the associated cost with the increasing number of shots. The detailed results are also provided in Supplementary Information S2. Dynamic K-nearest few-shot was conducted for K values of one, two, and five. For comparison, we also provided the zero-shot and static one-shot performance in the figure. The results suggest that dynamic K-nearest few-shot is most effective for multi-label document classification and question answering. For instance, for the LitCovid dataset, GPT-4 had a macro-F1 of 0.5901 under the static one-shot setting; in contrast, its macro-F1 under dynamic one-nearest shot was 0.6500 and further increased to 0.7055 with five-nearest shots. Similarly, GPT-3.5 exhibited improvements, with its macro-F1 under the static one-shot setting at 0.6009, compared to 0.6364 and 0.6484 for dynamic one-shot and five-shot, respectively. For question answering, the improvement was not as high as for multi-label document classification, but the overall trend showed a steady increase, especially considering that GPT-4 already had similar or higher performance than SOTA approaches with zero-shot. For instance, its accuracy on PubMedQA was 0.71 with a static one-shot; the accuracy increased to 0.72 and 0.75 under dynamic one-shot and five-shot, respectively.
The input and output types for each benchmark are displayed at the bottom of each subplot. Detailed methods for the few-shot and cost analysis are summarized in the Data and Methods section. Dynamic K-nearest few-shot involves selecting the K closest training instances as examples for each testing instance. Additionally, the performance of static one-shot (using the same one-shot example for each testing instance) is shown as a dashed horizontal line for comparison. Detailed performance in digits is also provided in Supplementary Information S2.
In contrast, the results show that dynamic K-nearest few-shot was less effective for other tasks. For instance, the dynamic one-shot performance is lower than the static one-shot performance for both GPT models on the two named entity recognition datasets, and by increasing the number of dynamic shots does not help either. Similar findings are also observed in relation extraction. For text summarization and text simplification tasks, the dynamic K-nearest few-shot performance was slightly higher in two datasets, but in general, it was very similar to the static one-shot performance. In addition, the results also suggest that increasing the number of shots does not necessarily improve the performance. For instance, GPT-4 with dynamic five-shot did not have the highest performance in eight out of the 12 datasets. Similar findings were reported in other studies, where the performance of GPT-3.5 with five-shot learning was lower than that of zero-shot learning for natural language inference tasks39.
Figure 1 further compares the costs per 100 instances of using GPT-3.5 and GPT-4. The cost is calculated based on the number of input and output tokens with unit price. We used gpt-4-0613 for extractive tasks and gpt-4-32k-0613 for generative tasks because the input and output context are much longer especially with more shots. GPT-4 generally exhibited the highest performance, as shown in both Table 2 and Fig. 1; however, the cost analysis results also demonstrate a clear trade-off, with GPT-4 being 60 to 100 times more expensive. For extractive and classification tasks, the actual cost per 100 instances of GPT-4 for five-shots ranges from approximately $2 for sentence-level inputs to around $10 for abstract-level inputs. This cost is 60 to 70 times higher than that of GPT-3.5, which costs approximately $0.03 for sentence-level inputs and around $0.16 for abstract-level inputs with five-shots. For generative tasks, the cost difference is even more pronounced, scaling to 100 times or more expensive. One reason is that GPT-4 32 K has a higher unit price, and tasks like text summarization involve much longer input and output tokens. Taking the PubMed Text Summarization dataset as an example, GPT-4 cost $84.02 per 100 instances with five-shots, amounting to approximately $5600 to inference the entire testing set. In comparison, GPT-3 only cost $0.71 per 100 instances for five-shots, totaling around $48 for the entire testing set.
Based on both performance and cost results, it indicates that the cost difference does not necessarily scale to the performance difference, except for question answering tasks. GPT-4 exhibited 20% to 30% higher accuracy than GPT-3.5 in question-answering tasks, and higher than the SOTA approaches; for other tasks, the performance difference is much smaller with a significantly higher cost. For instance, the performance of GPT-4 on both text simplification tasks was within 2% of that of GPT-3.5, but the actual cost was more than 100 times higher.
Figure 2A further shows an error analysis on the named entity recognition benchmark NCBI Disease, where the performance of LLMs under zero- and few-shot settings was substantially lower than SOTA results (e.g., the LLaMA 2 13B zero-shot performance is almost 70% lower). Recall that named entity recognition extracts entities from free text, and the benchmarks evaluate the accuracy of these extracted entities. We examined all the predictions on full test sets and categorized into four types: (1) correct entities, where the predicted entities are correct with both text spans and entity types, (2) wrong entities, where the predicted entities are incorrect, (3) missing entities, where the true entities are not predicted, and (4) boundary issues, where the predicted entities are correct but with different text spans than the gold standard, as shown in Fig. 2A. The results reveal that the LLMs can predict up to 512 entities correctly out of 960 in total, explaining the low F1-score. As the SOTA model is not publicly available, we used an alternate fine-tuned BioBERT model on NCBI Disease from an independent study (https://huggingface.co/ugaray96/biobert_ncbi_disease_ner), which had an entity-level F1-score of 0.8920 for comparison. It predicted 863 entities out of 960 correctly. The wrong entities, missing entities, and boundary issues were 111, 97, and 269, respectively.
A Error analysis on the named entity recognition benchmark NCBI Disease. Correct entities: the predicted entities are correct with both text spans and entity types; Wrong entities: the predicted entities are incorrect; Missing entities: true entities are not predicted; and Boundary issues: the predicted entities are correct but with different text spans than the gold standard. B–D Qualitative evaluation on ChemProt, HoC, and MedQA where the gold standard is a fixed classification type or multiple-choice option. Inconsistent responses: the responses are in different formats; Missingness: the responses are missing; and Hallucinations, where LLMs fail to address the prompt and may contain repetitions and misinformation in the output.
In addition, Fig. 2A also shows that GPT-4 had the lowest number of wrong entities, whereas other categories have a similar prevalence to GPT-3.5, which explains its higher F1-score overall. Furthermore, providing one shot did not alter the errors for GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 compared to their zero-shot settings, but it dramatically changed the results for LLaMA 2 13B. Under one-shot, LLaMA 2 13B had 449 correctly predicted entities, compared to 148 under zero-shot. Additionally, its missing entities also reduced from 812 to 511 with one-shot, but it also had a trade-off of more boundary issues and wrong entities.
Figure 2B–D present the qualitative evaluation results on ChemProt, HoC, and MedQA, respectively. Recall that we categorized inconsistencies, missing information, and hallucinations on the tasks where the gold standard is a fixed classification type or a multiple-choice option. Table 3 also provides detailed examples. The findings show prevalent inconsistent, missing, or hallucinated responses, particularly in LLaMA 2 13B zero-shot responses. For instance, it exhibited 506 hallucinated responses (~3% out of the total 16,943 instances) and 2376 inconsistent responses (14%) for ChemProt. In the case of HoC, there were 102 (32%) hallucinated responses and 69 (22%) inconsistent responses. Similarly, for MedQA, there were 402 (32%) inconsistent responses. In comparison, GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 exhibited substantially fewer cases. GPT-3.5 showed a small number of inconsistent responses for ChemProt and HoC, and a few missing responses for MedQA. On the other hand, GPT-4 did not exhibit any such cases for ChemProt and HoC, while displaying a few missing responses for MedQA.
It is worth noting that inconsistent responses do not necessarily imply that they fail to address the prompts; rather, the responses answer the prompt but in different formats. In contrast, hallucinated cases do not address the prompts and may repeat the prompts or contain irrelevant information. All such instances pose challenges for automatic extraction or postprocessing and may require manual review. As a potential solution, we observed that adding just one shot could significantly reduce such cases, especially for LLaMA 2 13B, which exhibited prevalent instances in zero-shot. As illustrated in Fig. 2B, LLaMA 2 13B one-shot dramatically reduced these cases in ChemProt and MedQA. Similarly, its hallucinated responses decreased from 102 to 0, and inconsistent cases decreased from 69 to 23 in HoC with one-shot. Another solution is fine-tuning, which we did not find any such cases during the manual examination, albeit with a trade-off of computational resources.
Figure 3 presents the qualitative evaluation results on the PubMed Text Summarization dataset. In Fig. 3A, the overall results in accuracy, completeness, and readability for the four models on 50 random samples are depicted. The evaluation results in digits are further demonstrated in Table 4 for complementary. Detailed results with statistical analysis and examples are available in Supplementary Information S3. The fine-tuned BART model used in the SOTA approach42, serving as the baseline, achieved an accuracy of 4.76 (out of 5), a completeness of 4.02, and a readability of 4.05. In contrast, both GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 demonstrated similar and slightly higher accuracy (4.79 and 4.83, respectively) and statistically significantly higher readability than the fine-tuned BART model (4.66 and 4.73), but statistically significantly lower completeness (3.61 and 3.57) under the zero-shot setting. The LLaMA 2 13B zero-shot performance is substantially lower in all three aspects.
A The overall results of the fine-tuned BART, GPT-3.5 zero-shot, GPT-4 zero-shot, and LLaMA 2 zero-shot models on a scale of 1 to 5, based on random 50 testing instances from the PubMed Text Summarization dataset. B and C display the number of winning, tying, and losing cases when comparing GPT-4 zero-shot to GPT-3.5 zero-shot and GPT-4 zero-shot to the fine-tuned BART model, respectively. Table 4 shows the results in digits for complementary. Detailed results, including statistical tests and examples, are provided in Supplementary Information S3.
Figure 3B further compares GPT-4 to GPT-3.5 and the fine-tuned BART model in detail. In the comparison between GPT-4 and GPT-3.5, GPT-4 had a slightly higher number of winning cases in the three aspects (4 winning cases vs. 1 losing case for accuracy, 17 vs. 13 for completeness, and 13 vs. 6 for readability). Most of the cases resulted in a tie. When comparing GPT-4 to the fine-tuned BART model, GPT-4 had significantly more winning cases for readability (34 vs. 1) with much fewer winning cases for completeness (9 vs. 22).
First, the SOTA fine-tuning approaches outperformed zero- and few-shot performance of LLMs in most of BioNLP applications. As demonstrated in Table 2, it had the best performance in 10 out of the 12 benchmarks. In particular, it outperformed zero- and few-shot LLMs by a large margin in information extraction and classification tasks such as named entity recognition and relation extraction, which is consistent to the existing studies43,44. In contrast to, other tasks such as medical question answering, named entity recognition, and relation extraction require limited reasoning and extract information directly from inputs at the sentence-level. Zero- and few-shot learning may not be appropriate or sufficient for these conditions. For those tasks, arguably, fine-tuned biomedical domain-specific language models are still the first choice and have already set a high bar, according to the literature32.
In addition, closed-source LLMs such as GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 demonstrated reasonable zero- and few-shot capabilities for three BioNLP tasks. The most promising task that outperformed the SOTA fine-tuning approaches is medical question answering, which involves reasoning45. As shown in Table 2 and Fig. 1, GPT-4 already outperformed previous fine-tuned SOTA approaches in MedQA and PubMedQA with zero- or few-shot learning. This is also supported by the existing studies on medical question answering38,46. The second potential use case is text summarization and simplification. As shown in Table 2, those tasks are still less favored by the automatic evaluation measures; however, manual evaluation results show both GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 had higher readability and competitive accuracy compared to the SOTA fine-tuning approaches. Other studies reported similar findings regarding the low correlation between automatic and manual evaluations35,47. The third possible use case – though still underperformed by previous fine-tuned SOTA approaches – document-level classification, which involves semantic understanding. As shown in Fig. 1, GPT-4 achieved over a 0.7 F1-score with dynamic K-nearest shot for both multi-label document-level classification benchmarks.
In addition to closed-source LLMs, open-source LLMs such as LLaMA 2 do not demonstrate strong zero- and few-shot capabilities. While there are other open-source LLMs available, LLaMA 2 remains as a strong representative48. Results in Table 1 suggest that its overall zero-shot performance is 15% and 22% lower than that of GPT-3.5 and GPT-4, respectively, and up to 60% lower in specific BioNLP tasks. Not only does it exhibit suboptimal performance, but the results in Fig. 2 also demonstrate that its zero-shot responses frequently contain inconsistencies, missing elements, and hallucinations, accounting for up to 30% of the full testing set instances. Therefore, fine-tuning open-source LLMs for BioNLP tasks is still necessary to bridge the gap. Only through fine-tuning LLaMA 2, its overall performance is slightly higher than the one-shot GPT-4 (4%). However, it is worth noting that the model sizes of LLaMA 2 and PMC LLaMA are significantly smaller than those of GPT-3.5 and GPT-4, making it challenging to evaluate them on the same level. Additionally, open-source LLMs have the advantage of continued development and local deployment.
Another primary finding on open-source LLMs is that the results do not indicate significant performance improvement from continuously biomedical pre-trained LLMs (PMC LLaMA 13B vs. LLaMA 2 13B). As mentioned, our study reproduced similar results reported in PMC LLaMA 13B; however, we also found that directly fine-tuning LLaMA 2 yielded better or at least similar performance—and this is consistent across all 12 benchmarks. In the biomedical domain, representative foundation LLMs such as PMC LLaMA used 32 A100 GPUs34, and Meditron used 128 A100 GPUs to continuously pretrain from LLaMA or LLaMA 249. Our evaluation did not find significant performance improvement for PMC LLaMA; the Meditron study also only reported ~3% improvement itself and only evaluated on question answering datasets. At a minimum, the results suggest the need for a more effective and sustainable approach to developing biomedical domain-specific LLMs.
The automatic metrics for text summarization and simplification tasks may not align with manual evaluations. As the quantitative results on text summarization and generation demonstrated, commonly used automatic evaluations such as Rouge, BERT, and BART scores consistently favored the fine-tuned BART's generated text, while manual evaluations show different results, indicating that GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 had competitive accuracy and much higher readability even under the zero-shot setting. Existing studies also reported that the automatic measures on LLM-generated text may not correlate to human preference35,47. The MS^2 benchmark used in the study also discussed the limitation of automatic measures, specifically for text summarization50. Additionally, the results highlight that completeness is a primary limitation when adapting GPT models to biomedical text generation tasks despite its competitive accuracy and readability scores.
Last, our evaluation on both performance and cost demonstrates a clear trade-off when using LLMs in practice. GPT-4 had the overall best performance in the 12 benchmarks, with an 8% improvement over GPT-3.5 but also at a higher cost (60 to 100 times higher than GPT-3.5). Notably, GPT-4 showed significantly higher performance, particularly in question-answering tasks that involve reasoning, such as over 20% improvement in MedQA compared to GPT-3.5. This observation is consistent with findings from other studies27,38. Note that newer versions of GPT-4, such as GPT-4 Turbo, may further reduce the cost of using GPT-4.
These findings lead to recommendations for downstream users to apply LLMs in BioNLP applications, summarized in Fig. 4. It provides suggestions on which BioNLP applications are recommended (or not) for LLMs, categorized by conditions (e.g., the zero/few-shot setting when computational resources are limited) and additional tips (e.g., when advanced prompt engineering is more effective).
It presents specific task-based recommendations across different settings and offers general guidance on effectively applying LLMs in BioNLP.
We also recognize the following two open problems and encourage a community effort for better usage of LLMs in BioNLP applications.
Adapting both data and evaluation paradigms is essential to maximize the benefits of LLMs in BioNLP applications. Arguably, the current datasets and evaluation settings in BioNLP are tailored to supervised (fine-tuning) methods and is not fair for LLMs. Those issues challenge the direct comparison between the fine-tuned biomedical domain-specific language models and zero/few shot of LLMs. The datasets for the tasks where LLMs excel are also limited in the biomedical domain. Further, the manual measures on biomedical text summarization also showed different results than that of all three automatic measures. These collectively suggest the current BioNLP evaluation frameworks have limitations when they are applied to LLMs35,51. They may not be able to accurately assess the full benefits of LLMs in biomedical applications, calling for the development of new evaluation datasets and methods for LLMs in bioNLP tasks.
Addressing inconsistencies, missingness, and hallucinations produced by LLMs is critical. The prevalence of inconsistencies, missingness, and hallucinations generated by LLMs is of concern, and we argue that they must be addressed for deployment. Our results demonstrate that providing just one shot could significantly reduce the occurrence of such issues, offering a simple solution. However, thorough examination in real-world scenario validations is still necessary. Additionally, more advanced approaches for validating LLMs' responses are expected for further improvement of their reliability and usability47.
This study also has several limitations that should be acknowledged. While this study examined strong LLM representatives from each category (closed-source, open-source, and biomedical domain-specific), it is important to note that there are other LLMs, such as BARD52 and Mistral53, that have demonstrated strong performance in the literature. Additionally, while we investigated zero-shot, one-shot, dynamic K-nearest few-shot, and fine-tuning techniques, each of them has variations, and there are also new approaches54. Given the rapidly growing nature of this area, our study cannot cover all of them. Instead, our aim is to establish baseline performance on the main BioNLP applications using commonly used LLMs and methods as representatives, and to make the datasets, methods, codes, and results publicly available. This enables downstream users to understand when and how to apply LLMs in their own use cases and to compare new LLMs and associated methods on the same benchmarks. In the future, we also plan to assess LLMs in real-world scenarios in the biomedical domain to further broaden the scope of the study.
Table 5 presents a summary of the evaluation tasks, datasets, and metrics. We benchmarked the models on the full testing sets of the twelve datasets from six BioNLP applications, which are BC5CDR-chemical and NCBI-disease for Named Entity Recognition, ChemProt and DDI2013 for relation extraction, HoC and LitCovid for multi-label document classification, and MedQA and PubMedQA for question answering, PubMed Text Summarization and MS^2 for text summarization, and Cochrane PLS and PLOS Text Simplification for text simplification. These datasets have been widely used in benchmarking biomedical text mining challenges55,56,57 and evaluating biomedical language models9,10,11,16. The datasets are also available in the repository. We evaluated the datasets using the official evaluation metrics provided by the original dataset description papers, as well as commonly used metrics for method development or applications with the datasets, as documented in Table 5. Note that it is challenging to have a single one-size-fits-all metric, and some datasets and related studies used multiple evaluation metrics. Therefore, we also adopted secondary metrics for additional evaluations. A detailed description is below.
Named entity recognition. Named entity recognition is a task that involves identifying entities of interest from free text. The biomedical entities can be described in various ways, and resolving the ambiguities is crucial58. Named entity recognition is typically a sequence labeling task, where each token is classified into a specific entity type. BC5CDR-chemical59 and NCBI-disease60 are manually annotated named entity recognition datasets for chemicals and diseases mentioned in biomedical literature, respectively. The exact match (that is, the predicted tokens must have the same text spans as the gold standard) F1-score was used to quantify the model performance.
Relation extraction. Relation extraction involves identifying the relationships between entities, which is important for drug repurposing and knowledge discovery61. Relation extraction is typically a multi-class classification problem, where a sentence or passage is given with identified entities and the goal is to classify the relation type between them. ChemProt55 and DDI201362 are manually curated relation extraction datasets for protein-protein interactions and drug-drug interactions from biomedical literature, respectively. Macro and micro F1-scores were used to quantify the model performance.
Multi-label document classification. Multi-label document classification identifies semantic categories at the document-level. The semantic categories are effective for grasping the main topics and searching for relevant literature in the biomedical domain63. Unlike multi-class classification, which assigns only one label to an instance, multi-label classification can assign up to N labels to an instance. HoC64 and LitCovid56 are manually annotated multi-label document classification datasets for hallmarks of cancer (10 labels) and COVID-19 topics (7 labels), respectively. Macro and Micro F1 scores were used as the primary and secondary evaluation metrics, respectively.
Question answering. Question answering evaluates the knowledge and reasoning capabilities of a system in answering a given biomedical question with or without associated contexts45. Biomedical QA datasets such as MedQA and PubMedQA have been widely used in the evaluation of language models65. The MedQA dataset is collected from questions in the United States Medical License Examination (USMLE), where each instance contains a question (usually a patient description) and five answer choices (e.g., five potential diagnoses)66. The PubMedQA dataset includes biomedical research questions from PubMed, and the task is to use yes, no, or maybe to answer these questions with the corresponding abstracts67. Accuracy and macro F1-score are used as the primary and secondary evaluation metrics, respectively.
Text summarization. Text summarization produces a concise and coherent summary of a longer documents or multiple documents while preserving its essential content. We used two primary biomedical text summarization datasets: the PubMed text summarization benchmark68 and MS^250. The PubMed text summarization benchmark focuses on single document summarization where the input is a full PubMed article, and the gold standard output is its abstract. M2^2 in contrast, focuses on multi-document summarization where the input is a collection of PubMed articles, and the gold standard output is the abstract of a systematic review study that cites those articles. Both benchmarks used the ROUGE-L score as the primary evaluation metric; BERT score and BART score were used as secondary evaluation metrics.
Text simplification. Text simplification rephrases complex texts into simpler language while maintaining the original meaning, making the information more accessible to a broader audience. We used two primary biomedical text simplification datasets: Cochrane PLS69 and the PLOS text simplification benchmark70. Cochrane PLS consists of the medical documents from the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews and the corresponding plain-language summary (PLS) written by the authors. The PLOS text simplification benchmark consists of articles from PLOS journals and the corresponding technical summary and PLS written by the authors. The ROUGE-L score was used as the primary evaluation metric. Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level (FKGL) and Dale-Chall Readability Score (DCRS), two commonly used evaluation metrics on readability71 were used as the secondary evaluation metrics.
For each dataset, we reported the reported SOTA fine-tuning result before the rise of LLMs as the baseline. The SOTA approaches involved fine-tuning (domain-specific) language models such as PubMedBERT16, BioBERT9, or BART72 as the backbone. The fine-tuning still requires scalable manually labeled instances, which is challenging in the biomedical domain32. In contrast, LLMs may have the advantage when minimal manually labeled instances are available, and they do not require fine-tuning or retraining for every new task through zero/few-shot learning. Therefore, we used the existing SOTA results achieved by the fine-tuning approaches to quantify the benefits and challenges of LLMs in BioNLP applications.
Representative LLMs and their versions. Both GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 have been regularly updated. For reproducibility, we used the snapshots gpt-3.5-turbo-16k-0613 and gpt-4-0613 for extractive tasks, and gpt-4-32k-0613 for generative tasks, considering their input and output token sizes. Regarding LLaMA 2, it is available in 7B, 13B, and 70B versions. We evaluated LLaMA 2 13B based on the computational resources required for fine-tuning, which is arguably the most common scenario applicable to BioNLP downstream applications. For PMC LLaMA, both 7B and 13B versions are available. Similarly, we used PMC LLaMA 13B, specifically evaluating it under the fine-tuning setting – the same setting used in its original study34. In the original study, PMC LLaMA was only evaluated on medical question answering tasks, combining multiple question answering datasets for fine-tuning. In our case, we fine-tuned each dataset separately and reported the results individually.
Prompts. To date, prompt design remains an open research problem73,74,75. We developed a prompt template that can be used across different tasks based on existing literature74,75,76,77. An annotated prompt example is provided in Supplementary Information S1 Prompt engineering, and we have made all the prompts publicly available in the repository. The prompt template contains (1) task descriptions (e.g., classifying relations), (2) input specifications (e.g., a sentence with labeled entities), (3) output specifications (e.g., the relation type), (4) task guidance (e.g., detailed descriptions or documentations on relation types), and (5) example demonstrations if examples from training sets are provided. This approach aligns with previous studies in the biomedical domain, which have demonstrated that incorporating task guidance into the prompt leads to improved performance74,76 and was also employed and evaluated in our previous study, specifically focusing on named entity recognition77. We also adapted the SOTA example selection approach in the biomedical domain described below27.
Zero-shot and static few-shot. We comparatively evaluated the zero-shot, one-shot, and five-shot learning performances. Only a few studies have made the selected examples available. For reproducibility and benchmarking, we first randomly selected the required number of examples in training sets, used the same selected examples for few-shot learning, and made the selected examples publicly available.
Dynamic K-nearest few-shot. In addition to zero- or static few-shot learning where fixed instructions are used for each instance, we further evaluated the LLMs under a dynamic few-shot learning setting. The dynamic few-shot learning is based on the MedPrompt approach, the SOTA method that demonstrated robust performance in medical question answering tasks without fine-tuning27. The essence is to use K training instances that are most similar to the test instance as the selected examples. We denote this setting as dynamic K-nearest few-shot, as the prompts for different test instances differ. Specifically, for each dataset, we used the SOTA text embedding model text-embedding-ada-00254 to encode the instances and used cosine similarity as the metric for finding similar training instances to a testing instance. We tested dynamic K-nearest few-shot prompts with K equals to one, two, and five.
Parameters for prompt engineering. For zero-, one-, and few-shot approaches, we used a temperature parameter of 0 to minimize variance for both GPT and LLaMA-based models. Additionally, for LLaMA models, we maintained other parameters unchanged, set the maximum number of generated tokens per task, and truncated the instances due to the input length limit for the five-shot setting. Further details are provided in Supplementary Information S1 Prompt engineering, and the related codes are available in the repository.
Fine-tuning. We further conducted instruction fine-tuning on LLaMA 2 13B and PMC-LLaMA 13B. For each dataset, we fine-tuned LLaMA 2 13B and PMC- LLaMA 13B using its training set. The goal of instruction fine-tuning is defined by the objective function: \({\arg }{\max }_{\theta }{\sum}_{\left({x}^{i},{y}^{i}\right)\epsilon (X,Y)}{logp}({y}^{i}|{x}^{i};\theta )\), where \({x}^{i}\) represents the input instruction, \({y}^{i}\) is the ground truth response, and \(\theta\) is the parameter set of the model. This function aims to maximize the likelihood of accurately predicting responses based on the given instructions. The fine-tuning is performed on eight H100 80G GPUs, over three epochs with a learning rate of 1e−5, a weight decay of 1e−5, a warmup ratio of 0.01, and Low-Rank Adaptation (LoRA) for parameter-effective tuning78.
Output parsing. For extractive and classification tasks, we extracted the targeted predictions (e.g., classification types or multiple-choice options) from the raw outputs of LLMs with a combination of manual and automatic processing. We manually reviewed the processed outputs. Manual review showed that LLMs provided answers in inconsistent formats in some cases. For example, when presenting multiple-choice option C, the raw output examples included variations such as: “Based on the information provided, the most likely … is C. The thyroid gland is a common site for metastasis, and …”, “Great! Let's go through the options. A. … B. …Therefore, the most likely diagnosis is C.”, and “I'm happy to help! Based on the patient's symptoms and examination findings, … Therefore, option A is incorrect. …, so option D is incorrect. The correct answer is option C.” (adapted from real responses with unnecessary details omitted). In such cases, automatic processing might overlook the answer, potentially lowering LLM accuracy. Thus, we manually extracted outputs in these instances to ensure fair credit. Additionally, we qualitatively evaluated the prevalence of such cases (providing responses in inconsistent formats), which will be introduced below.
Quantitative evaluations. We summarized the evaluation metrics in Table 5 under zero-shot, static few-shot, dynamic K-nearest few-shot, and fine-tuning settings. The metrics are applicable to the entire testing sets of 12 datasets. We further conducted bootstrapping using a subsample size of 30 and repeated 100 times at a 95% confidence interval to report performance variance and performed a two-tailed Wilcoxon rank-sum test using SciPy79. Further details are provided in Supplementary Information S2 Quantitative evaluation results (S2.1. Result reporting).
Qualitative evaluations on inconsistency, missing information, and hallucinations. For the tasks where the gold standard is fixed, e.g., a classification type or multiple-choice option, we conducted qualitative evaluations on collectively hundreds of thousands of raw outputs of the LLMs (the raw outputs from three LLMs under zero- and one-shot conditions across three benchmarks) to categorize errors beyond inaccurate predictions. Specifically, we examined (1) inconsistent responses, where the responses are in different formats, (2) missingness, where the responses are missing, and (3) hallucinations, where LLMs fail to address the prompt and may contain repetitions and misinformation in the output36. We evaluated and reported the results in selected datasets: ChemProt, HoC, and MedQA.
Qualitative evaluations on accuracy, completeness, and readability. For the tasks with free-text gold standards, such as summaries, we conducted qualitative evaluations on the quality of generated text. Specifically, one senior resident and one junior resident evaluated four models: the fine-tuned BART model reported in the SOTA approach, GPT-3.5 zero-shot, GPT-4 zero-shot, and LLaMA 2 13B zero-shot on 50 random samples from the PubMed Text Summarization benchmark. Each annotator was provided with 600 annotations. To mitigate potential bias, the model outputs were all lowercased, their orders were randomly shuffled, and the annotators were unaware of the models being evaluated. They assessed three dimensions on a scale of 1—5: (1) accuracy, does the generated text contain correct information from the original input, (2) completeness, does the generated text capture the key information from the original input, and (3) readability, is the generated text easy to read. The detailed evaluation guideline is provided in Supplementary Information S3 Qualitative evaluation on the PubMed Text Summarization Benchmark.
We further conducted a cost analysis to quantify the trade-off between cost and accuracy when using GPT models. The cost of GPT models is determined by the number of input and output tokens. We tracked the tokens in the input prompts and output completions using the official model tokenizers provided by OpenAI (https://cookbook.openai.com/examples/how_to_count_tokens_with_tiktoken) and used the pricing table (https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/cognitive-services/openai-service/) to compute the overall cost.
Further information on research design is available in the Nature Portfolio Reporting Summary linked to this article.
All data supporting the findings of this study, including source data, are available in the article and Supplementary Information, and can be accessed publicly via https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1402550037. Additional data or requests for data can also be obtained from the corresponding authors upon request. Source data are provided with this paper.
The codes are publicly available via https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1402550037.
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This study is supported by the following National Institutes of Health grants: 1R01LM014604 (Q.C., R.A.A., and H.X), 4R00LM014024 (Q.C.), R01AG078154 (R.Z., and H.X), 1R01AG066749 (W.J.Z), W81XWH-22-1-0164 (W.J.Z), and the Intramural Research Program of the National Library of Medicine (Q.C., Q.J., P.L., Z.W., and Z.L).
Open access funding provided by the National Institutes of Health.
These authors contributed equally: Zhiyong Lu, Hua Xu.
Department of Biomedical Informatics and Data Science, Yale School of Medicine, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA
Qingyu Chen, Xueqing Peng, Qianqian Xie, Xuguang Ai, Vipina K. Keloth, Kalpana Raja, Jimin Huang, Huan He, Fongci Lin & Hua Xu
National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA
Qingyu Chen, Qiao Jin, Po-Ting Lai, Zhizheng Wang & Zhiyong Lu
McWilliams School of Biomedical Informatics, University of Texas Health Science at Houston, Houston, TX, USA
Yan Hu, Jingcheng Du & W. Jim Zheng
Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Science, Yale School of Medicine, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA
Aidan Gilson, Maxwell B. Singer & Ron A. Adelman
Division of Computational Health Sciences, Department of Surgery, Medical School, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA
Rui Zhang
Center for Learning Health System Sciences, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, 55455, USA
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Q.C., Z.L., and H.X. designed the research. Q.C., Y.H., X.P., Q.X., Q.J., A.G., M.B.S., X.A., P.L., Z.W., V.K.K., K.P., J.H., H.H., F.L., and J.D. performed experiments and data analysis. Q.C., Z.L., and H.X. wrote and edited the manuscript. All authors contributed to the discussion and manuscript preparation.
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Dr. Jingcheng Du and Dr. Hua Xu have research-related financial interests at Melax Technologies Inc. The remaining authors declare no competing interests.
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The UniProt database is a valuable resource for biocatalyst discovery, yet predicting enzymatic functions remains challenging, especially for low-similarity sequences. Identifying superior enzymes with enhanced catalytic properties is even harder. To overcome these challenges, we develop ESM-Ezy, an enzyme mining strategy leveraging the ESM-1b protein language model and similarity calculations in semantic space. Using ESM-Ezy, we identify novel multicopper oxidases (MCOs) with superior catalytic properties, achieving a 44% success rate in outperforming query enzymes (QEs) in at least one property, including catalytic efficiency, heat and organic solvent tolerance, and pH stability. Notably, 51% of the MCOs excel in environmental remediation applications, and some exhibited unique structural motifs and unique active centers enhancing their functions. Beyond MCOs, 40% of L-asparaginases identified show higher specific activity and catalytic efficiency than QEs. ESM-Ezy thus provides a promising approach for discovering high-performance biocatalysts with low sequence similarity, accelerating enzyme discovery for industrial applications.
Enzymes are increasingly playing pivotal roles across diverse industries, including food, agriculture, chemical, and pharmaceutical sectors. Despite the successful use of various enzymes, their catalytic properties often do not meet the stringent demands of diverse industrial applications. Directed evolution has been effectively employed to enhance enzymatic catalytic properties. However, the lack of high-throughput screening methods makes the process labor-intensive and costly in many cases. Thanks to advances in next-generation sequencing, the UniProtKB now encompasses over 227 million protein sequences, including more than 214 million entries complemented by AlphaFold-predicted structures1. Therefore, discovering advanced enzymes from UniProtKB could offer advanced biocatalysts ready for direct applications or serve as prime candidates for subsequent directed evolution, potentially streamlining the follow-up extensive engineering processes.
Strategies for enzyme mining based solely on protein sequence information often led to inaccuracies in function annotations despite extensive sequence data collections from a wide array of organisms. Traditional bioinformatic tools excel at identifying protein domains and assigning gene ontology terms but face challenges in accurately predicting functions for enzymes with low sequence similarity to the characterized ones2,3. Consequently, these enzymes remain underexplored, highlighting the need for a convenient strategy to accurately identify enzymes with low sequence similarities and investigate the likelihood of discovering novel enzymes with enhanced properties from this pool.
Deep learning presents a promising avenue for establishing connections between protein sequences and their functions, particularly for proteins exhibiting low sequence similarities to the previously characterized entities. By leveraging the structural similarities between protein sequences and natural language, the development of protein language models (PLMs) has emerged as a powerful approach to addressing the challenges in predicting protein structure and function4,5,6. One such model, evolutionary scale modeling (ESM-1b), is designed to learn an embedding space from extensive protein sequence databases, enabling the Euclidean distance within this space to reflect functional similarities7,8. These embeddings, numerical vectors derived from diverse amino acid sequences by PLMs, encapsulate critical protein properties9,10. Recently, ESMs have been successfully utilized in protein engineering11,12,13, enzyme function classification14, and remote homology prediction4. However, strategies for discovering enzymes with improved catalytic properties compared to existing ones are rarely developed15,16. Since low sequence similarity can indicate structural and functional novelty, potentially leading to breakthroughs in properties, we aimed to develop a sequence-based, highly accurate sequence-based in silico tool for discovering enzymes with enhanced catalytic properties from collections with low sequence similarity.
Multicopper oxidases (MCOs) are key biocatalysts widely used in food and chemical industries. In this study, we developed ESM-Ezy, a deep learning strategy assisted by ESM-1b, to explore novel MCOs with low sequence similarity for improved catalytic properties at a high success rate. By fine-tuning ESM-1b with a small but high-quality dataset and selecting candidates based on shorter Euclidean distances to the query enzymes (QEs), we successfully identified new MCOs with low sequence similarity, mostly below 35%, exhibiting superior catalytic properties. Almost 89% of the tested MCOs catalyzed 2,2'-Azino-bis (3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulfonic acid) diammonium salt (ABTS) oxidation successfully, with 44% of them showing enhancements in at least one catalytic property compared to the QEs, including higher catalytic efficiency, improved heat and organic solvents tolerance, and a broader pH range. We identified Sulfur as one of the most heat-resistant MCOs reported so far17,18, with a remarkable half-life of 156.9 min at 80 °C, and characterized Bfre with a unique Cu-Mn heteroatom center for the first time. Furthermore, we evaluated the performance of newly discovered MCOs in mediator-free bioremediation applications. 53% of the MCOs decolorized Remazol Brilliant Blue R (RBBR) more efficiently than the QEs17. Talbi degraded Chloramphenicol (CAP) at room temperature and outperformed the previous fungal systems19. Additionally, Bcece demonstrated a capacity to degrade 39.4% of aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) after 48 h of incubation, exhibiting superior mediator-free degradation efficacy in comparison to other bacterial MCOs under mild conditions20. In addition to MCOs, 40% of l-Asparaginase enzymes discovered by ESM-Ezy outperformed their QE in terms of specific activity and catalytic efficiency. Overall, ESM-Ezy assisted us in enriching the libraries of MCOs with both improved catalytic activities and structural diversities, facilitating their application in various industrial settings.
In this study, a two-stage strategy named ESM-Ezy was developed, involving fine-tuning and searching, to discover novel MCOs from an extensive sequence database (Fig. 1a). Initially, sequence embeddings were extracted from the transformer layers of ESM-1b, and a binary classification layer was incorporated to distinguish MCOs from other sequences in the database. The fine-tuning stage utilized a high-quality positive dataset of 147 characterized MCOs from literature, along with a large negative dataset of 550,000 non-MCO sequences from Swiss-Prot. This process swiftly reached optimal accuracy and demonstrated significant robustness based on our analysis of five-fold cross-validation (Fig. S1, Tables S4 and S5). Additionally, dimensionality reduction employing the UMAP algorithm21 effectively displayed distinct clustering of MCOs, confirming the model's efficacy (Fig. 1b).
a In the fine-tuning stage, the ESM-1b model was fine-tuned through binary classification on positive and negative data sets. In the searching phase, the Fine-tuned ESM-1b Backbone was used to generate query embeddings and candidate embeddings, and Euclidean distance in the embedding space was employed to identify the closest sequences for further validation. In the searching stage, the Binary Classification Head was omitted, and the ESM-1b Backbone from the fine-tuning stage was retained as the Fine-tuned ESM-1b Backbone. b After fine-tuning, the MCOs cluster (positive) became distinctly separated from the non-MCOs cluster (negative). c The embeddings of the selected sequences generated by the fine-tuned model clustered closely with the QEs. d The sequence and structure similarity matrix of the MCOs and QEs. The newly discovered enzymes exhibit low sequence similarity but are structurally conserved. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.
Subsequently, to identify novel MCOs with enhanced catalytic properties in the searching stage, three representative MCOs, specifically Eclac from Escherichia coli K12 (UniProt: P36649)22, HR03 from Bacillus sp. HR03 (UniProt: B9W2C5)23 and DSM13 from Bacillus licheniformis DSM13 (UniProt: Q65MU7)24 were selected as QEs. These QEs, along with all sequences from UniRef50, were embedded into the fine-tuned ESM-1b backbone. Euclidean distances were calculated between the UniRef50 sequences and the QEs, leading to the selection of 18 neighboring sequences with similarity in protein semantic space for further analysis (Tables S2 and S3). It is important to note that the primary goal of the fine-tuned classification task in the first step is to learn a representation space for sequences, rather than merely predicting whether a sequence is positive or negative. Given that the UniRef50 database is extremely large, even applying stringent criteria to filter positive candidates yields thousands of sequences, which is impractical for wet lab experiments. To address this issue, we employed QEs to identify the nearest sequences within the fine-tuned representation space for wet lab experimentation. After fine-tuning, the selected candidates are much more closely positioned around the QEs compared to those in the pretrained and random ESM-1b model, which indicates the necessity of the fine-tuning step (Fig. 1c, Fig. S2).
The majority of the selected MCOs showed low sequence similarities both to the QEs and among themselves, ranging from 25% to 35% (Fig. 1d). Despite low sequence similarities, high structure similarity (TM-score > 0.8) was observed (Fig. 1d). Enzymes with low sequence similarity but conserved structures are often considered to possess evolutionary novelty, and the selected enzymes and their mutants in this study have not been reported previously. Phylogenetic analysis indicated that the selected MCOs are distributed across various bacterial MCO groups and do not cluster closely with their respective QEs (Fig. S3). This suggests that MCOs with shorter Euclidean distances may not be closely related evolutionarily. Additionally, analysis of sequence similarity networks (SSN) within UniRef50 indicated that MCOs with close evolutionary relationships do not consistently exhibit short Euclidean distances (Fig. S4). Finally, AlphaFold2 structures of the selected MCOs and the QEs were used for analyzing their structural relationships. A taxonomic tree (Fig. S5a) categorized the MCOs into six clades, with over half located in categories separate from those of the QEs.
To determine if this strategy could yield new MCOs with enhanced catalytic properties compared to the QEs, all selected MCOs were successfully expressed and purified using E. coli (BL21). We conducted a comprehensive and quantitative assessment of the catalytic properties of these MCOs using the standard ABTS oxidation reaction. Almost all MCOs effectively oxidized ABTS, with approximately 40% of MCOs in each series demonstrating superior catalytic efficiency or increased thermal stability relative to their QEs (Fig. 2a, Table. S6). Notably, several candidates stood out in this study: Sulfur, Bcece, Tocean, and Bfre. As shown in Fig. 2a, Scla exhibited a 3.0-fold longer half-life at 80 °C compared to DMS13 while maintaining a higher kcat and specific activity value. Additionally, Tocean and Bfre demonstrated catalytic efficiencies 5.8 and 95.2 times higher than that of HR03, respectively, while maintaining comparable thermostability. Remarkably, Sulfur was found to be 32.9 times more active than Eclac and stands out as one of the most heat-tolerant MCOs reported to date20, with a half-life of 156.9 ± 9.0 min at 80 °C.
a Kinetic parameter of representative MCOs. b Profiles of relative activities under different pH. c Profiles of relative activity under different temperatures. d Profiles of relative activity under different organic solvents. The bar plots show mean ± standard deviation (n = 3 biological replicates). The query enzyme of each series is labeled in dark blue. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.
Given that MCOs are often utilized in industrial settings with harsh conditions, we evaluated the optimal operating temperatures and pH, as well as the organic solvent tolerance of both newly discovered MCOs and their corresponding QEs. Like QEs, Sulfur, Bcece, Tocean, and Bfre showed optimal activity at temperatures between 80 and 90 °C. Notably, Sulfur also maintained relatively high activity at lower temperatures, ranging from 30 to 50 °C (Fig. 2b). Bacterial MCOs typically catalyze ABTS oxidation under acidic conditions and lose activity as the pH increases. However, in our study, Sulfur and Mint achieved optimal activity at a pH of 5.0 and remained active even when the pH levels were as high as 8 (Fig. 2c). Furthermore, Sulfur, Tocean, Slac, and Bfre demonstrated exceptional resistance to organic solvents such as methanol, ethanol, acetonitrile, dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) and acetone. After a 2-day incubation, they retained at least approximately 80% of their initial activity in 50 v/v% tested organic solvents, surpassing the performance of both QEs. The broader operational temperature and pH range, as well as enhanced organic solvent tolerance, highlight the potential of these enzymes for robust industrial applications.
Overall, Sulfur, Tocean, Bfre, Bcece, and Scla outperform both the QEs and most reported MCOs, excelling in at least two factors among catalytic efficiency, heat and pH tolerance, and organic solvent resistance. Among them, Sulfur significantly outperforms all QEs across all catalytic properties.
We resolved the crystal structure of Bfre (PDB:8Z5B) and Sulfur (PDB: 8Z59) due to their exceptional catalytic properties. The arguments for X-ray diffraction and structural refinement are listed in Tables S9 and S10. As illustrated in Fig. 3, both Bfre and Sulfur have Greek key β-barrel domains interconnected by α-helices and extensive coiled sections. They also have a highly conserved mononuclear copper ion center (T1 Cu) essential for substrate oxidation and a Cu-Cys-His pathway facilitating electron transfer. While these structural features are typical for MCOs from E. coli and Bacillus species25,26, Bfre and Sulfur possess unique characteristics that warrant further investigation.
a The crystal structures of Bfre and Sulfur, including their active centers. b Superimposition of Sulfur (PDB: 8Z59, colored in orange) with Eclac (AF-P36649-F1-model_v4, colored in cyan). The loop region of Ile335–Val340 (Sulfur) and Asp333–Ala384 (Eclac) are highlighted with B-factors of the regions represented as thickness. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.
The conventional active center of MCO comprises four copper ions, including a T1 Cu and a trinuclear Cu cluster27. The trinuclear Cu cluster consists of one T2 Cu ion and two T3 Cu ions, which bind and reduce molecular oxygen to water28. Differently, Bfre's active center contains only three metal ions: one T1 Cu and a unique diatomic center composed of one Cu ion and one Mn ion. Atomic absorption spectroscopy revealed that the MCO from Trametes hirsuta LG-9 contains copper and manganese, but it could not pinpoint the exact location of these metals29. Meanwhile, the PDB database has not yet included any MCOs with heteronuclear active centers. Therefore, this unique configuration distinguishes it from all previously documented MCO active centers30(Fig. 3a and Figs. S6 and S9).
Sulfur is structurally similar to Eclac, with a TM-score of 0.92, despite a low sequence similarity of 28.49% (Fig. 3a). A detailed structural comparison between Sulfur and Eclac reveals a significant difference in a loop region, where Eclac contains an additional 36 amino acid residues compared to Sulfur. Molecular dynamic simulations were conducted on both enzymes further to investigate the impact of this region on their properties. Root mean square fluctuation (RMSF) analysis indicated notable instability within the D333–A384 loop region of Eclac (0.07 < RMSF < 0.34), whereas the shorter I335-V340 loop in Sulfur exhibited greater stability (0.10 < RMSF < 0.18) (Fig. S8). Additionally, the B-factor of the I335–V340 loop in Sulfur is lower than that of the D333–A384 loop in Eclac (Fig. 3b), indicating reduced mobility in Sulfur's corresponding region. The contribution of shorter loops to enhanced thermal stability in MCOs has not been addressed in other studies. Furthermore, Sulfur also features 1.6 times more salt bridges than Eclac (Table S11), underscoring its exceptional thermostability31.
To assess the efficacy of this strategy in identifying more efficient enzymes for potential industrial use, we selected enzymes from each group and assessed their catalytic performance in key bioremediation applications: organic dye decolorization, antibiotic, and toxin degradation. Specifically, we evaluated remazol brilliant blue R (RBBR), chloramphenicol (CAP), and aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) as representatives for each category. In contrast to the traditional methods, we performed bioremediation tests without a mediator to reduce unnecessary pollution. Our findings showed that multiple MCOs in each series outperformed the corresponding QSs in removing these environmentally harmful compounds (Fig. 4).
a Evaluation of DSM13, Eclac and HR03 Series on RBBR Decolorization (from left to right). b Comparison of chloramphenicol degradation by HR03 series. c Comparison of Aflatoxin B1 degradation by DSM13 series. d Live/dead cell staining evaluation on HepG2 cells with Aflatoxin B1 (Calsin AM: green, PI: red). e Cell viability assessment with different concentrations of aflatoxin B1. The line, bar, and violin plots show mean ± standard deviation (n = 3 biological replicates). Asterisk (*) denotes statistical significance (P < 0.05, one-tailed test). Exact p-values: 10 mM, P = 0.096; 50 mM, P = 0.002. QE in each series is highlighted in special color, with Ctrl representing control groups. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.
RBBR, an anthraquinone dye commonly used in the textile industry, harms aquatic and vegetative life. In a two-hour test, all MCOs from three series catalyzed rapid decolorization within the first 10 min (Fig. 4A), outperforming some reported bacterial and fungal MCOs32,33,34. Each series featured multiple new enzymes that catalyzed faster decolorization rates and higher decolorization percentages than Eclac, DSM13, and HR03. Notably, in the DSM13 series, three out of five MCOs showed superior performance despite DSM13 itself exhibiting minimal activity. Sulfur decolorized 46.7% of RBBR within 10 min, marking it the most efficient MCO reported to date for mediator-free RBBR decolorization22,34,35.
Furthermore, CAP is known for its stability even at elevated temperatures18. All tested MCOs degraded CAP at room temperature. In the HR03 series, four out of five MCOs performed better than the QEs, with Talbi achieving the highest degradation percentage of approximately 24.3% within 48 h (Fig. 4b), surpassing the performance of fungal MCO-catalyzed systems in the presence of mediators19.
We also evaluated the degradation efficiency of AFB1, a major agricultural toxin. In the Eclac series, Psoli, Mint, and Faest outperformed the query, degrading nearly 33.5% AFB1 after 48 h of treatment. In the DSM13 series, all candidates showed better degradation capacity than the query, with Bcece showing the highest capacity at 39.4% (Fig. 4c). To assess the cytotoxicity of AFB1 and its degradation products, we incubated HepG2 cells with media supplemented with 10 mM and 50 mM AFB1 treated with and without Bcece, respectively. After a 48-h incubation period, there was an observed increase in the viability of HepG2 cells, with the survival rate rising from 116.1 ± 5.6% to 126.4 ± 6.1% and from 27.6 ± 3.4% to 65.3 ± 8.5% (Fig. 4d, e). This increase indicates a reduction in the cytotoxic effects associated with the degradation products of AFB135.
Researchers often randomly select enzymatic candidates from clusters identified through SSN analysis. However, this trial-and-error approach is generally inefficient and can prolong the discovery process. In addition, although PLMs have recently been successfully utilized to guide protein engineering12, antibody design11, enzyme functional assessment (such as CLEAN36 and TM-Vec14), and remote homology detection (like PLMSearch)4,14, they have not been used to explore the catalytic properties of enzymes in low sequence homology regions. ESM-Ezy addressed these previously unmet challenges.
In this study, ESM-Ezy utilizes a fine-tuned ESM-1b model and calculations of similarity in protein semantic space to efficiently discover novel MCOs with enhanced catalytic properties with a high success rate. Compared to the QEs, 44% of the selected MCOs outperformed the QEs and surpassed most previously reported MCOs in at least one property, including catalytic efficiency, heat and organic solvent tolerance, and pH stability. Notably, the enzyme Sulfur significantly outperformed all QEs across all evaluated catalytic properties. For bioremediation applications, approximately 44% of the MCOs decolorized RBBR more efficiently, while 22% and 33% MCOs demonstrated superior CAP and AFB1 degradation capabilities, respectively. For comparison, five sequences located in the same SSN cluster with Eclac but with a remote Euclidean distance based on ESM-Ezy analysis were tested, and activity was not detected (Fig. S4, Table S7). This indicates that ESM-Ezy improves the likelihood of identifying candidates with enhanced catalytic properties compared to conventional SSN-based strategies.
We found that MCOs representations from randomly initialized, pretrained, and finetuned models increasingly clustered with QEs. This indicates that in well-trained models, Euclidean distance in the model space reflects more semantic information related to MCOs (Fig. S2). These results are consistent with findings from other studies14,37 and suggest that Euclidean distance could serve as a unique metric for assessing enzyme functionality, distinct from methods based on structural and sequence similarities alone. Moreover, it is noteworthy that the majority of MCOs with improved catalytic properties shared only 25–35% sequence similarity with the QEs. For example, Sulfur (TM-score: 0.91, identity: 0.26), Scla (TM-score: 0.82, identity: 0.32), Bfre (TM-score: 0.96, identity: 0.39), Tocean (TM-score: 0.85, identity: 0.36), and Bcece (TM-score: 0.57, identity: 0.27) demonstrate low sequence similarity to their corresponding QEs. This suggests that enzymes with breakthrough properties might be often found in regions characterized by low sequence similarity but high structural conservation.
To evaluate the general applicability of the ESM-Ezy method in our study, we applied it to l-Asparaginase (l-asparagine amidohydrolase; EC 3.5.1.1) that catalyzes the hydrolysis of l-asparagine into ammonia and l-aspartic acid38. This enzyme has shown significant therapeutic potential, particularly in the treatment of childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia39. As described above, we finetuned the ESM-1b to search l-asparaginases (Table S12). We selected an l-asparaginase (UniProt: O34482) from Bacillus subtilis 168 as the QE and identified five candidate enzymes. Compared to QE, A0A3N5F6J4, and H1D2G7 exhibited approximately 2.0-fold and 4.1-fold higher specific activity and 2.0-fold and 3.0-fold higher kcat, respectively (Table S13). These results suggest that ESM-Ezy can successfully identify enzymes beyond oxidoreductases with superior catalytic performance.
In conclusion, our ESM-Ezy integrates ESM-1b with experimental validation to study enzymes with low sequence similarities, leading to the successful identification of novel and high-performing MCOs and l-Asparaginases. This approach suggests that utilizing PLMs along with the calculation of Euclidean distance to explore low sequence similarity space is a promising strategy for discovering high-performance enzymes and uncovering new enzymes with distinctive structural features. This technique has the potential to be extended to other enzyme families, speeding up the discovery of innovative biocatalysts with superior properties.
All chemicals used in this study were of analytical grade or higher. Plasmids for the expression of various multicopper oxidases (MCOs) were synthesized by SynbioB (Tianjin, China). LB broth powder, Isopropyl β-d-1-thiogalactopyranoside (IPTG, Cat. No. A600168), and kanamycin (Cat. No. A506636) were obtained from Sangon Biotech (Shanghai, China). 2,2'-Azino-bis (3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulfonic acid) diammonium salt (ABTS, Cat. No. A109612) and Remazol brilliant blue R (RBBR, Cat. No. R169089) were obtained from Aladdin Biotech (Shanghai, China). Chloramphenicol (Cat. No. A600118) and Aflatoxin B1 (Cat. No. A832707) were obtained in HPLC grade from Solarbio (Beijing, China) and Innochem (Beijing, China), respectively. Dulbecco's Modified Eagle Medium (DMEM, GibcoTM), fetal bovine serum (FBS, GibcoTM), and Penicillin–Streptomycin (GibcoTM) were purchased from Thermo Fisher (USA).
In our ESM-Ezy strategy, the objective of the fine-tuning stage differs slightly from other methods, as it focuses on learning a representation space for sequences rather than simply predicting whether a sequence is positive or negative. Given the vast size of the Uniref50 dataset, even with stringent criteria to filter positives, the number of resulting candidates remains in the thousands, rendering wet lab experiments impractical due to the sheer volume. To mitigate this challenge, during the searching stage, we employed QEs to identify the nearest sequences within the fine-tuned representation space from the previous stage, thereby obtaining a manageable number of sequences for wet-lab experimentation.
The positive dataset of MCOs consisted of 147 sequences reported in the literature. This dataset was randomly divided into training and test subsets, consisting of 117 sequences (~80%) and 30 sequences (~20%), respectively. The negative dataset of MCOs was sampled from the Swiss-Prot database (Release 2022_02), based on the assumption that unlabeled databases are likely to be negatives, a premise supported by findings in both the recommendation40,41 and natural language processing area42. The sequences in Swiss-Prot have been scientifically verified; thus, sequences without MCO labels and with low sequence similarities compared to MCOs are very likely to be negative. Sequences labeled as MCOs and those with sequence identities exceeding 40% relative to the positive set were excluded, resulting in a total of 567,235 sequences. From this adjusted negative set, 1000 sequences were randomly selected to form the test negative set, with the remaining 566,235 sequences designated as the training negative set.
We conducted a fivefold cross-validation to validate the robustness of our pipeline. The positive datasets were divided fivefold while keeping the negative datasets for training and test unchanged. In each experiment, onefold of the positive dataset was set aside as the test set, and the remaining folds were used as the training set. We then measured the ROC-AUC score, accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-score based on this setup (Table S5). The high average ROC–AUC of 0.9838 and F1-score of 0.9787 indicate the strong robustness.
The UniRef50 database was utilized as our candidate pool. We used the fine-tuned binary classification model to sift through the database and identify predicted positive sequences. Subsequently, we used their representations to calculate the Euclidean distances within the high-dimensional semantic space, facilitating the comparison between QEs and the candidate sequences. This method allowed for the efficient identification of potential biocatalysts by assessing their proximity in a semantic landscape shaped by protein function and structure.
To balance the large volume of negative data against the smaller positive sample set, a dynamic negative sampling strategy43 was adopted. Specifically, for each epoch, we sampled a number of negative samples equal to the positive samples (117 for training) from the negative sample pool of adjusted training Swiss-Prot database (566,235 sequences). These were then shuffled with the positive samples for training. This approach ensures that the model is exposed to new negative samples for each training epoch rather than a fixed negative set, thus addressing data imbalance and enhancing the robustness of the training process. By applying dynamic negative sampling, even if there were a few unknown positive samples in the negative sample pool, the likelihood of these being sampled during training would be extremely low due to their rarity. During the training process, the learning rate was set at \(1\times {10}^{-5}\) and the Adam optimizer was utilized44.
We utilized the TM-score to quantify structural similarity and sequence identity to measure sequence similarity. For the calculation of the TM-score, we employ a tool known as TM-align45, a structural alignment program designed to compare two proteins with potentially differing sequences. For sequence identity calculation, Bio.pairwise246 module was employed and the sequence identity between all sequence pairs were calculated.
Plasmids and strains are listed in Table S1. Synthetic genes were inserted into the BamH I–Hind III sites of plasmids pET-28a or pET-28a-sumo. Kanamycin (50 μg/mL) was added to the growth media when necessary. E. coli BL21(DE3) cultures transformed with expression plasmids were grown overnight, then inoculated into LB medium supplemented with 1 mM CuCl2 and incubated at 37 °C with continuous shaking (250 rpm) until late logarithmic phase. Induction of target protein expression was initiated by adding IPTG (final concentration 0.1 mM), followed by further incubation at 16 °C for 16 h. After centrifugation at 8000×g for 10 min at 4 °C, cells were resuspended in Tris-HCl buffer (20 mM Tris-HCl, 500 mM NaCl, pH 7.6) and subjected to sonication. The resulting crude extract was clarified by additional centrifugation steps to remove cell debris.
All purification steps were performed at 4 °C. The crude enzymes were purified with an IMAC column (HisTrapTMHP, 5 mL, Cytiva) using an FPLC system (ÄKTATM Pure, Cytiva). After washing with buffer A (20 mM Tris-HCl, 300 mM NaCl, 20 mM imidazole, pH 7.6), the target enzyme was eluted with a linear gradient of buffer B (20 mM Tris-HCl, 300 mM NaCl, 500 mM imidazole, pH 7.6). The purified enzymes were concentrated and desalted by ultrafiltration with an exchange buffer (300 mM NaCl, 20 mM Tris-HCl, pH 7.6). The samples were then analyzed by SDS-PAGE. Enzyme concentration was determined by Pierce™ BCA Protein Assay Kit47.
The specific activity of MCOs was evaluated at 37 °C using ABTS as the substrate. The assay solution comprised 40 mM ABTS in citrate-NaOH buffer (pH 4.0, 50 mM). The increase in absorbance resulting from the oxidation of ABTS at 420 nm per minute (ε420 = 36,000 M−1 cm−1) was recorded after the addition 0.1–1 μM enzymes, ensuring a linear increase in absorbance. One unit of enzyme activity was defined as the oxidation of 1 μmol of substrate per minute. Specific activity was calculated as units per milligram of protein. Enzyme activity was determined by analyzing the initial linear phase of the reaction curve. The kinetic parameters, including the Km and kcat of the recombinant enzyme, were determined by assessing the enzymatic activity under a gradient of with concentrations of 0.1–5 mM ABTS substrate concentrations. The Lineweaver–Burk plot was employed to fit the experimental data and calculate the Km and kcat parameters.
The optimal pH for MCO activity was determined at 37 °C using 50 mM citrate–phosphate buffer spanning a pH range of 3.0–8.0. The change in absorbance at 420 nm per minute was measured to determine enzyme activity. We set the highest activity as 100% for calculating the relative activity at each pH value. The optimum temperature for enzymatic activity of each enzyme was monitored across a temperature range from 40 °C to 90 °C. The maximum activity of each enzyme was set as 100% in order to calculate the relative activity at each temperature point.
Half-life of enzymes was assessed by incubating the purified enzyme (1 mg/ml) in 80 °C water bath with sampling at regular intervals. Residual activity (ΔA420/min/mg protein) was measured, and the activity ratio was calculated. Thermostability was evaluated at 80 °C. The experimental data was fitted to the inactivation equation:
where, Y is the percentage of the residual activity, X is time and kd is inactivation rate constant.
Then, half-life (t1/2) was calculated as:
The impact of various chemicals on enzyme activity was evaluated by preincubating the enzyme (1 mg/ml) with 50% concentrations of organic solvents (methanol, ethanol, acetone, acetonitrile, and DMSO) for 48 h at room temperature. Enzyme tolerance to organic solvents was assessed as the relative residual activity ratio between treated and untreated samples.
For crystallization, enzymes were purified using a fast protein liquid chromatography (FPLC) system equipped with an immobilized metal affinity chromatography (IMAC) column (HisTrap™ HP) and a size exclusion column (Superdex™). The purified enzymes were subjected to crystallization trials using commercial crystal screening kits (PEGRx and Proplex). In each well of a 96-well plate (SWISSCI 3drop), equal volumes (150 nL) of enzyme solution and reservoir solution were mixed using the vapor-diffusion sitting-drop method at 16 °C. Initial crystallization hits were observed in several conditions after 7–10 days. Following several rounds of optimization, the best quality single protein crystals were harvested under varying conditions. For example, crystals of Sulfur were obtained from conditions containing 1% w/v Tryptone, 0.001 M sodium azide, 0.05 M HEPES sodium pH 7.0, and 12% w/v Polyethylene glycol 3350, while crystals of Bfre were grown in 0.1 M Tris pH 8.5 and 20% v/v Ethanol.
For X-ray diffraction data collection, crystals of Bfre and Sulfur were briefly soaked in their respective reservoir solutions supplemented with 25% glycerol to enhance cryoprotection. The crystals were then mounted on loops and flash-frozen in liquid nitrogen for preservation. X-ray diffraction data were collected at the Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility and processed using HKL2000 software48. The data-collection statistics are detailed in Supplementary Tables S8–S10. The closest homologous structure (PDB entry 6SYY49) to Sulfur, exhibited 43.9% sequence identity and 89.8% coverage. For Bfre, the closest structure (PDB entry 2FQG) showed 38.4% sequence identity and 77.5% coverage. The structures were solved by molecular replacement using the Phenix software suite50, utilizing models 6SYY and 2FQG. Initial phases were refined using rigid body refinement, followed by manual model rebuilding in COOT51. Subsequent rounds of refinement were conducted using the Phenix suite. The final coordinates and structure factors for Bfre and Sulfur have been deposited in the Protein Data Bank, accessible under the accession codes 8Z5B and 8Z59, respectively.
Due to the absence of certain segments in the Eclac crystal structure (1KV7, 2FQD, 5YS1), the three-dimensional configuration of Eclac was determined by AlphaFold52,53. The AlphaFold model exhibited strong alignment with the available crystal structures, with a low RMSD value further validating the model's accuracy (Fig. S7). So, MD simulations were carried out for Eclac (AlphaFold: AF-P36649-F1-model_v4) and Sulfur (PDB: 8Z59) using Gromacs 2022.354,55,56. Each structure was placed in a box with a 0.8 nm margin and filled with tip3p water molecules57 and underwent 2000 steepest descent energy minimization steps. Then the systems were equilibrated and run for 50 ns with a 2 fs time step using the NPT ensemble at a temperature of 310.15 K, under the Amber ff14SB force field58, and each simulation was replicated 3 times. The trajectory was analyzed with Gromacs built-in tools. Graphical displays of the structures were visualized by PyMOL Molecular Graphics System (www.pymol.org).
A solution of RBBR (10 mM in 50 mM sodium citrate buffer, pH 4.0) was prepared. For the experiments, RBBR solution was added to each well (7 μL/well, resulting in a final concentration of 100 μM), followed by the addition of the MCO solution (693 μL/well, 1 μM in 50 mM sodium citrate buffer). Each MCO candidate was tested in four wells, with supernatants sampled at intervals of 10, 30, 60, and 120 min. The reactions were conducted in deep-well 96-well plates incubated in an 85 °C water bath. All experiments were performed in triplicate. RBBR dye decolorization was measured using a UV–vis plate reader (Bio-Tek H1). To determine the maximal absorbance wavelength of RBBR dye, a solution of the dye (200 μL/well, 100 μM in 50 mM sodium citrate buffer) was transferred to 96-microwell plates, and the final spectral scanning was confirmed at an absorbance of 594 nm.
To assess the degradation of chloramphenicol by MCOs, a reaction mixture was prepared by adding 677.4 μL of MCO solution (1 μM in 50 mM sodium citrate buffer, pH 4.0) to a 2 mL crimp vial, followed by the addition of 22.6 μL of chloramphenicol stock solution (1 mg/mL in ethanol). The vial was then agitated at 250 rpm at room temperature for 48 h. To terminate the reaction, each sample was heated at 95 °C for 20 min. Subsequently, the reaction mixture was filtered through a 0.22 μm PES membrane to remove the denatured enzyme. All experiments were conducted in triplicate. The degradation of chloramphenicol was analyzed using High-Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC, Shimadzu LC-20AT). The analysis included samples from both the control (untreated with MCOs) and those treated with MCOs. The mobile phase consisted of water, methanol, and acetic acid in a ratio of 55:45:0.1 (v/v/v). Chromatographic separation was achieved using an analytical reverse-phase C18 column (ZORBAX Eclipse Plus C18, 95 Å, 3.0 × 150 mm, 5 µm) equipped with a guard column (ZORBAX Eclipse Plus C18, 95 Å, 4.6 × 12.5 mm, 5 µm). The column temperature was maintained at 30 °C, and the analysis was performed with an injection volume of 10 μL, a flow rate of 0.5 mL/min, and detection at a wavelength of 278 nm.
MCOs solution (697.8 μL, 1 μM in 50 mM sodium citrate buffer, pH 4.0) and aflatoxin B1 stock solution (2.2 μL, 1 mg/mL in DMSO) were added to 2 mL crimp vial, and the vial was shaken at 250 rpm at room temperature for 48 h. All experiments were performed in triplicate. Following incubation, the control (un-MCOs treated) and MCOs treated samples were analyzed by HPLC (Shimadzu LC-20AT) using acetonitrile: methanol: water (1: 1: 2, v/v/v) as mobile phase, an analytical reverse phase C18 column (ZORBAX Eclipse Plus C18, 95 Å, 3.0 × 150 mm, 5 µm) with a guard column (ZORBAX Eclipse Plus C18, 95 Å, 4.6 × 12.5 mm, 5 µm) served as stationary phase. The experiment was performed at room temperature with the column oven in 30 °C, 10 μL of injection volume at 0.5 mL/min flow rate, and the analyte was detected at wavelength 365 nm.
To further verify the degradation effect of the MCOs treatment, experiments with AFB1 samples at concentrations of 10 and 50 µM were repeated. Following MCOs treatment, the samples were extracted with an equal volume of chloroform, then dried under nitrogen gas, and redissolved in DMSO at one-tenth of the original chloroform volume. The samples were thoroughly vortexed to ensure complete dissolution for further analysis.
The cytotoxicity of AFB1 was tested via HepG2 (HB-8065), the human hepatocarcinoma cell line obtained from ATCC (Manassas, VA, USA)59,60. The cell was cultured in culture flakes by DMEM, which contained 10% FBS, 100 U/mL penicillin, and 0.1 mg/mL streptomycin, and placed into a 5% CO2 incubator at 37 °C. When proliferating up to 90% of culture flakes, HepG2 cells were harvested by washing with phosphate-buffered saline, trypsinization, resuspended, and diluted in DMEM (1:3 ratio). Cells were passed every week until they were stable enough for testing.
For the cell viability test, the extracts of different concentrations of AFB1 with MCOs Bcece treatment were mixed with culture media to get a final concentration of 1% DMSO and used as experimental groups. Cell viability was tested by cell counting kits (CCK-8, Beijing Lablead Biotech), which could count live cell numbers with formazan produced by dehydrogenase in the mitochondria. The cells were incubated with corresponding media for 24 h, and cell viability was detected according to the instructions of the manufacturer.
Fluorescence imaging analysis was evaluated using a standard AM/PI assay kit (Beijing Lablead Biotech) with Calcein AM to identify cells with metabolic activity and PI to assess the cell membrane integrity. After incubated with Calcein AM and PI solution, samples were observed under a fluorescence microscope (Keyence BZ-X810) at 490 ± 10 nm. The living and dead cells were stained green and red by Calcein AM and PI, respectively.
All experiments were conducted at least three times, and error bars in the figures represent the standard errors. Statistical analysis was performed using a one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) followed by a one-tailed t-test.
Further information on research design is available in the Nature Portfolio Reporting Summary linked to this article.
The atomic coordinates and associated density maps have been deposited in the Protein Data Bank (PDB) under accession codes 8Z5B and 8Z59. Molecular dynamics trajectories files also have been provided. The AlphaFold structure of Eclac P36649 was used in this study. Dynamics simulation trajectory files can be downloaded from https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14808161. All data that support the findings of this study are provided in the Supplementary Information. Source data are provided with this paper.
The code used to develop the model, perform the analyses and generate results in this study is publicly available and has been deposited in ESM-Ezy, under MIT license. The specific version of the code associated with this publication is archived in Zenodo61.
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The crystal structures were elucidated by Dr. Shilong Fan from Tsinghua University. We thank Nan Li and Westlake University High-Performance Computing Center for the computing resources. We thank Dr. Yinjuan Chen and Cuili Wang from Instrumentation and Service Center for Molecular Sciences at Westlake University for the assistance in products measurement. This research was funded by the following grants: Key project on glucose water hydrogen production: [10311053A022301/002], Special fund for synthetic biology [211000006022301/010], National Key Research and Development Program of China [2022ZD0115100], Westlake Center of Synthetic Biology and Integrated Bioengineering (WE-SynBio), Zhejiang Key Laboratory of Low-Carbon Intelligent Synthetic Biology (2024ZY01025).
These authors contributed equally: Hui Qian, Yuxuan Wang, Xibin Zhou.
School of Engineering, Westlake University, Hangzhou, 310014, Zhejiang, China
Hui Qian, Yuxuan Wang, Xibin Zhou, Tao Gu, Hao Lyu, Zhikai Li, Xiuxu Li, Chengchen Guo, Fajie Yuan & Yajie Wang
The Center for Synthetic Biology and Integrated Bioengineering, Westlake University, Hangzhou, 310014, Zhejiang, China
Hui Qian, Yuxuan Wang, Tao Gu, Xiuxu Li, Fajie Yuan & Yajie Wang
Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence, Beijing, China
Hui Wang
Westlake Laboratory of Life Sciences and Biomedicine, Xihu District, Hangzhou, 310024, Zhejiang Province, China
Huan Zhou & Yajie Wang
School of Life Science, Westlake University, Hangzhou, 310014, Zhejiang, China
Yajie Wang
Muyuan laboratory, Zhengzhou, Henan, China
Yajie Wang
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The project was conceived by Yajie Wang and Fajie Yuan. The study design was developed by Hui Qian, Yuxuan Wang, and Xibin Zhou. Model training and database retrieval were conducted by Xibin Zhou, Yuxuan Wang, Hui Wang, and Zhikai Li. Hui Qian was responsible for the collection of the MCO dataset, as well as enzyme expression, purification, and functional testing. Yuxuan Wang handled the enzyme treatments for environmental pollutant remediation. Tao Gu conducted the molecular dynamics simulations, while Hao Lyu and Chengchen Guo carried out the cellular experiments. Xiuxu Li was involved in the analysis of structural clustering. Huan Zhou assisted in enzyme expression and purification. The manuscript was collaboratively written and has been reviewed and approved by all contributing authors.
Correspondence to
Fajie Yuan or Yajie Wang.
The authors declare no competing interests.
Nature Communications thanks Lígia Martins and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. A peer review file is available.
Publisher's note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
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How did Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg get added to a Signal group chat with Trump administration officials discussing their plans for an airstrike in Yemen?
The simplest explanation: National Security Adviser Mike Waltz had Goldberg saved as a contact in his phone and accidentally added him. Indeed, when Waltz first claimed that Goldberg's phone number was “sucked in” from another contact, Goldberg scoffed, “This isn't ‘The Matrix.'”
But according to the Guardian, an internal investigation conducted by the White House's information technology office concluded that something more complicated taken place, with an iPhone auto-suggestion playing a key role: After Goldberg emailed the White House for comment on a story, a Trump spokesperson, Brian Hughes, texted the contents of Goldberg's email to Waltz.
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Microsoft has released a browser-based, playable level of the classic video game Quake II. This functions as a tech demo for the gaming capabilities of Microsoft's Copilot AI platform — though by the company's own admission, the experience isn't quite the same as playing a well-made game.
You can try it out for yourself, using your keyboard to navigate a single level of Quake II for a couple minutes before you hit the time limit.
In a blog post describing their work, Microsoft researchers said their Muse family of AI models for video games allows users to “interact with the model through keyboard/controller actions and see the effects of your actions immediately, essentially allowing you to play inside the model.”
To show off these capabilities, the researchers trained their model on a Quake II level (which Microsoft owns through its acquisition of ZeniMax).
“Much to our initial delight we were able to play inside the world that the model was simulating,” they wrote. “We could wander around, move the camera, jump, crouch, shoot, and even blow-up barrels similar to the original game.”
At the same time, the researchers emphasized that this is meant to be “a research exploration” and should be thought of as “playing the model as opposed to playing the game.”
More specifically, they acknowledged “limitations and shortcomings,” like the fact that enemies are fuzzy, the damage and health counters can be inaccurate, and most strikingly, the model struggles with object permanence, forgetting about things that are out of view for 0.9 seconds or longer.
In the researchers' view, this can “also be a source of fun, whereby you can defeat or spawn enemies by looking at the floor for a second and then looking back up,” or even “teleport around the map by looking up at the sky and then back down.”
Writer and game designer Austin Walker was less impressed by this approach, posting a gameplay video in which he spent most of his time trapped in a dark room. (This also happened to me both times I tried to play the demo, though I'll admit I'm extremely bad at first-person shooters.)
Referring to a Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer's recent statements that AI models could help with game preservation by making classic games “portable to any platform,” Walker argued this reveals “a fundamental misunderstanding of not only this tech but how games WORK.”
“The internal workings of games like Quake — code, design, 3d art, audio — produce specific cases of play, including surprising edge cases,” Walker wrote. “That is a big part of what makes games good. If you aren't actually able to rebuild the key inner workings, then you lose access to those unpredictable edge cases.”
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FOSS unites Red and Green.
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In a surprising turn of events, an Nvidia engineer pushed a fix to the Linux kernel, resolving a performance regression seen on AMD integrated and dedicated GPU hardware (via Phoronix). Turns out, the same engineer inadvertently introduced the problem in the first place with a set of changes to the kernel last week, attempting to increase the PCI BAR space to more than 10TiB. This ended up incorrectly flagging the GPU as limited and hampering performance, but thankfully it was quickly picked up and fixed.
In the open-source paradigm, it's an unwritten rule to fix what you break. The Linux kernel is open-source and accepts contributions from everyone, which are then reviewed. Responsible contributors are expected to help fix issues that arise from their changes. So, despite their rivalry in the GPU market, FOSS (Free Open Source Software) is an avenue that bridges the chasm between AMD and Nvidia.
The regression was caused by a commit that was intended to increase the PCI BAR space beyond 10TiB, likely for systems with large memory spaces. This indirectly reduced a factor called KASLR entropy on consumer x86 devices, which determines the randomness of where the kernel's data is loaded into memory on each boot for security purposes. At the same time, this also artificially inflated the range of the kernel's accessible memory (direct_map_physmem_end), typically to 64TiB.
In Linux, memory is divided into different zones, one of which is the zone device that can be associated with a GPU. The problem here is that when the kernel would initialize zone device memory for Radeon GPUs, an associated variable (max_pfn) that represents the total addressable RAM by the kernel would artificially increase to 64TiB.
Since the GPU likely cannot access the entire 64TiB range, it would flag dma_addressing_limited() as True. This variable essentially restricts the GPU to use the DMA32 zone, which offers only 4GB of memory and explains the performance regressions.
The good news is that this fix should be implemented as soon as the pull request lands, right before the Linux 6.15-rc1 merge window closes today. With a general six to eight week cadence before new Linux kernels, we can expect the stable 6.15 release to be available around late May or early June.
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Game developers urge Nvidia RTX 30 and 40 series owners rollback to December 2024 driver after recent RTX 50-centric release issues
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Will this cable unlock high refresh 8K gaming?
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The Shenzhen 8K UHD Video Industry Cooperation Alliance, a group made up of more than 50 Chinese companies, just released a new wired media communication standard called the General Purpose Media Interface or GPMI. This standard was developed to support 8K and reduce the number of cables required to stream data and power from one device to another. According to HKEPC, the GPMI cable comes in two flavors — a Type-B that seems to have a proprietary connector and a Type-C that is compatible with the USB-C standard.
Because 8K has four times the number of pixels of 4K and 16 times more pixels than 1080p resolution, it means that GPMI is built to carry a lot more data than other current standards. There are other variables that can impact required bandwidth, of course, such as color depth and refresh rate. The GPMI Type-C connector is set to have a maximum bandwidth of 96 Gbps and deliver 240 watts of power. This is more than double the 40 Gbps data limit of USB4 and Thunderbolt 4, allowing you to transmit more data on the cable. However, it has the same power limit as that of the latest USB Type-C connector using the Extended Power Range (EPR) standard.
Standard
Bandwidth
Power Delivery
DisplayPort 2.1 UHBR20
80 Gbps
No Power
GPMI Type-B
192 Gbps
480W
GPMI Type-C
96 Gbps
240W
HDMI 2.1 FRL
48 Gbps
No Power
HDMI 2.1 TMDS
18 Gbps
No Power
Thunderbolt 4
40 Gbps
100W
USB4
40 Gbps
240W
GPMI Type-B beats all other cables, though, with its maximum bandwidth of 192 Gbps and power delivery of up to 480 watts. While still not a level where you can use it to power your RTX 5090 gaming PC through your 8K monitor, it's still more than enough for many gaming laptops with a high-end discrete graphics. This will simplify the desk setup of people who prefer a portable gaming computer, since you can use one cable for both power and data. Aside from that, the standard also supports a universal control standard like HDMI-CEC, meaning you can use one remote control for all appliances that connect via GPMI and use this feature.
The only widely used video transmission standards that also deliver power right now are USB Type-C (Alt DP/Alt HDMI) and Thunderbolt connections. However, this is mostly limited to monitors, with many TVs still using HDMI. If GPMI becomes widely available, we'll soon be able to use just one cable to build our TV and streaming setup, making things much simpler.
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AMD sets new supercomputer record, runs CFD simulation over 25x faster on Instinct MI250X GPUs
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This laptop has dropped to its lowest price of all time.
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Right now, at Amazon, you can find the 15.6-inch Samsung Galaxy AI Book4 Edge laptop for one of its best prices to date. This Snapdragon X Plus-based laptop usually goes for around $899, but right now it's marked down to just $695. So far, no expiration has been specified for the discount, so we don't know for how long it will be made available at this rate. It is, however, labeled as a limited offer.
We haven't had the opportunity to review the Samsung Galaxy AI Book4 Edge so far, but we're plenty familiar with several Snapdragon-powered Copilot+ machines. Recently, some controversy arose when the Surface Laptop 7s were frequently returned due to compatibility issues. If you're considering this laptop, you might want to research a little and make sure your favorite games and apps are able to run well on Windows-on-Arm systems. On the positive side, once you go Arm, you should enjoy the best "long-lasting battery" life available on Windows devices.
Samsung 15-Inch Galaxy AI Book4 Edge: now $695 at Amazon (was $899)This laptop is built around a Snapdragon X Plus X1P-42-100 processor. It has a 15.6-inch FHD display and relies on a Qualcomm Adreno GPU. It comes with 16GB of LPDDR5X and a 500GB internal SSD for storage.
The main processor driving the Samsung Galaxy AI Book4 Edge is a Snapdragon X Plus X1P-42-100. This CPU has eight cores with a base speed of 3.4 GHz and a single-core boost feature that takes it up to 3.8 GHz. For graphics, it relies on a Qualcomm Adreno GPU which outputs to a 15.6-inch anti-glare display with an FHD resolution of 1,920 x 1,080 pixels.
As far as memory goes, this edition comes with 16GB of LPDDR5X and a 500GB internal SSD is fitted for storage. It has a couple of 2W speakers integrated for audio output, but you also get a 3.5mm audio jack to take advantage of. It has an HDMI 2.1 port for outputting video to a secondary screen and a handful of USB ports, including one USB 3.2 port and two USB4 ports.
It is also worth noting that this price is cheaper than the current offer over at the official Samsung website. If you want to check out this deal for yourself, head over to the Samsung 15-inch Galaxy AI Book4 Edge product page on Amazon US for more information and purchase options.
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Melting occurs despite Corsair's first-party 600W 12VHPWR cable being used.
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Another Blackwell GPU bites the dust, as the meltdown reaper has reportedly struck a Redditor's MSI GeForce RTX 5090 Gaming Trio OC, with the impact tragically extending to the power supply as well. Ironically, the user avoided third-party cables and specifically used the original power connector, the one that was supplied with the PSU, yet both sides of the connector melted anyway.
Nvidia's GeForce RTX 50 series GPUs face an inherent design flaw where all six 12V pins are internally tied together. The GPU has no way of knowing if all cables are seated properly, preventing it from balancing the power load. In the worst-case scenario, five of the six pins may lose contact, resulting in almost 500W (41A) being drawn from a single pin. Given that PCI-SIG originally rated these pins for a maximum of 9.5A, this is a textbook fire/meltdown risk.
The GPU we're looking at today is the MSI RTX 5090 Gaming Trio OC, which, on purchase, set the Redditor back a hefty $2,900. That's still a lot better than the average price of an RTX 5090 from sites like eBay, currently sitting around $4,000. Despite using Corsair's first-party 600W 12VHPWR cable, the user was left with a melted GPU-side connector, a fate which extended to the PSU.
The damage, in the form of a charred contact point, is quite visible and clearly looks as if excess current was drawn from one specific pin, corresponding to the same design flaw mentioned above. The user is weighing an RMA for their GPU and PSU, but a GPU replacement is quite unpredictable due to persistent RTX 50 series shortages. Sadly, these incidents are still rampant despite Nvidia's assurances before launch.
With the onset of enablement drivers (R570) for Blackwell, both RTX 50 and RTX 40 series GPUs began suffering from instability and crashes. Despite multiple patches from Nvidia, RTX 40 series owners haven't seen a resolution and are still reliant on reverting to older 560-series drivers. Moreover, Nvidia's decision to discontinue 32-bit OpenCL and PhysX support with RTX 50 series GPUs has left the fate of many legacy applications and games in limbo.
As of now, the only foolproof method to secure your RTX 50 series GPU is to ensure optimal current draw through each pin. You might want to consider Asus' ROG Astral GPUs as they can provide per-pin current readings, a feature that's absent in reference RTX 5090 models. Alternatively, if feeling adventurous, maybe develop your own power connector with built-in safety measures and per-pen sensing capabilities?
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Hassam Nasir is a die-hard hardware enthusiast with years of experience as a tech editor and writer, focusing on detailed CPU comparisons and general hardware news. When he's not working, you'll find him bending tubes for his ever-evolving custom water-loop gaming rig or benchmarking the latest CPUs and GPUs just for fun.
Nvidia engineer breaks and then quickly fixes AMD GPU performance in Linux
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CFD simulation is cut down from almost 40 hours to less than two using 1,024 Instinct MI250X accelerators paired with Epyc CPUs.
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AMD processors were instrumental in achieving a new world record during a recent Ansys Fluent computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation run on the Frontier supercomputer at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). According to a press release by Ansys, it ran a 2.2-billion-cell axial turbine simulation for Baker Hughes, an energy technology company, testing its next-generation gas turbines aimed at increasing efficiency. The simulation previously took 38.5 hours to complete on 3,700 CPU cores. By using 1,024 AMD Instinct MI250X accelerators paired with AMD EPYC CPUs in Frontier, the simulation time was slashed to 1.5 hours. This is more than 25 times faster, allowing the company to see the impact of the changes it makes on designs much more quickly.
A new supercomputing record has been set!Ansys, @bakerhughesco, and @ORNL have run the largest-ever commercial #CFD simulation using 2.2 billion cells and 1,024 @AMD Instinct GPUs on the world's first exascale supercomputer. The result? A 96% reduction in simulation run…April 4, 2025
Frontier was once the fastest supercomputer in the world, and it was also the first one to break into exascale performance. It replaced the Summit supercomputer, which was decommissioned in November 2024. However, the El Capitan supercomputer, located at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, broke Frontier's record at around the same time. Both Frontier and El Capitan are powered by AMD GPUs, with the former boasting 9,408 AMD EPYC processors and 37,632 AMD Instinct MI250X accelerators. On the other hand, the latter uses 44,544 AMD Instinct MI300A accelerators.
Given those numbers, the Ansys Fluent CFD simulator apparently only used a fraction of the power available on Frontier. That means it has the potential to run even faster if it can utilize all the available accelerators on the supercomputer. It also shows that, despite Nvidia's market dominance in AI GPUs, AMD remains a formidable competitor, with its CPUs and GPUs serving as the brains of some of the fastest supercomputers on Earth.
“By scaling high-fidelity CFD simulation software to unprecedented levels with the power of AMD Instinct GPUs, this collaboration demonstrates how cutting-edge supercomputing can solve some of the toughest engineering challenges, enabling breakthroughs in efficiency, sustainability, and innovation,” said Brad McCredie, AMD Senior Vice President for Data Center Engineering.
Even though AMD can deliver top-tier performance at a much cheaper price than Nvidia, many AI data centers prefer Team Green because of software issues with AMD's hardware.
One high-profile example was Tiny Corp's TinyBox system, which had problems with instability with its AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX graphics cards. The problem was so bad that Dr. Lisa Su had to step in to fix the issues. And even though it was purportedly fixed, the company still released two versions of the TinyBox AI accelerator — one powered by AMD and the other by Nvidia. Tiny Corp also recommended the more expensive Team Green version, with its six RTX 4090 GPUs, because of its driver quality.
If Team Red can fix the software support on its great hardware, then it could likely get more customers for its chips and get a more even footing with Nvidia in the AI GPU market.
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Jowi Morales is a tech enthusiast with years of experience working in the industry. He's been writing with several tech publications since 2021, where he's been interested in tech hardware and consumer electronics.
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The Pentagon is expected to deliver plans for a “Golden Dome” to Trump this week. In the crudest sense, the Golden Dome is a missile defense system that would shoot nukes, missiles, and drones that threaten the U.S. out of the sky. A scientific study published earlier this month detailed the scientific impossibility of the scheme.
America has tried to build a missile defense system since before Ronald Reagan was president. Reagan wanted to put satellites into space that would use lasers to blast Soviet nukes out of the sky. What we built was somewhat more pedestrian. It also probably won't work. But defense contractors made a lot of money.
“When engineers have been under intense political pressure to deploy a system, the United States has repeatedly initiated costly programs that proved unable to deal with key technical challenges and were eventually abandoned as their inadequacies became apparent,” explained a new study from the American Physical Society Panel on Public Affairs.
Under Trump, we're going to do it again.
Trump signed an executive order on January 27 that called on the Pentagon to come up with a plan for an “Iron Dome for America,” which the President and others have taken to calling a “Golden Dome.” According to the EO, Trump wants a plan that'll keep the homeland safe from “ballistic, hypersonic, advanced cruise missiles, and other next-generation aerial attacks from peer, near-peer, and rogue adversaries.”
The dream of the Golden Dome is simple: shoot missiles out of the sky before they can do any damage. “It's important to not simply think of Golden Dome as the next iteration of the ground-based missile defense system or solely a missile defense system because it's a broader mission than that,” Jonathan Moneymaker, the CEO of BlueHalo, a defense company working on Golden Dome adjacent tech, told Gizmodo.
Moneymaker was clear-eyed about the challenges of building Golden Dome. “Everyone looks at it as a replication of Israel's Iron Dome, but we have to appreciate that Israel's the size of New Jersey,” he said.
Israel's Iron Dome has done a great job shooting down Hamas rockets and Iranian missiles. It's also covering a small territory and shooting down projectiles that aren't moving as fast as a nuclear weapon or a Russian Kh-47M2 Kinzhal ballistic missile might. The pitch of the Golden Dome is that it would keep the whole of the continental U.S. safe. That's a massive amount of territory to cover and the system would need to identify, track, and destroy nuclear weapons, drones, and other objects moving at high speed.
That's like trying to shoot a bullet out of the sky with a bullet. The missile defense study, published on March 3, detailed a few of the challenges facing a potential Golden Dome-style system.
Trump's executive order is vague and covers a lot of potential threats. “We focus on the fundamental question of whether current and proposed systems intended to defend the United States against nuclear-armed [intercontinental ballistic missile] now effective, or could in the near future be made effective in preventing the death and destruction that a successful attack by North Korea on the United States using such ICBMs would produce.”
Stopping a nuke is the primary promise of a missile system. And if one of these systems can't stop a nuke then of what use is it?
The study isn't positive. “This is the most comprehensive, independent scientific study in decades on the feasibility of national ballistic missile defense. Its findings may shock Americans who have not paid much attention to these programs,” Joseph Cirincione told Gimzodo.
Cirincione is the retired president of the Ploughshares Fund and a former Congressional staffer. He investigated missile defense systems and nukes for the House Armed Services Committee. “We have no chance of stopping a determined ballistic missile attack on the United States despite four decades of trying and over $400 billion spent. This is the mother of all scandals,” he said.
The study looked at a few different methods for knocking a North Korean nuke out of the sky. An ICBM launch has three phases: the boost phase which lasts only a few minutes, the midcourse phase which lasts around 20 minutes, and the terminal phase which is less than a minute.
During the boost-phase, the nuke is building up speed and getting into the air. “Boost-phase intercept of ICBMs launched from even a small country like North Korea is challenging,” the study said.
You have to get weapons close to the missile and, in the case of North Korea, that would require building them close to China and then firing them over Chinese territory. Any defense system would only have a few moments to respond to the nuke because the boost phase only lasts a few minutes.
For a countermeasure to hit that ICBM under those time constraints means it would need to be built close, probably somewhere in the Pacific. And we would need a lot of them. China would not be happy about a ring of missile defense systems close to its borders, no matter how America tried to sell it to them.
But what about space-based systems? It's a territory rivals have less power over. “The scientific review panel found that it would take over a thousand orbiting weapons to counter a single North Korean ballistic missile. Even then, ‘the system would be costly and vulnerable to anti-satellite attacks,'” Cirincione told Gizmodo. Around 3,600 interceptors, to be precise.
So we're talking about ringing the planet in thousands of munitions-armed satellites. And remember that this is just to handle one nuke launched by North Korea. Imagine scaling up a similar defense shield to guard against all the nukes in Russia and you'll begin to see the size of the problem.
Well, what about lasers? Reagan's original plan was lasers. Surely technology has advanced since the 1980s. “There is widespread agreement that laser weapons that could disable ICBMs during their boost-phase, whether based on aircraft, drones, or space platforms, will not be technically feasible within the 15-year time horizon of this study,” the study said.
This hints at another one of the problems of missile defense: it takes a long time to build and your enemies aren't stagnant while it's happening. While America works on the Golden Dome, Russia, North Korea, and China will be building their own new and different kinds of weapons meant to circumvent it. We may be able to build lasers capable of shooting nukes out of the sky in two decades but by then America's enemies may have things to deal with the lasers.
OK, so building the systems to shoot down a nuke in its boost phase is a logistical and geopolitical nightmare. What about during its mid-course arc? There's more time to do something then, between 20 and 30 minutes. Most of America's currently deployed missile defense systems are designed to strike an object midcourse.
“The absence of air drag during this phase means that launch debris, such as spent upper stages, deployment and altitude control modules, separation debris and debris from unburned fuel, insulation, and other parts of the booster, as well as missile fragments deliberately created by the offense and light-weight decoys and other penetration aids, all follow the same trajectory as a warhead,” the study said. “This makes it difficult for the defense to discriminate the warhead from other objects in this ‘threat cloud,' so it can target the warhead.”
In tests, America's midcourse interceptors only work about half the time. And those tests are done under perfect conditions against known threats. “After reviewing carefully the technology and test record of the [ground-based midcourse] system, the report concludes that its unreliability and vulnerability to countermeasures seriously limits its effectiveness,” the study said.
There's still the terminal phase, that less than a second before a nuke hits its target. And the U.S. also has systems, like the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THADD), designed to knock a missile out of the air during this crucial moment.
The truth is that if a nuke is that close, you've probably already lost. “Even effective terminal-phase defenses can defend only limited areas,” the study said. “Moreover, terminal-phase sensors are vulnerable to the blinding effects of nuclear explosions in the atmosphere.”
These are just a few of the problems that the researchers discussed in the 60-page report. There are many more. And remember this is just talking about shooting down a North Korean salvo. Things get more complicated when you add Russia, China, or any of America's other enemies.
For Cirincione, the report confirmed his long-held belief that any kind of intricate missile defense system isn't worth the cost of building it. “In short, we cannot defend the country against a determined ballistic missile attack now or anytime in the foreseeable future,” he said. “While we can intercept short-range missiles such as those used in the Middle East or Ukraine, there is zero chance we can intercept long-range missiles that span the oceans. We have spent over $400 billion since 1983 on nothing. Future expenditures will just be throwing money down a rat hole.”
Moneymaker was bullish. “When a nation can get aligned around an objective, whether that's Star Wars or Golden Dome or sending someone to the moon, when you have a unity of mission, a lot of things can happen,” he said.
He also noted that the Golden Dome was a massive opportunity for disruptive defense companies like Anduril and, yes, BlueHalo. He said that Golden Dome was a project at a scale that's never been seen before. Building any proposed system will require cooperation between state and local officials, police, the Coast Guard, the FBI, and the DHS. “There's a lot of constituents at play that have a next-level order of integration that needs to happen.”
In Moneymaker's imagining, the Golden Dome wouldn't be just one system but a vast patchwork of weapons that cover the United States. “Is this one dome? Or is it a series of federated domes that interplay with each other? I just, just given the size and scale of the endeavor, we're going to see phases to this development,” he said.
Moneymaker explained that high-value targets like military bases or large metro areas might get protection first and then be woven together into a “tapestry or fabric of protection.” He said the project is so big that progress will be incremental. “The good news is that I think we can go fast as a nation when we need to or want to.”
In Washington this week, there's talk of creating a whole new department just to handle the development of the Golden Dome. Booz Allen Hamilton has teased a swarm of refrigerator-sized drones flying in 20 orbital planes around 200 miles in the air. The plan is for these AI-connected drone swarms to identify missiles as they come in and slam into them.
That's just one of the many pitches the Trump administration has received. According to Defense One, the Pentagon has gotten more than 360 plans related to the Golden Dome. “I fully expect the Trump administration to ignore this serious scientific advice, just as they reject scientific truth on the climate crisis, vaccines, and the environment,” Cirincione said. “When there is money to be made, science is shunted aside.”
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The tech billionaire and Trump adviser “donated” Starlink service to the White House. The move resembles a previous maneuver by Microsoft.
"We will track down leakers and prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law," a spokesperson for DHS said.
An already weakened agency workforce will be severely culled in the coming weeks, per DOGE's orders.
The president said China was "not happy" with his tariffs, which are currently decimating the U.S. stock market.
Loomer is suing Bill Maher for defamation after the comedian said she was sleeping with the president.
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The French scholar Pierre-Simon Laplace crisply articulated his expectation that the universe was fully knowable in 1814, asserting that a sufficiently clever “demon” could predict the entire future given a complete knowledge of the present. His thought experiment marked the height of optimism about what physicists might forecast. Since then, reality has repeatedly humbled their ambitions to understand it.
One blow came in the early 1900s with the discovery of quantum mechanics. Whenever quantum particles are not being measured, they inhabit a fundamentally fuzzy realm of possibilities. They don't have a precise position for a demon to know.
Another came later that century, when physicists realized how much “chaotic” systems amplified any uncertainties. A demon might be able to predict the weather in 50 years, but only with an infinite knowledge of the present all the way down to every beat of every butterfly's wing.
In recent years, a third limitation has been percolating through physics—in some ways the most dramatic yet. Physicists have found it in collections of quantum particles, along with classical systems like swirling ocean currents. Known as undecidability, it goes beyond chaos. Even a demon with perfect knowledge of a system's state would be unable to fully grasp its future.
“I give you God's view,” said Toby Cubitt, a physicist turned computer scientist at University College London and part of the vanguard of the current charge into the unknowable, and “you still can't predict what it's going to do.”
Eva Miranda, a mathematician at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC) in Spain, calls undecidability a “next-level chaotic thing.”
Pierre-Simon Laplace speculated that an all-knowing demon could perfectly predict the future of any physical system. He was wrong.
Undecidability means that certain questions simply cannot be answered. It's an unfamiliar message for physicists, but it's one that mathematicians and computer scientists know well. More than a century ago, they rigorously established that there are mathematical questions that can never be answered, true statements that can never be proved. Now physicists are connecting those unknowable mathematical systems with an increasing number of physical ones and thereby beginning to map out the hard boundary of knowability in their field as well.
These examples “place major limitations on what we humans can come up with,” said David Wolpert, a researcher at the Santa Fe Institute who studies the limits of knowledge but was not involved in the recent work. “And they are inviolable.”
A striking example of unknowability came to physics in 1990 when Cris Moore, then a graduate student at Cornell University, designed an undecidable machine with a single moving part.
His setup—which was purely theoretical—resembled a highly customizable pinball machine. Imagine a box, open at the bottom. A player would fill the box with bumpers, move the launcher to any position along the bottom of the box, and fire a pinball into the interior. The contraption was relatively simple. But as the ball ricocheted around, it was secretly performing a computation.
“I give you God's view, and you still can't predict what it's going to do.”
Moore had become fascinated with computation after reading Gödel, Escher, Bach, a Pulitzer Prize–winning book about systems that reference themselves. The system that most captured his imagination was an imaginary device that had launched the field of computer science, the Turing machine.
Defined by the mathematician Alan Turing in a landmark 1936 paper, the Turing machine consisted of a head that could move up and down an infinitely long tape, reading and writing 0s and 1s in a series of steps according to a handful of simple rules telling it what to do. One Turing machine, following one set of rules, might read two numbers and print their product. Another, following a different set of rules, might read one number and print its square root. In this way, a Turing machine could be designed to execute any sequence of mathematical and logical operations. Today we would say that a Turing machine executes an “algorithm,” and many (but not all) physicists consider Turing machines to define the limits of calculation itself, whether performed by computer, human or demon.
Moore recognized the seeds of Turing machine behavior in the subject of his graduate studies: chaos. In a chaotic system, no detail is small enough to ignore. Adjusting the position of a butterfly in Brazil by a millimeter, in one infamous metaphor, could mean the difference between a typhoon striking Tokyo and a tornado tearing through Tennessee. Uncertainty that starts off as a rounding error eventually grows so large that it engulfs the entire calculation. In chaotic systems, this growth can be represented as movement across a written-out number: Ignorance in the one-tenths place spreads left, eventually moving across the decimal point to become ignorance in the tens place.
Moore designed his pinball machine to complete the analogy to the Turing machine. The starting position of the pinball represents the data on the tape being fed into the Turing machine. Crucially (and unrealistically), the player must be able to adjust the ball's starting location with infinite precision, meaning that specifying the ball's location requires a number with an endless procession of numerals after the decimal point. Only in such a number could Moore encode the data of an infinitely long Turing tape.
Then the arrangement of bumpers steers the ball to new positions in a way that corresponds to reading and writing on some Turing machine's tape. Certain curved bumpers shift the tape one way, making the data stored in distant decimal places more significant in a way reminiscent of chaotic systems, while oppositely curved bumpers do the reverse. The ball's exit from the bottom of the box marks the end of the computation, with the final location as the result.
Moore equipped his pinball machine setup with the flexibility of a computer—one arrangement of bumpers might calculate the first thousand digits of pi, and another might compute the best next move in a game of chess. But in doing so, he also infused it with an attribute that we might not typically associate with computers: unpredictability.
In a landmark work in 1936, Alan Turing defined the boundary of computation by describing the key features of a universal computing device, now known as a Turing machine.
Some algorithms stop, outputting a result. But others run forever. (Consider a program tasked with printing the final digit of pi.) Is there a procedure, Turing asked, that can examine any program and determine whether it will stop? This question became known as the halting problem.
Turing showed that no such procedure exists by considering what it would mean if it did. If one machine could predict the behavior of another, you could easily modify the first machine—the one that predicts behavior—to run forever when the other machine halts. And vice versa: It halts when the other machine runs forever. Then—and here's the mind-bending part—Turing imagined feeding a description of this tweaked prediction machine into itself. If the machine stops, it also runs forever. And if it runs forever, it also stops. Since neither option could be, Turing concluded, the prediction machine itself must not exist.
(His finding was intimately related to a groundbreaking result from 1931, when the logician Kurt Gödel developed a similar way of feeding a self-referential paradox into a rigorous mathematical framework. Gödel proved that mathematical statements exist whose truth cannot be established.)
In short, Turing proved that solving the halting problem was impossible. The only general way to know if an algorithm stops is to run it for as long as you can. If it stops, you have your answer. But if it doesn't, you'll never know whether it truly runs forever, or whether it would have stopped if you'd just waited a bit longer.
“We know that there are these kinds of initial states that we cannot predict ahead of time what it's going to do,” Wolpert said.
Since Moore had designed his box to mimic any Turing machine, it too could behave in unpredictable ways. The exit of the ball marks the end of a calculation, so the question of whether any particular arrangement of bumpers will trap the ball or steer it to the exit must also be undecidable. “Really, any question about the long-term dynamics of these more elaborate maps is undecidable,” Moore said.
Cris Moore developed one of the earliest and simplest undecidable physical systems.
Moore's pinball machine went beyond ordinary chaos. A tornado forecaster can't say exactly where a tornado will touch down for two reasons: the forecaster's ignorance of the precise position of every Brazilian butterfly, and limited computing power. But Moore's pinball machine featured a more fundamental form of unpredictability. Even for someone with complete knowledge of the machine and unlimited computing power, certain questions regarding its fate remain unanswerable.
“This is a bit more dramatic,” said David Pérez-García, a mathematician at the Complutense University of Madrid. “Even with infinite resources, you cannot even write the program that solves the problem.”
Other researchers have previously come up with systems that act like Turing machines—notably checkerboard grids with squares flickering on and off depending on the colors of their neighbors. But these systems were abstract and intricate. Moore crafted a Turing machine out of a simple apparatus you could imagine sitting in a lab. It was a vivid demonstration that a system obeying nothing more than high school physics could have an unpredictable nature.
“It's a bit shocking that it's undecidable,” said Cubitt, who lectured about Moore's machine after it captured his imagination as a graduate student. “It's literally a single particle bouncing around a box.”
After getting his doctorate in physics, Cubitt shifted into mathematics and computer science. But he never forgot the pinball machine, and how computer science put limits on the machine's physics. He wondered whether undecidability touched any physics problems that really matter. Over the last decade, he has discovered that it does.
Cubitt put undecidability on a collision course with large quantum systems in 2012.
He, Pérez-García, and their colleague Michael Wolf had gotten together for coffee during a conference in the Austrian Alps to debate whether a niche problem might be undecidable. When Wolf suggested they put that problem aside and instead tackle the decidability of one of the biggest problems in quantum physics, not even he suspected they might actually succeed.
“It started as a joke. Then we started to cook up ideas,” Pérez-García said.
Wolf proposed targeting a defining property of every quantum system called the spectral gap, which refers to how much energy it takes to jostle a system out of its lowest energy state. If it takes some oomph to do this, a system is “gapped.” If it can become excited at any moment, without any infusion of energy, it is “gapless.” The spectral gap determines the color that shines from a neon sign, what a material will do when you remove all heat from it, and—in a different context—what the mass of the proton should be. In many cases, physicists can calculate the spectral gap for a specific atom or material. In many other cases, they can't. A million-dollar prize awaits anyone who can rigorously prove from first principles that the proton should have a positive mass.
David Pérez-García (left) and Toby Cubitt designed a quantum material whose state can capture any calculation possible for a Turing machine.
Cubitt, Wolf, and Pérez-García aimed high. They sought to prove or disprove the existence of a single strategy—a universal algorithm—that would tell you whether anything from a proton to a sheet of aluminum had a spectral gap or not. To do so, they resorted to the same approach Moore had used with his pinball machine: They devised a fictitious quantum material that could be set up to act like any Turing machine. They hoped to rewrite the spectral gap problem as the halting problem in disguise.
Over the next three years they churned out 144 pages of dense mathematics, combining a handful of major results from the previous half-century of math and physics. The extremely rough idea was to use the quantum particles in a flat material—a grid of atoms, basically—as a stand-in for the Turing machine's tape.
Because this was a quantum material, the particles could exist in a superposition of multiple states at the same time—a quantum combination of different possible configurations of the material. The researchers used this feature to capture the different steps of the calculation. They set up the superposition so that one of these possible configurations represented the initial state of the Turing machine, another configuration represented the first step of the calculation, another represented the second step, and so on.
Finally, using techniques from quantum computing, they fiddled with the interactions between the particles so that if the superposition represented a calculation that halted, the material would have an energy gap. And if the computation continued forever, the material had no gap. In a paper published in Nature in 2015, they proved that the spectral gap problem is equivalent to the halting problem—and therefore undecidable. If someone handed you some complete description of the material's particles, it would either have a gap or not. But calculating this property mathematically, from the way the particles interact, couldn't be done, even if you had a quantum supercomputer from the year 3000.
In 2020, Pérez-García, Cubitt, and other collaborators repeated the proof for a chain of particles (as opposed to a grid). And last year, Cubitt, James Purcell, and Zhi Li further extended the setup to devise a material that, when subjected to a magnetic field that grows increasingly intense, will transition from one phase of matter to another at an unpredictable moment.
Their research program inspired other groups. In 2021, Naoto Shiraishi, then at Gakushuin University in Japan, and Keiji Matsumoto of Japan's National Institute of Informatics dreamt up a similarly bizarre material, in which it was impossible to predict whether energy would “thermalize,” or spread evenly throughout the substance.
None of these results mean that we can't predict specific properties of specific materials. Theorists might be able to calculate, for example, copper's energy gap, or even whether all metals thermalize under certain conditions. But the research does prove that no master method works for all materials.
Said Shiraishi: “If you think too generally, you will fail.”
Researchers have recently found an assortment of new limits on predictability outside quantum physics too.
Miranda of UPC has spent the last few years trying to work out whether liquids can act as computers. In 2014, the mathematician Terence Tao pointed out that if they could, perhaps a fluid could be programmed to slosh in just the right way to bring forth a tsunami of unlimited violence. Such a tsunami would be unphysical, since no wave can accommodate infinite energy in the real world. And so anyone who found such an algorithm would prove that the theory of fluids, called the Navier-Stokes equations, predicts impossibilities—another million-dollar problem.
Eva Miranda has shown that fluids can flow in such complicated ways that trajectories through them become undecidable.
Along with Robert Cardona, Daniel Peralta-Salas, and Francisco Presas, Miranda started with a fluid obeying simpler equations. They converted a Turing machine's tape into a location on a plane (akin to the bottom of Moore's pinball box). As the Turing machine ticks along, this point on the plane jumps around. Then, with a series of geometric transformations, they were able to turn the hopping of this point into the smooth current of a fluid flowing through 3D space (albeit a weird one curled into a doughnut in its center). To illustrate the idea over Zoom, Miranda pulled out a rubber duck from behind her computer.
“While the trajectory of the point in the water—it could be a duck—is moving around, this is the same as the tape of your Turing machine advancing somehow,” she said.
And with Turing machines comes undecidability. In this case, a calculation that halts corresponds to a current that carries a duck to some specific region, while a never-ending calculation corresponds to a duck that forever avoids that spot. So deciding a duck's ultimate fate, the group showed in a 2021 publication, was impossible.
While these systems have physically implausible features that would stop an experimentalist from building them, even as blueprints they show that computers and their undecidable problems are deeply woven into the fabric of physics.
“We live in a universe where you can build computers,” Moore told me over Zoom on a sunny December afternoon from his backyard garden in Santa Fe. “Computation is everywhere.”
Even if someone attempted to build one of the machines depicted in these blueprints, however, researchers point out that undecidability is a feature of physical theories and cannot literally exist in real experiments. Only idealized systems that involve infinity—an infinitely long tape, an infinitely extensive grid of particles, an infinitely divisible space for placing pinballs and rubber ducks—can be truly undecidable. No one knows whether reality contains these sorts of infinities, but experiments definitely don't. Every object on a lab bench has a finite number of molecules, and every measured location has a final decimal place. We can, in principle, completely understand these finite systems by systematically listing every possible configuration of their parts. So because humans can't interact with the infinite, some researchers consider undecidability to be of limited practical significance.
“There is no such thing as perfect knowledge, because you cannot touch it,” said Karl Svozil, a retired physicist associated with the Vienna University of Technology in Austria.
“These are very important results. They are very, very profound,” Wolpert said. “But they also ultimately have no implications for humans.”
Other physicists, however, emphasize that infinite theories are a close—and essential—approximation of the real world. Climate scientists and meteorologists run computer simulations that treat the ocean as if it were a continuous fluid, because no one can analyze the ocean molecule by molecule. They need the infinite to help make sense of the finite. In that sense, some researchers consider infinity—and undecidability—to be an unavoidable aspect of our reality.
“It's sort of solipsistic to say: ‘There are no infinite problems because ultimately life is finite,'” Moore said.
And so physicists must accept a new obstacle in their quest to acquire the foresight of Laplace's demon. They could conceivably work out all the laws that describe the universe, just as they have worked out all the laws that describe pinball machines, quantum materials, and the trajectories of rubber ducks. But they're learning that those laws aren't guaranteed to provide shortcuts that allow theorists to fast-forward a system's behavior and foresee all aspects of its fate. The universe knows what to do and will continue to evolve with time, but its behavior appears to be rich enough that certain aspects of its future may remain forever hidden to the theorists who ponder it. They will have to be satisfied with being able to discover where those impenetrable pockets lie.
“You're trying to discover something about the way the universe or mathematics works,” Cubitt said. “The fact that it's unsolvable, and you can prove that, is an answer.”
Original story reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine, an editorially independent publication of the Simons Foundation whose mission is to enhance public understanding of science by covering research developments and trends in mathematics and the physical and life sciences.
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Almost 40 years ago, deep in the Pacific, a single voice called out a song unlike any other. The sound reverberated through the depths at 52 Hertz, puzzling those listening to this solo ringing out from the ocean's symphony. The frequency was much higher than a blue whale or its cousin, the fin, leaving scientists to ponder the mystery of Whale 52.
The leviathan has been heard many times since, but never seen. Some suspect it might have some deformation that alters its voice. Others think it might simply exhibit a highly unusual vocalization — a tenor among baritones. But Marine biologist John Calambokidis of Cascadia Research Collective suggests another possibility: “The loneliest whale,” so named because there may be no one to respond to its unique call, may not be an anomaly, but a clue.
Calambokidis, who has spent more than 50 years studying cetaceans, suspects Whale 52 may be a hybrid: Part blue whale, part fin whale.
Such a creature, often called a flue whale, is growing more common as warming seas push blues into new breeding grounds, where they are increasingly likely to mate with their fin relatives. A survey of north Atlantic blues published last year found that fin whale DNA comprised as much as 3.5 percent of their genome, a striking figure given the two species diverged 8.35 million years ago. If Whale 52 is indeed a hybrid, its presence suggests genetic intermingling among Balaenoptera musculus, as blues are known among scientists, and Balaenoptera physalus has been occurring for decades, if not longer. The North Atlantic findings suggest it is accelerating.
Cetacean interbreeding has been documented before, notably among narwhals and belugas and between two species of pilot whales, combinations attributed largely to warming seas pushing these animals into new territory and closer proximity. But hybridization has been more closely studied among terrestrial creatures like the pizzly bears born of grizzlies and polar bears. It is scarcely understood in marine mammals, and little is known about what intermingling will mean for the genetics, behavior, and survival of the largest animal to have ever lived.
“Blue whales are still struggling to recover from centuries of whaling, with some populations remaining at less than 5 percent of their historical numbers,” Calambokidis said. While the number of confirmed hybrids remains low, continued habitat disruption could make them more common, eroding their genetic diversity and reducing the resilience of struggling populations.
Before the arrival of genomics 30 years ago, marine biologists identified hybrids primarily through morphology, or the study of physical traits. If an animal displayed the features of two species — the dappled skin of a narwhal and stout body of a beluga, for example — it might be labeled a hybrid based on external characteristics or skeletal measurements. Anecdotal evidence might also play a role: Historical whaling logs suggest blues and fins occasionally interbred, though such pairings went largely unconfirmed. But morphology can, at best, only reveal the first-generation offspring of two distinct species.
By analyzing DNA, marine biologists like Aimee Lang can now identify intermingling that occurred generations ago, uncovering a far more complex history than was previously understood. This new level of detail complicates the picture: Are flues becoming more common, or are researchers simply better equipped to find them? As scientists probe the genetic signatures of whales worldwide, they hope to distinguish whether hybridization is an emerging trend driven by climate change, or a long-standing, overlooked facet of cetacean evolution.
In any case, some marine biologists find the phenomenon worrisome because flues are largely incapable of reproducing. Although some females are fertile, males tend to be sterile. These hybrids represent a small fraction of the world's blue whales — of which no more than 25,000 remain — but the lopsided population of the two species suggests they will increase. There are four times as many fins as blues worldwide, and an estimate of the waters around Iceland found 37,000 fins to 3,000 blues.
“Three thousand is not a very high density of animals,” said Lang, who studies marine mammal genetics at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “So you can imagine if a female blue is looking for a mate and she can't find a blue whale but there's fin whales all over the place, she'll choose one of them.”
This has profound implications for conservation. If hybrids are not easily identifiable, it could lead to inaccurate estimates of the blue whale population and difficulty assessing the efficacy of conservation programs. More troubling, sterile animals cannot contribute to the survival of their species. Simply put, hybridization presents a threat to their long-term viability.
“If it becomes frequent enough, hybrid genomes could eventually swamp out the true blue whale genomes,” Lang said. “It could be that hybrids are not as well adapted to the environment as a purebred blue or fin, meaning that whatever offspring are produced are evolutionary dead ends.”
This could have consequences for entire ecosystems. Each whale species plays a specific role in ensuring marine ecosystem health by, say, managing krill populations or providing essential nutrients like iron. Hybrids that don't play the role evolution has assigned to them undermine this symbiotic relationship with the sea. “Those individuals and their offspring aren't fully filling the ecological niche of either parent species,” Calambokidis said.
All of this adds to the uncertainty wrought by the upheavals already underway. Many marine ecosystems are experiencing regime shifts — abrupt and often irreversible changes in structure and function — driven by warming waters, acidification, and shifting prey distributions. These alterations are pushing some cetacean species into smaller, more isolated breeding pools.
There is reason for concern beyond blue whales. Rampant interbreeding among the 76 orcas of the genetically distinct and critically endangered Southern Resident killer whale population of the Pacific Northwest is cutting their lifespans nearly in half, by placing them at greater risk of harmful genetic traits, weakened immune systems, reduced fertility, and higher calf mortality. Tahlequah, the southern resident orca who became known around the world in 2018 for carrying her dead calf for 17 days, lost another one in January. The 370 or so North Atlantic right whales that still remain may face similar challenges.
Some level of cetacean interbreeding and hybridization may be inevitable as species adapt to climate change. Some of it may prove beneficial. The real concern is whether these changes will outpace whales' ability to survive. Flue whales may be an anomaly, but their existence is a symptom of broader, anthropogenic disruptions.
“There are examples of populations that are doing well, even though they have low genetic diversity, and there are examples where they aren't doing well,” said Vania Rivera Leon, who researches population genetics at the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown, Massachusetts. “They might be all right under current conditions, but if and when the conditions shift more, that could flip.”
“The effect could be what we call a bottleneck,” she added. “A complete loss of genetic diversity.”
These changes often unfold too gradually for humans to perceive quickly. Unlike fish, which have rapid life cycles and clear population booms or crashes, whales live for decades, with overlapping generations that obscure immediate trends. There have only been about 30 whale generations since whaling largely ceased. To truly grasp how these pressures are shaping whale populations, researchers may need twice that long to uncover what is happening beneath the waves and what, if anything, Whale 52 might be saying about it.
This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/oceans/what-the-worlds-loneliest-whale-may-be-telling-us-about-climate-change/. Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org.
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The Nissan Leaf was once the number-one selling EV in the world. Unveiled in 2009, it hit the road in 2010, beating Tesla to market as the first mass-produced EV and topping sales charts for a decade. It was a bold move, and one that should have cemented the company as one of the world's premier EV players. So what happened?
Some 15 years later, in the United States, the automaker has floundered. It didn't predict the rise of hybrids, and it's still dealing with the PR aftermath of a very public failed merger with Honda. Add in years of mismanagement and an outright neglect of its EV portfolio, and the former king of EV sales has been scrambling to find its footing. A chaotic market reeling from threats of tariffs really isn't helping.
Still, Nissan is at least attempting to claw its way back to its former glory. It has a new CEO, upcoming EVs and a hybrid for the US market, and the self-awareness to know it needs to adapt how it does business. Nissan is ready for change. Oh, and those talks with Honda aren't over yet.
“This is the heart of Nissan,” the automaker's former chief planning officer and shiny new CEO, Ivan Espinosa, tells media gathered at the Nissan Technical Center, located just outside of Yokohama in Atsugi, Japan. Notably absent from this event is outgoing CEO Makoto Uchida. This is the introduction to Espinosa as the boss—but more importantly, the automaker wants to share its plans for the future.
We're seated in a large design studio with a screen that fills an entire wall; executives address the crowd with a mix of renewed focus and humility. In an industry full of bravado, Nissan is refreshingly forthcoming about its issues.
Chief performance officer Guillaume Cartier begins the two-day event by expressing that the company would be an open book, and be honest about the external and internal issues that have plagued the brand in recent years. The Nissan/Honda merger fell apart largely due to the Nissan leadership's unwillingness to concede that in the automotive world, Nissan and Honda are not equals. This time round, there's a promise for better transparency.
The news Nissan wants everyone to now focus on is the unveiling of the third-generation Leaf. Gone is the hatchback—the Leaf has morphed into a sporty but handsome crossover. And after all, the US market loves a crossover.
Powered by Nissan's 400-volt CMF-EV platform, the Leaf will rest on the same architecture as the Ariya. Outside of smart design and repeated insistence that the team focused on efficiency, the automaker shared no information about range, battery capacity, or price. The vehicle will be available first in the United States and Canada beginning in 2025.
The new Nissan Leaf.
For Europe, the automaker unveiled a new all-electric Micra, an urban runabout that senior vice president of global design Alfonso Albaisa refers to as “charming.” The wide eyes of the Micra have returned and are now powered by electrons instead of petroleum. It's built on the CMF-B EV platform that also underpins the Renault 5 E-Tech. Like the Leaf, Nissan was silent on details about range, price, and battery capacity, but we do know that Europe will get both the Micra and Leaf in 2025.
The new Nissan Micra.
In a move that will attempt to fix its previous huge market oversight, Nissan will begin production of an all-new hybrid Rogue in 2026, while a PHEV is also in the works. The automaker's midsize SUV competes directly with the wildly popular Honda CR-V and Toyota Rav4, both of which have hybrid powertrain options.
The Rogue will use the third generation of Nissan's e-Power series hybrid technology. Unlike typical hybrids, an e-Power's wheels are only powered by the electric motor, while a specially tuned gas engine acts as a generator. The second generation of the technology is currently in use in the Nissan Qashqai, but this upcoming version combines the powerplants, gearbox, and inverter into a single 5-in-1 unit, using the same electric motor and other components found in Nissan's EV. A clever way to lower costs.
Nissan says that this system delivers the attributes of an EV—increased lower-end torque, smoother acceleration, real-time motor-based torque vectoring (Nissan calls this e-4orce), and a quieter ride. At Nissan's Granddrive test track in Yokosuka, Japan, I was able to test the second and upcoming third-generation e-Power system, and I found it compelling, and, in many cases, superior to traditional hybrid systems. Although the small 1.8-kWh-capacity battery pack means drivers will still have to endure the rumble of an engine on a regular basis, even if it is quieter.
After a keynote, Nissan led us into a courtyard to look at (but not photograph) a series of vehicles in various states of development. The most intriguing was a rugged electric SUV that oozed X-Terra vibes. The light-offroader will begin production in Nissan's Canton, Mississippi, plant in 2027, deftly escaping the latest tariffs announced by President Trump.
Nissan sees the vehicle as a way to differentiate itself from competitors. “You saw an outdoorsy EV, which is not what you see today. The reason to do that is to be different, because the market will get very crowded very fast. We want to come in with an offer that is more unique,” Espinosa says.
Sometimes, however, there is good reason why a certain category of EV “is not what you see today,” and while trying to be different is certainly laudable, it is not always advisable. We'll see soon enough if Espinosa's strategy pans out. Regardless, this Canton-built rugged electric SUV will beat Scout's offerings to market, and will go head-to-head with Rivian's R2. That is, if everything goes according to plan for both automakers.
Nissan has big plans and an intriguing upcoming lineup that, on paper, seems to give it the automotive firepower to be a true competitor in the electrified vehicle market. Bringing those proposals to fruition requires leadership willing to aggressively move forward while taking a long, hard look at the current situation and making drastic changes.
There's a tinge of frustration in Espinosa's voice as the new Nissan CEO explains the current situation with Honda. “The fact that the integration talks stopped is in no way meaning that we are not collaborating with them,” Espinosa said.
“The future of the industry is going to be very challenging, and it's clear that the name of the game is how you build efficient partnerships that add value to your company,” Espinosa told reporters during a roundtable event. For automakers, sharing a platform reduces both parties' financial commitment. Parts procurement also benefits. Suppliers will always prioritize the customer who places the largest order. If a part is used in multiple vehicles across multiple brands, it's built sooner and at a lower cost.
It's the economies of scale in action. The issue? Nissan's scale has dropped dramatically. In 2018, the automaker was producing 5.8 million units a year. Currently, that number has dropped to 3.5 million units. Its US factories are currently underutilized, and its lineup, while slowly undergoing a refresh over the past few years, in some cases still lags behind competitors. Recent moves to rectify the situation have come with their own issues.
The Ariya was a fine reboot of the automaker's electric vehicle strategy, but the vehicle itself hasn't taken off like EV offerings from other automakers. Ponz Pandikuthira, Nissan's chief planning officer for North America tells WIRED how timing hurt the vehicle's launch. As it was introduced, Tesla began cutting prices to ward off new competitors in the market, and suddenly, the Ariya was 20 percent more expensive than a similarly equipped Tesla.
The Ariya also isn't eligible for the $7,500 EV tax credit unless the vehicle is leased. Then, add in manufacturing delays of eight to ten months, and the result is a vehicle hitting the market after any hype that had been generated died down.
Pandikuthira also explains the reason behind Nissan's lack of a hybrid in the coveted midsize SUV segment. With the vehicle price increases during the Covid lockdowns, Nissan (and other automakers) believed that this was the new normal. A rise in overall vehicle value would make EVs seem more affordable at the price points an automaker would need to sell an electric vehicle at to make a profit.
Like many manufacturers, Nissan had bold plans to introduce a fleet of EVs, and at the time, to add a hybrid to its lineup would mean making one less EV. So the automaker gambled on an inflated marketplace. Suddenly, the prices of vehicles came back down to earth, and Nissan's future lineup wouldn't generate much-needed profits. It's tough to be nimble without capital.
According to Espinosa, Nissan has 1 trillion yen ($6.65 billion) in cash. The issue is that the company has $1.5 billion in debt due this year, and $5.6 billion in debt due in 2026. “We're not in the situation in which we have an urgent need for cash,” Espinosa said. “What we have to work on is the free cash-flow generation, which is different. So we have to accelerate revenue generation. We have to get our sales pace in better shape, and we need to work on cost.”
A big part of that is its work to reduce development time from 55 months to 37 months. Then 30 months on each vehicle iteration based on the platform. “We need to show what we're capable of doing,” the new CEO says.
At the multiday event in Japan, Auto Pacific president and chief analyst Ed Kim tells WIRED, “One of the big takeaways I got from all this was that I don't think even Nissan knows how they're going to get there.” However, Nissan's willingness to partner with others, the introduction of a hybrid to compete with the Rav4 and CR-V, and its upcoming lineup are all good moves, Kim says. “Oftentimes, when an automaker has their backs against the wall, sometimes they pull out some of their best design work,” he adds.
But all of this meticulous planning and good intention could quickly be derailed by the chaotic financial situation in the US market. Nissan needs to win big in the United States, and the Trump administration's tariff chaos isn't helping.
“We are working on multiple scenarios to be ready when some clarity comes. It's changing every other day,” Espinosa tells WIRED. Of course, Espinosa said this mere hours before Trump announced the 25 percent tariff on all imported vehicles and parts, and an even more recent 24 percent reciprocal tariff on other goods from Japan. Whether Nissan was planning for that kind of clarity is unclear.
WIRED reached out to Nissan for an update. The automaker wouldn't comment directly, but pointed us to a comment from Jennifer Safavian, president and CEO of Autos Drive America, a trade association that represents international automakers. “At a time when cost is the number one concern for American car buyers, US automakers are working to provide a range of affordable vehicles for consumers,” she says. “The tariffs will make it more expensive to produce and sell cars in the United States, ultimately leading to higher prices, fewer options for consumers, and fewer manufacturing jobs in the US.”
Sam Abuelsamid, automotive analyst and vice president of market research for Telemetry, believes these costs could hit Nissan hardest. “Of the three largest Japanese automakers operating in the US, Nissan will likely face some of the biggest challenges with the tariffs,” he says. “They only have two plants in the US and import a significant percentage of their products from either Mexico or Japan.”
Like many automakers, Nissan may spread the cost of the tariffs across its entire lineup of vehicles to keep the vehicles that are imported to the US from being prohibitively expensive—although each vehicle will soon undoubtedly cost more.
For Espinosa, in the face of such economic turmoil, the inconvenient truth is that Nissan could do everything right and still struggle because of forces beyond its control. “From a product perspective, they're definitely headed in the right direction. But the big question mark is really on the business side,” Kim says. Indeed, it's the big question for every automaker right now. Except, for Nissan, the results could be catastrophic.
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April 06, 2025
By Dante Gonzalez
The FIFA World Cup has undergone numerous changes in recent years, with the upcoming 2026 edition set to feature 48 national teams for the first time. However, plans for the 2030 tournament have sparked new controversy, as UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin slammed FIFA and its president, Gianni Infantino, over a proposal to expand the event even further.
On March 5, Ignacio Alonso, president of the Uruguayan Football Association, proposed expanding the 2030 World Cup to 64 teams during a FIFA Council videoconference. The edition would mark the tournament's 100th anniversary, as the first World Cup was held in 1930.
At a press conference following Thursday's UEFA Congress in Belgrade, Ceferin offered his first reaction to the proposal. “This proposal was perhaps even more surprising for me than for you,” he stated.
Ceferin then expressed clear opposition to the idea, claiming that such an expansion would undermine the integrity of UEFA's qualification process: “I think it's a bad idea. I don't think it's a good idea for the World Cup itself, and it's not a good idea for our qualification phase either.
“So I don't support that idea. It's strange that we didn't know anything about it before this proposal was made at the end of the FIFA Council meeting. I don't know where it came from,” he added. His comments come amid growing tensions between UEFA and FIFA, exacerbated by a congested calendar and the new 32-team Club World Cup set to debut in 2025.
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Shocking: FIFA reveals projected revenue for the 2025 Club World Cup and 2026 World Cup
FIFA president Gianni Infantino has championed sweeping changes to international soccer over the last decade. From hosting the first World Cup in the Middle East (Qatar 2022), to expanding the 2026 tournament to 48 teams, and introducing a revamped Club World Cup, his tenure has been marked by aggressive global expansion.
Although Infantino was present at the UEFA Congress, he did not publicly address the 64-team proposal. FIFA, for its part, called the idea “spontaneous” and stated that it has “a duty to evaluate” such proposals—without disclosing the president's personal position.
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The United States is poised to reap massive economic rewards from hosting the FIFA Club World Cup 2025 and FIFA World Cup 2026. New reports project billions in revenue and the creation of thousands of jobs for the host nation.
The newly leaked Mexico 2026 World Cup home kit, inspired by a vintage design and reminiscent of an iconic Portugal look once worn by Cristiano Ronaldo, is turning heads for more than just aesthetics. It signals a return to tradition, a connection to legacy, and a challenge to perform under immense pressure on home soil.
Standing before European soccer leaders, Infantino expressed a desire that Russia may soon be welcomed back into the international fold. Meanwhile, UEFA has made its stance clear.
After the incident sparked by Memphis Depay that led to a rule change in Brazilian soccer, Santos star Neymar shared a 10-word message addressing the state of the game.
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By Francisco Quatrin
April 06, 2025
Club León and Pachuca have received good news from the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) after FIFA decided to exclude the “Panzas Verdes” (Green Bellies) from the next Club World Cup for failing to comply with multi-ownership rules.
Through a statement, the Court of Arbitration for Sport announced that it accepted the appeal presented by Grupo Pachuca for the expulsion of “La Fiera” (The Beast), a situation that will make James Rodríguez smile and that gives him hope of playing in the tournament next summer in the United States.
In the letter from the CAS, it was announced that León and Pachuca presented a letter of appeal against FIFA on April 2, where they indicate that they do not agree with the measures taken to exclude one of their teams for the Club World Cup.
It must be remembered that FIFA announced that “La Fiera” was the sacrificed team, ahead of the “Tuzos” (Gophers), for the Club World Cup, supposedly, for failing to comply with the regulations regarding multi-ownership.
“Pachuca and Club León appeal the decision of the FIFA Appeals Committee in order to declare that both clubs meet the eligibility requirements to participate in the FIFA Club World Cup 2025,” they said in the statement.
Adding that “Club León filed an additional appeal against the decision of the FIFA Secretary General in order to be reinstated in said competition.” So “the Parties are exchanging the writings in relation to these appeals in accordance with the arbitration rules governing the CAS proceedings.”
A meeting that has already been scheduled, and the day that it will be known if León will be one of the 32 guests to the next Club World Cup: “The appeals will be processed according to the accelerated procedure agreed by the parties and the hearing will be held during the week of May 5, 2025.”
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Shocking: FIFA reveals projected revenue for the 2025 Club World Cup and 2026 World Cup
On the other hand, the CAS also accepted the appeal presented by the Costa Rican team, who alleges that the two teams of the Liga MX are left out, and that they deserve to receive the ticket to the Club World Cup.
“Likewise, another arbitration procedure is being processed in relation to the appeal presented by the Asociación Liga Deportiva Alajuelense (LDA) against Club León, Club de Fútbol Pachuca and FIFA, with which it alleges that the participation of Club León and Pachuca in the FIFA Club World Cup 2025 is contrary to the Regulations and that one of the clubs, or both, must be excluded from the competition.”
In this case, the hearing will be held in Madrid in person on April 23, 2025, weeks before the meeting that the CAS will hold with León or Pachuca regarding the Club World Cup.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS, in its acronym in French) has received appeals from Club León and Club de Fútbol Pachuca (Pachuca) against FIFA, presented on April 2, 2025.
The FIFA Appeals Committee decided in March 2025 that Club León and Pachuca failed to comply with the FIFA Club World Cup Regulations 2025 (Art.10.1) in relation to the multi-ownership of clubs. Due to this infraction, the Secretary General of FIFA decided to exclude Club León from the FIFA Club World Cup 2025.
Pachuca and Club León appeal the decision of the FIFA Appeals Committee in order to declare that both clubs meet the eligibility requirements to participate in the FIFA Club World Cup 2025. Club León filed an additional appeal against the decision of the FIFA Secretary General in order to be reinstated in said competition.
The Parties are exchanging the writings in relation to these appeals in accordance with the arbitration rules governing the CAS proceedings. The appeals will be processed according to the accelerated procedure agreed by the parties and the hearing will be held during the week of May 5, 2025.
Likewise, another arbitration procedure is being processed in relation to the appeal presented by the Asociación Liga Deportiva Alajuelense (LDA) against Club León, Club de Fútbol Pachuca and FIFA, with which it alleges that the participation of Club León and Pachuca in the FIFA Club World Cup 2025 is contrary to the Regulations and that one of the clubs, or both, must be excluded from the competition.
The LDA also requests to be admitted to the competition in replacement of Pachuca or Club León. The hearing of this case will be held in Madrid in person on April 23, 2025.
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The United States is poised to reap massive economic rewards from hosting the FIFA Club World Cup 2025 and FIFA World Cup 2026. New reports project billions in revenue and the creation of thousands of jobs for the host nation.
Club León's decision to appeal to the CAS shows their determination to fight for their place in the Club World Cup. The team believes that they earned the right to participate in the tournament and that FIFA's decision to exclude them is unfair.
After suffering an injury last Sunday, Manchester City coach Pep Guardiola has set a return date for striker Erling Haaland, with the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup on the horizon.
After the incident sparked by Memphis Depay that led to a rule change in Brazilian soccer, Santos star Neymar shared a 10-word message addressing the state of the game.
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World Soccer Talk, like Futbol Sites, is a company owned by Better Collective. All rights reserved. World Soccer Talk is reader-supported and may earn a commission through our partner links.
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INGLEWOOD, Calif. — Trinity Rodman returned to the U.S. women's national team on Saturday for the first time since last summer's Olympic final and immediately returned to her goal scoring ways.
The forward scored the opening goal in the fifth minute as the U.S. defeated Brazil 2-0 in their gold medal rematch. Angel City forward and Los Angeles native Alyssa Thompson provided the assist for Rodman, deking past her defender and slotting the ball to Rodman as she darted in from the right wing. Rodman finished it off in front of 32,303 fans at SoFi Stadium. It was the venue's first women's sports event since it opened in 2020.
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“It felt amazing, especially in this stadium. It was unreal,” Rodman told the TNT broadcast after the match. “I wanted to be a portable changer on the field. I wanted to be a provider of energy and to be able to charge everyone's batteries. I think I did that pretty well today.”
Rodman said after the match that she felt happy with her and the team's performance. It was more than just a simple return for her, as she balanced “bringing my level of competitiveness, my energy, but also trying to relearn a couple of new things while remembering the foundation of this team.”
She called this version of the USWNT a “newer team” but one with the same energy.
TRINITY RODMAN SCORES ON HER RETURN TO THE USWNT 💥
Catch the game on TNT and Max or watch the AltCast, hosted by Sam Mewis and Roger Bennett, on truTV & Max 📺 pic.twitter.com/afuziRcd3w
— B/R Football (@brfootball) April 5, 2025
She celebrated her goal by faking a back injury before launching into a more celebratory dance. “Yeah, the medical staff was freaking out,” Rodman said in the mixed zone, laughing. “I should have told them beforehand for sure. But you know, you gotta keep people on their toes.”
Head coach Emma Hayes was amused but also exasperated in her postgame press conference about Rodman's selection of celebration, immediately thinking her back was a real issue.
“I will have a word with her,” Hayes said, smiling, “because that's like a cry-wolf moment.” She did quickly realize she had been tricked and said that she and Rodman have been trying to distract each other in various media availabilities too.
Rodman's night ended after 61 minutes, as she was replaced by Michelle Cooper after another decent scoring opportunity that she couldn't quite get on frame.
While the celebration was in jest, Rodman did put her hand to her back a few times during the match — including once after going down following a challenge and then getting slowly back to her feet. Rodman, who has had multiple back issues that have sidelined her in her young career, told reporters last week that she does not believe her back will ever be 100 percent.
“I'm happy with the progression that we've had,” Rodman said. “But for me, I don't think my back will ever be the way it was my rookie year, which is unfortunate.”
“I just want Trin to be Trin,” head coach Emma Hayes said on Friday before playing Rodman for an hour against Brazil. “She brings so much lightness and energy to the group. We've really, really missed her and I've probably told her that 50 times this week.
“We miss her as a person, first and foremost, because she brings her own individuality into a team setting but is an absolutely fierce competitor. I think it's been challenging to watch the team from afar.”
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Midfielder Lindsey Heaps doubled the score in the second half via a penalty kick earned by substitute Lily Yohannes.
The U.S. started strong, controlling the pace of the game through the first portion of the first half, forcing Lorena into multiple stops. However, Brazil slowly gained control, maintaining momentum for most of the match's remaining time. On the other end of the pitch, goalkeeper Phallon Tullis-Joyce made her debut for the U.S. and helped keep the team ahead until Heaps' penalty iced the game.
(Top photo: Ric Tapia / Getty Images)
Meg Linehan is a senior writer for The Athletic who covers the U.S. women's national team, the National Women's Soccer League and more. She also hosts the weekly podcast "Full Time with Meg Linehan." Follow Meg on Twitter @itsmeglinehan
The striker came up short once again while the wing-back spurned a couple of fine chances as United failed to see off their lacklustre neighbours
Manchester United let Manchester City off the hook and missed a glorious opportunity to do the double on their noisy neighbours in a flat derby which ended 0-0. The Red Devils played the more positive football and looked most likely to find a winner but they were toothless in attack, as Rasmus Hojlund lacked presence in the box in his latest anonymous display.
Patrick Dorgu also disappointed, getting in behind City on a couple of occasions in promising attacks but making the wrong decision each time, miscontrolling on one occasion and firing well wide of goal on the other.
Bruno Fernandes and Alejandro Garnacho were United's most lively players but there was a glaring lack of cutting edge for Ruben Amorim's side, who have just one point to show in their two games since returning from the international break. On the plus side, they avoided defeat against their rivals and suffered no injuries ahead of their Europa League quarter-final tie with Lyon.
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France football great Marcel Desailly does not feel that visa issues relating to entering the United States will have any impact on the 2026 FIFA World Cup as "sport is above all these". The 2026 World Cup is being co-hosted by the US, Canada and Mexico from June 11 to July 19. The United States will host 78 matches, while Canada and Mexico will each stage 13 games in the 48-team tournament. There has been fear that the long visa appointment wait time combined with harsher regulations implemented by new president Donald Trump could make it more difficult for football fans to make it to the US for the World Cup.
But Desailly, a member of France's 1998 FIFA World Cup and 2000 Euro winnings teams, said previous editions of the showpiece had succeeded despite having "bigger problems than a few visa issues." "Honestly, no," said Desailly when asked if Trump's policies on tariffs and visas could affect the next World Cup.
"Sport is above that. We've had World Cups in places with bigger problems than a few visa issues," he said during a virtual interaction ahead of Laureus World Sports Awards to be held in Madrid on April 21.
"Look at Qatar (2022)! So much criticism before the tournament. People said 'It won't work'. But it worked. It was a fantastic tournament. The organisation, the safety, the atmosphere — all top level." Desailly, a Laureus World Sports Academy member, is banking on the unifying power of sport in a diverse world.
"Football unites people. I believe the next World Cup, even with politics in the background, will still be a celebration. That's what sport does." The 56-year-old Desailly, who last played for France in 2004, said winning the 1998 World Cup changed his life and united his country.
"Everything... it changed my life. When we won, France became one country. Not Black France, not White France - just France. People were in the streets, hugging, crying, celebrating together. For once, football showed us our power to unite.
"And that legacy? It led to the Women's World Cup getting more attention. It inspired kids. It proved that football could lead social change." He also won the UEFA Champions League title with French side Marseille and Italian club AC Milan.
Asked which team is the favourite to win the Champions League this year, Desailly said, "Bayern Munich always has the tools to surprise you. But me, I think Barcelona look strong. They're back to their DNA - youth, flair, passing, belief.
"And honestly, I love when it's not always the same clubs. Let's see different teams winning. It keeps football alive. Competition is good. And when clubs from different countries reach the top, it inspires others." On the significance of Laureus World Sports Awards, he said, "It's more than just an awards show. It's not about who scored the most goals or lifted the biggest trophy last year. It's about what sport can do beyond the pitch.
"Most of us are retired. We've had our moment. But Laureus gives us another role - to give back. We go into communities, we work with kids who are struggling, and we use sport to help them find direction.
"They might not all become champions, but they learn discipline, teamwork, confidence. That's what Laureus is about. And it brings us together, even across different sports. Boxing, athletics, tennis, football - we're one family again."
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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Former Bolles School midfielder Avery Patterson made her first career appearance for the U.S. women's national soccer team in Saturday's 2-0 victory over Brazil.
Patterson, in her second year of professional competition with the Houston Dash of the National Women's Soccer League, entered the game as an 88th-minute substitute replacing Emily Fox at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif.
In high school, she helped Bolles to Florida High School Athletic Association championships in 2018, 2019 and 2020, earning All-First Coast recognition.
Patterson played college soccer at the University of North Carolina, scoring twice in the 2022 NCAA final against UCLA. Houston selected her at No. 13 overall in the 2024 NWSL Draft.
This year, she has appeared three times for the NWSL club, lining up more frequently as a wingback on the outside rather than in her more attacking Bolles role.
Former Sandalwood High School goalkeeper Mandy McGlynn was also on the U.S. roster for the game but remained on the bench.
The United States women are scheduled to play a second game against Brazil at 10:30 p.m. Tuesday in San Jose, Calif.
KANSAS CITY, Kan. (KCTV) - With 431 days remaining until the 2026 FIFA World Cup kicks off, Kansas City took center stage at Children's Mercy Park Saturday night —
not just for a soccer showdown between Sporting KC and St. Louis City SC, but for a major unveiling that highlights the city's upcoming role as a World Cup host.
More than 100 local designers contributed their talents to a project that will help define Kansas City's identity during the global tournament.
At halftime, fans in the Cauldron supporters' section raised a massive version of the final design, revealing the winning artwork titled “Woven Together”, created by Columbia, Missouri native and Kansas City transplant Jadie Arnett.
“My cheeks are sore from smiling so much,” Arnett said.
Her artwork pays homage to the unique duality of the city that straddles two states—Kansas and Missouri.
The halftime reveal was followed by a 2-0 victory for Sporting KC, their first win of the season, perhaps a hopeful sign for what the city might achieve as a World Cup host.
Arnett, who has embraced Kansas City as her own, infused the poster with cultural nods intended to welcome the world and share what makes the metro special.
“My personal little favorite Easter egg is the barbecue sauce bottle because I will fight to the death that Kansas City has best barbecue,” Arnett said. “I'm so excited for people to come try it when they come see, you know, the FIFA games here.”
Soccer fans eager to own a piece of Kansas City's World Cup legacy can find more information and purchase the poster through the official website.
Copyright 2025 KCTV. All rights reserved.
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The U.S. Women's National Team secured a 2-0 win in the first of two friendlies against Brazil on Saturday.
The last time the two sides met, the U.S. took gold after winning 1-0 in the 2024 Olympic final. This rematch also marked the first time a professional women's sports event was held at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif., drawing a crowd of 32,303.
The starting lineup consisted of Phallon Tullis-Joyce in the net, and Emily Fox, Tara McKeown, Emily Sonnett, and Crystal Dunn holding the backline. Ally Sentnor, Sam Coffey, and Lindsey Heaps took the midfield with Rodman and Alyssa Thompson playing further up, and Catarina Macario taking the striker role.
Goalkeeper Tullis-Joyce and defender Avery Patterson both earned their first caps for the national team.
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The U.S started off well with Rodman slotting in a goal at the 5th minute. Alyssa Thompson gave the assist after running down the midfield and dropping her defender, then sending the ball down the middle to meet Rodman's run into the box.
“I'm excited to get more towards the goal and to have those explosive runs, to have quick finishes rather than having to create by myself every time,” Rodman said after the match, which also marked her return to the national team since the Olympic final.
Thompson was a standout throughout the game, creating chances, dropping defenders, and getting several shots on goal.
Though the Brazilian team's attacking plays and early pressure tested the U.S. midfield and defense, which seemed disjointed at times, the Americans won 55.5% of duels. Both teams showed their physicality, with the U.S. drawing 15 fouls and Brazil drawing 18.
Shortly after subbing in at the second half, Lily Yohannes drew a penalty at the 64th minute. Heaps converted the penalty, doubling the USWNT's lead.
Tullis-Joyce was visibly excited following the game. The Manchester United keeper made six saves and earned her first clean sheet in her debut.
“I'm really lucky to have such an incredible team, like it's the U.S. Women's National Team,” she said. “It's crazy that I'm wearing this crest right now.”
Head Coach Emma Hayes said the team needs to work on keeping possession, as well as figuring out whether they should be quick in the final third or recycle the ball.
“We're not afraid to back press, we're not afraid to go player-for-player in situations, but we need to be a little more decisive in the decision-making and execution of things,” she said.
Hayes has emphasized these games and upcoming camps will focus on experimentation and developing the less experienced players. She will need to drip-feed the younger players into the games as to not set them up for failure, she said Friday.
The U.S. will play Brazil again on Tuesday, April 8 in San Jose, Calif.
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Cloudy with a few showers. Thunder possible. High 46F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 30%..
Considerable cloudiness with occasional rain showers. Low 38F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 60%.
Updated: April 6, 2025 @ 1:07 pm
USA defender Trinity Rodman (2) celebrates scoring her team's first goal during a friendly against Brazil at Sofi Stadium on Saturday, April 5, 2025, in Inglewood, California.
LOS ANGELES (TNS)— Saturday's women's soccer friendly between the U.S. and Brazil was billed as a rematch of last summer's Olympic final. That was a bit of a misnomer since two-thirds of the women on the 23-player U.S. roster weren't in Paris last August.
Even the uniforms weren't the same.
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Cloudy with occasional rain showers. High 46F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 40%..
Rain showers early becoming a steady light rain overnight. Low 38F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 60%.
Updated: April 6, 2025 @ 1:42 pm
USA defender Trinity Rodman (2) celebrates scoring her team's first goal during a friendly against Brazil at Sofi Stadium on Saturday, April 5, 2025, in Inglewood, California.
LOS ANGELES (TNS)— Saturday's women's soccer friendly between the U.S. and Brazil was billed as a rematch of last summer's Olympic final. That was a bit of a misnomer since two-thirds of the women on the 23-player U.S. roster weren't in Paris last August.
Even the uniforms weren't the same.
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First Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
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Manchester City will go into this summer's FIFA Club World Cup still as one of the favourites despite a disappointing season by their ridiculously high standards.
Pep Guardiola's men can still boast of being Premier League champions for four consecutive seasons, and they are still the current holders of the Club World Cup, having won the competition in 2023.
DAZN is the only place to watch every match of the Club World Cup live and for free - download the free app now for smart TV's, smartphones, streaming devices and games consoles to start watching.
DAZN News has everything you need to know about Manchester City.
One of the big two in Manchester, City and neighbours United split the famous city.
Since their big-money takeover, the blue half have gone from being ‘noisy neighbours' to being the region's dominant force.
Members of St. Mark's Church of England, West Gorton, Manchester, founded the football club that would become known as Manchester City for largely humanitarian purposes.
Two churchwardens sought to curb local gang violence and alcoholism by instituting new activities for local men, whilst high unemployment plagued East Manchester.
They became Ardwick Association Football Club in 1887 and finally Manchester City in 1894.
Manchester City's Premier League win in 2024 made them the first side in English football history to ever win four league championships in a row, cementing their dominace of English football that started with the takeover by the Abu Dhabi United Group in 2008.
Their investment moved Manchester City onto the elite table of clubs in England and has seen them go on to win eight league titles since 2012, as well as nine domestic cups and their Champions League win in 2023 - one third of a historic treble.
They are also the current holders of the FIFA Club World Cup.
The likes of Colin Bell and Franny Lee were City heroes of the '60s and '70s, but the modern stars and their achievements have eclipsed that era as legends of the club.
City's struggles haven't stopped the striking Viking, as has broken the thirty-goal barrier in all competitions for a third season in a row.
2025 may not have been Pep's year, but football is still Pep's playground.
No manager has revolutionised the game like the Spaniard, and he'll be heading into this year's FIFA Club World Cup looking to win the competition for a FOURTH time.
Manchester CIty are one of twelve European teams competing in the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup and qualify as one of the last three winners of the UEFA Champions League.
The Citiziens were victorious in the 2023 showpiece, where they earned a 1-0 victory over Inter Milan thanks to a goal from Rodri in Istanbul, Turkey.
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INGLEWOOD, Calif. (April 5, 2025) -- The U.S. Women's National Team defeated Brazil 2-0 as Trinity Rodman scored early and team captain Lindsey Heaps clinched the game with a second half penalty kick. Rodman was playing her first USWNT match since the 2024 Paris Olympics and picked up right where she left off, scoring in the sixth minute off a precise assist from fellow forward Alyssa Thompson.
Backed by some excellent U.S. defending and a debut shutout for goalkeeper Phallon Tullis-Joyce, Heaps effectively clinched the match with a goal in the 66th from the penalty spot. Midfielder Lily Yohannes, who came on in the 61st minute, drew the foul in the penalty box just minutes after substituting for Ally Sentnor.
The Americans were aggressive on the attack from the very start. In the first half, they tested Brazilian goalkeeper Lorena with five shots on goal and seven attempts. The Americans finished with 12 shots on goal.
The two Olympic finalists brought a competitive energy and bite to the match which saw six yellow cards shown, four to Brazil and two to the Americans.
The match was played in front of 32,303 fans at SoFi Stadium and marked the first-ever women's professional sporting event at the world-class stadium, which featured a grass system that was being tested for the 2026 FIFA World Cup. It was the second largest crowd in the Los Angeles area for the U.S. Women's National Team, not counting the 1999 FIFA Women's World Cup Final at the Rose Bowl.
The 28-year-old Tullis-Joyce had a sparkling debut, becoming the 10th goalkeeper in U.S. history to earn a shutout. She becomes the 16th player to earn a first cap under head coach Emma Hayes. Defender Avery Patterson came on at the end of the match and became the 17th. Tullis-Joyce is the 274th player to earn a cap for the USWNT, now in its 40th year of existence, and Patterson became the 275th.
Next up, the USWNT faces Brazil in the second of the two-match series, meeting at PayPal Park in San Jose, Calif. on Tuesday, April 8, 2025 (7:30 p.m. PT / 10:30 p.m. ET on TBS, Max, Universo and Peacock).
USA — Trinity Rodman (Alyssa Thompson), 6th minute - After a nifty move to beat the defender cutting in from the left side, Thompson found a cutting Rodman in the penalty box with a perfect pass. Rodman then calmly finished into the lower right corner with her fight foot from 10 yards out. USA 1, BRA 0
USA — Lindsey Heaps (Penalty Kick), 67th minute - Lily Yohannes was chopped down near the top of the penalty box and referee Katia Gacia immediately pointed to the spot. The veteran then blasted her shot into the left corner of the net despite Brazilian ‘keeper Lorena guessing correctly. USA 2, BRA 0
Match: United States Women's National Team vs. BrazilDate: April 5, 2025Competition: International FriendlyVenue: SoFi Stadium; Inglewood, Calif.Attendance: 32,303Kickoff: 2:07 p.m. local (5:07 p.m. ET)Weather: 78 degrees, sunny
Lineups: USA: 21-Phallon Tullis-Joyce; 23-Emily Fox (13-Avery Patterson, 88), 4-Tara McKeown, 14-Emily Sonnett, 19-Crystal Dunn; 17-Sam Coffey, 10-Lindsey Heaps (Capt.) (8-Jaedyn Shaw, 85), 9-Ally Sentnor (24-Lily Yohannes, 61); 2-Trinity Rodman (15-Michelle Cooper, 61), 20-Catarina Macario (7-Ashley Hatch, 84), 11-Alyssa Thompson (22-Yazmeen Ryan, 85)Substitutes not used: 3-Korbin Albert, 5-Alana Cook, 6-Emily Sams, 12-Gisele Thompson, 16-Claire Hutton, 18-Mandy McGlynnHead coach: Emma Hayes
BRA: 1-Lorena; 23-Isa Haas, 3-Tarciane (15-Fê Palermo, 81), 6-Yasmim (2-Antônia, 73); 9-Adriana, 20-Mariza, 8-Angelina (Capt.) (5-Duda Sampaio, 81), 14-Ludmila (13-Bruninha, 73); 18-Gabi Portilho, 21-Gio Queiroz (7-Jheniffer, 89), 11-Amanda Gutierres (10-Kerolin, 73)Substitutes not used: 12-Natascha, 22-Camila, 4-Lauren, 16-Kaká, 17-Lais Estevam, 19-LuanyHead coach: Arthur Elias
Stats Summary: USA / BRAShots: 16 / 15Shots on Goal: 12 / 6Saves: 6 / 10Corner Kicks: 5 / 6Fouls: 15 / 18Offside: 4 / 0
Misconduct Summary:USA – Emily Sonnett (Caution) 45 + 2nd minuteBRA – Tarciane (Caution) 50BRA – Gio Queiroz (Caution) 58BRA – Isa Haas (Caution) 68USA – Michelle Cooper (Caution) 72BRA – Adriana (Caution) 72BRA – Antônia (Caution) 83
Officials:Referee: Katia Garcia (MEX)Assistant Referee 1: Sandra Ramirez (MEX)Assistant Referee 2: Shirley Perello (HON)4th Official: Marianela Araya (CRC)VAR: Diana Perez (MEX)AVAR: Tatiana Guzman (NCA)
Michelob Ultra Woman of the Match: Trinity Rodman
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INGLEWOOD, Calif. (April 5, 2025) -- The U.S. Women's National Team defeated Brazil 2-0 as Trinity Rodman scored early and team captain Lindsey Heaps clinched the game with a second half penalty kick. Rodman was playing her first USWNT match since the 2024 Paris Olympics and picked up right where she left off, scoring in the sixth minute off a precise assist from fellow forward Alyssa Thompson.
Backed by some excellent U.S. defending and a debut shutout for goalkeeper Phallon Tullis-Joyce, Heaps effectively clinched the match with a goal in the 66th from the penalty spot. Midfielder Lily Yohannes, who came on in the 61st minute, drew the foul in the penalty box just minutes after substituting for Ally Sentnor.
The Americans were aggressive on the attack from the very start. In the first half, they tested Brazilian goalkeeper Lorena with five shots on goal and seven attempts. The Americans finished with 12 shots on goal.
The two Olympic finalists brought a competitive energy and bite to the match which saw six yellow cards shown, four to Brazil and two to the Americans.
The match was played in front of 32,303 fans at SoFi Stadium and marked the first-ever women's professional sporting event at the world-class stadium, which featured a grass system that was being tested for the 2026 FIFA World Cup. It was the second largest crowd in the Los Angeles area for the U.S. Women's National Team, not counting the 1999 FIFA Women's World Cup Final at the Rose Bowl.
The 28-year-old Tullis-Joyce had a sparkling debut, becoming the 10th goalkeeper in U.S. history to earn a shutout. She becomes the 16th player to earn a first cap under head coach Emma Hayes. Defender Avery Patterson came on at the end of the match and became the 17th. Tullis-Joyce is the 274th player to earn a cap for the USWNT, now in its 40th year of existence, and Patterson became the 275th.
Next up, the USWNT faces Brazil in the second of the two-match series, meeting at PayPal Park in San Jose, Calif. on Tuesday, April 8, 2025 (7:30 p.m. PT / 10:30 p.m. ET on TBS, Max, Universo and Peacock).
USA — Trinity Rodman (Alyssa Thompson), 6th minute - After a nifty move to beat the defender cutting in from the left side, Thompson found a cutting Rodman in the penalty box with a perfect pass. Rodman then calmly finished into the lower right corner with her fight foot from 10 yards out. USA 1, BRA 0
USA — Lindsey Heaps (Penalty Kick), 67th minute - Lily Yohannes was chopped down near the top of the penalty box and referee Katia Gacia immediately pointed to the spot. The veteran then blasted her shot into the left corner of the net despite Brazilian ‘keeper Lorena guessing correctly. USA 2, BRA 0
Match: United States Women's National Team vs. BrazilDate: April 5, 2025Competition: International FriendlyVenue: SoFi Stadium; Inglewood, Calif.Attendance: 32,303Kickoff: 2:07 p.m. local (5:07 p.m. ET)Weather: 78 degrees, sunny
Lineups: USA: 21-Phallon Tullis-Joyce; 23-Emily Fox (13-Avery Patterson, 88), 4-Tara McKeown, 14-Emily Sonnett, 19-Crystal Dunn; 17-Sam Coffey, 10-Lindsey Heaps (Capt.) (8-Jaedyn Shaw, 85), 9-Ally Sentnor (24-Lily Yohannes, 61); 2-Trinity Rodman (15-Michelle Cooper, 61), 20-Catarina Macario (7-Ashley Hatch, 84), 11-Alyssa Thompson (22-Yazmeen Ryan, 85)Substitutes not used: 3-Korbin Albert, 5-Alana Cook, 6-Emily Sams, 12-Gisele Thompson, 16-Claire Hutton, 18-Mandy McGlynnHead coach: Emma Hayes
BRA: 1-Lorena; 23-Isa Haas, 3-Tarciane (15-Fê Palermo, 81), 6-Yasmim (2-Antônia, 73); 9-Adriana, 20-Mariza, 8-Angelina (Capt.) (5-Duda Sampaio, 81), 14-Ludmila (13-Bruninha, 73); 18-Gabi Portilho, 21-Gio Queiroz (7-Jheniffer, 89), 11-Amanda Gutierres (10-Kerolin, 73)Substitutes not used: 12-Natascha, 22-Camila, 4-Lauren, 16-Kaká, 17-Lais Estevam, 19-LuanyHead coach: Arthur Elias
Stats Summary: USA / BRAShots: 16 / 15Shots on Goal: 12 / 6Saves: 6 / 10Corner Kicks: 5 / 6Fouls: 15 / 18Offside: 4 / 0
Misconduct Summary:USA – Emily Sonnett (Caution) 45 + 2nd minuteBRA – Tarciane (Caution) 50BRA – Gio Queiroz (Caution) 58BRA – Isa Haas (Caution) 68USA – Michelle Cooper (Caution) 72BRA – Adriana (Caution) 72BRA – Antônia (Caution) 83
Officials:Referee: Katia Garcia (MEX)Assistant Referee 1: Sandra Ramirez (MEX)Assistant Referee 2: Shirley Perello (HON)4th Official: Marianela Araya (CRC)VAR: Diana Perez (MEX)AVAR: Tatiana Guzman (NCA)
Michelob Ultra Woman of the Match: Trinity Rodman
Get unrivaled matchday access
Saturday's women's soccer friendly between the U.S. and Brazil was billed as a rematch of last summer's Olympic final. That was a bit of a misnomer since two-thirds of the women on the 23-player U.S. roster weren't in Paris last August.
Even the uniforms weren't the same.
As for the result, only the score was different, with the U.S. riding goals from Trinity Rodman and Lindsey Heaps to a 2-0 win before a crowd of 32,303 at SoFi Stadium.
And all that was fine with coach Emma Hayes, who is using her first full year in charge of the team to audition a wave of young players ahead of the next major international tournament, the 2027 World Cup. Two of those women nailed their tryouts Saturday, with Alyssa Thompson running through, around and over the Brazilian defense all afternoon, while Manchester United goalkeeper Phallon Tullis-Joyce made six saves in her first appearance for the senior national team to earn the shutout.
“I love playing in L.A., obviously,” said Thompson, who grew up the San Fernando Valley and plays for Angel City FC. “Knowing that my family's here, knowing that my friends are here, my teammates. It just made me feel so much more comfortable and I felt like I could be more myself on the field. So it was really nice.”
Thompson made her presence felt early, assisting on Rodman's goal in the fifth minute. After taking a one-bounce header from Crystal Dunn at midfield, Thompson weaved through the center of the Brazilian team — deking fullback Mariza so badly she went to the turf — before splitting two defenders with a low through ball that hit Rodman in stride for the easy finish.
“She's been building her confidence and consistency in her performance, and I think it showed,” Hayes said of Thompson. “It's a really good steppingstone for her.”
The goal by Rodman, who has battled a back injury for the last seven months, was her first for the U.S. since the Olympic quarterfinals.
“I felt so good to be in this atmosphere again, be with the team,” said Rodman, an Orange County native who also played in front of family and friends in the first professional women's sporting event at SoFi Stadium.
After her score, Rodman playfully grabbed at her back and pretended to limp away from the goal — a stunt that originally alarmed her coach.
“I didn't think she was pretending, so I will have a word with her,” Hayes said with mock anger. “I turned to the physios and I said, ‘Her back's hurting.' Then I realized she was tricking us.
“Just having her back is just such a difference. She's a game-changer and we know we have to look after her.”
Soccer
As the U.S. women's national team prepares to face Brazil for the first time since the Paris Olympics, Trinity Rodman is ready to adapt to her new teammates.
Twelve minutes later the speedy Thompson nearly scored, making a run across the top of the box to create space before sending a right-footed shot toward the far corner that Brazilian keeper Lorena Leite barely kept out of the side netting.
Thompson had three better looks in the second half, but Leite smothered the first two, then leaped to lift the third try — an athletic shot by Thompson, whose back was to the goal — over the crossbar to keep the game close.
So it fell to Lily Yohannes to set up the second goal, going down in the box after being tripped, allowing Heaps to double the lead on a penalty kick.
Tullis-Joyce made it stand up with six saves, the most by a U.S. keeper since Alyssa Naeher's seven against Germany in the Olympic semifinals. Tullis-Joyce made her national team debut after Hayes told her several days ago she would start against Brazil, but the keeper said she didn't tell her family members who attended the game.
“I couldn't verbally. There was a frog in my throat,” Tullis-Joyce said. “They only knew when the [lineup] was announced on social media.”
Meanwhile Hayes, a former standout club coach who has lost just once in 19 games in her first try at managing a national team, said she's beginning to feel comfortable 10 months into the new job.
“I feel at home with this team,” she said. “I feel like I could make a difference, build an environment that I want to be in and the players want to be in and I think it's pushing me to new heights. When you're at a club, you can't breathe. You've got a game every three days, you're on the road.
“I feel like this is the first camp in my tenure where, quite frankly, I feel like I've got my menopause under control. I think that's been really challenging for me. I didn't realize how challenging it was.”
Soccer
SoFi Stadium experimented with an innovative hybrid grass system. Here is how they set up the pitch and what they learned ahead of the 2026 World Cup.
Hayes' team wasn't the only thing that was tested. The hybrid playing surface at SoFi, stretched over the artificial turf the Rams and Chargers play on, held up well. The grass carpet was installed about a month ago for four CONCACAF Nations League games and was left in place for the women's friendly to see how it would grow and adapt to the stadium's unique indoor/outdoor conditions ahead of next year's men's World Cup.
SoFi will play host to eight World Cup games and FIFA rules prohibit the use of artificial turf in the tournament.
Otto Benedict, the stadium's senior vice president for facility and campus operations, said the removal of the turf will be done in collaboration with SoFi's field contractor.
New sod will be laid down ahead of the CONCACAF Gold Cup match, featuring Mexico, on June 14.
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Washington Spirit owner Michele Kang is investing an additional $25 million in U.S. Soccer for the development and research of women's soccer via the federation's Soccer Forward Foundation.
This marks Kang's second financial pledge to the federation in five months. The founder and CEO of Kynisca, a women's sports organization based in London that aims to advance research and development of women's soccer, shared the announcement alongside U.S. Soccer CEO JT Batson on Friday at the SheBelieves Summit in Los Angeles. The move is part of a larger initiative to integrate the current operations of Kynisca Innovation Hub into Soccer Forward.
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Kang's latest investment builds on a $30 million pledge made last November to be used by the federation over the next five years. As the largest donation toward women's and girls' programs in U.S. Soccer's 111-year history, it is intended to grow competitive opportunities for youth soccer players, improve talent identification mechanisms and champion the professional development of female players, coaches and referees.
In the last three years, Kang has made increasingly splashy moves as a major investor in women's soccer in the U.S. and Europe. She became the majority owner of the Washington Spirit in 2022, expanding her club portfolio to the London City Lionesses in December 2023 and the eight-time Champions League winners Olympique Lyonnais Feminin in February 2024 to build the first multi-club model in women's soccer.
“This integration represents a major step forward in advancing research and setting new standards for women's sports,” Kang said. “By working together, we are ensuring that players at all levels benefit from innovative insights and best practices. Women's soccer is experiencing historic growth, but there's still work to be done to break down systemic barriers and secure the investment needed for female athletes.”
According to the release, the new partnership will run through two major channels of focus: research and solutions-oriented initiatives toward positive health outcomes in women's sports and the implementation of best practice standards to guide women's soccer performances and grow the game globally.
U.S. Soccer President Cindy Parlow Cone said that by “integrating Kynisca Innovation Hub talent into Soccer Forward, we can drive real change through research-backed standards that support players at every level.”
(Photo: James A. Pittman / Imagn Images)
Tamerra Griffin is a women's soccer writer for The Athletic covering the women's game around the world. She also hosts the weekly “Full Time” women's soccer podcast. As a freelance journalist, she covered the 2023 World Cup in Australia and the CONCACAF W Gold Cup for The Athletic, as well as women's soccer stories for ESPN Andscape, USA Today's Pro Soccer Wire, and other publications. Prior to that, she was an international correspondent based in Kenya, where she reported on presidential elections and political movements, LGBTQ and women's rights, climate change, and much more across East and Southern Africa. Follow Tamerra on Twitter @tamerra_nikol
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Trinity Rodman and captain Lindsey Heaps scored quality goals and the U.S. women's national team beat Brazil 2-0 in the first of a pair of friendlies on Saturday afternoon at SoFi Stadium.
The USWNT started strong, with Rodman's goal coming five minutes into the match; Heaps extended the lead when she converted from the spot in the 66th minute. The Americans matched the physicality of Brazil, who hoped to avenge their loss the last time these sides met in the Paris Olympics gold medal match. The U.S. won that final, 1-0.
U.S. coach Emma Hayes said ahead of this game that the April window would feature a lot of experimentation with lineups and player combinations as she works to give younger players more exposures. The starting lineup included a mix of young and veteran players, with Ally Sentnor and Tara McKeown each getting their respective third starts.
There were two debuts, with Hayes starting Phallon Tullis-Joyce in goal and subbing defender Avery Patterson on late. That brings the number to 17 players who have earned their first caps under Hayes.
Here are the takeaways from the match.
It took all of five minutes for Rodman to score in her first game back for the USWNT since last summer's Olympics.
Alyssa Thompson collected the ball just past midfield and looked like she was going to feed Heaps on the left wing. Instead, the 20-year-old cut inside, beat her man one-on-one, and slipped a perfectly weighted ball into the box for Rodman, who scored with the outside of her right foot.
The last goal Rodman scored for the U.S. was the winning one in a dramatic Olympic quarterfinal match against Japan. After taking several months off from international duty — mostly to get some rest following a busy 2023-24 and recover from a back injury — Rodman is back like she never left.
Thompson's assist was an example of what Hayes said Friday while discussing the Angel City forward's development and how far she's come in the past six months. Hayes described her as a one-on-one specialist, and that the staff have been working with her on honing those skills and getting into the best positions to win battles. The hard work was clear early and often against Brazil as she continued to find the ball in space and create opportunities. She nearly had a goal of her own late in the second half, but was pulled down by a defender, forcing her volley to fly over the crossbar.
Only moments after being substituted into the game in the second half, 17-year-old Lily Yohannes was fouled in the box by Ludmila, drawing a penalty.
Heaps took the PK, powering her shot past Lorena to double the USWNT's lead.
After Heaps converted from the spot, the broadcast noted that the U.S. captain spent time after Friday's training session working specifically on her PKs, with most going into that left corner.
Tullis-Joyce had a clean sheet in her first cap as the USWNT's starting goalkeeper.
The 28-year-old was invited into her first national team camp at the end of 2024 ahead of matches against England and the Netherlands, and was called up as a training player during February's SheBelieves Cup. Hayes has been complimentary of the goalkeeper, while adding she still needs to work on her feet and be more vocal within the group.
Tullis-Joyce has started every match for Manchester United this season and has posted 12 clean sheets. Oftentimes in USWNT friendlies, goalkeepers don't get too much action. But Tullis-Joyce had an opportunity to show what she could do in a fast-paced and aggressive match. Brazil was dangerous on several occasions, forcing Tullis-Joyce to be commanding in the box and make some big saves. One of her best came in the 52nd minute when Brazil's Gio got in behind and got a shot off, only to be saved by Tullis-Joyce.
With the USWNT's goalkeeper competition still very much wide open, this was an important performance for an inexperienced Tullis-Joyce.
The U.S. and Brazil will play the second match of this doubleheader on Tuesday at PayPal Park in San Jose, Calif.
Laken Litman covers college football, college basketball and soccer for FOX Sports. She previously wrote for Sports Illustrated, USA Today and The Indianapolis Star. She is the author of "Strong Like a Woman," published in spring 2022 to mark the 50th anniversary of Title IX. Follow her at @LakenLitman.
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The ATP Monte Carlo Masters is one of just two 1000-level events that is still played over the course of a single week – which means that there is plenty of entertaining tennis to be enjoyed across all seven days. As ever, we here at LWOT will be offering our predictions for every match on the slate on day two, but who will book their spot in the second round?
Head-to-head: first meeting
Stan Wawrinka is obviously nearing the end of his career, but recent weeks have shown he's still got a bit left in the tank. He's playing his brand of clay tennis with monstrous power unleashed from way behind the baseline and doing well. Bucharest wasn't a bad display of stamina either with the three-hour win over Timofey Skatov. Against someone who's as out of form/confidence as Alejandro Tabilo, that might as well be enough.
Prediction: Wawrinka in 3
Head-to-head: Bu 1-0 Musetti
Bu Yunchaokete posted a great win over Lorenzo Musetti in Beijing last year, but has since struggled to replicate that level elsewhere. It's also way easier to touch the Italian on hard courts than in the slow, windy conditions in Monte Carlo. Musetti usually plays well here and has a much more versatile game than his opponent. Bu's style was perfect for grinding down the veteran Albert Ramos-Vinolas in the qualifying, but it's unclear what he can do to trouble Musetti on the dirt.
Prediction: Musetti in 2
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Head-to-head: Berrettini 1-0 Navone
This is a little unfortunate for both players as probably the most dangerous of the qualifiers is running into someone in very good shape of late. Mariano Navone's expertise in clay-court rallying is evident any time he plays, while Matteo Berrettini is just among the top echelon of the sport regardless of conditions. The Argentinian has had a few matches recently where he could have gone on a deeper ATP Tour run, but was outplayed in the key moments. He'd need to be absolutely clinical here.
Prediction: Berrettini in 3
Head-to-head: Davidovich Fokina 1-0
Alejandro Davidovich Fokina reached the final at this event three years ago, which remains the biggest achievement of his career. His form has been pretty strong this season and he's a deadly draw for Ben Shelton here. While the American has the skillset to play at least decently on clay with his athleticism and lefty topspin, way too often you can see he just doesn't trust his baseline game that much. He needs to realize he doesn't need to ballbash and he's just not quite there yet.
Prediction: Davidovich Fokina in 3
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Main photo credit: Susan Mullane-USA TODAY Sports
With just three months of the 2025 season gone, at least seven prominent tennis players have officially retired. For some, it was the end of
The 2025 ATP Houston final serves up a compelling all-American showdown between Jenson Brooksby and Frances Tiafoe, two players arriving at this stage with very
Camila Osorio will look to become the second Colombian to win three titles at WTA Bogota. Meeting her in the championship match is first-time Tour
A blockbuster WTA Charleston final awaits between world No. 4 Jessica Pegula and 2020 Australian Open champion Sofia Kenin. Pegula hopes to win her first
The ATP Tour has quickly moved from hard courts to clay, with the Monte Carlo Masters having now arrived.
Carlos Alcaraz can shine on clay this season, which represents the first such season without Rafael Nadal since 2002.
Nadal retired last season with 22 Grand Slam titles to his name, 14 of which arrived on the clay courts of the French Open.
Bjorn Borg is his nearest competitor with six, although it is Nadal's former rival Novak Djokovic who has the most men's Grand Slam titles of all time.
The Serbian tops the list with 24, and can add to that tally at this year's French Open, which gets underway next month.
He has joined forces with three-time Grand Slam champion Andy Murray, with Andrey Rublev following suit by appointing Marat Safin to his coaching time.
And his fellow former professional Tracy Austin has now shared her verdict on that pairing, saying on Tennis Channel: “I don't know, I mean, we've seen Andrey Rublev break his rackets out there, hit his leg, and I thought maybe somebody a little more calm than Marat Safin would come on board.
READ MORE: Jimmy Connors shares his opinion on Andrey Rublev's decision to hire Marat Safin as his new coach
“But we know that Marat Safin has won majors, so maybe it's that knowledge that will help Rublev break that quarter-final barrier that he seems to have gotten to.
“And you know also maybe it's just being around a guy that's a whole lot of fun. Marat Safin, I've been around him, every room that he is in, he lights it up, something new, something different to add to the team so it's worth a try.”
We're looking forward to Marat Safin coaching Andrey Rublev 🤭👏#TCLive pic.twitter.com/KHpW2b0zyV
Rublev has seemingly been needing more guidance in recent times, with fellow Russian Safin likely to help out in that regard.
The former currently occupies ninth in the ATP rankings, but is on a three-match losing streak ahead of the Monte Carlo Masters.
READ MORE: The ATP player ranked 507th in the world has just reached a final on clay and made tennis history by doing so
That poor run remarkably comes immediately after he beat Jack Draper to win the Qatar Open in February.
Safin meanwhile reached world number one during his fantastic career, which included two Grand Slam titles and two Grand Slam final defeats.
But according to Austin, who also reached world number one and won two Grand Slams, Safin could and perhaps should have enjoyed more success.
“I'm a fan of the way that he played,” she said. “I mean, the way that he beat Pete Sampras at the US Open, the talent level that Marat had, what he brought to the court.
“Honestly, I will say that I think he could have won five, six majors if he had been maybe a little bit more professional, but he did it his way.
“You know he won those big titles and we're lucky that we had him in the sport because he certainly played a terrific brand of tennis.”
American players are taking centre stage at this moment in time, having dominated the Houston Open and Charleston Open.
Frances Tiafoe and Jenson Brooksby made the final in Houston, with Sofia Kenin and Jessica Pegula reaching the 2025 Charleston Open final.
Brooksby is the lowest-ranked player to reach a clay final, with the qualifier taking on three-time consecutive finalist Tiafoe.
Home players have enjoyed their time at the ATP Houston, with all eight quarter-finalists coming from America.
Brooksby then beat top seed Tommy Paul in their semi-final, with second seed Tiafoe overcoming fourth seed Brandon Nakashima.
Falling in the quarter-finals of the ATP 250 event meanwhile was Alex Michelsen, with the fifth seed losing to Tiafoe.
The 20-year-old has, however, garnered huge praise from Coco Gauff's former coach Brad Gilbert, who is predicting big things for the world number 34.
READ MORE: Barbora Krejcikova and Coco Gauff's former coach react after Jakub Mensik wins the Miami Open title
“Michelsen is sneaky good,” said Gilbert, as quoted by Tennis Channel. “I'd be really surprised if he doesn't make [at least] the Top 10. His backhand is really good, and he's really clever.”
"We have a lot of 🇺🇸 guys that are quality players. And now there are younger ones, too. They are all getting a lot better." @bgtennisnation ﹠ @PatrickMcEnroe on the state of the @atptour:https://t.co/rmhBiRRy72
Michelsen recently reached a career-high rank of 32, and is currently seventh among the highest-ranked American men.
He is joined in that list by the likes of Paul and Shelton, who occupy places 13th and 14th respectively on the ATP Tour.
READ MORE: Coco Gauff's former coach predicts how high Ben Shelton can reach in the world rankings after new career-best
The highest-ranked American Taylor Fritz meanwhile is all the way up in fourth, and is certainly flying the flag the highest for his nation.
It is a situation that has delighted Gilbert, who said: “We have a lot of guys that are quality players. And now there are younger ones, too. They are all getting a lot better.
“That's why we're a lot deeper. Sometimes the results aren't exactly what you want, but you've got to keep pressing on.”
There has not, however, been an American men's Grand Slam winner since Andy Roddick in 2003, when he won the US Open.
Asked if he's worried that the Fritz generation will lose even more ground in the near future, Gilbert replied: “Let's hope they pick it back up. You know, I just want to be hopeful. How about that? I'd rather be hopeful than be bitter.”
An unlikely appearance at the 2002 Monte-Carlo Masters turned into a memorable ATP debut for Richard Gasquet.
Born in the southern French city of Beziers, Gasquet was introduced to tennis by his parents, both of whom were biology teachers.
Mum Maryse and dad Francis were coaches at their local club in Serignan, where Richard became a student.
Their young prodigy first picked up a racquet at the age of three and it didn't take long for his potential quality to shine through on court.
Having started playing with his father, Gasquet was discovered by the seven-time title winner and former ATP star Pierre Barthes.
The then retired Frenchman, who also won the US Open doubles with Nikola Pilic in 1970, ran the tennis camp in Cap d'Agde close by.
Gasquet continued his growth and at nine-years-old, he became the cover star of the February 1996 edition of Tennis Magazine.
'The champion that France is waiting for?' it read on the front, one that has also donned Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic.
French media hype continued when Gasquet was dubbed as the 'little Mozart of tennis' when was 15, the age in which his career took off.
After reaching the Australian Open boys' singles semi-finals in 2002 he made his ATP Tour debut at the Monte-Carlo Masters.
Gasquet entered qualifying as a wildcard, beating Nikolay Davydenko and Adrian Voinea to reach the main draw of the tournament.
In doing so, he became the youngest ever qualifier in a Masters Series event at Monte-Carlo before making more history in the first round.
A 7-6 [7-5] 3-6 7-5 win against Franco Squillari, who was world no.54, made him the youngest ATP-level match winner in 14 years.
Gasquet won when aged just 15 years and ten months, after Tommy Ho and his 1988 Rye Brook Open win at 15 years and two months.
The teenager was beaten in the second round by Marat Safin but just a few months later, he impressed on his senior Grand Slam debut.
Shortly before he turned 16, Gasquet faced world no.20 Albert Costa in the French Open first round and won the first set before defeat.
An ATP record awaited him at the end of his breakout 2002 when he became the youngest ever player to finish in the year-end top 200.
Consistent Grand Slam appearances followed, including two semi-final outings at Wimbledon and one at the US Open.
But Gasquet also made regular visits to where it all began in Monte-Carlo and reached the quarter-finals in 2005 as a qualifier.
Standing between him and the last four was world no.1 Federer, who was unable to overcome the latest rising star in tennis.
Gasquet beat the Swiss legend 6-7 [1-7] 6-2 7-6 [10-8] and met Nadal in the semi-finals but couldn't capitalise on his first set win.
Another three quarter-final outings came his way in 2007, 2013 and 2018 at the Monte Carlo Country Club, with 2025 his final year.
He announced in October that he will retire and make his final ever appearance at the French Open next month.
A final bow at the Monte-Carlo Masters comes before though and the 38-year-old made an excellent start in the first round.
Gasquet beat Matteo Arnaldi 6-3 4-6 6-4 and will now face either world no.19 Felix Auger-Aliassime or qualifier Daniel Altmaier.
Fabio Fognini, Stan Wawrinka and Valentin Vacherot have joined him as wildcard entries.
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Find out why Djokovic won't be coached by Andy Murray in Monaco.ByBaseline StaffPublished Apr 06, 2025 copy_link
Published Apr 06, 2025
© 2025 Getty Images
We're talking about practice! They'll be hoping to stand on opposite sides of the net in a week's time in Monte Carlo, but for now, Carlos Alcaraz and Novak Djokovic kicked off the clay-court season with a training session together on Day 1 of the Rolex Monte-Carlo Masters.Both men are making highly anticipated apperances at the first ATP Masters 1000 event of the sping clay-court season. Two-time Monte Carlo champion Djokovic, who was beaten by Casper Ruud in the semifinals last year, returns to the match court after falling just short of winning his 100th career singles title at the Miami Open, where he was upset in the final in a pair of tiebreaks by Czech teenager Jakub Mensik. Alcaraz, meanwhile, is making only his second apperance; after losing his opening match to Sebastian Korda in 2022, he withdrew from the 2023 and 2024 events with various injuries.Read more: Does title 100 for Novak Djokovic lie in red clay?But one familir face isn't at the tournament, as made apparent by Alcaraz and Djokovic's joint practice, where the two played points and shared spirited conversation: Djokovic's brother Marko is standing in as coach this week, rather than Andy Murray.
Both men are making highly anticipated apperances at the first ATP Masters 1000 event of the sping clay-court season. Two-time Monte Carlo champion Djokovic, who was beaten by Casper Ruud in the semifinals last year, returns to the match court after falling just short of winning his 100th career singles title at the Miami Open, where he was upset in the final in a pair of tiebreaks by Czech teenager Jakub Mensik. Alcaraz, meanwhile, is making only his second apperance; after losing his opening match to Sebastian Korda in 2022, he withdrew from the 2023 and 2024 events with various injuries.Read more: Does title 100 for Novak Djokovic lie in red clay?But one familir face isn't at the tournament, as made apparent by Alcaraz and Djokovic's joint practice, where the two played points and shared spirited conversation: Djokovic's brother Marko is standing in as coach this week, rather than Andy Murray.
Read more: Does title 100 for Novak Djokovic lie in red clay?But one familir face isn't at the tournament, as made apparent by Alcaraz and Djokovic's joint practice, where the two played points and shared spirited conversation: Djokovic's brother Marko is standing in as coach this week, rather than Andy Murray.
But one familir face isn't at the tournament, as made apparent by Alcaraz and Djokovic's joint practice, where the two played points and shared spirited conversation: Djokovic's brother Marko is standing in as coach this week, rather than Andy Murray.
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The two-time Monte Carlo champion, who said he found "joy" in his Miami performance, and that it "gives [him] more inspiration to keep going," added in his pre-tournament interview that it was never in the plans for Murray, who started coaching Djokovic at the start of the year, to accompany him to the event. The Scot will re-join him in Madrid.“I was thinking about who I wanted anyone apart from my fitness coach and physio and my brother Marko was able to join me so that helps me on a different level emotionally," he said, according to the ATP website. "Have some time with my brother and spend some time with him on the road.”Read more: 2025 Monte Carlo Masters Preview: Carlos Alcaraz tries to dispel the doubtsAlcaraz, seeded No. 2, and No. 3 seed Djokovic were drawn in opposite halves at the first clay-court Masters 1000 event of the spring. The Spaniard will face the winner of the first-round match between wild card Fabio Fognini and Francisco Cerundolo, while Djokovic will face either wild card Stan Wawrinka or Alejandro Tabilo—the latter of whom defeated him last year in Rome.
“I was thinking about who I wanted anyone apart from my fitness coach and physio and my brother Marko was able to join me so that helps me on a different level emotionally," he said, according to the ATP website. "Have some time with my brother and spend some time with him on the road.”Read more: 2025 Monte Carlo Masters Preview: Carlos Alcaraz tries to dispel the doubtsAlcaraz, seeded No. 2, and No. 3 seed Djokovic were drawn in opposite halves at the first clay-court Masters 1000 event of the spring. The Spaniard will face the winner of the first-round match between wild card Fabio Fognini and Francisco Cerundolo, while Djokovic will face either wild card Stan Wawrinka or Alejandro Tabilo—the latter of whom defeated him last year in Rome.
Read more: 2025 Monte Carlo Masters Preview: Carlos Alcaraz tries to dispel the doubtsAlcaraz, seeded No. 2, and No. 3 seed Djokovic were drawn in opposite halves at the first clay-court Masters 1000 event of the spring. The Spaniard will face the winner of the first-round match between wild card Fabio Fognini and Francisco Cerundolo, while Djokovic will face either wild card Stan Wawrinka or Alejandro Tabilo—the latter of whom defeated him last year in Rome.
Alcaraz, seeded No. 2, and No. 3 seed Djokovic were drawn in opposite halves at the first clay-court Masters 1000 event of the spring. The Spaniard will face the winner of the first-round match between wild card Fabio Fognini and Francisco Cerundolo, while Djokovic will face either wild card Stan Wawrinka or Alejandro Tabilo—the latter of whom defeated him last year in Rome.
As the clay season hits full swing, the bigger names – and a few outsiders – are building towards the next grand slam
Jannik Sinner Still serving his three-month doping ban, Sinner maintains his spot as the world No 1 after his rivals' faltering performances in Indian Wells and Miami. He will return to competitive tennis in Rome, aiming to capture his home ATP 1000 title for the first time after missing the 2024 edition due to a hip injury before the French Open. The ban limits his preparation, but he will be rested and eager to impress.
Alexander Zverev The German's form has been concerning, with unexpected losses to Arthur Fils at the Miami Open, the world No 43, Tallon Griekspoor, at Indian Wells and the teenage qualifier Learner Tien at the Mexican Open. By his own admission he has been “playing terrible” but clay is his strongest surface, where his powerful groundstrokes and topspin are highly effective. He has won titles in Rome and Hamburg in the past two years and fell in five sets to Carlos Alcaraz in the French Open final last year.
Carlos Alcaraz It is easy to forget how young the Spaniard is – he turns 22 next month – especially with four grand slam titles already won, but his recent inconsistencies are a reminder of how much he has to learn. Dominant sets are often followed by periods of vulnerability and his serve has not improved since he ended 2022 as world No 1. The good news is clay will mitigate his biggest 2025 struggle: not returning well against big servers on faster courts. Instead, he can take his time to set up points and showcase his shotmaking. The glimmer of invincibility has slightly dimmed, but he should not be underestimated on the red dirt.
Lorenzo Musetti He is not the most exciting player, but the 23-year-old won bronze at the Paris Olympics on clay, the first Italian to win a medal in singles tennis in a century, by being patient and adaptable. “He's an awkward player to play against,” said Novak Djokovic after last year's Wimbledon semi‑finals. “He has that defence slice, drop shots. He can serve and volley. He's so crafty. He can play any shot.” His biggest weakness? He always seems to end up on Djokovic's side of the draw.
Taylor Fritz With five Americans ranked in the top 25, the depth of talent is undeniable. Fritz leads the pack and while his consistent power game seems ill-suited for clay it has proved to be effective. Last year, he became the first American to reach the quarter-finals of all three ATP Masters events on clay and committed to playing the full clay-court season, challenging the traditional American aversion to the surface. “The generation before me, a lot of Americans wouldn't want to play the whole swing,” he says. “Clay is a huge part of the season. It's three Masters, some other tournaments and a grand slam. How can I ever be a top player if I can't produce some results during the clay season?”
Aryna Sabalenka The Belarusian's season has been marked by consistent dominance, with Brisbane and Miami Open titles, not dropping a set and consistently producing first serves above 80% at the latter. Her powerful backhand translates effectively to clay and while it is not her strongest surface her seven finals and two titles demonstrate her clay-court capability. “Physically I'm strong and I'm not rushing the point. I know I can stay in the point for how long I need. I have got everything to be a good player on clay,” she said after her Miami Open win.
Iga Swiatek The undisputed queen of the surface in recent years enters the clay season with a point to prove. Her 2024 dominance featured titles in Madrid, Rome and a third consecutive and fourth overall Roland Garros win, which was her last tournament victory. Opponents have exploited the Pole's forehand vulnerabilities on faster courts, but the shift to clay, with its slower pace, should favour her heavy topspin forehand. Her mental resilience will be tested, given her admitted recent struggles after a positive drugs test and subsequent ban last August. Can she reclaim her clay-court throne?
Coco Gauff Gauff's season has been marred by inconsistent performances, with four consecutive losses to unseeded opponents. Her forehand remains a significant weakness targeted by opponents, consistently hitting long. While possessing exceptional defensive skills, particularly in returning first serves, her ability to capitalise on second serves is less effective. Her 0-5 record against Swiatek on clay speaks volumes but with Swiatek's dip in form, can the American finally make a breakthrough?
Mirra Andreeva After reaching the Roland Garros semi-final last year, the Russian has solidified her status as the tour's newest teenage sensation. Her victories in Dubai and Indian Wells, including wins over Swiatek and Sabalenka in the latter, helped her record the longest winning streak by a player under 18 in two decades and become the youngest player in 40 years to defeat the world's top two players en route to a title. As the third-youngest Indian Wells champion, after Martina Hingis and Serena Williams, she enters the clay season with immense momentum.
Daria Kasatkina All eyes will be on Kasatkina who is now representing Australia after switching from her birth country, Russia. “I have to get used to it,” she says. “But I'm really happy to start this new chapter of my life representing Australia on the big stage.” Her clay-court prowess is undeniable, with more wins on the surface than any player outside Swiatek and Sabalenka in 2023 and an 8-4 record on clay in 2024. The new Australian No 1's crafty baseline game and ability to adapt to various playing styles make her a formidable opponent with her versatility being well-suited to the demanding conditions of the surface.
Novak Djokovic and the people of Australia ain't exactly on the best terms since the pandemic ... and Aussie wheelchair tennis legend Dylan Alcott says many fans have been unfair to the 24x Grand Slam winner!
Things began to go south in 2022, when Novak, a skeptic of the COVID-19 vaccine, was banned from playing in the Australian Open (a 10x A.O. champ) and deported from the country because he didn't get the jab.
Fast forward to 2025 ... Novak pulled out of the Australian Open in the semifinals due to a muscle tear in his leg. The tennis great was heavily criticized in the country.
Not how we wanted your campaign to end, @djokernole.Thank you for another wonderful Australian summer. Well played and best wishes for a speedy recovery.#AO2025 pic.twitter.com/d5VJ6YNBeN
So, when 34-year-old Alcott, one of the greatest wheelchair tennis players ever, stopped by the TMZ offices for a taping of our new podcast, "Big Down Under," host (and fellow Aussie) Charlie Cotton asked him about Djokovic, a mate of Dylan's.
"It sucks," Alcott, a 25x Grand Slam winner (15 singles and 10 doubles titles), said of the fans who booed 37-year-old Novak after he was hurt.
"Like who are you to say someone isn't injured, and when you won that many [Australian Opens], you don't have to be a fan of someone but you don't have to disrespect them and boo them off the court."
Despite the harsh treatment inside his home country's borders, Alcott has nothing but love for Novak.
"He's been a supporter of me, wheelchair tennis," he said. "We do this demo every year at the AO, and it really highlights that he wants to support other people in tennis, which is cool."
Dylan, who was named Australian of the Year in '22, says everyone is entitled to their own opinion ... but that doesn't mean the athletes have to pay attention.
"You can like me; you can not like me. You can like Novak; you can not like Novak. We can't control what people think about us."
The next Australian Open is set to go down in January 2026 ... and if Djokovic is healthy and playing, it'll be one of the most can't-miss tourneys in the tennis calendar.
Bottom line ... the man has at least ONE fan Down Under.
The 24-year-old staved off match point as he produced a 7-6(5), 3-6, 7-6(6) win over fellow American Paul, ranked 13th in the world.
Brooksby has made a habit of saving match points in this tournament; he did so in the first round of qualifying and then fought off three match points in the second round of the main draw.
The match was blighted by several lengthy rain delays and concluded seven and a half hours after it began when Brooksby's backhand return winner secured the tie-break win in the third.
"I've been able to recall a lot of those (match point) moments this tournament and I think I've gotten stronger as each of those have gone on," said Brooksby who is ranked 50th in the world.
"I'm just really pleased with how I've kept my mental composure here the whole week so far," he said.
Brooksby will face second-seeded fellow American Francis Tiafoe in Sunday's final.
Tiafoe took down fourth seed Brandon Nakashima 6-4, 7-6(3) to reach the final.
Jenson Brooksby refuses to lose in Houston.
The 24-year-old American saved match point in the first round of qualifying, three of them in the second round of the main draw and on Saturday evening, he fought off another match point en route to upsetting top seed Tommy Paul 7-6(5), 3-6, 7-6(6) in the semi-finals of the Fayez Sarofim & Co. U.S. Men's Clay Court Championship.
Brooksby's smile after hitting a backhand return winner to seal his place in the final said it all. The qualifier had just weathered literal storms in Texas and an always game Paul to reach his fourth ATP Tour championship match.
“I've been able to recall a lot of those moments this tournament,” Brooksby said of his match point saves. “And I think I've gotten stronger as each of those have gone on. I'm just really pleased with how I've kept my mental composure here the whole week so far.”
What a match 🙌
Jenson Brooksby stuns Paul 7-6(5) 3-6 7-6(6) and advances to his first final in three years.@mensclaycourt | #USClay pic.twitter.com/yPTp5MiYT0
The No. 507 in the PIF ATP Rankings became the sixth tour-level finalist ranked outside the world's Top 500 since 1990 and the second qualifier to reach the final of the tournament since it moved to Houston in 2001. Mariano Zabaleta also achieved the feat in 2007 before falling to Ivo Karlovic.
The day's first semi-final was scheduled to begin at 1 p.m. in Houston, but it did not end until about 8:30 p.m. due to multiple weather delays.
After the final delay, the players resumed action in the middle of the second set and an aggressive Paul quickly surged into a decider. However, the gritty Brooksby showed his resilience and led by a break twice in the third set. He continued putting balls into play, forcing his opponent to play nearly perfect tennis.
Paul, who was pursuing his first ATP Tour clay-court final, showed his class to turn the tables and serve for the match at 6-5. Despite letting slip that opportunity, the top seed earned match point at 6/5 in the tie-break.
With all the pressure on him, Brooksby landed a deep second serve, jamming Paul to force an error. Although he lost serve five times according to Infosys ATP Stats, the qualifier claimed a spot in the final against second seed Frances Tiafoe.
“I think regardless of what happens tomorrow, it's a huge positive for me this week. Huge,” Brooksby said. “I'm proud of the work I've put in, even last year heading into this year, and how I've responded every week, no matter if it was a worse week or a good week. Just excited for tomorrow.”
Tiafoe will compete in the Houston final for the third consecutive year after defeating fellow American and fourth seed Brandon Nakashima 6-4, 7-6(3). The second seed, who claimed the crown at this event in 2023, won 68 per cent of his second-serve return points to move on after one hour and 42 minutes.
"I thought I played pretty well tonight," Tiafoe said. "Tough, tough conditions. Really tough winds on this side of the court, we were both struggling to hold serve. But I thought I came out with a great energy and it's again just having fun out here and playing really well my first tournament on clay. I really love playing here in Houston."
Tiafoe is the fourth player to make at least three straight championship matches in Houston, joining Jimmy Connors (1976-79), Andres Gomez (1983-1986) and Andy Roddick (2001-05).
Last year, Tiafoe lost a three-set final in Texas to Ben Shelton. He will try to overcome an 0-2 deficit in his Lexus ATP Head2Head rivalry with Brooksby.
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The Rolex Monte-Carlo Masters, the first clay court Masters of the season, is here and promises high-octane tennis. Three first-round matches are scheduled on Day 1, featuring the former semifinalist, Richard Gasquet, who will play here for the final time. As always, we at LWOT will offer predictions for every match on the slate. But who will advance?
Head-to-Head: first meeting
Jan-Lennard Struff had a horrible first three months of the season, and the European clay season couldn't have come sooner for the German player. Struff has played some great tennis at the Monte-Carlo Masters in the last two editions and will look to replicate it again. He desperately needs match wins as he is on the verge of dropping outside the top 50 for the first time since 2023. He will face the local wild card, Valentin Vacherot, who has never won a tour-level match outside of the Davis Cup. Vahcrot will have the crowd support, and with Struff's recent form, this match could get close. However, I still expect Struff to find a way to win.
Prediction: Struff in 3
Head-to-Head: Perricard 0-3 Thompson
Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard won his first tour-level title on clay and would be extremely excited to make his debut at the Monte-Carlo Masters. However, his form is not great this season, and he will face a tough opponent in the first round. The Frenchman's last match was against Jordan Thompson in Miami, where he lost to the Australian in straight sets. Thompson has a great record against Perricard and knows how to win key points. But this is the first time these two will meet on clay, which is Thompson's worst surface. Perricard's serve will still be impactful, and he will have extra time from baseline.
Prediction: Perricard in 3
Embed from Getty Images
Head-to-Head: first meeting
Richard Gasquet first played at this historic event back in 2002 as a 15-year-old boy. 23 years later, he will play here for the final time. The French legend's retirement is close, but he is still capable of delivering amazing tennis, as he demonstrated last week in Bucharest against Botic van de Zandschulp. He also took a set from Flavio Cobolli, who is currently in the final of the Bucharest Open. Matteo Arnaldi is a solid clay courter but he is playing his first clay match this season, and maybe it will take him some time to find his feet. I can see Gasquet starting strong but the Italian should win once he finds his rhythm.
Prediction: Arnaldi in 3
Main Photo Credit: Jerry Lai – USA TODAY Sports
The 2025 ATP Houston final serves up a compelling all-American showdown between Jenson Brooksby and Frances Tiafoe, two players arriving at this stage with very
Camila Osorio will look to become the second Colombian to win three titles at WTA Bogota. Meeting her in the championship match is first-time Tour
A blockbuster WTA Charleston final awaits between world No. 4 Jessica Pegula and 2020 Australian Open champion Sofia Kenin. Pegula hopes to win her first
ATP 250 Marrakech final Griekspoor – Darderi: 06.04.2025 16:00 CEST H2H: 2-0 Tallon Griekspoor has won four of his last five matches. His last match
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April 05, 2025 10:01PM EDT
By Gianni Taina
After an early-round exit at Indian Wells and a finals loss in Miami to rising star Jakub Mensik, Novak Djokovic is now shifting focus to the clay season. With Roland Garros looming and the 100th ATP title within reach, former World No. 6 Gilles Simon is highlighting the critical tweaks Djokovic has made to stay competitive.
As with all athletes, age eventually starts to take a toll—some adjust better than others. Simon believes Djokovic has made the right changes to ease the physical burden that once fueled his success.
Speaking with Tennis365, Simon explained how Djokovic has evolved, playing smarter and more aggressively to manage his physical output. “It's a very logical way,” said Simon. “He's serving better and better, because he needs more free points than before. He's less capable of holding his level playing full intensity, every point from the baseline for four or five sets, what he was doing before with Rafa [Nadal] – we all watched it”.
Simon pointed out that during Djokovic's 2023 Roland Garros title run, there were stretches where he appeared to hold back—deliberately conserving energy to make it through the match.
Novak Djokovic of Serbia celebrates with the winners trophy after victory against Casper Ruud of Norway in the 2023 Roland Garros final. (Julian Finney/Getty Images)
“It has already been a few years [now] where he can only play that level for one hour and a half and sometimes one set, or some moments in the match,” he continued. “Even when he won the French Open or Wimbledon, there is one set where he is not playing it, because he needs to recover – something he would never do before. Before he was full gas, first to last point”.
see also
Former World No.1 Mats Wilander makes bold prediction about Novak Djokovic's clay-court season
According to the French former pro, Djokovic no longer sticks to the relentless playing style that defined him in his prime. Instead, he adapts to how his body feels and paces himself accordingly.
“The choices he is making sometimes are different because he has to know how to handle this energy and regulate it, to play the five sets,” he noted. “That's where the logic is different. It's no longer: ‘No matter what happened, I will go full power first to last point”.
“He's really smart, he understands everything, he's super good obviously. He understands now how his body is responding and where the limit is, and where he has to change the choice and be a bit more aggressive to have shorter points in some moments, to hold the whole match,” Simon added.
Gianni Taina is a bilingual journalist, fluent in English and Spanish, specializing in soccer, the NBA, and tennis. He began his professional career in 2020 with Mundo Deportivo US, where he made his initial strides as a writer. Gianni has covered major sports events such as the FIFA World Cup in Qatar, the NBA Finals, and Grand Slam tournaments like Roland Garros. His ability to report on real-time events and write under pressure has established him as a valuable member of a top-tier team of journalists. In 2024, he joined Bolavip US, where he covers a wide range of sports, including European soccer, MLS, and the NBA. Gianni earned his degree in Communication from Deportea in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Bolavip, like Futbol Sites, is a company owned by Better Collective. All rights reserved.
2025 Charleston
WTA Staff
No. 1 seed Jessica Pegula battled into her first Credit One Charleston Open final on Saturday, twice coming back from a break down in the third set to pull off a 6-2, 2-6, 7-5 semifinal victory over No. 9 seed Ekaterina Alexandrova.
Charleston: Draws | Scores | Order of play
World No. 4 Pegula had been halted in the Charleston semifinals in each of the last two years, but she went one better this time at the WTA 500 green-clay event. However, she had to use all of her mettle to come from behind on a gusty day, outlasting 26th-ranked Alexandrova in 2 hours and 20 minutes and levelling their head-to-head at 2-2.
"It's been the same kind of storyline in the past when I've played her," Pegula said, after her win. "Played a good first set, she comes back in the second, and then, usually, I tend to lose the third. So glad I was able to flip that script today."
Pegula will now face her fellow American Sofia Kenin in Saturday's final. The 2020 Australian Open champion Kenin advanced when another American, No. 8 seed Amanda Anisimova, retired from their semifinal due to a right hip injury. Kenin was leading 5-2 in the first set when Anisimova stopped play.
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"I'm feeling very good with the level I've played throughout the week," Kenin said. "It's unfortunate that Amanda had to retire, I wish her a speedy recovery. She's had a great year and I just wish her the best."
Pegula leads Kenin 3-2 in their head-to-head. Pegula won their most recent meeting, when she beat former World No. 4 Kenin in the second round of last year's US Open en route to her first Grand Slam singles final.
This is the first all-American final at Charleston since Martina Navratilova beat Jennifer Capriati in the 1990 final.
New tour win leader: The Hologic WTA Tour match-win leader position has changed hands numerous times in 2025, and Pegula now takes her turn at the top. Pegula's win over Alexandrova was her 24th WTA main-draw victory of the year, putting her one ahead of Aryna Sabalenka's 23.
Pegula was dominant early on Saturday, where she went 20 minutes without hitting an unforced error. By reaching 5-0 in the first set, she was on a 14-game winning streak that began in the second set of her quarterfinal win over defending champion Danielle Collins.
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The second set, however, was a very different story, as Alexandrova's power game kicked into gear. Alexandrova had 14 winners to Pegula's two in that set, and the ninth seed tied up the match at one set apiece.
In the topsy-turvy third set, Pegula fought back from a break down on two separate occasions. At 5-5, Pegula placed a backhand in the corner to force an error from Alexandrova, earning a chance to serve for the match. In the next game, Pegula fired another backhand, this time down the line, to convert her second match point.
"[Alexandrova is] a really good player," Pegula said. "There's a reason she beats a lot of top players … Her game is tough to play against, the way she strikes the ball, she's serving well, returning well."
By Sean Piccoli
The three stars of Mid-Century Modern are united in their belief that a gay-themed sitcom lands as a welcome antidote to what they all described as an increasingly hostile political climate for LGBTQ+ people. Without mentioning names or political parties, stars Nathan Lane, Matt Bomer and Nathan Lee Graham took turns praising the multi-cam Hulu show — taped in front of a live audience — for a timely representation of gayness.
“It's more important than ever these days now that we're in an authoritarian regime,” Lane said to laughter Sunday during Deadline's Contenders TV panel, “and all of our rights are under threat.”
Bomer, for his part, said that Mid-Century Modern has “hopefully brought a little joy, a little queer joy, to the world in 2025.” Graham added, “I cannot tell you how liberating it is to play a character without shame,” he added, calling the series “a weapon of joy.”
Watch on Deadline
RELATED: ‘Mid-Century Modern' Trailer: Matt Bomer, Nathan Lane & Nathan Lee Graham Audition Housekeeper By Having Him Do Pushups
After the death of a dear friend, three older gay men resettle together in Palm Springs, where Lane's character, a bra store chain magnate named Bunny, shares a house with his longtime friends Jerry (Bomer) and Arthur (Graham) and Bunny's mother, Sybil, played by the late Alice star Linda Lavin, With the testy Arthur, the blithely upbeat Jerry and the less excitable Bunny all under one roof alongside Bunny's assertive mother, the gay jokes fly and the life lessons for this “found family,” as the actors called it, are both funny and bittersweet.
RELATED: Linda Lavin Remembered By Nathan Lane, Matt Bomer, Sarah Paulson & More: “She Was Just So Funny”
The show is from executive producer Ryan Murphy and Will & Grace co-creators Max Mutchnick and David Kohan, with Lane and Bomer also serving as executive producers. The first season, which was greenlighted in June, premiered in March with all 10 episodes released together.
The production was dealt a devastating off-screen loss in December when Lavin died with three episodes left to tape. Her death meant that Mid-Century Modern would be the Tony-winning actresses' last role, and it forced the Mutchnick and Kohan to write a farewell for her character. Episode 9, entitled “Here's to You, Mrs. Schneiderman,” is about Sybil's death and the aftermath for her son and his friends.
RELATED: ‘Mid-Century Modern' Co-Creator Reveals How Linda Lavin's Character Will Be Written Off
Lane on Sunday remembered Lavin as “extraordinary” and as someone she knew from the theater world before Mid-Century Modern brought them together professionally for the first time. Bomer said that Lavin “led us all with such a gentle and beautiful grace, and taught by example.”
RELATED: ‘Mid-Century Modern' Team Talks Linda Lavin's “Devastating” Death, ‘Golden Girls' Comparisons & ‘Will & Grace' Crossover Potential
On a lighter note, Graham took a moment to gently push back on online chatter that the show airs with a canned laugh track. “We actually do have people in the studio audience that actually laugh,” he said.
Check back Monday for the panel video.
RELATED: Contenders TV — Deadline's Complete Coverage
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By Destiny Jackson
Awards Writer
Brian Tyree Henry confessed to breaking his own cardinal rule of not returning to television in order to star in Apple TV+'s crime drama Dope Thief. The Atlanta breakout star was initially reluctant to return to the small screen after a slew of theatrical releases that include The Eternals, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and The Fire Inside. Reflecting on his last acting roles in Atlanta and Class of ‘09, Henry said, “There seems to be this trend where people love putting me through trauma. You know what I mean? I'm either being shot at in a bulletproof vest, crying, all this stuff. I'm like, why can't I just own a sandwich shop and be in love?”
Executive produced by Henry, Ridley Scott and showrunner Peter Craig, Dope Thief, based on Dennis Tafoya's book of the same name, follows two long-time friends Ray (Brian Tyree Henry) and Manny (Wagner Moura) who pose as DEA agents to steal drugs from prominent dealers. Their righteous scores soon turn dangerous when the pair end up robbing the wrong house to one of the biggest and secretive narcotics operations on the East coast.
Watch on Deadline
“So, I read this [script] and I couldn't stop reading it,” Henry continued explaining about why he agreed to the role after initially turning it down. “Then I heard they were willing to let me executive produce as well, and I couldn't turn that down. But the character of Ray, I couldn't deny him. There were so many parts of Ray that reflected me, which I try to do with all the characters [that I chose]. Ray came at a point in my life where I was really doing some deep healing, and I saw Ray was just trying so hard to figure out what his trauma was, what his grief was, and also there was just a huge heart to him. So, I couldn't deny it. Then when I met Pete, it was like, ‘Well, shit'. It was an easy choice to make.”
Craig revealed that he came across the gripping drama via an Apple TV+ executive who just happened to have the novel in their possession. Just as the COVID era was happening Craig toyed with the idea of turning it into a show. “I said, ‘I think I can pop this as an inciting incident and then just take these characters as far as we want,'” Craig said. “Then I was just playing with it over COVID, and not knowing whether the show was going to go or not. Just kind of using that almost like worry beads. I know the intro says it's a dark show, but it's actually not. It's actually almost a kind of absurdist comedy in some places. So then when Ridley came aboard, all of a sudden we had a show.”
RELATED: Contenders TV — Deadline's Complete Coverage
In describing working together with his co-worker Moura, as they play into nuances and tensions in their interracial friendship pairing, Henry said, “He's just one of the best humans, not just one of the best actors, that I've ever met. We would have discussions. We were like, ‘Well, we know what this looks like, a Black and Latino man [involved in] drugs and violence. We've seen this shit. So, how is this different?' What we realized is that Pete had conjured up deep down. It's a love story between these two men who have been incarcerated since they were 15, put in a system that told them they can't be anything and released into the world still trying to figure out what kind of men they want to be. They just decide to pretend to be DEA agents and rob trap houses. It was like, OK, well let's just see where this love story goes and just watch that relationship unfold. It's something we hadn't seen a lot.”
Craig added, “They're actually good hearted people. I mean, they actually have more morality than anybody around them, including most of the law enforcement and most of everybody else. They just have been thrown into a system where morality gets in the way.”
RELATED: ‘Dope Thief' Trailer: Brian Tyree Henry & Wagner Moura Are On The Run After A Drug Heist Gone Bad – Update
Alongside being an EP for the series, Scott somehow found the time between Napoleon and production of Gladiator II to direct the first episode. “It was like having that dad who has two secret families, and you only see him for that one holiday,” Henry joked about working with the director on set. “He's a walking masterclass, especially for an actor because he films with no less than six cameras. He's not a man of many takes, which I wouldn't be either if I had six cameras, but I loved it because it felt very much like theater. Because when you're doing the stage, the curtain comes up and that's it. There's no, ‘Hold on, let me stop. Let me go back.' He brought that kind of energy. It was also really great to know that you're working with the director that you're never going to see because [Ridley] directs from a hidden trailer somewhere on the street. He's in a trailer moving like Minority Report.”
Henry also mentioned that Scott had a great response for him after being enthralled by a take that Henry had done on set. “[Ridley] called me in [his office] and we have this conversation, and he just says to me, ‘Brian, I've been doing this for a very long time, and all I'm looking for are actors who make me go, I've never thought of it that way.' That was wonderful. That to me gave me my charge of what I needed to do and [reinforced] that we picked each other at the right time. It was wonderful to hear that from him, it was really wonderful to have him on this.”
Check back Monday for the panel video.
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By
Peter Wade
A second Texas child has died of a measles outbreak, and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — infamous spreader of vaccine misinformation — reportedly plans to attend the funeral on Sunday.
Axios first reported news of Kennedy's trip to Texas, with NBC News later reporting that Kennedy plans to attend the child's funeral. The school-aged child's death follows the death of a 6-year-old Texas girl who died from measles. Both children were unvaccinated and in the Mennonite community, which eschews vaccines due to religious beliefs. An adult in Texas has also died from the outbreak. Shortly after the first child's death, Kennedy posted photos of himself “mountaineering above Coachella Valley,” prompting criticism he was not taking the disease's spread seriously.
“The child was receiving treatment for complications of measles while hospitalized,” the hospital said in a statement about the recent death. “It is important to note that the child was not vaccinated against measles and had no known underlying health conditions. This unfortunate event underscores the importance of vaccination.”
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The outbreak has caused 481 measles cases in the state this year as of Friday, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS). Until this year, no child in the United States had died of measles since 2015, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says. The U.S. had largely eradicated measles thanks to vaccination, but with rising vaccine skepticism — aided by Kennedy — the disease is having a resurgence. The CDC's website currently says that “thanks to a highly effective vaccination program in the United States,” the U.S. eliminated measles from the country and “has maintained measles elimination status for over 20 years.” If outbreaks and declining vaccination rates continue, however, the country could lose that status.
“Due to the highly contagious nature of this disease, additional cases are likely to occur in the outbreak area and the surrounding communities,” Texas DSHS warned.
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Kennedy downplayed the severity of the outbreak in February after the first child's death by calling the spread “not unusual” despite the complete lack of measles deaths in the U.S. over the past decade. He has long perpetuated misinformation about the potential side effects of vaccination, claiming that the vaccine leads to deaths. But according to the Infectious Disease Society of America, there have been “no deaths related to the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine in healthy individuals.”
As recently as a few weeks ago, in an appearance on Fox News, Kennedy suggested without evidence that getting the measles is the best path to acquiring lifelong immunity from the disease. But according to the CDC, one to three out of every 1,000 cases of childhood measles results in death. Meanwhile, two doses of the MMR vaccine is safe and 97 percent effective in protection against measles.
Kennedy has also pushed vitamin A as a treatment for measles. In an editorial published on Fox News' website, Kennedy claimed good nutrition is “a best defense against most chronic and infectious illnesses.” And in a Fox News interview he claimed that doctors in Texas are treating measles cases with steroids and cod liver oil and “getting very, very, good results.”
He went so far as to say that vitamin A can “dramatically” reduce deaths from the disease. While the World Health Organization recommends two doses of vitamin A for those with measles who have low vitamin A levels, it not a treatment for measles. WHO says that there is “no specific treatment for measles” beyond “relieving symptoms, making the person comfortable and preventing complications.”
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“Because it has been described that patients with vitamin A deficiency can have a more severe course, the WHO recommends low doses of vitamin A for children diagnosed with measles,” Dr. Carla Garcia Carreno, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Children's Medical Center Plano in Texas, told ABC News. “This is a supplementation in case of deficiency, and it is not intended to treat the virus. High doses of vitamin A can have serious consequences.”
The World Health Organization (WHO) states that: “Community-wide vaccination is the most effective way to prevent measles. All children should be vaccinated against measles. The vaccine is safe, effective and inexpensive.”
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Known as the "Oscars of Science," the Saturday night event saw Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and Sam Altman rubbing shoulders with stars including Gwyneth Paltrow, Seth Rogen and Zoe Saldaña.
By
Alex Cramer
From the Oscars to the Golden Globes, Hollywood has no shortage of starry awards shows — but there's only one at which pop princesses like Lizzo and Katy Perry rub elbows with Nobel Prize laureates, while Paris Hilton takes selfies with scientists developing gene-editing techniques that can cure cancer.
The Breakthrough Prize Ceremony, also known as the “Oscars of Science,” was founded by Silicon Valley titans Sergey Brin, Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg, Julia and Yuri Milner, and Anne Wojcicki. Now in its 13th year, the show honors scientists, doctors and researchers who have made significant breakthroughs in their respective fields, and sends winners home with $3 million checks.
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This year's ceremony took place at Santa Monica's Barker Hanger on Saturday, and celebrity attendees — including Leonardo DiCaprio, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jodie Foster, Alicia Keys, Drew Barrymore, Christina Aguilera, Mr. Beast, Gayle King, Jeremy Strong, Jessica Chastain, Kate Hudson, Olivia Wilde, Rob Lowe, Glenn Close and Zoe Saldaña — were joined by tech leaders such as Zuckerberg, Google co-founder Brin, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, as well as businessman Rupert Murdoch.
James Corden once again emceed the evening and opened the show by acknowledging the recent stock market crash.
“A lot of you have had a bad week. You know what I can see from up here? I see a room full of people who are starting to worry that they might have to fly commercial again,” he joked, while also referencing how President Trump's recent tariffs could affect foreign scientists.
“Not only will we be celebrating them, we'll actually be helping fund their vital and groundbreaking research, because every winner will go home tonight with $3 million,” Corden said. “Although I should warn you, unfortunately, due to some recent tariffs, international winners will actually only now be going home with $45,000.”
Following Corden's opening remarks, six Breakthrough Prizes were awarded in categories covering life sciences, fundamental physics and mathematics; in addition, the Breakthrough Prize Foundation announced that eight early-career physicists and mathematicians were sharing six $100,000 New Horizons Prizes. Among the winners were David Liu, who developed new gene-editing tools that were used to save the life of a young girl suffering from Leukemia by correcting disease-causing mutations in her DNA, and Dr. Stephen Hauser, who was honored for developing advanced treatments for people with multiple sclerosis.
Although the show honored scientists, it still featured Hollywood glamour, and every winner was introduced by a blockbuster-style movie trailer that showcased them and their work. Some celebrities — those serving as the evening's presenters — shared how scientific breakthroughs impacted their lives. While posthumously honoring George Berci, an innovator in using miniature cameras to perform minimally invasive surgeries, Gal Gadot shared how his work helped prevent a major medical crisis while she was pregnant.
“A little over a year ago, I had a big health scare when I was eight months pregnant. I had debilitating headaches and I had no idea what was happening inside my head,” she told the crowd. “I'm here today thanks to the amazing Cedars-Sinai Medical Center here in Los Angeles. Using MRI — a technology made possible, as we heard earlier, by particle physics — the doctors there discovered I had a blood clot. In fact, I had three major blood clots. I'm kind of an all-or-nothing type of person, but I'm here today thanks to them and the technology that they use.”
Halfway through the show, Perry took the stage accompanied by a pianist and a cello to perform soulful renditions of “It's a Wonderful Life” and “Firework.” Additional entertainment was provided by Brin — showing off his magic tricks — and professional magician David Blaine, who performed an elaborate trick in which every guest shuffled a pack of cards according to Blaine's instructions and then had hundreds of people select the exact same card.
While presenting an award with Edward Norton, Seth Rogen gave an unfiltered take on the night amid current events. After Norton praised those in the room who underwrote the show with millions of dollars, Rogen added, “And it's amazing that others in this room underwrote electing a man who, in the last week, single-handedly destroyed all of American science.”
Rogen, clearly referencing Elon Musk, a guest at last year's Breakthrough Prize ceremony, and his role in cutting federal resources, continued, “It's amazing how much good science you can destroy with $320 million and RFK Jr., very fast.”
A full list of winners follows.
Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences
Daniel J. Drucker, Joel Habener, Jens Juul Holst, Lotte Bjerre Knudsen and Svetlana Mojsov, for the discovery and characterization of GLP-1 and revealing its physiology and potential in treating diabetes and obesity.
Alberto Ascherio and Stephen L. Hauser, for establishing the role of B cells in multiple sclerosis and developing B-cell based treatments, and for revealing that Epstein-Barr virus infection is the leading risk for multiple sclerosis.
David R. Liu, for developing base editing and prime editing, technologies that edit the DNA of living systems without cutting the DNA double helix, and rewrite segments of genes at their native locations, enabling the correction or replacement of virtually any mutation.
Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics
The ATLAS, CMS, ALICE and LHCb Collaborations at CERN's Large Hadron Collider, for detailed measurements of Higgs boson properties confirming the symmetry-breaking mechanism of mass generation, the discovery of new strongly interacting particles, the study of rare processes and matter-antimatter asymmetry, and the exploration of nature at the shortest distances and most extreme conditions at CERN's Large Hadron Collider.
Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics
Gerardus ‘t Hooft, for fundamental insights into gauge theory and the standard model.
Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics
Dennis Gaitsgory, for foundational works and numerous breakthrough contributions to the geometric Langlands program and its quantum version; in particular, the development of the derived algebraic geometry approach and the proof of the geometric Langlands conjecture in characteristic 0.
New Horizons in Mathematics Prize
Ewain Gwynne, for contributions to conformal probability, in particular to the understanding of the LQG metric.
John Pardon, for contributions to symplectic topology and other areas of geometry and topology.
Sam Raskin, for contributions to the geometric Langlands program, including the theory of the Whittaker model and the proof of the geometric Langlands conjecture in characteristic 0.
Maryam Mirzakhani New Frontiers Prize
Si Ying Lee, for contributions to the theory of Shimura varieties.
Rajula Srivastava, for contributions in harmonic analysis and analytic number theory, including contributions to the problem of counting rational points near smooth manifolds.
Ewin Tang, for developing classical analogs of quantum algorithms for machine learning and linear algebra, and for advances in quantum machine learning on quantum data.
New Horizons in Physics Prize
Waseem Bakr, for the realization of quantum gas microscopes for atoms and molecules, providing a microscopic view on correlations and transport in strongly interacting quantum systems.
Jeongwan Haah, for the discovery of Haah's code, in which fractal conservation laws emerge, and other models bringing discrete mathematical structures to physics.
Sebastiaan Haffert, Rebecca Jensen-Clem and Maaike van Kooten, for demonstrating new extreme adaptive optics techniques that will allow the direct detection of the smallest exoplanets.
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Plus: Lil Durk debuts in the top three with "Deep Thoughts."
By
Keith Caulfield
Ariana Grande's 2024 album Eternal Sunshine returns to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart for its third total week atop the list, flying 87-1 on the April 12-dated chart, following the set's deluxe reissue, dubbed Eternal Sunshine Deluxe: Brighter Days Ahead. Bolstered with six previously unreleased songs, the expanded effort — available at streamers, and to purchase as a download, CD and vinyl LP — earned 137,000 equivalent album units in the U.S. in the week ending April 3 (up 968%), according to Luminate.
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All versions of the album, old and new, are combined for tracking and charting purposes and continue to chart under the title Eternal Sunshine.
Trending on Billboard
Eternal Sunshine premiered atop the Billboard 200 dated March 23, 2024, and spent its first two weeks at No. 1. The set contains a pair of chart-toppers on the Billboard Hot 100 in the songs “Yes, And?” and “We Can't Be Friends (Wait for Your Love).” The project also returns to the top 40 on the Billboard 200 for the first time since the Oct. 19, 2024-dated list, when it ranked at No. 34.
The Billboard 200 chart ranks the most popular albums of the week in the U.S. based on multi-metric consumption as measured in equivalent album units, compiled by Luminate. Units comprise album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). Each unit equals one album sale, or 10 individual tracks sold from an album, or 3,750 ad-supported or 1,250 paid/subscription on-demand official audio and video streams generated by songs from an album. The new April 12, 2025-dated chart will be posted in full on Billboard‘s website on April 8. For all chart news, follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on both X, formerly known as Twitter, and Instagram.
With Eternal Sunshine's return to No. 1 after a year and two weeks, it's the second title in the last six months to jump back to the top after more than a year away. On the Jan. 4, 2025-dated chart, SZA's SOS shot back to the top after a 22-month vacation from No. 1. It returned to lead the list after its SOS Deluxe: LANA reissue.
Further, Eternal Sunshine has the largest positional jump to No. 1 (bolting 87-1) since last September, when Travis Scott's Days Before Rodeo vaulted 106-1 on the Sept. 28, 2024-dated list, after the album's vinyl edition was shipped to customers.
Of Eternal Sunshine's 137,000 equivalent album units earned in the week ending April 3, SEA units comprise 75,000 (up 541%, equaling 98.45 million on-demand official streams of the set's songs; it reenters at No. 2 on Top Streaming Albums), traditional album sales comprise 61,000 (up 5,338%, it reenters at No. 1 on Top Album Sales for a second total week atop the list) and TEA units comprise 1,000 (up 4,115%).
Sales of Eternal Sunshine were bolstered by its availability in a variety of permutations released for the Brighter Days Ahead launch. The original Eternal Sunshine album had 13 tracks, and the core Brighter Days Ahead album added six cuts: one extended version of the album-opening “Inro (End of the World)” and five new songs.
Grande's webstore sold three exclusive variants of the download edition of the album: the 19-track edition, a version with the 19 tracks plus instrumentals of the same cuts, and another version with the 19 tracks and a cappella versions of each cut (all with alternative cover artwork). Grande also released two vinyl variants and six CD editions of the reissue (some signed by the artist), containing the 19 tracks plus the three bonus tracks originally found on the album's “slightly deluxe” reissues last year.
Playboi Carti's MUSIC falls to No. 2 on the Billboard 200 chart after two weeks on top, with 91,000 equivalent album units earned (down 31%). It holds at No. 1 on the Top Streaming Albums chart for a third week.
Lil Durk collects his seventh top 10-charting effort on the Billboard 200 as Deep Thoughts debuts at No. 3 with 64,000 equivalent album units earned. The set arrives largely from streaming activity, as it was only available to purchase as a standard widely available digital download album. Of its first-week units, SEA units comprise 63,000 (equaling 85.92 million on-demand official streams of the set's songs; it debuts at No. 1 on Top Streaming Albums), album sales comprise 1,000 and TEA units comprise a negligible sum.
The rest of the top 10 on the Billboard 200 comprises former No. 1s. Kendrick Lamar's GNX falls 3-4 (58,000 units; down 10%); PARTYNEXTDOOR and Drake's $ome $exy $ongs 4 U is down 4-5 (nearly 58,000; down 6%); SZA's SOS slips 5-6 (56,000; down 7%); Sabrina Carpenter's Short n' Sweet dips 6-7 (51,000; down 7%); Bad Bunny's Debí Tirar Más Fotos is a non-mover at No. 8 (45,000; down 8%); Lady Gaga's MAYHEM falls 7-9 (nearly 45,000; down 15%); and Morgan Wallen's One Thing at a Time is stationary at No. 10 (almost 45,000; down 2%).
Luminate, the independent data provider to the Billboard charts, completes a thorough review of all data submissions used in compiling the weekly chart rankings. Luminate reviews and authenticates data. In partnership with Billboard, data deemed suspicious or unverifiable is removed, using established criteria, before final chart calculations are made and published.
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By Sean Piccoli
They're not related, but from the first time they sat down to discuss their roles in Prime Video's domestic thriller, The Better Sister, Jessica Biel and Elizabeth Banks clicked in a way that carried through to their performances, both actresses said on Sunday at Deadline Contenders TV.
“I felt, like, an immediate connection the first time we had lunch together,” Biel said at a panel with Banks and co-showrunners and executive producers, Olivia Milch and Regina Corrado. Banks agreed, saying, “I felt like the big sister right away.”
The two actresses, who are also executive producers on the show, discussed Biel's anxieties about sending her son off to camp for the first time — an experience that Banks was able to speak to knowledgeably as a mother whose children are older. “I was the younger sister, she was the older sister, and that's just the dynamic,” Biel said.
Based on the bestseller by crime novelist and former prosecutor Alafair Burke, the series follows a successful New York City career woman, Chloe (Biel), and her older but struggling alcoholic sibling, Nicky (Banks), as their already strained relationship is rocked by the murder of Chloe's lawyer husband, Adam (Corey Stoll). Suspicion falls on Ethan (Maxwell Acee Donovan), the teen-aged son that Adam had with Nicky — yes, Nicky — before they divorced and Adam, having won outright custody of Ethan, married “up,” wedding Nicky's more accomplished sister Chloe.
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RELATED: Contenders TV — Deadline's Complete Coverage
Chloe — suddenly, violently widowed — is left alone to care for the nephew whom she was helping to raise as a son, and who is now under investigation for having possibly killed his own father. As Chloe's dream life unravels, she finds herself thrown back into close quarters with estranged sister Nicky. Together, they try to work through old conflicts and resentments to uncover the truth behind the death of a man they both knew — or thought they knew — intimately.
The Contenders TV audience in Los Angeles got an early, exclusive look at a clip from the show, before all eight episodes drop May 29 on Prime Video.
Milch raved about Burke's “twisty, turny, amazing” novel and said that when Tomorrow Studios acquired the rights, she and Corrado found themselves with an opportunity to do what they love: “telling stories about excellent, complicated women.”
The added dimension of a family history complicated by alcoholism was another attraction for the pair.
“I think the thing that really stuck with us when I was reading was this idea that siblings get different versions of their parents depending on birth order, and that shapes your identity,” Milch said. “It shapes how you conceive of yourself, how you conceive of your sibling, and particularly if there is a moment of sobriety for a parent. You know, I was 10 when my dad got sober. My sister was 15, my brother was 13. We had very different experiences and memories of our childhood, and that's at play for these characters as well, for Nicky and Chloe.”
“Also, what's more savage than family?” Corrado added.
Biel also praised the female-led team behind The Better Sister, calling herself “lucky” to work with “all these major females at the heads of all these incredible departments.”
Milch recalled “a real sense of love and camaraderie and community” on set, “and maybe a little less ego than maybe you sometimes feel when there's other dynamics at play.”
Check back on Monday for the panel video.
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By
Peter Wade
A conservative think tank has said the formula the Trump administration used to calculate tariffs that are wreaking havoc on the economy contains an egregious error. When confronted with the allegations, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins doubled down.
CNN's Jake Tapper noted that the Trump tariffs that went into effect Wednesday have “wiped $6.6 trillion of wealth off of Wall Street” when he interviewed Rollins on Sunday's State of the Union. He later pointed out that economists at the conservative American Enterprise Institute recently uncovered what they say is an error in the administration's math.
“Conservative economists at the American Enterprise Institute say that when the Trump administration came up with these tariff rates, you should have used as a basis the elasticity in the response of import prices to tariffs, instead of retail prices,” Tapper said. “And AEI, a conservative group, says, because the Trump administration mixed that up, the entire computation is wrong and these tariff rates are set four times too high.”
AEI economists Kevin Corinth and Stan Veuger argue in a recent paper that had the Trump administration used a correct calculation, then it “would reduce the tariffs assumed to be applied by each country to the United States to about a fourth of their stated level.”
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“Our view is that the formula the administration relied on has no foundation in either economic theory or trade law,” Corinth and Veuger write.
“They make a compelling case,” Tapper said, asking Rollins, “Is that true?”
In defending the administration, Rollins attacked AEI as hostile toward Trump: “AEI has never been a friend of the president's. They have never been a friend of an America first agenda. They have never come alongside and helped us effectuate what we believe is today's conservative vision for America.”
“And they're just wrong on this,” Rollins claimed without providing proof. She then said that Trump has “the smartest, most incredible economists, businessmen on our side.”
“I have 100 percent faith in the formulas that they used and how they came up with these numbers,” she said before admitting she had not even read the AEI article.
“I have not read [it],” she said.
“Well, I'd ask you to check it out,” Tapper responded. “You should read it.”
“The reason I ask is because a lot of people are questioning the level of scholarship here behind how these tariffs were done,” he continued.
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A Trump official familiar with the tariff plans told Rolling Stone that ahead of his inauguration, Trump “wanted the numbers to be huge” on tariffs. “The president isn't a number-crunching guy, per se, but President Trump strongly demanded big numbers that would make other countries treat us fairly,” the source said. “And I think you can see today that those numbers are huge.”
The numbers are huge, but according to AEI's economists, they may be four times too huge.
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By Nellie Andreeva
Co-Editor-in-Chief, TV
Logan Lerman (Hunters) has boarded the upcoming fifth season of Hulu's hit comedy series Only Murders in the Building in a recurring role. His casting was revealed by Selena Gomez in a behind-the-scenes photo on Instagram, in which he is pictured alongside returning stars/executive producers Gomez, Steve Martin and Martin Short as well as fellow new Season 5 additions Renée Zellweger and Christoph Waltz and series showrunner John Hoffman. (You can see it below)
Other big names who have recurring roles on Season 5 are Tea Leoni and Keegan-Michael Key. As usual, details about the new characters are being kept under wraps.
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Production on the new season, which will be solving Lester's murder, is underway in New York with the show's four series regulars — Martin, Short, Gomez and Michael Cyril Creighton returning.
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Season 4 also featured a starry cast yet, including the return of Meryl Streep, joined by Eugene Levy, Zach Galifianakis, Eva Longoria, Jane Lynch, Richard Kind, Melissa McCarthy, Kumail Nanjiani and Molly Shannon.
Only Murders, from 20th TV, this year scored its first SAG Award for Comedy Series Ensemble, shared by Martin, Short, Gomez, Creighton, Levy, Galifianakis, Longoria, Kind, Nanjiani and Molly Shannon. Short also won for Male Actor in a Comedy Series.
This marks Lerman's return to Hulu and 20th TV after starring in the 2024 limited series We Were the Lucky Ones. Known for his title role in the Percy Jackson film series, his recent credits also include the movies Oh Hit!, which premiered at Sundance, and Skincare. He is repped by UTA, Brillstein and Hirsch Wallerstein Hayum.
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By Ryan Fleming
Crafts Editor, Awards
“There's so many shows that pull punches now… that want to take the correct boxes and do things right, and this has never been a show that's done that,” says actor Antony Starr at Deadline's Contenders TV panel for The Boys, alongside fellow stars Jack Quaid and Erin Moriarty. “It's always been unapologetically itself in its own lane.”
Based on the New York Times best-selling comic book by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson, The Boys follows a group of vigilantes who aim to keep corrupt superheroes in check. In Season 4, Victoria Neuman (Claudia Doumit) is closer than ever to the Oval Office and under the thumb of Homelander (Antony Starr). The dying Butcher (Karl Urban) is still reeling from losing his job as The Boys' leader and trust of his fellow teammates. With the stakes higher than ever, they have to find a way to work together and save the world before it's too late.
“This season is structured differently because we're effectively taking Starlight away and making her Annie and part of The Boys, and that really adjusts the structure of the show and the way that the story is told,” says Starr. “Starlight was the British spy in the Nazis, and there were three seasons of that.”
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Along with the difference in show structure, creator Eric Kripke decided to dive deep into personal backstories for the second to last season. “I just love how we get so deep into every character's story we're really dealing with our core traumas,” says Quaid. “Hughie was no exception, so Eric set up this amazing subplot of Hughie's mom abandoning him when he was a kid.”
RELATED: Contenders TV — Deadline's Complete Coverage
While Hughie's trauma was focused in the past, Annie's focus was on her present crisis. “When I found out about halfway through the season, the trajectory that this character was going to be taking and the deep dive into this identity crisis,” says Moriarty, “she is going to be struggling with or has been struggling with, and the way that was gonna manifest in this metaphorical, double character moment… It was one of the most gratifying experiences in my life.”
Check back Monday for the panel video.
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After last week's slightly languid “Saturday Night Live” episode hosted by Mikey Madison, there was no doubt that Jack Black needed to bring the energy and boy, did he not disappoint. Following a pretty standard cold open featuring James Austin Johnson as Trump announcing his tariffs, as well as yet another appearance from Mike Myers as Elon Musk, Black took to the main Studio 8H stage as if he was being shot out of a cannon.
Though initially unsure if he should take another spin as host, the band playing Aerosmith's “Back in the Saddle” prompted Black to grab a mic and use the entire studio as his stage. Not only could Bill Burr and Kieran Culkin (both currently in the Broadway revival of “Glengarry Glen Ross”) be seen in the crowd, but if you look closely, a few faces from “School of Rock” were visible as well.
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Though all of Black's live sketches offered at least a few giggles, if not an outright cackle, the one that really showed off his comedy chops was a pre-taped bit that doubles as a commercial for both Flamin' Hot Cheetos and the hemorrhoid treatment Preparation H. While the conceit is funny enough, Black's over-the-top presentation and forceful enthusiasm for the combination of both products brings the gag to a whole other level, making this one of the best commercial parodies “SNL” has done in quite some time.
While “The Lonely Island” is no longer a full-time part of “SNL,” their impact on the show has remained, with pre-taped musical sketches now a staple of the variety series. Not all of these bits have landed in the absence of “The Lonely Island,” but last night's “Goth Kid on Vacation” was top tier, harkening back to the glory days of “I'm On a Boat” and “Dick in a Box.” Featuring Kenan Thompson and Ego Nwodim as a Jamaican singing duo, the song is a jaunty ear-worm that recalls the one sibling in most families unable to enjoy an easy-going vacation in paradise. Michael Longfellow is hilarious as the eponymous goth kid, with Black offering a killer emo-inspired solo in the middle of the song as well.
Colin Jost and Michael Che have been delivering 3-pointers all season at the Weekend Update desk, proving why they've been mainstays on the show for over a decade, but last night, Nwodim ate them both up for a bit that recalled the Def Jam style of stand-up comedy from the 1990s. Referencing the recent news that Trump's White House Correspondents' Dinner would break with tradition and not feature a comedian as host — even after Amber Ruffin had already been announced for the job — Nwodim decided to offer her own skills to show that you can still be funny without referencing politics. Instead, Nwodim's jokes focused around the food being served at the function and not being able to find a good man. Things went off-the-rails when she tried to get the audience to participate, proving that sometimes the best part of “SNL” are the moments you can't plan for.
Again, all of the live sketches last night were better than many featured during “SNL 50,” purely based on Black's own strong sense of timing, as well as the cast's comfort working with a true professional who is on their level or higher. However, the one that stood above the rest came a bit later in the evening, with Black playing a band leader performing on a pier near “Bass Lake.” As he offers others to join him on stage for a rendition of Tom Petty's “Freefallin',” a host of what we'll politely call “gator-trash” appear, ready to perform. The only problem is that they all insist on playing bass, a notion that soon gets out-of-hand, as the intensity of the sound begins to compromise the structure they're standing on.
“Saturday Night Live” returns next week, April 12, with host Jon Hamm and musical guest Lizzo.
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By Glenn Garner
Associate Editor
Although The Last of Us drags viewers through the emotional depths of the human experience, none go through it quite possibly as much as star Pedro Pascal.
The Golden Globe nominee recently explained why the series, which returns to Max for Season 2 on April 13, puts him in “an unhealthy mindset” as he reprises his role as post-apocalyptic smuggler Joel Miller.
“It's this experience, more than any I've had. It's hard for me to separate what the characters are going through and how it makes me feel,” he told People.
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“In a way that isn't very healthy,” added Pascal. “And so, I kind of feel their pain I suppose, so I suppose I was in an unhealthy mindset.”
After the Season 1 finale saw Joel riding off with an unconscious Ellie (Bella Ramsey), saving her from scientists that planned to experiment on her to find a cure for the Cordyceps infection, Pascal noted it's the “fiercely protective” nature of the character that he relates to most.
“I think that storytelling is cathartic in so many ways, always has been,” explained Pascal. “It's the way that the human beings have made testimony to life.”
At this weekend's Deadline Contenders TV event, Ramsey noted that there's “definitely some doubt” between Ellie and Joel this season, “so I think that plays a big part in the shift in the relationship.”
“It's really difficult playing being cold to him … it's sadder for sure,” added Ramsey about the emotional toll of the show. “And it will continue to just get sadder and more cold … so look forward to that.”
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By
Peter Wade
The National Park Service has edited a page on its website that describes the Underground Railroad to reduce the emphasis on Harriet Tubman, instead highlighting “Black/White cooperation.”
The Washington Post first reported the changes, noting that the government replaced a large portrait of Tubman as well as a quote at the top of the page where Tubman described herself as “the conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years.” In place of Tubman's portrait is a collage of five U.S. Postal Service stamps that depict Black and white abolitionist figures, including Tubman, who were involved in helping to bring escaped enslaved people to the north.
“The Underground Railroad — the resistance to enslavement through escape and flight, through the end of the Civil War — refers to the efforts of enslaved African Americans to gain their freedom by escaping bondage,” the page used to read.
The opening lines of the page no longer mention slavery but call the Underground Railroad “one of the most significant expressions of the American civil rights movement.” It also states that the network “bridged the divides of race.”
According to The Post, since Trump returned to office, dozens of government-owned webpages have “softened descriptions of some of the most shameful moments of the nation's past,” including erasing or editing references to slavery and Jim Crow-era segregation.
High-ranking political appointees at the Interior Department, which manages the Park Service, have directed staff to identify webpages that the administration might take issue with, according to anonymous sources who spoke to the paper.
The Post found additional changes on dozens of pages, including:
In a statement to The Post, a spokesperson for the Park Service said: “The National Park Service has been entrusted with preserving local history, celebrating local heritage, safeguarding special places and sharing stories of American experiences. We take this role seriously and can point to many examples of how we tell nuanced and difficult stories about American history.”
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This revisionist purge appears to be part of the administration's anti-DEI objectives. Earlier edits to Department of Defense websites removed an article that paid tribute to Jackie Robinson's military service and several other pages that featured women and minority groups. When confronted, the administration blamed their use of artificial intelligence for the pages being taken down.
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An Executive Order signed by Trump last month called for the removal of “anti-American ideology” from the Smithsonian Institution, including targeting exhibits at the National Museum of African American History and the Women's History Museum. He declared that the Smithsonian will be banned from hosting exhibits or programs that “degrade shared American values, divide Americans based on race, or promote programs or ideologies inconsistent with Federal law and policy.”
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The sketch comedy show took aim at the country star during both the cold open and Weekend Update.
By
Mitchell Peters
Saturday Night Live took aim at Morgan Wallen following the country star's abrupt exit during the show's end credits in late March.
During the NBC sketch comedy show's cold open on April 5, just a week after Wallen's headline-making appearance as musical guest, President Donald Trump — portrayed by James Austin Johnson — made a jab at Wallen while discussing his “Liberation Day” tariffs.
“I even put tariffs on an island uninhabited by humans. It's called Heard and McDonald Island,” Johnson's Trump said, holding a poster featuring a hamburger in a hula skirt. “I would love to visit there. Can you imagine that? Big Mac and a hula skirt. Get me to God's country, right? Remember that?”
The “Get me to God's country” line was a direct nod to Wallen's comment on his Instagram Story after his much-discussed exit from the show on March 29, when he abruptly walked off stage at Studio 8H during the end credits after whispering something to host Mikey Madison.
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Later in the April 5 episode, SNL‘s Colin Jost poked fun at Wallen during Weekend Update, cracking jokes about the financial state of the country.
“This was the worst week for the stock market since the summer of 2020. But you have to remember — back then, the president was also Trump,” Jost said. “Just in the past two days, investors have lost over $6 trillion. Money is leaving the stock market faster than Morgan Wallen at goodnights.”
During his musical guest appearance on SNL, Wallen performed the title track from his upcoming album, I'm the Problem, along with his song “Just in Case.”
Just days after his controversial appearance, the country singer capitalized on the highly publicized moment by launching a new line of “Get Me to God's Country” merchandise. Wallen had not publicly commented on the incident or explained the meaning behind the phrase at press time.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly following Wallen's walk-off, longtime SNL cast member Kenan Thompson called the incident “definitely a spike in the norm.”
“We're so used to everybody just turning around and high-fiving us, everybody's saying, ‘Good job, good job, good job.' So when there's a departure from that, it's like, hmm, I wonder what that's about?” Thompson said, adding that Prince had done the same thing during his appearance on the show years ago.
“I'm not saying Morgan Wallen is Prince, but we weren't surprised because Prince was notoriously kind of standoffish. It's just how he was. So we just thought like, ‘Okay, now he's gone back into fantasyland.'”
Wallen's forthcoming album, I'm the Problem, is set to be released on May 16 and features 37 tracks, although only a few song titles have been revealed so far.
Watch SNL‘s cold open and Weekend Update sketches below. For those without cable, the broadcast streams on Peacock, which you can sign up for at the link here. Having a Peacock account also gives fans access to previous SNL episodes.
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Warner Bros.' kid-friendly movie blew past all expectations to score the top start ever for a video game adaptation, as well as rouse the beleaguered box office back to life.
By
Pamela McClintock
Senior Film Writer
The box office blues have been banished in historic fashion.
Warner Bros.' A Minecraft Movie, made with help from Legendary Pictures, struck gold with a record-shattering $157 million opening domestically and $144 million overseas for a global start of $301 million.
The film came in tens of millions ahead of expectations to score the top start ever for a video game adaptation, besting the $146.4 three-day launch of Universal Pictures' The Super Mario Bros. Movie over Easter weekend in 2023. (Opening on a Wednesday, Mario Bros. earned $204 million through Easter Sunday.)
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A Minecraft Movie easily boasts the top start of 2025 to date and, just as noteworthy, is the biggest domestic launch since Deadpool & Wolverine in July 2024 ($211 million). Saturday's gross of $60 million is the biggest in the history of Warners, not adjusted for inflation. Legendary put up 25 percent of the $150 million production budget (that doesn't include marketing costs).
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The star-studded, high-wattage ensemble pic couldn't have come at a better time. The 2025 box office has seen its fortunes fall off dramatically in recent weeks. Minecraft is just the shot of confidence Hollywood studios and cinema owners needed after pics including Disney's Snow White bit the poisoned apple.
It's also a needed victory for embattled Warner Bros. movie studio chiefs Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy, and for the studio overall. Ditto for Legendary, whose movie chief Mary Parent — known for her deft handling of big IP — is a credited producer and is given major props for suggesting that Jared Hess (Napoleon Dynamite, Nacho Libre) be hired to direct the pic.
“We're absolutely overjoyed A Minecraft Movie has been so warmly received by audiences around the world,” Abdy and De Luca said in statement thanking all involved, from Hess to the cast to Legendary and Vertigo, another producing partner. They also thanked their marketing and distribution teams. “A Minecraft Movie's decade long journey to the screen was overseen with great care by WBP's Jesse Ehrman and his team, and we are thrilled their efforts have resulted in such a tremendous response.”
Jason Momoa, Jack Black, Jennifer Coolidge and Danielle Brooks star in the PG-rated film, as well as Emma Myers and Sebastian Eugene Hansen. The movie, based on the Mojang Studios video game of the same name, centers around four misfits who are suddenly pulled through a mysterious portal into a bizarre, cubic wonderland that thrives on imagination. To get back home, they must master their new reality's quirks while embarking on a quest with an unexpected, expert crafter, as Black steps into the shoes of the iconic character Steve.
Warners global distribution chief Jeff Goldstein said the film worked everywhere, from small towns to the biggest cities. And, reached in London, Parent said the opening is a both a reflection of the mandate to celebrate the world of Minecraft in a joyful way, and the singular experience that only theatrical can offer. “This game is a global phenomenon,” she said.
Minecraft is the the best-selling video game of all time, with over 300 million copies sold an an estimated 174 million active monthly players in 2024 (Microsoft bought Mojang in 2014).
On Saturday morning, based on Friday's huge haul of $58 million, insiders at Warner Bros. projected a $135 million domestic start. Some rival studios thought it had a shot at as much as $150 million, but massive walk-up business saw the final tally come in even higher.
Not even so-so reviews or a B+ CinemaScore dinged A Minecraft Movie (moviegoers under 18 gave it a perfect A).
Exit polls from PostTrak did the best job at explaining the movie's out-of-this world start: Teens between ages 13 and 17 made up 35 percent of the audience, while the largest quad was between ages 18 and 24, according to those with access to the data. Those are the demos best known for repeat viewing. Families also turned out in force, while males — as expected — dominated at 65 percent to 67 percent of the audience. General audiences and parents/kids gave the movie four out of five stars on PostTrak, while kids delivered five out of five.
Overseas, A Minecraft Movie is even showing promise in China, where it topped the weekend chart with $14.6 million, the best showing of any Hollywood title this year. Legendary East is handling the film in China.
“This was lightning in a bottle,” said Goldstein.
Final numbers will be released Monday, and no one at Warners — or rival studios — will be surprised if grosses end up being higher.
The next-closest film was A Working Man, which came in No. 2 with $7.3 million. Distributed by Amazon MGM Studios in the U.S., the pic has earned $27.8 million in its first 10 days of release. Fathom's screening of part two of The Chosen: Last Supper followed closely with $7.2 million.
Snow White, now in its third weekend, placed No. 4 with $6.1 million domestically for a tepid global total of $168.4 million.
Numbers will be updated Monday morning.
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By
Peter Wade
The judge overseeing the case of a Maryland man erroneously deported to El Salvador has reiterated that the Trump administration must return him to the U.S.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, along with hundreds of other deportees from the U.S., is being held in El Salvador's Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), which District Court Judge Paula Xinis described as “one of the most notoriously inhumane and dangerous prisons in the world” that keeps people “in some of the most inhumane and squalid conditions known in any carceral system.”
“The officers had no warrant for his arrest and no lawful basis to take him into custody; they told him only that his ‘status had changed,'” Xinis wrote in her order issued Friday, which was obtained by Politico.
Abrego Garcia was arrested last month. He came to the U.S. from El Salvador because local gangs were trying to recruit him, threatening both him and his family. He was arrested in Maryland in 2019, but a judge granted him protection from deportation because he was likely to be targeted. His wife and five-year-old autistic son are both U.S. citizens. Abrego Garcia was reportedly arrested in front of his son.
Even Department of Homeland Security officials admitted in an earlier court filing that Abrego Garcia was sent to El Salvador last month because of an “administrative error.” Despite that, the Justice Department has argued that it cannot bring Abrego Garcia back to the United States.
In a statement on Friday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said, “We suggest the judge contact President Bukele.”
As Xinis pointed out, the Justice Department has shown “no evidence” to back up its claim that Abrego Garcia is a member of the MS-13 gang. Further, she said, by publicly labeling him as a gang member, the government put him at high risk of being targeted because as part of CECOT's cruelty, the facility “intentionally mixes rival gang members.”
Attorneys for Abrego Garcia told The Atlantic the accusations that he is a gang member are false, pointing to police records that state law enforcement was unable to find reliable evidence to connect him with MS-13 in 2019. They additionally noted that Abrego Garcia has not been convicted of any crimes, nor has he been involved with law enforcement at any other times.
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The obvious lack of evidence against Abrego Garcia has not stopped Vice President J.D. Vance from spreading misinformation about him. “He was a convicted MS-13 gang member with no legal right to be here,” he falsely claimed.
Xinis also dismantled the Trump administration's argument that because Abrego Garcia is in El Salvador, they are not able to return him to the U.S.
“Surely, Defendants do not mean to suggest that they have wholesale erased the substantive and procedural protections of [federal immigration law in one fell swoop by dropping those individuals in CECOT without recourse,” Xinis wrote.
Xinis pointed out that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem recently visited CECOT where she appeared in a bizarre video in front of dozens of incarcerated men held in a large cell. In the video, she called the prison “one of the tools in our toolkit that we will use.”
“Thus, just as in any other contract facility, Defendants can and do maintain the power to secure and transport their detainees, Abrego Garcia included,” Xinis wrote, using the administration's own words to undermine its argument.
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Xinis also noted that the administration's “legal basis for the mass removal of hundreds of individuals to El Salvador remains disturbingly unclear.” But she emphasized that Abrego Garcia's case is “categorically different” because “there were no legal grounds whatsoever for his arrest, detention, or removal.”
“Rather, his detention appears wholly lawless,” she wrote.
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Bill Murrary is opening up about the incident that led to the 2022 production of “Being Mortal” shut down and nearly ended his career. Speaking in a recent interview with The New York Times, the “SNL” comedian turned actor shared that there aren't “too many day or weeks” he goes without thinking about what happened and has “tried to make peace” since.
“I ended up being, to my mind, barbecued,” said Murray of the fallout. “But someone that I worked with, that I had had lunch with on various days of the week — it was Covid, we were all wearing masks, and we were all stranded in this one room listening to this crazy scene. I dunno what prompted me to do it. It's something that I had done to someone else before, and I thought it was funny, and every time it happened, it was funny. I was wearing a mask, and I gave her a kiss, and she was wearing a mask. It wasn't like I touched her, but it was just, I gave her a kiss through a mask. And she wasn't a stranger.”
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Murray doesn't blame the individual he kissed “through a mask” who ultimately submitted a complaint, but rather, as he puts it, “the human rights or ‘H & R' of the Disney corporation.” Disney owns Searchlight Pictures, which was producing the film and since the incident triggered protocols in their contracts, the issue was put into arbitration, a fact Murray bemoans.
“It turned out there were pre-existing conditions and all this kind of stuff. I'm like, what? How was anyone supposed to know anything like that? There was no conversation, there was nothing,” Murray said. “There was no peacemaking, nothing. It went to this lunatic arbitration, which, if anyone ever suggests you go to arbitration: Don't do it. Never ever do it. Because you think it's justice, and it isn't.”
When this news first broke, it was reported that Murray thought the person he kissed had been flirting with him, but now recognizes that not to be the case. Even so, he wishes what he views as a “stupid” exchange wasn't blown out of proportions by the powers-that-be.
“It was a great disappointment, because I thought I knew someone, and I did not,” he said. “I certainly thought it was light. I thought it was funny. To me it's still funny, the idea that you could give someone a kiss with a mask on. It's still stupid. It's all it was.”
Murray blames his actions on a sense of playfulness he tries to bring to set, particularly when it came to “Being Mortal.” The film was set to be an adaptation of the non-fiction book by Atul Gawande, which centers around death and end-of-life care. To balance the heaviness of this subject matter, Murray said he tried to create a light space when shooting wasn't happening.
“When you're dealing with this painful material all day long, part of what my job has always been is to keep the mood light,” Murray told The NYT. “The job is not easy, and when you're doing a story about pain and misery, everyone can get pained and miserable, and you don't want that. You want to say: ‘Hey, we're still who we are.'”
“Being Mortal” was set to be the feature directorial debut of Aziz Ansari, who was also set to star alongside Murray, Seth Rogen, and Keke Palmer. The film remains shut down since 2022, with Ansari opting to make his debut with a self-written comedy called “Good Fortune” that features Ansari, Rogen, and Palmer, as well as Keanu Reeves.
Since the incident on “Being Mortal,” Murray has co-starred in “The Friend” with Naomi Watts. The two were recently seen on an episode of Andy Cohen's “What What Happens Live” in which Murray, once again, forcibly gave his co-star what appears to be an unsolicited kiss. Watch below.
Bill Murray grabbed his #thefriend co-star Naomi Watts' face and planted a big smooch on her mouth after a cheeky virtual fan question on wwhl. #billmurray #naomiwatts #andycohen
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Since actress Mindy Cohn skyrocketed to fame in the 80s playing Natalie Green on the hit sitcom “The Facts of Life,” she's enjoyed a wide-ranging career, from voicing “Scooby-Doo” character Velma for more than a decade to her recurring role on the 2024 Apple TV+ show “Palm Royale.”
In March 2025, Cohn made her Hallmark Channel debut, appearing as a foster mom in the network's four back-to-back “Hearts Around the Table” movies. It was an experience she loved so much, she told People on April 4 she's hoping Hallmark invites her back for many more.
Noting that she has many friends who are Hallmark Channel “devotees” Cohn told People that joining the network was a dream.
“I didn't know who any of these insanely terrific actors are but they taught me a thing or two,” she said. “It was such a beautiful surprise to work with such incredible actors and a production team. I just had a spectacular experience all the way around.”
Though instant chemistry among a cast is hard to come by on many Hollywood sets, Cohn told the outlet that wasn't the case this time around, explaining, “Creating chemistry is part of my job, right? Even when you don't feel it, you try and make the audience feel it. Well, there was no fakery at all here. We just really spent so much so much time together so quickly, and the bonds were real.”
In each of Hallmark's new “Hearts Around The Table” movies, Cohn plays Angie, a former foster parent who hosts weekly Sunday suppers for the now-grown kids she raised. The ensemble cast includes many familiar faces to Hallmark fans, including Torrance Coombs, Mishael Morgan, Ashley Newbrough, and Kathryn Davis.
The third “Hearts Around The Table” movie, “Josh's Third Serving,” premieres on April 6 with a storyline that centers around a couple played by Hallmark regulars Jake Epstein and Stephanie Bennett. A fourth movie, “Kiki's Fourth Ingredient,” premieres on April 12.
If Cohn has her way, these movies will mark the beginning of an ongoing “Hearts Around The Table” franchise at Hallmark.
“We hope this does well because we want four more,” she said. “I'm hoping there is a way for a future for them with Hallmark as well. These characters are so delicious. We don't want to put them down. I hope the fans feel the same way.”
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Cohn, who's begun filming the second season of “Palm Royale,” and the rest of her “Hearts Around The Table” castmates have gushed on social media about the bond they forged while filming their Hallmark movies from August through November 2024.
She leaned on her co-stars for comfort after losing her dad in November, sharing on Instagram at the time that her family was “in the deepest ocean of despair.”
While filming “Hearts Around The Table” in Ontario, she shared another post in mid-November that said, “Oh Canada. thank you for holding me while i grieve my beloved daddio and providing me with a cast, crew and production company that were sublime. ‘til soon. ❌⭕️”
Cohn told People that one of the things she loves about the “Hearts Around The Table” movies is that they portray what it's like to create safe spaces for sharing with each other within family and friend groups.
“I think we all crave those kind of safe spaces,” she said. “I think people just long for that connection. I think the ‘Hearts' are just an amazing example of that, and I think I hope people are craving it as much as I am.”
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By Antonia Blyth
Executive Editor, Awardsline
As always, Deadline's Contenders events offer up the lowdown on hot picks for awards season, with a wealth of talent and teasers for what you need to watch. With this year's Contenders Television that continues Sunday at the DGA Theater in Los Angeles, we are bringing you the latest round of must-see shows.
Today's action gets underway beginning at 9:30 a.m. PT. Doors at the DGA open at 8:30 a.m. if you're attending live. If not:
Day 2 continues what Day 1 started Saturday, when a packed house of guild and Academy voters saw the casts and creatives of the likes of The Handmaid's Tale, The Last of Us, 1923, Yellowjackets, Matlock, Running Point, The Pitt, Étoile, Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire, Good American Family, Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light, Landman, Going Dutch and the original movies Another Simple Favor and Out of My Mind. The list of participants included Kathy Bates, Noah Wyle, Elisabeth Moss, Denis Leary, Paul Feig, Ellen Pompeo, Bella Ramsey, Brandon Sklenar and many more.
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With the amount of prestige TV on offer, now is the time to get your list of favorites up and running — and we're here to help you do that. With Angelenos still reeling from the devastating fires and with industrywide upheaval and much change on the horizon, it's heartening to see the continuing incredible quality and breadth of the shows in the mix today — from returning favorites like Apple TV+'s Severance and Prime Video's The Boys to all the new and exciting TV we'll continue to showcase for you.
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The DGA will be jam-packed again with stars and the off-screen creatives behind these projects. Of course, sometimes those on-screen stars are on double, triple or even quadruple duty. For example, there's creator-writer-EP-actor Benito Skinner from Prime Video's Overcompensating on board.
We'll have plenty more actors on board who also executive produce including Jessica Biel and Elizabeth Banks with their new Prime Video series The Better Sister, Aldis Hodge with Cross and Sterling K. Brown with Hulu's Paradise. Michael Fassbender will be here with Paramount+'s The Agency. And we'll meet Brian Tyree Henry from Apple TV+'s Dope Thief and Nathan Lane and Matt Bomer from Hulu's Mid-Century Modern.
RELATED: 2025-26 Awards Season Calendar: Dates For Tonys, Emmys, Oscars & More
You'll also get a look at brand-new titles including The Studio from Apple TV+, Onyx Collective's crime comedy series Deli Boys and Kaitlin Olsen as an unexpected detective in ABC's High Potential.
Follow the panel coverage all day on Deadline and on social via #DeadlineContenders, and stay tuned or when we launch the streaming site Monday featuring the full panel videos.
RELATED: 2025 Premiere Dates For New & Returning Series On Broadcast, Cable & Streaming
Here's today's lineup of panels and panelists (all times PT):
9:35 a.m. – Program begins
PRIME VIDEO
The Boys
Jack Quaid (Actor)Erin Moriarty (Actor)Antony Starr (Actor)
Overcompensating
Benito Skinner (Creator/Writer/Executive Producer/Actor)Scott King Showrunner/Executive Producer)Wally Baram (Actor)
The Better Sister
Olivia Milch (Co-Showrunner/Executive Producer)Regina Corrado (Co-Showrunner/Executive Producer)Elizabeth Banks (Executive Producer/Actor)Jessica Biel (Executive Producer/Actor)
Cross
Aldis Hodge (Producer/Actor)Ben Watkins (Creator/Showrunner/Writer/Executive Producer)
APPLE TV+
Dope Thief
Brian Tyree Henry (Executive Producer/Actor)Peter Craig (Showrunner/Writer/Director/Executive Producer)
The Studio
Melissa Kostenbauder (Casting Director)Adam Newport-Berra (Director of Photography)James Weaver (Executive Producer)Ike Barinholtz (Actor)
Severance
Rachel Tenner (Casting Director)Jeremy Hindle (Production Designer)Theodore Shapiro (Composer)
HULU
Mid-Century Modern
Nathan Lane (Executive Producer/Actor)Matt Bomer (Executive Producer/Actor)Nathan Lee Graham (Actor)
Paradise
Sterling K. Brown (Executive Producer/Actor)James Marsden (Actor)
LUNCH
PARAMOUNT+
The Agency
Michael Fassbender (Executive Producer/Actor)Richard Gere (Actor)Jodie Turner-Smith (Actor)Jeffrey Wright (Actor)
ONYX COLLECTIVE
Deli Boys
Asif Ali (Actor)Saagar Shaikh (Actor)Poorna Jagannathan (Actor)
ABC
High Potential
Kaitlin Olson (Producer/Actor)Todd Harthan (Showrunner/Executive Producer)Drew Goddard (Executive Producer)
9:35 a.m. – Opening remarks
MASTERPIECE on PBS
Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light
Colin Callender (Executive Producer/Founder & Chairman, Playground)Damian Lewis (Actor)
HBO | MAX
The Last of Us
Bella Ramsey (Actor)Craig Mazin (Co-Creator/Writer/Director/Executive ProducerNeil Druckmann (Co-Creator/Writer/Director/Executive Producer
PRIME VIDEO
Étoile
Luke Kirby (Actor)Gideon Glick (Actor)Lou de Laâge (Actor)
Another Simple Favor
Paul Feig (Director/Producer)
PARAMOUNT+
1923
Brandon Sklenar (Actor)Julia Schlaepfer (Actor)Aminah Nieves (Actor)
Yellowjackets
Melanie Lynskey (Actor)Christina Ricci (Actor)Bart Nickerson (Creator/Writer/Director/Executive Producer)Ashley Lyle (Creator/Writer/Executive Producer)
AMC
Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire
Sam Reid (Actor)Mark Johnson (Executive Producer)
HULU
Good American Family
Ellen Pompeo (Executive Producer/Actor)Mark Duplass (Actor)Katie Robbins (Creator/Co-Showrunner/Executive Producer)Sarah Sutherland (Co-Showrunner/Executive Producer)
The Handmaid's Tale
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The song appears on their collaborative album, Who Believes in Angels?
By
Mitchell Peters
Elton John and Brandi Carlile paid a visit to Studio 8H to perform a pair of songs from their new collaborative album.
The longtime friends appeared as the musical guests on Saturday Night Live on April 5, with Jack Black taking on hosting duties.
Set against a starry, neon-lit backdrop with their names emblazoned on the walls, the duo opened with the rocking, 1950s-inspired “Little Richard's Bible,” with John on piano and Carlile on guitar. Later in the episode, they returned for an inspiring performance of the title track from their new album, Who Believes in Angels?
John and Carlile wrote and created the album alongside John's long-time co-writer Bernie Taupin and producer Andrew Watt. Who Believes in Angels?, which dropped on April 4, features previously released singles “Swing for the Fences,” “Never Too Late” and the title track.
“As my Farewell tour came to an end, I knew I wanted to make a new album with Brandi, I wanted to shift gears and do something different from anything I'd done before,” John previously told Billboard of the project. “I have always found Brandi so inspiring, our friendship was so close, and I just had the instinct that we could produce something really amazing.”
Trending on Billboard
The iconic musician added, “Creating Who Believes in Angels? was challenging, and I had a lot of self-doubt, but alongside Bernie Taupin and Andrew Watt, we ended up writing 10 songs in 20 days and it was one of the most joyous and exhilarating experiences I've ever had in my life.”
This marked John's first time back on SNL in more than a decade. He last appeared on the sketch comedy show in 2011, when he pulled double duty as both host and musical guest. Prior to that, he made his SNL debut in 1982. Meanwhile, Saturday marked Carlile's third appearance on the late-night show.
It's a busy weekend for both musicians. In addition to their SNL appearance, they will also host a one-hour concert special celebrating the new album. An Evening with Elton John and Brandi Carlile will air on CBS on Sunday (April 6), featuring live performances, stories about the duo's friendship, and an intimate look at the making of their new album.
Watch John and Carlile's SNL performances below. For those without cable, the broadcast streams on Peacock, which you can sign up for at the link here. Having a Peacock account also gives fans access to previous SNL episodes.
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Authorities in Mexico City shut down the event at Bicentennial Park following the tragic accident and death of the photographers.
By
Natalia Cano
The AXE Ceremonia festival, which was taking place this weekend at an ecological park in Mexico City, was suspended by local authorities following the death of two people on Saturday (April 5) when a crane transporting a decorative metal object collapsed.
The cancellation was confirmed on Sunday (April 6) in a message on X by the Miguel Hidalgo mayor's office, the borough where the event venue is located.
“The teams from the Miguel Hidalgo Government and Legal Affairs, along with the borough's Civil Protection department and the Administrative Verification Institute of Mexico City, completed the inspection and placed suspension seals at the entrances to AXE Ceremonia in Bicentennial Park,” the mayor's office stated in its message.
Trending on Billboard
Mexican newspaper El Universal confirmed the identity of the victims, Miguel Angel Rojas, 26, and Berenice Giles, 28, of structure collapse. They were photographers. Music portal Mr. Indie also confirmed this on Sunday, through a statement.
“With deep sadness we say goodbye to our friends and colleagues, Berenice Giles and Miguel Hernandez, who lost their lives while doing their journalistic work. Both were an essential part of Mr. Indie, a media that exists thanks to the passion of people like them,” the document states. “From our space, we want to honor their dedication, their love for music and photography, and their commitment to this project that was also theirs”.
The festival corroborated the incident through an Instagram story. Following the events, the Mexico City Prosecutor's Office announced that it has launched an investigation to determine the corresponding responsibilities.
📰 TARJETA INFORMATIVA: INFORMA GOBIERNO DE LA CIUDAD SOBRE COLAPSO DE ESTRUCTURA DECORATIVA EN EVENTO PRIVADO EN EL PARQUE BICENTENARIO. Para mayor información da clic en el enlace ⬇️⬇️⬇️https://t.co/XL5T4qKJRk#TrabajandoJuntos #LaPrevenciónEsNuestraFuerza pic.twitter.com/rNas5gshI3
The festival also confirmed the deaths on their Instagram stories. “With deep sadness, we confirm the passing of the two people who were injured during today's incident,” AXE Ceremonia published. “We are deeply heartbroken by this loss. We are reaching out to their families to support them during this incredibly difficult time and to provide them with all our care and solidarity. The safety of our community has always been our priority, and we continue, as from the very beginning, to maintain close collaboration and complete transparency with the authorities. We will continue to share official updates about the event through our social media channels.”
The company ECO Live, the festival's producer, had not responded to a request for information from Billboard Español.
The accident occurred around 5:30 p.m. (local time) when a gust of wind shook a metal structure that fell on two people, according to a statement from the Mexico City Government, issued through the Secretariat of Comprehensive Risk Management and Civil Protection.
📰 TARJETA INFORMATIVA: INFORMA GOBIERNO DE LA CIUDAD SOBRE COLAPSO DE ESTRUCTURA DECORATIVA EN EVENTO PRIVADO EN EL PARQUE BICENTENARIO. Para mayor información da clic en el enlace ⬇️⬇️⬇️https://t.co/XL5T4qKJRk#TrabajandoJuntos #LaPrevenciónEsNuestraFuerza pic.twitter.com/rNas5gshI3
“The mentioned structure fell on two people who received pre-hospital care at the scene, and were later urgently transported to the hospital, where they unfortunately passed away,” authorities wrote in the statement.
A photojournalist who captured images of the metal structure collapse shortly after it happened told Billboard Español that, following the crash, several attendees near the point where the crane fell tried to move it to assist the victims trapped beneath it. Paramedics and police officers quickly arrived at the scene and cordoned off the area, as attested by Billboard Español.
“Paramedics from the company hired by the event organizers provided medical attention to a man and a woman for Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) and various fractures at the site of the collapse,” detailed the Mexican Government on Saturday night in an informational statement through the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS) Bienestar program.
Lamentamos los hechos ocurridos durante el evento privado "AXE CEREMONIA 2025" en el Parque Bicentenario y expresamos nuestras condolencias a los familiares de las personas fallecidas.#IMSSBienestar #ServiciosPúblicosDeSalud pic.twitter.com/DXkklFjgbv
The Head of Government of Mexico City, Clara Brugada, addressed the incident in a message on X, where she expressed her sorrow over the events and extended her solidarity to the families and friends of the victims. She also thanked the “quick and efficient response” of the relevant personnel “who acted diligently to secure the area and request immediate medical attention.”
“We will closely monitor the corresponding investigations by the Mexico City Prosecutor's Office to determine responsibilities,” added the local leader.
Atentos de los lamentables hechos ocurridos esta tarde en el Parque Bicentenario. Mi solidaridad con familiares y amigos de las personas que desafortunadamente perdieron la vida tras el accidente. Agradezco la rápida y eficiente respuesta del personal de la @PBI_SSC, de la…
The mayor of Miguel Hidalgo, Mauricio Tabe, also addressed the incident and expressed his solidarity with the families of the victims. “I deeply regret what happened today during a private event at Bicentennial Park. My deepest solidarity goes out to the families of the victim,” the mayor wrote on X.
According to a statement issued by the Miguel Hidalgo mayor's office, the incident may have been caused by the installation of additional cranes by the organizers, which had not been included in the program submitted to authorities for the pre-festival inspection.
Local authorities stated that, as this was a private event, the project director and the official in charge of Civil Protection, both hired by the festival organizers, will be subject to the investigation initiated by the Mexico City Prosecutor's Office.
📰 TARJETA INFORMATIVA: INFORMA GOBIERNO DE LA CIUDAD SOBRE COLAPSO DE ESTRUCTURA DECORATIVA EN EVENTO PRIVADO EN EL PARQUE BICENTENARIO. Para mayor información da clic en el enlace ⬇️⬇️⬇️https://t.co/XL5T4qKJRk#TrabajandoJuntos #LaPrevenciónEsNuestraFuerza pic.twitter.com/rNas5gshI3
Following the crane collapse and the two fatalities it caused, AXE Ceremonia continued on Saturday with headline performances by corridos tumbados superstar Natanael Cano, British pop diva Charli XCX, and South Korean boy band Tomorrow X Together, according to Billboard Español. The festival's director, Diego Jiménez, had stated in a prior interview that an attendance of 55,000 people was expected on the first day.
On Sunday (April 6), the second day of the festival's activities, the highly anticipated return of British trip-hop group Massive Attack to Mexico City had been expected, along with performances by American rapper Tyler, The Creator, Argentine duo Ca7riel & Paco Amoroso, Argentine-Spanish artist Nathy Peluso, and California-based indie pop band The Marías, among others.
Festival organizers confirmed on a social media post that those performances have been canceled and that ticket buyers will be automatically refunded via Ticketmaster.
pic.twitter.com/dNJXSU9RIs
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Former “Real Housewives of Potomac” star Candiace Dillard Bassett is sharing what it would take for her to return to the series after announcing her departure in early 2024.
While speaking to Entertainment Tonight in March 2025, Dillard Bassett said she would consider eventually returning to the show. She said, however, that her current business opportunities may prevent her from appearing on the Bravo series for some time.
She also shared what she would need to return to RHOP.
“Friends. You need friends. People who want to understand you. And who aren't dedicated to misunderstanding you,” said Dillard Bassett to the publication.
She also said she would consider coming back for a good salary.
“A good coin. A good old nasty coin is always nice. And for me, that's it. I really enjoyed my time on Potomac. I mean you really can't look at the legacy of the show without me in it. And I'm really proud of that, humbly,” said Dillard Bassett while speaking to Entertainment Tonight.
A post shared by CANDIACE (@therealcandiace)
During an April 2024 interview with Entertainment Tonight, Dillard Bassett said she decided to leave RHOP after she found out she was pregnant with her son, Jett, whom she shares with her husband, Chris Bassett.
“I wanted this space around us and around our child to feel peaceful and to feel free and to feel positive,” said Dillard Bassett during the 2024 interview.
She also said she would consider coming back to RHOP if the show made some major changes.
“The space would have to be different. I think time is always a teller of all things,” said Dillard Bassett to the publication.
A post shared by Bravo's The Daily Dish (@bravodailydish)
During a November 2024 interview with People magazine, Dillard Bassett spoke about motherhood. She said Jett, who was born in October 2024, “is just the cutest little thing.”
“Chris and I couldn't be happier. It's so cliché to say, but he's brought such joy to our lives in ways I never would have been able to describe before. It's pure love!” said Dillard Bassett during the People magazine interview.
She also shared she is looking forward to spending the rest of her life with Jett by her side.
“I just look at him and envision all the adventures we're going to have. Throughout my pregnancy, when I would talk to him in my stomach, I would say, ‘I can't wait to see who you're going to be.' And that's been the joy in my heart that's continued after his birth. It's exciting to think about. I'm so ready for a lifetime of being on the sidelines, cheering him on,” said Dillard Bassett to People.
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Billboard Women in Music 2025 was full of love and sisterhood. If you couldn't make it, don't worry: We're here to catch you up on everything you missed at this year's show. From Drew Afualo reading Muni Long's birth chart to aespa snapping pics on a Polaroid to Ángela Aguilar's passionate performance of “Cielito Lindo,” keep watching for exclusive BTS moments and updates from the big night!
Rania Aniftos:
I had so much fun interviewing honorees, presenters and guests with my fellow correspondent, Jazzy. By the way, some of our talent were more starstruck by Jazzy than anyone else. Benedict Polizzi gave our ladies some polite catcalls that made them giggle as they walked in to claim their awards. The room was filled with sisterly love as the women honored each other for their impressive achievements in music, to which only they can relate. Tina Knowles honored her daughters in her speech. Ángela Aguilar's speech made us tear up as she honored immigrant women and called for their safety. Putting her money where her mouth is, she even had a local children's choir from the Harmony Project performing with her. Ángela continued to honor under-resourced communities backstage. The party continued in our portrait studio with all the ladies catching up and taking flicks. We had our girl Drew Afualo giving flowers backstage as she interviewed our honorees. And of course, like the Virgo she is, Drew read Billboard Birth Charts. We asked talent to give a love letter to the women of the world and sign it. Making sure to take polaroids of everyone who stepped into our interview lounge for our Billboard polaroid collection. Gracie Abrams thanked Taylor Swift as she accepted Songwriter of the Year before she performed “I Love You, I'm Sorry.” Summer Walker presented the Icon Erykah Badu with her award, and her outfit left us speechless. Billboard's Group of the Year aespa visited our backstage lounge minutes before heading onstage for the final performance of the night. Back behind the scenes, the night ended on a high note with our Woman of the Year Doechii giving Erykah Badu her flowers. Doechii also made sure to give the women on her team their flowers too. Another memorable Billboard Women in Music for the books!
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By Caroline Frost
pmc-media-editor-2024
Eva Longoria says she'd be the first person to sign up for a reboot of Desperate Housewives, the TV show that made her a household name.
The American actress was one of the breakout stars of the hit drama that debuted in 2004 and ran for eight seasons. This weekend, she told Stellar magazine about the prospect of signing on for a reboot: “I would be the first person.”
Longoria said she was “super proud” of the hit series' legacy, reflecting that its popularity helped pave the way for more female-led dramas.
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She said, “I love that, when I'm anywhere in the world, people go: ‘Gabby!' I actually take a lot of pride in that. To me, it's just reflective of the impact it had.”
She added that, as the youngest of the show's cast to grab the spotlight through their roles on Wisteria Lane, the overnight attention caught her by surprise, recalling a trip to London when a crowd gathered outside her hotel. She recounted:
“I said: ‘Is Bono here?' And they said: ‘No, they are here for you, that's why they are out there.' I couldn't believe they would even know me, because I'd never been to London. And that [realisation of the global reach of the show] was really weird and great at the same time.”
She said of the first time she read the script for the show: “I only knew it was super special because it was odd. It was the first time I had read a dramedy, so I didn't get it.”
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By
William Vaillancourt
Saturday Night Live‘s Weekend Update took aim at Donald Trump‘s massive tariffs, which have caused markets to tumble, in the process making a dig at last week's musical guest, Morgan Wallen.
“America elected Trump to run the country like a business, but it turns out he's running it like one of his businesses,” Colin Jost joked at the outset.
Jost then alluded to how the president has shared a video about how he ‘s “purposely crashing the stock market.”
“I love that you can intentionally ruin the economy and still get to stay president,” he said. “It's like if you drunk-drove your car through the window of the DMV and they were like, ‘License renewed!' It's insane. This was the worst week for the stock market since summer 2020, but you have to remember: the president then was…also Trump.”
Noting how much value has been wiped out by the tariffs, Jost joked that money is leaving the stock market “faster than Morgan Wallen at goodnights.”
The country singer, who was SNL‘s musical guest last week, left the stage prematurely at the end of the show and has since been hawking merchandise off the stunt.
Co-anchor Michael Che then riffed on Trump's justification for the tariffs.
“Trump announced a tariff on all goods imported into the U.S., saying that the U.S. has been plundered and raped by other countries. And Trump will not stand for plundering,” he joked.
Turning to how some tariffs were oddly put on islands with zero human beings but plenty of penguins, Jost offered an explanation.
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“Well, maybe penguins should stop pushing their gay agenda,” he said, as a picture showed on screen of the children's book And Tango Makes Three, which depicts two male penguins having a family.
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Justin Bieber, 31, started April 2025 by going on an social media posting spree, and on April 4, he spoke out about his opinion of Rihanna in a revealing post. Read on to find out what he said.
A post shared by Hollywood Pipeline (@thehollywoodpipeline)
Justin Bieber has been extra active on social media as the month of April kicks off. He posted lots of memes and an announcement about his new clothing line, Skylrk, before sharing a tribute to the “Love On the Brain” singer.
Bieber took to his Instagram Stories to repost a video of the starlet from the Instagram account @magicalsing that was captioned, “Rihanna's not just an artist-she's a whole era.”
Bieber appeared to be in the mood to listen to music, as he had posted a YouTube clip of his own music , slowed down 800%, right before the mention.
His next post was a clip of another singer, Nati Livian, doing a cover of the Gracie Abrams hit “That's So True.” The video was captioned, “I could listen to him all day.”
The latest post to his timeline is a blurry selfie he posted on April 4. One fan found the shot to be nostalgic, commenting, “2016 selfie era.”
Another fan related to Bieber's recent social media spontaneity, writing, “I love it, it's refreshing to see cuz I be doing the same thing and I'm like, oh cool Justin does it too.” The poster was replying to another commenter who said “Bro just posting whatever at this point,” with a cry laughing emoji.
The two musicians seem to have a long-running friendship. They possibly met for the first time when they both attended the 2009 Def Jam Spring collection party.
In the coming years, they would be spotted together sitting courtside during the 2011 NBA all-star game, sharing the stage at the 2012 Victoria's Secret Fashion Show, and posing at the Grammys.
Hola! reported in January 2025 that Bieber asked Rihanna, who hasn't released an album since 2016, to return to the music game. The outlet says the “Holy” singer captioned a clip of the Barbadian beauty performing her hit “Needed Me” with the words, “Missed seeing u sing, Queen.”
Rihanna, who welcomed her sons Riot Rose and RZA nearly back-to-back, promised ET in 2024 that she will eventually release more music, but she needs some time. “I'm rediscovering things. I have been working on the album for so long that I kinda put all that stuff aside and now I'm prepared to go back in the studio. I'm gonna start — give me a second!” said the star.
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William Vaillancourt
Jack Black rejoiced in his return to Saturday Night Live after nearly twenty years away, singing about the occasion to the tune of Aerosmith's “Back in the Saddle.”
Black, who most recently hosted SNL in 2005 and was the show's musical guest with Tenacious D the following year, began his monologue by announcing he would actually have to “quit” due to the pressure. That is, until the riff to the 1976 track got the School of Rock star in the right mood.
“How dare you play that riff? You guys!” he reacted. “You know what this song does to me.”
After the song kicked in, Black recapped some of his films since his last appearance on the late night show, and then headed into the studio audience.
“I bet this guy did not know he'd be on TV,” he sang to one audience member. “And if you want to rock and roll, you best be following me.”
Black then introduced a marching band, which made their way down from the top row behind him.
The actor then ran into a few SNL cast members, botching their names while admitting in his song, “It's been a while since I've watched this show.”
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On stage once again with the marching band, Kenan Thompson, Heidi Gardner, and Marcello Hernandez, Black belted out the final lines:
“SNL is 50! And I'm 55! The older we get, the more we feel alive!” he screamed. “‘Cause I'm back!”
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By
Althea Legaspi
Bill Murray opened up in a new interview about the incident that led to Being Mortal, Aziz Ansari's directorial debut, being shut down in what was described at the time as Murray's “inappropriate behavior.”
In a conversation discussing his new movie The Friend with The New York Times, Murray was asked about the parallels between Walter, the film's character he portrays, and his own experience with both of them being accused of “inappropriate misconduct.” When asked if he thought about that, Murray said, “I don't go too many days or weeks without thinking of what happened in Being Mortal.”
In 2022, production on Being Mortal was suspended after a complaint or “inappropriate behavior” was made against Murray. At the time, Searchlight Pictures said in an email to the production crew that it looked into the incident. “After reviewing the circumstances, it has been decided that production cannot continue at this time,” the company said.
In Murray's interview with The Times, he detailed some of the specifics of what happened, saying that he had been “trying to make peace, but instead I ended up being, to my mind, barbecued.”
He added that the incident was with someone he worked with, and it was a person who he'd had lunch with several times a week. It took place during a time when everyone on set was wearing masks due to Covid.
“We were all stranded in this one room listening to this crazy scene. I dunno what prompted me to do it,” he said. “It's something that I had done to someone else before, and I thought it was funny, and every time it happened, it was funny.
“I was wearing a mask, and I gave her a kiss, and she was wearing a mask,” he continued. “It wasn't like I touched her, but it was just, I gave her a kiss through a mask. And she wasn't a stranger.”
Murray said the incident still bothers him since the film was indefinitely suspended shortly after and “that movie was stopped by the human rights or ‘H & R' of the Disney corporation, which is probably a little bit more strident than some other countries'.”
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“It turned out there were pre-existing conditions and all this kind of stuff. I'm like, what? How was anyone supposed to know anything like that?” he said. “There was no conversation, there was nothing. There was no peacemaking, nothing. It went to this lunatic arbitration, which, if anyone ever suggests you go to arbitration: Don't do it. Never ever do it. Because you think it's justice, and it isn't.”
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He added that he believed he has learned from the experience, but that “it was a great disappointment, because I thought I knew someone, and I did not. I certainly thought it was light. I thought it was funny. To me it's still funny, the idea that you could give someone a kiss with a mask on. It's still stupid. It's all it was.”
Adapted from Sigrid Nunez's novel, the Scott McGehee and David Siegel-directed The Friend stars Naomi Watts, who plays a New York writer that is saddled with the dog of her friend Walter (Murray) followin his death. The film was widely released in theaters on Friday.
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You can't undersell the impact "Paranormal Activity" had on the found footage movie boom. While there were plenty of predecessors that made the horror subgenre feel downright revolutionary like "The Blair Witch Project" and "Cloverfield," Oren Peli's self-contained haunted house flick kicked the doors down when it came to studio interest. It delivered suspenseful thrills and chills on a micro-budget that allowed it to make an unbelievable profit for Paramount. Everyone tried to recapture the magic with varying levels of success.
Peli would spend the following years producing the "Paranormal Activity" and "Insidious" franchises, while conjuring an original idea for television with "Paranormal Activity 2" co-writer Michael R. Perry. The result was 2012's "The River," a found footage adventure-horror series that only ran for one season on ABC.
There had been some examples of found footage finding success on the small screen such as Animal Planet's "Lost Tapes," which intercut faux "real" tapes of people being attacked by mythological creatures and scientific figures attempting to make sense of it. But the Peli-Perry-produced series was taking on a whole new narrative frontier with the subgenre.
"The River" follows an expedition to find Dr. Emmet Cole (Bruce Greenwood), a notable television explorer who went missing in the Amazon amid a search for "real magic." Emmett's wife, Tess (Leslie Hope), and son, Lincoln (Joe Anderson), are only able to put up the funding for the rescue operation up the Boiuna river after a deal is made with a television network to document the trip. Needless to say, things don't go according to plan.
The trailer for "The River" gave the impression that it could have been a midseason surprise for ABC. In addition to the "Paranormal Activity" connections behind the scenes, the series also had Steven Spielberg on as an executive producer. The trailer drummed up enough interest to get folks to tune into the 2-part series premiere. It was even directed by none other than "Orphan" filmmaker Jaume Collet-Serra. But none of that helped in the long run.
The pilot started out relatively okay with 7.59 million viewers. When next week's episode rolled around, however, it lost nearly 3 million of them. In the weeks to follow, that number would get lower and lower. Interestingly enough, there was a brief window before its cancellation where the series almost had a savior in the form of Netflix on account of its DVR numbers (via Deadline). But "The River" wasn't even doing as good as Fox's then-already-canceled "Avatar" meets "Jurassic Park" high concept series, "Terra Nova" in that department.
It also didn't help the series' case that no one was exactly singing high praises, with most reviews culminating to the same conclusion: there's a good idea trapped in a lackluster execution. It currently sits at a 65 rating on Metacritic. "Through the two episodes being shown on Tuesday night, the mixture of 'Lost' storytelling and 'Paranormal' style is neither intriguing nor particularly scary, and it doesn't help that there's hardly a glimmer of humor," said Mike Hale in his review for The New York Times.
"The River" was initially conceived as a movie before being stretched out to keep the expedition crew busy until they found Emmet, and it shows (via Bloody Disgusting). It was as if you took the mystery location aspects of "Lost" that kept viewers on the edge of their seats, but removed all of the charm and engaging character dynamics.
I remember tuning in every week when "The River" aired and even at 8 episodes, my interest in the series' supernatural detours ran thin with each passing week. There simply wasn't enough momentum to keep me invested beyond the fact I enjoyed found footage movies and wanted to see how it would transfer to television. The truth is that it doesn't.
Even when it attempts to emulate the appearance of low quality found footage, "The River" ultimately looks too slick and overproduced to feel dangerous. The only found footage project I've seen come close is "The Creep Tapes," which takes on more of an anthology format. /Film's Ryan Scott had kind words in his review, but I feel even that show started to spin its wheels with the concept.
"The River" does have its fans though, with many disappointed that it left on a cliffhanger in which its characters were swallowed by the Amazon. I'd argue that the ending fits in line with the fatalistic nature of the subgenre. By way of being found footage, it implies there's not a happy ending to this journey.
Fire meets ice in the dramatic video.
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A dramatic drone video shows Isar Aerospace's first orbital launch attempt, which ended with a fiery crash into the frigid sea about 30 seconds after liftoff.
The Germany company's first Spectrum rocket lifted off Sunday morning (March 30) from Andøya Spaceport in northern Norway on the first-ever orbital launch attempt from European soil.
Spectrum cleared the tower but suffered an anomaly shortly thereafter. The rocket flipped over and slammed into the ocean near the pad, sending an orange-tinted cloud high into a clear Arctic sky, as the video shows.
The launch pad and surrounding infrastructure appear to have escaped damage, according to Isar Aerospace. The company accentuated the positive about Spectrum's debut, saying the 95-foot-tall (28 meters) rocket performed quite well overall.
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"Our first test flight met all our expectations, achieving a great success," Isar Aerospace CEO and Co-founder Daniel Metzler said in an emailed statement. "We had a clean liftoff, 30 seconds of flight and even got to validate our flight termination system."
European space officials were similarly sanguine.
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"A test flight is exactly that: a test to gather data, learn and improve," European Space Agency Director General Josef Aschbacher said in a different statement on Sunday.
"Everything Isar Aerospace achieved today is remarkable, and they will have lots of data to analyze," he added. "I applaud the teams for getting this far, and I am confident that we will see the next Spectrum on the launch pad ready for test flight 2 liftoff soon."
Originally posted on Space.com.
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A CUMBRIAN Paranormal Investigator has published a book documenting Cumbria's dark history and most haunted places.
Louis Dee of Workington runs a YouTube channel where he and his team visit haunted locations across the world.
His adventures have gained some interest online, and his viewers regularly tune in to see if he discovers anything paranormal in the places he visits.
Louis's love of all things macabre has inspired him to write three books.
The first book, The Ward, was released last summer and tells the fictional story of three young people who start a paranormal You Tube channel.
The trio visits an abandoned asylum to create their latest video, where they are tormented by the spirit of Dr Silas Thorne.
The book is inspired by Louis's adventures exploring abandoned buildings.
It was a top seller in the horror genre on Amazon, and he followed the book up with a sequel of the same trio travelling the world.
This year, he has released his third book, titled Ghosts of Cumbria.
Which is a nonfiction book exploring some of the dark history of Cumbria.
Mr Dee said: "After writing my first book and publishing it through Amazon and Google, 'The Ward' last year I was surprised when it reached best seller in the horror genre on Amazon after the first two weeks, this made me write a second book where the lead characters went on to travel the world through big TV companies doing the most haunted locations in the world.
"This book was also successful. After a long year of me traveling and filming Paranornal investigations for my YouTube channel Paranormal Origins I wanted something that holds the historical value of the past and reporting on paranornal events that have happened there for example eye witness reports and peoples experiences at all these locations."
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