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A federal appeals court rejected the Trump administration's request that it halt the next steps Judge Paula Xinis is seeking to take in the case concerning a migrant who was wrongly deported to El Salvador, with a strident warning about the rule of law and the possibility the dispute presented an “incipient crisis.”
The 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals said in its seven-page ruling Thursday that the Trump administration's assertions in the case “should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear.”
The unanimous ruling was written by Judge Harvie Wilkinson, an appointee of former President Ronald Reagan. In it, he was extremely critical of the administration's effort to undo some of Xinis' recent orders in the case, sounding alarm bells about how its maneuverings in the matter have resulted in the two branches “grinding irrevocably against one another in a conflict that promises to diminish both.”
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“The Judiciary will lose much from the constant intimations of its illegitimacy, to which by dent of custom and detachment we can only sparingly reply,” Wilkinson wrote. “The Executive will lose much from a public perception of its lawlessness and all of its attendant contagions. The Executive may succeed for a time in weakening the courts, but over time history will script the tragic gap between what was and all that might have been, and law in time will sign its epitaph.”
The appeals court used the order to weigh in on the broader atmosphere around President Trump's conflict with the judiciary.
“The basic differences between the branches mandate a serious effort at mutual respect. The respect that courts must accord the Executive must be reciprocated by the Executive's respect for the courts,” the 4th Circuit said. “Too often today this has not been the case, as calls for impeachment of judges for decisions the Executive disfavors and exhortations to disregard court orders sadly illustrate.”
The court's rejection of the Justice Department's bid for emergency intervention sets the stage for the dispute to return to the Supreme Court, one week after the justices left most of the Xinis' order that the government facilitate the migrants return.
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Who is Judge Paula Xinis? What to know about the judge in the case of a man mistakenly deported to El Salvador
The order, nonetheless, ended with a note of optimism.
“It is, as we have noted, all too possible to see in this case an incipient crisis, but it may present an opportunity as well,” the 4th Circuit said. “We yet cling to the hope that it is not naïve to believe our good brethren in the Executive Branch perceive the rule of law as vital to the American ethos.”
This story is breaking and will be updated.
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Federal Judge Paula Xinis is at the center of the case of a Maryland man mistakenly deported to El Salvador by the Trump administration that has emerged as a critical test of Trump's aggressive crackdown on immigration in the United States.
Following a Supreme Court ruling that the US must “facilitate” Kilmar Abrego Garcia's return, Xinis, a New York native who has sat on the federal bench in Maryland for nearly a decade, must now contend with a government whose officials insist it's an issue for the president of El Salvador to decide.
“Our only job legally was to facilitate it if, according to the Supreme Court, President Bukele wanted him to come back to our country and he does not want him back and we do not want him back in our country,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said Wednesday on Fox News.
Since ordering Abrego Garcia's return earlier this month, Xinis has gone toe-to-toe with Justice Department attorneys in her courtroom, appearing confident that the Supreme Court largely endorsed her decision to order the administration to bring Abrego Garcia back.
“We're not going to slow walk this,” Xinis told the government last week. “So you will have a full and fair opportunity to be heard, but we're not relitigating what the Supreme Court has already put to bed.”
Xinis has, at times, appeared frustrated with how the case has unfolded since the Supreme Court ruling. Earlier this week, she allowed for expedited fact finding to see whether the Trump administration is complying with her order.
“It is a fact now of this record that every day Mr. Garcia is detained in CECOT is a day of irreparable harm,” she said, referencing the high-security mega prison where inmates are packed into cells and never allowed outside.
“There will be no tolerance for gamesmanship or grandstanding,” she declared to attorneys when the status conference began.
She has allowed for “two weeks of intense discovery,” including depositions taken by Abrego Garcia's attorneys of the administration officials who have been submitting the daily sworn statements.
And she wants both sides to move quickly: “Well, cancel – cancel vacation. Cancel other appointments,” the judge said at one point during the conference. “I'm usually pretty good about things like that in my courtroom, but not this time. So, I expect all hands on deck.”
Here's what to know about the judge at the center of the Abrego Garcia case:
Like Judge Tanya Chutkan, the federal judge who notably presided over President Donald Trump's criminal case in Washington, DC, Xinis previously served as a public defender.
Xinis spent more than a decade as an assistant federal public defender in Maryland, from 1998 to 2011. Before then, she was a law clerk for Judge Diana Gribbon Motz of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit from 1997 to 1998. In a recent interview with The Washington Post, Motz described Xinis as an “extraordinarily able young lawyer” who was “totally forthright” and “easy to work with.”
Xinis was confirmed by the Senate in 2016 in a 53 - 34 vote, more than a year after she was nominated by President Barack Obama.
Then-Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions scrutinized her record at her confirmation hearing in July 2015, pointing towards her work as a complaint examiner for the Office of Police Complaints for the District of Columbia and her firm's role in a civil suit surrounding the 2015 death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore.
“I've never had an agenda even in my private practice, even in my practice as an assistant federal defender,” Xinis said. “There is no agenda for a well-trained judge. There is no agenda for me, sir, and there would not be if I were confirmed.”
Former Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont later defended Xinis before her final confirmation vote on the Senate floor, pointing towards one case where she provided legal counsel to a Baltimore police officer unfairly accused of criminal wrongdoing.
In 2011, Xinis joined the Baltimore law firm, Murphy, Falcon & Murphy, where she handled civil matters and acted as a lead and co-chair trial attorney on federal civil rights violations, according to a questionnaire she provided to the Senate Judiciary Committee when she was nominated by Barack Obama in 2015.
She described her work in 2021 during a highly personal talk shared by the US Courts, where she looked back on representing “brain injured children poisoned in a lead paint study, a 39-year-old man who suffered a massive stroke after a police officer put him in a choke hold during a traffic stop,” and “patients at a drug rehab center poisoned by carbon monoxide.”
Xinis was born in 1968 in Mineola, New York, a town in Long Island, New York to a family of Greek immigrants. She completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Virginia and graduated from Yale School of Law in 1997.
CNN's Devan Cole and Kaanita Iyer contributed to this report.
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The European Central Bank (ECB) cut interest rates yesterday for the seventh time to counter worries about economic growth fueled by US President Donald Trump's tariff onslaught.
The bank's move should support economic activity in the 20 countries that use the euro currency by making credit more affordable for consumers and businesses.
ECB President Christine Lagarde said at a post-decision news conference that “the major escalation in global trade tensions and the associated uncertainty will likely lower euro area growth by dampening exports.”
Photo: Ronald Wittek, EPA-EFE
“And it may drag down investment and consumption,” she said.
The bank's rate-setting council decided at a meeting in Frankfurt to lower its benchmark rate by a quarter percentage point to 2.25 percent. The bank has been steadily cutting rates after raising them sharply to combat an outbreak of inflation from 2022 to 2023.
Now that inflation has fallen, growth worries have taken center stage. The economy in the 20 countries that use the euro grew a modest 0.2 percent in the final three months of last year. Inflation was 2.2 percent last month, close to the bank's target of 2 percent.
The cut was widely expected by analysts given the sudden shadow cast over the eurozone's growth outlook by Trump's April 2 announcement of unexpectedly high tariffs on goods from other countries starting at 10 percent and ranging as high as 49 percent. The European Union faces a 20 percent tariff.
At the bank's last meeting on March 6, Lagarde had raised the possibility of an upcoming “pause” in the bank's series of rate cuts. But that option was practically eliminated by Trump's announcement.
Trump has suspended the tariffs for 90 days, but the possibility of the 20 percent tariff rate he has proposed for Europe left economists and policymakers concerned that the higher costs will weigh on business activity and lead to slower growth or even a recession if he carries through.
Earlier yesterday, the Bank of Korea (BOK) held its interest rate steady at 2.75 percent, its third straight decision to keep rates unchanged after a 0.25 percentage point cut in February.
Given the “significant uncertainty” due to US tariffs and the government's push for economic stimulus, “the board judged it appropriate to keep the base rate unchanged for now while closely assessing changes in domestic and external conditions,” the bank said.
BOK Governor Rhee Chang-yong said the decision was driven by tariff-related “uncertainty” going forward, which has grown to an “unprecedented level.”
“The intensity of US tariff policies and the swift shifts in responses from major economies are evolving so rapidly that it is currently difficult to even establish a baseline scenario for forecasts,” he said at a press conference in Seoul.
Rhee hinted that the board is considering additional cuts next month, but is “closely reviewing both domestic and external economic conditions.”
The country's annual economic growth is expected to fall short of a recent forecast due to sweeping US tariffs and the fallout from the ex-president's martial law declaration, he said.
“This year's annual growth rate is now expected to fall short of the 1.5 percent forecast made in February,” Rhee said.
Additional reporting by AFP
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A Taiwanese cookware firm in Vietnam urged customers to assess inventory or place orders early so shipments can reach the US while tariffs are paused Taiwanese businesses in Vietnam are exploring alternatives after the White House imposed a 46 percent import duty on Vietnamese goods, following US President Donald Trump's announcement of “reciprocal” tariffs on the US' trading partners.
Lo Shih-liang (羅世良), chairman of Brico Industry Co (裕茂工業), a Taiwanese company that manufactures cast iron cookware and stove components in Vietnam, said that more than 40 percent of his business was tied to the US market, describing the constant US policy shifts as an emotional roller coaster.
“I work during the day and stay up all night watching the news. I've been following US news until 3am
Six years ago, LVMH's billionaire CEO Bernard Arnault and US President Donald Trump cut the blue ribbon on a factory in rural Texas that would make designer handbags for Louis Vuitton, one of the world's best-known luxury brands.
However, since the high-profile opening, the factory has faced a host of problems limiting production, 11 former Louis Vuitton employees said.
The site has consistently ranked among the worst-performing for Louis Vuitton globally, “significantly” underperforming other facilities, said three former Louis Vuitton workers and a senior industry source, who cited internal rankings shared with staff.
The plant's problems — which have not
UNCERTAINTY:
Innolux activated a stringent supply chain management mechanism, as it did during the COVID-19 pandemic, to ensure optimal inventory levels for customers Flat-panel display makers AUO Corp (友達) and Innolux Corp (群創) yesterday said that about 12 to 20 percent of their display business is at risk of potential US tariffs and that they would relocate production or shipment destinations to mitigate the levies' effects.
US tariffs would have a direct impact of US$200 million on AUO's revenue, company chairman Paul Peng (彭雙浪) told reporters on the sidelines of the Touch Taiwan trade show in Taipei yesterday.
That would make up about 12 percent of the company's overall revenue.
To cope with the tariff uncertainty, AUO plans to allocate its production to manufacturing facilities in
TARIFF CONCERNS:
The chipmaker cited global uncertainty from US tariffs and a weakening economic outlook, but said its Singapore expansion remains on track Vanguard International Semiconductor Corp (世界先進), a foundry service provider specializing in producing power management and display driver chips, yesterday withdrew its full-year revenue projection of moderate growth for this year, as escalating US tariff tensions raised uncertainty and concern about a potential economic recession.
The Hsinchu-based chipmaker in February said revenues this year would grow mildly from last year based on improving supply chain inventory levels and market demand. At the time, it also anticipated gradual quarter revenue growth.
However, the US' sweeping tariff policy has upended the industry's supply chains and weakened economic prospects for the world economy, it said.
“Now
French weekly published pictures of Pelicot with a man, described as her ‘companion', walking in the street
Gisèle Pelicot, who survived nearly a decade of rapes by dozens of men, will sue Paris Match magazine for invasion of privacy, her lawyers said on Thursday.
In its latest edition, Paris Match published seven pictures of Pelicot accompanied by a man described as her companion walking in the streets in her new home town.
Pelicot received international acclaim for waiving her right to anonymity in the trial last year of her ex-husband and other defendants.
“It's not us who should feel shame, but them,” she said of the perpetrators.
Dominique Pelicot, her former husband, drugged her for nearly a decade so he and dozens of strangers he recruited online could rape her. Dominique Pelicot, who admitted the charges, kept hundreds of videos of the attacks on his computer in a file entitled “abuse”. A French court sentenced him to 20 years in prison in December.
“Every time the intimacy of our client's personal life is violated, we will react and seek a court decision,” the lawyer Antoine Camus said on Thursday. Camus said it was “shocking” and “disappointing” that Paris Match would secretly take pictures of Pelicot, “whose ordeal was the subject of 3,000 pictures and videos”.
He accused the magazine of “having learned nothing from the four-month trial”.
Contacted by Agence France-Presse, Paris Match had no comment.
Pelicot was included in Time magazine's list published on Wednesday of the world's most influential people in 2025.
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Police in Germany have raided the home of a teenage boy suspected of making and storing ricin, a highly toxic and deadly biological warfare agent.
The 16-year-old is accused of producing “several vials” containing a mixture of ricin and aconitine, another potent plant toxin, in a makeshift laboratory in the attic of his family home in Zeithain, a municipality in the eastern state of Saxony, police said.
The Saxony State Criminal Police Office has launched an investigation in conjunction with the Dresden Public Prosecutor's Office into the possible violation of Germany's Weapons of War Act, which regulates the production and trade of materials considered weapons of war.
Officers have been searching the suspect's home since the early hours of Thursday morning, according to the Saxony police statement. They are seeking to “secure all toxic substances and other evidence,” the statement said.
Investigators have so far not uncovered any evidence regarding the suspect's intentions for the toxic substance, police said.
An arrest warrant has not been issued. Based on the current status of the investigation, there are no grounds for detention under Germany's Code of Criminal procedure, particularly considering the Juvenile Justice Act, the statement said.
Ricin is a natural, highly toxic compound that is a byproduct of processing castor beans. It is potentially lethal when inhaled, ingested or injected. Less than a pinpoint of ricin can kill a person within 36 to 48 hours due to the failure of the respiratory and circulatory systems.
If ingested, it causes nausea, vomiting and internal bleeding of the stomach and intestines, followed by failure of the liver, spleen and kidneys, and finally death by collapse of the circulatory system.
If injected, ricin causes the immediate death of the muscles and lymph nodes near the site of the injection. Failure of major organs and death usually follows.
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The Power Within: The Kyiv Independent's first-ever magazine. Be among the first to get it.
Ukrainian forces have liberated approximately 16 square kilometers of territory near Pokrovsk in Donetsk Oblast in recent weeks, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Oleksandr Syrskyi said on April 17.
There has been a notable slowdown in Russia's offensive operations after months of steady territorial gains across eastern Ukraine. According to battlefield monitoring group DeepState, Russian troops have captured just 133 square kilometers in March, the lowest monthly total since June 2024.
The recently recaptured territory by Ukrainian troops includes areas near the settlements of Udachne, Kotlyne, and Shevchenko, according to Syrskyi. He made the announcement after a three-day visit to the Operational-Tactical Group Donetsk, which he described as the strongest formation within the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
"Over the course of three days, I visited almost all brigades of this most powerful grouping of the Ukrainian Defense Forces, which bears the brunt of the enemy's spring offensive and destroys its best forces and means," Syrskyi said.
According to Syrskyi, Ukrainian forces are halting around 30 Russian assaults daily in the Pokrovsk sector in Donetsk Oblast, inflicting significant losses on Russian troops.
During his visit, Syrskyi met with commanders at front-line command posts and reviewed operational plans with Brigadier General Oleksandr Tarnavskyi, commander of the operational-tactical group. He said that on-site problems related to logistics, ammunition supply, and combat organization were being addressed.
Despite continued Russian efforts to push Ukrainian troops out of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts and reach the administrative borders of these regions, Syrskyi said those objectives remain unfulfilled.
"We continue our defensive operation, carry out counteroffensive actions, and are achieving certain successes," Syrskyi said.
As of late 2024, Russian forces controlled around 60% of Donetsk Oblast and approximately 98.5% of Luhansk Oblast.
Moscow does not fully control any of the four Ukrainian regions – Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson – that it illegally claimed to annex in 2022. According to media reports, including from The Moscow Times, Russia is seeking full control over these regions in the negotiations on ending the war with the United States, which started in March 2025.
Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei speaks during a meeting with government officials in Tehran, Iran, on April 15.Office of the Iranian Supreme Le/Reuters
Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei sent his foreign minister to Moscow on Thursday with a letter for President Vladimir Putin to brief the Kremlin about nuclear negotiations with the U.S., which has threatened to bomb the Islamic Republic.
U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened Iran with bombing and to extend tariffs to third countries that buy Iranian oil if Tehran does not come to an agreement with Washington over its disputed nuclear program. The United States has moved additional warplanes into the region.
The Trump administration and Iran held talks in Oman last weekend that both sides described as positive and constructive. Ahead of a second round of talks set to take place in Rome this weekend, Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said on Wednesday that Iran's right to enrich uranium is not negotiable.
Russia, a longstanding ally of Tehran, plays a role in Iran's nuclear negotiations with the West as a veto-wielding U.N. Security Council member and a signatory to an earlier nuclear deal Trump abandoned during his first term in 2018.
“Regarding the nuclear issue, we always had close consultations with our friends China and Russia. Now it is a good opportunity to do so with Russian officials,” Araqchi told Iranian state TV.
He said he was conveying a letter to Putin that addressed regional and bilateral issues. Putin's foreign policy aide, Yuri Ushakov, said Putin would receive Araqchi.
Western powers say Iran is refining uranium to a high degree of fissile purity beyond what is justifiable for a civilian nuclear energy programme and close to the level suitable for an atomic bomb. Iran denies seeking nuclear weapons and says it has a right to a civilian nuclear programme.
Moscow has bought weapons from Iran for the war in Ukraine and signed a 20-year strategic partnership deal with Tehran earlier this year, although it did not include a mutual defence clause. The two countries were battlefield allies in Syria for years until their ally Bashar al-Assad was toppled in December.
Russia's foreign ministry said talks with Iran would focus on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the world powers' 2015 nuclear treaty with Iran from which the United States withdrew during Trump's first presidency.
“We intend to further expand mutually beneficial relations with Iran in the interests of regional stability and international security,” the ministry said.
Putin has kept on good terms with Khamenei as both Russia and Iran are cast as enemies by the West, but Moscow is keen not to trigger a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.
Russia has said that any military strike against Iran would be illegal and unacceptable. On Tuesday, the Kremlin declined to comment when asked if Russia was ready to take control of Iran's stocks of enriched uranium as part of a possible future nuclear deal between Iran and the United States.
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Exclusive: Mark Bridges of Farrer & Co was trustee for Rifaat al-Assad, who was charged with war crimes in 2024
Queen Elizabeth II's private solicitor spent eight years helping to manage the offshore wealth of the uncle of the recently deposed Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, an investigation has established.
Rifaat al-Assad became known as the “butcher of Hama” after allegations he played a key role in a massacre of thousands of Syrians at the city of Hama in 1982. In 2024, Switzerland formally charged him with war crimes.
Concerns about Rifaat's activities, including his record as the head of a feared Syrian paramilitary force known as the Defense Brigades, have been publicly raised in Europe and the US by the media, human rights groups and government officials since the 1980s. He left Syria for Europe in 1984 after a failed coup against his brother.
Inquiries by the Guardian and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism have established that Mark Bridges, also known as the third Baron Bridges, served as a trustee on at least five trusts holding assets in France and Spain on behalf of Rifaat al-Assad or his relatives between 1999 and 2008.
During the same period, Bridges also held one of the most prestigious legal positions in Britain: private legal adviser to the British monarch. He was Queen Elizabeth's solicitor from 2002 to 2019.
The findings raise questions about whether it was appropriate for the monarch's personal lawyer to take the ethical and reputational risk of working for an individual accused of human rights atrocities, in view of potential embarrassment to the queen had the connection been discovered while she was still alive.
There is no suggestion of any regulatory wrongdoing by Bridges, who was knighted for his services to the queen in 2019. His firm, Farrer & Co, said the trusts were established on the advice of another leading law firm, that Bridges's work for Rifaat al-Assad was in complete compliance with regulatory requirements in effect at the time and that Bridges had been presented with evidence contradicting the allegations made against him.
The property empire amassed by Rifaat al-Assad after his arrival in Europe spanned the most luxurious postcodes of Paris, London and the Costa del Sol.
His acquisitions, which he claimed were part-funded by cheques worth millions of dollars from the king of Saudi Arabia, included Witanhurst in London's Highgate – the second-largest private residence in the capital after Buckingham Palace – and a seven-storey mansion near Paris's Arc de Triomphe.
Assad held his property empire through offshore companies and trusts, obscuring his ownership. One trust was registered in the Bahamas, while some of the purchases used shell companies in Gibraltar, a British overseas territory, before transfer to Spanish and later Maltese companies.
In 2014, prosecutors in France began investigating whether Rifaat al-Assad's wealth had in fact been obtained through corruption. Bridges had ceased acting as a trustee for Rifaat in 2008, his lawyers said, but continued to provide “limited and ad-hoc” legal advice until 2015 “in circumstances whereby the regulatory requirements imposed on the firm were met”.
Two of the trusts that Bridges had managed were said to own the Spanish portion of Rifaat al-Assad's real estate empire, including a deluxe villa with swathes of land near Marbella.
In 2019, Spanish prosecutors alleged that these same trusts controlled shell companies holding more than 500 properties in Spain worth €695m (£595m). According to the Spanish prosecutors, the offshore setup was designed to “hide the true ownership of the huge amount of real estate properties” and enabled the “laundering [of] dirty money from abroad”, referring to funds allegedly stolen from the Syrian state.
In 2020, a French court convicted Rifaat al-Assad of tax fraud and laundering embezzled public money – primarily about $200m (£151m) stolen from Syrian state funds and $100m in fraudulent loan agreements from Libya. Assad was sentenced to four years' imprisonment. He fled to Syria in 2021 while his conviction was under appeal.
Though not the only trustee serving Assad, Bridges was by far the most eminent. In addition to his services to the queen, he led the private client team at Farrer, an elite law firm with a reputation forged through serving British royals and aristocrats as far back as 1769.
There is no evidence Bridges knew or suspected that Rifaat al-Assad's money was stolen. Assad claimed his wealth came from benefactors, including the Saudi royal family, and in 2018 the Gibraltar supreme court concluded that it had been reasonable for Rifaat's trustees to believe this story.
The question of Rifaat al-Assad's status as an alleged war criminal, however, is more complicated.
In February 1982, armed militias affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood staged an uprising against the Assad regime in the town of Hama, in western Syria. To suppress the uprising, Syria's then president, Hafez al-Assad, Rifaat's brother, dispatched the Syrian army and a paramilitary group called the Defense Brigades.
An Amnesty International report published in 1983 found that while “it is difficult to establish for certain what happened”, allegations against Syrian regime forces included “collective execution of 70 people outside the municipal hospital” and “cyanide gas containers … alleged to have been brought into the city, connected by rubber pipes to the entrances of buildings believed to house insurgents, and turned on, killing all the buildings' occupants”. It is estimated that 10,000 to 40,000 people may have been unlawfully tortured and executed.
As head of the paramilitaries, Rifaat al-Assad was believed to have taken a leading role in the carnage. In a 1989 book, From Beirut to Jerusalem, the journalist Thomas Friedman described how, after initial skirmishes, “Rifaat's tactic shifted from trying to ferret out nests of Muslim Brotherhood men to simply bringing whole neighbourhoods down on their heads and burying the Brotherhood and anyone else in the way.”
Allegations of atrocities against Rifaat al-Assad were widely known by the point Bridges began working as a trustee for his offshore wealth in 1999.
In 2013, Swiss prosecutors opened a criminal investigation into Rifaat al-Assad's role in suppressing the Hama uprising. In 2021 it issued an international arrest warrant for Assad, and in 2024 he was formally charged with war crimes. Assad has always denied these charges. His whereabouts is unknown
Farrer said Assad's trustees, including Bridges, “were provided with credible information, when they were appointed and at different junctures thereafter, which fundamentally contradicted the claims being made in the media about Mr al-Assad”.
The firm added that it and Bridges were restricted by a duty of client confidentiality from revealing what this evidence was, or commenting on whether it was appropriate for the queen's solicitor to also have represented Assad. However, it did share 11 French defamation judgments, dating from the late 1980s and early 1990s, that found in Assad's favour.
The majority related to allegations made in various news outlets that Rifaat al-Assad's wealth was sourced from organised crime. In the case of the two judgments that substantially addressed allegations of human rights abuses, the courts found that the journalists had failed to reflect certain nuances of Amnesty International's report by glossing over uncertainties about whether the Assad regime directly ordered the atrocity.
Public attitudes towards British lawyers acting for foreign politicians with questionable reputations have hardened in recent years.
This month, a taskforce of senior lawyers and civil society experts said law firms must request more “credible explanations” from their clients as to the source of their wealth, and that it was unsustainable to disregard reputational risks to the legal profession.
“Whether the same decision [to act for Assad] would be made today, in the light of further information now available and, arguably, the more stringent demands of the regulatory environment, is a point on which one might speculate,” Farrer said in its response.
MOSCOW, April 17. /TASS/. Leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and prospective Chancellor Friedrich Merz should realize that any attack on Russian facilities using Taurus missiles would mean Germany joining the conflict to fight for Kiev, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at a news briefing.
"You know, I think the CDU leader should realize one thing. <…> Launching these missiles on any critical Russian transport infrastructure <…> would be considered as direct involvement of Germany in the hostilities on the side of the Kiev regime," she warned.
Meanwhile, the Kiev regime has been "a tool of this Western manipulation," Zakharova argued.
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Barcelona Femení player Mapi León was banned for two matches after appearing to touch the groin area of Espanyol defender Daniela Caracas.
The incident happened in the 15th minute of the Barcelona derby on February 9 when León and Caracas were jostling for position in the penalty area.
“The FC Barcelona player, Mapi León, was banned (for) two matches by the RFEF (Royal Spanish Football Federation) competition committee,” Liga F, the top division of women's football in Spain, told CNN Sports in a statement.
“Liga F is not going to make any further statement on this matter.”
León missed Barça's 5-1 win over Sevilla on Wednesday and the 6-0 win over Atlético Madrid on Sunday due to her ban.
CNN has reached out to Barcelona, Espanyol and RFEF for comment.
After the initial incident, León had denied any wrongdoing and said in a statement shared by Barcelona that there was “NO contact with (Caracas') private parts, and certainly no intention.”
Footage of the incident was widely shared on social media, and in a statement released the day after the match, Espanyol said “violated the intimacy of our player.”
Barça ended up winning the derby match 2-0.
León, who has played more than 50 times for the Spanish national team, is a key player for Barcelona, winning five league titles and three Women's Champions Leagues.
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Trump praises Italian PM and accepts invitation that could present chance to meet other European leaders
Giorgia Meloni said Donald Trump had accepted her invitation for an official trip to Rome, as the pair met in Washington in an attempt by the Italian prime minister to bridge the gap between the EU and US amid trade tariff tensions.
Meloni said Trump's trip could happen “in the near future” and could present an opportunity for him to meet other European leaders.
“The goal for me is to make the west great again,” Meloni said.
Trump opened the summit in the Oval Office on Thursday by saying Meloni was “doing a fantastic job” and had “taken Europe by storm”, adding that she “has become a friend”.
Trump and Meloni had earlier both expressed optimism about resolving the EU-US trade conflict. The EU faces 25% import tariffs on steel and aluminium and cars, and broader tariffs on almost all other goods, under Trump's policy to hit countries he says impose high barriers to US imports.
“I am sure we can make a deal and I am here to help with that,” Meloni said before the summit.
Trump said that broadly speaking he expected he would make an announcement about trade deals but he was in no rush. “We're going to have very little problem making a deal with Europe or anybody else, because we have something that everybody wants,” Trump said.
Before leaving for Washington, Meloni discussed the summit with the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen.
Germany's outgoing chancellor, Olaf Scholz, and his successor, Friedrich Merz, also discussed the meeting with Meloni, according to reports in the German edition of Politico. Scholz failed to get a meeting with Trump and Merz's request is reportedly pending.
Meloni had previously described Trump's tariffs on EU goods as “wrong” but she appears to be taking a more cautious approach as she manages a delicate balancing act between her political ideals, which are more in tune with Trump's, and Italy's role within the EU.
The meeting provoked trepidation among some of Italy's European allies as well as Meloni's domestic opposition amid fears their closeness risks jeopardising the bloc's unified approach to the tariffs and other issues.
Enrico Borghi, a politician with the centrist Italia Viva party, told a TV talkshow: “The advice from the opposition is that the prime minister returns home with reopened negotiations between the US and EU that will guarantee a framework of relative tranquility to our economic and productive system, which has been weakened by what is a real trade war.”
Italy is the third-largest exporter to the US from the EU. Meloni's office denied she would seek special tariff exemptions on Italian products. Italy has strong economic ties with the US that go beyond exports, including foreign direct investments.
The summit was expected to address Trump's demand that Nato partners increase military spending to 2% of GDP. Italy is at 1.49%, among the lowest in Europe.
It was Meloni's third visit to the White House, with the two previous occasions taking place during Joe Biden's administration.
She will return to Rome in time to meet on Friday Trump's vice-president, JD Vance, whose blistering attack on Europe at the Munich Security Conference in February she has defended.
Vance will also meet Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican's secretary of state, during his Easter weekend visit.
A small Michigan community banded together to help a beloved local bookstore move its stock to a new storefront
Residents of all ages in a small Michigan community formed a human chain and helped a local bookshop move each of its 9,100 books – one by one – to a new storefront about a block away.
The “book brigade” of about 300 people stood in two lines running along a sidewalk in downtown Chelsea on Sunday, passing each title from Serendipity Books' former location directly to the correct shelves in the new building, down the block and around the corner on Main Street.
“It was a practical way to move the books, but it also was a way for everybody to have a part,” Michelle Tuplin, the store's owner, said. “As people passed the books along, they said ‘I have not read this' and ‘that's a good one'.”
Momentum had been building since Tuplin announced the move in January.
“It became so buzzy in town. So many people wanted to help,” she said on Tuesday.
Tuplin said the endeavour took just under two hours – much shorter than hiring a moving company to box and unbox the thousands of titles. The brigade even put the books back on the shelves in alphabetical order.
Now Tuplin hopes to have the new location open within two weeks.
The bookstore has been in Chelsea, about 60 miles (95km) west of Detroit, since 1997. Tuplin has been the owner since 2017 and has three part-time employees.
About 5,300 people call Chelsea home and residents described it as a place where neighbours help neighbours.
“It's a small town and people just really look out for each other,” said Kaci Friss, 32, who grew up in Chelsea and has worked at the bookstore for a little over a year. “Anywhere you go, you are going to run into someone you know or who knows you, and is going to ask you about your day.”
Friss said Sunday's book brigade reminded her of “how special this community is”.
MOSCOW, April 17. /TASS/. Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has vehemently rejected the Franco-British proposal to send a "multinational peacekeeping contingent" to Ukraine, labeling it as utterly insane.
"Despite their persistent efforts, Paris and London have failed to secure unanimous backing for their reckless plan to deploy what they term a 'multinational peacekeeping contingent' consisting of troops from several NATO member states," Zakharova stated at a news briefing.
She noted that, alongside the French and the British, "only similarly frenzied Russophobes in the Baltic states" are willing to join this venture, which risks a direct confrontation between the alliance and Russia.
"I am referring, of course, to the regimes. The countries and their peoples are often unaware that their leaders act on orders from outside," Zakharova explained.
According to her, most participants in the "coalition" doubt the feasibility of this military intervention without U.S. support. "Judging by the current discussions, Washington still has no intention of becoming involved in such an adventure. It seems to be realistically assessing where all this could lead," she added.
Zakharova highlighted that 21 billion euros had been pledged for the needs of the Ukrainian military, a figure that had previously been mentioned in NATO statements.
"Once again, London has taken the lead. It announced a package of assistance amounting to 350 million pounds, which includes, as stated, hundreds of thousands of drones, radar systems, and more," she noted. "In total, the British plan to spend 4.5 billion pounds on military support for Kiev in 2025."
Zakharova observed that Berlin is attempting to keep pace with London. "An additional 30 missiles for Patriot launchers have already been shipped to Ukraine, but, as you know, Berlin cannot provide the American systems. Germany is prepared to allocate four more IRIS-T anti-aircraft missile systems and supply combat vehicles, tanks, ammunition, and other equipment," she emphasized. "In total, Germany plans to allocate approximately 3 billion euros for these purposes.".
MOSCOW, April 17. /TASS/. Senior Ukrainian officials are in Paris to discuss what may become a catastrophic outcome of plans by the "coalition of the willing" to deploy troops in Ukraine, Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev wrote on X.
"Apparently, the top of Ukraine's fascist clique have come to Paris for talks with the UK, Germany and France on how many European coffins they will be ready to accept after the deployment of the troops of the `coalition of the willing' in Ukraine," the Russian politician wrote in an English-language post.
Earlier, Andrey Yermak, the head of the office of Ukraine's Vladimir Zelensky, said he along with the Ukrainian defense and foreign ministers, Rustem Umerov and Andrey Sibiga, respectively, had arrived in Paris for talks with senior US officials.
The United States reported earlier that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff will hold a meeting with their European counterparts in Paris on April 17-18.
The "coalition of the willing" held a summit in Paris on March 27, where representatives from around 30 countries discussed potential security guarantees for Kiev after the conclusion of the conflict. One of the key issues was the possible deployment of a military force in Ukraine. The United States was absent from this summit.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said last month that any presence of NATO troops under any flag and in any capacity in Ukraine is a threat to Russia and Moscow will never agree to this.
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The U.K. transferred 752 million pounds ($990 million) to Ukraine on April 14 under a G7 loan covered by Russian assets to buy air defense and artillery, the British government announced.
The U.K. has pledged to lend Ukraine 2.26 billion pounds ($2.9 billion) in three equal installments as part of the G7's Extraordinary Revenue Acceleration scheme, worth $50 billion in total.
This installment is the second one. Ukraine received the first part of the loan from the U.K. on March 6, 2025. The final part will be paid in 2026.
"The world is changing before our eyes, reshaped by global instability, including Russian aggression in Ukraine," British Finance Minister Rachel Reeves said.
At the onset of the full-scale war in 2022, the G7 countries immobilized some $300 billion in Russian sovereign assets. The $50 billion loan, shouldered mainly by the U.S. and the EU, will be funneled to Ukraine's defense needs and recovery and repaid by proceeds from the frozen assets.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin may attempt to seize NATO territory and trigger a global conflict if not stopped in Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky warned in an April 13 interview with CBS News.
"If we do not stand firm, he will advance further," Zelensky said, calling the threat "real."
The Ukrainian president warned that Putin's long-term objective is to restore a Russian empire that would include parts of NATO member states.
"Considering all of this, I believe it could escalate into a world war," he said.
Zelensky previously raised alarm at the Munich Security Conference in February, saying Russian troop buildup in Belarus could be aimed not only at Ukraine but also at Poland or the Baltic states.
According to Ukrainian estimates, Russia is preparing to field 15 divisions — up to 150,000 troops — in the region.
NATO leaders have echoed the warnings. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said on Feb. 12 that any Russian attack on NATO would be met with a "devastating" response.
"If Putin attacks NATO, the reaction will be devastating. He will lose," Rutte said.
U.S. President Donald Trump's special envoy, Steve Witkoff, has sought to keep diplomatic channels open with Russia, claiming in a March 23 Fox News interview that Putin "wants peace."
When asked about Putin's territorial ambitions beyond Ukraine, Witkoff responded: "I simply have said that I just don't see that he wants to take all of Europe."
Zelensky's warnings come as Russia continues to reject U.S.-proposed ceasefire terms and steps up its offensive across Ukraine.
Tensions between NATO and Russia have risen following Moscow's all-out attack against Ukraine. Western leaders and intelligence agencies have warned of a potential large-scale war in Europe within the next five years, citing Russia's increasingly aggressive posture.
A Russian-Indian joint venture has submitted a bid for a contract to supply Kalashnikov AK-203 assault rifles to the police force in the southern Indian state of Kerala, Russian arms exporter Rosoboronexport said in a statement on Tuesday.
Indo-Russian Rifles Private Limited (IRRPL), formed by Rosoboronexport and the Kalashnikov Concern along with two state-owned Indian firms – Advanced Weapons and Equipment India Limited and Munitions India Limited – started manufacturing the rifles in India in 2023.
AK-203 rifles are manufactured using Russian technology and certified equipment. They are produced in the town of Korda in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, following the ‘Make in India' initiative of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
“The capacities of the Korwa Ordnance Factory make it possible to equip the personnel of the Ministry of Defense and other law enforcement agencies of India with AK-203 assault rifles, which, due to their high adaptability, are suitable for various operators,” Rosoboronexport CEO Aleksandr Mikheev said in a statement.
In addition, the joint venture will be able to export its products to third countries, according to Mikheev. Manufacturing of AK-203 rifles has progressed rapidly since 2019, when Modi visited the Amethi district where the Korwa ordnance factory is located, reports said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a statement in 2019 that “the new joint venture will manufacture world famous Kalashnikov assault rifles of the newest 200 series and eventually will reach full localization of production. Thus, the Indian defense-industrial sector will have the opportunity to fulfill the needs of national security agencies in this category of small arms, resting upon advanced Russian technologies.”
Since then, more than 35,000 Kalashnikovs have been delivered to the Indian Army by the joint venture, Srihari Pratap Shahi, additional CEO of UP Expressways Industrial Development Authority (UPEIDA), told RT. He added that further manufacturing of nearly 600,000 AK-203 rifles will be spread over ten years.
UPEIDA is part of the Uttar Pradesh state government, tasked with establishing ‘defense industrial corridors' in the northern part of India. Earlier this year, India proposed exporting the AK-203 rifle to Nepal, potentially replacing the outdated INSAS platform, as part of a broader effort to standardize modern assault rifles, according to a report in media outlet ThePrint.
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Toronto Raptors President Masai Ujiri speaks to members of the media in Toronto, on July 8, 2024.Christopher Katsarov/The Canadian Press
Like a sporty Jacques Derrida, Toronto Raptors president Masai Ujiri operates in terms of text vs. subtext.
This is why some of his former players and coaches leave unhappy. They were listening to what Ujiri said, but not paying attention to what he meant.
There isn't much to discuss in either sense about the Raptors season just ended. At first the team was bad, but not in a fun way. Then they were better, but that wasn't much fun either. They made a notable trade for Brandon Ingram, but he showed up hurt and never got better.
Unless the draft lottery goes their way (they have a 7.5 per cent chance at landing the top pick), the 2024-25 campaign was the pause that doesn't refresh. They'll try to be better next year. Failing that, better at being worse.
On Wednesday, Ujiri was the last man to speak on behalf of the team before their break begins. These confabs are enjoyable because Ujiri wears the armour of a championship. That gives him a lifetime exemption from the usual mode of Toronto sports talk – dissembling, with a side plate of begging.
At the season's wake, Ujiri judged the results (“it's been a tough couple of years”), the chemistry (“A+”) and the goal going forward (another title, but “when that comes, we don't know”). What else can he say? Sadly, no one offered him Luka Doncic in exchange for a bag of magic beans.
The little thing that struck you was the repeated use of the word “unique.” Ujiri applied it in several contexts, but mostly in terms of the city in relation to the NBA's global aspirations. If you listened very carefully with your Canadian ears, you could hear a dog whistle.
Not so long ago, this league was the resistance HQ to Trump presidency 1.0. If there is any opposition this time around, it's gone underground. The likes of LeBron James, once so anxious to talk politics, are sticking to game talk in their old age.
That puts Ujiri, one of sports' pre-eminent immigrants, in a weird position. He has his opinions, but it's not his place to be out ahead of the talent or his employers. Unlike others, his position has been consistent in that regard.
So what does “unique” mean to you in this sentence, after a question about Canadian-American relations?
“The NBA is going to Europe, no? There's something unique about this market. We're going to be at the forefront of what basketball is,” Ujiri said. “We are the only team that's outside the United States in the NBA, and I believe it's a unique opportunity that's going to be an incredibly unique opportunity in the years to come.”
He leaned really hard into the word “incredibly.”
Europe doesn't really belong in that thought, but he foregrounded it. Why? At a guess, because as basketball becomes more global, America is becoming more provincial. Europe isn't just the counterpoint to that policy. They're also producing the highest quality players in the world.
Is it unimaginable that at some point, the current U.S. regime might start banning athletes from countries it dislikes (which seems to be all of them, minus Russia) or ones who say the wrong thing? I would call it more than imaginable. I would call it well within the realm of possibility.
What happens in a world where everybody wants to play in the NBA, but not everybody can get into America, or wants to?
Asked to focus in on that idea, Ujiri grew more gnomish.
“I think the unique flow of players, the pool of players, is going to be more widespread,” Ujiri said. “I think streaming and media opportunities are going to be even bigger in terms of how people view the game, and really see the game. I mean, international players.”
Was he suggesting that in the near future, non-American players might prefer Canada to the United States?
“I don't know,” Ujiri said. “I think the international stage is just going to be bigger.”
Of course, this could mean anything. But when Ujiri talks, he isn't just stringing clichés together. Everything he says means something. When he says “I don't know,” it usually means he knows.
The NHL and MLB each feature players from fewer than 20 different countries. The NBA has 43 nationalities represented. That number will grow now that teenagers are being paid to play in U.S. colleges. Who would stay home if they could move abroad and get rich studying?
American athletes famously resent keeping track of their passports. Someone like Doncic – a guy who turned pro when most kids are in Grade 11 – speaks four languages. It's the same planet, but different worlds. If Ujiri's right, and the NBA expands to Europe, one could imagine a bifurcated league in every sense.
Picture one where Americans play in America, while the rest of the world plays in Europe. The two polarities meet in the playoffs and the NBA Cup. It's a hybrid of every apex league – a little NFL, a little Premier League, a little Champions League.
It allows the world access to a global game, and lets America play with itself.
Even if that never happens, very recent history suggests that fewer and fewer Africans, Asians and Europeans are going to feel welcome and secure in America. The players won't get hassled because they're players, but they all have relatives who might find themselves on the wrong end of a random ID check.
Wouldn't it be nice to get a piece of the American pie, but not have to run any of those risks while living in a country that doesn't view every outsider as a potential thief?
That would put the Toronto Raptors in the most advantageous spot of any sports franchise in the world, at least for a little while.
I wouldn't bet the future of a multibillion-dollar sports business on any of this coming to pass. But in terms of potential, I would call it a unique opportunity. Maybe even an incredibly unique opportunity.
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Trump called for university to lose tax-exempt status after it defied him; federal law bars president from requesting the IRS investigate or audit specific targets
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is making plans to rescind Harvard University's tax-exempt status, with a final decision expected soon, according to multiple reports.
Some IRS officials have told colleagues that the treasury department asked the agency on Wednesday to consider revoking Harvard's tax exemption, the New York Times reported.
Linda McMahon, the education secretary, said she doesn't know whether Harvard will lose its tax-exempt status but argued “it was certainly worth looking into.”
“We'll see what IRS comes back with relative to Harvard,” McMahon told CNN.
I certainly think, you know, in elitist schools, especially that have these incredibly large endowments, you know, we should probably have a look into that.
Donald Trump on Tuesday publicly called for Harvard to lose its tax-exempt status, hours after his administration announced a $2.2bn freeze in federal funds to Harvard.
“Perhaps Harvard should lose its Tax Exempt Status and be Taxed as a Political Entity if it keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting “Sickness?” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Remember, Tax Exempt Status is totally contingent on acting in the PUBLIC INTEREST!”
According to the Times, federal law bars the president from either directly or indirectly requesting the IRS to investigate or audit specific targets.
The IRS has previously revoked tax exemptions from organizations for political or commercial activities, but federal law gives non-profits the right to appeal the agency's decision in court.
“To my knowledge, this is the first time an administration has tried something like this,” R William Snyder, accounting and taxes professor at George Mason University's Costello College of Business, told CNN.
Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni has invited Donald Trump to visit Italy as the two leaders sat down for talks at the White House.
Their meeting comes a day before Meloni hosts vice-president JD Vance in Rome, and the back-to-back talks could be critical in determining whether she can play a mediator role between the US and Europe.
Meloni added that she expected Italy would announce at the next Nato meeting in June that her country would be able to reach the alliance requirement that each member nation spend 2% of GDP on defense spending.
Donald Trump and Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni have said they are certain they can make a trade deal ahead of talks at the White House.
“I am sure we can make a deal, and I am here to help with that,” Meloni said as she sat across a table from Trump ahead of a lunch on Thursday.
Trump said that broadly speaking he expected he would make an announcement about trade deals but was “in no rush”. Per pool report:
Oh, there will be a trade deal, 100% … Of course there will be a trade deal. They want to make one very much. And we are going to make a trade deal. I fully expect it. And it will be a fair deal.
Asked about what countries were on his priority list, Trump said, “Everybody is on my priority list.”
Brendan Carr, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, has attacked Comcast, claiming that the media company is “misleading the American public” by describing Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a 29-year old Salvadorian man living in Maryland who was wrongfully sent to El Salvador, as a “Maryland man.”
Carr, who was appointed to his position by Trump, targeted Comcast outlets and accused them of “news distortion” on X.
The FCC chair's comments come a day after Trump attacked Comcast in a separate Truth Social post this week, writing that Comcast and its leadership “are a disgrace to the integrity of Broadcasting!!!”
Last week, the supreme court unanimously ruled and ordered the administration to “facilitate” the return of Garcia, who was supposed to have been protected from deportation to El Salvador, regardless of whether he was part of the MS-13 gang – a claim that the Trump administration has repeated and which García's family and attorneys staunchly refutes.
Garcia has no criminal record in the US, according to court documents. It's also noteworthy that while members of the Trump administration continue to make the claim on television, the Department of Justice has not made the MS-13 accusation in court papers and has admitted the deportation was an error.
Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni has arrived at the White House ahead of talks with Donald Trump.
Speaking to reporters before their formal bilateral meeting, Trump praised Meloni, calling her a “great prime minister” and “one of the real leaders of the world”.
Meloni said she wants to “speak frankly about the needs that every one of us has” and “find the best way to make us both stronger”.
In respose to whether Meloni will be the one to “mediate your relationship with Europe”, Trump said: “Well, I do like her very much… I'm very proud to be with her…can't do better than that.”
Treasury secretary Scott Bessent has cautioned White House officials to avoid firing Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, Politico reports, citing sources familiar with the matter.
Trump's frustration with Powell stems from Powell's refusal to cut interest rates, something which Trump has repeatedly advocated for. On Thursday, Trump took to Truth Social and vowed that Powell's “termination cannot come fast enough”!
Since Trump issued sweeping tariffs – which he later scaled back as part of a 90-day pause on most countries – the president has been calling for lower rates. However, Powell has kept rates elevated in attempts to control rising prices across the country.
Politico reports that according to federal law, members of the Federal Reserve's Board of Governors are appointed for 14-year terms and are can only be dismissed for “cause”.
Powell has previously said that the removal and demotion of top Federal Reserve officials are “not permitted under the law”.
Republican senator Lisa Murkowski has said a fear of retaliation under the Trump administration is rising to levels she has not seen before.
“We are all afraid,” the Alaska senator said at leadership summit on Monday. “It's quite a statement,” she continued.
We're in a time and place where – I don't know, I certainly have not – I have not been here before. And I'll tell you, I'm oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice because retaliation is real. And that's not right.
“It is as hard as anything I have been engaged in, in the 20-plus years I've been in the Senate,” she added.
The wife of Kilmar Ábrego García, the Maryland man unlawfully deported to a mega-prison in El Salvador, has strongly criticized the Trump administration's attempt to smear his character, saying a temporary restraining order against him was “out of caution” and that “he is a loving partner and father” who is being denied justice.
Jennifer Vasquez Sura said she “acted out of caution after a disagreement with Kilmar” when she got the civil protective order in 2021, according to a statement emailed to the Baltimore Sun.
Vasquez Sura said she decided not to follow through with the civil court process because “things did not escalate” with her husband. She wrote:
We were able to work through this situation privately as a family, including by going to counseling. Our marriage only grew stronger in the years that followed. No one is perfect, and no marriage is perfect.
That is not a justification for ICE's action of abducting him and deporting him to a country where he was supposed to be protected from deportation.
The Trump administration has refused to attempt to return Ábrego García to the US after he was mistakenly placed on a deportation flight to El Salvador last month, despite legal rulings ordering his return.
The Trump administration claims that Ábrego García is a member of MS-13, a gang the administration has listed as a foreign terrorist organization. Ábrego García, through his attorneys, has denied any affiliation. He has no criminal record in either the US or El Salvador.
The White House is preparing a budget that could include deep cuts to federal housing, including a sweeping overhaul of aid to low-income families, according to a New York Times report.
The potential changes primarily concern federal housing vouchers, including those more commonly known as Section 8, the paper writes.
Section 8 helps low-income families, elderly persons, veterans and disabled individuals cover the monthly costs of apartments, town homes and single-family residences.
The overhaul would be reportedly included in Donald Trump's new budget, which is expected to be sent to Capitol Hill in the coming weeks.
Talks between Iran and the US over Tehran's nuclear program are in a “very crucial” stage, the head of the UN's nuclear watchdog said.
Iran and US are expected to meet on Saturday in Rome for a new round of talks after last weekend's first meeting in Oman.
“We know that we are in a very crucial, I would say, stage of this important negotiation, so I want to concentrate on the positive,” International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi said.
There is a possibility of a good outcome. Nothing is guaranteed. We need to make sure that we put all of the elements in place ... in order to get to this agreement.
Grossi was speaking during a visit to Iran, during which he met with the country's foreign minister Abbas Araghchi.
Several international students who have had their visas revoked in recent weeks have filed lawsuits against the Trump administration, arguing the government denied them due process.
The actions by the federal government to terminate students' legal status have left hundreds of scholars at risk of detention and deportation.
Their schools range from private universities such as Harvard and Stanford to large public institutions such as the University of Maryland and Ohio State University and to some small liberal arts colleges.
At least 901 students at 128 colleges and universities have had their visas revoked or their legal status terminated since mid-March, according to an Associated Press review of university statements and correspondence with school officials.
In lawsuits against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), students have argued the government lacked justification to cancel their visa or terminate their legal status.
The Trump administration plans to focus on the financial investments of elite universities as part of the next phase of Donald Trump's war on top universities, according to a report.
White House officials plan to examine investments in areas disfavored by Trump, including clean energy and China, Semafor reports, citing sources.
It comes after Trump announced pauses in federal funding on some of the top US universities he accuses of antisemitism and pushing progressive ideology, and as the IRS is reportedly preparing to revoke Harvard University's tax-exempt status.
Semafor cites a White House memo from February that states:
It is past time for American universities to stop supporting foreign adversaries with their investment decisions, much as they should stop granting university access to supporters of terrorism.
Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer has called on the Department of Justice to investigate whether the arson attack on Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro's home constitutes a hate crime.
In a letter to attorney general Pam Bondi, Schumer wrote:
While the local district attorney has not yet filed hate-crime charges, he acknowledged that Governor Shapiro's religion appears to have factored into the suspect's decisions.
Schumer referred to revelations contained in search warrants made public yesterday about the arson attack suspect's comments signaling support for Palestinians.
According to a search warrant in the case, 38-year-old Cody Balmer identified himself by name in a 911 call and said Shapiro “needs to know that he ‘will not take part in his plans for what he wants to do to the Palestinian people'”.
The suspect's statements, “in conjunction with the timing of the attack during Passover, Governor Shapiro's visible embrace of his Jewish faith, and the context of rising antisemitism globally and across the country” raise “serious concerns about antisemitic motivation”, Schumer wrote.
Illinois congresswoman Delia Ramirez, a Democrat, has requested a congressional delegation to visit the Salvadorian mega-prison where the Trump administration is sending deportees.
Among those who have been sent to the Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot) in El Salvador is Kilmar Ábrego García, whom the Trump administration admitted to wrongly deporting but has refused to bring back.
In a statement on Wednesday, Ramirez said she had sent a letter to the Committee on Homeland Security demanding an oversight visit to Cecot, which she described as a “notorious, off-shore prison with a history of gross human rights violations”.
President Trump and Secretary Noem deported Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, Andry Hernandez Romero, Jerce Reyes Barrios and hundreds of others to Cecot with no due process, resulting in ‘administrative errors'. Their actions are illegal, unconstitutional and inhumane.
Maryland's Democratic senator Chris Van Hollen traveled to El Salvador on Wednesday but said his request to visit Ábrego García was denied.
Several other Democratic lawmakers have signaled that they would like to visit El Salvador to check on Ábrego García, including Adriano Espaillat, chair of the Congressional Hispanic caucus, and Robert Garcia and Maxwell Alejandro Frost, both members of the House oversight committee.
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is making plans to rescind Harvard University's tax-exempt status, with a final decision expected soon, according to multiple reports.
Some IRS officials have told colleagues that the treasury department asked the agency on Wednesday to consider revoking Harvard's tax exemption, the New York Times reported.
Linda McMahon, the education secretary, said she doesn't know whether Harvard will lose its tax-exempt status but argued “it was certainly worth looking into.”
“We'll see what IRS comes back with relative to Harvard,” McMahon told CNN.
I certainly think, you know, in elitist schools, especially that have these incredibly large endowments, you know, we should probably have a look into that.
Donald Trump on Tuesday publicly called for Harvard to lose its tax-exempt status, hours after his administration announced a $2.2bn freeze in federal funds to Harvard.
“Perhaps Harvard should lose its Tax Exempt Status and be Taxed as a Political Entity if it keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting “Sickness?” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Remember, Tax Exempt Status is totally contingent on acting in the PUBLIC INTEREST!”
According to the Times, federal law bars the president from either directly or indirectly requesting the IRS to investigate or audit specific targets.
The IRS has previously revoked tax exemptions from organizations for political or commercial activities, but federal law gives non-profits the right to appeal the agency's decision in court.
“To my knowledge, this is the first time an administration has tried something like this,” R William Snyder, accounting and taxes professor at George Mason University's Costello College of Business, told CNN.
An immigration judge denied bond to a Tufts University PhD student who was detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents outside her Massachusetts apartment because her student visa had been revoked.
Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish doctoral student at Tufts University, was targeted by the Trump administration for arrest, detention and deportation in retaliation for an op-ed she co-authored in her student newspaper, according to her lawyers.
Öztürk's attorneys said the immigration ruling on Wednesday was a “complete violation of due process and the rule of law”.
Ms. Öztürk has committed no crime and DHS has provided zero evidence in their case against her. Despite that, the court yesterday relied on a previously submitted State Department memo that points to nothing that Ms. Öztürk said or did — other than her 2024 school newspaper op-ed — to falsely claim she is a danger to her community.
Öztürk is one of several international university students facing deportation over their involvement in pro-Palestinian protests and activism on college campuses.
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U.S. President Donald Trump's White House is proposing dramatic cuts to the U.S. State Department's budget, including halting nearly all of the department's funding to NATO, the U.N., and over 20 other international organizations, the Washington Post reported on April 14, citing an internal draft document.
The proposed cuts for the next fiscal year would reportedly leave $28.4 billion for all State Department activities, a 48% reduction from the 2025 budget approved by Congress.
The plan would preserve only minimal support for a handful of agencies, such as the International Atomic Energy Agency and the International Civil Aviation Organization.
According to Politico, funding for "contributions to international organizations," presumably including U.N. institutions, would be slashed from $1.5 billion to $169 million.
Although the proposal would require congressional approval, the cuts align with broader White House efforts to slash federal spending.
On March 10, the Trump administration announced the termination of 83% of the foreign aid contracts of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
The cuts have broad implications for humanitarian efforts, particularly in Ukraine, where USAID has provided $2.6 billion in humanitarian aid, $5 billion in development assistance, and over $30 billion in direct budget support since Russia's full-scale invasion began.
Trump has long expressed hostility toward NATO, repeatedly accusing European allies of underfunding the alliance and threatening to allow Russia to attack non-compliant members.
The proposal to eliminate NATO funding appears to escalate that stance into formal policy.
Before being appointed under Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio had consistently defended NATO. In 2023, Rubio co-sponsored bipartisan legislation requiring congressional approval before any president could unilaterally withdraw the U.S. from the alliance.
Some members of Trump's circle, including billionaire and advisor Elon Musk, called for the U.S. to exit NATO, and the U.S. is broadly expected to withdraw some troops from the alliance's eastern flank.
As Europe faces growing Russian aggression and war rages in Ukraine, the proposed withdrawal of U.S. support for NATO and the U.N. could drastically reshape the West's security architecture and strain Washington's credibility as a global leader.
MOSCOW, April 15. /TASS/. The Ukrainian army carried out strikes on energy facilities in 15 Russian regions between March 18 and April 16, according to TASS estimates.
The Belgorod, Bryansk, Voronezh, Zaporozhye, Kursk, Lipetsk, Rostov, Saratov, Smolensk, Tambov, Kherson and Krasnodar regions, the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics and Crimea came under attack. The majority of strikes were reported in the Kursk, Belgorod and Bryansk regions.
The attacks involved unmanned aerial vehicles, FPV drones and artillery, including HIMARS rocket launchers. A Ukrainian attack almost completely destroyed the Sudzha gas metering station in the Kursk Region.
Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said earlier that Kiev had in fact failed to comply with the energy strike moratorium after March 18. The Russian Defense Ministry reports such attacks almost every day.
US President Donald Trump suggested that the parties to the conflict halt attacks on energy sites for 30 days in a phone call with Russian leader Vladimir Putin on March 18. Putin welcomed the idea and gave the relevant order to the Russian military.
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The Associated Press
10:34 JST, April 17, 2025
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Wednesday inserted himself directly into trade talks with Japanese officials, a sign of the high stakes for the United States after its tariffs rattled the economy and caused the administration to assure the public that it would quickly reach deals.
The Republican president attended the meeting alongside Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, top economic advisers with a central role in his trade and tariff policies.
“Hopefully something can be worked out which is good (GREAT!) for Japan and the USA!” Trump wrote in a social media post ahead of the meeting.
Afterward, he posted: “A Great Honor to have just met with the Japanese Delegation on Trade. Big Progress!”
The president's choice to get directly involved in negotiations points to his desire to quickly finalize a slew of trade deals as China is pursuing its own set of agreements. It's an open test of Trump's reputation as a dealmaker as countries around the world seek to limit the potential damage unleashed by his import taxes.
The sweeping tariffs that Trump announced on April 2 triggered panic in the financial markets and generated recession fears, causing the U.S. president to quickly put a partial 90-day hold on the import taxes and increase his already steep tariffs against China to as much as 145%.
The pause temporarily spared Japan from 24% across-the-board tariffs, but there continues to be a 10% baseline tariff and a 25% tax on imported cars, auto parts, steel and aluminum exports.
With Japan charging an average tax rate of 1.9% on other countries' goods and having a longstanding alliance with the U.S., the talks on Wednesday are a crucial indicator of whether the Trump administration can achieve a meaningful deal that reassures the markets, American voters and foreign allies.
U.S. economic rival China, meanwhile, is trying to capitalize on the turmoil around Trump's announcements, with its leader, President Xi Jinping, touring nations of Southeast Asia and promoting his country as a more reliable trade partner.
Japan is among the first countries to start open negotiations with the U.S. Trump and other administration officials have said the phones have been “ringing off the hook” with dozens of countries calling, eager to strike deals with a president who views himself as a master negotiator to avoid tariffs when the 90-day pause ends. Israel and Vietnam have offered to zero out their tariff rates, but Trump has been noncommittal as to whether that would be sufficient.
On Thursday, Trump is scheduled to meet with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who will likely be carrying messages on behalf of the European Union about how to resolve the tariffs Trump placed on the 27-state group.
Still, the U.S. president may also be feeling increased domestic pressures to settle any tariffs as many voters say they returned Trump to the White House with the specific goal of improving the economy. California Gov. Gavin Newsom filed a lawsuit Wednesday that argues that Trump overstepped his authority by declaring an economic emergency to levy his tariffs, with the Democrat saying in a statement that the tariffs have caused economic chaos.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Wednesday that Trump's tariff policies would hurt the U.S. economy, a direct warning to a White House trying to sell the import taxes as a long-term positive for the country.
“The level of tariff increases announced so far is significantly larger than anticipated, and the same is likely to be true of the economic effects which will include higher inflation and slower growth,” Powell said at the Economic Club of Chicago.
Japan, like many other nations trying to minimize the possible economic fallout from Trump's tariffs, has been scrambling to respond. It has set up a special task force to assess the impact of the tariffs and offer loans to anxious companies.
Although Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba has been working hard to coax exemptions out of Trump, the government has said little officially on what concessions it might offer during these talks.
Nor has the administration been transparent about its asks. The Trump administration is seeking to close the $68.5 billion trade deficit with Japan and seeking greater access for U.S. goods in foreign markets, yet the president has also insisted that tariff revenues can be used to pay down the federal budget deficit.
“Japan is coming in today to negotiate Tariffs, the cost of military support, and ‘TRADE FAIRNESS,'” Trump posted on Wednesday.
U.S. officials met in Washington with Japan's chief trade negotiator, Economic Revitalization Minister Ryosei Akazawa.
“I am prepared for the talks,” Akazawa told reporters at Tokyo's Haneda Airport before boarding his flight. “I will negotiate in order to firmly protect our national interest.”
He said that both Bessent and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer are “known to be pro-Japan and professionally talented” and that he hopes to build a relationship of trust with them.
“I believe we can have good talks toward a win-win relationship that will serve national interest for both Japan and the United States,” he said.
Japan has contended that Trump's tariff measures are likely to violate bilateral trade agreements or World Trade Organization rules. While Ishiba has said he opposes retaliatory tariffs, he also has said he is in no rush to push for a settlement because he doesn't want concessions.
Xi, meanwhile, stopped in Malaysia on Wednesday and told its leader that China will be a collaborative partner and stand with its Southeast Asian neighbors after the global economic shocks.
Xi is touring Vietnam, Malaysia and Cambodia this week on a trip that likely was planned before the tariffs' uncertainty but that he's also using to promote Beijing as a source of stability in the region and shore up relationships in that part of the world as he looks for ways to mitigate the 145% tariffs that Trump is keeping on China.
“In the face of shocks to global order and economic globalization, China and Malaysia will stand with countries in the region to combat the undercurrents of geopolitical … confrontation, as well as the counter-currents of unilateralism and protectionism,” Xi said in remarks at a dinner with Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim.
“Together, we will safeguard the bright prospects of our Asian family,” he added.
Xi has promised Malaysia and Vietnam greater access to Chinese markets on his visits, although few details were shared.
In Washington, Trump has indicated that he also wants to discuss how much the Japanese contribute to the cost of U.S. troops stationed there, largely as a deterrent to China.
Trump's demand for more defense spending concerns the Japanese government.
Under its national security strategy, Japan aims to double annual defense spending to nearly $10 trillion, or 2% of GDP, in 2027, while there is a concern that Trump may ask for that to be increased to 3% of GDP. Japanese Defense Minister Gen Nakatani said Tuesday that the military budget for this year is about 1.8% of Japan's GDP.
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Trump administration officials claim Kilmar Abrego Garcia had history of violence
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A man mistakenly deported to an El Salvador prison was not an “upstanding Maryland” resident but a wife abuser, a US government department has claimed.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was deported by Donald Trump's administration in error, had a history of violence and was handed a restraining order against his wife Jennifer Vasquez in 2021, the Department of Homeland Security said on Wednesday.
Ms Vasquez, who is campaigning for Mr Garcia's return and has described him as an “excellent father”, previously told law enforcement he punched, scratched and ripped off her shirt, according to court documents published on Tuesday.
Per the court documents, Mr Abrego Garcia, who entered the US illegally 14 years ago, was ordered to vacate the family home in Maryland and not to contact Ms Vasquez as part of the temporary protective order.
In a statement to Newsweek, Ms Vasquez described her husband's deportation as an abduction and said she had sought the restraining order “out of caution” because of her previous experience with domestic violence.
“After surviving domestic violence in a previous relationship, I acted out of caution after a disagreement with Kilmar by seeking a civil protective order in case things escalated,” Ms Vasquez said.
“Things did not escalate, and I decided not to follow through with the civil court process. We were able to work through this situation privately as a family, including by going to counselling. Our marriage only grew stronger in the years that followed.”
Ms Vasquez noted that the incident was “not a justification for ICE's action of abducting him” and said she would “continue to stand by him and demand justice for him”.
“No one is perfect, and no marriage is perfect. That is not a justification for ICE's action of abducting him and deporting him to a country where he was supposed to be protected from deportation. Kilmar has always been a loving partner and father, and I will continue to stand by him and demand justice for him.”
The 29-year-old remains imprisoned in a notorious jail in his native country despite a US federal judge's order backed by the Supreme Court for his return to the United States.
He was protected by a 2019 court order determining that he could not be deported to El Salvador, but he was sent there around a month ago.
The administration has since admitted the mistake and has been ordered by the Supreme Court to “facilitate” the 29-year-old's return.
However it has maintained that Mr Abrego Garcia is a member of the MS-13 criminal gang. The White House insists it has no plans to return Mr Abrego Garcia to the US.
“Deporting him back to El Salvador was always going to be the end result. There is never going to be a world in which this is an individual who is going to live a peaceful life in Maryland,” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said on Tuesday.
Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland senator, said authorities in El Salvador had denied him access to Mr Abrego Garcia while on a visit to the country.
The Democrat arrived in the Central American nation on Wednesday and said he would seek to meet with senior Salvadoran officials to secure Mr Abrego Garcia's release.
He later said Felix Ulloa, the country's vice president, told him he could not authorise a visit or a call with Mr Abrego Garcia.
Mr Van Hollen, who is a member of the US Senate foreign relations committee, said Mr Ulloa told him Mr Abrego Garcia would not be released because the US was paying El Salvador to keep him incarcerated.
“Why should the government of the United States pay the government of El Salvador to lock up a man who was illegally abducted from the United States and committed no crime?” Mr Van Hollen said.
In a meeting with Donald Trump at the White House on Monday, Nayib Bukele, El Salvador's president, said he had no plans to return Mr Abrego Garcia.
Patty Morin, whose daughter Rachel was killed in 2023 by an illegal immigrant while exercising on a popular hiking trail north-east of Baltimore, criticised Mr Van Hollen for trying to visit Mr Abrego Garcia.
Victor Martinez-Hernandez was convicted of raping and killing Rachel and concealing her body in a drainage culvert on Monday.
“To have a senator from Maryland who didn't even acknowledge, or barely acknowledged my daughter and the brutal death that she endured, leaving her five children without a mother, and now a grandbaby without a grandmother... so that he can use my taxpayer money to fly to El Salvador to bring back someone that's not even an American citizen,” Ms Morin said on Wednesday.
“Why does that person have more rights than I do, or my daughter, or my grandchildren. I don't understand this.”
Mr Trump's administration has deported hundreds of people who it claims are gang members to El Salvador.
On Wednesday, a federal judge said officials in the administration could face criminal prosecution for contempt of court for violating his order halting deportations of Venezuelan migrants under a wartime law evoked by the president.
Mr Abrego Garcia left El Salvador at age 16 to escape gang-related violence before entering the US illegally, his lawyers have claimed.
While in the US he worked in construction and got married. He had been raising three children with disabilities before his deportation, according to court records.
Mr Abrego Garcia has never been charged with or convicted of any crime, his lawyers say. They have denied the allegations that he is a member of the criminal gang MS-13.
Trump administration officials said the 29-year-old was deported last month based on a 2019 accusation from local police in Maryland that he was an MS-13 gang member.
Later in 2019, an immigration judge shielded Mr Abrego Garcia from deportation to El Salvador because he likely faced persecution there by local gangs that had terrorised his family.
The Trump administration ploughed ahead with the deportation, later describing the mistake as “an administrative error”.
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Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard discusses plans to release assassination files of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., during a cabinet meeting.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard declassified a Biden-era plan to counter domestic terrorism that called for greater information-sharing with tech companies and a legislative push to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.
Developed in 2021 after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, the plan outlined a government-wide effort to track how foreign actors use disinformation to radicalize Americans and urged coordination with private industry on domestic threats. It also called for measures to curb in-prison radicalization and study extremism within the military.
Among its proposals was a plan to "develop awareness training for active service military members, DOD employees and contractors, and those service members separating or retiring from the military on the threat posed by domestic terrorism, the potential targeting of those with military training by violent extremist actors, and relevant reporting mechanisms."
TRUMP THREATENS IRAN OVER NUKES AS DNI GABBARD CLAIMS TEHRAN IS NOT BUILDING BOMBS
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard declassified a Biden-era plan to counter domestic terrorism that called for information-sharing with tech companies and pushing for a legislative ban on assault weapons. (Reuters )
The strategy had a four-part goal: "Understand and Share Domestic Terrorism-Related Information," "Prevent Domestic Terrorism Recruitment and Mobilization to Violence," "Disrupt and Deter Domestic Terrorism Activity" and "Confront Long-Term Contributors to Domestic Terrorism."
The Biden administration plan encouraged "teaching and learning of civics education that provides students with the skill to fully participate in civic life," and promoted "literacy education for both children and adult learners and existing proven interventions to foster resiliency to disinformation."
It also called for advancing "inclusion" in the Covid-19 response and addressing "hate crime reporting barriers faced by disadvantaged communities by promoting law enforcement training and resources to prevent and address bias-motivated crimes; improve federal hate crimes data and analysis to eliminate hate crimes underreporting; mitigate xenophobia and bias."
DEMS WHO HAVE SPOKEN PASSIONATELY AGAINST DOMESTIC TERRORISM GO SILENT AS TESLA TORCHERS ARE CHARGED
The Biden administration launched the first-ever National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism in 2021, identifying domestic terrorism as a major national security threat in the wake of the Capitol riot. (Screenshot/Biden speech)
Former President Joe Biden's administration launched the first-ever National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism in 2021, identifying domestic terrorism as a major national security threat in the wake of the Capitol riot.
Gabbard declassified the strategy after prompting from conservative groups like America First Legal.
The group wrote to Gabbard earlier this month, asking her to declassify the strategy amid concerns of "weaponization" of power by "censoring disfavored speech on the Internet by labeling such speech ‘misinformation,' ‘disinformation,' ‘hate speech,' ‘domestic terrorism.'"
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Biden's summer 2021 counterterrorism strategy garnered criticism from the American Civil Liberties Union, which said it "reflects the government's ever-expanding authority to surveil and monitor American communities; law enforcement guidance that permits profiling on the basis of race, religion, or national origin; and the use of abusive tools such as the watchlisting system against people for constitutionally protected speech and association."
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Heritage Foundation research fellow EJ Antoni on President Trump's slated announcement on semiconductor tariffs and DOGE's new website enabling the American people to recommend potential cuts.
The Trump administration placed roughly 75% of full-time AmeriCorps employees on administrative leave on Wednesday as the administration looks to rebuild the Clinton-era volunteer agency from scratch, Fox News Digital learned.
A total of 535 full-time AmeriCorps employees out of the agency's 700 staff were placed on leave, an administration official confirmed to Fox News Digital Thursday.
Volunteers with AmeriCorps' National Civilian Community Corps, a program that focuses specifically on volunteer opportunities for youth between the ages of 18–26, were preemptively pulled out of the field ahead of the Trump administration placing the agency's full-time staffers on leave Wednesday, Fox Digital learned. Roughly $250 million in AmeriCorps contracts have also been canceled.
AmeriCorps is expected to remain in existence, according to the admin official, but the operations will essentially restart from scratch.
IRS CUTTING ITS WORKFORCE BY 25%, ELIMINATING AGENCY'S CIVIL RIGHTS OFFICE
Then-President Bill Clinton with AmeriCorps youth during an event at the University of Maryland. (Getty Images)
Former President Bill Clinton created the AmeriCorps National Service Program in 1993, during his first year in office, as a volunteer arm of the government to help aid communities nationwide.
The agency has received roughly $1 billion in taxpayer funds every year, the House Higher Education and Workforce Development Subcommittee previously found, but had failed eight consecutive audits across the past decade.
"Unfortunately, AmeriCorps has a long history of abusing taxpayer dollars," chair of the House subcommittee, Republican Utah Rep. Burgess Owens, said in a statement in December 2024.
"AmeriCorps is entrusted with over $1 billion of taxpayer funds every year, with the result of failure of eight consecutive audits," he continued. "In 2023, the AmeriCorps Inspector General issued a 'Management Challenges' report detailing significant challenges AmeriCorps faces. This includes being unable to detect fraud. We have no real idea when AmeriCorps will be able to have a clean audit again. In fact, this year's audit includes 78 recommendations still open, even after AmeriCorps said it addressed 20 last year."
Then-President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden pose with members of AmeriCorps on arrival at Joint Base Charleston in North Charleston, South Carolina, on Jan. 19, 2025. (Roberto Schmidt/AFP via Getty Images)
Fox News Digital examined AmeriCorp's budget in recent years and found its 2023 fiscal year budget stood at $1,312,806, which included $99,686,000 in expenses and salaries, while fiscal year 2024 saw a budget of $1,262,806, which included the same figure for expenses and salaries. The Biden administration proposed a budget of $1,342,093,000 for fiscal year 2025.
The agency's annual management report for fiscal year 2024 showed that it had $3.7 billion in assets, including over $1.5 billion in investments.
Diversity, equity and inclusion and climate change initiatives have been a top priority for the volunteer-focused agency, with the 2024 annual management report identifying "advancing racial and economic equity" as one of its top priorities, Fox Digital found.
President Donald Trump gestures to the crowd at a campaign event on July 1, 2023 in Pickens, South Carolina. (Sean Rayford/Getty Images)
"AmeriCorps has a decades-long commitment to advancing racial and economic equity through national service and volunteering," the report stated. "These efforts are designed to expand pathways to opportunity for all Americans. Racial and economic equity will be central to AmeriCorps' planning and implementation of all priorities, ensuring AmeriCorps members and volunteers reflect the diversity of the American people and the communities in which they serve."
Owens said in 2024 that while some of the agency's programs are "well-intentioned," taxpayers should not continue funding the office and called for it to land on the Department of Government Efficiency's chopping block.
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"It makes no sense to expand this agency or give it more money when it continuously fails to meet basic accountability standards," he said. "Every time its representatives come before this Committee, AmeriCorps assures us that they will implement reforms, and year after year nothing changes. We can tell AmeriCorps to modernize and reform until we are blue in the face, but nothing will change unless we recognize the system is built on a flawed idea. It is time to admit that this is a failed program that needs a complete overhaul or elimination. It should be on DOGE's chopping block."
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Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
This combination of two booking photos provided by the California Department of Corrections shows Erik Menendez, left, and Lyle Menendez. (California Department of Corrections via AP, File)
Attorney Mark Geragos, representing Erik and Lyle Menendez, speaks to the media as he arrives for a hearing in their case Thursday, April 17, 2025, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman speaks outside of court before a hearing in the case of Erik and Lyle Menendez Thursday, April 17, 2025, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
A supporter holds a sign outside of court before a hearing in the case of Erik and Lyle Menendez Thursday, April 17, 2025, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
Anamaria Baralt, center, and other family members of Erik and Lyle Menendez arrive in court for a hearing in their case Thursday, April 17, 2025, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
Family members and supporters of Erik and Lyle Menendez arrive in court for a hearing in their case Thursday, April 17, 2025, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
Attorney Mark Geragos, representing Erik and Lyle Menendez, speaks to the media as he arrives for a hearing in their case Thursday, April 17, 2025, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman speaks outside of court before a hearing in the case of Erik and Lyle Menendez Thursday, April 17, 2025, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
Attorney Mark Geragos, representing Erik and Lyle Menendez, arrives for a hearing in their case Thursday, April 17, 2025, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Erik and Lyle Menendez could learn this week whether they will get reduced sentences — and the chance of freedom — nearly 30 years after they were convicted of murdering their parents.
A Los Angeles judge will preside over the resentencing hearing that's expected to last two days starting Thursday. The judge could rule during the hearing or issue a written decision later. If he shortens their sentences, the brothers would still need approval from the state's parole board to leave prison.
The district attorney's office filed a motion late Wednesday to delay the resentencing hearings so the court can obtain one aspect of the state parole board's comprehensive risk assessments. California Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered the assessments in February and the brothers' final risk assessment hearings are scheduled for June 13. Prosecutors said in their filing that one part of the risk assessment has already been completed.
The brothers were sentenced in 1996 to life in prison without the possibility of parole for murdering their entertainment executive father Jose Menendez and mother Kitty Menendez in their Beverly Hills home in 1989. The brothers were 18 and 21 at the time of the killings. While defense attorneys argued the brothers acted out of self-defense after years of sexual abuse by their father, prosecutors said the brothers killed their parents for a multimillion-dollar inheritance.
The case has captured the public's attention for decades, and the Netflix drama “ Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story ” and documentary “The Menendez Brothers” have been credited with bringing new attention to the case. Supporters of the brothers have flown in from across the country to attend rallies and hearings in recent few months.
The resentencing hearing will center on whether the brothers have been rehabilitated in prison and deserve a lesser sentence of 50 years to life. That would make them eligible for parole under California's youthful offender law because they committed the crime when they were younger than 26.
Former Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón asked a judge last year to reduce the brothers' sentences. He lost reelection to Nathan Hochman, who moved to withdraw the resentencing request and has argued the brothers have not taken full responsibility for their crimes.
A resentencing petition laid out by Gascón focuses on the brothers' accomplishments and rehabilitation. The brothers' attorneys say their clients have worked hard over the decades to better themselves and give back to the prison community. The extended Menendez family, with the exception of an uncle who died last month, has said they fully forgive the brothers for what they did and want them to be freed.
With Hochman in charge, prosecutors argued last Friday they could not support the brothers' resentencing. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Michael Jesic ruled the resentencing hearings could continue despite their opposition.
Prosecutors have said the brothers have not admitted to lies told during their trial about why they killed their parents, or that they asked their friends to lie for them in court. Hochman's office has also said it does not believe that the brothers were sexually abused by their father and that by speaking about their childhood abuse, they have not taken complete responsibility for the crime.
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Fox News correspondent Madeleine Rivera reports on the Democratic Party's resistance to the Trump administration on ‘Fox Report.'
FIRST ON FOX: Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., chartered a private jet worth up to a staggering $15,000 an hour for several West Coast stops on their "Fighting Oligarchy" tour.
Sanders boarded the luxury Bombardier Challenger private jet at the Meadows Field Airport in Bakersfield, California, on Tuesday afternoon, according to a photo captured by a source on the ground and shared exclusively with Fox News Digital. Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez, whom the source also spotted boarding the private jet, spoke at their "Fighting Oligarchy" event in Bakersfield just hours earlier.
Flight records reveal the jet landed at Sacramento Mather Airport on Tuesday evening, which is about a 20-minute drive to Folsom, California, where the self-identified Democratic socialists hosted their second rally of the day.
The jet Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez were seen boarding made stops in Salt Lake City and Boise prior to landing in Bakersfield, according to flight records. The arrival dates match the duo's "Fighting Oligarchy" events in Salt Lake City and Nampa, which is about a 25-minute drive from Boise Airport.
BERNIE SANDERS, AOC AND OTHER ANTI-TRUMP PROGRESSIVES HAUL IN BIG BUCKS FOR 2026 MIDTERMS
A photo captured by a source on the ground, and shared exclusively with Fox News Digital, confirmed Bernie Sanders boarded the luxury Bombardier Challenger private jet at the Meadows Field Airport in Bakersfield, California, on Tuesday afternoon between stops on his "Fighting Oligarchy" tour with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. (Fox News Digital)
"Champagne socialists Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez demand Americans surrender their pick-up trucks, air conditioning and meat from the luxe leather seats of their private jets that cost more per hour than most Americans earn in months. Their hypocrisy is staggering," National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) spokesperson Ben Petersen said in a statement to Fox News Digital.
BERNIE SANDERS COMPARES TRUMP, MUSK AND OTHER 'OLIGARCHS' TO 'HEROIN ADDICTS,' SAYS DRUG OF CHOICE IS 'GREED'
The Bombardier Challenger private jet is operated by Ventura Air Services, which touts "one of the widest cabins of any business jet available today" and provides "superior cabin comfort for its passengers." According to their website, the private jet can cost up to $15,000 an hour.
Sanders has long been ridiculed for relying on luxury private planes while crisscrossing the country, warning Americans about climate change and the threats of billionaires seizing political power. Despite his Democratic socialist platform advocating for universal healthcare, the Green New Deal and ending wealth inequality, Sanders flying private has become infamous.
Sanders' campaign committee, Friends of Bernie Sanders, spent over $221,000 chartering private jets during the first quarter of 2025, according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings reviewed by Fox News Digital. The filing, which was released on Tuesday, shows that Sanders dropped the massive haul between three private jet companies: Ventura Jets, Cirrus Aviation Services and N-Jet.
Sen. Bernie Sanders waves to the crowd during a "Fighting Oligarchy" event in Los Angeles, Saturday, April 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
The six-figure spending on private jets this year follows Sanders spending over $1.9 million on private jets during his failed presidential campaign in 2020. A Fox News Digital review found that Sanders dished out almost $2 million to Apollo Jets and the Advanced Aviation Team, a Virginia-based private jet company.
Private jets have faced the ire of Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez's fellow climate activists. According to 2021 Transport and Environment report, private jets are up to 14 times more polluting than commercial planes.
"For real, how many private jets do these CEOs need? It is insatiable. It is unacceptable," Ocasio-Cortez said in 2023, in one example of the New York congresswoman herself railing against private jets.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez arrives to speak during a "Fighting Oligarchy" tour event at Arizona State University, March 20, 2025, in Tempe, Arizona. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)
Both Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez championed the Democrats' failed Green New Deal, the aggressive climate change policy targeting carbon emissions and fossil fuel production. Ocasio-Cortez proposed the controversial legislation in 2019, and Sanders designed his own Green New Deal plan during his 2020 presidential primary campaign.
Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez have welcomed massive crowds to their "Fighting Oligarchy" stops across the country. On Saturday, the two political leaders hosted what they said was their largest rally ever, with 36,000 people in Los Angeles.
Fox News Digital can confirm that Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez boarded a private jet at the Meadows Field Airport in Bakersfield, California, on Tuesday afternoon between stops on their "Fighting Oligarchy" events on the West Coast. (Getty/Fox News Digital)
Sanders started the "Fighting Oligarchy" tour in response to President Donald Trump's second term to "take on the Oligarchs and corporate interests who have so much power and influence in this country."
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Fox News Digital reached out to the offices of Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez for comment.
Deirdre Heavey is a politics writer for Fox News Digital.
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President Donald Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence shake hands at former President Carter's funeral
EXCLUSIVE: Former Vice President Mike Pence is urging House Republicans to stand firm against hiking takes on the country's top-earners, as sources tell Fox News Digital the White House is floating a millionaire tax hike proposal to offset the cost of eliminating taxes on overtime pay, tipped wages and retirees' Social Security.
Advancing American Freedom (AAF), the conservative policy advocacy group Pence launched in 2021, sent a letter to congressional Republicans, including House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Rep. Jason Smith, R-Mo., and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, advising Congress to "stand firm against tax hikes."
"President Trump and Republicans in Congress promised to make the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act permanent and work to secure further tax cuts. Republicans should stick to their promises and not pull pages from Kamala Harris' losing policy platform," AAF President Tim Chapman and Board Chairman Marc Short wrote in the letter, referring to Trump's 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which is set to expire this year.
WHITE HOUSE QUIETLY FLOATS MILLIONAIRE TAX HIKE PROPOSAL IN CONGRESS AS GOP LEADERS SIGNAL OPPOSITION
Former Vice President Mike Pence, left, is urging House Republicans to make President Donald Trump's 2017 tax cuts permanent. (Getty Images)
"The American people voted for tax cuts, not tax hikes. Advancing American Freedom calls on Republicans to swiftly renew the across-the-board tax cuts that unleashed prosperity during President Trump's first term and deliver on the promise to make America prosperous again," they wrote.
Pence added in a statement to Fox News Digital, "The Trump-Pence tax cuts lowered taxes across the board – for working families and businesses large and small. The results were historic. We got America's economy booming like never before and created more opportunity for all Americans. Republicans know that less taxes mean more jobs."
HAWLEY URGES REPUBLICANS TO CUT TAXES FOR WORKING-CLASS VOTERS WHO 'PUT TRUMP IN THE WHITE HOUSE'
Two sources familiar with the discussions told Fox News Digital that White House aides have been quietly floating a proposal to House Republicans that would raise the tax rate for people making more than $1 million to 40%. The plan is intended to mitigate the cost of Trump's ambitious 2024 campaign promise to cut taxes on overtime pay, tipped wages and retirees' Social Security.
The sources stressed the discussions were only preliminary, and the plan is one of many being discussed as congressional Republicans work on advancing Trump's "big, beautiful bill."
Pence responded to Fox News Digital's reporting on Wednesday, urging House Republicans to resist tax increases on the wealthy.
"Republicans Don't Raise Taxes. Republicans Cut Taxes," Pence responded on X. "Raising the Top Marginal Rate would be a Huge Tax Increase on Small Business America."
President Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House on March 31, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Getty Images)
Pence has often criticized Trump's policies during his second term, most recently critiquing Trump's tariff uncertainty, arguing even 10% tariffs would drive inflation higher and hurt American families. In a call for limited government, Pence also advocated for Congress to reclaim their authority over tariffs during remarks this week.
Trump's former vice president refused to endorse him in 2024. Pence, who himself launched a short-lived 2024 presidential campaign, unexpectedly dropped out of the race for the White House during remarks at the Republican Jewish Coalition's annual event in Las Vegas in October 2023. Trump spoke on the same stage soon after Pence's announcement without acknowledging the news.
Former Vice President Al Gore, left, watches as former Vice President Mike Pence, center, shakes hands with then-President-elect Donald Trump before a State Funeral Service for former President Jimmy Carter at the Washington National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 9, 2025. (Getty Images)
However, Trump and Pence were seen shaking hands at former President Jimmy Carter's funeral in December – their first public appearance together in nearly four years. Pence congratulated Trump on winning the 2024 election, despite refusing to endorse him.
Pence has distanced himself from his former boss since the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, when Pence defied Trump's wishes by affirming that former President Joe Biden rightly won the 2020 election. Rioters called for Pence to be hanged, and the former vice president has faced the ire of Trump's most loyal supporters ever since.
Republican presidential candidate former Vice President Mike Pence speaks at the Clinton County GOP Hog Roast on July 30, 2023 in Clinton, Iowa. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
The former vice president's campaign failed to gain traction as Trump's lead over the crowded Republican Party widened, and Republican voters proved they had not forgotten Pence's "disloyalty" to Trump during the attacks on the U.S. Capitol.
Pence ran on a traditional conservative platform, framing the future of the Republican Party against what he called the rise of "populism" in the party. Among the slim anti-Trump base of the Republican Party, Pence received praise for his courage on that day. As Pence campaigned in Iowa and New Hampshire, voters at town halls often thanked Pence for standing up to Trump.
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"Mike Pence stood for the Constitution. He deserves, not grudging credit. He deserves our thanks as Americans for putting his oath of office and the Constitution of the United States before personal, political and unfair pressure," former Gov. Chris Christie, R-N.J., the candidate who rejected Trump most during the Republican primary, said on the debate stage.
The White House did not respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment by deadline.
Deirdre Heavey is a politics writer for Fox News Digital.
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The Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board are investigating after a Frontier Airlines flight made a hard landing at Luis Marin International Airport in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on Tuesday.
Flight 3506, an Airbus A321, was arriving from Orlando International Airport when its first landing attempt failed.
Audio from the website Broadcast includes air traffic controllers alerting pilots of “debris on the runway” after an “aircraft landed a bit harsh.”
“The last aircraft that tried to land in San Juan hit the surface too hard and apparently (it) lost some things in the runway,” the controller explained to another pilot. “He has declared an emergency.”
Flight 3506 circled the airport and made two more attempts at landing, successfully touching down at 10:20 p.m. local time.
A number of other incoming planes had to land at other airports while Luis Marin International was closed.
Video from a passenger on the plane showed people onboard cheering as it finally landed.
“It was truly terrible. To fear for your life and not know what was going to happen, to not know if you were going to land safely or how everything was going to end,” Jeffrey Cerda said in a video he posted to Instagram. “The accidents happen, and we don't know when or how they'll happen. They're accidents and they happen the moment we least expect it.”
Passengers were deplaned on the taxiway and bussed to a terminal.
“The aircraft landed safely and there were no injuries to the passengers or crew,” Frontier Airlines said in a statement. “The incident is under investigation.”
CNN's Pete Muntean, Martin Goillandeau, Caroll Alvarado and David Williams contributed to this report
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'The Big Weekend Show' co-hosts discuss a Los Angeles judge allowing the Menendez brothers' resentencing hearing to move forward.
The Los Angeles District Attorney's Office filed a request late Wednesday to delay Thursday's resentencing hearing for Erik and Lyle Menendez.
District Attorney Nathan Hochman's office said in the filing that the resentencing hearings, set for Thursday and Friday, should be put on hold until the court obtains copies of comprehensive risk assessments for the brothers that were completed by state prison and parole officers.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom's office told Fox News in response that the comprehensive risk assessment is ongoing and will be completed on June 13, 2025. Per California legal regulations, one component of it has been released to the involved parties for their review 60 days before the clemency hearing and is subject to correction, his office said. Newsom's office said it notified Judge Michael Jesic of the status of this report, which is not a stand-alone risk assessment, and offered to share it with the court if he requests it.
It was not immediately clear if the DA's filing would affect Thursday's hearing, which is scheduled to start at 9:30 a.m. local time. The court said it would be addressed when the hearing begins.
MENENDEZ BROTHERS' FAMILY ACCUSES DA OF VIOLATING VICTIM PROTECTION LAW AFTER SHOWING GRAPHIC PHOTO IN COURT
Lyle, left, and Erik Menendez sit with defense attorney Leslie Abramson in Beverly Hills Municipal Court during a hearing on Nov. 26, 1990. (AP Photo/Nick Ut)
The Menendez brothers' discussed their push for freedom, decades after their parents' brutal murders, in a recent interview with TMZ.
In the feature, "TMZ Presents: The Menendez Brothers: The Prison Interview," both brothers were interviewed and discussed how prison has changed them and how they envision life outside of prison walls.
"We're very hopeful, we've done what we can with the time we've had," Lyle Menendez said in the interview.
"Hope for the future is kind of a new thing for us," he continued.
The scenes then show a young Erik and Lyle and the grisly crime scene they left behind in their Beverly Hills mansion in 1989 after killing their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez.
"It was almost the perfect murder," said former Beverly Hills Police Detective Tom Linehan.
Now, more than 35 years later, the fate of the brothers lies in the hands of a Los Angeles County judge, who legal experts say will have to answer two simple questions: Do Erik and Lyle pose an unreasonable risk to the public, and does he believe they have rehabilitated?
Linehan unequivocally said he would not trust them and what they did was the "worst, most heinous murder case" he has ever seen.
LOS ANGELES DA SLAMS MENENDEZ BROTHERS FOR ‘BUNKER OF LIES' AHEAD OF FIGHT AGAINST REDUCED SENTENCES
This combination of two booking photos provided by the California Department of Corrections shows Erik Menendez, left, and Lyle Menendez. (California Dept. of Corrections via AP, File)
"They are two of the most skilled liars and their notary is what sets them apart from other inmates in similar situations," Linehan said. "If things weren't going their way, they could do this again."
Hochman has also said he does not agree with the resentencing but is prepared to move forward.
Hochman has said that it is up to the court to factor in whether the "lack of acceptance of responsibility for their murderous actions" is enough to decide whether the Menendez brothers pose an unreasonable risk of danger to the community.
MENENDEZ BROTHERS RESENTENCING: WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?
"Though this pathway to resentencing has been offered to the Menendez brothers, they have chosen to stubbornly remain hunkered down in their over 30-year-old bunker of lies, deceit and denials," Hochman said.
However, family and other supporters of the Menendez brothers argued they have paid their dues and have changed.
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A former inmate, rapper X-Rated, who served 18 years with Lyle and Erik, said they do not belong in prison, even claiming his neighbor's dog was more dangerous than the Menendez brothers.
He added that they have helped him and many others get out of prison and rehabilitate in society, showing selflessness, knowing they had "no chance" of getting out while they were helping others.
GET REAL-TIME UPDATES DIRECTLY ON THE TRUE CRIME HUB
"The fact they did all this without getting anything in return says a lot," the rapper said.
Lyle said that he and Erik have developed a peace and patience that most people would not understand.
Erik admitted they were "spoiled brats" and that he suffered from severe insecurity issues. He added that he wants to be an advocate for other sexually abused victims, saying that "no one should have to be trapped" like he was.
Both Lyle and Erik Menendez have come forward in documentaries and on social media claiming their father sexually abused them, offering a different narrative of the killings than the story their attorneys told in the 1990s.
WATCH ON FOX NATION: MENENDEZ BROTHERS: VICTIMS OR VILLAINS?
The Menendez brothers, Erik, left, and Lyle, on the steps of their Beverly Hills home in November 1989. (Ronald L. Soble / Los Angeles Times)
They maintain they killed their parents in self-defense.
Their first trial ended in a mistrial, when jurors could not agree on their fate. After a second trial in the mid-1990s, in which some of their evidence about the alleged sexual abuse was excluded, jurors agreed with prosecutors that their motive was greed.
If the judge decides to resentence the Menendez brothers, it will then be up to the state parole board to consider their release.
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Because they were under 26 years old at the time of the murders, under current California law, new sentences of 50 years to life would immediately make them eligible for a parole hearing.
They are already scheduled to appear before the board on June 13 as part of a comprehensive risk assessment report ordered by Newsom, who is considering the brothers' clemency request – a separate potential path out of prison.
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Fox News' Michael Ruiz and Melissa Chrise contributed to this report.
Stepheny Price is a writer for Fox News Digital and Fox Business. She covers topics including missing persons, homicides, national crime cases, illegal immigration, and more. Story tips and ideas can be sent to stepheny.price@fox.com
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Fox News Digital was on hand for the opening of first lady Melania Trump's White House Garden Tours on April 6. Here are some of the beautiful scenes on the tour.
Americans coast to coast are rushing to obtain REAL IDs while many motor vehicle bureaus are grappling to accommodate appointments.
With the deadline of May 7 approaching, air travelers at domestic airports and people entering some federal buildings must have a REAL ID.
Some Americans are considering alternatives if they're struggling to get DMV appointments to obtain the new identification.
REAL ID APPOINTMENTS ADDED AS NEW JERSEY RESIDENTS STRUGGLE TO GET NEW IDENTIFICATION
On Monday in New Jersey, the Department of Motor Vehicles (NJDMV) website showed "0 appointments available" for REAL ID services on its site; it has now added additional time slots.
Virginia DMVs have launched Saturday events for people to get their REAL IDs, while some offices in California have extended their hours.
Some motor vehicle bureaus across the nation are offering extended hours and events for people to obtain REAL IDs as the deadline approaches. (iStock)
Other identification forms that will be accepted in lieu of a REAL ID are a valid U.S. passport or passport card; DHS trusted traveler cards such as Global Entry; Department of Defense IDs; permanent resident cards; and border crossing cards.
For those who do not have those IDs on hand, some AAA branches in six states are offering services to get a REAL ID.
NO 'REAL ID' APPOINTMENTS OPEN IN NEW JERSEY AS RESIDENTS SOUND OFF: ‘GET WITH THE TIMES, NJ'
"In Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New York, DMV/RMV services at AAA branches are free for all AAA members," the AAA site notes.
"In Connecticut, AAA members from outside AAA Northeast territory pay $6 for DMV services and non-members pay $8," the site adds.
An example of a REAL ID shows the gold star in the upper right-hand corner, as shared by TSA. (U.S. Transportation Security Administration)
The site says there is no additional cost for the REAL ID itself.
"If not at renewal, only the standard duplicate license fees would apply," states the site.
"AAA offers DMV services in 22 states, ranging from vehicle registrations, titling, tags, license renewals, issuing new licenses, and/or REAL ID," an AAA spokesperson told Fox News Digital on Wednesday.
"Got the passport card in addition to my book and I just carry that."
"Of those 22 states, 6 states offer REAL ID services: FL, KS, MA, MN, OH, and RI. Regulations regarding private organizations offering DMV services (and what type of services offered) vary by state," the spokesperson added.
AAA does not have plans to roll out DMV services in additional states, the organization said.
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The processing time for an expedited passport is two to three weeks with additional fees, according to the State Department's website.
Many Americans have taken to social media to share their frustrations, with some seeking more alternatives.
REAL IDs will be required starting May 7 in order for U.S. air travelers to fly domestically, leaving DMVs struggling to meet demand. (Lindsey Nicholson/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
"The REAL ID situation in Kentucky is such a sh--show that I'm completely bypassing it and just getting a passport next week," a man posted on X.
"To all the PANICANS, you do NOT need a REAL ID if you have a passport," posted one X user.
Another user responded, "That's what I did... Got the passport card in addition to my book and I just carry that."
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"I'm in SC and it was easier getting a passport," shared one X user.
A woman on X shared, "Not everyone wants, or needs, a REAL ID. A passport or passport card (less expensive) can be used for domestic air travel and entrance to restricted federal buildings."
Some Americans are ordering passports amid the REAL ID deadline in order to fly domestically. (Kurt "CyberGuy" Knutsson)
"If you need to switch and the DMV is too crazy where you are, just apply for a passport with the passport card, and you can use that instead," advised one user.
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A man posted, "Use your passport. It works when you don't have a REAL ID yet."
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Keyshawn Johnson breaks down the expectations for Caleb Williams heading into his second NFL season and whether he can meet the high bar set for him.
Caleb Williams, the top pick in last year's NFL Draft, experienced some highs and lows during his rookie season.
However, the Chicago Bears quarterback is speaking out on at least one of the ways he plans on approaching his second NFL season. Developing close friendships with fellow quarterbacks across the league is something Williams is simply not interested in.
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Chicago Bears quarterback Caleb Williams, #18, leaves the field after an 18-15 loss to the Washington Commanders in an NFL football game on Sunday, Oct. 27, 2024 in Landover, Maryland. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)
In an interview with Esquire, the Heisman Trophy winner acknowledged that other quarterbacks are "probably great guys." However, he is not necessarily prioritizing getting to know any of them on a personal level.
RANKING THE 11 BEST QB PROSPECTS SINCE 2023: HOW DO CAM WARD, SHEDEUR SANDERS STACK UP?
Williams' rationale centered around his belief that having a strong bond with counterparts could cause him to lose his competitive edge. "I think the NFL game has become very friendly, and I don't necessarily want to be friends, because I want to keep that competitive advantage," he said.
Chicago Bears quarterback Caleb Williams, #18, throws a pass during the fourth quarter against the Green Bay Packers at Lambeau Field. (Jeff Hanisch-Imagn Images)
The Bears finished last season with a disappointing 5-12 record. The Bears relieved Matt Eberflus of his head coaching duties in November, just one day after he received considerable blame for mismanaging the clock in a 23-20 loss to the Detroit Lions.
Eberflus' nearly three-year tenure in the Windy City was marred by a flurry of last-second losses and ended with a six-game losing streak. Thomas Brown then became interim head coach. Chicago hired Ben Johnson in January.
The Bears made a flurry of additions to its roster once the NFL free agency period opened last month. The team bolstered its offensive line by acquiring center Drew Dalman and guards Joe Thuney and Jonah Jackson.
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Williams made it clear that winning is the top expectation in 2025. "The plan is to go win big," Williams said.
Follow Fox News Digital's sports coverage on X, and subscribe to the Fox News Sports Huddle newsletter.
Chantz Martin is a sports writer for Fox News Digital.
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Imagine a world without the internet, or GPS, MRNA vaccines or the touchscreen on your iPhone. The science and technology that have become integral to our daily lives may never have existed, experts say, were it not for research funded by the federal government at American colleges and universities.
But as President Trump's administration threatens to withhold billions of dollars in federal funding from colleges across the nation, the future of innovations like those – and America's global leadership in research and development – could be at stake.
“It's not hyperbole to say we could destroy a generation's worth of scientific progress in this administration,” Jon Fansmith, senior vice president of government relations at the American Council on Education, told CNN.
“The implications are huge for every American, regardless of your political viewpoints.”
Related article
DHS threatens to revoke Harvard's eligibility to host international students unless it turns over disciplinary records
The Trump administration appears determined to bring America's most elite universities in lockstep with his political ideology by threatening to withhold research funding that has proven critical for the universities.
Harvard University is locked in a standoff with the administration over $2 billion in multi-year grants and contracts for the school. The Ivy League school “will not surrender its independence or its constitutional rights” by giving in to a bevy of demands from the administration in order to maintain its funding levels, the university's president, Alan Garber, has said.
But other universities have struck a less defiant tone. Fansmith said some colleges can survive without federal funding – but not for long.
“When you get to hundreds of millions, billions of dollars – no institution, no matter how big their endowment, could sustain that kind of a loss over an extended period of time,” he said.
Universities are like small cities with thousands of faculty members, students and researchers depending on the school to survive. But no two colleges are funded in the same way.
Public universities often rely on revenue from tuition and donations as well as money from state and local governments to provide the bulk of their funding.
Private universities are different. Because they don't receive financial support from the state, private schools lean heavily on donations.
Take Harvard, for instance. Last year, philanthropy accounted for 45% of the school's revenue. But the majority of that money came from one source: the university's centuries-old endowment.
Harvard, founded in 1636, is the oldest private university in the country and the school has received donations for nearly four centuries. Those gifts have helped the university amass an endowment worth $53 billion in 2024 – the largest of any university in the country.
But that doesn't mean Harvard – or any other school with an endowment – can access and spend that money freely.
Endowments are meant to literally fund a university forever. So there are rules limiting how much money a school can withdraw from its endowment each year.
Last year, a $2.4 billion distribution from Harvard's endowment accounted for more than a third of the university's funding. But crucially, the university said 80% of that money was restricted for specific purposes, like financial aid, professorships and specific scholarships within certain schools.
“If I decide to endow a chair in the English department, the institution is legally not allowed to use that money for some other purpose,” Fansmith said, adding universities “don't have the flexibility to just shift (donations) to other purposes if they think it's a more pressing need.”
That's where the federal government – and its commitment to funding academic research – comes in.
Johns Hopkins University “receives more money than any other entity in the US” from the National Institutes of Health. Last year, Hopkins received $1 billion in funding from the agency.
Harvard received $686 million in federal funding to conduct research in fiscal year 2024.
Related article
Harvard weighs its next moves amid the federal funding standoff
But all of that could vanish overnight if the Trump administration follows through with its threats to withhold funds. Hopkins has already cut thousands of employees after dramatic cuts to USAID cost it $800 million in funding.
But the federal government hasn't always played such a critical role in academic research. World War II fundamentally changed the relationship between the government and colleges and universities in the United States.
Before the war, American industrialists like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller created their own universities and financed research.
But President Franklin Roosevelt believed scientific advancements would be crucial to winning the war. So, in 1941, he signed an executive order to create the Office of Scientific Research and Development. He tasked Vannevar Bush, the former dean of the MIT School of Engineering, with marshalling the country's top scientists and researchers to create more advanced weapons and technology.
The OSRD funded research programs at universities across the nation – including the Manhattan Project – and the work of these scientists and researchers led to the creation of not only the atomic bomb but also radar and crucial advances in medicine and other military technology.
The office was disbanded after the war, but the partnership between the federal government and colleges and universities helped place the nation at the forefront of global scientific innovation. And that relationship has endured for more than 70 years, until now.
Today, agencies like the National Institutes of Health, Department of Defense, National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy are the largest funders of academic research at universities across the nation, said Toby Smith, senior vice president for government relations at the Association of American Universities.
But the money doesn't go straight into Columbia or Harvard's bank accounts. Instead, the colleges and universities across the nation apply and compete for federal grants to conduct research, which Fansmith said enables the government to fund the best researchers at the lowest cost.
Federal funding also helps cover the majority of costs for maintaining research facilities, a cost-sharing system that has been in place since Bush and the creation of the OSRD.
In essence, Smith said, universities are akin to national laboratories.
“When you take money away from a Columbia or a Harvard or research or other institutions, you've just taken away funds from the best researchers who were judged by other scientists to do that research on behalf of the American people – in areas like cancer, Alzheimer's, pediatrics, diabetes, and other critical research areas,” Smith said.
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Many advances in science, he added, were discovered inadvertently by researchers who received federal grants. In fact, the annual “Golden Goose” award recognizes these innovations that have had life-changing impacts.
Thanks to funding from the National Science Foundation, economics researchers who were studying markets helped develop the chain model for kidney donations. In 2012, researchers Alvin Roth and Lloyd Shapley shared the Nobel Prize for economics.
Scientists studying rats at Duke University, funded by the NIH, uncovered a breakthrough that led to the practice of “infant massage” and forever changed neonatal care for premature infants. It has saved countless lives.
That is what's at stake, Smith said, if the US were to halt its federal funding to colleges and universities.
“At the end of the day, (the US) won't have that knowledge,” he said. “Other countries will overtake us in science and resulting technology, if we don't recognize and protect the unique system that we have in place.”
And ultimately, he said, the American people will lose.
© 2025 Cable News Network. A Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All Rights Reserved. CNN Sans ™ & © 2016 Cable News Network.
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.
Gatestone Institute senior fellow Gordon Chang discusses President Donald Trump's tariff strategy and the threat of Chinese hackers to U.S. national security on ‘Fox News Live.'
"There are no winners in a trade war or a tariff war," wrote Xi Jinping this week. If he's talking about China, he's absolutely right. Across the board, the Chinese will suffer.
In America, the story will be different. When the dust settles on President Donald Trump's tariffs, there will be 340.1 million people much better off.
For more than four decades, China's regime has been implementing predatory and criminal trade practices. For various reasons, the U.S. and other countries have let matters slide.
President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping
Trump in his first term, in 2018, fired a warning shot with his 25% tariffs. Unfortunately, the Chinese regime did not take the hint. This month he raised the general tariff rate on China's goods to 145%.
10 TOUGH TRUMP TARIFF QUESTIONS CRITICS DON'T WANT TO ANSWER
Trump's trade actions could not have come at a worse time for Xi.
As an initial matter, his economy is stumbling. It cannot be growing at the 5.4% pace reported Wednesday for the first quarter of this year. Price data for March – the Consumer Price Index was negative for the second-straight month and the Producer Price Index was negative for the 30th-straight month – indicates the country has entered a deflationary spiral. That phenomena suggests the economy is now contracting and will do so for some time.
And it's going to get worse. Xi Jinping, despite what his technocrats say, does not want consumption to form the foundation of the Chinese economy. In fact, consumption's share of gross domestic product – an abnormally low 38% last year – is now falling. In these circumstances, Xi's only way to rescue an increasingly grim situation is to export more.
Yet Trump's elevated tariffs close off the U.S. market to most Chinese goods. The U.S. accounts for more than a third of global consumer spending.
TRUMP'S TARIFF WAR WITH BEIJING IS PART OF A MULTI-PRONG STRATEGY TO SECURE AMERICA FROM A MUCH BROADER THREAT
Worse for Xi Jinping, Trump's tariffs are helping end the fast globalization that has marked the post-Cold War period.
"Due to many reasons, the world has been deglobalizing for years," trade expert Alan Tonelson told Fox News. "Now, the Trump Liberation Day tariffs are greatly speeding up the process, and further threatening the well-being of the People's Republic of China and other export-led economies."
As Tonelson, who blogs on trade at RealityChek suggests, the world is de-integrating. "The Russian invasion of Ukraine has put an end to the globalization we have experienced over the last three decades," wrote Larry Fink in his March 24, 2022, letter to BlackRock shareholders. The world's largest asset manager – BlackRock has $11.6 trillion under management – suggested the Ukraine war killed globalization because globalization had already been weakened by the COVID pandemic, which had lessened connectivity among nations, among companies and among people.
In this deglobalizing world, other countries will not allow China to flood their markets with goods the Chinese would have otherwise sold to America. Those markets are not large enough to absorb those goods and, in any event, they will not permit China to decimate their local industries.
China will be hurt. Even now, export factories in southern China, with nothing in their order books, are closing. Workers have begun to return to hometowns, many to subsist on farms.
WHY US MUST ASSERT INDUSTRIAL DOMINANCE IN LIGHT OF CHINA-EUROPE TIES
The downturn in the export sector is occurring while the country is essentially having its 2008. In 2008, Hu Jintao, Xi's predecessor, decided to avoid a downturn by embarking on what was then the biggest stimulus program in history. In the process, China took on an enormous amount of debt. Today, China's total-country-debt-to-GDP ratio could be as high as an unsustainable 375%.
As a result, there have been for four years a series of high-profile debt defaults, especially in the property sector. Prices of flats in China have tumbled, a social stability issue: Approximately 70% of household wealth is in property.
And if all of this were not bad enough, Trump has picked this moment to begin challenging China's mighty export sector with tariffs.
The obvious course of action for Xi Jinping would be to pick up the phone to call 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. He has, however, made it clear that he won't be doing that.
"China wants to make a deal," Trump said last Wednesday. "They just don't know how quite to go about it."
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No Xi Jinping doesn't. And it's not hard to figure out why something so easy is in fact so hard.
Xi has configured the Chinese political system so that only the most hostile answers are considered acceptable. As a result, he cannot now back down or make concessions for fear that will lead to a challenge to his leadership. There are already signs of discontent with his rule, especially in the top ranks of the military.
Xi remains intransigent. "China does not flinch from any unjust suppression," he proclaimed during his meeting with visiting Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on April 11.
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So Xi has boxed himself in. For him, there are no good outcomes. If he does not compromise, the Chinese economy will fail. If he compromises, he will fail.
For China's willful leader, the choice is easy: He will not initiate talks with Trump. China, as a consequence, will bear the consequences.
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Gordon G. Chang is the author of "Plan Red: China's Project to Destroy America" and "The Coming Collapse of China." Follow him on X @GordonGChang.
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"Zero Day" star Eden Lee, who balances her acting career with working as an ER nurse, explained why she doesnt plan to give up her day job.
"Zero Day" star Eden Lee is balancing saving lives as a real-life emergency room nurse with her rising career in Hollywood.
The 34-year-old actress, who works in the ER at Atrium Health Union in Monroe, North Carolina, landed her first major role in the new Netflix political thriller limited series starring Robert De Niro.
During an interview with Fox News Digital, Lee explained why she decided to pursue acting while continuing to serve her community as an emergency medical professional.
"Acting is something I've always wanted to do ever since I was younger," she said. "It wasn't something that was particularly encouraged. It was seen as more of a hobby."
"Zero Day" star Eden Lee opened up about balancing her acting career with her job as an ER nurse. (Netflix/JoJo Wilden | Eden Lee)
"And so when I started settling into my career a couple years into working in the ER, I was very happy," she continued. "I found my now-husband. I was feeling very fulfilled in my career, yet subsequently I felt like... something was missing.
ROBERT DE NIRO, 79, SAYS HE'S MORE ‘AWARE' OF CERTAIN ‘FAMILY DYNAMICS' AS AN OLDER PARENT
"And so I started looking around and realized I now have the luxury of being a grown-up and making my own choices because I make my own money and let's see what acting classes do for me."
Lee, who graduated from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte with a bachelor's degree in nursing, told Fox News Digital that she initially planned to attend medical school. However, she decided that she wanted to "get to the bedside quicker," so she declared nursing as her major.
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The New York native launched her acting career in 2017. She appeared in a string of short films before making her streaming debut in the 2021 Fox Nation holiday movie "Christmas in the Pines."
Over the past few years, Lee racked up acting credits with guest appearances on TV shows like "The Resident," "Dynasty," "She-Hulk: Attorney at Law," "Twisted Metal," "First Wives Club," "Found" and "Parish."
Lee also took on roles in the 2022 action film "County Line: No Fear" and the 2023 coming-of-age movie "Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret," based on Judy Blume's 1970 novel of the same name.
WATCH: ‘ZERO DAY' STAR EDEN LEE SAYS SHE WON'T GIVE UP ER NURSE DAY JOB ‘ANYTIME SOON'
While speaking with Fox News Digital, Lee shared how she juggles her acting gigs with shifts in the ER.
"Luckily, I've been an ER nurse for 12 years now, so I have a loyalty to my department, and my department has a loyalty for me, and so I'm offered a lot of flexibility and freedom to pursue my career," she said.
Lee recently told the Charlotte Observer that as a PRN nurse, she works on an "as-needed" basis, which has enabled her to more easily divide her time between her two professions.
She explained to Fox News Digital that managing her busy schedule is a "matter of balancing it from week to week."
"I pick my schedule at work in a way that suits me and suits my auditioning schedule, and if there's ever times where I need to take an extended leave of absence, my department is very accommodating of that," Lee said.
Lee is starring alongside Robert De Niro in the new Netflix series. (Netflix/JoJo Wilden)
Though Lee has now established herself as a working actress, she told Fox News Digital that she doesn't foresee hanging up her scrubs in the near future.
"I've been working professionally for a few years and, so luckily and thankfully, I have the luxury of honestly letting my nursing job go," she said. "And my husband has from time to time been like, ‘You should just quit. Why are you still going?'"
"And I worked really hard for this thing too," Lee continued. "So emergency nursing feels very much a part of me as acting does."
Lee said she enjoys each of her vocations equally, adding, "Obviously, there's one I'm pursuing with a little bit more fervor, but I don't see myself letting go of nursing anytime soon."
The actress went on to say that she sees parallels between her two occupations, noting that they both require "empathy."
"I tell people all the time on both sides, whether it's acting or in nursing, that I find that they inform each other very well," she said. "Obviously, when I'm working as a nurse and working at the bedside, empathy and compassion is a big part of doing what I do."
"And subsequently, I feel like working as an actor is a constant practice of empathy as well," Lee continued. "And on my bad days, you know, I got to be a real good actor at work, too."
Lee has been an ER nurse for 12 years. (Courtesty of Eden Lee)
Lee recalled that there have been a "couple of times" when she has had to use her ER nursing skills while working on sets.
"There was a show that I got hired on to play a nurse and I realized very quickly when I got there that they were also in need of a little bit of medical expertise when it came down to handling some of the equipment," she said.
"Emergency nursing feels very much a part of me as acting does."
Additionally, Lee told Fox News Digital that she stepped in to help an injured actor during the filming of one of her projects.
"There's been an instance on a smaller scale working on a short film project with a friend of mine," she said. "We had an actor get hurt when he was on set, and between the time it took for our onset medic to get there and between him getting injured, I was able to lend a hand in a situation that felt very crisis-like for a lot of people there."
WATCH: ACTRESS EDEN LEE RECALLS USING ER NURSING SKILLS TO HELP INJURED ACTOR IN ‘CRISIS-LIKE' SITUATION ON SET
Lee told Fox News Digital that the "toughest part" of working as an ER nurse is "realizing over and over again that we live in a world that is less than ideal."
"I feel very fortunate to be very well tied into my community, but at the same time, it is a privilege, but it's also really hard to see all the things that people who don't work in healthcare are not privy to," she said.
"And so I feel like my biggest struggle is realizing that the state of our country is the way that it is and, hopefully, what I do and how I participate in it is making it better," Lee added.
The actress said she has no plans to give up her nursing job "anytime soon." (Eden Lee Instagram)
"Zero Day," which was released on Feb. 20, follows a "former US President, George Mullen (De Niro}, who is called out of retirement to investigate a devastating cyberattack," which becomes known as "Zero Day," according to a plot synopsis for the show.
"As he delves into the event, he uncovers a web of lies, conspiracies, and personal betrayals that threaten to unravel the nation."
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Along with Lee and De Niro, the six-episode miniseries features an ensemble cast that includes Angela Bassett, Lizzy Caplan, Jesse Plemons, Connie Britton, Joan Allen, Bill Camp, Dan Stevens, Matthew Modine and McKinley Belcher III.
"Zero Day" marks De Niro's first leading role in a TV series. The two-time Academy Award winner also executive produced the show along with creators Eric Newman, Noah Oppenheim, and Michael Schmidt as well as director Lesli Linka Glatter and Miramax CEO Jonathan Glickman.
In a recurring role, Lee portrays Special Agent Angela Kim, who heads the FBI National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force. Kim joins the Zero Day Commission, which is led by Mullen, as they work to uncover the culprits and motives behind the deadly cyberattack.
WATCH: ROBERT DE NIRO'S ‘ZERO DAY' CO-STAR EDEN LEE REFLECTS ON WORKING WITH ACTOR
During her interview with Fox News Digital, Lee reflected on her experience working with De Niro.
"I couldn't in my wildest dreams ever imagine that I would be working with Robert De Niro," she said.
ROBERT DE NIRO, 79, WELCOMES HIS 7TH CHILD
She continued, "I think every actor has this bucket list that in our wildest dream we would get to do, like go to the Oscars and work with Robert De Niro and Meryl Streep and so on. This wasn't even on my bingo card."
"And working with him was such an eye-opening experience," Lee added. "I think for me, my biggest takeaway in working with him is realizing that working really hard and being a kind person are really the key factors to making sure that you have a long and successful career."
Lee plays an FBI agent in "Zero Day." (Netflix/JoJo Wilden)
Lee also shared what surprised her most about working with the "Taxi Driver" star.
"I think the thing that we as aspiring actors and looking up to people like Robert De Niro, we make some assumption that these people are infallible, and they're perfect, and they must show up camera-ready every single day," she said.
"On our early mornings, if there were days when he would trip up a couple of lines or things like that, it was just really eye-opening, right? It's a consistent practice of showing up and working really hard," Lee added. "But he comes in ready every single day, which is very impressive."
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Lee noted that she didn't ask for any advice or "sage wisdom" from the veteran actor.
"He's generally, I believe, a very introverted person. And so between takes and stuff, he keeps to himself," she said. "I felt like watching him work was probably the best way to learn what I should be doing."
The actress said working with De Niro was "eye-opening." (ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images)
Following "Zero Day," Lee is continuing to line up new acting projects.
The actress told Fox News Digital that she recently wrapped filming on the independent film "Bedford Park," the first directorial outing for writer and editor Stephanie Ahn. Lee said she is playing a small supporting role in the movie, which she described as "more of a coming-of-age romantic drama" that is "based on two Korean-American leads."
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As a Korean-American herself, Lee shared that it was "super important for me to make it into that project."
Lee also shared that she will be traveling to Atlanta to film a guest appearance in the long-running Canadian TV series "Murdoch Mysteries."
"And so hopefully the train just keeps chugging along," she said.
"Zero Day" is streaming on Netflix now.
Ashley Hume is an entertainment writer for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to ashley.hume@fox.com and on Twitter: @ashleyhume
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The United States deployed B-1B bombers to East Asia earlier this week for multiple geopolitical assignments, first in South Korea and then in Japan.
First, the long-range bombers participated in joint military drills with jets from South Korea on Tuesday, an operation that drew the ire of North Korean government officials. The military aerial collaboration reportedly occurred on the 113th birthday of the country's first leader, Kim Il Sung, an important anniversary in the country's culture.
The Air Force issued a release regarding the joint drills and emphasized the importance of the continued cooperation between the U.S. and South Korea.
“Two U.S. Air Force B-1 Lancers and two F-16 Fighting Falcons joined two Republic of Korea Air Force F-35A Lightning IIs and KF-16s for combined training in airspace over western ROK April 15,” the release read. “The fighters and bombers engaged in offensive and defensive counter-air training together, refining combined tactics, techniques, and procedures. The bombers then performed a low pass over the flightline of Osan AB before departing Korean airspace.”
“Regular training with strategic assets like long-range bombers and fifth-generation fighters enables Seventh Air Force to maintain its strong, combined readiness posture with the Republic of Korea Air Force and demonstrates its continued ironclad commitment to the ROK-U.S. Alliance,” the release noted.
Additionally, CBS News reported that South Korea's Defense Ministry announced the drills were meant to enhance “operational capabilities” between the two countries and promote deterrence against any possible North Korean aggression. The communist country on the Korean peninsula has fired multiple ballistic missiles in recent months. North Korean government officials said the launches were a sign of their own deterrence against the U.S.
North Korean state media blasted the joint military operation, considering it an act of aggression. Reuters reported that a spokesman for North Korea's defense ministry called the drills “reckless bluffing.”
NO MORE UNION TIME ON TAXPAYER DIME
“The recent military move of the U.S. and the ROK is an open threat to the security of our state,” the spokesperson said.
Later, the same B-1B bombers flew to Misawa Air Base in Japan to participate in the “U.S. Air Force's first-ever Bomber Task Force rotation based in Japan.” The presence of the bomber planes marked an increase in U.S. aerial military might in the Indo-Pacific, reported Air & Space Forces Magazine. It's also the first time since the Vietnam War era that there were U.S. bombers in Japan. During that time, B-52 bombers were at Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan.
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US Sen. Chris Van Hollen told reporters in El Salvador Wednesday that he was unable to visit Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia in the maximum-security mega-prison where he is being held.
Instead, the Democrat announced he met with the Salvadoran vice president and vowed to “keep pressing” for answers and the man's release.
“There will be more members of Congress coming,” Van Hollen said in an emotional media availability. “This is an unsustainable and unjust moment, so it cannot continue.”
The March deportation of Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national and Maryland resident, has become a flashpoint in the fight over the Trump administration's hardline deportation push. The administration conceded in court filings that it had mistakenly deported the father of three to El Salvador last month as part of its recent deportation flights to the Central American nation, which are now at the center of a fraught legal battle.
Van Hollen said he specifically asked Salvadoran Vice President Felix Ulloa if he could meet with Abrego Garcia or at least speak with him over the phone or via video conferencing. Again, Van Hollen said the request was denied.
Pressed on whether he had concerns about the man's health, Van Hollen said: “I don't know about his health status which is why I wanted to meet with him directly.”
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What to know about Abrego Garcia's deportation case
The senator's trip swiftly drew the ire of the White House.
Communications director Steven Cheung called Van Hollen “a complete disgrace” and the Office of Communications accused the senator in a statement of a lack of concern regarding crimes they say were committed by undocumented immigrants against his constituents. Abrego Garcia has not been charged with any crimes in the United States, according to his lawyers.
While Abrego Garcia had not been legally in the US prior to his deportation, a 2019 court order said he could not be returned to El Salvador and the Trump administration admitted in court documents he was deported there due to a clerical error.
In recent days, however, Trump administration officials have denied that he was mistakenly deported. US officials have alleged he is a member of the MS-13 gang, which the administration has designated as a foreign terrorist organization – a claim his attorneys dispute and at least one federal judge has voiced skepticism toward.
The Wednesday meeting, Van Hollen said, started with a “point of agreement” that the countries should work together to “crack down” on gangs like MS-13. However, he said the case of Abrego Garcia “does not have to do with MS-13.”
Despite a Supreme Court ruling that the US must “facilitate” Abrego Garcia's return, White House officials have argued it's up to El Salvador whether to do so. The Trump administration and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele made clear during an Oval Office meeting earlier this week that the Maryland man wouldn't be returned to the US.
Bukele said during the meeting that while he has the power to release Abrego Garcia, he wasn't willing to do so.
Officials in the Oval Office meeting, including President Donald Trump, made no effort to ask for his cooperation in the matter.
Van Hollen said Wednesday that the Salvadoran vice president had echoed comments made by Bukele at the White House that El Salvador “can't smuggle” Abrego Garcia to the US.
“I said I am not asking him to smuggle Mr. Abrego Garcia into the United States, I am simply asking him to open the door of CECOT and let this innocent man walk out,” the senator said.
Bukele has no plans to meet with the Democratic senator currently visiting the country, a high-level source close to Bukele told CNN.
According to the source CNN spoke with, a tour of the maximum security prison Cecot may be arranged for US lawmakers, but they are not expected to be granted access to Abrego Garcia himself — as El Salvador does not permit individual visits with inmates at the facility.
This story has been updated with additional developments.
CNN's CNN's David Culver, Priscilla Alvarez, Elise Hammond, Devan Cole and Emily Condon contributed to this report.
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When President Donald Trump named Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as his choice to lead the US Department of Health and Human Services, one group of health researchers was cautiously optimistic that their cause would finally have a champion at the highest levels of government: those focused on food and nutrition.
“These are the kinds of things I've been saying and writing about for decades!” Marion Nestle, a prominent food policy researcher, wrote in November of some of Kennedy's stated Make America Healthy Again goals: removing ultraprocessed foods from schools, restricting purchases of soda with Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits and ridding government agencies of conflicts of interest.
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Ultraprocessed foods make up to 70% of the US food supply. How to reduce your intake
Dr. Kevin Hall, a senior investigator at the US National Institutes of Health conducting some of the world's only controlled trials on ultraprocessed foods, shared that optimism.
“When I saw the MAHA movement gaining bipartisan support last year, it was music to my ears,” Hall wrote in a letter late last month to Kennedy and incoming NIH Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya. “I thought that after years of defunding human clinical research to understand metabolic disease perhaps NIH might finally prioritize the studies needed to uncover its root causes.”
Instead, Hall announced his early retirement Wednesday, after 21 years at the NIH, in a post on social media, citing censorship of communication of his research findings.
“Recent events have made me question whether NIH continues to be a place where I can freely conduct unbiased science,” Hall wrote, noting that it's been his “life's work” to “scientifically study how our food environment affects what we eat, and how what we eat affects our physiology” and that, given the new administration's interest in those issues, he'd hoped to expand that research program.
But instead, the post continued, “I experienced censorship in the reporting of our research because of agency concerns that it did not appear to fully support preconceived narratives of my agency's leadership about ultra-processed food addiction.”
Hall said he'd hoped that “was an aberration,” prompting him to write to his agency's leadership asking to discuss those issues. He said he never received a response.
“It's disappointing that this individual is fabricating false claims,” an HHS spokesperson told CNN on Wednesday. “NIH scientists have, and will, continue to conduct interviews regarding their research through written responses or other means. We remain committed to promoting gold-standard research and advancing public health priorities. Any attempt to paint this as censorship is a deliberate distortion of the facts.”
Hall's letter to Kennedy and Bhattacharya, which circulated both within government and in external research circles and was obtained by CNN, sheds more light on what led to the departure of a key nutrition researcher from an administration that has said it's dedicated to improving the nation's nutrition.
Hall requested a discussion with the health leaders of ideas to advance studies into how the food supply contributes to rising chronic disease rates - a common focus of Kennedy and the MAHA movement - and serious concerns about significant disruptions to research and censorship of communications of his findings.
“We have been hobbled on several occasions with intermittent inability to purchase food for our study participants or obtain research supplies,” he told Kennedy and Bhattacharya in the March 28 letter. “The future of our studies seems bleak given the inability to replace outgoing trainees who are the workhorses of our research.”
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Further, Hall wrote, “I've also experienced incidences of censorship in my ability to discuss our research.”
“Most concerning,” he said, “was a recent intervention by a HHS communications director regarding media coverage of our study on brain responses to ultra-processed foods.”
The study, published March 4 in the journal Cell Metabolism, used brain imaging to see whether consuming ultraprocessed milkshakes high in fat and sugar caused reactions in dopamine similar to addictive drugs.
“Surprisingly,” Hall and his team wrote in the paper, they didn't, at least not large enough to be picked up on PET scans.
“HHS denied an interview request from the New York Times and contacted the reporter directly to downplay our study results because our data might be viewed as failing to support preconceived HHS narratives about ultra-processed food addiction,” Hall said in the letter. “My written responses to the reporter's questions were edited and submitted without my approval.”
An HHS spokesperson denied that Hall's responses were edited. CNN viewed copies of the written responses, which showed that an approved version sent to a reporter had added a line suggesting the study was small, with 50 participants. Hall noted Wednesday that, in fact, it was actually the largest of its kind.
It's not the first time a Trump administration is said to have attempted to interfere with communication of health information from its agencies; in September 2020, a federal health official told CNN that Trump appointees had pushed to change language in the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's weekly reports so they didn't undermine the president's political message during the Covid-19 pandemic.
But Bhattacharya, who was sworn in as NIH director on April 1, has said it is a key priority to end what he sees as censorship at the federal research agency, claiming during his confirmation hearing that the Biden administration sought to censor him for divergent views on how to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic.
“We'll never use this agency to censor scientists who disagree,” Bhattacharya said in an interview on Fox News. “If scientists are censored, we actually can't have excellent science.”
And food and nutrition researchers had high hopes for Kennedy, despite the broader public health world's deep concerns about his history of spreading misinformation about vaccines - worries that have only increased as a deadly measles outbreak grows in Texas and surrounding states.
On food, Kennedy's priorities have appeared more aligned with most academic health researchers'.
“I was hoping the administration would come in and say … ‘this is a big priority for us. We want to do this kind of study,' ” said Jerold Mande, who served in food and nutrition policy roles in the administrations of George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and is now an adjunct professor of nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and CEO of the nonprofit Nourish Science. “They've said it's a priority: In order to take steps to make a difference here, we need the science.”
What sets Hall's work apart, Mande said, is that he runs randomized, controlled clinical trials - considered the gold standard of research - to understand the effects of ultraprocessed foods on the body. Ultraprocessed foods are those that include industrially created ingredients that can't be made in a regular home kitchen and are estimated to make up about 70% of the US food supply.
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Americans love ultraprocessed foods. Science wants to know why
These kinds of trials are especially difficult to do in nutrition because participants' environments must be tightly controlled so their food can be monitored down to the gram; in Hall's studies, participants live at the NIH clinical center - essentially a hospital - for weeks at a time.
The results of Hall's first such trial were published in 2019 and showed that people who ate a diet of mostly ultraprocessed foods consumed an additional 500 calories a day and gained about 2 pounds, on average, over the course of two weeks, compared with when they ate diets composed mainly of minimally processed foods, matched for nutrients.
The study “helped provide the causal link in the established epidemiological association between obesity and diets high in ultra-processed foods,” Hall told Kennedy and Bhattacharya in his letter.
Nestle, a professor emerita at New York University and author of the book “Food Politics,” called it one of the most important nutrition studies done since the discovery of vitamins.
Hall, whose best-known work also includes a series of studies following the outcomes of participants in the show “The Biggest Loser,” has been in the midst of a follow-up study at NIH to understand what it is about ultraprocessed foods that causes people to overeat them. That's despite, he wrote in his letter, a 30% cut to the beds in the NIH clinical center available to conduct the trials.
“His study raises this question – ‘What if it is the processing?' ” – that drives overeating of ultraprocessed foods, Mande said. “Then you have an administration coming in that's saying the same thing, and you have a great story for them to tell: that the last administration dragged its feet on this. Kevin's study was done, in 2019 it came out; it should have been replicated the next year, and hasn't been.”
Hall wrote that interim results from the ongoing study “suggest that we are making substantial progress identifying exactly how ultra-processed foods cause overeating and weight gain,” but he notes that “there is still so much more to learn.”
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During his confirmation hearings, Kennedy told lawmakers that the most important action the federal government could take to improve the nation's nutrition would be “to deploy NIH and FDA to [do] the research to understand the relationship between these different food additives and chronic disease, so that Americans understand it.”
“You should know what the impacts are on your family and on your health,” Kennedy said.
Just over two months after Kennedy was sworn in, Hall – the NIH's top nutrition researcher working on those answers – is leaving.
In his letter, Hall noted “the short time period” of deadlines to accept voluntary early retirement, part of the federal government's push to shed workers; HHS said it cut 25% of its staff through a combination of voluntary departures like Hall's and a mass Reduction in Force this month.
In his social media post Wednesday, Hall said he “felt compelled to accept early retirement to preserve health insurance for my family,” noting that he'd lose that benefit if he resigned later “in protest of any future meddling or censorship.”
He said he doesn't have plans for next steps in his career, given how quickly he had to make the decision. But in both his post and his letter to Kennedy and Bhattacharya, he emphasized that he hopes to go back.
“Perhaps I could soon return to government service and lead an effort to expand on our research to rapidly determine what are the most important factors in our toxic food environment that are making Americans chronically sick,” Hall wrote last month.
For now, he said, his experiences “have led me to believe that NIH may be a difficult place to continue the gold-standard unbiased science required to inform the needed transformation of our food supply to make Americans healthy.”
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Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has declassified a Biden administration plan to counter domestic terrorism established in the months following the Jan. 6 Capitol riots.
Gabbard declassified former President Joe Biden's Strategic Implementation Plan for Countering Domestic Terrorism at the prompting of conservative groups, including America First Legal.
AFL wrote in a letter to Gabbard on April 2 about its concerns regarding the Biden administration's “weaponization” of its power in the name of maintaining national security through “censoring disfavored speech on the Internet by labeling such speech ‘misinformation,' ‘disinformation,' ‘hate speech,' ‘domestic terrorism.'”
Gabbard wrote on X on April 5 in response to the AFL letter thanking the group “for your work.”
“We are already on this, and look forward to declassifying this and other instances of the government being weaponized against Americans,” she wrote, vowing to “bring transparency and accountability to end the weaponization of our intelligence community.”
The 15-page declassified plan from June 2021 established four pillars it hoped to achieve: understand and share domestic terrorism-related information, prevent domestic terrorism recruitment and mobilization to violence, disrupt and deter domestic terrorism activity, and confront long-term contributors to domestic terrorism.
The plan called to “drive other executive and legislative action, including banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines,” a frequent effort from Democrats.
The Biden administration also called for sharing with “relevant technology and other private-industry companies” information concerning domestic terrorism.
The proposal also encouraged the “teaching and learning of civics education that provides students with the skill to fully participate in civic life,” including by promoting “literacy education for both children and adult learners and existing proven interventions to foster resiliency to disinformation.”
LIST: THE EXECUTIVE ORDERS, ACTIONS, AND PROCLAMATIONS TRUMP HAS MADE AS PRESIDENT
The plan also talked about “advancing inclusion in the nation's COVID-19 response” and working to “increase voter participation and service as nonpartisan poll workers.”
Biden's summer 2021 outline even garnered the criticism of the American Civil Liberties Union, which called it a reflection of the “ever-expanding authority to surveil and monitor American communities.”
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.
A compilation of President Trump's remarks on his and the nation's relationship with God from the past year. (Credit: White House / FOX / National Faith Advisory Board)
President Donald Trump participated in a Wednesday evening prayer service and dinner as part of a series of Holy Week events ahead of Easter Sunday this weekend.
Faith leaders of various Christian denominations were present and listened to the president address them about the importance of faith, both in governing and in people's personal lives. Trump also took the moment to tout his recent accomplishments in-line with Christian beliefs, and slammed efforts to move the country away from its Christian foundation.
"This is really — I hope — going to be one of the great Easters ever, because we have something going that I don't think this country has seen in 100 years. And as we gather with family and friends, we'll not forget the true source of our joy and our strength: America has put our trust in God," Trump said during his address to attendees. "It will always be ‘In God We Trust.' We will never change that."
INSIDE DONALD TRUMP'S RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD, IN HIS OWN WORDS: ‘I WAS SAVED'
"You know there's a movement to change it," Trump continued. "It won't happen. We won't let that happen. Can you imagine a movement to change that?"
President Donald Trump attends an Easter prayer service and dinner in the Blue Room of the White House in Washington, Wednesday, April 16, 2025. (Pool via AP)
Trump also slammed former administrations for failing to stand up for persecuted Christians around the globe, reassuring the crowd of faith leaders in attendance that things would be different under his administration.
"We had nobody fighting for our Christians in other parts of the world, that were being so incredibly destroyed, killed, injured, hurt. But they died, so many died. You wouldn't think that could happen in this time — in this modern time," Trump said.
Trump also remarked about the anti-Christian bias exhibited in the U.S., pointing out to those in attendance that he established a Justice Department task force to root it out. Trump also touted his creation of the White House Faith Office, which replaced the former White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.
TECH COMPANY REVERSES POLICY AFTER CHRISTIAN GROUP SUES FOR RELIGIOUS DISCRIMINATION
"You don't hear about that very much, but there is anti-Christian bias," Trump said.
President Donald Trump greets Rev. Franklin Graham during an Easter prayer service and dinner in the Blue Room of the White House in Washington, Wednesday, April 16, 2025. (Pool via AP)
Trump will continue his Holy Week celebrations with another prayer service tomorrow, on Holy Thursday, which will again include various faith leaders from different Christian denominations and members of the president's staff. The event will include Christian hymns sung by musicians associated with Liberty University, a private Christian university in Virginia.
The White House is also reportedly hosting a Passover event Thursday afternoon, to celebrate the Jewish holiday that began April 12 and ends April 20.
"With God's help we can overcome every challenge, triumph over every evil, and restore the spirit of faith in the United States for generations to come," Trump concluded. "We have a very simple slogan: ‘Make America Great Again,' and that's exactly what we're doing."
TRUMP CHAMPIONS JESUS' ‘MIRACULOUS RESURRECTION' IN PALM SUNDAY MESSAGE VOWING TO ‘DEFEND THE CHRISTIAN FAITH'
President Donald Trump speaks at an Easter prayer service and dinner in the Blue Room of the White House in Washington, Wednesday, April 16, 2025. (Pool via AP)
In addition to faith leaders, Patty Morin, whose daughter's death at the hands of an illegal immigrant in 2023 was a major point of contention during the last election, was also present at the Wednesday dinner service. She attended following an emotional press briefing earlier in the day at the White House during which she told her daughter's story.
"Her daughter's looking down on Patty today," Trump noted during the event, adding she's "been through hell."
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Companies are expected to raise prices in response to President Donald Trump's slew of tariffs.
While firms raise prices for many reasons, some were blaming hikes on tariffs long before Trump's so-called "Liberation Day." On April 2, he announced a 10% baseline tariff on imports from most countries, except Canada and Mexico. China faces even higher rates of up to 245% on some goods, the White House said on April 16. Autos are another area of focus after Trump announced a 25% tariff on all car imports into the US.
"April 2, 2025, will forever be remembered as the day American industry was reborn, the day America's destiny was reclaimed, and the day that we began to make America wealthy again," Trump said during his remarks.
Some economists have said that Trump's tariffs — and the uncertainty with his overall trade policy — could lead companies to raise prices on the goods they produce.
"The tariffs are larger than forecasters expected, certainly larger than we expected in our upside case," Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said April 16 during a speech at the Economic Club of Chicago. "Our role is to make sure this will be a one-time increase in prices and not something that turns into an ongoing inflation process."
Powell said the Federal Reserve is monitoring how much prices rise, which is still unclear.
Beginning at the end of 2024, some companies warned that they would consider raising prices on consumers if Trump implemented his broad tariff proposals. While it's still possible they could absorb some of the costs of the tariffs, here are the companies that have warned of price increases.
The two Chinese retailers released almost identical notices on April 16, both reading: "Due to recent changes in global trade rules and tariffs, our operating expenses have gone up."
"To keep offering the products you love without compromising on quality, we will be making price adjustments starting April 25, 2025," Shein's statement said.
Shein, a fast-fashion retailer, and Temu, a marketplace for everything from home goods to electronics, promised their US customers eight final days of low-price shopping.
In addition to hiking tariffs on Chinese imports, Trump also cracked down on the de minimis trade loophole that allowed small parcels under $800 to enter the US tax-free. Shein and Temu were large beneficiaries of this loophole.
Bloomberg reported that the automaker plans to raise prices on new gas and electric cars starting next month unless Trump gives the industry some relief from tariffs.
Ford, in a memo to dealers viewed by Bloomberg, said that the company anticipates "the need to make vehicle pricing adjustments in the future, which is expected to happen with May production." Prices won't change for vehicles in inventory now.
On April 14, Trump told reporters that he was contemplating a temporary tariff exemption for autos to give manufacturers more time to move production to the US.
Conagra Brands CEO Sean Connolly told Reuters on April 3 that the food company may have to hike prices to offset the cost of tariffs on ingredients like cocoa, olive oil, palm oil, and a type of steel used for its canned products.
Connolly said that Conagra, which makes products such as Hunt's ketchup and Chef Boyardee, imports tin plate steel for its canned food and tomatoes from Mexico.
It was too early to tell how big price hikes on the company's food products would be, he added. During an April 3 earnings call, he stressed that the trade situation remains "volatile" and changes hourly.
According to a memo first reported by Automotive News, Volkswagen said it would place an import fee on vehicles made outside of the US in response to Trump's 25% tariff on car imports.
The company said it would provide more details on its pricing changes in response to the tariffs by mid-April.
Best Buy CEO Corie Barry said during the company's March earnings call that Trump's tariff plans are likely to increase prices.
"Trade is critically important to our business and industry. The consumer electronic supply chain is highly global, technical and complex," Barry said. "We expect our vendors across our entire assortment will pass along some level of tariff costs to retailers, making price increases for American consumers highly likely."
Target CEO Brian Cornell told CNBC in a March interview that Trump's 25% tariff plan on goods from Mexico and Canada would likely result in price increases on produce.
"Those are categories where we'll try to protect pricing, but the consumer will likely see price increases over the next couple of days," Cornell said.
Donald Allan, the CEO of the manufacturing company Stanley Black & Decker, said during a February earnings call: "Our approach to any tariff scenario will be to offset the impacts with a mix of supply chain and pricing actions, which might lag the formalization of tariffs by two to three months."
Allan had previously told analysts in an October earnings call that the company had been evaluating "a variety of different scenarios" to plan for new tariffs under Trump.
"And obviously, coming out of the gate, there would be price increases associated with tariffs that we put into the market," Allan said, adding that "there's usually some type of delay given the processes that our customers have around implementing price."
Walmart CFO John David Rainey told CNBC on November 19 that the company will likely raise prices if Trump's tariff proposals are implemented.
"We never want to raise prices," he said. "Our model is everyday low prices. But there probably will be cases where prices will go up for consumers."
The company's CEO, Doug McMillan, said during a February earnings call that "tariffs are something we've managed for many years, and we'll just continue to manage that."
Tim Boyle, the CEO of Columbia Sportswear, told analysts on an October earnings call that the company was "very concerned about the imposition of tariffs. " He said that while he considered Columbia adept at managing tariffs, "trade wars are not good and not easy to win."
Boyle also told The Washington Post in October that the company was "set to raise prices."
"It's going to be very, very difficult to keep products affordable for Americans," he said. He later said in a February interview with CNBC that "we need some surety about what is going to happen" before making price changes.
Philip Daniele, the CEO of the auto-parts company AutoZone, told analysts on a September earnings call that tariff policies had "ebbed and flowed over the years," and if Trump implemented more tariffs, "we will pass those tariff costs back to the consumer."
"We generally raise prices ahead of that," Daniele said, adding that prices would gradually settle over time. "So, that's historically what we've done," he said.
Trump's 25% tariff on car imports is expected to increase manufacturing costs by anywhere from $4,000 to $12,000.
How have prices affected you? Reach out to cboudreau@businessinsider.com.
Jump to
The housing market saw a pronounced buyer-seller mismatch last month, and it's proving difficult to draw prospective home buyers off of the sidelines, according to Zillow.
That could spell good news on the housing-affordability front. Buyers holding back from buying a home due to cost concerns could eventually prompt price cuts, and just in time for one of the hottest home-buying seasons of the year.
Sellers put more than 375,000 homes on the market last month, a 32% increase from last month and a 9% increase compared to levels recorded the same month last year, according to a report Zillow released on Monday.
But buyers haven't been keeping pace with the growth in new listings. Pending home sales for the month remained flat compared to last year's levels, with just 265,000 listings transitioning into a pending sale in March.
That means the housing market added a net 110,000 listings last month, pushing overall inventory up 19% year-over-year to 1.15 million, Zillow estimated.
That's the most inventory the market has seen since March 2020, when the pandemic pushed the housing market into a near-standstill, according to Skylar Olsen, the chief economist at Zillow.
"Home price growth paused and inventory swelled during what is typically one of the most competitive home shopping months of the year. That's despite mortgage rates reaching a 2025 low in March," Olsen wrote in the note. "While sellers leaned on the gas, buyers didn't keep up," she added.
Olsen said buyers may have been held back by affordability concerns, with high home prices keeping mortgage payments elevated.
The typical mortgage payment, assuming a 20% down payment on a home, cost around 25% of the median US household income in March, Zillow estimated, outside the recommended guideline to keep housing costs under 30% of one's total income.
Sellers have already started to give in to pressure to slash home prices. with 23% of listings on Zillow seeing a price reduction over March. That's the largest share of homes with a price cut since 2018, and up slightly from last month's share, when 21% of homes on Zillow had a price cut, the firm said.
That said, the housing market has been tipped towards sellers' favor for most of the last five years. Zillow's Market Heat Index, which shows whether the housing market is more favorable to buyers or sellers, moved from "neutral" territory to "sellers market" territory in March, the first time it's done so since June of last year.
Jump to
Neurotech startup Precision Neuroscience on Thursday announced that a core component of its brain implant system has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, a major win for the four-year-old company.
Precision is building a brain-computer interface, or a BCI, which is a system that decodes neural signals and translates them into commands for external technologies. The company's BCI will initially be used to help patients with severe paralysis restore functions such as speech and movement, according to its website.
Only part of Precision's system was approved by the FDA on Thursday, but it marks the first full regulatory clearance granted to a company developing a wireless BCI, Precision said in a release. Other prominent startups in the space include Elon Musk's Neuralink, and Synchron, which is backed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.
"This is a foundational moment for Precision," Dr. Benjamin Rapoport, Precision's co-founder and chief science officer, said in a statement. Rapoport also helped co-found Musk's Neuralink in 2017 before departing the following year.
The piece of Precision's system that the FDA approved is called the Layer 7 Cortical Interface. The microelectrode array is thinner than a human hair and resembles a piece of yellow scotch tape. Each array is made up of 1,024 electrodes that can record, monitor and stimulate electrical activity on the brain's surface.
When it is placed on the brain, Precision says it can conform to the surface without damaging any tissue.
The FDA authorized Layer 7 to be implanted in patients for up to 30 days, and Precision will be able to market the technology for use in clinical settings. This means surgeons will be able to use the array during procedures to map brain signals, for instance. It is not Precision's end goal for the technology, but it will help the company generate revenue in the near term.
Precision has temporarily implanted the Layer 7 in 37 patients so far, and CNBC observed one case at the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York last April. Until this point, the implementations have taken place for short periods, often a matter of minutes or hours, on patients who were already undergoing brain surgery for a medical reason.
Now, because of the FDA clearance, the company will be able to collect data for much longer periods of time.
"This regulatory clearance will exponentially increase our access to diverse, high-quality data, which will help us to build BCI systems that work more effectively," Rapoport said.
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Elon Musk's SpaceX and two partners have emerged as frontrunners to win a crucial part of President Donald Trump's "Golden Dome" missile defense shield, six people familiar with the matter told Reuters.
Musk's rocket and satellite company is partnering with software maker Palantir and drone builder Anduril on a bid to build key parts of Golden Dome, the sources said, which has drawn significant interest from the technology sector's burgeoning base of defense startups.
In his January 27 executive order, Trump cited a missile attack as "the most catastrophic threat facing the United States."
All three companies were founded by entrepreneurs who have been major political supporters of Trump. Musk has donated more than a quarter of a billion dollars to help elect Trump, and now serves as a special adviser to the president working to cut government spending through his Department of Government Efficiency.
Despite the Pentagon's positive signals to the SpaceX group, some sources stressed the decision process for Trump's Golden Dome is in its early stages. Its ultimate structure and who is selected to work on it could change dramatically in the coming months.
The three companies met with top officials in the Trump administration and the Pentagon in recent weeks to pitch their plan, which would build and launch 400 to more than 1,000 satellites circling the globe to sense missiles and track their movement, sources said.
A separate fleet of 200 attack satellites armed with missiles or lasers would then bring enemy missiles down, three of the sources said. The SpaceX group is not expected to be involved in the weaponization of satellites, these sources said.
One of the sources familiar with the talks described them as "a departure from the usual acquisition process. There's an attitude that the national security and defense community has to be sensitive and deferential to Elon Musk because of his role in the government."
SpaceX and Musk have declined to comment on whether Musk is involved in any of the discussions or negotiations involving federal contracts with his businesses.
The Pentagon did not respond to detailed questions from Reuters, only saying it will deliver "options to the President for his decision in line with the executive order and in alignment with White House guidance and timelines."
The White House, SpaceX, Palantir, and Anduril also did not respond to questions.
In an unusual twist, SpaceX has proposed setting up its role in Golden Dome as a "subscription service" in which the government would pay for access to the technology, rather than own the system outright.
The subscription model, which has not been previously reported, could skirt some Pentagon procurement protocols allowing the system to be rolled out faster, the two sources said. While the approach would not violate any rules, the government may then be locked into a subscription and lose control over its ongoing development and pricing, they added.
Some Pentagon officials have expressed concerns internally about relying on the subscription-based model for any part of the Golden Dome, two sources told Reuters. Such an arrangement would be unusual for such a large and critical defense program.
U.S. Space Force General Michael Guetlein has been in talks on whether SpaceX should be the owner and operator of its part of the system, the two sources said. Other options include having the U.S. own and operate the system, or having the U.S. own it while contractors handle operations. Guetlein did not respond to a request for comment.
Retired Air Force General Terrence O'Shaughnessy, a top SpaceX advisor to Musk, has been involved in the company's recent discussions with senior defense and intelligence leaders, the two sources said. O'Shaughnessy did not respond to requests for comment.
Should the group led by SpaceX win a Golden Dome contract, it would be the biggest win for Silicon Valley in the lucrative defense contracting industry and a blow to the traditional contractors.
However, those long-standing contractors, such as Northrop Grumman, Boeing and RTX are expected to be big players in the process as well, people familiar with the companies said. Lockheed Martin put up a webpage as a part of its marketing efforts.
The Pentagon has received interest from more than 180 companies keen to help develop and build the Golden Dome, according to a U.S. official, including defense startups like Epirus, Ursa Major and Armada. Members of the White House's National Security Council were briefed by a handful of companies about their capabilities, four sources said.
The Pentagon's number two, former private equity investor Steve Feinberg, will be a key decision-maker for Golden Dome, two U.S. defense officials said.
Feinberg co-founded Cerberus Capital Management which has invested in the cutting-edge hypersonic missiles industry but not in SpaceX. Feinberg, who did not respond to a request for comment, has said he would divest of all his interests in Cerberus when he joined the administration.
Some experts believe the overall cost for Golden Dome could reach hundreds of billions of dollars. The Pentagon established several timelines for capabilities to be delivered starting with early 2026 to those delivered after 2030.
SpaceX is pitching for the part of the Golden Dome initiative called the "custody layer," a constellation of satellites that would detect missiles, track their trajectory, and determine if they are heading toward the U.S., according to two sources familiar with SpaceX's goals.
SpaceX has estimated the preliminary engineering and design work for the custody layer of satellites would cost between $6 billion and $10 billion, two of the sources said. In the last five years, SpaceX has launched hundreds of operational spy satellites and more recently several prototypes, which could be retrofitted to be used for the project, the sources said.
Reuters reviewed an internal Pentagon memo from Defense Secretary Peter Hegseth issued shortly before a February 28 deadline to senior Pentagon leadership asking them for initial Golden Dome proposals and calling for the "acceleration of the deployment" of constellations of satellites.
The time frame could give SpaceX an advantage because of its fleet of rockets, including the Falcon 9, and existing satellites that could be repurposed for the missile defense shield, the people familiar with the plan said.
Despite these advantages, some of those familiar with the discussions said it was uncertain whether the SpaceX group would be able to efficiently set up a system with new technology in a cost-effective way that can protect the United States from attack.
"It remains to be seen whether SpaceX and these tech companies will be able to pull any of this off," said one of the sources. "They've never had to deliver on an entire system that the nation will need to rely on for its defense."
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By most metrics, employees have never been more disconnected from their work. Employee engagement in the U.S. fell to its lowest level in a decade last year, with roughly 31% of employees engaged, according to Gallup. Workers also are losing confidence in their company's future, with that sentiment falling to a record low, according to Glassdoor, leading many to either quit, or perhaps worse, stick around and do less.
Pete Stavros, co-head of global private equity at KKR, said that when he meets with CEOs and asks them how their employees are feeling, it often results in vague responses: "There's not a tremendous amount of insight," he said.
When KKR runs its own set of worker surveys across the companies in its portfolio, "The results consistently surprise CEOs to the downside. They're like 'Wow, yeah, I didn't know it was that bad.'"
Stavros has been championing a strategy that he believes can solve some of these issues, born out of his own decades of experience across hundreds of private equity deals but also his father's career journey working for a small construction company in Chicago: employee stock ownership.
"These programs can really meaningfully move the needle on culture when they're well implemented," he said. "These are outcomes that build wealth for workers, make them happier on the job, more engaged, and less likely to quit, and that's what it's done for companies."
At its most basic, the goal of employee stock ownership plans is to award all workers, not just the most senior executives, with equity in the company as part of retirement planning. Advocates like Stavros say that broadening stock ownership within corporate America can help to address several critical issues for companies but also for workers, which includes worker retention, engagement and happiness, but also wealth inequality, financial illiteracy and the broader fraying of the social fabric of society.
Stavros has led the push via KKR's deals in the industrial and manufacturing sectors, transitioning companies to shared ownership models in the process. The strategy has had some big successes, and big payouts for workers.
For example, KKR acquired CHI Overhead Doors for roughly $600 million in 2015, and in the process created a program where even hourly workers at the company received stock on top of their regular wages and benefits. When KKR sold CHI Overheard Doors to steel producer Nucor for $3 billion in 2022, CHI's employees collectively received more than $360 million as a result, with the vast majority of that going to workers below the C-suite level.
However, to date, the growth of ESOPs has been relatively stagnant, with about 250 companies each year forming as one and it largely being contained to smaller industrial companies.
Stavros said there are several reasons why, from regulatory complexity and tax issues that don't benefit larger companies, to litigation risk and a structure that appeals to companies with just a few shareholders.
However, he's placed his support behind updates to the federal law that governs employee-stock ownership plans.
"Without policy, we're not going to reach our aspirations, which are to have a transformational impact on the way companies operate," said Stavros, who added that his Expanding ESOPs coalition not only has the support of more than 50 organizations, foundations and service providers, but also bipartisan support in Washington, D.C.
The moment may not be right, Stavros said. "The government has a lot going on ... when the time is right, we'll make a big bipartisan push to try and get this law modernized."
Meanwhile, his efforts to spread the message of employee ownership continue, alongside CEOs and workers alike who praise what it's brought to their companies.
Wayne Berson, the CEO of BDO USA, said as his professional services firm was considering a variety of restructuring options in 2023 ranging from a private equity buyout to becoming an M&A buyer, the idea of how to keep workers engaged, motivated and with the firm into its future, especially amid talent shortages in accounting, kept coming up.
"We were looking at several business models, and we were looking for a business model that supported continued growth, investment and long-term stability," Berson said. "But while we were doing that analysis on our business model, we were also looking at a second issue of people."
Berson said a few numbers kept coming up, one in particular that stuck: at the nearly 6,000 ESOPs across the U.S., average staff turnover then was at 5.9%, while BDO's was at 18% (albeit less than the 39% seen across its industry).
"Any CEO is looking at the future. How do you create a sustainable business, and one that's profitable at the same time?" Berson said. "The more we looked at it, the more it became clear that if you really do care about people, this in my mind is the only way to go."
Berson said in the nearly two years since, the decision has been proven correct. The firm has lowered its turnover rate, attracted new workers because of the employee ownership strategy, and anecdotally, engagement among workers is up.
"Every firm is unique and has unique considerations, but for us, this was the only choice for our future growth based on how we feel about people," he said. Berson said his leadership team has often used the term 'We before me."
"We wanted to put it in practice; we wanted to be able to steward a thriving future for all," he said.
When Kevin Sims was in the process of being hired as a technician at Web Industries, a Massachusetts-based aviation and medical product manufacturer, he was told by human resources that the company was 100% owned by its employees through its ESOP structure.
At first, Sims said he didn't really understand what that meant but was happy to have a stable position after bouncing between jobs for a stretch of time. However, because of those job changes, he hadn't been able to set himself up well for retirement, something that was looming in his mind as he made his way through his 40s as a single father.
But as he started to learn more about what an ESOP was, and he started to receive statements explaining how his ownership in the company was growing, he quickly realized the benefits.
"It really just changed my life," Sims said. "It gave me this sense of confidence."
It also changed his relationship with work. Sims said in other jobs, "It was like I'm just clocking in and clocking out and getting a paycheck." But in this role, he said "I come in every day like it's my first day because that's how proud I am of what I do and what this company has offered me."
Sims said that sense of ownership is apparent among his fellow workers, who all feel like they share in the successes and challenges that the company faces, whether that's the pride he felt when Sims and his coworkers manufactured blankets that were used in space, to offering suggestions to the company about ways it could save money by being less wasteful with supplies, a strategy that was later implemented.
"The fact that I have a voice and faith in this company, it's like I got an opportunity to help us grow," he said. "I think that's really cool, and I really brainstorm on how I can make us better and our team better; the fact that they actually listen and do it and implement it, it just makes me want to do everything 10 times better in my life."
Mary Josephs, who previously led Bank of America's ESOP solutions group before founding her own ESOP advisory firm, Verit Advisors, said there have been a number of successes with ESOPs across middle market companies, but too often "it's too complicated for very small businesses and too complicated for the very large and very, very valuable businesses, so the access to ESOP is very limited relative to the economy as a whole."
At the same time, Josephs said simply implementing an ESOP doesn't guarantee anything. "The culture that needs to complement the strategy takes intention," she said.
However, she said she has seen firsthand the way that the benefits from ESOPs have empowered workers both on the job and in their personal lives. "If you come into work and you matter, and your contributions are going to help the firm and your family, you're going to go home a different person, you're going to contribute to your community differently, and that's what you see around employee ownership."
Both Josephs and Stavros say while the ESOP structure isn't going to work for every company as things stand, there are several lessons that any company can learn from ESOP successes.
Stavros said at the core, that starts with trust building, which he said, "is one of the real breakpoints today between management and workers."
The most common way to build trust is through sharing information, and that can be accomplished through highlighting financials or just a deeper roadmap into where the company is heading. Employee surveying is an important part of that also, as well as implementing requested changes with accurate timelines.
He also encourages companies to give workers "more voice," pointing to the "Kaizen" principle practiced by Toyota, where all employees are encouraged to identify problems or potential fixes at the worksite to improve efficiency and eliminate waste.
"We've worked on more programmatic ways of giving people a feeling of control and input," Stavros said, highlighting the example of giving each manufacturing plant a million dollars a year, which workers can then "invest in any way they see fit in improving their workplace."
Stavros said there is also the opportunity for companies to embrace efforts around profit sharing and equity grants, things that can bolster retention and create more buy-in. Employee share purchase plans don't always have the same effect, he said, as they can be viewed as a trade of wages or benefits rather than being treated as a business partner.
"Conventional wisdom is only CEOs and C-suite people move the needle, they're the only ones who need ownership and we should concentrate that there," he said. "This strikes at the Achilles heel of capitalism. Every economist would say capitalism is the best way to organize an economy, but the problem, as Winston Churchill said, is the unequal sharing of the blessings," he added. "This strikes right at the heart of the problem, which is why I think it's such an important idea."
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A version of this article first appeared in the CNBC Sport newsletter with Alex Sherman, which brings you the biggest news and exclusive interviews from the worlds of sports business and media. Sign up to receive future editions, straight to your inbox.
Everyone is trying to assess how President Donald Trump's tariff policies will or could affect their lives and industries. In the sports world, the resulting economic uncertainty will likely do more harm than the tariffs themselves.
I asked WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert (this week's "On The Record" guest) if market turbulence in recent weeks has affected ticket sales for the upcoming season that begins May 16.
"Not this season, for sure, because most of our arenas are already sold out," Engelbert told me. "So I'm not worried this year, but certainly as we go forward, if we were to enter into a deep recession of some sort, then you start to look again at scenario plans and contingency plans around that."
As the private equity firm Arctos Partners said last week in a note to clients, sports are fairly well protected from recessions because "the underlying business model of sports benefits from exceptional stability due to long-term, contracted revenues across media rights, sponsorship and ticketing and enjoys sticky, largely domestic demand."
The CNBC Sport newsletter with Alex Sherman brings you the biggest news and exclusive interviews from the worlds of sports business and media, delivered weekly to your inbox.
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A recession typically goes hand-in-hand with a dip in advertising spending. Logically, companies such as automakers or toymakers that might see demand fall as tariffs raise prices could pull back on advertising to save money. Still, several big media companies told me that they haven't seen any significant effect on ad spend yet heading into next month's industry-wide upfront presentations.
Sports, in particular, will probably be the last events to lose advertising tonnage. Fans watch games live and can't skip ads. Sports and league executives expressed confidence that scripted entertainment would feel more of the pain if companies retrench. Alex Weprin of The Hollywood Reporter wrote a good piece about this yesterday.
Some sports may also benefit from decreased travel – a phenomenon United Airlines said this week is already happening. Consumers could attend local sporting events for entertainment instead of going on pricier vacations. Last month's consumer confidence reading hit a 12-year low.
But one place where the sports world may feel the effects is in media consolidation – or lack thereof. Legacy media companies including Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount Global and Comcast want to change their asset mix. Comcast is moving forward with spinning out most of its cable networks, including CNBC. Paramount Global is trying to merge with Skydance Media.
No company's CEO has been more vocal about the need for a light regulatory touch on mergers and acquisitions than Warner Bros. Discovery boss David Zaslav.
"We just need an opportunity for deregulation, so companies can consolidate and do what we need to be even better," Zaslav told reporters at Allen & Co.'s annual Sun Valley conference last year.
Consolidation is a big deal for the sports world. All three of Warner Bros. Discovery, Comcast and Paramount own major sports rights, including some of the biggest packages of rights for the National Football League, the National Basketball Association, the National Collegiate Athletic Association, the National Hockey League and Major League Baseball.
Zaslav hoped a Trump victory would bring the deregulation he wanted. Not only has that not happened yet (Paramount's deal with Skydance is still awaiting approval from the Federal Communications Commission, prompting the first of potentially two 90-day extensions), but wild market swings have made any type of consolidation virtually impossible.
While Trump claims to love the art of the deal, the administration's economic policies have ironically stymied Zaslav's dealmaking plans.
Paramount Global would love to close its agreement with Skydance, fix Paramount Pictures by adding to its movie slate, and then merge with another studio, according to people familiar with the matter. Warner would be near or at the top of that list, the people said.
But if Zaslav doesn't want to wait, I'm told he may still pivot and split his company into two – a low-debt entity housing his streaming service Max, the studio, the gaming division and the company's content library, and a second company with WBD's cable networks and free over-the-air European assets, which would house news and sports.
No decisions have been made on this front yet, but WBD has hired bankers to work on options which include a potential split, according to people familiar with the matter. The Financial Times first reported this idea almost a year ago – quickly following up that Zaslav had decided a breakup wasn't a good idea. Still, I'm told WBD hasn't ruled it out if the board thinks it's the easiest way to facilitate asset reallocation because other deals aren't on the table. Warner Bros. Discovery has already internally split its legacy linear assets from the streaming and studio business, making a move far easier.
The NBA was concerned WBD might not have the balance sheet heft to pay $2 billion a year (or more) for league rights for the next 11 years when it struck its most recent TV deal last year. If Zaslav were to split the company, the non-streaming entity that owns sports rights – including MLB, NHL, French Open, March Madness, NASCAR, and more – will be even smaller.
If that's the direction Zaslav goes, it'll take about ten seconds for pundits to start predicting what types of combinations could come next – likely starting with Comcast's SpinCo and RemainCo (which will still house NBCUniversal and Peacock).
Breaking up the company doesn't require regulatory approval or glorified bribes to the Trump administration, as Michael Wolff reported earlier this week. Neither does forming new cross-company streaming bundles – another possibility once Paramount has more clarity on its future. A recession is probably worse news for the fourth or fifth-most popular streaming service (see: Max, Paramount+, Peacock) than it is for a company like Netflix – which, by the way, reports quarterly earnings this afternoon. I'll be listening to the Netflix conference call for any insights into how that company is viewing Trump's policies.
Warner Bros. Discovery has already paused non-critical business travel, first reported by Oliver Darcy's Status newsletter. I can add a little more detail – I'm also told the company has temporarily frozen non-critical hiring and is being cautious about other expenditures, such as how many employees to send to Cannes Lions, the industry's annual advertising extravaganza in Southern France — a location where Zaslav himself threw a big party just two years ago.
A Warner Bros. Discovery spokesperson declined to comment.
With WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert and Ally Financial Chief Marketing Officer Andrea Brimmer ...
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Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., warned Thursday that U.S. markets will "crash" if President Donald Trump has the power to fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.
The comment from Warren, a frequent Powell critic, on CNBC's "Squawk on the Street" came hours after Trump wrote in a social media post that the Fed chair's "termination cannot come fast enough!"
A senior White House official later told CNBC that Trump's broadside should not be seen as a threat to fire Powell, and that there are no plans being made to end his term early.
Powell has previously said the president does not have the power to fire him.
"I have tangled with [Powell] on a regular basis about both regulations and interest rates," Warren acknowledged in her remarks at the New York Stock Exchange.
"But understand this: If Chairman Powell can be fired by the president of the United States, it will crash markets in the United States," she said.
Warren, the ranking member on the Senate Banking Committee, said the "infrastructure" upholding the stock market — and therefore the global economy — is "the idea that the big pieces move independent of the politics."
If key economic levers are "subject to a president who just wants to wave his magic wand," then the U.S. will be indistinguishable "from any other two-bit dictatorship around the world," she said.
Trump has repeatedly singled out Powell by name while urging the U.S. central bank to lower interest rates in hopes of spurring rapid economic growth.
The Fed hiked rates during President Joe Biden's term in order to tamp down the rampant inflation induced by the coronavirus pandemic and started dialing them back in 2024.
However, the Fed has said it is in no hurry to continue those cuts, pointing to the uncertainty created by Trump's shape-shifting tariff policies. Powell reiterated that stance Wednesday in a speech at the Economic Club of Chicago, saying the president's import taxes are "likely to move us further away from our goals."
In his Truth Social post Thursday morning, Trump, while defending his wide-ranging tariff plans, slammed Powell as being "always TOO LATE AND WRONG."
Powell should have lowered rates "long ago, but he should certainly lower them now," Trump wrote. "Powell's termination cannot come fast enough!"
— CNBC's Megan Cassella and Fred Imbert contributed to this report.
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Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., warned Thursday that U.S. markets will "crash" if Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell can be fired by President Donald Trump.
The comment from Warren, a frequent Powell critic, on CNBC's "Squawk on the Street" came hours after Trump griped that the Fed chair's "termination cannot come fast enough!"
A senior White House official later told CNBC that Trump's broadside should not be seen as a threat to fire Powell, and that there are no plans being made to end his term early.
Powell has previously said the president does not have the power to fire him.
"I have tangled with [Powell] on a regular basis about both regulations and interest rates," Warren acknowledged in her remarks at the New York Stock Exchange.
"But understand this: If Chairman Powell can be fired by the president of the United States, it will crash markets in the United States," she said.
Warren, the ranking member on the Senate Banking Committee, explained that the "infrastructure" upholding the stock market — and therefore the global economy — is "the idea that the big pieces move independent of the politics."
If key economic levers are "subject to a president who just wants to wave his magic wand," then the U.S. will be indistinguishable "from any other two-bit dictatorship around the world," she said.
Trump has repeatedly singled out Powell by name while urging the U.S. central bank to lower interest rates in hopes of spurring rapid economic growth.
The Fed hiked rates during President Joe Biden's presidency in order to tamp down the rampant inflation induced by the coronavirus pandemic, but started dialing them back in 2024.
But the Fed under Powell has said it is in no hurry to continue those cuts, pointing to the uncertainty created by Trump's shape-shifting tariff policies. Powell reiterated that stance Wednesday in a speech at the Economic Club of Chicago, saying the president's import taxes are "likely to move us further away from our goals."
In a Truth Social post Thursday morning, Trump slammed Powell as being "always TOO LATE AND WRONG" while defending his wide-ranging tariff plans.
Powell should have lowered rates "long ago, but he should certainly lower them now," Trump wrote. "Powell's termination cannot come fast enough!"
— CNBC's Megan Cassella and Fred Imbert contributed to this report.
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This was CNBC's live blog covering the European Central Bank's April 2025 meeting.
The European Central Bank made yet another 25-basis-point interest rate cut on Thursday as global tariff turmoil has created widespread uncertainty and spurred fears about the euro zone's economic growth.
A rate cut was fully anticipated by markets, with a roughly 94% chance of a 25-basis-point trim being priced in ahead of the decision, according to LSEG data.
The cut takes the ECB's deposit facility rate, its key rate, to 2.25%. At its highs in mid-2023 it had been at 4%.
Tariff developments in recent weeks are widely seen by analysts and economists as a key reason for the ECB to cut interest rates. Even though many of the initial duties imposed by the U.S., as well as retaliation measures, have been put on ice or eased, fears about how they could affect economic growth have been rife.
In its policy statement, the ECB said that the "outlook for growth has deteriorated owing to rising trade tensions."
It added, "Increased uncertainty is likely to reduce confidence among households and firms, and the adverse and volatile market response to the trade tensions is likely to have a tightening impact on financing conditions."
The ECB on Thursday also said that "the disinflation process is well on track."
"Most measures of underlying inflation suggest that inflation will settle at around the Governing Council's 2% medium-term target on a sustained basis."
The ECB appears open to further interest rate cuts after announcing a 25 basis point trim, according to Mark Wall, chief European economist at Deutsche Bank.
"The forwarding-looking view on the economy implies an expected shock from tariffs, and the characterisation of 'exceptional' uncertainty, implies an openness to further monetary easing assuming the trade shock persists and is borne out in the data," Wall said in a note.
"We continue to expect another rate cut in June and a terminal rate of 1.5% by year-end," Wall said.
This sentiment regarding further cuts was echoed by other economists and analysts, with Capital Economics Chief Europe Economist Andrew Kenningham saying the ECB was likely to cut rates at both its June and July meetings.
— Sophie Kiderlin
"We are in the presence of a negative demand shock," ECB President Christine Lagarde said during a press conference as she noted that while some tariffs are in place, "something that could be far more impactful" could be on the horizon.
Lagarde said there would likely be some re-routing of goods supplied by markets that are facing higher duties, and other policies that do not necessarily link to trade, but fiscal matters and investments, were also at play.
She indicated that tariffs could have a negative impact on economic growth, while the "net impact on inflation is less than clear at this point in time."
Some of the factors at play could settle by the ECB's June meeting, but others would take longer to become more certain, she said.
— Sophie Kiderlin
Assessing the current level of monetary policy restrictiveness is "meaningless," ECB President Christine Lagarde said during a press conference.
Her comments after the ECB Governing Council removed a line characterizing the level of restrictiveness of monetary policy from its statement. Ahead of the ECB's decision, analysts and economists had been considering if, and how, the Governing Council would change its wording around this in its statement.
"While that assessment of the restrictiveness was meaningful, or made sense, to the extent that we were very far away from the destination, it is meaningless at this point in time," Lagarde said.
"Meaningless because assessing restrictiveness relies heavily on the comparison between the policy rates and the neutral rate," she said.
The concept of the neutral rate works for a world free of shocks, Lagarde said, suggesting that this did not match the current environment.
"So, that assessment of the restrictiveness is not operative anymore and what we need to do is to determine the appropriate monetary policy stance that will actually take us to our destination," which is the ECB's 2% inflation target, she said.
— Sophie Kiderlin
The ECB's decision to cut interest rates by 25 basis points was unanimous, the central bank's President Christine Lagarde told CNBC's Annette Weisbach during a press conference.
"Options were debated but there was no one to argue in favor of a 50 basis point cut for instance," Lagarde said. "25 basis points was definitely the rate cut on which all in the room agreed," she added.
— Sophie Kiderlin
ECB President Christine Lagarde said in a press conference that the economic outlook was "clouded by exceptional uncertainty."
"Euro area exporters face new barriers to trade although their scope remains unclear. Disruptions to international commerce, financial market tensions and geopolitical uncertainty are weighing on business investment," she said.
Consumers meanwhile could also become more cautious regarding spending, Lagarde said.
But, "the euro area economy has been building up some resilience against the global shocks," she said, noting that the economy likely grew in the first quarter of 2025.
— Sophie Kiderlin
The ECB's 25 basis point interest rate reduction was "an insurance cut Lagarde-style," ING's global head of macro Carsten Brzeski said in a note.
"Given the high level of uncertainty currently, 50bp might indeed have been a bridge too far today – but to some extent, today's rate cut decision is also an insurance cut," he said. "Today's cut won't do any harm," he added.
Keeping rates unchanged meanwhile could have raised questions about whether the ECB was willing to bolster growth, and would have prompted "a further and unwarranted strengthening of the euro," Brzeski said.
— Sophie Kiderlin
The ECB on Thursday said that "especially in current conditions of exceptional uncertainty" the central bank's Governing Council would "follow a data-dependent and meeting-by-meeting approach to determining the appropriate monetary policy stance."
Decisions would be based on the council's expectations for the inflation outlook given economic and financial data, as well as underlying inflation dynamics and the strength of monetary policy transmission.
"The Governing Council is not pre-committing to a particular rate path."
— Sophie Kiderlin
Euro zone bond yields pared gains shortly after the interest rate cut announcement, with Germany's 10-year yield — the benchmark for the bloc — just below the flatline after earlier gains of more than one basis point.
Yield moves were largely muted following their recent spell of volatility spurred by tariffs. The German 2-year dipped to the flatline from a gain of three basis points. France's 2-year yield was nearly one basis point higher, slightly below earlier gains, while its 10-year yield also fell flat.
"All else equal, the ECB believes monetary policy will need to be more accommodative than previously expected," Andrew Kenningham, chief Europe economist at Capital Economics, said in a note.
— Jenni Reid
The ECB on Thursday warned that trade tensions have weakened the outlook for economic growth.
"The euro area economy has been building up some resilience against global shocks, but the outlook for growth has deteriorated owing to rising trade tensions," the central bank said in its monetary policy statement.
"Increased uncertainty is likely to reduce confidence among households and firms, and the adverse and volatile market response to the trade tensions is likely to have a tightening impact on financing conditions. These factors may further weigh on the economic outlook for the euro area."
— Sophie Kiderlin
The ECB on Thursday cut interest rates by 25 basis points, as was widely expected ahead of the decision.
Markets had been pricing in an around 94% chance of such a cut, and an around 6% chance of a bigger, 50 basis point reduction.
This takes the central bank's deposit facility rate, its key rate, to 2.25% — down from highs of 4% in mid-2023.
— Sophie Kiderlin
The Euro was last lower against the U.S. dollar just after midday in London, as markets looked ahead to the ECB's interest rate decision.
At 12:33 p.m. London time, the euro was down around 0.3% against the greenback.
In the aftermath of sweeping U.S. tariffs initially coming into effect, the euro had strengthened, while the dollar declined, which caught many investors offguard.
— Sophie Kiderlin
European markets were slightly lower ahead of the ECB's interest rate decision, with the cross-regional Stoxx 600 last trading around 0.5% lower at 11:52 a.m. London time.
Regional bourses were also widely in negative territory, with Germany's DAX down 0.6%, the French CAC 40 falling 0.8% and Italy's FTSE MIB trading 0.5% lower.
— Sophie Kiderlin
Lower growth expectations have been a key factor in shifting market pricing toward an interest rate cut from the ECB, Jens Eisenschmidt, chief Europe economist at Morgan Stanley, told CNBC on Thursday.
"Of course the clear catalyst has been here the lower growth expectation coming out of April 2nd's announcement related to the U.S. tariffs," he told Julianna Tatelbaum.
An unexpected exchange rate reaction was also a factor, he added.
"More tariffs were previously associated with a lower value of the euro, hence inflationary. The opposite has happened and of course that has contributed to an expectation for the cut."
Eisenschmidt said he does not believe the ECB would make any big changes to the wording of its closely watched policy statement as there are no new projections and a lot of uncertainty.
"Right now in that situation probably you're well advised not touching in particular references to policy being still restrictive," he said.
— Sophie Kiderlin
An interest rate cut from the ECB is being fully priced in by markets. But the rate decision is not the only thing they will be paying attention to on Thursday.
"More importantly for markets will be the extent to which the central bank decides to communicate what it perceives to be the "neutral rate," and whether monetary policy could turn accommodative – i.e. go below the neutral rate – in the next six to 12 months," Julien Lafargue, chief market strategist at Barclays Private Bank, said in a note Thursday.
But, he added, it may be too soon for the ECB to share a solid stance on that, given the ongoing tariff uncertainty.
"Another area of focus will be the euro, given the recent appreciation of the single currency," Lafargue added. That could "help" in terms of inflation, he explained, but could be a downside risk for economic growth.
— Sophie Kiderlin
The European Central Bank is widely expected to trim interest rates for the third time this year as global tariff tensions and uncertainty threaten the euro zone's economic growth.
A quarter-point cut would take the ECB's deposit facility rate, its key rate, to 2.25% — down from a high of 4% toward the middle of 2023.
The series of relatively fast-paced interest rate cuts have played out as inflation in the euro area has consistently sat below 3%, recently closing in on the ECB's 2% target. Regional economic growth has, meanwhile, been lackluster.
Read the full preview here.
— Sophie Kiderlin
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Russia escaped unscathed from President Donald Trump's trade tariffs unveiled earlier this month, but the Kremlin says Moscow is not immune from the economic aftershocks that could ensue in a potential global trade war.
"Of course, instability in the global economy cannot but affect Russia," Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov told CNBC on Wednesday, according to a Google translation.
"At the same time, we manage to maintain macroeconomic stability even in the face of numerous sanctions," Peskov added in emailed comments.
Unlike many U.S. allies who were hit with trade tariffs in Trump's early-April announcement, Russia was spared new import tariffs when Trump announced his wide-ranging list of new duties to be imposed on imports from more than 180 countries, ostensibly aimed at leveling up the global trading playing field.
Russia was left out, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told the Axios media outlet, because U.S. sanctions on the country for its invasion of Ukraine in 2022 already precluded "any meaningful trade" between the two nations.
Analysts question that assertion, saying Russia still did more trade with the U.S. than a number of other countries that made it onto the tariffs list, such as Brunei and Mauritius. Ukraine, incidentally, was hit with a 10% tariff.
A White House official told CNBC Thursday that Russia, along with Cuba, Belarus and North Korea, were "not subject to the Reciprocal Tariff Executive Order because they are already facing extremely high tariffs and our previously imposed sanctions preclude any meaningful trade with these countries." The official added that President Trump has also recently threatened to impose strong sanctions on Russia.
Global market turbulence prompted Trump to temporarily reduce the tariff rates on imports from most countries — barring China — to 10% for 90 days. Whether negotiations taking place with various trading partners in the interim can lead to compromise and, ultimately, trade deals is highly uncertain.
Russia's reaction to Trump's trade duties has been mixed, with state media observing the measures and market fallout with a mixture of cool detachment, some concern over global economic volatility and a touch of schadenfreude at the turbulence hitting the West.
Trump's destabilization of the existing U.S.-led "global world order" — which Moscow would like to dismantle — is also seen as a potential benefit of the tariffs to Kremlin, analysts say. They warn that Russia is not immune to the impact of any trade war.
"On the surface you see a lot of giggles and genuine relief [in Russia] that, for once, it is not Russia that is at the center of attention," Anton Barbashin, a Russian political analyst and editorial director of the journal Riddle, told CNBC on Wednesday, noting that "Russia does see itself better positioned in the world of a more pronounced bipolarity."
"Russia wants a less global U.S. that is engaged in permanent conflict with China (though not war), so that Washington does not have enough time for Europe," he said in emailed comments.
Barbashin said two schools of thought had emerged in Russia — one recognizing the damage that a trade war could do to the country, and the other acknowledging that economically weakened rivals benefit Russia geopolitically.
"Russia is still dependent on global economy and high demand for her exports. If a global recession is to follow, it could seriously hurt Russia's pockets. Yet there is another level of analysis in Russia that suggests that ... the more he [Trump] does to harm the transatlantic relationship the easier it would be for Moscow to split Europe on issues related to Ukraine," Barbashin noted.
Russia analysts have questioned why Russia was not subjected to any tariffs, and whether its exclusion could be part of a White House plan to try to gain leverage over Moscow in any Ukraine peace talks.
"The White House said Russia was not hit with tariffs because there was no trade between the two countries due to the Western sanctions ... That's not entirely true," Alexander Kolyandr, senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, noted.
Exports of Russian goods to the U.S. totaled a 30-year low of around $3 billion in 2024, and the U.S. exported $526 million worth of goods to Russia over the period, he noted.
"These are tiny numbers when it comes to overall U.S. trade, but, for example, Lesotho, an African kingdom with a population of 2 million, sells even less to the U.S. — about $2 billion worth of goods a year — but was hit with a 50% tariff," Kolyandr noted.
According to the formula used to determine the tariffs on trading partners, Russia should have faced a 40% tariff, based on 2024 numbers. Kolyandr noted, however, that in recent pre-war years, Russia and the U.S. have enjoyed relatively balanced trade, which would have meant Russia hit instead with the baseline 10% tariff rate.
Kolyandr told CNBC on Thursday that if there is a desire in the White House to use the tariffs as a way to induce Moscow into peace negotiations on Ukraine, "then it's a delusion."
"The size [of trade] is very small, and even before the war, the U.S. was not Russia's significant trade partner compared to places like the European Union, Turkey, China or India."
"Russia does need some technological stuff from the United States, such as spare parts for Boeing (airplanes], for example. And apart from Tungsten and Titanium, Russia has very little to offer to the United States which is not elastic, in other words, which cannot be procured somewhere else. So I don't think that the trade tariffs are something Moscow can be seduced with to stop the war."
The World Trade Organization on Wednesday warned that the outlook for global trade has "deteriorated sharply" in the wake of Trump's tariffs regime.
Based on the duties currently in place, and including a 90-day suspension of "reciprocal tariffs," the volume of world merchandise trade is now expected to decline by 0.2% in 2025, the WTO said. It added that global economic growth would take a direct hit from a decline in global trading volumes.
Even if Russia is not a direct target, it's certain to suffer collateral damage from tariffs and a potential trade war, analysts agree, with a decline in prices and demand for Russia's main oil global export supplies posting a major economic risk.
Russia is already laboring under significant domestic inflation — which hit an annual 10.3% in March — and the country's central bank has maintained high interest rates of 21% recently in a bid to deal with war-led price pressures.
"If the trade war pushes the global economy into a recession, and especially if overall trade goes down, which means fewer goods criss-cross the globe, that would mean that demand for oil would also go down if there is a recession, and it is painful for Russia," Kolyandr told CNBC.
"But Russia's problems do not end with oil. With global instability and a spike in inflation and, presumably, a decline of oil revenues, Russia's central bank will find it difficult to start easing its base rate. It's stifling the Russian non-military economy. So, basically, about two thirds of the national economy has to borrow at 21%. You cannot be healthy with such a high rate."
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Target CEO Brian Cornell will meet with the Rev. Al Sharpton this week in New York as the retailer faces calls for a boycott and a slowdown in foot traffic that began after it walked back key diversity, equity and inclusion programs, the civil rights leader told CNBC Wednesday.
The meeting, which Target asked for, comes after some civil rights groups urged consumers not to shop at Target in response to the retailer's decision to cut back on DEI. While Sharpton has not yet called for a boycott of Target, he has supported efforts from others to stop shopping at the retailer's stores.
"You can't have an election come and all of a sudden, change your old positions," said Sharpton. "If an election determines your commitment to fairness then fine, you have a right to withdraw from us, but then we have a right to withdraw from you."
The civil rights leader said he would consider calling for a Target boycott if the company doesn't confirm its commitment to the Black community and pledge to work with and invest in Black-owned businesses.
"I said, 'If [Cornell] wants to have a candid meeting, we'll meet,'" Sharpton said of the phone call Target made to his office. "I want to first hear what he has to say."
A Target spokesman confirmed to CNBC that the company reached out to Sharpton for a meeting and that Cornell will talk to him in New York this week. The company declined further comment.
In January, Target said it would end its three-year DEI goals, no longer share company reports with external diversity-focused groups like the Human Rights Campaign's Corporate Equity Index and end specific efforts to get more products from Black- and minority-owned businesses on its shelves.
Just days after the announcement, foot traffic at Target stores started to slow down. Since the week of Jan. 27, Target's foot traffic has declined for 10 straight weeks compared to the year-ago period, according to Placer.ai, an analytics firm that uses anonymized data from mobile devices to estimate overall visits to locations. Target traffic had been up weekly year over year before the week of Jan. 27.
The metric, which tallies visits to brick-and-mortar locations, does not capture sales in stores or online, but can indicate which retailers are drawing steadier business. While Target has been struggling to grow its sales for months as shoppers watch their spending, the stretch of declining visits came as some civil rights groups and social media users criticized the DEI decision and urged shoppers to spend their money elsewhere.
Target declined to comment on the figures, saying it doesn't discuss third-party data.
At the convention earlier this month for his civil rights organization, the National Action Network, Sharpton said the group would call for a boycott of PepsiCo if the company didn't agree to meet with the organization within 21 days. In February, the food and beverage company behind brands like Doritos and Mountain Dew announced it would end its DEI workforce representation goals and transition its chief DEI officer role into another position, among other changes.
This week, leaders from Pepsi met with Sharpton and his team. He did not confirm whether Pepsi made any commitments, but did say it was encouraging that Pepsi's CEO Ramon Laguarta attended. He added that the two will continue their discussions.
Sharpton's meetings with companies including PepsiCo and Target — and his openness to boycotts — mark one of the first meaningful efforts to push back against the war conservative activists like Robby Starbuck have waged on DEI. Starbuck, a movie director-turned-activist, has urged companies to drop DEI policies in part by sharing what he considers unflattering information about their initiatives with his social media followers. He has successfully pressured a wide range of corporate giants to rethink their programs.
With its decision to roll back DEI efforts, the cheap chic retailer Target joined Walmart, McDonald's, Tractor Supply and a slew of others that scrapped at least some DEI initiatives as they grew concerned that the programs could alienate some customers or land them in the crosshairs of President Donald Trump, who has vowed to end every DEI program across the federal government.
Target's decision contrasted with Costco, which shook off pressure from conservative activists to maintain its DEI programs. Shareholders of the membership-based wholesale club soundly rejected a proposal in late January that requested a report on the risks of DEI initiatives.
NAN has called for so-called "buy-cotts" at Costco, and has brought people to stores in Tennessee, New York and New Jersey. It gave them gift cards to shop with at the warehouse club.
In the month of March, Target's store traffic declined 6.5%, while the metric rose 7.5% year over year at Costco, Placer.ai data show.
Target's challenges run deeper than DEI backlash, and resistance to its policy change only added to its issues. The discounter's annual revenue has been roughly flat for four years in a row as it's struggled to drive consistent sales gains.
Margins have been under pressure, as consumers buy more of groceries and necessities and less of more profitable categories like home goods and clothing. And the company has pinned its problems on a laundry list of problems in recent years, including having the wrong inventory; losing money from theft, damaged goods and other types of inventory losses; backlash to its collection for Pride Month and pricier costs from rushing shipments.
Competition has grown fiercer too, as big-box rival Walmart has remodeled stores, launched new private brands and attracted more high-income shoppers.
In February, Target gave weak guidance for the first quarter and said it expected sales to grow 1% for the full year.
In his meeting with Cornell, Sharpton said he will ask for Target to follow through on pledges it made after police killed George Floyd in the company's hometown of Minneapolis.
"You made commitments based on the George Floyd movement ... what changed?" said Sharpton. "Are you trying to say ... everything's fine now, because the election changed? That's insulting to us."
In the wake of Floyd's murder, Cornell said the event moved him.
"That could have been one of my Target team members," Cornell said in 2021 at an event hosted by the Economic Club of Chicago, recounting his thoughts as he watched the video of Floyd taking his final breaths.
At the time, he said it motivated him to step up Target's efforts to fight racial inequities.
"We have to be the role models that drive change and our voice is important," he said at the event. "We've got to make sure that we represent our company principles, our values, our company purpose on the issues that are important to our teams."
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President Donald Trump on Thursday again called for the Federal Reserve to lower rates and even hinted at the "termination" of Chair Jerome Powell.
In a Truth Social post, Trump said:
"The ECB is expected to cut interest rates for the 7th time, and yet, 'Too Late' Jerome Powell of the Fed, who is always TOO LATE AND WRONG, yesterday issued a report which was another, and typical, complete 'mess!' Oil prices are down, groceries (even eggs!) are down, and the USA is getting RICH ON TARIFFS. Too Late should have lowered Interest Rates, like the ECB, long ago, but he should certainly lower them now. Powell's termination cannot come fast enough!"
Indeed, the European Central Bank has been cutting rates as it tries to boost growth in the region. The ECB lowered rates again later Thursday.
To be sure, a senior White House official told CNBC that the post should not be seen as a threat to fire Powell, but rather as a reinstatement of Trump's frustrations with the Fed chief.
The post comes a day after Powell delivered a speech at the Economic Club of Chicago in which he noted that the administration's tariffs put the central bank in a tricky spot as it decides whether to tame inflation or boost growth.
"If that were to occur, we would consider how far the economy is from each goal, and the potentially different time horizons over which those respective gaps would be anticipated to close," Powell said. Those comments contributed to a steep sell-off on Wednesday.
This is not the first time Trump has criticized Powell's approach to U.S. monetary policy. Trump posted on April 4, two days after the administration's "Liberation Day" tariff announcement, that it would be "a PERFECT time for Fed Chairman Jerome Powell to cut Interest Rates. He is always 'late,' but he could now change his image, and quickly."
However, it is the first time Trump has explicitly called for Powell's firing. Powell has said the president does not have the power to fire him, noting that it is "not permitted under the law."
Powell's term as Fed chair ends in May 2026.
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Spanish lender Banco Santander has eclipsed Swiss giant UBS as continental Europe's largest bank by market capitalization, as U.S. tariffs ripple through the region's bruised banking sector.
UBS — whose share took a deep tumble after the April 2 announcement of U.S. President Donald Trump's baseline and reciprocal duties on Washington's trade counterparties — had a market cap of 79.5 Swiss francs ($97.23 billion) as of the Wednesday close, according to FactSet data, with Banco Santander at 91.3 billion euros ($103.78 billion).
The two banks' shares have diverged over recent months, with the Swiss lender shedding 17.2% in the year to date, while Banco Santander has gained nearly 35%, according to LSEG data.
Both banks, along with Europe's broader banking sector, have suffered since the imposition of the White House's protectionist trade policies, given the shrinking growth outlook for tariff-struck European countries and the prospect of a recession in the U.S.
Washington imposed 20% tariffs on imports from the European Union, but has lowered them to 10% under a 90-day pause announced by Trump on April 9.
Switzerland — which is not a member of the EU — faces a steeper 31% levy after the pause lifts and the Trump administration has also threatened additional duties on imported drugs. This could deliver a blow to the Swiss pharmaceutical industry that "grew robustly" in the fourth quarter and "contributed significantly" to the country's exports over the period.
More broadly, European Union banks received a boost from the announcement of the European Union's ReArm initiative in March, which is set to loosen regional fiscal rules and trigger further borrowing activity to boost defense spending.
Continental Europe's two largest lenders have very different exposures to the U.S. market.
Banco Santander is the fifth-largest auto lender in the country and is expanding through a recent partnership with telecom giant Verizon. Nevertheless, it only logged around 9% of its total profits for 2024 Stateside.
The U.S. is, meanwhile, a key market for UBS' lucrative core global wealth management division, with roughly half of the Swiss lender's invested assets concentrated in the broader Americas region last year, according to its annual report.
UBS' outlook has also been clouded by a shroud of uncertainty surrounding potential new — and steeper — capital requirements from Swiss authorities. This follows its expansion in the wake of absorbing collapsed domestic peer Credit Suisse, from which it also inherited a significant U.S. presence. The lender expects to receive further clarity on these guidelines next month.
UBS' profitability could also be impacted by a strong Swiss franc — historically a safe haven asset during market turmoil — which has appreciated by roughly 8% against the U.S. dollar since the imposition of the latest tariffs.
Switzerland's appreciating currency — whose strength local trade groups had flagged as damaging to exports even before tariffs came into effect — could, along with depressed inflation in the country, see the Swiss National Bank make further defensive cuts to interest rates, which were already reduced to just 0.25% in March.
In comparison, the European Central Bank is also widely expected to trim its key deposit facility rate by a quarter point when it meets later on Thursday, although this will take it to 2.25%.
The potential interest rate cut would take place after the ECB said in March that its monetary policy was "becoming meaningfully less restrictive" — in a signal some analysts interpreted as indicating restraint when it comes to lowering rates further.
Declines in national interest rates typically weigh on local lenders' net interest income revenues from loans.
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Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said on Thursday that China was a very important market for Nvidia after the U.S. imposed a ban on sales of its H20 artificial intelligence chips to the country.
"We hope to continue to cooperate with China," Huang said in a meeting with Ren Hongbin, head of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, according to China state broadcaster CCTV.
Huang arrived in Beijing earlier in the day at the invitation of the trade organisation.
His visit comes at a time when the United States has put new restrictions on China-bound shipments of Nvidia's H20 datacentre GPUs, the only compliant AI chip the company can sell legally to China.
The US ban has created uncertainty for Chinese internet companies, which were still anticipating H20 deliveries by the end of the year.
Nvidia didn't immediately respond to a Reuters' request for comment on Huang's agenda in China.
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Redwood Materials, run by Tesla cofounder JB Straubel, is building the biggest battery recycling operation in North America.
If you've ever handed old laptops or smartphones to a recycling center, it's likely they ended up on a giant lot in front of Redwood Materials' 300-acre campus.
I visited the company in March and got a tour around a network of vast buildings in the high desert east of Reno, Nevada, where Redwood is still building and expanding rapidly.
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Tesla is scaling back Cybertruck production.
The electric car maker has dropped production targets for several Cybertruck lines over the past few months, two workers with knowledge of the targets told Business Insider. Some lines are running at a small fraction of their previous capacity, and the company has thinned out a handful of Cybertruck production teams by more than half, these workers said.
Since January, the carmaker has continued to move some workers from the line for the Cybertruck, which is made at its Texas Gigafactory, to the Model Y line, four workers said.
"It feels a lot like they're filtering people out," one of the workers said. "The parking lot keeps getting emptier."
A spokesperson for Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.
During the first three months of 2025, Tesla sold 6,406 Cybertrucks, Cox Automotive estimated, half that of the previous quarter. Before the truck's release, Musk said Tesla had more than 1 million reservations for the vehicle. To date, it has delivered fewer than 50,000 Cybertrucks, a March 20 recall filing said.
In April, Tesla unveiled its cheapest version of the truck, a $70,000 rear-wheel-drive variant.
Tesla sales more broadly have been trending downward. This year's first-quarter delivery results, which are seen as a proxy for sales, showed a 13% drop from the same period in 2024.
The most recent Cybertruck production shift follows similar moves made in December, when the carmaker notified workers it would change Cybertruck production schedules and surveyed workers on their preferred roles. At the time, workers said they were told the company planned to scale back production targets for the electric pickup truck for the first quarter of 2025.
Tesla's lower delivery numbers come at a time when the company is facing pressure from all fronts. Competitors are edging in to compete with Tesla's aging lineup, demonstrators are staging protests outside showrooms, and the company's stock is down about 40% year to date.
Shares of the carmaker are still up more than 53% from this time last year.
During a press conference at the White House last month, Tesla CEO Elon Musk promised to double the company's vehicle production rates in the US over the next two years.
In February, during the company's biannual performance reviews, Tesla asked managers to identify which roles on their teams were vital to the company, three current and former workers said. The company first added the query to employee reviews in February 2024. Workers were also ranked on a scale of one to five. The company eliminated a small percentage of staff during the reviews, two people said.
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The executive added that most of the millions of cryptocurrencies in circulation today lack any real monetary value.
Barry Silbert, the CEO of Digital Currency Group, said he would have secured higher investment gains by just holding the Bitcoin that he invested in early-stage crypto projects around 2012.
During an April 17 appearance on Raoul Pal's Journey Man podcast, Silbert said he discovered Bitcoin (BTC) in 2011, purchasing BTC at $7-$8 per coin. Once the price of BTC surged, Silbert started looking for early-stage crypto companies to invest in. The executive told Raoul Pal:
Silbert's comments come at a time when Bitcoin maximalists, including Strategy co-founder Michael Saylor, forecast a seven-figure Bitcoin price in the coming decade, and BTC receives greater attention from governments worldwide.
Related: Bitcoin gold copycat move may top $150K as BTC stays 'impressive'
Zach Shapiro, the head of the Bitcoin Policy Institute (BPI) think tank, recently predicted BTC would hit $1 million per coin if the United States government were to purchase 1 million BTC.
“If the United States announces that we are buying a million Bitcoin, that's just a global seismic shock," Shapiro told Bitcoin Magazine in an April 16 podcast appearance.
Bo Hines, the executive director of President Trump's White House Crypto Council, signaled that the council is exploring several budget-neutral strategies for acquiring more Bitcoin for the US Strategic Reserve.
These strategies included revaluing the US Treasury's gold reserves, which are currently priced at $43 per ounce while the market rate is at an all-time high of $3,300 per ounce, and funding Bitcoin acquisition through trade tariffs.
BTC has been floated as a way to eliminate or alleviate the growing national debt by President Trump and several market analysts.
According to asset management firm VanEck, Bitcoin could help claw back the $36 trillion national debt by $14 trillion if the US Treasury introduces long-term bonds with BTC exposure.
Magazine: TradFi fans ignored Lyn Alden's BTC tip — Now she says it'll hit 7 figures: X Hall of Flame
The recent Project Eleven bounty for quantum computers cracking cryptographic keys is a joke. It provides no serious incentive at all.
Recently, Project Eleven (a quantum computing research group) announced a 1 bitcoin reward for the first team able to complete a challenge to demonstrate breaking a ECC (elliptic curve cryptograph) key using Shor's algorithm on a quantum computer.
The deadline for this challenge is April 5th, 2026, meaning in order to qualify for the prize a team must demonstrate breaking a key pair it must be done before that deadline.
This is frankly a completely absurd and meaningless prize for a number of reasons, the first of which is the deadline of just under a year from today. Even highly optimistic projections about the progress of quantum computing put the timeline of practically achieving such a goal at more like 5-10 years. Expecting a workable proof of concept demonstration that actually breaks a keypair in a single year is pretty laughable at face value, even if you do view quantum computing as a material threat in the short term.
Next is the factor of economic incentives. A single bitcoin is currently worth approximately $80,000. That is frankly not a lot of money in the grand scheme of things. Especially when it comes to the application of a cutting edge technology like quantum computing that can perform an entire class of computation exponentially faster than a classical computer. Imagine how much more valuable things could be done with a working quantum computer.
You could eavesdrop on internet connections regardless of TLS, breaking secure connections to banks, equity brokerages, private corporate networks not using post-quantum cryptography. You could break every private messenger application on the planet, you could decrypt any PGP encrypted message sent over email that you knew the public key for. You could break the entire DNS system's certificate authority hierarchy, allowing you to impersonate any server in the world a user tries to connect to.
All of these things have immeasurable value beyond just a mere $84,000. Why on Earth would someone with a working quantum computer publicly reveal that fact to claim a single bitcoin when they could take advantage of all these other things they would be capable of doing?
Okay, let's sweep all of those possibilities aside and pretend the entire world magically migrates to post-quantum cryptography aside from Bitcoin. It still makes no sense to try to publicly claim this prize if you have a functional quantum computer.
Let's assume you have a barely performant enough quantum computer, that it takes a decent amount of time to crack a single key. How many bare public keys are there securing 50 BTC outputs from the first mining epoch? THOUSANDS of them. Why on Earth would you crack one, and then go tell everyone publicly to claim a single bitcoin? You would just try to crack as many of those early coinbase rewards as possible before people detected you.
Finally, the timetable on its own is just absurd. Quantum computers currently are not even capable of factoring prime numbers that people can do themselves in their heads mentally. In a single year the technology is going to jump from that to cracking Bitcoin keys? That's absurd.
So what the hell is the point of this prize except some publicity stunt? It's utterly meaningless as a serious bounty to function as a canary in the coalmine for us, no matter how concerned or unconcerned you are with the timeframes of quantum computers as a threat.
This bounty is a joke.
This article is a Take. Opinions expressed are entirely the author's and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.
Established in 2012, Bitcoin Magazine is the oldest and most established source of trustworthy news, information and thought leadership on Bitcoin.
© 2025 BTC INC
According to @bolsaverse, OpenSea's new token trading feature for beta testers presents a strategic opportunity to acquire NFTs for potential flipping on the Solana blockchain. The integration with Twitter has positively impacted Solana, suggesting potential for increased trading volume. By connecting with the Phantom wallet, traders can position themselves to leverage these developments effectively.
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Richard Kim, the founder of crypto casino Zero Edge, was arrested on Tuesday following allegations that he had gambled away investors' funds.
According to an FBI complaint filed on Tuesday in the Southern District of New York, Kim "fraudulently induced investors to invest in Zero Edge, a cryptocurrency technology company he founded, and then misappropriated millions of dollars in those investors' funds."
The FBI said Kim lost "nearly all" of the $7 million he raised from investors and charged him with securities fraud and wire fraud. According to court records, Kim posted a secured bond of $250,000 and put up $100,000 in "cash or real property" to secure it.
CoinDesk was first to report on the Zero Edge incident in July of last year. In an interview at the time, Kim revealed to CoinDesk that he had gambled away more than $3.67 million of his investors' funds through a series of high-risk leveraged crypto trades.
"The downfall began with a careless mistake — a phishing site that cost $80k," Kim said in his own recollection of what went wrong, which he shared with CoinDesk in a written statement that he later published as a public apology. "This triggered my old demons, the need to 'make it back' to preserve my reputation."
According to Kim, he "started down a negative spiral of leverage trading, raising more capital, and hiding the truth."
After losing most of the $7 million he had raised for Zero Edge, Kim told CoinDesk he reported himself to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's public tip line.
"Part of my rationale in reaching out proactively to the SEC was to say, OK guys, I really f—d up. I lost this money. It was grossly negligent. But I didn't intend to go run away with this money," he told CoinDesk in an interview.
According to the FBI complaint, Kim's previous accounts "misleadingly described where investors' funds had gone, and why, and omitted to inform investors that certain funds had been transferred to Shuffle.com, the gambling website."
Kim's claim that he initially lost $80,000 to a phishing scam and never “mix[ed] personal and business funds,” according to the FBI, failed to account for the fact that he had also sent company funds to an online sportsbook and personal crypto investment accounts.
Kim did not immediately respond to a request for comment this week.
Kim's arrest marks a striking fall from grace. A former executive of Galaxy, the crypto investment firm headed by Michael Novogratz, Kim also led elite trading desks at JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs. Before that, he was an attorney with the prestigious law firm Cleary Gottlieb.
Galaxy was among the investors in Zero Edge who lost money as a result of Kim's activities.
"Mr. Kim left Galaxy in March 2024 to start Zero Edge, a company in which Galaxy had an immaterial balance-sheet investment," said Michael Wursthorn, Galaxy's head of communications. "Upon learning of certain actions taken by Mr. Kim in his role at Zero Edge, we, along with other investors, reported his conduct to the authorities."
Kim pitched Zero Edge as a first-of-its-kind crypto casino that would level the playing field for gamblers through improved transparency.
Zero Edge never launched, but Kim told CoinDesk last year that he was motivated to build it because of his history with gambling addiction and his frustration that the house frequently had an opaque and unfair edge over players.
Read more: Crypto Casino Founder Apologizes for Gambling Away Investor Funds
Sam is CoinDesk's deputy managing editor for tech and protocols. His reporting is focused on decentralized technology, infrastructure and governance. Sam holds a computer science degree from Harvard University, where he led the Harvard Political Review. He has a background in the technology industry and owns some ETH and BTC. Sam was part of the team that won a 2023 Gerald Loeb Award for CoinDesk's coverage of Sam Bankman-Fried and the FTX collapse.
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Since at least 2023, Bit Digital has been expanding into artificial intelligence and high-performance computing to diversify its revenue beyond crypto mining.
Bitcoin mining company Bit Digital has acquired an industrial building in Madison, North Carolina, upping the ante in a business diversification strategy that includes strategic pivots into AI and high-performance computing.
Bit Digital agreed to buy the property for $53.2 million through Enovum Data Centers Corp., the company's wholly owned Canadian subsidiary, regulatory filings show. The investment includes a $2.25 million initial deposit, with $1.2 million being non-refundable. The transaction is expected to close on May 15.
Bit Digital's regulatory filing was submitted around the same time that it announced a new Tier 3 data center site in Quebec, Canada, which will support the company's 5 megawatt colocation agreement with AI infrastructure provider Cerebras Systems.
The Quebec facility is being retrofitted with roughly $40 million in upgrades to meet Tier 3 standards — strict requirements that ensure high reliability for critical systems and continuous operation.
Bit Digital CEO Sam Tabar said at the time that the Quebec operation “represents continued momentum in our strategy to deliver purpose-built AI infrastructure at scale.”
Related: Auradine raises $153M, debuts business group for AI data centers
Faced with volatile crypto prices and a quadrennial Bitcoin halving cycle that squeezes revenues, several mining firms have leveraged their existing infrastructure to pivot to other data-intensive workloads. Mining companies like Hive Digital say AI data centers offer potentially higher revenue streams than crypto mining.
In the latest sign of economic pain, public Bitcoin miners sold more than 40% of their Bitcoin (BTC) holdings in March, according to data from TheMinerMag publication.
Public miners that can't keep their costs under control struggle the most in maintaining their Bitcoin operations, placing more pressure on executives to seek out alternative revenue streams.
An October report by CoinShares suggested that the least profitable miners are more likely to shift gears to AI and other workloads.
Related: SEC says proof-of-work mining does not constitute securities dealing
Binance CEO Richard Teng reveals multiple governments seeking guidance on bitcoin and crypto following U.S. strategic stockpile initiative.
Financial Times reports that bitcoin and crypto exchange Binance is advising several countries on creating their own bitcoin and crypto regulations and establishing national strategic bitcoin reserves.
Binance CEO Richard Teng revealed that multiple governments seek the exchange's guidance on establishing strategic bitcoin reserves and crafting digital asset policies following recent U.S. moves toward creating a national bitcoin stockpile.
“We have actually received quite a number of approaches by a few governments and sovereign wealth funds on the establishment of their own crypto reserves,” Teng said in an interview with the Financial Times. While declining to name specific countries, he noted that the United States is “way ahead” in developing strategic bitcoin frameworks.
The development comes as nations worldwide reassess their approach to Bitcoin following former U.S. President Donald Trump's executive order to establish a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve using confiscated assets from criminal and civil proceedings.
Teng, who assumed leadership of Binance after founder Changpeng Zhao stepped down, said that many countries have approached Binance to “[help] them with formulating their regulatory framework to govern crypto.”
The exchange's advisory role significantly evolves its relationship with regulators. Previously known for its “no headquarters” approach, Binance is considering establishing a global base as it takes on a more formal role in shaping national bitcoin and crypto policies.
Countries like Pakistan and Kyrgyzstan have already partnered with Binance on crypto regulation, though neither has officially announced plans for bitcoin reserves. The exchange's expanding influence in policy formation reflects the growing acceptance of Bitcoin as a potential strategic asset by sovereign entities.
Market observers note this development could signal a broader shift in how governments view bitcoin and crypto.
The advisory initiative comes as Binance works to reshape its image following recent regulatory challenges. The exchange has strengthened its compliance frameworks and proactively engaged with regulators worldwide.
The trend toward national bitcoin reserves could significantly affect the bitcoin's global adoption and price stability. As more countries consider holding bitcoin as a strategic asset, the market may see reduced volatility and increased institutional participation.
Binance's role in advising governments marks a new chapter in the bitcoin and crypto industry's maturation as these assets increasingly become part of national strategic planning. The development suggests a potential shift in how countries approach monetary sovereignty in the digital age.
Established in 2012, Bitcoin Magazine is the oldest and most established source of trustworthy news, information and thought leadership on Bitcoin.
© 2025 BTC INC
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The crypto market has been under bearish pressure because of President Trump's tariff policy. The Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has also sparked concerns after his recent remarks revealed that US inflation may also rise because of these tariffs. This article explores the top altcoins that crypto traders should sell as the economic climate flips bearish.
According to Powell, the ongoing tariff war will have a negative impact on inflation. Following these remarks, Reuters reported that experts are also expressing concerns about US economic growth. One expert noted,
“Powell is confirming what investors have been worried about, and that is the likelihood of slowing economic growth and more stubborn inflation as a result of the tariffs.”
Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump attributes the wrangles in the financial markets to Powell's hawkish stance on inflation. In his recent post on Truth Social, Trump noted that other central banks were lowering their rates to stimulate economic growth.
Despite the mounting concerns, data from CME FedWatchTool shows that 87% of investors believe that interest rates will remain the same next month after the FOMC meeting. If this happens, the crypto market faces volatility, hence the need for traders to seek the best altcoins to sell to minimize risks.
The harsh macroeconomic situation is spooking crypto investors, and some are looking for the best altcoins to sell. The top altcoins to sell amid growing concerns are Mantra (OM), Pi Network (PI), and Trump (TRUMP)
One of the top altcoins to sell to avoid losses is Mantra. This token recently recorded one of the worst crashes in crypto history, and it is now down by 92% from its all-time high recorded only two months ago.
Despite this dip, the RSI remains historically low at 27, which highlights a bearish momentum. At the same time, the ADX line is rising, which is a sign that the downtrend is gaining strength. This technical outlook supports a bearish Mantra price prediction.
Pi Network (PI) is also another altcoin to sell due to upcoming token unlocks. On-chain data shows that over 10M PI Coin tokens will be added to the circulating supply in the next month.
According to an X post by analyst Dr Altcoin, these unlocks are the main reason that the Pi Coin price is falling. These events have led to the Pi Coin market being flooded by more sellers than buyers, which is having a bearish effect on the price.
TRUMP is also one of the top altcoins to sell as traders remain concerned about inflation and tariffs. Data from Coinglass shows that TRUMP's funding rates have been predominantly negative in the last month. This indicates that many traders are taking long positions, further showing bearish momentum.
The Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has warned that US inflation may rise again due to tariffs. His remarks have drawn criticism but have also caused concerns in the crypto industry about a possible downtrend. If the market starts to drop, the top altcoins to sell are Mantra (OM), Pi Network (PI), and the TRUMP meme coin.
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In today's crypto for advisors, Todd Bendell from Amphibian Capital breaks down bitcoin yield products as a strategy to grow bitcoin holdings beyond price appreciation.
Then, Rich Rines, an initial Core DAO developer, provides guidance to Bitcoin developers in Ask an Expert.
Exclusive event alert for financial advisors: Join CoinDesk for Wealth Management Day on May 15th at Consensus Toronto. Registered wealth advisors are provided with their own day of networking and learning where they will acquire timely and actionable information about digital assets. Approved advisors receive a complimentary 3-day Platinum Pass ($1,750 value) to Consensus. Apply today.
– Sarah Morton
You're reading Crypto for Advisors, CoinDesk's weekly newsletter that unpacks digital assets for financial advisors. Subscribe here to get it every Thursday.
Bitcoin was never meant to sit idle.
For over a decade, bitcoin has served as a digital store of value, a hedge against monetary debasement and more recently, a core allocation in institutional portfolios. As the asset matures and infrastructure improves, long-term holders are asking a new question: How do I put my bitcoin to work — without leaving the Bitcoin ecosystem?
The answer lies in a growing but underexplored category of strategies: BTC-on-BTC yield.
Let's be clear: this isn't about lending your BTC on unregulated platforms or chasing high annual percentage yields (APYs) à la BlockFi. That playbook collapsed under the weight of counterparty risk and opacity. What's emerged over the last two years is a more institutional alternative — diversified, risk-managed access to systematic arbitrage and quantitative strategies, all denominated in bitcoin.
Why BTC-native yield matters
For most assets, it's a given that money should work for you. We don't keep dollars under a mattress or tucked away on a thumb drive — we invest them. Yet in the bitcoin world, the dominant narrative has long been “hold and wait.”
That mindset made sense when bitcoin was fighting for legitimacy. But in today's environment — where BTC is being adopted by sovereign wealth funds and traded on major exchanges — long-term holders need better tools.
BTC-on-BTC yield solves this. It aligns with the ethos of accumulating more BTC but does so through institutional-grade strategies that aim to generate returns in BTC, not just on BTC. That distinction matters.
Cold storage isn't a strategy
There's also a myth that simply holding bitcoin in cold storage is the safest option. The phrase “not your keys, not your coins” has become dogma — but it deserves a second look.
In reality, cold storage comes with its own risks: human error, hardware failure, loss of keys and in many cases, an inability to generate any yield whatsoever. Meanwhile, professional custodians — regulated, insured and audited — are now standard infrastructure providers in digital asset management.
For allocators managing material BTC positions, yield-generating custody isn't a tradeoff. It's an upgrade.
How these strategies work
Today's BTC-native yield opportunities span a wide range — from delta-neutral basis trades and statistical arbitrage to DeFi yield farming and machine learning-driven quant execution — but all settled in BTC.
Returns are calculated and distributed in kind. The objective is simple: accumulate more BTC over time, without needing to rely solely on price appreciation.
By allocating across a diversified mix of strategies and managers, investors can pursue consistent BTC growth while mitigating single-strategy or single-manager risk.
Why BTC-on BTC yield is timely
Several forces are converging right now:
In short, bitcoin is growing up. The question is whether the strategies around it will grow with it.
Rethinking HODLing
BTC-on-BTC yield and long-term holding aren't mutually exclusive. Allocators can continue to hold core BTC positions while using active strategies to pursue steady accumulation.
That requires moving beyond cold storage maxims and exploring yield strategies that reflect the sophistication of today's markets. With proper risk controls, BTC-native yield offers a pragmatic path to accumulate more BTC without abandoning its core principles.
The bottom line is that bitcoin doesn't have to sit on the sidelines. It can move with the market — and grow with it.
For allocators thinking in decades, BTC-on-BTC yield opens the door to a more productive bitcoin strategy — one that matches conviction with action.
- Todd Bendell, Managing General Partner, Amphibian Capital
Q. What's the best way to align early developer incentives with long-term protocol value?
A. The key is to reward real product-market fit and real users — not short-term speculation. That starts with building tight relationships and solving problems for real communities. From there, it's about fostering an “eat what you kill” ecosystem, in which builders who ship products people actually use are rewarded with real economic upside — not just points, grants or temporary incentives. When developers are compensated based on the value they create for users, long-term alignment takes care of itself.
Q. When just starting out in crypto, how can developers filter for signal over noise?
A. Don't just chase the hot thing — look for what will still matter in 5 to 10 years. That's one of the key reasons Bitcoin remains a compelling foundation for builders. It has dedicated users, immense value and a clear product-market fit. Developers should focus on real usage and demand instead of short-term token price action. If you're building something that keeps people engaged because it's useful — not because it's yield-farming season — you're already filtering signal from noise.
Q. What lessons from Bitcoin's design philosophy are still underutilized?
A. Bitcoin is dominant not because it does the most, but because it does one thing better than anyone else. Its product-market fit as digital gold is crypto's most proven use case — and yet it's still underrated. Too many forget that simplicity with real utility wins. Building around Bitcoin and extending its utility without compromising its foundation remains one of the most underrated opportunities in the space today.
- Rich Rines, an initial contributor, Core DAO
Todd is the Co-Founder and Managing General Partner at Amphibian Capital. Amphibian Capital is a Digital Assets fund of funds investing in the world's leading crypto hedge funds. We have researched 500+ funds, vetted 100+, and constructed a portfolio with the top 15-20 based on a proprietary diligence process and algorithm. This provides accredited investors and institutional allocators with the ability to gain diversified digital asset exposure with one investment. Amphibian Capital offers USD, BTC, and ETH denominated funds giving investors the opportunity to maintain long exposure to crypto with disciplined and resilient risk management measures in place.
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Code & Country welcomes key government officials, the global tech industry, and Bitcoin leaders to discuss the future of tech and policy.
LAS VEGAS, April, 2025 – The Bitcoin Conference, the world's largest Bitcoin and fintech event, and America250 announced “Code & Country,” a first-of-its kind program exploring the intersection of public policy and technology. Taking place on Tuesday, May 27, 2025, at the Venetian Conference Center during Bitcoin 2025, Code & Country will bring together U.S. cabinet officials and policymakers, leading tech companies, and Bitcoin industry titans for a summit on accelerating innovation through public policy.
Chris LaCivita, Co-Manager to Donald Trump's 2024 Presidential Campaign and Senior Strategic Advisor for America250, Rosie Rios, Chair of America250, David Sacks, White House Crypto and AI Czar, and Bo Hines, White House Executive Director have been announced to speak. Bitcoin industry executives joining the program are Gemini Founders, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and the Chief Legal and Chief Policy Officers of Coinbase, Paul Grewal and Faryar Shirzad (respectively,) and BTC Inc Founder and CEO, David Bailey. More speakers and the official program will be announced in the coming weeks on the Bitcoin 2025 website.
“Bitcoin is experiencing unprecedented recognition at the highest levels of government, but it's not happening in a silo,” said David Bailey, Co-Founder and CEO of BTC Inc. “President Trump's establishment of a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve is one of many steps he's taken to promote American innovation. Our stage is where these conversations started, and we're taking it to the next level in Las Vegas.”
For the first time, the Bitcoin Conference opens its stage to converging technologies, recognizing that Bitcoin's adoption is a byproduct of widespread technological progress, industrial strength, and a friendly regulatory landscape.
By collaborating with America250, the Congressional Commission tasked with celebrating the 250th anniversary of the United States, the organizers recognize the role American policies play in advancing technology globally.
“President Trump has assembled the first pro-crypto administration,” said Chris LaCivita. “Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and space exploration are all a part of America's legacy for human achievement. President Trump's agenda ensures that crypto, AI, and energy abundance will write this next chapter in history.”
Code & Country will convene Cabinet officials, U.S. Members of Congress, and key figures from federal agencies, including the Department of Justice, Treasury, and Department of Energy alongside industry executives from the Bitcoin, AI, energy, fintech, internet access, space, and enterprise technology sectors. Together, they will explore the next era of human advancement and the critical role that the government plays in fostering open innovation.
The Bitcoin Conference has historically hosted key political figures including President Donald Trump, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, Howard Lutnik, Ron Paul, and Vivek Ramaswamy, many of whom have taken a position with the new administration, are vocal proponents of Bitcoin, and are notable supporters of economic freedom.
Attendance at Code & Country is exclusively available to Bitcoin 2025 Industry Pass and Whale Pass holders, ensuring a high-caliber networking environment. Attendees will hear from and engage in discussions around these topics with more information to be announced in the coming weeks.
Interested in attending? Visit the official website. Use the discount code: MEDIA10.
Interested sponsors can visit the website.
For the link to learn more.
The Bitcoin Conference is the world's largest and most influential gathering of Bitcoin professionals, investors, and thought leaders. Committed to fostering Bitcoin adoption and industry innovation, the conference has grown into a global phenomenon since its founding in 2019. Learn more by visiting the official website.
America250's mission is to celebrate and commemorate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, marking America's Semiquincentennial. We aim to inspire our fellow Americans to reflect on our past, strengthen our love of country, and renew our commitment to the ideals of democracy through programs that educate, engage, and unite us as a nation. America250 will foster shared experiences that spark imagination, showcase the rich tapestry of our American stories, inspire service in our communities, honor the enduring strength, and celebrate the resilience of the United States of America.
Disclosure: This content is provided by a third party. crypto.news does not endorse any product mentioned on this page. Users must do their own research before taking any actions related to the company.
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Blockchain Deposit Insurance Corporation (BDIC) Announces 3Point0 Labs as Official Agency of Record
LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Blockchain Deposit Insurance Corporation (BDIC), the cryptocurrency insurer offering cutting-edge security solutions for digital currency wallet holders, has named 3Point0 Labs as its Agency of Record. The announcement marks a strategic partnership as BDIC prepares for its anticipated insurance solution and token launch Q4 2025.
Marquel Martin said, “BDIC is poised to become a foundational layer in the digital asset economy. Our goal is to help shape their global narrative, drive user adoption, and position them as the go-to solution ...."
“3Point0 will work with our CMO and marketing team to increase brand awareness, drive engagement and amplify the BDIC message,” said Jeffrey Glusman, CEO of BDIC. “Their proven expertise in fintech, crypto, and global brand building makes them an ideal partner.”
Based in Los Angeles, 3Point0 Labs is a full-service digital marketing and communications agency specializing in blockchain, cryptocurrency, sports, and entertainment. 3Point0 will oversee BDIC's strategic communications, public relations, brand messaging, and digital marketing across global markets. With deep roots in the blockchain industry, 3Point0 has executed standout campaigns for leading fintech and digital asset companies.
3Point0's campaign will highlight BDIC's innovative tokenomics and risk management solutions with key focus on buildout of emerging markets like the Middle East and Africa where demand and 3Point0's relationships align.
“3Point0 has an unmatched track record of building successful international brands,” added Glusman. “Andrew, Marquel, and their team are difference-makers who understand the urgency and opportunity within this sector who have been visionaries themselves in business.”
Marquel Martin, CEO of 3Point0 Labs, echoed that enthusiasm: “BDIC is poised to become a foundational layer in the digital currency economy ecosystem. Our goal is to help shape the global narrative, drive user adoption, and position BDIC as the go-to solution for anyone serious about security and trust in the crypto space for collaboration.”
3Point0 Labs
3Point0 is a full-service digital marketing and branding house that specializes in blockchain, cryptocurrency, sport and entertainment industries. Known for its innovative approach to public relations, content marketing, and social media strategy, 3Point0 works with clients to craft compelling narratives that resonate with modern investors and drive engagement across digital platforms.
Website: https://www.3point0labs.io/
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Blockchain Deposit Insurance Corporation (BDIC)
By leveraging blockchain-powered smart contracts and advanced risk assessment algorithms, BDIC provides a vital safety net for cryptocurrency investments, ensuring trust, security, and long-term value in the digital economy through insurance.
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As the cryptocurrency market navigates through April 2025, participants are closely watching for signs of a potential turnaround following recent volatility. Significant attention has been paid to recent analysis, particularly a report from Coinbase published mid-April, which offers a cautiously optimistic forecast suggesting a market bottom might form later in Q2, potentially setting the stage for a Q3 bounce. This outlook inevitably sparks interest in identifying the best altcoins to buy now to position advantageously for a possible recovery. Understanding the market dynamics, especially concerning altcoins, provides crucial context when evaluating various opportunities, from innovative presales like Dawgz AI ($DAGZ) to established players such as Sei (SEI) and XRP.
Summary
The comprehensive April 15th report from Coinbase delves into the state of the crypto market, offering valuable perspectives for those considering altcoin investments. It acknowledges the significant pressure experienced, noting that the total crypto market capitalization excluding Bitcoin had fallen sharply by 41% from its December 2024 peak of $1.6 trillion to around $950 billion by mid-April.
This coincided with a notable decline in venture capital investment in the sector, remaining 50-60% below the previous cycle's highs, indicating reduced risk tolerance from major investors. External factors like global tariff implementations and economic uncertainty were also cited as contributing factors, particularly weighing on the recently more volatile altcoin market.
The analysts encourage using technical indicators like the 200-day moving average to understand longer-term trends. Both Bitcoin and Coinbase's own COIN50 index ,tracking top altcoins. Falling below this key level signaled a potentially more profound market shift requiring caution. The report highlighted the performance gap between Bitcoin and altcoins. This divergence,reflects the heightened volatility in newer crypto sectors like memecoins, DePIN projects, and AI-related tokens. Despite these cautionary signals, Coinbase expressed cautious optimism, forecasting a potential market bottom by mid-to-late Q2 2025 and the possibility of a recovery starting in Q3.
Given Coinbase's analysis pointing towards potential stabilization and a Q3 bounce, which specific altcoins might traders be evaluating? The focus often falls on projects with strong fundamentals, innovative technology aligning with current trends,like AI or unique market positioning that could see them benefit disproportionately from a market recovery. Here are three diverse examples attracting attention:
Dawgz AI ($DAGZ) represents an altcoin operating in the AI and meme coin sectors, highlighted by Coinbase as areas of interest (and volatility). Currently in its presale phase, it offers a unique entry point.
Sei (SEI) is an established altcoin operating as a Layer 1 blockchain specifically engineered for trading applications.
XRP stands as one of the largest and longest-standing altcoins, primarily known for its focus on facilitating efficient global payments.
The search for the best altcoins to buy now is intensified by analysis suggesting the market may be nearing a bottom ahead of a potential Q3 bounce. While caution is warranted due to ongoing volatility and technical indicators still showing weakness, this outlook encourages strategic positioning.
Opportunities are diverse: innovative presales like Dawgz AI ($DAGZ) offer early access to trending sectors like AI with potential price stability, specialized Layer 1s like Sei (SEI) provide infrastructure bets on specific growth areas like decentralized trading and established utility-focused coins like XRP present opportunities tied to real-world adoption and regulatory clarity. As market sentiment potentially shifts, conducting research into these varied altcoin categories will be key for navigating the path towards a potential Q3 recovery.
Discovering altcoins involves using data aggregators, crypto exchanges, news sites, and researching presales; always verify project details, check for audits (like Dawgz AI's SolidProof audit), and assess utility before investing.
Potential often lies with altcoins innovating in key sectors like AI (e.g., Dawgz AI), specialized Layer 1s (e.g., Sei), or those with strong real-world utility (e.g., XRP), especially if positioned well before market rebounds.
Some altcoins with proven utility and strong ecosystems may fit long-term strategies, but many are highly speculative; Coinbase's report highlighting altcoin volatility underscores the need for careful selection and risk management.
Altcoins include diverse categories like platform tokens, DeFi protocols, utility tokens (like XRP), meme coins (including those adding utility like Dawgz AI), Layer 1s focused on specific niches (like Sei), and many more.
*This article was paid for. Cryptonomist did not write the article or test the platform.
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Secret Service, Canadian Officials Disrupt $4.3M Ethereum “Approval Phishing” Scam
$85,055.00
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U.S. Secret Service forensic analysts have collaborated with Canadian authorities to tackle $4.3 million in “approval phishing” attacks targeting Ethereum wallet holders.
Approval phishing is when a malicious attacker tricks a user, for example, as part of a “pig butchering” romance scam, into signing a transaction that gives the attacker permission to spend or drain tokens from their crypto wallet.
The joint operation, dubbed Operation Avalanche (no affiliation with the layer-1 network or its AVAX token), searched for compromised wallets on the Ethereum blockchain and reached out to impacted wallet owners who had lost money or were at risk of doing so.
The effort was led by the U.S. Secret Service and the B.C. Securities Commission. It also had support from the Ontario Provincial Police, Alberta Securities Commission, L'Autorité des marchés financiers, Ontario Securities Commission, Delta Police Department, Vancouver Police Department, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. An unnamed crypto exchange and a third-party blockchain analyst were also said to be involved.
Matt McCool, a special agent in charge at the U.S. Secret Service's Washington Field Office, said his organization “will continue working with Canadian law enforcement and financial partners to identify and seize stolen assets to return to victims.”
This isn't the first time that the Secret Service has announced a major crypto enforcement action in recent months.
In March, it took down the website of Russian crypto exchange Garantex as part of another joint operation, claiming it had ties to cybercriminal groups and sanctioned Russian banks, including darknet ransomware groups.
Approval phishing has consistently been a popular and damaging type of crypto scam.
Blockchain sleuths at Chainalysis estimated that $2.7 billion was lost to approval phishing between May 2021 and July 2024, adding that many cases go under the radar and remain unreported.
Though approval phishing attacks can be targeted at organizations—such as in the case of the $120 million Badger DAO hack in December 2021—they are often directed at wealthy private individuals, who are known to be active in crypto or NFT space.
In December 2021, a well-known collector in the NFT space lost Bored Ape NFTs worth almost $2 million (at value's of the time) to a variant of 'approval phishing' known as 'ice phishing.'
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Stacy Hazinski received one of those annoying text messages that claimed she was about to be charged $114.02 for something she didn't buy. So she called the number, supposedly for her Apple Pay account, to make sure that she didn't get stuck with the bill.
She got stuck talking to scammers.
One simple phone call set off a scheme that ultimately enabled someone to steal her entire income tax refund and drain her savings account at a local credit union.
Filing her taxes early in the year essentially meant little, she told me at her Troy condo, because now she has nothing to show for it.
She's out $17,500 in all.
Her story highlights one huge red flag that consumers must watch out for these days — how scammers are convincing you to take cash to a crypto ATM at the local party store, gas station, or grocery.
Con artists deceive people with backstories on how they can protect their money or avoid trouble by depositing money in a cryptocurrency ATM.
The crooks — who might pretend to be from Apple, Google, an Internet service provider, or even law enforcement — do their research and know where these ATMs are in your neighborhood. They'll tell you to withdraw cash from the bank and give you directions to one of these crypto ATMs.
The crooks even go so far as to call bitcoin ATMS “safety lockers," according to regulators.
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel issued a consumer alert April 8 to warn residents about scammers using bitcoin ATMs to defraud consumers.
“Because money sent through bitcoin ATMs is nearly impossible to recover and these machines lack oversight and regulation, they have become an attractive option for criminals engaged in fraud and money laundering,” Nessel said in a statement.
Consumers lost $66 million to crypto ATM fraud in the first six months of 2024, according to the Federal Trade Commission. The actual number is likely much higher as such types of fraud often go unreported, according to the FTC. The FTC said the losses involving these ATMs increased dramatically from $12 million in 2020 to $114 million for all of 2023.
People 60 and over were more than three times as likely as younger adults to report a loss using a bitcoin ATM in the first half of 2024, according to FTC data.
Once the money is deposited into bitcoin, experts warn, it is transferred quickly, making it often impossible to track. Your bank is unlikely to reimburse you because you withdrew the money on your own.
Hazinski, 51, heard slew of scary stories on Feb. 28 — starting with a guy named John from Apple and switching over to a guy named Eric who claimed to be from her credit union — on how scammers were in the process of getting their hands on her federal income tax refund, as well as the rest of her savings.
As part of the scam, she was told by the guy who claimed to be an employee at the credit union that she would need to transfer her cash into a "security" account to protect her savings from someone who was about to send her money into an account at www.poker.com.
What? Why was her money going to cover some online poker tournament? She got terribly nervous, especially since her savings was limited after she had been out of work for a few months.
"And I said, 'I don't gamble,' " Hazinski recalls.
She said she wasn't using her refund to play poker — and she wasn't about to let someone else use her money, either.
"It was so stressful," Hazinski said.
The fraudsters kept her on the phone most of the time, except for when they were disconnected a few times. She was told to go to the Community Choice Credit Union branch at 1740 Crooks Road in Royal Oak first to take out $12,500 where she remembers that the stack of bills was stuffed into zippered bag.
The crooks told her not to tell any bank employees why she was taking the money out. When a teller asked, she repeated a story the man on the phone told her. She needed money for home improvements.
She and her son and daughter live in a condo that she rents in Troy. She had no plans for home improvements.
After she made the first withdrawal, the man on the phone told her to drive to the Community Choice Credit Union at 30 E. Long Lake Road in Troy where he instructed her to take out $5,000 cash. The teller put those bills in a paper envelope.
After that, he told her that bitcoin is secure and she needed to deposit her money at a bitcoin ATM to protect it from scammers.
"So I believed him," she told me as we talked at her dining room high-top table.
Hazinski said the con artists told her to drive to a party store, BB's of Troy, where people usually go to buy liquor or lottery tickets. Instead of winning big, she ended up losing her money on the spot.
There, she would find an ATM operated by Bitcoin Depot where she could deposit her cash.
The Bitcoin Depot ATM stands near the front register, not far from a refrigerated case that sells BB's Buzzin Brews for $8.99 and up, ready-to-mix drinks that often include minibar size bottles of liquor.
When I visited the store April 12, I did not see any signs posted on the machine warning of potential scams. I did not attempt to buy bitcoin. The sign on the screen flashed: "Touch the screen to get started. With Bitcoin Depot there's no hassle. Just crypto made easy."
When I called the store April 16, I asked to speak to a manager who apparently hung up on me after I mentioned that a woman had lost $17,500 at the bitcoin machine in the store. I asked how long the ATM had been there and the phone went dead. No one picked up after I tried to immediately call again.
The party store had a decent number of customers in it that February afternoon, Hazinski remembered, but no one said a word as she pulled out the two envelopes stuffed with $17,500 from her purse.
"I was standing there at least a half hour putting money in that machine," Hazinski said.
She had no idea how to use a bitcoin ATM or set up an account. The con artist remained on the phone to walk her through the steps.
"He's telling me exactly what to do," Hazinski said.
At one point, the ATM asked her for a QR code. And con artist told her: "I'll send you the QR code."
She scanned it. "What I find out after the fact, right, is the QR code that he sent me went to his account," Hazinski said. "I did that twice like an idiot."
As part of the scam, crooks text you a QR code to scan at the ATM, and once you do, the cash you deposit goes right into the bad actor's wallet. It's gone.
She was still in the store when her 16-year-old son Joshua, who attends Troy Athens High School, called her wondering why she wasn't home yet.
"I said, 'I'll be home in a minute,' " she recalled.
When she told him what had happened, her son said "Mom, are you kidding me?"
If her bank account somehow wasn't secure, her teen son wondered, why wouldn't the credit union tell her to transfer it right to his account? It made no sense to go to a crypto ATM.
The lights came on, and Hazinski knew her son had to be right.
The man impersonating a credit union employee had told her earlier that someone would come to her house the next day to give her a new debit card and a new account number. No one showed up. After her conversation with her son, Hazinski didn't expect that anyone would.
"All the bills, and you have no money," Hazinski said.
Fortunately, her father has been able to help her cover some expenses, such as her rent.
Hazinski was laid off in August from a job as a robotics engineer, work she has done for some 25 years. Initially, she used that time off to take care of her father who was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. He's now in remission and she's still looking for work.
Hazinski has been on interviews but thinks many companies, including auto suppliers, are holding back hiring in light of the Trump tariffs. She voted for Trump and favors his strategy of raising revenue for the federal government by getting countries to pay higher tariffs. But she's hoping that hiring picks up, too.
She's far from the first person to be caught in this bitcoin ATM scam.
Crypto ATM abuse has gotten so bad that a top Democratic senator introduced a bill in Congress in February that would protect new customers who are most likely to be fraud victims by setting transaction limits of $2,000 per day, and $10,000 total over the first 14 days.
The Crypto ATM Fraud Protection Act — introduced by Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee — would require full refunds for fraudulent transactions at crypto ATMs if the new customer makes a report within 30 days.
And it would be required that the ATM offer a way for consumers to give live, verbal confirmation for any transaction greater than $500.
ATM operators would need to provide clear warnings to consumers about the risk of fraud.
In a Senate floor speech, Durbin shared the story of a man from New Lenox, Illinois, who lost $15,000 via a bitcoin ATM. That scam started when the con artists called and claimed to be a deputy in the Will County Sheriff's Office. Supposedly, the man missed jury duty and needed to pay a fine to avoid arrest.
Durbin said it was past time to put some "commonsense guardrails in place to stop fraud in this largely unregulated industry."
Bitcoin Depot, which operates the ATM at BB's of Troy along with more than 8,400 kiosks in North America, said the company remains focused on "prevention and user safety as we work to make crypto more accessible and secure."
"We display multiple scam warnings throughout the entire transaction process and offer live customer support via phone, text, chat, and email to assist users in real-time before they complete a transaction," according to a statement sent to the Detroit Free Press by a spokesperson for Bitcoin Depot.
Bitcoin Depot also emailed photos of several types of warnings. One was of a permanent label attached below a keypad on the kiosk that stated: "Warning: Have you received a phone call from someone demanding payment in bitcoin? This is likely a scam. All bitcoin transactions are irreversible."
I did not see such a label when I looked at the ATM in Troy on April 12.
Other warnings, according to the company, appear during the transaction. They include warnings to new customers to not use the Bitcoin Depot ATM for payments to any government entities, law enforcement, employers, tech support companies, or anyone saying you've been hacked.
Another photo showed a warning that appears before a wallet is scanned: "Are you being scammed? Do not buy bitcoin for IRS payments, utility bills, or if someone says you have been hacked or are being investigated. These are scams."
That warning also indicates that "losses due to fraudulent or accidental transactions may not be recoverable and transactions in virtual currency are irreversible."
Hazinski told me she did not see any alerts about scams when the con artist on the phone was telling her what to do next.
"I did not receive any of those warnings," she later told me by email after I sent her images of the Bitcoin Depot warnings.
I initially wrote about crooks using bitcoin ATMs to steal money roughly three years ago. A 27-year-old woman thought she snagged a great work-from-home job, but she ended up losing $500 to scammers. They sent a phony check to her Oakland Township home for her to buy Apple computer products to work remotely as an administrative assistant for a biopharmaceutical company.
But first, she somehow needed to deposit money in a bitcoin ATM at the Star Market in Lake Orion to prove where she lived before they'd send any equipment. She, too, had never bought bitcoin before.
In another case in 2022, a northern Michigan couple received a phony call from "Apple Support." Ultimately, the couple ended up withdrawing $350,000 from various banks and then turning that cash into cryptocurrency, according to the Grand Traverse Sheriff's Department.
The man, 76, and the woman, 87, sent that money via CoinFlip platform to scammers. Some money was sent via bitcoin ATMs; the rest was through wire transfers, according to authorities.
In 2024, consumers reported losing more money to scams where they paid with bank transfers or cryptocurrency than all other payment methods combined. People reported losing $2 billion through a bank transfer and $1.42 billion through cryptocurrency, according to Federal Trade Commission data. These cryptocurrency-related scams also involved phony investments, not just cash lost at a bitcoin ATM.
Crooks, of course, take advantage of our lack of knowledge when it comes to these ATMs. Consumers need to realize that they should only send crypto to a wallet that that they control.
Once it's in someone else's wallet, experts say, there's nothing you can do to recover your crypto.
The Community Choice Credit Union said it consistently shares information to alert consumers about fraud, including the use of bitcoin. Warnings about bitcoin ATM scams, according to the credit union, have been posted on its website and social media pages.
“We are extremely concerned and saddened to hear that our member was a victim of fraud,” said Jeff Dubey, vice president of Enterprise Risk Management for Community Choice Credit Union.
In a statement sent to the Free Press, the credit union said frontline credit union staff will encourage a credit union member to engage with the risk management team, if the staff suspects someone is a potential victim.
"Our internal teams are alerted to current scam techniques and trained to assist members if they indicate they have been told to withdraw money for a suspicious purpose," according to the statement.
The credit union stated that fraudsters are increasingly tech savvy and can "spoof" financial institution phone numbers and send text messages to take over accounts. "They also commonly employ scare tactics via phone calls, demanding that consumers purchase gift cards, wire funds, or deposit cash into bitcoin machines," the credit union stated.
Lt. Ben Hancock of the Troy Police Department said right now, scams where crooks are demanding payments by bitcoin or outright cash have seen an uptick lately.
On March 16, for example, a 61-year-old Troy man told police that he was contacted by someone who falsely claimed to be from the Department of Justice. The man was told that his bank accounts had been breached and his money could be stolen if he did not safeguard his cash.
As part of the scam, the government imposters told him to wire transfer $33,000 to a Coinbase account. Coinbase is an online platform, which promises that you can buy and sell crypto in "less than 3 minutes."
After transferring the money, the victim was contacted again and told he needed to transfer any remaining money he had to protect it. The man did not send any more money.
It's another reminder, Hancock said, that scammers impersonate government agencies and brand names we trust. But no legitimate federal agency or business, he said, is going to contact you and demand that money be transferred or paid immediately by cryptocurrency, cash or other methods.
"We are still seeing some gift card scams," Hancock said, "but currently bitcoin or other electronic payments seem to be happening more than gift card scams."
His advice: Do not purchase bitcoin or transfer money via other means to pay a bill or handle a problem.
"Please do your research and contact whatever company these people are claiming to be from directly to confirm they are, in fact, employees," Hancock said. "They are likely not."
Contact personal finance columnist Susan Tompor: stompor@freepress.com. Follow her on X @tompor.
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Trump wants to build a "Crypto Monopoly"? (Related reading: " Trump, an old fan of Monopoly, enters the blockchain game, making another move in the crypto market ")
Although Trump has disturbed the world since he took office, we have to admit that, personally, Trump is undoubtedly the most money-making president of all time. In addition to his well-known real estate industry, the growth of his media and technology companies, and the shady stock operations that have made the market extremely suspicious, he has also opened up a new channel for profit-making - cryptocurrency, and has made at least $1 billion in profits from it.
To date, Trump's crypto territory has been expanding, from the initial NFT to Defi, from MEME to stablecoins, and finally to mining. A new crypto empire named after Trump seems to be rising. And just recently, according to Fortune, the Trump family is suspected of targeting the blockchain game field again.
Looking back at Trump's crypto journey, we have to start with digital cards. In June 2021, Trump at the time was still advocating the "great dollar theory", denouncing cryptocurrencies as a "scam" that affects the value of the dollar, and also said that cryptocurrencies should be strictly regulated. But in less than a year and a half, Trump has shown his true colors.
On December 15, 2022, Trump announced the release of Trump digital trading card NFT through TruthSocial, a social media website he founded. The series was minted on the Polygon blockchain, and a total of 45,000 NFTs were initially created, with a starting price of $99 per piece. Buying 45 digital trading cards will get you a ticket to dinner with Trump. This series of NFTs can be purchased with credit cards and WETH, and requires KYC and email. Although it caused ridicule at the time, with the traffic blessing and call of the former president, this series was still sold out in less than a day after its launch. Judging from the trading volume of opensea, the total transaction volume of this series reached 17,115ETH, and there are currently 14,411 holders.
In short, Trump made a huge profit of $4.45 million on his first attempt. After tasting the sweetness, on April 18, 2023, Trump quickly released his second series of NFTs - Trump Digital Trading Cards Series 2. The same marketing method, but the total number of series increased to 47,000, which he said was to express his confidence in serving as the 47th president. The price is still $99. Although it was also sold out within 5 hours of release, it plummeted rapidly on the second day. It can be seen that the market has been tired of the consecutive sales.
But Trump doesn't care about the market, he only cares about the actual benefits. Shortly afterwards, Trump released the third series of MugShot Edition NFTs. This time it was even more outrageous, with a total of 100,000 pieces, with no price increase, and introduced special benefits. For $10,000, you can be invited to the reception, and a unique Ordinal digital trading card limited to 200 pieces will be included. It is precisely because of this series that Trump's subsequent "making NFT hot again" came into being. A simple calculation shows that with just three sets of NFT combinations, the Trump team has attracted $19 million, and according to its financial disclosures, the actual profit of NFTs has reached millions of dollars.
NFT is just the beginning. It is both for earning political donations and for canvassing votes. In September 2024, the Trump family announced the launch of the cryptocurrency project "World Liberty Financial". This company named Defi has not seen much improvement in Defi since its listing. Instead, it has continuously bought coins and built positions, which has attracted attention. The total holdings have reached 1 billion US dollars, with a loss of 0.87%. More directly, the sale of governance tokens. In the context of clarifying that the tokens will not be resold at the secondary level and that there are market interests, in March this year, WLFI still announced the completion of the sale of $550 million WLFI governance tokens, and the currency circle OG Sun Yuchen also contributed $75 million.
The documents show that after deducting operating costs, Trump and his business partners will receive 75% of the project's net income, including the WLFI token sale. Of the funds raised from the WLFI sale, $30 million has been designated to pay company expenses, compensation and obligations. Project documents also show that Trump and his partners in DT Marks DEFI LLC will receive 75% of the remaining amount, or $390 million, as marketing fees for Trump to promote the project "from time to time" and allow the use of his name and image.
Just as Trump talked about the future of stablecoins at the first White House Crypto Summit, the family business took action. On March 25, WLFI announced the launch of a stablecoin called USD1, which is pegged to the US dollar and 100% backed by US government short-term treasury bonds, US dollar deposits and other cash equivalents. USD1 will be minted on the ETH and BSC blockchains, and plans to expand to other protocols in the future. USD1 reserves will be hosted by BitGo. As of now, according to Coingecko data, USD1 transaction volume has exceeded 44.91 million US dollars.
Next up is mining. The president has made it clear that he wants to ensure that the remaining bitcoins are made in the United States, so the Trump family naturally wants to seize the opportunity. At the end of March, Trump's second son Eric Trump and mining company Hut 8 Mining announced the joint establishment of a new bitcoin mining company, American Bitcoin. Hut 8 injected most of its ASIC mining machines into American Data Centers, which was co-invested by Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., and changed its name to American Bitcoin after the transaction was completed. Hut 8 holds 80% of the shares.
If mining and stablecoins seem to have just taken shape and there is no big profit to speak of, the one that shocked the world must be Trump MEME. In January, Trump's personal MEME Trump opened the precedent of the president issuing coins, and successfully made him a lot of money amid the abuse. But from the peak of $70 to the current $7.89, from a 125-fold surge to a 90% drop from the high point, investors are in a state of extremes, and it also laid the root cause of further tightening of liquidity in the subsequent cryptocurrency circle.
Due to the unlocking problem, the actual profit is not as huge as imagined. From the perspective of token distribution, the total supply of TRUMP is 1 billion, but only 200 million will be circulated initially, and the remaining 800 million are expected to be unlocked linearly within 3 years. Two subsidiaries of the Trump Group occupy an absolute share. Trump's companies CIC Digital LLC and Fight Fight Fight LLC will own 80% of the TRUMP tokens, with a lock-up period of 3-12 months and unlocking within the next 24 months. The current book value profit is approximately US$6.344 billion.
Overall, a huge Trump crypto empire is emerging, and its layout is already very extensive. After a small trial of NFT, the mining business is about to take shape, and it also includes profit cash cow stablecoins and Defi, and even MEME provides blood packages. Although it is scattered, the industrial chain has gradually formed, and both infrastructure and applications are involved, and it is expected to continue to expand around "core applications". Bloomberg reported that as of now, the Trump family has attracted more than $1 billion in the crypto field. From the current point of view, the crypto market is not in a boom cycle. After entering the bull market after the foothold, it is obvious that the Trump family will make a lot of money.
Just a few days ago, Fortune reported that Trump's latest crypto project will be a real estate video game. People familiar with the matter said that this game is an adaptation of "MONOPOLY GO!". Players earn in-game cash by moving chess pieces on a digital "Monopoly" board and build buildings in a digital city. It was also revealed that Trump's long-time friend Bill Zanker is the driving force behind the project. However, Zanker spokesman Kevin Mercuri denied this, saying only that Zanker is indeed developing a game, but it is not Monopoly. It can be seen that the Trump family's subsequent crypto tentacles are very likely to extend to the field of blockchain games.
It has been mentioned before that Trump's business philosophy adheres to the principle of traffic monetization. The currency circle, which has always been traffic-oriented, is obviously very consistent with its business characteristics. With the support of its own controllable policies, Trump can continue to raise the currency market by releasing favorable news, and can also directly use his influence to cut into the most profitable and policy-promising fields. This is undoubtedly an alternative political corruption and insider trading. Looking at its layout in the encryption field, it is all before and after the government releases the signal, the family team quickly follows up, and interest groups are also formed. A typical example is that one of the co-founders of WLFI is Zach Witkoff, who is also the son of Steve Witkoff, the Trump administration's special envoy for the Middle East.
Not everyone is happy about this, and high-level doubts from the Democratic Party and nonpartisan parties have never stopped. Elizabeth Warren, a well-known crypto opponent, said that the SEC's abandonment of law enforcement activities is part of Trump's use of the crypto business to get rich, which undoubtedly hinders regulatory legislation. Kedrick Payne, general counsel and senior director of ethics at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center, also said that Trump is personally advocating laws to promote the development of the crypto industry.
This is not groundless. After Trump took office, not only did the SEC completely become crypto-friendly, the Department of Justice also promised to reduce crypto lawsuits, and even stopped prosecuting the mixers that were previously deeply involved in anti-money laundering controls, and stakeholders were able to let go. Take Justin Sun as an example. In 2023, he was also sued by the SEC for fraudulent market manipulation and other suspected misconduct, but after investing heavily in WFLI last year, the SEC stopped the lawsuit this year.
It seems that the policies under Trump's control are ironclad, but arbitrary regulation can easily trigger political conflicts, especially in the current complex political situation in the United States, where there is a possibility of regulatory backlash. Investment bank TD Cowen said today that the Trump family's crypto business (including the planned stablecoin) may trigger a backlash and delay the US regulatory process. Although lawmakers are accelerating crypto regulations, political risks are rising.
In fact, conflicts of interest and insider information are not limited to the cryptocurrency circle. After the recent tariff storm swept the global stock market, Trump's close friends have successfully made a fortune. According to congressional disclosure documents, Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia congresswoman who has a close relationship with Trump, successfully made 21 stock purchases the day before and the day Trump suspended tariffs. What's even more ridiculous is that on the same day, Trump's personal account stock holdings soared 22.67%, with a single-day profit of more than $415 million. In addition to this congresswoman, Republican Congressman Rob Bresnahan of Pennsylvania also coincidentally sold shares of American steel producer Steel Dynamics in advance on the day Trump announced the imposition of tariffs on steel and aluminum products. Although the two congressmen later came forward to clarify that the investment was legal and compliant, it still aroused suspicion in the market.
The family makes money in the cryptocurrency circle, and allies profit in the stock market. No matter how it is clarified, Trump's operation is inevitably suspected of conflict of interest. At present, the Democratic Party has jointly sent a letter to the new SEC Chairman Paul Atkins, asking for an investigation into whether Trump has created trading opportunities for allies through policy changes and whether he is suspected of market manipulation. However, considering that the chairman was pushed to the top by Trump, the Democratic Party's impeachment may be difficult to succeed.
It is obvious that the Trump family has not stopped making money. Less than half a year after taking office, the Trump family has already made billions of dollars. After four years in office, how much more money will they make? The evaluation of the Trump family's ability to govern has not yet begun, but the most profitable president in the United States seems to have been born.
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Former US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Gary Gensler has stated that Bitcoin (BTC) could continue to exist and thrive for a long time.
However, Gensler emphasized that this may not be the case for most altcoins, as they lack solid fundamentals.
In a recent interview with CNBC, Gensler mentioned that Bitcoin's enduring presence could be attributed to its strong global interest.
“Something like Bitcoin may persist for a long time because there's 7 billion people around the globe, a real keen interest in it,” he stated.
Gensler, who served as SEC Chair from 2021 to 2025, made these remarks in response to questions about the crypto industry's reaction to the dismissal of lawsuits and investigations initiated during his tenure.
While at the SEC, Gensler took a hard stance on cryptocurrency regulation. He launched multiple enforcement actions targeting several exchanges, token issuers, and other crypto entities.
While he refrained from commenting directly on the dismissal of these cases, he shifted focus to broader trends within the cryptocurrency market.
“I'm going to step back a little bit from any individual cases and just say this again to your viewing public. This is a very small part of the financial markets, but if you were interested in this, think about every financial asset sort of trades on a bit of fundamentals and sentiment. But this field is almost 99, or maybe one might say 100% sentiment and very little on fundamentals,” said Gensler.
The former SEC chair advocated for careful asset risk assessment. He noted that the primary focus should be the project's fundamentals. Moreover, he warned that many assets are driven predominantly by sentiment. As a result, he suggested that such tokens are generally unsustainable and likely to lose value over time.
When pressed on whether Bitcoin should be grouped with other cryptocurrencies, Gensler drew an analogy to precious metals. He implied that Bitcoin holds a unique position in the cryptocurrency world.
“There's only two or three precious metals. We humans have a certain fascination with two or three precious metals like gold,” he remarked.
Gensler believes that the vast majority of cryptocurrencies, especially those driven by trends, memes, or social sentiment, will not attract lasting interest. He stressed that only a few, like Bitcoin, will stand the test of time.
These comments align with Gensler's previous statements on the crypto market. In a January 2025 interview with CNBC, he acknowledged BTC's volatility yet showed faith in its long-term prospects.
“With 7 billion people around the globe, 7 billion people want to trade it just like we do have gold for 10,000 years. We have Bitcoin. It might be something else in the future as well,” Gensler noted.
Despite the optimistic outlook, Gensler disclosed that he did not own any Bitcoin or other crypto assets.
Gensler's remarks reflect ongoing debates about the legitimacy and sustainability of cryptocurrencies. While Bitcoin has gained traction as a store of value, many altcoins struggle to demonstrate the same level of acceptance.
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MONG KOK, HONG KONG / ACCESS Newswire / April 17, 2025 / Avlitex, a trailblazer in cryptocurrency innovation, is set to redefine the digital finance landscape with the official launch of two proprietary digital assets-Avlitex Coin and Avlitex Stable Coin-alongside a fully transparent, open-source blockchain network. This strategic initiative is designed to enhance trust, security, and efficiency in digital transactions on a global scale.
Founded in 2020, Avlitex has emerged as a dominant force in high-frequency trading and blockchain solutions, operating under strict legal compliance in Canada. The company is recognized for its transparent practices, investor-focused strategies, and a robust global presence spanning Europe, Asia, and North America. With a growing ecosystem of over 50,000 partners and a capital base exceeding $500 million, Avlitex continues to lead with vision and innovation.
Strategic Development TimelineAvlitex is rolling out its core blockchain initiatives across four key phases:
Q1 2025: Finalization of technical specifications for Avlitex Coin and Avlitex Stable Coin. Blockchain architecture undergoes rigorous testing. Strategic industry partnerships are established, accompanied by global awareness campaigns.
Q2 2025: Beta launch of the Avlitex Blockchain Network for internal testing. The network features enhanced security protocols and real-time transaction transparency.
Q3 2025: Public release of blockchain-based applications. Integration of Avlitex Coin and Stable Coin into leading financial services. Developer-focused events will foster ecosystem growth.
Q4 2025: Full-scale network launch and listing of Avlitex Coin and Stable Coin on major cryptocurrency exchanges. A global marketing initiative will reinforce Avlitex's commitment to decentralization and innovation.
Expanding the Digital EcosystemIn addition to its blockchain launch, Avlitex is enhancing its suite of advanced digital tools:
Avlitex Miner - A next-generation mining operation designed for optimal efficiency and profitability.
Avlitex Trading - An AI-driven high-frequency trading platform offering real-time market analysis.
Avlitex CryptoBot - A powerful automated trading algorithm focused on maximizing returns.
Avlitex App & Card - A user-friendly platform and payment solution for managing and utilizing digital assets with ease.
Commitment to Transparency, Security, and GrowthAvlitex remains deeply committed to providing secure, transparent, and future-ready investment opportunities. Leveraging cutting-edge AI, machine learning, and blockchain advancements, the company empowers investors to confidently navigate the ever-evolving world of digital finance.
About AvlitexAvlitex is a global leader in cryptocurrency investment and blockchain development, specializing in trading technologies and next-generation digital solutions. With a mission to drive profitability, trust, and security in the digital asset space, Avlitex operates under rigorous regulatory standards to ensure lasting value for its partners and stakeholdersJoin the conversation on:Website: https://avlitex-global.com/
Email: support@avlitex.com
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Media ContactOrganization: Avlitex LimitedContact Person Name: Raymond NorburyWebsite: https://avlitex-global.com/Email: support@avlitex.comCity: Mong KokCountry: Hong Kong S.A.R.
SOURCE: Avlitex Limited
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The cyberpunk-themed MMORPG 77-Bit has concluded its closed Beta phase with metrics that suggest a compelling case for the viability of a fun-first crypto gaming model. The development team has now confirmed the distribution of free Limited Edition NFT skins to Beta participants, alongside introducing a new item drop, Quantum Core, slated to follow soon after.
The Beta attracted major attention, with over 1 million BitHub users attempting access. Ultimately, the team onboarded 20,000 players, prioritizing high-intent participants over mass inclusion.
Engagement data from Amplitude paints a strong picture:
Players averaged 2.5 hours of gameplay per day. Notably, ~$500,000 in in-game purchases were recorded during the Beta. Importantly, none of these purchases were speculative or play-to-earn related. Spending centered around non-tokenized upgrades like weapon leveling and battle pass access, reinforcing the developers' “fun-before-financials” approach.
The average revenue per paying user (ARPPU) was $45 across 11,000 users. These figures suggest that crypto-native gaming experiences can attract and retain users based on gameplay value, not token incentives.
In recognition of Beta participation, all players will receive one free Limited Edition Beta Skin NFT. Battle Pass holders are entitled to a second one. These NFTs represent some of the rarest cosmetics introduced so far in 77-Bit, and may become tradeable in the future, though they are currently Soulbound.
The skin lineup includes:
Each mint reveals instantly upon claim, with no delay or random reveal mechanics. Players can mint additional skins at 0.005 ETH (~$7.70), with no cap on the number of paid mints.
This mint is not open to the general public, with eligibility tied to in-game engagement or prior asset ownership.
Following the NFT skin mint, 77-Bit will roll out its next initiative—Quantum Core. Details remain limited, but the team has confirmed that holders of minted skins will gain the “Noob” role, granting early access to upcoming rewards and the Quantum Core whitelist. A supply of 5,000 Quantum Cores is expected, with distribution prioritized to Iconic players and Noob-role holders.
The roadmap beyond April includes:
77-Bit's development team emphasized that the project's direction hinges on the success of these next phases. The Beta has provided strong proof of concept, but community engagement in events like the NFT mint and Quantum Core drop will determine how the platform scales.
For now, April 18 marks a key date for players looking to secure early, limited assets tied to 77-Bit's foundational phase.
According to Bold (@boldleonidas), the Zora token model, which creates a unique token for every piece of content, can be puzzling for traders and creators. This approach results in multiple tokens each representing individual artworks or digital items, instead of a single token representing an entire brand or creator. Traders should analyze each token's individual performance, as each has its own chart and market dynamics (source: Twitter).
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Ethereum has slipped below the $1,600 mark, but on-chain and technical signals hint that the market may be entering a key accumulation phase.
According to an Apr.17 analysis by CryptoQuant contributor abramchart, Ethereum (ETH) is trading near its realized price level, historically a zone that has preceded significant rebounds. The realized price, currently around $1,585, has served as a reliable signal of deep-value accumulation.
Every major bull run in ETH's history has started when the price fell to or below this level. Ethereum is approaching the lower band of the realized price model, indicating market cooling and potentially priming long-term holders for re-entry.
Still, technical indicators remain mixed. ETH has slipped beneath its 20-day moving average and remains well below the 200-day, indicating a strong downtrend. The relative strength index hovers just under 40, reflecting weak momentum but not yet fully oversold. Daily Bollinger Bands remain compressed, reflecting lower volatility, but a decisive move in either direction may be imminent.
Should the downtrend persist, ETH could find support in the $1,450–$1,550 range, a zone that has historically served as a bottoming area. Immediate resistance lies around $1,670 and a stronger overhead pressure could be experienced in the $1,930 area.
On the fundamentals front, Ethereum's value capture on layer 1 has weakened considerably since the Dencun upgrade, as noted by an Apr. 16 Binance Research article. While scalability has increased nearly 16-fold due to the introduction of blobs, the change reduced L1 fee revenues.
With users migrating to cheaper layer 2s, ETH's role as “ultrasound money” has diminished, hurting its appeal relative to faster, lower-fee rivals like Solana (SOL) and BNB Chain (BNB).
Santiment's Apr. 16 analysis revealed that Ethereum fees have dropped to 5-year lows, averaging just $0.168 per transaction. This shows falling usage and congestion, but from a contrarian perspective, could hint at a potential rebound.
Historically, low fees under $1 often precede price rebounds. As Santiment notes, “The more the retail community leans away from an asset (especially one with still thriving development), the higher the likelihood of an eventual surprise rebound with little resistance.”
Much of the pullback may be tied to broader macro uncertainty. Santiment observed that traders are highly sensitive to tariff and economic news, often delaying ETH activity until greater clarity returns to the global picture.
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A widely followed crypto analyst says one Solana (SOL) competitor may be gearing up for a breakout.
In a new thread, crypto trader Michaël van de Poppe tells his 783,000 followers on the social media platform X that Sei (SEI) may increase more than 100% its current value if it breaks through a key resistance level.
“SEI starts to show momentum. The Bitcoin pair has a strong bullish divergence on the higher timeframes and the USD pair faces a crucial resistance. Breaking through $0.20 opens up a continuation towards $0.30-$0.35.”
SEI is trading for $0.17 at time of writing, down 2.4% in the last 24 hours.
Next up, the analyst says that Bitcoin (BTC) is in a consolidation phase that may lead to an explosive move to the upside.
“Bitcoin is stuck in the final range. Another test of $87,000 and we'll likely break upwards to the rally of a new all-time high.”
Bitcoin is trading for $83,800 at time of writing, flat on the day.
Lastly, the analyst says that Ethereum (ETH) may be kicking off an uptrend if the price of gold peaks, based on ETH's historic inverse correlation with the precious metal.
“A good start of the week, as ETH is +4% against Bitcoin. The ultimate question whether it will sustain or not, last months it has been giving back the returns in the days after. What to monitor? Gold peaking or not. If that's the case, then we'll see more strength on ETH.”
The analyst also says that ETH's Relative Strength Index (RSI) indicator is flashing bullish, having entered oversold territory.
The RSI is a momentum oscillator used to determine whether an asset is oversold or overbought. The RSI's values range from zero to 100. A level between 70 and 100 indicates that an asset is overbought. The 0 to 30 level range indicates that an asset is oversold.
“It's been a bear market for 1,225 days for ETH, as, in this period, gold did a 2x. The lowest RSI on the weekly candle for ETH as well.”
ETH is trading for $1,589 at time of writing, down 2% in the last 24 hours.
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How burned artifacts offer a window into the dismantling of a dynasty.
Archaeologists discovered clues to a fire in Guatemala from between 733 and 881 AD that they say represents a key turning point in Maya rule—a very public turning point.
The discovery at the Maya site of Ucanal in Guatemala “marked a public dismantling of an old regime”—a rather pivotal moment in the collapse of rulers and key point in political power that isn't often shown so clearly from an archeological find, the authors write in a study published in the journal Antiquity.
The event in question occurred at the capital of the K'anwitznal kingdom near a burial site. The bodies and their ornaments—items include a jewel-adorned stone mask, fragments of a greenstone diadem, and jade ornaments—were moved from a tomb to a public burning site, where fire engulfed some of the centuries-old items for all to see.
“This event marked a moment of change in the kingdom and in the lowlands,” the authors write. “Rather than examine this fire-burning event as a bookend to Maya history, we view it as a pivot point around which the K'anwitznal polity reinvented itself and the city of Ucanal went on to a flourishing of activities.”
The new leadership regime welcomed a non-royal leader called Papmalil, and there is little in the written record indicating how he came to power. “Papmalil's rule was not only seminal because of his possible foreign origins—perhaps breaking the succession of ruling dynasts at the site—but also because his rule shifted political dynamics in the southern Maya lowlands.”
The study's authors, led by Christina Halperin at the University of Montreal, state that Papmalil appears to have ushered in an era of prosperity. Substantial construction occurred in both the civic-ceremonial core and outer residential zones of the city following the power shift.
That new era may have had a dramatic beginning.
The team discovered the fire event during 2022 excavations in the construction fill of a temple-pyramid situated in a public plaza, and the evidence shows that there was no effort to protect the burial deposit. The team believes that at least four adults were part of the burn remains, and that the fire reached a temperature of over 800°C. Included with the bodies were 1,470 fragments of greenstone pendants, beads, plaques, and mosaics, along with large blades—all representing a “single burning event.” The quantity and quality of the burnt and broken ornaments indicate they came from a royal tomb, likely belonging to multiple individuals.
The team said evidence indicates that the human bone and ornaments had once been part of the contents of a Late Classic royal tomb, and the deposit was part of a fire-entering rite that “marked the symbolic and literal destruction of an earlier K'anwitznal dynastic line.”
The authors state that the event “appears to have bene an act of desecration: it was dumped at the edge of a crude wall used as a construction pen and no effort was made to protect the fragmented bones and ornaments from the tomb blocks deposited on top of them as construction fill.” It all likely made for a “dramatic public affair” meant to be charged with emotion. “It could dramatically mark,” they wrote, “the dismantling of an ancient regime.”
Tim Newcomb is a journalist based in the Pacific Northwest. He covers stadiums, sneakers, gear, infrastructure, and more for a variety of publications, including Popular Mechanics. His favorite interviews have included sit-downs with Roger Federer in Switzerland, Kobe Bryant in Los Angeles, and Tinker Hatfield in Portland.
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Publishers are being offered hundreds of thousands of euros for journals indexed by scholarly databases.Credit: Dave Whitney/Getty
Research-integrity analysts are warning that ‘journal snatchers' — companies that acquire scholarly journals from reputable publishers — are turning legitimate titles into predatory, low-quality publications with questionable practices.
In an analysis published on the preprint repository Zenodo in January1, researchers identified three dozen journals that have been caught in this predicament after being bought by what they describe as a network of recently established international companies with no track record in the publishing industry. The scholarly database Scopus has removed the titles from its index after an investigation.
“We found at least 36 journals but we think that there may be more,” says study co-author Alberto Martín-Martín, an information scientist at the University of Granada in Spain. Nature was able to reach one of the companies named in the study, Oxbridge Publishing House, which disputes the allegations.
The titles were previously indexed by databases such as Scopus and Web of Science, and were owned by various institutions, including the Dutch publishing giant Elsevier; the academic publisher Palgrave Macmillan, based in London; Indiana University Northwest, in Gary, Indiana; and the University of São Paulo, in Brazil. They range in discipline from linguistics, psychology and criminology to biology and medicine. (Palgrave Macmillan is owned by Springer Nature, which also publishes Nature. Nature's news team is independent of its publisher.)
Predatory publishers' latest scam: bootlegged and rebranded papers
Predatory publishers' latest scam: bootlegged and rebranded papers
Martín-Martín's study describes how, in the past few years, these journals were acquired by various companies, including Oxbridge Publishing House — a firm registered in the United Kingdom in September 2022 — another UK-based firm called Open Access Text, JCF Corp in Singapore and Intellectual Edge Consultancy in Malaysia.
According to emails evaluated by Martín-Martín and his co-author, Emilio Delgado López-Cózar, also an information scientist at Granada, publishers are being offered hundreds of thousands of euros in exchange for each journal. “For small journals, this is a very attractive offer,” Martín-Martín says.
After acquisition, the analysis found, a common trend appears across the publications: the journals introduce or raise article-processing charges — fees some open-access journals impose for publishing papers — and churn out more studies. Many of these papers are outside the scope of topics covered by the journal before acquisition.
These practices are typically associated with predatory publishing, where questionable publishers cut corners to generate low-quality or fraudulent research papers in exchange for high publication fees.
Most of the companies named in the analysis did not respond to Nature's requests for comment. David Radhor, relationship manager at Oxbridge Publishing House, says the company is “not a publisher” and does not directly own all of the titles in Martín-Martín's preprint. (The study claims that Oxbridge has directors in common with some of the other companies, and suggests that it is part of a network of linked firms that are actively acquiring journals.)
Radhor adds that for the journals Oxbridge Publishing House does own, the company “has not been involved in their editorial decision-making” and does not have oversight of the number of papers published, the article-processing charges or the authors who submit manuscripts. Those decisions are made independently by each journal's editorial board, he says. “Our role is primarily operational, focusing on production and formatting, publishing and distribution, sales and revenue management, marketing and promotion, legal and compliance, and technology and infrastructure.”
How big is science's fake-paper problem?
How big is science's fake-paper problem?
Nature also attempted to contact all 36 journals listed in the study. Amjid Iqbal, managing editor of the American Journal of Health Behavior (AJHB) in Los Angeles, California, says his journal increased their publication fees (from US$1,595 to £2,000 according to the study) because of inflation and because its vendors increased their charges. He adds that all editorial decisions are made by the journal's editorial board. The study claims that payments to AJHB from authors based in the United States, Europe, and the Middle East are handled by Oxbridge Publishing House, but Iqbal says that the journal has no relationship with the company.
Representatives from the International Journal of Medicine and Science of Physical Activity and Sport and ArtsEduca declined to answer questions about their ownership and editorial oversight. The remaining journals did not respond to requests for comment.
In two other cases, researchers contacted by Nature said they had been falsely listed as editors on journal websites.
“One of the problems of these companies is that when they buy journals, they are not very open about this, and in many cases, the journals don't give any information about this new owner,” Martín-Martín says. “They don't even display the name of the new owner on the journal website.”
or
doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-01198-6
Martín-Martín, A. & Delgado López-Cózar, E. Preprint at Zenodo https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14766414 (2025).
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According to experts, the building may have once been a royal “water palace.”
The Konbaung Dynasty (1752 to 1885)—also known as the Third Burmese Empire—was the last dynasty to rule Burma (now Myanmar), eventually toppled by the British. A recent natural disaster may give researchers a rare look into remnants of the empire, or at least one remnant in particular. On March 28, a 7.7 magnitude earthquake revealed an ancient structure in Tada-U Township, Myanmar. According to a translated report from the Department of Archaeology and National Museum, some believe the remains could have been part of a royal “water palace” from the Konbaung era.
Part of the archaeological site—a set of stairs—was originally uncovered in 2009 while locals were baking bricks. But the recent earthquake caused a fissure that revealed more parts of the structure that were previously hidden beneath layers of soil. Exploratory excavations began on April 9, led by the Mandalay branch of the Department of Archaeology. Researchers say that additional ruins, including a handrail, brick platforms, and an 18-inch riser step, are now visible. According to the report, some of these features resemble sketches from ancient palm-leaf manuscripts called “Pura-pike.”
Historically, water has been a religious symbol in Myanmar culture, so water palaces served as important places for rituals, the Department of Archaeology and National Museum reports. The water palace described in the palm-leaf manuscript—supposedly penned by Minister Letwe Nawrahta (a prominent minister during the Burmese Kingdom)—has five grand staircases and 18 to 20 dormitories shaded by mango trees.
Though the prospect of finding a royal water palace is exciting, it's much more likely the structure is something simpler. Researchers suggest the building may have been a wooden residence, spanning about 200-250 feet long and 200 feet wide. According to experts, the structure resembles the Inwa Varkara Wooden Monastery and the Shwenandaw (Golden Palace) Monastery in Mandalay.
Some commenters are critical of researchers not unearthing the structure when it was initially discovered in 2009. Because of the possible religious significance of the site and how little is currently known, Myanmar's Department of Archaeology and National Museum reports that further research will continue and, in the future, the structure will be preserved for public education.
Emma Frederickson is a Pace University student by day, journalist by night. She enjoys covering anything from pop culture to science to food. Her work appears in several publications including Biography.com and Popular Mechanics. When she's not writing, Emma can be found hopping between coffee shops on the hunt for the world's best oat milk cappuccino.
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Scientists are trying to measure the impact on global health of funding cuts by the US administration. Credit: Luis Tato/AFP via Getty
The United States spent roughly US$12 billion on global health in 2024. Without that yearly spending, roughly 25 million people could die in the next 15 years, according to models that have estimated the impact of such cuts on programmes for tuberculosis, HIV, family planning and maternal and child health.
The United States has long been the largest donor for health initiatives in poor countries, accounting for almost one-quarter of all global health assistance from donors. These investments have contributed to consistent public-health gains for more than a decade. HIV deaths, for example, dropped by 51% globally between 2010 and 2023, and deaths owing to tuberculosis dropped by 23% between 2015 and 2023.
But the administration of US President Donald Trump has cut billions of dollars of spending for global health, including dismantling the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and freezing foreign-aid contributions — some of which has been temporarily restored.
Researchers have been trying to study the potential impact of the funding cuts. John Stover, an infectious-diseases modeller at Avenir Health, a global-health organization in Glastonbury, Connecticut, and his colleagues used mathematical models to estimate health outcomes, should all US funding for global health be cut and not replaced, compared with outcomes if funding provided in 2024 were to continue through to 2040. The results were posted on the preprint server SSRN earlier this month and have not been peer reviewed1.
Source: Stover/Preprints with The Lancet
The researchers “use a combination of robust, well-established and proven mathematical models and analytical approaches to estimate the impact”, says Andrew Vallely, a clinical epidemiologist at the Kirby Institute at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. “Their findings are devastating to read” and “a wake-up call for all of us working in global health.”
James Trauer, an infectious-disease modeller at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, adds: “These models are probably as good as we have available at the moment for predicting the direct effects of the funding cuts on these various programmes.”
On 28 March, Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, said that the government was reorienting its foreign-assistance programmes to align with the country's priorities. “We are continuing essential life-saving programmes and making strategic investments that strengthen our partners and our own country.”
The researchers modelled the impact of cutting the US President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) in the 55 countries it supports, including stopping the delivery of treatments, tests and interventions that prevent transmission. The programme has been affected by funding freezes.
Without PEPFAR, there would be 15 million more deaths from AIDS by 2040 than if the programme continued (see ‘A world without US aid'). More than 60% of those deaths would take place in six African countries, including Mozambique, Nigeria and Uganda. Roughly 14 million extra children would become orphans as a result of those AIDS deaths — a trend that had been expected to decrease over the next 15 years. And 26 million more people could become infected with HIV without PEPFAR.
Source: Stover/Preprints with The Lancet
The impact varies considerably depending on how reliant a country is on US government support, says Stover. In Uganda, for example, 65% of funding for HIV research comes from the United States, he says. Some models estimated the effects of a partial-funding scenario; in this case, continuing funding for treatment alone could avert 97% of the extra deaths and 90% of the extra new HIV infections.
The global number of infections of Mycobacterium tuberculosis — the bacterium that causes the world's deadliest infectious disease — is also expected to ramp up without US aid funding. Researchers looked at the impact of cuts to USAID and US contributions to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria across 79 low- and middle-income countries — although it is not yet clear by how much US contributions to the fund will shrink in the coming years. These would contribute to 69 million more M. tuberculosis infections and 2 million more deaths by 2040.
These estimates are broadly consistent with other efforts to assess the impact, says Trauer.
“There's been tremendous progress made in global health over the last couple of decades and we're at risk of losing a lot of that,” says Katherine Horton, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, who contributed to the modelling on tuberculosis.
or
doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-01191-z
Stover, J. et al. Preprint posted at SSRN https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5199076 (2025).
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Trump freezes funds and Africa counts the costs
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Trump 2.0: an assault on science anywhere is an assault on science everywhere
How Trump 2.0 is reshaping science
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And it's not the first batch they've discovered in the area.
Most of us have skeletons in our closets, but they can also lurk in much less familiar places. Literally.
Hundreds of skeletons were recently unearthed at the site of an abandoned Debenhams department store in the UK. The remains of 317 individuals from medieval and post-medieval burial grounds were discovered by archaeologists from Cotswold Archaeology in Kings Square, Gloucester, as the site was being redeveloped into the University of Gloucester's City Campus. The university actually commissioned Cotswold Archaeology to excavate at the site because artifacts have continued to crop up in the area.
“Every time we work in Gloucester, we make new discoveries,” Cliff Bateman, Cotswold Archaeology Senior Project Officer, said in a press release. “It's a massively important place.”
Among the skeletons were artifacts such as a tobacco pipe and fragments of a wine bottle. Many earlier artifacts from the Roman period also surfaced, which makes sense, considering that what is now King's Square is thought to have once been the northeast quadrant of an ancient Roman town. Since the project began in 2023, archaeologists have found many vestiges of the Roman period, including pottery, 83 brick burial vaults (which were cleared in the mid-1950s), the foundations of a wall from a townhouse, and what appears to be a road dating back to the 2nd Century A.D.
Other recent finds include brick burial vaults and a crypt from St. Aldate's Church—the external wall and porch of which appeared when remodeling efforts started. It was built in 1750 to replace a church of the same name, whose origins traced back to before the Norman Conquest in 1066 (it was meant to honor a fallen bishop of Gloucester, who died in battle in 577). That church ended up so damaged from the English Civil War that it was finally torn down in the mid-1700s. The later St. Aldate's stood until 1960, but has long since been demolished. Evidence of its medieval predecessor has not yet appeared, but is thought to be in the area.
Burials associated with the vanished medieval church were also found when the site was first being remodeled. The bones of twelve individuals were only exhumed for research before being reinterred in their original graves.
Bateman also said that he is just about positive “there will be Roman buildings in situ” beneath the post-medieval necropolis. This isn't surprising to archaeologists, who first started finding mosaics and ruins of Roman buildings in the basement of the empty Debenham's.
Preliminary studies on the teeth of skeletons have found that the people they came from likely consumed a diet high in sugar. While there is little else known about the remains—except that about half of them were not in burial vaults like some of the other skeletons found nearby—Gloucester is apparently one of those places where pieces of the ancient past are literally inches beneath your feet. Excavations in another part of the city previously revealed even more skeletons, this time from the Late Roman period, which were buried both on their backs and facedown. Some of them were even decapitated, then laid to rest with their heads between their feet.
While human remains will not be on display at the university, the Roman, medieval, and post-medieval artifacts found at the site will eventually have their own shrine.
“These objects have been retained on site, following archaeological recording, and will be displayed on site for students, staff and visitors to City Campus to appreciate once the site is fully operational,” Steve Sheldon, Acting Principal Manager of Cotswold Archaeology, said in a more recent press release.
The campus in progress will be opening in September. There could be no more epic way to kick off an ancient history class.
Elizabeth Rayne is a creature who writes. Her work has appeared in Popular Mechanics, Ars Technica, SYFY WIRE, Space.com, Live Science, Den of Geek, Forbidden Futures and Collective Tales. She lurks right outside New York City with her parrot, Lestat. When not writing, she can be found drawing, playing the piano or shapeshifting.
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Experts aren't sure why it was buried in the first place.
The discovery of a silver treasure hoard—this one unearthed by metal detectorists—has shed a sparkling light on just how richly adorned the Dacian elite once were.
What is now modern-day Romania was once ruled by a people group known as the Dacians, who were prominent from around 500 B.C. into the first century A.D. This spring (according to a translated statement from the Museum of Mures County posted by the Breaza Mures Municipality City Hall), metal detectorists Moldovan Dionisie-Aurel and Zahan Sebastian-Adrian scoured an area around the town of Breaza in central Romania, and uncovered a cache of six silver ornamental pieces that date to the Dacian people.
This is the first find of Dacian treasure in Breaza, and it doesn't disappoint.
The haul included a bracelet made of a circular silver bar with slightly widened ends and plant-like motif decorations, a matching pair of two knotted brooches without decoration (but with an elongated plate and a spring), a smaller brooch with four knobs, a neck chain with a looped link holding three nail-like pendants, a waist belt made up of oval plates attached alternately with a series of links, and a rectangular plate that likely attached to the belt, the last of which would likely have been decorated with a series of solar motifs showing the role the Sun played in ancient Dacian culture.
In total, the treasure weighs 19 ounces and “represented an important symbol of the owner's social status,” museum archaeologist Daniel Cioata wrote. He added that the items would have been worn by a prominent member of the Dacian aristocracy on various special occasions, but it's “difficult to say whether it was a man or a woman.” Either way, they would have shined in silver.
The buried silver didn't offer up many clues as to why it was placed where it was to begin with—as Cioata said, it could have been an offering to a deity, or simply never retrieved after the owner hid it away.
This find opens up the possibility for further Dacian discoveries in and around the town of Breaza. “We hope that through field research in the coming period,” Cioata said, “the Dacian settlement or even the fortification in the area will be identified.”
Plans are now in place to document and further study the silver hoard, which the Mures County Museum will exhibit.
“These historical artifacts,” the city said in a statement, “remind us of the cultural heritage and importance of our region in the history of Dacia.”
Tim Newcomb is a journalist based in the Pacific Northwest. He covers stadiums, sneakers, gear, infrastructure, and more for a variety of publications, including Popular Mechanics. His favorite interviews have included sit-downs with Roger Federer in Switzerland, Kobe Bryant in Los Angeles, and Tinker Hatfield in Portland.
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The stability of fluorescent proteins (FPs) is crucial for imaging techniques such as live-cell imaging, super-resolution microscopy and correlative light and electron microscopy. Although stable green and yellow FPs are available, stable monomeric red FPs (RFPs) remain limited. Here we develop an extremely stable monomeric RFP named mScarlet3-H and determine its structure at a 1.5 Å resolution. mScarlet3-H exhibits remarkable resistance to high temperature, chaotropic conditions and oxidative environments, enabling efficient correlative light and electron microscopy imaging and rapid (less than 1 day) whole-organ tissue clearing. In addition, its high photostability allows long-term three-dimensional structured illumination microscopy imaging of mitochondrial dynamics with minimal photobleaching. It also facilitates dual-color live-cell stimulated emission depletion imaging with a high signal-to-noise ratio and strong specificity. Systematic benchmarking against high-performing RFPs established mScarlet3-H as a highly stable RFP for multimodality microscopy in cell cultures and model organisms, complementing green FPs for multiplexed imaging in zebrafish, mice and Nicotiana benthamiana.
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The coordinates and structure factors for mScarlet-H and mScarlet3-H have been deposited in the Protein Data Bank with accession numbers 8ZXO and 8ZXH, respectively. The most essential raw datasets, including source files for supplementary figures and raw unprocessed images, are available on figshare at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.28398170.v1 (ref. 50). The remaining files are available from the corresponding author upon request. All plasmids used in this study are available on WeKwikGene at https://wekwikgene.wllsb.edu.cn/. Source data are provided with this paper.
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We thank S. Papadaki from Westlake Laboratory for verifying all plasmid sequences and depositing them to WeKwikGene. We thank E. Snapp from Janelia Research campus for the help with the interpretation of OSER imaging results. This project was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 32201235 to Z.F.), the Natural Science Foundation of Fujian Province, China (grant nos. 2022J01287, 2023Y9272 and 2024J09036 to Z.F. and 2024J01074 to C.W.), the Research Foundation for Advanced Talents at Fujian Medical University, China (grant nos. XRCZX2021013 to Z.F. and XRCZX2022031 to C.W.), the Finance Special Science Foundation of Fujian Province, China (grant no. 22SCZZX002 to Z.F.), Foundation of NHC Key Laboratory of Technical Evaluation of Fertility Regulation for Non-human Primate, Fujian Maternity and Child Health Hospital (grant no. 2022-NHP-04 to Z.F.), Open Project Fund of Fujian Key Laboratory of Drug Target Discovery and Structural and Functional Research (grant no. FKLDSR-202102 to Z.F.), Foundation of Westlake University, Westlake Laboratory of Life Sciences and Biomedicine, National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 32171093 to K.D.P.), and ‘Pioneer' and ‘Leading Goose' R&D Program of Zhejiang (grant no. 2024SSYS0031 to K.D.P.). We thank L. Zhou, M. Wu and X. Lin at the Public Technology Service Center, Fujian Medical University for support with EM sample preparation and EM imaging.
These authors contributed equally: Haiyan Xiong, Qiyuan Chang, Jiayi Ding, Shuyuan Wang, Wenhao Zhang, Yu Li, Yaochen Wu.
Key Laboratory of Clinical Laboratory Technology for Precision Medicine, Institute of Neuroscience, and Fujian Key Laboratory of Molecular Neurology, Public Technology Service Center, Fujian Medical University, Fuzhou, China
Haiyan Xiong, Qiyuan Chang, Shuyuan Wang, Yaochen Wu, Pengyan Lin, Yiming Chen, Congxian Wu & Zhifei Fu
The School of Basic Medical Sciences, Fujian Medical University, Fuzhou, China
Haiyan Xiong, Qiyuan Chang, Yaochen Wu & Miaoxing Liu
Academy for Advanced Interdisciplinary Studies, Peking University, Beijing, China
Jiayi Ding
Chinese Institute for Brain Research, Beijing, China
Jiayi Ding & Hu Zhao
School of Life Sciences, Westlake University, Hangzhou, China
Wenhao Zhang
Westlake Laboratory of Life Sciences and Biomedicine, Hangzhou, China
Wenhao Zhang & Kiryl D. Piatkevich
Institute of Basic Medical Sciences, Westlake Institute for Advanced Study, Hangzhou, China
Wenhao Zhang & Kiryl D. Piatkevich
College of Life Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China
Wenhao Zhang & Kiryl D. Piatkevich
State Key Laboratory of Vaccines for Infectious Diseases, National Institute of Diagnostics and Vaccine Development in Infectious Diseases, School of Public Health, Xiamen University, Xiamen, China
Yu Li, Chengyu Yang & Qingbing Zheng
Microscopy core facility of Westlake University, Hangzhou, China
Guicun Fang & Jiongfang Xie
Institute of Life Sciences, Fuzhou University, Fuzhou, China
Yiwei Yang & Yufeng Yang
Optofem Technology Company, Beijing, China
Dong Qi
Beijing Nano Insights Technology Co. Ltd, Beijing, China
Tao Jiang
National Laboratory of Biomacromolecules, New Cornerstone Science Laboratory, CAS Center for Excellence in Biomacromolecules, Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
Wenfeng Fu & Dong Li
Key Laboratory of Ministry of Education for Gastrointestinal Cancer, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Fujian Medical University, Fuzhou, China
Fen Hu & Fenghua Zhang
Fujian Key Laboratory of Drug Target Discovery and Structural and Functional Research, School of Pharmacy, Fujian Medical University, Fuzhou, China
Rongcai Yue
School of Pharmacy, Center of Translational Hematology, Fujian Medical University, Fuzhou, China
Rongcai Yue & Yunlu Xu
State Key Laboratory of Cellular Stress Biology, School of Life Sciences, Faculty of Medicine and Life Sciences, Xiamen University, Xiamen, China
Yanbin Li & Yong Cui
X-ray crystallography platform of National Protein Science Facility, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
Min Li & Shilong Fan
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Z.F. conceived and supervised the whole project. H.X., Q.C. and C.W. engineered mScarlet3-H and measured its properties. H.X., P.L. and D.Q. did STED imaging. Q.C. and M. Liu did SIM imaging. H.Z. and J.D. performed rapid tissue clearing. S.W. did CLEM imaging. K.D.P. and W.Z. tested the photostability of mScarlet3-H. P.L. and Y.W. measured the pKa of mScarlet3-H. Y. Cui and Yanbin Li performed experiments on mScarlet3-H's performance in plants. F.Z. did experiments on mScarlet3-H's performance in zebrafish. Y.W. and G.F. helped to do EM sample preparation. Yiwei Yang and Y. Chen cultured cells. C.Y. conducted the MD simulation. J.X. analyzed the images from rapid tissue clearing. D.L., T.J. and W.F. helped with SIM imaging and analyzing the images of 3D-SIM imaging. F.H., Y.X. and R.Y. helped to purify mScarlet3-H. Q.Z., S.F., M. Li, Yu Li and Yufeng Yang solved the crystal structures of mScarlet-H and mScarlet3-H. Z.F., K.D.P. and Q.Z. wrote the paper. All authors reviewed the paper.
Correspondence to
Congxian Wu, Qingbing Zheng, Kiryl D. Piatkevich or Zhifei Fu.
A Chinese patent application (no. 202410568362.4) covering the use of mScarlet3-H for CLEM, rapid tissue clearing, expansion microscopy and fluorescent microscopy has been filed in which the Fujian Medical University is the applicant and Z.F., Y.W., H.X., Q.C., C.W., S.W. and Yiwei Yang are the inventors. The other authors declare no competing interests.
Nature Methods thanks Benjamin Campbel, Takeharu Nagai and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Peer reviewer reports are available. Primary Handling Editor: Rita Strack, in collaboration with the Nature Methods team.
Publisher's note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Supplementary Figs. 1–21 and Tables 1–21.
Long-term super-resolution imaging of the ER and microtubule dynamics in live HeLa cells acquired with CSU-W1 SoRa imaging setup (×100 NA 1.41, total duration 01:18 h:min; plays at 100 f.p.s.). ER: mScarlet3-H; EMTB: mBaoJin.
Long-term super-resolution imaging of mitochondria and EB3 dynamics in live HeLa cells acquired with CSU-W1 SoRa imaging setup (×100 NA 1.41, total duration 50:45 m:s; plays at 100 f.p.s.). Mito: mScarlet3-H; EB3: mBaoJin.
Long-term super-resolution imaging of mitochondria and lifeact labeled actin dynamics in live HeLa cells acquired with CSU-W1 SoRa imaging setup (x100 NA 1.41, total duration 58:29 m:s; plays at 20 f.p.s.). Lifeact: mScarlet3-H; Mito: mBaoJin.
Long-term super-resolution imaging of ER and mitochondria dynamics in live HeLa cells acquired with CSU-W1 SoRa imaging setup (×100 NA 1.41, total duration 08:15 m:s; plays at 10 f.p.s.). ER: mScarlet3-H; Mito: mBaoJin.
Long-term imaging of cell mitosis of zebrafish larva labeled by mScarlet3-H using a STELLARIS 8 FALCON confocal microscope.
Long-term imaging of H2B-mScarlet3-H in a developing zebrafish larva using a STELLARIS 8 FALCON confocal microscope.
Video showing the fluorescence dynamics of HeLa cells expressing H2B-mScarlet3-H alternately treated with PBS and 5 M GdnHCl.
Long-term super-resolution imaging of the dynamics of mitochondria labeled by mScarlet3-H in live COS-7 cells using a 3D-SIM imaging setup (×100 NA 1.49, total duration 2 h).
Long-term super-resolution imaging of the dynamics of ER sheet labeled by mScarlet3-H in live COS-7 cells using a STED imaging setup (×100 NA 1.45, total duration 09:00 min:s).
Long-term super-resolution imaging of the dynamics of ER sheet fusion labeled by mScarlet3-H in live COS-7 cells using a STED imaging setup (×100 NA 1.45, total duration 10.8 s).
Long-term super-resolution imaging of the dynamics of ER sheet fission labeled by mScarlet3-H in live COS-7 cells using a STED imaging setup (×100 NA 1.45, total duration 3:18 m:s).
Long-term super-resolution imaging of the dynamics of ER ball labeled by mScarlet3-H in live COS-7 cells using a STED imaging setup (×100 NA 1.45, total duration 14.4 s).
Long-term super-resolution imaging of the dynamics of ER and mitochondria in live COS-7 cells using a STED imaging setup (×100 NA 1.45, total duration 5:32 m:s). ER: mScarlet3-H; Mito: HBmito Crimson.
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Xiong, H., Chang, Q., Ding, J. et al. A highly stable monomeric red fluorescent protein for advanced microscopy.
Nat Methods (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41592-025-02676-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41592-025-02676-5
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Mitochondria-ER membrane contact sites (MERCS) represent a fundamental ultrastructural feature underlying unique biochemistry and physiology in eukaryotic cells. The ER protein PDZD8 is required for the formation of MERCS in many cell types, however, its tethering partner on the outer mitochondrial membrane (OMM) is currently unknown. Here we identify the OMM protein FKBP8 as the tethering partner of PDZD8 using a combination of unbiased proximity proteomics, CRISPR-Cas9 endogenous protein tagging, Cryo-electron tomography, and correlative light-electron microscopy. Single molecule tracking reveals highly dynamic diffusion properties of PDZD8 along the ER membrane with significant pauses and captures at MERCS. Overexpression of FKBP8 is sufficient to narrow the ER-OMM distance, whereas independent versus combined deletions of these two proteins demonstrate their interdependence for MERCS formation. Furthermore, PDZD8 enhances mitochondrial complexity in a FKBP8-dependent manner. Our results identify a novel ER-mitochondria tethering complex that regulates mitochondrial morphology in mammalian cells.
Mitochondria and the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) form contact sites (mitochondria–ER contact sites: MERCS), where the two membranes are juxtaposed within 10–50 nm, an ultrastructural feature conserved in unicellular eukaryotes and metazoans. MERCS are the most abundant membrane contact sites (MCS) between organelles in many cell types and serve as a unique subcellular signaling platform for exchanging metabolites such as Ca2+ and glycerophospholipids. In addition to these critical biochemical reactions, key physiological and cell biological events essential for the maintenance of cellular homeostasis, including mitochondrial fission, mitochondrial DNA replication, and autophagosome biogenesis occur at these contact sites1,2,3.
Observations using electron microscopy (EM) have demonstrated that mitochondria and ER membranes are closely apposed at MCS, requiring proteins able to tether these two membranes within tens of nanometers of one another4. Intensive screening studies have identified multiple proteins localizing at MERCS in mammalian cells1,5,6,7. Among those, the ER-resident protein PDZD8 was identified as a paralog of yeast Mmm1, a component of the ER–mitochondria encounter structure (ERMES)8,9. Although the ERMES as a full complex formed by four proteins is lost in mammals, PDZD8 is required for forming the majority (~40–80%) of MERCS in various cell types, and its deletion in cell lines and in mammalian neurons results in the disruption of intracellular Ca2+ dynamics by decreasing the fraction of Ca2+ released from the ER that can be imported directly into mitochondria8,10,11,12,13,14,15. Consistent with its role in neurons of central nervous system (CNS), PDZD8 regulates dendritic Ca2+ dynamics in hippocampal CA1 and underlies their response properties in vivo16. Furthermore, genetic loss of function mutations of PDZD8 in humans leads to syndromic intellectual disability17. In addition, expression quantitative trait loci (eQTL) mapping identified a single-nucleotide polymorphism affecting the expression of PDZD8 in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in a population of patients with high risk for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)18. Therefore, PDZD8 plays a critical role in controlling neuronal and circuit function, and proper brain development and homeostasis in mammals12.
In addition to MERCS, the ER forms various MCSs with other organelles such as lysosomes, endosomes, Golgi apparatus, lipid droplets, and the plasma membrane (PM)2,19,20,21,22. We and other groups have previously shown that PDZD8 localizes at MERCS in various cell types8,23,24. However, it has also been reported recently that overexpression of Rab7 or LAMP1 can recruit PDZD8 to the ER–late endosome or ER–lysosome contact sites, respectively23,25,26. In addition, overexpression of PDZD8 and Rab7 recruits the mitochondria to ER–endosome contact sites and was proposed to lead to the formation of three-way MCS23. Therefore, PDZD8 might participate in the formation of MCS networks besides tethering MERCS. As such, we hypothesized the existence of a currently unknown molecular effector required to recruit PDZD8 specifically to MERCS. To elucidate the molecular mechanisms underlying PDZD8-dependent MERCS formation, we used multiple independent proximity-based proteomic approaches relying on endogenous protein tagging. Since overexpression of PDZD8 can alter its subcellular distribution8. we implemented CRISPR–Cas9 technology to generate knock-in cell lines where endogenous PDZD8 is tagged with various epitopes, fluorescent proteins or catalytic enzymes, allowing its localization by microscopy or proximity-based proteomic screens. We demonstrate that the mitochondrial LC3 receptor FK506 binding protein 8 (FKBP8 also known as FKBP38) is a novel, direct PDZD8-interacting protein, and that the PDZD8–FKBP8 complex is required for MERCS formation in metazoan cells. Using combinations of Cryo-EM tomography and correlative light-electron microscopy (CLEM), we revealed the ultrastructural features of MERCS mediated by the PDZD8–FKBP8 tethering complex. Finally, our serial scanning electron microscopy demonstrated that PDZD8 regulates mitochondrial complexity through inhibition of FKBP8 function.
While we previously reported that a significant fraction of PDZD8 localizes at MERCS8, PDZD8 was recently shown to localize to the ER–late endosome and ER–lysosome contact sites11,23,25,26. Some of these studies failed to detect the enrichment of PDZD8 at MERCS, however, in the absence of reliable antibodies detecting endogenous PDZD8 protein by immunofluorescence, these studies often relied on overexpression of tagged forms of PDZD8 which disrupts both its subcellular localization and can generate gain-of-function phenotypes, for instance by increasing the number and size of MERCS or other MCSs where it is localized. Therefore, to determine the subcellular distribution of endogenous PDZD8 protein at MCS formed by the ER, we developed a knock-in mouse embryonic fibroblast NIH3T3 cell line fusing the fluorescent protein Venus sequence to the C-terminus of the Pdzd8 coding sequence (Supplementary Fig. 1a, b). To avoid an artifactual increase in size and/or biogenesis of late endosome/lysosome due to overexpression of key effector proteins Rab7 or LAMP1, colocalization analyses were performed by detecting these proteins at endogenous levels with antibodies against endogenous markers: LAMP1 for lysosomes, Rab7 for the late endosomes, and Tomm20 and OXPHOS proteins for mitochondria. In agreement with previous studies11,25, confocal microscopy imaging showed that 14.8% of PDZD8-Venus visualized by an enhancement with anti-GFP antibody staining overlapped with LAMP1 staining, and under these endogenous expression conditions 7.7% overlapped with Rab7 staining. However, a significantly larger fraction overlapped mitochondria labeled either with Tomm20 (25.0%) or OXPHOS staining (22.1%), suggesting that endogenous PDZD8 is present at multiple MCS but is most abundant at MERCS (Supplementary Fig. 1c, d).
We next investigated the dynamics of endogenously expressed PDZD8 using time-lapse imaging in live cells. Because native signal of Venus was undetectable in PDZD8-Venus KI NIH3T3 cells, we established the PDZD8-HaloTag KI HeLa cell line and transiently transfected the ER-localized reporter (BiP-mTagBFP2-KDEL) and an outer mitochondrial membrane (OMM)-localized reporter (YFP-ActA27,28) (Supplementary Fig. 2a, b). The PDZD8-HaloTag was labeled with Janelia Fluor (JF) 549 dye. Triple-color time-lapse imaging using confocal microscopy demonstrated that PDZD8-Halotag puncta can be stably localized at MERCS despite significant dynamics of both ER and mitochondria, suggesting a direct association of PDZD8 with mitochondria may be present (Supplementary Fig. 2c, Supplementary Movie 1).
Recent work demonstrated that the ER-resident MERCS forming protein VAPB exhibits transient but highly frequent visits to MERCS29. Thus, to determine the localization and molecular dynamics of PDZD8 along the ER membrane relative to MERCS, we performed single particle tracking-photoactivation localization microscopy (sptPALM)30. Single PDZD8 molecules were visualized by labeling overexpressed PDZD8-HaloTag with a photoactivatable version of JF646 in COS7 cells (Supplementary Movie 2). Analysis of localization probabilities using a spatially defined probability function29 revealed PDZD8 localization was entirely restricted to the ER (Fig. 1a). Strikingly, we observed regions along the ER where the probability was significantly higher (hotspots), presumably as a result of tethering and engagement with interacting proteins at contact sites with other organelles. In agreement with our endogenous labeling, ~47% of these hotspots were in close proximity with mitochondria (Fig. 1a–c, Supplementary Fig. 3; 90 out of 192 hotspots). By following the trajectories of single PDZD8 molecules outside and within these mitochondria-associated PDZD8 hotspots (MitoHS), we found that PDZD8 can dynamically enter and exit these hotspots in seconds (Fig. 1b, d, Supplementary Movie 3). Importantly, the effective diffusion (Deff) of single PDZD8 molecules within MitoHS was significantly reduced compared the rest of the ER (0.22 ± 0.0025 μm2/s in MitoHS, mean ± SEM, n = 90; Fig. 1e) suggesting that PDZD8 is captured at MERCS but still remains mobile at these contact sites. Consistent with this, PDZD8 single particles dwelled at the hotspots for a median time of just 1.1 s per each visit (Fig. 1g). In addition to MitoHS, we also observed spots with high probability of PDZD8 that were not mitochondria-associated (OtherHS: Other hotspots, Fig. 1a, c, d). The Deff and dwell time of PDZD8 in the OtherHS is similar to those in MitoHS, but the mean of individual HS area was significantly larger at MitoHS than at the OtherHS (Fig. 1e, f).
a Diffraction-limited imaging of the ER (cyan) and the mitochondria (red) in the periphery of a representative COS7 cell with the simultaneously measured likelihood of finding a PDZD8 molecule in a 1-min window. The locations of the mitochondria in the probability map are indicated with dotted white lines. Boxes correspond to the mitochondria-associated hotspots (MitoHS, magenta) or non-mitochondria-associated hotspots (OtherHS, green) in b and c. Data are representative of 14 cells from two independent experiments. b Zooms of MitoHS in a showing individual PDZD8 trajectories engaging with the hotspots and the associated PDZD8 probability density. Dotted lines indicate hotspot boundaries as used for subsequent analysis. c Zooms of the OtherHS in a showing individual PDZD8 trajectories engaging with the hotspots and the associated PDZD8 probability density. Dotted lines indicate hotspot boundaries as used for subsequent analysis. The shape and size are consistent with endosomal contact sites, as described in Obara et al.29. d Plots of the distance of individual PDZD8 molecules shown in different colors from the center of example hotspots over time. Plots are from MitoHS 2 (top panel) or OtherHS 3 (bottom panel) shown in a. Note the long stretches where single molecules remain engaged in the hotspots. e PDZD8 shows reduced diffusion within both classes of hotspots as compared to freely diffusing in the surrounding ER. n = 89 and 99 hotspots for the MitoHS and OtherHS, respectively. Statistical analysis was performed using two-sided Mann–Whitney test for comparing % reduction in 2D Deff in MitoHS between OtherHS and one sample Wilcoxon signed-rank test for comparing the hypothetical median (0) and the median of % reduction in 2D Deff within MitoHS or OtherHS. ns: p > 0.05, ****p < 0.0001. The data are presented as individual points on box plots, with the center indicating the median, and the 25th and 75th percentiles represented by the box. Whiskers extend to the minimum and maximum values. f Sizes of MitoHS are significantly larger than those of OtherHS in the same cells. n = 89 and 99 hotspots for the MitoHS and OtherHS, respectively. The data are presented as individual points on box plots, with the center indicating the median, and the 25th and 75th percentiles represented by the box. Whiskers extend to the minimum and maximum values.Statistical analysis was performed using two-sided Mann–Whitney test. **p = 0.0065. g PDZD8 dwell times in individual MitoHS and OtherHS. Inset shows the leaving frequency (kout) of individual PDZD8 molecules from probability hotspots associated or unassociated with mitochondria. Scale bar: a 5 µm, b, c 100 nm. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.
We note that the size of the hotspots observed with PDZD8 is significantly larger and the mean dwell time of PDZD8 at the hotspots was significantly longer compared to those reported with VAPB (Fig. 1f, g)29. The fact that the behavior of PDZD8 and VAPB at the MCS differs suggests that PDZD8 interaction at MERCS may represent a distinct, specific tethering from the interactions described for VAPB. Taken together, these data suggest that PDZD8 is highly dynamic along the ER but drastically slows down at contacts between ER and mitochondria as well as other potential MCS between ER and other organelles. These results strongly suggest the existence of an unknown tethering partner for PDZD8 along the OMM.
To identify the tethering partner of PDZD8 facilitating this behavior at MERCS, we designed unbiased proteomic screens using endogenous PDZD8 protein immunoprecipitation coupled with mass spectrometry (IP–MS) (Fig. 2a). To avoid artifacts due to PDZD8 overexpression, we established a mouse line engineered with a 3× HA tag fused to the endogenous PDZD8 protein using CRISPR–Cas9-mediated genomic knock-in (Pdzd8-3× HA KI mouse line) (Fig. 2b, Supplementary Fig. 4a, b). Since PDZD8 is expressed at high levels in neurons, protein complexes containing PDZD8 were isolated from the neocortex of either Pdzd8-3× HA KI mice or control littermates at postnatal day 10 by IP using anti-HA antibody. Identification of the corresponding proteins immunoprecipitated in a complex with PDZD8-3× HA by LC–MS/MS revealed that, in addition to previously identified PDZD8 interactors such as Protrudin, VAPA and VAPB11,31, proteins known to localize at MERCS and/or mitochondria were significantly enriched in the immunoprecipitates from the KI mice compared to the control mice (Fig. 2c, Supplementary Data 1).
a Scheme of the immunoprecipitation and LC–MS/MS analysis using the Pdzd8-3× HA KI mice neocortices. The immunoprecipitates from the neocortices of Pdzd8-3× HA mice or the control littermates using an anti-HA antibody were subjected to the LC–MS/MS analysis. b Diagram describing the genomic sequence of Pdzd8-3× HA KI mice. The sequence of a 3× HA tag was knocked-in at the C-terminus of the Pdzd8 coding sequence. c Volcano plot of proteins differentially binding to the PDZD8-3× HA. FKBP8 is labeled in red. Protrudin and VAPA, which have been previously reported to interact with PDZD8, are labeled in blue. The plot represents data from three biological replicates. The p-value was calculated using an unadjusted two-tailed Student's t-test. d Scheme of labeling proteins in the vicinity of endogenous PDZD8. A Biotin ligase TurboID fused to PDZD8 generates biotin–5′-AMP from biotin and ATP. The biotin–5′-AMP can covalently bind to proteins located within about 20 nm of endogenously expressed PDZD8-TurboID. e Diagram describing the genomic sequence of the PDZD8-TurboID KI HeLa cell. The sequence of TurboID-P2A-Neor was knocked-in at the C-terminus of the PDZD8 coding sequence. f Volcano plot of proteins differentially biotinylated with biotin in the PDZD8-TurboID KI HeLa cell. FKBP8 is labeled in red. Protrudin and VAPA, which have been previously reported to interact with PDZD8, are labeled in blue. The volcano plot represents three biological replicates. The p-value was calculated using an unadjusted two-tailed Student's t-test. g Numbers of proteins highly enriched in the IP–MS (c) and TurboID-MS (f) are shown in a Venn diagram. Twelve proteins are commonly found in the two proteomes. Note that FKBP8 is the only protein annotated with mitochondrial localization. h, i Analysis of the interaction between endogenous FKBP8 and endogenous PDZD8-3× HA from the mouse neocortex (h), or endogenous PDZD8-Venus from NIH3T3 cells. Extracts from neocortex in Pdzd8-3×HA KI mouse (h) or Pdzd8-Venus KI NIH3T3 cells (i) were subjected to immunoprecipitation (IP) with antibodies to HA or GFP respectively. The resulting precipitates as well as the original tissue extracts (Total) were subjected to immunoblot analysis with antibodies to FKBP8, VAPA, MFN2, HA (h), GFP (i), and β-actin (i). Data are representative of three independent experiments. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.
Next, in order to narrow down the protein list to only proteins in close proximity to PDZD8, we employed an independent approach, a proximity-based labeling screen using a biotin ligase TurboID (Fig. 2d)32. Again, to avoid overexpression-induced artifacts, we established a PDZD8-TurboID KI HeLa cell line using CRISPR–Cas9 knock-in technology (Fig. 2e). These PDZD8-TurboID KI HeLa cells were treated with biotin for 6 h and biotinylated peptides were isolated using tamavidin 2-REV beads and identified by LC–MS/MS (Fig. 2f, Supplementary Data 2). Among 166 proteins identified by this screening approach, 12 proteins were also identified by the IP–MS-based screen (Fig. 2g). Among these candidate interactors, the only protein previously shown to localize at the outer mitochondrial membrane (OMM) was FKBP8 (Fig. 2g).
Finally, we also performed a proteomic screen using TurboID in a mouse neuroblastoma cell line (Neuro2a) and again identified FKBP8 in the list of biotinylated proteins (Supplementary Fig. 4c, d). Specific co-immunoprecipitation of FKBP8 and PDZD8 was confirmed by Western blotting using the Pdzd8-3× HA knock-in mouse (Fig. 2h) and Pdzd8-Venus KI NIH3T3 cells (Fig. 2i). These three independent proteomic approaches converge to strongly suggest that PDZD8 and FKBP8 reside in the same protein complex.
To test if the interaction between PDZD8 and FKBP8 is direct, we measured the binding affinity of PDZD8–FKBP8 interaction in vitro. We used surface plasmon resonance (SPR) with purified recombinant cytosolic portions of both FKBP8 and PDZD8 (Supplementary Fig. 5a, b). Recombinant PDZD8 proteins without their transmembrane domain (∆TM) were immobilized on a sensor chip and changes of the surface resonance upon recombinant FKBP8∆TM injection were measured. As expected, the SPR responded in a FKBP8 dose-dependent manner in the 2–90 µM range (Fig. 3a). Even though the titration did not reach a plateau, by assuming a monovalent binding of FKBP8 and PDZD8, fitting Req (SPR responses in equilibrium) and FKBP8 concentration to the titration curve provided a KD value of 142 µM (74–447 µM, 95% confidence interval) (Fig. 3b). Thus, the affinity between recombinant PDZD8 and FKBP8 is in the same range as other previously reported VAPB-PTPIP51 MERCS tethering complex and agrees with the unexpectedly rapid exchange observed by sptPALM33.
a Sensorgrams of SPR assay. Recombinant human PDZD8 (1, 28–)—FLAG was immobilized on the sensor chip and FKBP8 (1–380)—Histag with indicated concentrations were injected. b SPR responses at equilibrium (Req) were plotted against FKBP8 concentration. The plot of Req versus FKBP8 concentration was fitted to a monovalent binding model to determine KD values. c Schematic diagram of the mutants of PDZD8 deleted with various domains. TM transmembrane, SMP synaptotagmin-like mitochondrial-lipid-binding, C2n N-terminal sequence of C2 domain, PDZ PDZ domain, C2c C-terminal sequence of C2 domain, C1 C1 domain, CC coiled-coil region. d Pdzd8f/f::CreERT2 MEFs expressing a series of deletion mutants of PDZD8-3× FLAG shown in (c) and HA-FKBP8 were treated with 1 μM 4-hydroxy tamoxifen (4-OHT) and cell extracts were immunoprecipitated with anti-HA antibody. Western blotting was performed with anti-HA antibody and anti-FLAG antibody. Data are representative of three independent experiments. e GST-Pulldown assay from the mixture of recombinant GST—Thrombin cleavage site—human PDZD8 (1, 28–506)—HA and recombinant human FKBP8 (1–380)—Histag in vitro. FKBP8—Histag was eluted only from the GST beads incubated with GST- PDZD8 (1, 28–506)—HA. Data are representative of two independent experiments. f HA-Pulldown assay with recombinant human PDZD8 (1, 28–506)—HA and recombinant human FKBP8 (1–380)—Histag in vitro. The FKBP8-Histag was enriched when incubated with hPDZD8 (1, 28–506)—HA, compared to the negative controls (buffer or buffer with BSA). Data are representative of two independent experiments. g Immunofluorescence analysis of Pdzd8-Venus KI NIH3T3 cells knocking out endogenous FKBP8 by confocal microscopy with a Nikon Spatial Array Confocal (NSPARC) detector. The cells were transfected with the control gRNA (upper two rows) or three gRNAs against FKBP8 (bottom two rows), Cas9, and transfection marker mtagBFP2, and stained with antibodies to GFP, and Tomm20 for visualizing endogenous PDZD8-Venus (green) and mitochondrial outer membrane (magenta), respectively. Scale bars: 5 µm (original) 1 µm (magnified). h Quantification of the percentage of endogenous PDZD8-Venus intensity overlapping with mitochondria (Tomm20-positive area). The data are presented as individual points on box plots, with the center indicating the median, and the 25th and 75th percentiles represented by the box. Whiskers extend to the minimum and maximum values. n = 17, 14 cells for the control and FKBP8 KO cells. Statistical analysis was performed using two-sided Mann–Whitney U test. **p = 0.003. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.
Next, to identify the protein domains of PDZD8 required to mediate interaction with FKBP8, we conducted co-IP experiments by expressing a series of 3× FLAG-tagged PDZD8 deletion mutants together with HA-tagged FKBP8 (Fig. 3c). Based on the previous reports suggesting that PDZD8 can homodimerize, endogenous full-length PDZD8 can act as a bridge between exogenously expressed truncated forms of PDZD8 and FKBP8, even in the absence of direct binding26. To avoid this, we established a tamoxifen-inducible Pdzd8 conditional KO mouse embryonic fibroblast cell line (Pdzd8f/f::CreERT2 MEFs) (Supplementary Fig. 5c–e). Using a time-course analysis, we determined that PDZD8 was undetectable 45 h after CreERT2-mediated deletion of the floxed allele by treatment with 4-hydroxytamoxifen (4-OHT; Supplementary Fig. 5f). Whereas truncated forms of PDZD8 including TM-SMP domains co-precipitated FKBP8 efficiently, none of the other domains showed strong binding to overexpressed FKBP8 (Fig. 3d). These results suggest that TM-SMP domains of PDZD8 represent the minimal domain mediating interaction with FKBP8.
Next, we tested if SMP-C2n-PDZ domain of PDZD8 directly binds to FKBP8 using purified recombinant proteins. Recombinant glutathione S-transferase (GST)—Thrombin cleavage site - human PDZD8 (1, 28–506) - HA and human FKBP8 (1–380)—Histag were expressed in E. coli and purified with GST-binding beads and TALON affinity columns, respectively. These purified proteins were mixed in vitro, applied to a column with GST-binding beads and eluted by cleaving the thrombin cleavage site. Western blotting analysis revealed that FKBP8 was isolated only when it was incubated with GST-PDZD8 (1, 28–506)—HA (Fig. 3e). This binding of FKBP8 and PDZD8 was confirmed by a pull-down assay using the same set of purified proteins and anti-HA antibodies (Fig. 3f). Collectively, these results suggest that the SMP domain of PDZD8 plays a dominant role in interacting with FKBP8 while the TM domain is necessary for the interaction in cellulo, presumably for recruiting PDZD8 to the ER membrane. Given that protein binding and late endosome/lysosome recruitment functions of PDZD8 are suggested to be independent of the SMP domain23,25,34, the SMP domain of PDZD8 may represent a unique binding interface with FKBP8.
Our live imaging of endogenously expressed PDZD8 and the single molecule tracking of PDZD8 showed that PDZD8 is highly mobile throughout the ER but shows distinct interactions (confined diffusion) where the ER is contacting mitochondria (Supplementary Fig. 3, Fig. 1b, e, Supplementary Movie 1). Therefore, the direct binding of PDZD8 and FKBP8 prompted us to examine whether FKBP8 is required for capturing of PDZD8 to mitochondria. To achieve this, Cas9 and guide RNAs targeting Fkbp8 gene locus were transiently expressed in the PDZD8-Venus KI NIH3T3 cell line. Immunocytochemistry confirmed that FKBP8 was not detectable in more than 81% of transfected cells (labeled with mTagBFP2; Supplementary Fig. 6a). By quantifying the ratio of PDZD8 closely associated with mitochondria (stained by the anti-Tomm20 antibody) using a confocal microscopy equipped with a super resolution Nikon Spatial Array Confocal (NSPARC) detector, we found that colocalization of PDZD8 with mitochondria was significantly reduced in the FKBP8-depleted cells (Fig. 3g, h). This demonstrates that FKBP8 is required for recruiting the ER protein PDZD8 to mitochondria.
Our results demonstrate that a direct binding between FKBP8 and PDZD8 and also that FKBP8 is required for PDZD8 recruitment to mitochondria. Thus, we investigated if the interaction between PDZD8 and FKBP8 is critical for MERCS formation. To measure the size of MERCS, we visualized the ER and mitochondria membranes using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and segmented the contact sites between the two organelles. As previously reported in HeLa cells constitutively deleted with PDZD88, conditional deletion of PDZD8 induced by a treatment with 4-OHT to Pdzd8f/f::CreERT2 MEFs (Pdzd8 cKO) significantly decreased the size of MERCS, defined as the fraction of OMM membranes associated (≤3 pixels: 23.4 nm) with ER, compared to the vehicle-treated control isogenic MEFs (Fig. 4a, b). Strikingly, shRNA mediated knock-down (KD) of Fkbp8 (validated in Supplementary Fig. 6b) in the vehicle-treated control MEFs significantly decreased the size of MERCS to the same extent as in conditional Pdzd8 cKO cells (Fig. 4a, b, Supplementary Fig. 6c). Importantly, Fkbp8 KD in Pdzd8 cKO MEFs did not further reduce the fraction of MERCS compared to Pdzd8 KO MEF only (Fig. 4a, b, Pdzd8 cKO vs Pdzd8 cKO + Fkbp8 KD). Two-way ANOVA analysis shows that there is a strong functional interaction between the effects of FKBP8 and PDZD8 loss of function regarding the size of MERCS (Fig. 4c, d). We also observed the same trend when MERCS were defined as OMM membranes associated with the ER at a longer distance, specifically 32.4–54.6 nm (4–7 pixels) (Supplementary Fig. 6d). Therefore, these results demonstrate that PDZD8 and FKBP8 tether the ER and mitochondria interdependently.
a Representative electron micrographs of Pdzd8f/f::CreERT2 MEFs infected with lentivirus carrying shControl or shFKBP8, and treated with or without 0.5 µM 4-OHT. MERCS (yellow arrowheads) were more frequently observed in the Control cells than in Pdzd8 cKO, Fkbp8 KD, and Pdzd8 cKO + Fkbp8 KD cells. Scale bars: 200 nm. b Quantification of the MERCS length normalized by the mitochondrial circumference. The data are presented as individual points on box plots, with the center indicating the median, and the 25th and 75th percentiles represented by the box. Whiskers extend to the minimum and maximum values. n = 33, 29, 39, 34 cells from two independent experiments for the control, Pdzd8 cKO, Fkbp8 KD, and Pdzd8 cKO + Fkbp8 KD cells, respectively. Statistical analysis was performed using one-way ANOVA and Fisher's LSD test. ****p < 0.0001, ***p = 0.0003. c The interaction plot corresponding to b. Dots show the mean of each condition. d The results of the two-way ANOVA test. The low (<0.01) variation of the interaction shows that PDZD8 and FKBP8 cooperatively affect the areas of MERCS. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.
Although the vast majority of FKBP8 localizes at the mitochondria, an escape of FKBP8 from mitochondria to the ER has been reported upon mitophagy induction35. Therefore, to determine if PDZD8 colocalizes with the ER-resident FKBP8 (cis-interaction) or with the mitochondrial FKBP8 (trans-interaction), we determined the subcellular compartments where PDZD8 and FKBP8 colocalize. Immunostaining using anti-FKBP8 antibodies showed a puncta-like distribution of endogenous FKBP8 and revealed that 88.2% of FKBP8 is localized at mitochondria in HeLa cells (Fig. 5a, b, Supplementary Fig. 7a). Calculation of the distance from the centroids of each PDZD8 puncta to the nearest FKBP8 puncta within the mitochondria (‘on mito regions') revealed that the number of FKBP8 within 450 nm of PDZD8 was considerably higher compared to the control where the centroids of FKBP8 puncta were placed at scrambled positions within ‘on mito regions'. This juxtaposition of PDZD8 and FKBP8 was not observed outside the mitochondria (‘off mito regions') (Fig. 5c). These suggest that FKBP8 localizes near PDZD8 within mitochondria but not in other cytoplasmic region. Additionally, we found that the ratio of PDZD8 intensity overlapped with FKBP8 on mitochondria was significantly reduced by the FKBP8 randomizing (Fig. 5d). Moreover, PDZD8 puncta were significantly enriched in the FKBP8-positive area of mitochondria (Fig. 5e), indicating that PDZD8 colocalizes with FKBP8 more frequently than random occurrences on mitochondria. To independently confirm these results in cells derived from a different species and using endogenous tagging of FKBP8 and PDZD8 simultaneously, we developed a dual KI strategy (Supplementary Fig. 7b), whereby an HA-tag was knocked-in at the Fkbp8 genomic locus to express HA-FKBP8 in the Pdzd8-Venus KI NIH3T3 cell line. Consistent with the localization in HeLa cells, PDZD8 significantly accumulated in FKBP8-present regions on mitochondria compared to FKBP8-absent regions (Supplementary Fig. 7c–e). Taken together, these results strongly suggest that an ER-resident protein PDZD8 colocalizes with FKBP8 specifically on the mitochondria.
a Immunofluorescence analysis of PDZD8-Halotag KI HeLa cells. The cells were treated with 200 nM of Janelia Fluor 549 for 20 h and then stained with antibodies to FKBP8 and to Tomm20. The boxed regions of the top panels are shown at higher magnification in the corresponding lower panels. Arrowheads indicate PDZD8 colocalized both with FKBP8 and Tomm20. Scale bars, 5 μm (original) or 1 μm (magnified). b The ratios of FKBP8 intensity on or outside (off) the mitochondria were determined for images obtained as described in a. Error bar is mean ± s.e.m. of nine cells from two independent experiments. The average of three cytoplasmic regions cropped from each of the nine cells was used for the analysis. c Distribution of PDZD8 puncta with the indicated distance to the nearest FKBP8 puncta was determined for images obtained as described in a. The distance from centroids of each PDZD8 punctum to the nearest FKBP8 centroids was calculated within mitochondria (on mito) or outside of the mitochondria (off mito) respectively. The scrambled FKBP8 centroids were created by shuffling pixels within mitochondria or outside of the mitochondria in the images showing FKBP8 centroids. Nine cells from two independent experiments were used in the calculation. Two-sided Kolmogorov–Smirnov test was used to test statistical significance. ****P < 0.0001, *P = 0.0254. d The ratios of PDZD8 intensity overlapped with FKBP8 on mitochondria (Mander's coefficients) were determined for images as described in a. The scrambled FKBP8 images were created by shuffling pixels within mitochondria in the FKBP8 channel. Data are representative of two independent experiments (9 cells). A two-sided paired t-test was used to test statistical significance. *P = 0.0172. e The means of PDZD8 intensity in the FKBP8-present or FKBP8-absent area on mitochondria were determined for images as in a. Data are representative of two independent experiments (nine cells). A two-sided paired t-test was used to test statistical significance. **P = 0.0073. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.
We next tested if overexpression of the mitochondrial FKBP8 is sufficient for recruiting endogenous ER-localized PDZD8 to mitochondria. We overexpressed a mutated form of FKBP8 previously shown to lock its localization at the OMM (FKBP8N403K)35 in the PDZD8-Halotag KI HeLa cells. Strikingly, the overlap of PDZD8 with an OMM-marker YFP-ActA in HA-FKBP8N403K overexpressing cells was significantly increased (Fig. 6a, b). This suggests that the mitochondrial FKBP8 binds to PDZD8. Then, we examined if overexpression of FKBP8N403K recruits the ER together with PDZD8 by a correlative light-electron microscopy (CLEM) analysis (Supplementary Fig. 8a). Endogenous PDZD8 was labeled with JF549 dye in the PDZD8-HaloTag KI HeLa cell expressing with Venus-FKBP8N403K or YFP-ActA (OMM marker). Confocal microscopy with an NSPARC detector was used to visualize JF549 labeled PDZD8-HaloTag and Venus-FKBP8N403K or YFP-ActA signals within fixed cells, and the area imaged by confocal microscopy was subsequently re-identified in EM images (Supplementary Fig. 8b–e). OMM and the ER membrane within 25 nm of each other (MERCS) were segmented in the EM images and then 3D-reconstructed from 8 slices with 50 nm thickness (total 400 nm thick in z-axis) (Fig. 6c, Supplementary Fig. 8d, e). The 3D-reconstructed mitochondria and MERCS was aligned to the confocal microscopy image using the FKBP8 signals or ActA signals as landmarks for mitochondria (Fig. 6d, Supplementary Movie 4). Notably, PDZD8 puncta observed near mitochondria were highly accumulated in MERCS of the FKBP8N403K-overexpressing cell (arrowheads in Fig. 6e, Supplementary Movie 4). Taken together, using multiple independent approaches, our results demonstrate that PDZD8 and FKBP8 form a complex between the ER and mitochondria and the overexpression of FKBP8 at OMM increases the abundance of this protein complex at MERCS.
a Immunofluorescence analysis of PDZD8-Halotag KI HeLa cells overexpressing HA-FKBP8N403K. Cells transfected with either the control plasmid (upper two rows) or the plasmid encoding HA-FKBP8N403K (bottom two rows), along with the mitochondrial marker YFP-ActA, were treated with 200 nM of JF549 for 20 h, and subsequently, the fixed cells were observed using a confocal microscope equipped with a Nikon Spatial Array Confocal (NSPARC) detector. Scale bars: 5 µm (upper panels), 1 µm (lower magnified panels). b Quantification of the percentage of endogenous PDZD8-Halotag intensity overlapping with mitochondria (YFP-ActA-positive area). The data are presented as individual points on box plots, with the center indicating the median, and the 25th and 75th percentiles represented by the box. Whiskers extend to the minimum and maximum values. n = 78, 48 cells for the control and FKBP8N403K overexpressing cells from two independent experiments. Statistical analysis was performed using two-sided Student's t-test. ***P = 0.0007. c–e Correlative light and electron microscopy (CLEM) analysis in a PDZD8-HaloTag KI HeLa cell. Cells overexpressing with Venus-FKBP8N403K or YFP-ActA (for the control) were treated with 200 nM of JF549 for 20 h and then fixed cells were observed by a confocal microscope. After that, ultra-thin sections (50 nm thick) were created and observed in a field emission scanning electron microscope (FE–SEM). Electron micrographs of the serial 8 slices were corresponding to an optical section of fluorescence images. Segmentations and 3-demensional (3D) reconstructions of mitochondria and the ER within 25 nm of mitochondria (MERCS) in electron micrographs were shown in c. 3D reconstruction from electron micrographs (shown as “EM”) were merged with fluorescence images (shown as “LM”) in d. The z projection of mitochondria and MERCS in EM was overlaid with fluorescence images in e. Arrowheads indicate PDZD8 puncta that localize to MERCS. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.
Cryo-electron tomography (cryo-ET) provides a resolution range of 3–50 Å that is not accessible with other techniques and, importantly, allows the quantification of ultrastructural features of MERCS in situ under native conditions. Using correlative cryo-light microscopy and cryo-ET, we studied the in situ topology of mammalian mitochondria and mitochondria-associated membrane (MAM). First, we overexpressed FKBP8N403K in Pdzd8-Venus KI NIH3T3 cells and replicated the effect of recruiting and stabilizing PDZD8 in cells grown on cryo-EM grids (Fig. 7a). We then used cryo-focused ion beam (cryo-FIB) milling to generate lamellae (<200 nm-thick slice per cell) from PDZD8-HaloTag KI HeLa cells overexpressing mScarlet-FKBP8N403K (Fig. 7b–e). Cryo-fluorescence images of the lamellae overlaid on their corresponding high-resolution medium-mag TEM montage confirmed the presence of FKBP8N403K-mScarlet in the target cells. Since mScarlet-FKBP8N403K overexpression significantly increased the number of associations between mitochondria and MAM in each lamella compared to control cells, we fully segmented and labeled 20 or 6 membrane structures at OMM within 50 nm of their associated membranes in the FKBP8N403K overexpression condition or in the control cells, respectively. Using surface morphometrics analysis36, we quantified MAM–OMM distances at the level of a fraction of MAM. Our cryo-ET analyses demonstrate that MAM–OMM distances at any given interface are quite heterogeneous ranging from 10 to 50 nm (Fig. 7f, Supplementary Fig. 9). Moreover, an aggregate analysis for both the overexpressed and control conditions showed that overexpression of FKBP8N403K significantly (p < 0.0005, Kolmogorov–Smirnov test) shifted MAM–OMM distances to shorter values with a weighted median value at 25.7 nm compared to 30.1 nm in control cells (Fig. 7g). These results suggest that overexpression of FKBP8N403K, which efficiently recruits ER-localized PDZD8 to MERCS, imposes distances shorter than 25 nm between the MAM and OMM.
a Overexpression of FKBP8N403K increases the intensity and the abundance of the PDZD8-Venus puncta. At cryogenic temperatures, autofluorescence of the NIH3T3 cells in the green channel is strong, hence the presence of puncta in the control cells. The Venus fluorophore also emits light in the red channel. The images represent two stacks (field of view: 638.9 µm2) for the control and four stacks (field of view: 638.9 µm2) for FKBP8N403K OE, respectively. b–e For the cryo-ET analysis, mScarlet-FKBP8N403K overexpression (OE) was used to increase the number of associations between mitochondria and mitochondria-associated membrane (MAM) captured in cryo-FIB milled lamellae. An SEM image of a target cell before Cryo-FIB milling is shown (b). Cryo-fluorescence imaging of lamellae confirmed the presence of mScarlet-FKBP8N403K in the target cells. Note that the apparent mismatch between the cryo-fluorescence image and cryo-TEM is due to factors including autofluorescence, differences in resolution, registration errors, distortions in the imaging plane, and ice-crystal contaminations (c). Using medium-mag high-resolution TEM montages of the lamellae, mitochondria with MAM were targeted for high-resolution tilt series acquisition (d). Eighty tomograms containing MAM were obtained for the OE condition (of which 20 were fully segmented and labeled), and 10 tomograms containing MAM were obtained for the control (of which 6 were fully segmented and labeled). Two representative tomograms from the OE condition corresponding to the arrows in panel (d) are shown (e). The image of b represents more than 35 cells. The image of c represents 13 lamellae. FLM: fluorescent light microscopy. f A surface morphometrics analysis was used to calculate the MAM-outer mitochondrial membrane (OMM) distance. The distances are shown as a heatmap. Mammalian OMM and MAM show a great deal of heterogeneity in their membrane ultra-structure. g Aggregate analysis of the area-weighted MAM–OMM distance histogram shows a shift to smaller distances in the overexpression condition compared to the control. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.
MERCS represent hotspots for both fission and fusion of mitochondria37,38,39. Importantly, previous reports suggested that FKBP8 promotes mitochondrial fission40,41. Thus, we decided to examine the role of PDZD8–FKBP8 complex in the regulation of mitochondrial morphology. Quantitative volume analyses of mitochondria reconstructed from serial electron microscopy images revealed that mitochondria in PDZD8 cKO cells were significantly spherical represented by the smaller mitochondria complexity index (MCI42) compared to the control (Fig. 8a–d, Supplementary Fig. 10, Supplementary Movie 5). In contrast, mitochondria in FKBP8 KD cells were more elongated and branched compared to the control, resulting in higher MCI (Fig. 8c, d). These data suggest that PDZD8 increases but FKBP8 decreases the mitochondrial complexity. Interestingly, PDZD8 KO did not reduce the MCI in FKBP8 KD background (Fig. 8c, d). This indicates that PDZD8 suppresses the function of FKBP8 in regulating mitochondrial structure.
a Schematic of mitochondrial morphology analysis by the volume EM. Serial electron micrographs were obtained by imaging the serial sections with an FE–SEM. After cropping the volume, the mitochondria in the volume were semi-automatically extracted with an AI-assisted pipeline. b Formula of calculating MCI (mitochondrial complexity index)42. MCI is calculated as SA3/(16π2V2), where SA is the surface area and V is the volume of each mitochondrion (see details in the Methods section). c Representative 3D reconstruction of mitochondria extracted from serial EM images acquired by array tomography in Pdzd8f/f::CreERT2 MEFs infected with lentivirus carrying shControl or shFKBP8, and treated with or without 0.5 µM 4-OHT. Scale bars: 1 µm. d Quantification of MCI (mitochondrial complexity index)42. The data are presented as individual points on box plots, with the center indicating the median, and the 25th and 75th percentiles represented by the box. Whiskers extend to the minimum and maximum values. n = 63, 90, 54, and 52 mitochondria from 5, 5, 5, and 4 cells for the control, Pdzd8 cKO, Fkbp8 KD, and Pdzd8 cKO + Fkbp8 KD cells, respectively. Statistical analysis was performed using one-way ANOVA and Fisher's LSD test. ****p < 0.0001, ***p = 0.0006, *p = 0.033. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.
The biology of organelle contacts has emerged as molecularly complex and highly dynamic but mediating many crucial aspects of cell physiology. In particular, MERCS play key roles in exchanging Ca2+ and lipid between the ER and mitochondria8, regulating mitochondrial fission/fusion, and biogenesis of autophagosomes1,3,43,44. In this study, we investigated the molecular mechanisms of MERCS formation and its role in regulating mitochondrial morphology by analyzing the dynamics of the ER–mitochondria tethering protein PDZD8 using endogenous tagging, single particle tracking, identifying the partner protein on the mitochondrial side, and investigating mitochondrial morphology at a nanometer scale.
Our results show (1) specific PDZD8 recruitment at MERCS under endogenous conditions, (2) PDZD8 moving dynamically along the ER membrane and exhibits a significant increase in dwell time or transient ‘capture' near points of contacts with mitochondria, and (3) that FKBP8, identified using a battery of endogenous tags and biotin ligase mediated proteomics, is a novel PDZD8 binding partner mediating its tethering function at MERCS across multiple systems and species. Super-resolution optical imaging and CLEM analysis revealed that FKBP8 is necessary and sufficient for recruiting PDZD8 to MERCS. Furthermore, our ultrastructural analysis suggested that the binding between FKBP8 and PDZD8 is necessary for the formation of a significant fraction of MERCS. We took advantage of a cryo-ET pipeline for characterizing mitochondria and their associated membranes at sub-nanometer resolution in native conditions and discovered that the MAM–OMM distances are highly variable with a range of 10–50 nm and narrowed by overexpressing FKBP8N403K. Taken together, our results revealed a novel molecular mechanism underlying the formation of contacts between the ER and mitochondria. Given that our screenings identified VAPA and VAPB (VAPs), known participants in the MERCS formation, as candidate proteins interacting with PDZD8, it would be intriguing to explore whether PDZD8 and these proteins form a complex and how they regulate MERCS.
The ER spreads throughout the cell and works as a hub exchanging a wide variety of molecules with other organelles especially through membrane contact sites. It has been shown that PDZD8 is an ER protein required for the formation of MERCS, but also localizes at MCS between ER–lysosome, ER–late endosome, and at the ER–late endosome–mitochondria tripartite contacts, all of which we can observe with some frequency in our data11,23,25. The results of sptPALM showing the dynamic exchange of PDZD8 inside and outside hotspots at ER-mitochondrial contacts suggest that PDZD8 may be able to move rapidly between different types of MCS, as suggested for VAPB. One mechanism that could help facilitate recruitment of PDZD8 to the late endosome is its ability to directly bind to Rab7. Thus, it is possible that FKBP8 and Rab7 are competing for sequestration of PDZD8 and therefore might control the balance between the areas of MERCS and ER–lysosome contacts. Although the absence of Rab7 and other late endosomal/lysosomal proteins in the protein list from our screening results suggests that our current experimental system may not be ideal for investigating this hypothesis, single-particle tracking analyses exploring the sequestration of PDZD8 in cells where it binds with both FKBP8 and Rab7 would be of great interest.
Previous studies revealed that FKBP8 expression induces mitochondrial fragmentation and mitophagy through its LC3-interacting region motif-like sequence (LIRL) and LC3-interacting region (LIR), respectively40. In agreement with this, our high-throughput volume EM analysis demonstrated that FKBP8 limits mitochondrial volume possibly by limited fusion or promoting fission (Supplementary Fig. 10a). Together with the fact that MERCS provides isolation membranes for autophagy45, the MERCS formation via the PDZD8–FKBP8 complex might be a prerequisite for the onset of mitophagy. Of note, a combination of FKBP8 KD and PDZD8 KO revealed that PDZD8 enhances mitochondrial complexity through inhibition of FKBP8. Considering that PDZD8 is required to suppress mitophagy in Drosophila neurons12, one potential function of PDZD8 binding to FKBP8 could be to arrest the progression of mitophagy by inhibiting FKBP8-dependent modulation of mitochondrial shape after initiating the formation of the isolation membrane. The CLEM analysis in this study showed that the overexpression of the mitochondrial FKBP8 brought PDZD8 on the positive curvature of mitochondria (Supplementary Fig. 8f). Future studies using high-resolution live imaging will be required to clarify how the localization of this complex affects the morphological changes of mitochondria.
Cryo-ET pipelines will pave the way for sub-nanometer analysis of intact mammalian MCS in their native state. However, cryo-ET has limitations: (1) it is restricted to imaging lamellae thinner than 200 nm, which makes it challenging to capturing the entire ultrastructure, including whole mitochondria and MERCS, and (2) its technically demanding sample preparation limits its use for large datasets and broader fields of view. To compensate these limitations, we performed a 3D ultrastructural analysis using array tomography on chemically fixed cells using wide-field SEM. This complementary technique confirmed the essential role of the PDZD8–FKBP8 complex in MERCS formation and the regulation of mitochondrial morphology.
Although our cryo-ET analysis demonstrated FKBP8's role in controlling distances between membranes at mitochondrial contact sites in a near-native state (Supplementary Fig. 9d), fixation-induced artifacts remain a potential limitation, regardless of whether chemical or cryo-fixation methods are used. Thus, studying the PDZD8–FKBP8 complex's role in MERCS formation within living cells, especially in relation to ER and mitochondrial dynamics, is an important direction for future research. Furthermore, protein localization analysis using confocal microscopy revealed that FKBP8 is essential for MERCS formation by recruiting PDZD8 to the vicinity of mitochondria. Although FKBP8 knockout did not completely block PDZD8 recruitment to mitochondria, it is important to note that the limited resolution of the z-axis in fluorescence microscopy may have added background signals to overestimate the localization of PDZD8 near mitochondria. While this limitation makes it difficult to precisely define MERCS using fluorescence microscopy alone, the combination of fluorescence and electron microscopy (3D-CLEM) ensured that PDZD8 is indeed localized within MERCS. These analyses were performed using endogenous protein observation, as overexpression can obscure true localization due to excessive protein levels. Although the low expression levels of endogenous PDZD8 prevented us from observing its dynamics using sptPALM, photoactivation enabled us to track the dynamics of individual molecules in overexpressed proteins. Future studies are needed to investigate the dynamics of endogenous PDZD8.
This study elucidates a molecular pathway that regulates mitochondrial morphology at the interface with the ER. Given the dynamic nature of MERCS, revealing how cellular conditions utilize this pathway to modulate mitochondria will provide novel insights into cellular homeostasis.
NIH3T3 cells, Neuro2a cells, HeLa cells, and MEFs were maintained with Dulbecco's Modified Eagle Medium (DMEM, Sigma-Aldrich, catalog No. D6429) supplemented with 10% FBS (MP Biomedicals, catalog No. 2917346), and 1% Penicillin–Streptomycin (Gibco, catalog No. 15140-122) at 37 °C under 5% CO2. COS7 cells were maintained in phenol red-free DMEM (Corning, catalog No. 25200114) supplemented with 10% FBS (Corning, catalog No. 35-011-CV), 1% Penicillin–Streptomycin, and 1% l-glutamine (Corning, catalog No. 25-005-CI). NIH3T3 cells, Neuro2a cells, and MEFs were transfected with plasmids by polyethyleneimine (Polysciences). HeLa cells were transfected with plasmids by Lipofectamine LTX reagent with Plus reagent (Thermo Fisher) and Lipofectamine 2000 transfection reagent (Thermo Fisher), or with siRNAs by Lipofectamine RNAiMAX transfection reagent (Thermo Fisher). All DNA plasmids used in this work are listed in Supplementary Data 4.
All animals were maintained and studied according to protocols approved by the Animal Care and Use Committee of The University of Tokyo. Mice were housed under a 12-h light/dark cycle at an ambient temperature of 23 °C and a humidity of >40%.
Pdzd8-Venus KI NIH3T3, Pdzd8-TurboID KI Neuro2a cells, PDZD8-TurboID KI HeLa cells, and PDZD8-Halotag KI HeLa cells are generated using the CRISPR–Cas9 system8. The plasmids pCAG-mPDZD8_cterm-Venus-P2A-Neo for Pdzd8-Venus KI NIH3T3 cells, pCAG-mPDZD8_cterm-v5-TurboID-P2A-Neo for Pdzd8-TurboID KI Neuro2a cells, pCAG-hPDZD8_cterm-v5-TurboID-P2A-Neo for PDZD8-TurboID KI HeLa cells, and pCAG-hPDZD8_cterm-HaloTag-P2A-Neo for PDZD8-HaloTag KI HeLa cells were used as donor vectors, respectively. The transfected cells were cultured with Geneticin (G418 sulfate) to select successfully recombined cells.
For CRISPR–Cas9 plasmid, CRISPR guide RNA that targets the region prior to Fkbp8 start codon was designed using CRISPR Design tool (Horizon Discovery Ltd.) and cloned into pSpCas9 (BB)-2A-Puro (PX459) V2.0 (Addgene plasmid # 62988)46. The donor oligonucleotides containing the 5′ arm sequence, the sequence of HA tag and the 3′ arm sequence (5′-TCC CCG AGC CGC AGG GCC AGT TCC TGA TCC CAG CAG CAT GTA CCC ATA CGA TGT TCC AGA TTA CGC TGC GTC TTG GGC TGA GCC CTC TGA GCC TGC TGC CCT-3′) were obtained from Eurofins Genomics. Pdzd8-Venus KI NIH3T3 cells were transfected with CRISPR–Cas9 plasmid and the donor oligonucleotides by polyethylenimine.
Pdzd8f/f mouse embryos were dissected from anesthetized females at embryonic day 13.516. The embryos were minced, and after treatment with 0.25% trypsin (Gibco), 50 μg/mL of DNaseI (Merck) and 0.67 mg/mL of Hyaluronidase (Merck) in PBS for 20 min, the cells of the resulting suspension were plated onto 100-mm culture dishes and maintained in culture medium for 4 days. The cells were then immortalized by transfecting with plasmids encoding simian virus 40 (SV40) large T antigen (pMK16_SV40 T ori (−)47). After that, the cells were infected with lentivirus carrying Cre-ERT2 and single cell clones were obtained using a limiting dilution in 96-well plates. For Supplementary Fig. 5e, cells were boiled with a solution containing 50 mM Tris-HCl (pH 7.5), 100 mM NaCl, 1 mM EDTA, 0.5% Tween20, and 0.5 mg/mL Proteinase K (Nacalai) at 55 °C for 1 h. Using the resulting supernatant, the target DNA sequence was amplified with KOD FX Neo (TOYOBO).
CRISPR/Cas9-mediated genome editing was performed using the iGONAD method48. Two- to three-month old female mice (Jcl:ICR, CLEA Japan) were mated with male mice the day before electroporation. The female mice with virginal plug were used for iGONAD at embryonic day 0.75. Genome editing solution was prepared with 1 mg/ml Cas9 protein (IDT, 1081059), 30 mM crRNA (annealed with tracrRNA, IDT, 1072534), 2 mg/ml ssODN (IDT, Ultramer DNA Oligo, standard desalting), and FastGreen (Fujifilm Wako, 061-00031) in OPTI-MEM (Thermo Fisher Scientific, 11058021). The oviducts of the female mice were exposed and injected with the solution through microcapillary injection. Oviduct electroporation was performed using NEPA21 and CUY652P2.5 × 4 (NEPA gene) with the following protocol: three poring pulses (50 V, 5 ms, 50 ms interval, and 10% decay [±pulse orientation]) and three transfer pulses (10 V, 50 ms, 50 ms interval, and 40% decay [±pulse orientation]). After electroporation, the oviducts were returned to their original position. The sequences of crRNA and ssODN were as follows: crRNA, 5′-ATT GAT TAC ACT GAC TCA GA-3′ and ssODN, 5′-AGC CAT TCA GCA ACA TTT CCG ATG ACT TGT TCG GCC CAT CTG AGT CAG TGT ACC CAT ACG ATG TTC CAG ATT ACG CTG GCT ATC CCT ATG ACG TCC CGG ACT ATG CAG GAT CCT ATC CAT ATG ACG TTC CAG ATT ACG CTG TTT AAT CAA TAA GCT ATT TCA ACT TTC ACA TGG ATG GAG GGG ACA AGA CGT A-3′. For Supplementary Fig. 4b, mouse tail fragments were boiled with a solution containing 50 mM Tris-HCl (pH 7.5), 100 mM NaCl, 1 mM EDTA, 0.5% Tween20, and 0.5 mg /mL Proteinase K (Nacalai) at 55 °C for 20 h. Using the resulting supernatant, the target DNA sequence was amplified with KOD FX Neo (TOYOBO).
Primary Abs for immunostaining; anti-Tomm20 (Abcam, ab78547; 1:500), anti-LAMP1 (BD Bioscience, 553792; 1:500), rat anti-GFP (Nacalai, 04404-84; 1:200–1:500), mouse anti-GFP (Invitrogen, A-11120; 1:1000), anti-Rab7 (Cell Signaling Technology, 9367; 1:100), anti-OXPHOS complex (Invitrogen, 45-8099; 1:200), anti-FKBP8 (R and D systems, MAB3580; 1:500), anti-HA-tag (Cell Signaling Technology, 3724; 1:200), and anti-HA-tag (BioLegend, 16B12; 1:500).
Primary Abs for immunoblotting; anti-PDZD8 (Hirabayashi et al.8; 1:500), anti-HA-tag (BioLegend, 901501; 1:2000), anti-FKBP8 (R and D systems, MAB3580; 1:500), anti-VAPA (Bethyl laboratories, A304-366A; 1:1000), anti-Mfn2 (Abcam, ab56889; 1:1000), anti-β-actin (Cell Signaling Technology, 4967; 1:500), anti-FLAG (M2) (Sigma-Aldrich, F1804; 1:1000), anti-α-tubulin (Sigma-Aldrich, T6188; 1:1000), anti-GFP (Medical & Biological Laboratories, 598; 1:1000), anti-His-tag (Medical & Biological Laboratories, D291-3S; 1:1000), and anti-v5 (Abcam, ab27671; 1:500).
Cells were lysed with a solution containing 20 mM Hepes-NaOH (pH 7.5), 150 mM NaCl, 0.25 M sucrose, 1 mM EDTA, 0.1% SDS, 0.5% sodium deoxycholate, 0.5% NP-40, 1 mM Na3VO4, cOmplete Mini Protease Inhibitor Cocktail (Roche) and Benzonase (25 U/ml). Insoluble pellets and supernatants were separated by centrifugation at 15,000 × g at 4 °C for 15 min. The supernatants were boiled with 1× Laemmli's sample buffer containing 10% mercaptoethanol at 98 °C for 5 min. The cell lysates were fractionated by SDS-PAGE on a 10% gel or a 4–15% gradient gel (Bio-Rad) and the separated proteins were transferred to a polyvinylidene difluoride membrane (Merck). The membrane was incubated first with primary Abs for 24 h at 4 °C and then with HRP–conjugated secondary Abs (GE Healthcare) for 1 h at room temperature. After a wash with TBS-T (50 mM Tris-HCl (pH 8), 150 mM NaCl, and 0.05% Tween 20), the membrane was processed for detection of peroxidase activity with chemiluminescence reagents (100 mM Tris-HCl (pH 8.5), 1.25 mM Luminol, 0.2 mM P-coumaric acid, 0.01% H2O2) and the signals were detected by Image Quant LAS4000 instrument (GE Healthcare).
Pdzd8-3× HA knock-in mice and control littermates at postnatal 10 days were put to sleep using medetomidine hydrochloride (Domitor, Nippon zenyaku kogyo, 0.75 mg/kg), midazolam (Sandoz, 4 mg/kg) and butorphanol (Vetorphale, Meiji Seika Pharma Co., Ltd., 5 mg/kg). Pups were then put on the ice for 5 min and exsanguinated by terminal intracardial perfusion with ice-cold 2% paraformaldehyde (Merck) in phosphate-buffered saline (PBS). The neocortex was then removed and sonicated five times for 30 s with ice-cold lysis buffer (50 mM Tris-HCl (pH 7.5), 1 mM EDTA, 0.2% Triton-X100, PhosSTOP phosphatase inhibitor (Roche) and cOmplete protease inhibitor cocktail (Roche)). Insoluble pellets and supernatants were separated by centrifugation at 15,000 × g at 4 °C for 15 min. The supernatants were incubated in rotation at 4 °C for 20 h with a protein complex of anti-HA antibody (Cell signaling technology, C29F4) and Sera-Mag SpeedBeads Protein A/G (Cytiva). After the rotation, beads were washed three times with TBS buffer. The immunoprecipitates were eluted from beads by incubating in 2× Laemmli's sample buffer containing 10% mercaptoethanol at 98 °C for 10 min and then subjected to immunoblotting. Total fraction samples were prepared using 2% of the cell extracts.
Cells were fixed with 0.1% PFA for 10 min at room temperature, and 100 mM glycine–NaOH was treated for 4 min at RT. Cells were washed twice with ice-cold PBS and lysed with ice-cold lysis buffer (50 mM Tris-HCl, pH 7.4, with 150 mM NaCl, 1 mM EDTA, 0.2% Triton-X100, 1 mM Na3VO4 and cOmplete Mini Protease Inhibitor Cocktail (Roche)). Cell extracts were incubated on ice for 15 min, then insoluble pellets and supernatants were separated by centrifugation at 15,000 × g at 4 °C for 15 min. The supernatants were incubated in rotation at 4 °C for 20 h with a protein complex of anti-GFP antibody (MBL) and Dynabeads Protein A (Thermo Fisher Scientific). After the rotation, beads were washed three times with TBS buffer. The immunoprecipitates were eluted from beads by incubating in 2× Laemmli's sample buffer, then mercaptoethanol was added at the final concentration of 9%. Samples were boiled at 98 °C for 5 min and then subjected to immunoblotting. Total fraction samples were prepared using 1.5% of the cell extracts.
Pdzd8f/f::CreERT2 MEFs were treated with 1 μM 4-OH tamoxifen for 24 h and then transfected with plasmids encoding 3× FLAG-tagged full-length PDZD8/deletion mutants and HA-tagged FKBP8. Twenty-four hours post transfection cells were lysed with ice-cold lysis buffer (50 mM Tris-HCl (pH 7.5), 1 mM EDTA, 0.2% Triton-X100, 1 mM Na3VO4 and cOmplete protease inhibitor cocktail (Roche)), and insoluble pellets and supernatants were separated by centrifugation at 15,000 × g at 4 °C for 15 min. The supernatants were incubated in rotation at 4 °C for more than 3 h with a protein complex of anti-HA antibody (Cell signaling technology) and Dynabeads Protein A (Thermo Fisher Scientific). After the rotation, beads were washed twice with TBS-T buffer and once with TBS buffer. The immunoprecipitates were eluted from beads by incubating in 2× Laemmli's sample buffer, then mercaptoethanol was added at the final concentration of 9%. Samples were boiled at 98 °C for 5 min and then subjected to immunoblotting. Total fraction samples were prepared using 20% of the cell extracts.
The pCAX–Cas9 and gRNA backbone vector (YT210) were generously provided by Matsuzaki49. To enhance knockout (KO) efficiency, three gRNAs targeting different exons were designed for the CRISPR/Cas9-based KO system50. The gRNA sequences were designed using either Crispor51 or the CRISPRdirect52. Target sequences were amplified using forward and reverse oligonucleotides through PCR and subsequently cloned into the gRNA backbone vector at the AflII restriction sites49.
Cells were fixed with 4% paraformaldehyde for 15 min at 37 °C, permeabilized with 90% methanol in PBS for 20 min under −20 °C and incubated for 20 h (Supplementary Fig. 1, Supplementary Fig. 6, Supplementary Fig. 7c) or 1 h (Fig. 3g, Supplementary Fig. 6a and Supplementary Fig. 7a) in PBS containing 2% FBS and 2% BSA (blocking buffer) at room temperature. They were then exposed at room temperature first for 1 h to primary Abs in blocking buffer and then for 30 min to Alexa Fluor-conjugated secondary Abs (Thermo Fisher Scientific) in blocking buffer. ProLong Gold (Thermo Fisher Scientific) was used as a mounting medium. Images were acquired on a Nikon Ti2 Eclipse microscope with an A1R confocal, a CFI Plan Apochromat Lambda D 100× Oil (NA 1.45), a laser unit (Nikon; LU-N4, 405, 488, 561, and 640 nm), and filters (450/50 nm, 525/50 nm, 595/50 nm, 700/75 nm for 405 nm, 488 nm, 561 nm, 640 nm laser, respectively). All equipment was controlled via NIS Elements software (Nikon). Optical sectioning was performed at Nyquist for the longest wavelength. The resulting images were deconvoluted with NIS-elements (Nikon) and processed with NIS-elements (Nikon) or ImageJ (NIH). In Fig. 5a and Fig. S7c, the images were taken as z-stack images (interval; 100 nm) and then 3D-deconvoluted with NIS-elements (Nikon) to enhance resolution. The full width at half maximum (FWHM) of point spread function (PSF) in this setup had the following measured values: 488 nm: x 139 nm, y 156 nm, z 307 nm; 561 nm: x 139 nm, y 156 nm, z 345 nm; 640 nm: x 172 nm, y 244 nm, z 368 nm. One z-slice image was arbitrarily selected in each cell as a representative image and used in the analyses in Fig. 5b–e, and Fig. S7d, e.
All analyses of PDZD8 or FKBP8 localization in fluorescent images were conducted using homemade programs written with Python, as detailed below. All binarized images were created using OpenCV's threshold function. In Supplementary Fig. 1c, d, mitochondrial area, lysosomal area, or late endosomal area were defined by binarizing signals of Tomm20/OXPHOS, Lamp1, or Rab7, respectively, and then the percentages of PDZD8 intensity on mitochondria, lysosome or late endosome were calculated. In Fig. 3g, h, the mitochondrial areas were defined by binarizing signals of Tomm20 with global thresholding and then the percentage of PDZD8 intensity on mitochondria (Mander's coefficient, M1) was calculated. In Fig. 5b–e, mitochondrial areas were defined by binarizing signals of Tomm20. In Fig. 5b, to calculate Mander's coefficient between FKBP8 and Tomm20, the sum of FKBP8 intensity on mitochondria divided by total FKBP8 intensity was calculated. In Fig. 5c, using OpenCV's connectedComponentsWithStats function, the puncta of PDZD8 and FKBP8 were segmented in the binarized images of PDZD8 and FKBP8, respectively, and then obtained the centroids of individual puncta. To define the centroids in the “on mito” or “off mito” regions, the images mapping PDZD8 and FKBP8 centroids were masked using the binarized images of Tomm20. To obtain scrambled images of FKBP8, the pixels of the image mapping FKBP8 centroids on mito or off mito regions were shuffled in the corresponding area using the random module of Python. The distance map of FKBP8 was created using OpenCV's distanceTransform function in the images with FKBP8 centroids “on mito”, shuffled “on mito”, “off mito”, and shuffled “off mito”, respectively. Then the number of PDZD8 puncta with the distance from the nearest FKBP8 corresponding to each bin indicated in x-axis of the graph was calculated. In Fig. 5d, to calculate Mander's coefficient between PDZD8 and FKBP8 on mitochondria, the sum of PDZD8 intensity on FKBP8-present mitochondrial regions divided by total PDZD8 intensity on mitochondria was calculated. The scrambled images of FKBP8 were created by shuffling the pixels of FKBP8 channel within mitochondrial area using the random module of Python. In Fig. 5e, FKBP8-present or FKBP8-absent mitochondrial areas were defined as ROIs using binarized images of Tomm20 and FKBP8, and then the sum of PDZD8 intensity at ROIs divided by the area of ROIs was calculated. Image analyses in Fig. S7d, e were performed using the same methods as in Fig. 5d, e. In Fig. 6a, b, the ROIs were manually defined as the cytoplasmic region using the YFP-ActA signal as a guide. The mitochondrial area was defined as binarized images of YFP-ActA with Otsu's method and then the percentage of PDZD8 intensity on mitochondria (Mander's coefficient, M1) was calculated.
Cells were fixed with 4% paraformaldehyde for 15 min at 37 °C. The fixed cells were mounted by ProLong Gold (Thermo Fisher Scientific). Images were acquired on a Nikon Ti2 Eclipse microscope with a Nikon AX confocal microscopy with a Nikon Spatial Array Confocal (NSPARC) detector and a CFI Plan Apochromat Lambda D 100× Oil (NA 1.45). The wavelength range of 430–463 nm, 503–545 nm, or 582–618 nm was obtained by excitation with a 405 nm, 488 nm, or 561 nm laser, respectively.
For the expression of FLAG-tagged human PDZD8 (1, 28–), human PDZD8 sequences were cloned into the pCAG vector. Recombinant human PDZD8 (1, 28–)—FLAG was expressed in Expi293 Cells (Thermo Fisher Scientific) using ExpiFectamine 293 Transfection Kit (Thermo Fisher Scientific) according to the manufacturer's protocol. The cells were cultured for 4 days after transfection at 37 °C and 8% CO2. The Expi293 cell pellets were homogenized with lysis buffer (25 mM Tris-HCl (pH 8.0) 150 mM NaCl) and centrifuged at 40,000 × g for 30 min at 4 °C. The supernatant was filtered through a 0.8-μm pore-size filter and subsequently applied to a DDDDK-tagged protein purification gel (MBL) equilibrated with the lysis buffer. After washing with the lysis buffer once, the FLAG-tagged proteins were eluted with 1 M l-arginine-HCl (pH 4.4). The eluted fraction was dialyzed with an SEC buffer (25 mM Tris pH 8.0 containing 300 mM NaCl, and 5 mM DTT). The dialyzed fraction was subjected to size-exclusion chromatography in a HiLoad 16/600 Superdex 200 pg column equilibrated with the SEC buffer in an AKTA system (GE Healthcare). The purified fractions were concentrated using Amicon Ultra-15 (Cut off: 100 kDa) Centrifugal Filter Units (MERCK). For expressing GST-tagged human PDZD8 (1, 28–506)—HA, human PDZD8 sequences were cloned in pGEX4-T-1 vector (Cytiva) and transformed into Escherichia coli BL21 (DE3) cells. After culturing 24 h at 37 °C, the cells were incubated at 28 °C until OD600 reaches 0.6–1.0. Then 0.5 mM of IPTG was added into the LB medium and incubated at 20 °C. 16–20 h after IPTG induction, the cells were collected by centrifugation (8000 × g 10 min 4 °C), frozen by liquid nitrogen, and stored at −30 °C. The frozen pellet was mixed with lysis buffer (20 mM Tris pH 8.0, 500 mM NaCl, 5 mM DTT, 10 mM EDTA, and Benzonase diluted at 1:5000) and lysed with an ultrasonic disruptor. The cell lysate was centrifuged (40,000 × g for 30 min) at 4 °C. The supernatant was filtered through a 0.8-μm pore-size filter and subsequently loaded onto a Glutathione Sepharose 4B (Cytiva) equilibrated with a lysis buffer. After washing with (20 mM Tris pH 8.0, 500 mM NaCl, 5 mM DTT, 10 mM EDTA, 1% Triton-X100) once, with (20 mM Tris pH 8.0, 500 mM NaCl, 5 mM DTT) twice, and the GST-hPDZD8 (1, 28–506)—HA, was eluted with a buffer (50 mM Tris-HCl, 10 mM reduced glutathione, pH 8.0). For the elution of hPDZD8 (1, 28–506)—HA, the Glutathione Sepharose beads were treated with a buffer (20 mM Tris pH 7.5 containing 150 mM NaCl, 5 mM DTT) supplemented with 0.04 U/µL Thrombin (Cytiva) for 2 days. For the expression of His-tagged human FKBP8 (1–380), pRSETA-hFKBP8 (1–380)—Histag (a kind gift from Dr. Chrisostomos Prodromou53) was transformed into Escherichia C43 (DE3) cells. After culturing for 24 h at 37 °C, the cells were incubated at 28 °C until the OD600 reached 0.6–1.0. Then, 0.5 mM of IPTG was added to the LB medium and incubated at 20 °C. 16–20 h after IPTG induction, the cells were collected by centrifugation (8000 × g for 10 min at 4 °C), frozen in liquid nitrogen, and stored at −30 °C. The frozen pellet was homogenized with lysis buffer (20 mM Tris-HCl pH 7.5, 100 mM NaCl, 0.5 mM imidazole, Benzonase diluted at 1:10,000) and centrifuged at 40,000 × g for 30 min at 4 °C. The supernatant was filtered through a 0.8-μm pore-size filter and subsequently loaded onto a TALON Metal Affinity Resin (Clontech) equilibrated with the lysis buffer. After washing with the wash buffer (20 mM Tris-HCl pH 7.5, 100 mM NaCl 5 mM imidazole) twice, the protein was eluted with elution buffer (20 mM Tris-HCl pH 7.0, 100 mM NaCl, 500 mM imidazole). The eluted fraction was dialyzed with an SEC buffer (20 mM Tris pH 7.5 containing 500 mM NaCl, 1.0 mM EDTA, and 5 mM DTT). The dialyzed fraction was subjected to size-exclusion chromatography in a HiLoad 16/600 Superdex 200 pg column equilibrated with the SEC buffer in an AKTA system (GE Healthcare).
The interactions of hPDZD8 (1, 28−)—FLAG with hFKBP8 (1–380)—Histag were analyzed using SPR in a Biacore T200 instrument (Cytiva). A Series S CM5 Biacore sensor chip (Cytiva) was activated with N-hydroxysuccinimide/N-ethyl-N′-(3-dimethylaminopropyl) carbodiimide hydrochloride, followed by immobilization of hPDZD8 (1, 28–)—FLAG at 618 resonance units. After the immobilization, the activated surface of the sensor chip was blocked with 1 M ethanolamine hydrochloride (pH 8.5). Binding analysis was performed at 25 °C in a running buffer of HBS-T (10 mM HEPES-NaOH, pH 7.4, 150 mM NaCl, and 0.005% (v/v) Tween-20). A series of five 2.5-fold dilutions of the FKBP8 solution was injected into the sensor chip at 30 μL/min, with a contact time of 120 s and a dissociation time of 120 s. The KD values were calculated with the Steady State Affinity model on Biacore T200 Evaluation Software, version 3.2 (Cytiva). The 95% CI of the KD value was calculated with Saturation binding analysis on Prism 10 (GraphPad Software).
GST-hPDZD8 (1, 28–506)—HA and hFKBP8 (1–380)–Histag were mixed with Glutathione Sepharose 4B (Cytiva) in a buffer (20 mM Tris pH 7.5 containing 500 mM NaCl, 1.0 mM EDTA, 5 mM DTT) and incubated for 3 h at 4 °C. After washing with a wash buffer (20 mM Tris pH 7.5 containing 500 mM NaCl, 5 mM DTT) twice, the proteins were eluted by cleaving the thrombin cleavage site with 0.04 U/µL thrombin (Cytiva) in an elution buffer (20 mM Tris pH 7.5 containing 500 mM NaCl, 5 mM DTT, 2 mM MgCl2). The eluate was subjected to SDS-PAGE and processed for Western blotting with anti-Histag and anti-HA antibodies. During the elution process, GST-hPDZD8 (1, 28–506)—HA was cleaved by Thrombin between the GST and hPDZD8 (1, 28–506)—HA. As a result, the IP fraction primarily contained hPDZD8 (1, 28–506)—HA, which has an estimated protein size of 55 kDa based on its amino acid sequence, rather than GST-hPDZD8 (1, 28–506)—HA, which has an estimated size of 81 kDa.
Anti-HA antibodies (C29F4, from Cell Signaling Technology, Cat# 3724) were mixed with Dynabeads protein A (Thermo Fisher Scientific, Cat# 10001D, Lot#2791319) in a buffer (20 mM Tris pH 7.5 containing 150 mM NaCl, 1 mM EDTA, 5 mM DTT) with 100 mg/mL BSA and 0.4% Triton-X100 overnight at 4 °C. Following three washes with a buffer (20 mM Tris pH 7.5 containing 150 mM NaCl, 1 mM EDTA, 5 mM DTT), only a buffer (20 mM Tris pH 7.5 containing 150 mM NaCl, 1 mM EDTA, 5 mM DTT, 0.2 % Triton-X100), 0.5 mg/mL BSA in a buffer (20 mM Tris pH 7.5 containing 150 mM NaCl, 1 mM EDTA, 5 mM DTT, 0.2% Triton-X100), or 0.5 mg/mL hPDZD8 (1, 28–506)—HA in a buffer (20 mM Tris pH 7.5 containing 150 mM NaCl, 1 mM EDTA, 5 mM DTT, 0.2% Triton-X100) was added and incubated for 2 h at 4 °C. Following two washes with a buffer (20 mM Tris pH 7.5 containing 150 mM NaCl, 1 mM EDTA, 5 mM DTT), 0.5 mg/mL hFKBP8 (1–380)—Histag was added and incubated for 2.5 h at 4 °C. Following two washes with a wash buffer (20 mM Tris pH 7.5 containing 150 mM NaCl, 1 mM EDTA, 5 mM DTT, 1% Triton-X100) and one wash with a buffer (20 mM Tris pH 7.5 containing 150 mM NaCl, 1 mM EDTA, 5 mM DTT), the immunoprecipitates were eluted from the beads by incubating them in 2× Laemmli's sample buffer. Finally, mercaptoethanol was added at a final concentration of 9%. The samples were heated to 98 °C for 3 min and then subjected to immunoblotting.
For Figs. 4 and 8, the cells were fixed with 2.5% glutaraldehyde (Electron Microscopy Sciences) in DMEM for 1 h at 37 °C. After being washed with 0.1 M phosphate buffer (0.02 M sodium dihydrogenphosphate dihydrate, 0.08 M disodium hydrogenphosphate), the cells were scraped and collected with 0.2% BSA/0.1 M phosphate buffer followed by centrifugation at 820 × g. After being embedded in low melting agarose (2% in 0.1 M phosphate buffer, MP Biomedicals), cell pellets were sectioned at 150-µm thickness with a Leica VT1000S vibratome. The sections were post-fixed with 1% OsO4 (Electron Microscopy Sciences) and 1.5% potassium ferrocyanide (FUJIFILM Wako Pure Chemical Corporation) in a 0.05 M phosphate buffer for 30 min. After being rinsed for 3 times with H2O, the cells were stained with 1% thiocarbohydrazide (Sigma-Aldrich) for 5 min. After being rinsed with H2O for 3 times, cells were stained with 1% OsO4 in H2O for 30 min. After being rinsed twice with H2O at room temperature and 3 times with H2O at 50 °C, the cells were treated with Walton's lead aspartate (0.635% lead nitrate (Sigma-Aldrich), 0.4% aspartic acid (pH 5.2, Sigma-Aldrich)) at 50 °C for 20 min. The sections were followed by incubations in an ascending ethanol series (15 min each in 50% on ice, 70% on ice, and 10 min each in 90%, 95% ethanol/H2O at room temperature), 10 min in 100% ethanol 4 times and 60 min in butyl 2,3-epoxypropyl ether (Fujifilm Wako pure chemical corporation). This was followed by infiltration of Epok812 resin-butyl 2,3-epoxypropyl ether for 24 h at a 1:1 dilution. After incubating with 100% Epok812 resin for 4 h, followed by 2 h, the resin was cured at 40 °C for 12 h, followed by 60 °C for 48 h. Epok812 resin was made by mixing 7.5 g of MNA (Oken), 13.7 g of Epok812 (Oken), 3.8 g of DDSA (Oken), and 0.2 g of DMP-30 (Oken). Resin blocks were trimmed with a TrimTool diamond knife (Trim 45; DiATOME). For Fig. 4, 50–80 nm thick ultra-thin sections made with a diamond knife (Ultra 45; DiATOME) were collected on a cleaned silicon wafer strip in a Leica Ultramicrotome (UC7). The ultra-thin sections were imaged with a scanning electron microscope (JSM7100F; JEOL). Imaging was done at 5 kV accelerating voltage, probe current setting 12, 1280 × 960 frame size, and 7.4-mm working distance, using the Backscattered Electron Detector. The final pixel size was a 7.8 nm square. For Fig. 8, in the array tomography analysis, the resin blocks created above were serially sectioned further at a 50-nm thickness with a diamond knife (Ultra JUMBO, 45°; DiATOME) fitted in a Leica Ultramicrotome (UC7) to obtain a ribbon of 70–200 serial sections. The serial sections were imaged by a field emission scanning electron microscope (JSM-IT800SHL; JEOL) with the Array Tomography Supporter software (System in Frontier). Imaging was done at 3 kV accelerating voltage, 268 pA beam current, 2560 × 1920 frame size, 6.5 mm working distance, 32.0 × 24.0 µm field of view (pixel size is 12.5 nm) and 2.67 µs dwell time, using the scintillator backscattered electron detector.
For Fig. 4, electron micrographs were manually annotated using PHILOW software54. Mitochondria and ER in the vicinity of mitochondria were annotated and ER regions within 3 pixels (23.4 nm) of the mitochondrial periphery were defined as MERCS. One cell in the Pdzd8 cKO condition was excluded from the statistical analysis because it was considered an outlier in the ROUT test (Q = 0.1%). The numbers of analyzed cells are 33, 29, 39, and 34 cells from two independent experiments for the control, Pdzd8 cKO, Fkbp8 KD, and Pdzd8 cKO + Fkbp8 KD cells, respectively. For Extended Fig. 6d, the same analysis was performed, defining MERCS as ER regions located within 4, 5, 6, and 7 pixels (32.4, 39.0, 46.8, and 54.6 nm) from the mitochondrial periphery. One cell in the Pdzd8 cKO condition was also excluded from the statistical analysis in the Extended Fig. 6d.
The electron micrographs were aligned using the linear stack alignment with scale invariant feature transform (SIFT) Plugin, implemented in ImageJ (NIH). Mitochondria, whose entire volume is within the imaging volume, were semi-automatically annotated using Empanada software55 and PHILOW software54. The volumes of mitochondria were calculated as the number of mitochondrial voxels multiplied by the voxel size (12.5 nm × 12.5 nm × 50 nm). The method for calculating mitochondrial surface area from electron microscopy images is as follows: The number of voxels along the circumference of mitochondrial cross-sections in the xy-plane was counted for each z-plane, and the totals were summed. This allowed for the enumeration of the voxels facing the surface in the direction perpendicular to the z-axis. Subsequently, this sum was multiplied by the 12.5 nm × 50 nm. To account for the mitochondrial surfaces facing along the z-axis the aforementioned voxel count was multiplied by 0.5, and the product was then multiplied by the dimensions of 12.5 nm × 12.5 nm. The sum of these two values was considered the total mitochondrial surface area. MCI was calculated by the following formula proposed by Vincent et al.56:
where SA is surface area and V is volume.
4, 9, 2, and 2 mitochondria in the control, Pdzd8 cKO, Fkbp8 KD, and Pdzd8 cKO + Fkbp8 KD condition were excluded from the statistical analysis because it was considered outliers in the ROUT test (Q = 0.1%) (Supplementary Data 5). 3D visualization of the mitochondrial structure was performed using Imaris version 9.6.0 (Bitplane).
293 T cells (BRC) were co-transfected with shuttle vectors (FUW-CreERT2-P2A-NeoR), HIV-1 packaging vectors Delta8.9 and VSV-G envelope glycoproteins, or shuttle vectors (pLKO-shFKBP8 or pLKO-scramble), LP1, LP2, and VSV-G using FuGENE transfection reagent (Promega, catalog no. E2311)57. Twenty-four hours after transfection, the media were exchanged with 8 mL of fresh DMEM supplemented with 10% FBS, and 1% penicillin–streptomycin, and 24 h later, supernatants were harvested, spun at 500 × g to remove debris and filtered through a 0.45 μm filter (Sartorius). The filtered supernatant was concentrated to 125 μL using an Amicon Ultra-15 (molecular weight cut-off 100 kDa) centrifugal filter device (Merck Millipore), which was centrifuged at 4000 × g for 60 min at 4 °C. Then, 100 μL of viral supernatants was added to each 6-well dish containing MEFs.
Prior to imaging, cells were washed twice with PBS and then incubated in phenol red-free full DMEM supplemented with 10% FBS and 1% P/S for approximately 30 min. During imaging, cells were maintained at 37 °C in an incubation chamber (Tokai Hit). Images were acquired on a Nikon Ti2 Eclipse microscope with an A1R confocal, a CFI Plan Apochromat Lambda D 100× Oil (NA 1.45), a laser unit (Nikon; LU-N4, 405, 488, 561, and 640 nm), and filters (450/50 nm, 525/50 nm, 595/50 nm for 405 nm, 488 nm, and 561 nm, respectively). All equipment was controlled via NIS Elements software (Nikon). Optical sectioning was performed at Nyquist for the longest wavelength. The resulting images were deconvoluted with NIS-elements (Nikon). The resulting images were processed with NIS-elements (Nikon) or ImageJ (NIH).
PDZD8-HaloTag knocked-in HeLa cells were incubated with 200 nM JF549 dye (Promega, catalog No. GA1110) at 37 °C o/n. Three hours before the confocal imaging, three times PBS washes were performed and mediums were changed to JF549 free DMEM, then incubated at 37 °C.
Coverslips (25 mm, No. 1.5, high tolerance, Warner Scientific) were cleaned according to a previously described protocol58 and stored in dry, sterile, 35 mm tissue culture dishes sealed with parafilm until use within 3 months. Immediately before plating, coverslips were coated with 500 μM phenol red-free Matrigel (Corning) for 1 h at 37 °C. Coverslips were then washed once with sterile PBS before being overlaid with 2 mL of complete, phenol red-free DMEM. Simultaneously, 1 × 106 COS7 cells per sample were trypsinized and resuspended directly into a transfection cocktail made of 750 ng PrSS-mEmerald-KDEL, 500 ng mTagRFP-T2-Mito-7, and 250 ng of msPDZD8-HaloTag-N1 mixed with Fugene HD (Promega) according to the manufacturer's specifications. Cells were incubated in the suspension for 15 min at 37°, and then the entire mixture was plated onto the coverslip and incubated for 18–22 h until imaging. Any cells that were not imaged before 24 h post transfection were discarded. Immediately prior to imaging, coverslips were loaded into a custom imaging chamber, labeled for 1 min with 10 nM PA-JF64659 in OptiMEM (Gibco), and washed excessively (at least 5 times) with 10 mL of sterile PBS. Washing was performed while simultaneously aspirating from the chamber, taking extreme care to never expose the cells directly to the air. Cells were then washed once with 10 mL of complete, phenol red-free medium and allowed to recover in 1 mL of complete, phenol red-free DMEM for 15 min before imaging.
Single molecule imaging was performed using a custom inverted Nikon TiE scope outfitted with a stage top incubation system to maintain cells at 37 °C with 5% CO2 and appropriate humidity during imaging (Tokai Hit). Regions amenable to sptPALM (primarily the flat lamella of cells, 500 nm thick or less) were located by eye using the fluorescence of the ER label. The experimenter was always blinded to the single molecule tracers when choosing the cell region for imaging. Once a region with sufficiently flat ER was chosen, excitation was achieved using three fiber couples solid state laser lines (488 nm, 561 nm, 642 nm, Agilent Technologies) to illuminate the sample. The excitation beams were introduced into the system with a traditional rear-mount TIRF illuminator, which was used to manually set the angle of incidence beneath the critical angle to provide the most even illumination across the ER in the field of view. The illumination by the 488 nm and 561 nm lines were adjusted for each sample to minimize the bleed through into the single molecule channel, but both were always kept beneath 50 μW (488 nm) and 150 μW (561 nm) total power into the back aperture. The single molecule channel was always collected with a constant 11.5 mW of 642 nm light introduced into the back aperture.
Emission light was collected using a 100× α-plan apochromat 1.49 NA oil immersion objective (Nikon Instruments). The collected light was focused onto three simultaneously running, electronically synchronized iXon3 electron multiplying charged coupled device cameras (EM-CCD, DU-897; Andor Technology), using a MultiCam optical splitter (Cairn Research) and sequential 565LP and 647LP dichroic mirrors (Chroma) within the optical path. The three emission paths were additionally cleaned up with a 525/50 BP, 605/70 BP, and 705/60 BP filter (Chroma) to filter extra light in the system.
The microscope was operated in sptPALM mode using only 128 × 128 pixel region on the camera (20.48 μm × 20.48 μm) to drive the system quickly enough to unambiguously track single proteins. The location of the region was always selected close to the center of the camera chip, since the objective being used is only chromatically well corrected at the center of the field of view. Imaging was performed with 5 ms exposure times, and the final speed was monitored using an oscilloscope directly coupled to the system (mean frame rate ~95 Hz).
Single molecule localizations were linked to form trajectories using the TrackMate plugin in Fiji. Linking parameters were experimentally selected for each data set to minimize visible linkage artifacts and identified by eye. The resulting trajectories were then projected on to the ER network and manually curated for linkages that are close in 2D space but prohibitively far in the underlying ER structure itself. The resulting trajectories were exported from TrackMate and analyzed in Matlab for subsequent analysis, as described elsewhere29.
Probability analysis was performed largely as described elsewhere30, where a spatially-defined probability mass function was derived from the total number of localizations observed within a 30 s time window. Note that while enrichments in the probability can correspond to regions of slowed movement, there are several other potential explanations for this phenomenon. Thus, an orthogonal analysis approach was also used where localizations are grouped into Voronoi tessellations and a simple Langevin motion model was applied. The resulting best fit values for diffusion coefficients for each tessellation were then mapped, and in this context they were directly compared to the mean diffusion coefficient of PDZD8 in regions of ER far from the putative contact sites.
PDZD8-Halotag knocked-in HeLa cells were overexpressed with plasmids encoding Venus-FKBP8N403K or YFP-ActA and then treated with 200 nM JF549 dye (Promega) for 20 h at 37 °C. After that, cells were washed with PBS twice and plated in No. 1S gridded coverslip-bottom dishes (custom made, based on IWAKI 3922-035; coverslips were attached inversed side), precoated with carbon by a vacuum coater and then coated with poly-d-lysine (Merck, catalog No. P0899)60. The cells were fixed with 2% paraformaldehyde (Electron Microscopy Sciences) in PBS at room temperature for 10 min and then washed with PBS. Fluorescence imaging was conducted using Nikon AX confocal microscopy with a Nikon Spatial Array Confocal (NSPARC) detector and a CFI Plan Apochromat Lambda D 100× Oil (NA 1.45). The wavelength range of 503–545 nm or 582–618 nm was obtained by excitation with a 488 nm or 561 nm laser, respectively. The cells were then fixed with 2.5% glutaraldehyde in 0.1 M phosphate buffer (pH 7.4) for 2 days at 4 °C. After washing with 0.1 M phosphate buffer, the cells were post-fixed with 1% OsO4 (Electron Microscopy Sciences), 1.5% potassium ferrocyanide (Fujifilm Wako pure chemical corporation, catalog No. 161-03742) in a 0.05 M phosphate buffer for 30 min. After being rinsed 3 times with H2O, the cells were stained with 1% thiocarbohydrazide (Sigma-Aldrich) for 5 min. After being rinsed with H2O for three times, the cells were stained with 1% OsO4 in H2O for 30 min. After being rinsed with H2O for two times at room temperature and three times with H2O at 50 °C, the cells were treated with Walton's lead aspartate (0.635% lead nitrate (Sigma-Aldrich), 0.4% aspartic acid (pH 5.2, Sigma-Aldrich)) at 50 °C for 20 min. The cells dehydrated with an ascending series of ethanol (15 min each in 50% on ice, 70% on ice, and 10 min each in 90%, 95% ethanol/H2O at room temperature, 10 min in 100% ethanol 4 times at room temperature) were embedded in epoxy resin (LX-112) by covering the gridded glass with a resin-filled beam capsule. LX-112 resin was made by mixing 4.85 g of NMA (Ladd Research Industries), 7.8 g of LX-112 (Ladd Research Industries), 2.35 g of DDSA (Ladd Research Industries), and 0.3 g of BDMA (Ladd Research Industries). Polymerization was carried out at 42 °C for 12 h and 60 °C for 72 h. After polymerization, the gridded coverslip was removed and the resin block was trimmed to a square of about 150–250 μm. The block was sectioned using an ultramicrotome (EM UC7, Leica) equipped with a diamond knife (Ultra JUMBO 45°, DiATOME) to cut 50 nm thick sections. The serial ultra-thin sections were collected on the cleaned silicon wafer strip and imaged with a scanning electron microscope (JSM-IT800SHL; JEOL). Imaging of the Venus-FKBP8N403K overexpressing cell was done at 2 kV accelerating voltage, 34.1 pA beam current, 5120 × 3840 frame size, 6.5 mm working distance, 12.8 × 9.6 µm field of view (pixel size is 2.5 nm) and 1.33 µs dwell time, using the Scintillator Backscattered Electron Detector. Imaging of the YFP-ActA-overexpressing cell was done at 2 kV accelerating voltage, 48.8 pA beam current, 2560 × 1920 frame size, 6.9 mm working distance, 12.8 × 9.6 µm field of view (pixel size is 5 nm) and 14.1 µs dwell time, using the Scintillator Backscattered Electron Detector. The images taken by confocal microscopy were processed with ImageJ (NIH). The electron micrographs were stitched by Stitch Sequence of Grids of Images Plugin and aligned using the Linear Stack Alignment with Scale Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT) Plugin, implemented in ImageJ (NIH). After that, pixel size of images from the Venus-FKBP8-overexpressing cell was converted 2.5 nm to 5 nm by OpenCV's resize function. Mitochondria and ERs in the vicinity of mitochondria in electron micrographs were semi-automatically annotated using Empanada software55 and PHILOW software54. ER regions within 5 pixels (=25 nm) of the mitochondrial periphery were defined as MERCS. Reconstructing segmented images of the electron micrographs to three-dementional images and overlaying it with fluorescence images were conducted using Imaris software (Bitplane). The z projection of electron micrographs was created using ImageJ (NIH). For the analysis of mitochondrial membrane curvature at PDZD8-localized MERCS, the arbitrary area was extracted from the z-projection images of 3D-reconstructed electron micrographs merged with fluorescence images and counted the number of PDZD8-localized MERCS with positive, negative, and neutral OMM using ImageJ.
Cells were transiently transfected with FKBP8N403K-mScarlet plasmid for 24 h and then were transferred to cryo-EM grids (Quantifoil, 200-Au-mesh with carbon film) (pre-treated with 50 µg/ml fibronectin for at least 15 min) and incubated for 3 h. The cells were incubated with 5% glycerol in the media for 15 min right before freezing after which the media was exchanged with PBS and 5% glycerol, and the grids were plunge-frozen. A Leica GP2 was used for plunge freezing with double blotting each for 7 s. The grids were stored in liquid nitrogen for the following steps. First, the grids were imaged using a Zeiss LSM900 AiryScan and the Linkam cryo-stage to screen for overall quality and transfection efficiency. Second, 4 grids were milled in one session using an Aquilos2 FIB-SEM equipped with the Delmic IceShield. Thirty-five lamellae were generated with a thickness of around 170 nm and varying surface areas. These lamellae were loaded on a Titan Krios equipped with a K3 detector and BioQuantum energy filter. High-resolution medium-mag montages of lamellae were collected and manually inspected for MAM. Mitochondria and MAM were then targeted for high-resolution tilt series acquisition at a pixel size of 2.07 Å/pixel. Grids were loaded into the cassette with a lamella pre-tilt of −9°, thus the tilt series acquisition started at 9 degrees, with a target range of −42 to +60° on the grid (−51 to +51 on the lamellae) acquired in 3° increments in a dose-symmetric fashion using SerialEM61. The data collection was monitored live using Warp62. After cryo-ET data collection, the lamellae were imaged in the Zeiss AiryScan with a 100× objective. This was feasible since we discovered that the mScarlet tag survives TEM radiation. The fluorescence images were overlaid on the TEM montages using the MAPS software (Thermo Fisher Scientific). Tilt series alignment was done using AreTomo. Weighted back projection tomogram reconstructions were CTF-deconvolved using ISONET63. Initial Segmentation was done using TomoSegMemTV64 on the deconvoluted tomograms. The segmentations were corrected and labeled manually using Amira. The segmentations were subsequently processed and analyzed using the surface morphometrics analysis toolkit36. In the OE condition, 73 out of 116 collected tomograms (63%) contained at least one contact site, while in the control, only 19 out of 49 collected tomograms (38%) contained at least one contact site. Full analysis was on 20 mitochondria–MAM associations for the OE condition, and 6 for the control.
Pdzd8-3× HA knock-in mice and control littermates at postnatal 10 days were put to sleep using medetomidine hydrochloride (Domitor, Nippon zenyaku kogyo, 0.75 mg/kg), midazolam (Sandoz, 4 mg/kg) and butorphanol (Vetorphale, Meiji Seika Pharma Co., Ltd., 5 mg/kg). Pups were then put on the ice for 5 min and exsanguinated by terminal intracardial perfusion with ice-cold 2% paraformaldehyde (Merck) in phosphate-buffered saline (PBS). The neocortex was then removed and sonicated five times for 30 s with ice-cold lysis buffer (20 mM Hepes-NaOH pH7.5, 1 mM EGTA, 1 mM MgCl2, 150 mM NaCl, 0.25% Na-deoxycholate, 0.05% SDS, 1% NP40, Benzonase (Merck), PhosSTOP phosphatase inhibitor (Roche) and cOmplete protease inhibitor cocktail (Roche)). After the lysates were centrifuged at 20,000 × g for 15 min at 4 °C, the resulting supernatants were incubated for 3 h at 4 °C with a 2.5 µL slurry of Sera-Mag SpeedBeads Protein A/G (Cytiva) pre-incubated with 2.5 µL of anti-HA-tag rabbit mAb (Cell signaling technology, C29F4). The beads were washed four times with the lysis buffer and then twice with 50 mM ammonium bicarbonate. Proteins on the beads were digested by adding 200 ng trypsin/Lys-C mix (Promega) at 37 °C overnight. The resulting digests were reduced, alkylated, acidified, and desalted using GL-Tip SDB (GL Sciences). The eluates were evaporated and dissolved in 0.1% trifluoroactic acid and 3% ACN. LC–MS/MS analysis of the resultant peptides was performed on an EASY-nLC 1200 UHPLC connected to an Orbitrap Fusion mass spectrometer through a nanoelectrospray ion source (Thermo Fisher Scientific). The peptides were separated on a C18 reversed-phase column (75 mm [inner diameter] x 150 mm; Nikkyo Technos) with a linear 4%–32% ACN gradient for 0–100 min, followed by an increase to 80% ACN for 10 min and final hold at 80% ACN for 10 min. The mass spectrometer was operated in data-dependent acquisition mode with a maximum duty cycle of 3 s. MS1 spectra were measured with a resolution of 120,000, an automatic gain control (AGC) target of 4e5, and a mass range of 375–1500 m/z. HCD MS/MS spectra were acquired in the linear ion trap with an AGC target of 1e4, an isolation window of 1.6 m/z, a maximum injection time of 35 ms, and a normalized collision energy of 30. Dynamic exclusion was set to 20 s. Raw data were directly analyzed against the SwissProt database restricted to Mus musculus using Proteome Discoverer version 2.5 (Thermo Fisher Scientific) with Sequest HT search engine for identification and label-free precursor ion quantification. The search parameters were as follows: (i) trypsin as an enzyme with up to two missed cleavages; (ii) precursor mass tolerance of 10 ppm; (iii) fragment mass tolerance of 0.6 Da; (iv) carbamidomethylation of cysteine as a fixed modification; and (v) acetylation of the protein N-terminus and oxidation of methionine as variable modifications. Peptides and proteins were filtered at a false discovery rate (FDR) of 1% using the Percolator node and Protein FDR Validator node, respectively. Label-free quantification was performed on the basis of the intensities of precursor ions using the Precursor Ions Quantifier node. Normalization was performed such that the total sum of abundance values for each sample over all peptides was the same.
PDZD8-TurboID knocked-in HeLa cells were plated into a 15 cm dish at the density of 2 × 106 cells/dish and cultured two overnight. The cells were treated with Biotin at the final concentration of 50 μM, and incubated for 6 h. The cells were washed twice with ice-cold Hepes-saline and lysed in 6 M guanidine-HCl (Wako) containing 100 mM HEPES-NaOH (pH7.5), 10 mM TCEP (Nacalai), and 40 mM chloroacetamide (Sigma). After heating and sonication, proteins (1.3 mg each) were purified by methanol–chloroform precipitation and resuspended in 200 μL of PTS buffer (12 mM SDC, 12 mM SLS, 100 mM Tris-HCl, pH 8.0)65. After sonication and heating at 95 °C for 10 min, the protein solutions were diluted 5-fold with 100 mM Tris-HCl, pH8.0 and digested with 13 μg of trypsin (Pierce) at 37 °C overnight. After heating at 95 °C for 10 min, the digested peptides were incubated with the ACN-prewashed Tamavidin 2-REV beads (FUJIFILM Wako) for 3 h at 4 °C. After washing five times with TBS (50 mM Tris-HCl, pH 7.5, 150 mM NaCl), biotinylated peptides were eluted for 15 min at 37 °C twice with 100 µL of 1 mM biotin in TBS. The combined eluates were desalted using GL-Tip SDB, evaporated, and redissolved in 0.1% TFA and 3% ACN. LC–MS/MS analysis of the resultant peptides was performed on an EASY-nLC 1200 UHPLC connected to an Orbitrap Fusion mass spectrometer. The peptides were separated on the C18 reversed-phase column with a linear 4–32% ACN gradient for 0–60 min, followed by an increase to 80% ACN for 10 min and final hold at 80% ACN for 10 min. The mass spectrometer was operated in data-dependent acquisition mode with a maximum duty cycle of 3 s. MS1 spectra were measured with a resolution of 120,000, an AGC target of 4e5, and a mass range of 375–1500 m/z. HCD MS/MS spectra were acquired in the linear ion trap with an AGC target of 1e4, an isolation window of 1.6 m/z, a maximum injection time of 200 ms, and a normalized collision energy of 30. Dynamic exclusion was set to 10 s. Raw data were directly analyzed against the SwissProt database restricted to Mus musculus using Proteome Discoverer version 2.5 with Sequest HT search engine for identification and label-free precursor ion quantification. The search parameters were as follows: (i) trypsin as an enzyme with up to two missed cleavages; (ii) precursor mass tolerance of 10 ppm; (iii) fragment mass tolerance of 0.6 Da; (iv) carbamidomethylation of cysteine as a fixed modification; and (v) acetylation of the protein N-terminus, oxidation of methionine, and biotinylation of lysine as variable modifications. Peptides and proteins were filtered at a FDR of 1% using the Percolator node and Protein FDR Validator node, respectively. Label-free quantification was performed on the basis of the intensities of precursor ions using the Precursor Ions Quantifier node. Normalization was performed such that the total sum of abundance values for each sample over all peptides was the same.
For Fig. 2g, the highly enriched proteins were selected according to the following criteria: log2 (fold change) > 1 and −log10 (p-value) > 1 for IP–MS and log2 (fold change) > 3, −log10 (p-value) > 1.25 for TurboID-MS.
Pdzd8-v5-TurboID knock-in cell (mouse Neuro2a) were grown in T75 (75 cm2) cell culture flask. One flask per each triplicate samples were prepared for MS analysis. The cells were then treated with biotin (50 μM) in complete DMEM medium for 30 min at 37 °C. The labeled cells were washed three times with cold DPBS 30 min after the in situ biotinylation, following next cell lysis. The cells were lysed with 750 μl of 1× TBS (25 mM Tris, 0.15 M NaCl, pH 7.2) containing 2% SDS and 1× protease inhibitor cocktail. Lysates were clarified by ultrasonication (Bioruptor, diagenode) to physically break down nucleic acid such as DNA for 5 min three times with iced water bath.
The 4 ml of cold acetone were added to the lysates and incubated at −20 °C for at least 2 h to 16 h. After first precipitation with acetone, the samples were centrifuged at 13,000 × g for 10 min at 4 °C and the supernatant was gently discarded. To completely reconstitute all proteins, samples were incubated with cooled 10% TBS/90% acetone at −20 °C for at least 2 –16 h. The samples were centrifuged at at 13,000 × g for 10 min at 4 °C and the supernatant was gently discarded. The pellets were reconstituted with 500 μl of 8 M urea containing 50 mM ABC, followed by measuring protein concentration using BCA assay. Denaturation was performed at 650 rpm for 1 h at 37 °C. Samples were reduced by reducing agent, 10 mM DTT and alkylated with 40 mM IAA at 650 rpm for 1 h at 37 °C, respectively. The. Samples were diluted 8-fold with 50 mM ABC containing 1 mM CaCl2. Samples were digested with (50:1 w/w) trypsin at 650 rpm for at least 6–18 h at 37 °C. Insoluble fractions were removed by centrifugation for 10 min at 10,000 × g. The 150 μl of Streptavidin magnetic beads were firstly washed with 1× TBS containing 2 M urea four times and then added to the digested solution. The binding with the beads were for 1 h room temperature, followed by washing the beads two times with 50 mM ABC containing 2 M urea. The washed beads were washed with pure water compatible with LC–MS and transferred to new protein lobind tubes (Eppendorf). For elution of biotinylated peptides from the beads, 150 μl of elution solution (80% ACN, 20% pure water, 0.2% TFA, and 0.1% formic acid) were incubated at 60 °C three times repeatedly. Total elution fractions were completely dried using a speedvac. The resulting peptides were analyzed by Q Exactive Plus orbitrap mass spectrometer (Thermo Fisher Scientific, MA, USA) equipped with a nanoelectrospray ion source. To separate the peptide mixture, we used a C18 reverse-phase HPLC column (500 mm × 75 μm ID) using an acetonitrile/0.1% formic acid gradient from 4 to 32.5% for 120 min at a flow rate of 300 nL/min. For MS/MS analysis, the precursor ion scan MS spectra (m/z 400–2000) were acquired in the Orbitrap at a resolution of 70,000 at m/z 400 with an internal lock mass. The 15 most intensive ions were isolated and fragmented by High-energy collision induced dissociation (HCD).
All MS/MS samples were analyzed using the Sequest Sorcerer platform (Sagen-N Research, San Jose, CA, USA Sequest was set up to search the Mus musculus protein sequence database (86320 entries, UniProt, http://www.uniprot.org/) assuming the digestion enzyme stricttrypsin. Sequest was searched with a fragment ion mass tolerance of 1.00 Da and a parent ion tolerance of 10.0 ppm. Carbamidomethylation of cysteine was specified in Sequest as a fixed modification. Oxidation of methionine, acetyl of the n-terminus, phospho of serine, threonine and tyrosine and biotin of lysine were specified in Sequest as variable modifications. Scaffold (Version 4.11.0, Proteome Software Inc., Portland, OR, USA) was used to validate MS/MS-based peptide and protein identifications. Peptide identifications were accepted if they could be established at greater than 95.0% probability by the Scaffold Local FDR algorithm. Protein identifications were accepted if they could be established at greater than 99.0% probability and contained at least 2 identified peptide. Protein probabilities were assigned by the Protein Prophet algorithm66. Proteins that contained similar peptides and could not be differentiated based on MS/MS analysis alone were grouped to satisfy the principles of parsimony. Proteins were annotated with Gene Ontology (GO) terms from the National Center of Biotechnology Information database (NCBI; downloaded November 1, 2019)67.
All statistical analyses were performed in Prism 10 (GraphPad Software).
Further information on research design is available in the Nature Portfolio Reporting Summary linked to this article.
The MS proteomics data of Pdzd8-3× HA mice and PDZD8-TurboID HeLa cells generated in this study have been deposited in the ProteomeXchange Consortium via the jPOST partner repository with the dataset identifiers PXD052134 and PXD052135. The MS proteomics data of Pdzd8-v5-TurboID KI Neuro2a have been deposited to the PRIDE (Project accession: PXD052694). The EM datasets of Fig. 4 and Fig. 8 have been deposited to the figshare website (https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.26501122) and EMPIAR, respectively. The data generated in this study are provided in the Supplementary Information, Supplementary Data, and Source Data file. Source data are provided with this paper.
The original codes used in this study are available at the following GitHub.
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We thank Drs. Heike Blockus, Tommy Lewis, and Seok-Kyu Kwon for their critical reading of the paper and members of the Hirabayashi lab for constructive discussions. We thank Chenxing Jiang and Machiko Tsumura for their technical support. We thank Drs. Yoshibumi Yamaguchi (Hokkaido University), Masato Ohtsuka (Tokai University), Masayuki Miura (The University of Tokyo), and Makoto Matsuyama (Shigei Medical Research Institute) for the kind instruction of the iGONAD method, Dr. Luke Hammond (Columbia University) for the kind instruction of fluorescence image analysis, and Drs. Satoru Takahashi, Yoko Ishida, Chieko Saito, Ikuko Koyama-Honda, and Noboru Mizushima (The University of Tokyo) for the kind instruction of the CLEM method. We thank Yuki Umeda, Ryotaro Yamamoto, Taiki Uno, Dr. Satoshi Yamaguchi, and Dr. Akimitsu Okamoto (The University of Tokyo) for their assistance in the synthesis of Halotag ligands. We thank Drs. Shigeo Okabe and Yuka Sato for the support in FE–SEM imaging. We thank Dr. Jonathon Nixon-Abell for performing pilot experiments with sptPALM of PDZD8 and assisting with establishing imaging and tracking conditions. We acknowledge Shunsuke Kihara (NIKON SOLUTIONS Co., Ltd.) for the support of NIKON NSPARC microscopy. This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI under Grant Number JP20H04898 (Y.H.), JP22H05532 (Y.H.), JP24H01269 (Y.H.), JP24H01348 (Y.H.), JP21J00490 (S. A-I.), JP22J23099 (K.N.), AMED under Grant number JP19dm0207082 (Y.H.), JP21wm0525015 (Y.H.), SECOM Science and Technology Foundation Research grant (Y.H.), the Uehara memorial foundation research grant (Y.H.), the Naito Foundation (S. A-I.), NIH-NINDS R35 award NS127232 (F.P.), Joint Usage and Joint Research Programs by the Institute of Advanced Medical Sciences of Tokushima University (K.N., T.N., Y.S-S., Y.H., and H.K.), and The University of Tokyo WINGS-LST “Collaboration project” and “Laboratory Practice” (K.N. and Y.H.). We thank Dr. Chrisostomos Prodromou (University of Sussex) for providing the pRSETA-hFKBP8 (1–380)—Histag. We thank Drs. Yuji Tsunekawa and Fumio Matsuzaki (RIKEN) for providing the YT210 plasmid. pENTR4-HaloTag (w876-1) was a gift from Dr. Eric Campeau (Addgene plasmid #29644; http://n2t.net/addgene:29644; RRID: Addgene_29644).
Mohammadreza Paaran, Clint Potter & Bridget Carragher
Present address: Chan Zuckerberg Imaging Institute, Redwood City, CA, USA
Yusuke Kishi
Present address: Laboratory of Molecular Neurobiology, Institute for Quantitative Biosciences, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, 113-0032, Japan
Chulhwan Kwak
Present address: Department of Neurosurgery, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA, 94304, USA
These authors contributed equally: Koki Nakamura, Saeko Aoyama-Ishiwatari, Takahiro Nagao.
Department of Chemistry and Biotechnology, School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, 113-8656, Japan
Koki Nakamura, Saeko Aoyama-Ishiwatari, Takahiro Nagao, Yudan Du, Shogo Suga, Masafumi Tsuboi, Makoto Nakakido, Kouhei Tsumoto & Yusuke Hirabayashi
Simons Electron Microscopy Center, New York Structural Biology Center, New York, NY, 10028, USA
Mohammadreza Paaran, Jake Johnston, Clint Potter & Bridget Carragher
Janelia Research Campus, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Ashburn, VA, 20147, USA
Christopher J. Obara & Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz
Department of Bioengineering, School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, 113-8656, Japan
Yui Sakurai-Saito, Makoto Nakakido, Kouhei Tsumoto & Yusuke Hirabayashi
Columbia University Medical Center, New York, NY, 10032, USA
Jake Johnston
Medical Proteomics Laboratory, The Institute of Medical Science, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, 108-8639, Japan
Kouhei Tsumoto
Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, 113-0033, Japan
Yusuke Kishi & Yukiko Gotoh
Department of Chemistry, Seoul National University, Seoul, 08826, Republic of Korea
Chulhwan Kwak
School of Biological Sciences, Seoul National University, Seoul, 08826, Republic of Korea
Hyun-Woo Rhee
Graduate School of Semiconductor Materials and Devices Engineering, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), Ulsan, 44919, Republic of Korea
Jeong Kon Seo
UNIST Central Research Facilities (UCRF), Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), Ulsan, 44919, Korea
Jeong Kon Seo
Division of Cell Signaling, Fujii Memorial Institute of Medical Sciences, Institute of Advanced Medical Sciences, Tokushima University, Tokushima, 770-8503, Japan
Hidetaka Kosako
Department of Neuroscience, Columbia University Medical Center, New York, NY, 10032, USA
Franck Polleux
Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute, New York, NY, 10027, USA
Franck Polleux
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Y.H. conceptualized and supervised the project. K.N., S.A.-I., T.N., Y.S.-S., Y.D., S.S., M.T., and Y.H. designed and performed the experiments. M.P. performed cryo-ET analysis advised by C.P., B.C., and F.P. J.J. helped with the cryo-ET grid preparation and data processing. C.J.O. and J.L.-S. performed sptPALM analysis. K.N. performed in vitro analysis under the supervision of M.N. and K.T. Y.K. and Y.G. generated Pdzd8-3× HA KI mice. H.K. acquired and analyzed the MS data. C.K., H.-W.R., and J.K.S. performed proximity labeling-MS experiment of Pdzd8-TurboID KI Neuro2a. K.N., S.A.-I., T.N., and Y.H. wrote the paper with the help of the rest of the authors.
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Yusuke Hirabayashi.
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Nakamura, K., Aoyama-Ishiwatari, S., Nagao, T. et al. Mitochondrial complexity is regulated at ER-mitochondria contact sites via PDZD8-FKBP8 tethering.
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Astronomers have detected the most promising signs yet of a possible biosignature outside the solar system, although they remain cautious.
Using data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the astronomers, led by the University of Cambridge, have detected the chemical fingerprints of dimethyl sulfide (DMS) and/or dimethyl disulfide (DMDS), in the atmosphere of the exoplanet K2-18b, which orbits its star in the habitable zone.
On Earth, DMS and DMDS are only produced by life, primarily microbial life such as marine phytoplankton. While an unknown chemical process may be the source of these molecules in K2-18b's atmosphere, the results are the strongest evidence yet that life may exist on a planet outside our solar system.
The observations have reached the 'three-sigma' level of statistical significance -- meaning there is a 0.3% probability that they occurred by chance. To reach the accepted classification for scientific discovery, the observations would have to cross the five-sigma threshold, meaning there would be below a 0.00006% probability they occurred by chance.
The researchers say between 16 and 24 hours of follow-up observation time with JWST may help them reach the all-important five-sigma significance. Their results are reported in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Earlier observations of K2-18b -- which is 8.6 times as massive and 2.6 times as large as Earth, and lies 124 light years away in the constellation of Leo -- identified methane and carbon dioxide in its atmosphere. This was the first time that carbon-based molecules were discovered in the atmosphere of an exoplanet in the habitable zone. Those results were consistent with predictions for a 'Hycean' planet: a habitable ocean-covered world underneath a hydrogen-rich atmosphere.
However, another, weaker signal hinted at the possibility of something else happening on K2-18b. "We didn't know for sure whether the signal we saw last time was due to DMS, but just the hint of it was exciting enough for us to have another look with JWST using a different instrument," said Professor Nikku Madhusudhan from Cambridge's Institute of Astronomy, who led the research.
To determine the chemical composition of the atmospheres of faraway planets, astronomers analyse the light from its parent star as the planet transits, or passes in front of the star as seen from the Earth. As K2-18b transits, JWST can detect a drop in stellar brightness, and a tiny fraction of starlight passes through the planet's atmosphere before reaching Earth. The absorption of some of the starlight in the planet's atmosphere leaves imprints in the stellar spectrum that astronomers can piece together to determine the constituent gases of the exoplanet's atmosphere.
The earlier, tentative, inference of DMS was made using JWST's NIRISS (Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph) and NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph) instruments, which together cover the near-infrared (0.8-5 micron) range of wavelengths. The new, independent observation used JWST's MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) in the mid-infrared (6-12 micron) range.
"This is an independent line of evidence, using a different instrument than we did before and a different wavelength range of light, where there is no overlap with the previous observations," said Madhusudhan. "The signal came through strong and clear."
"It was an incredible realisation seeing the results emerge and remain consistent throughout the extensive independent analyses and robustness tests," said co-author Måns Holmberg, a researcher at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, USA.
DMS and DMDS are molecules from the same chemical family, and both are predicted to be biosignatures. Both molecules have overlapping spectral features in the observed wavelength range, although further observations will help differentiate between the two molecules.
However, the concentrations of DMS and DMDS in K2-18b's atmosphere are very different than on Earth, where they are generally below one part per billion by volume. On K2-18b, they are estimated to be thousands of times stronger -- over ten parts per million.
"Earlier theoretical work had predicted that high levels of sulfur-based gases like DMS and DMDS are possible on Hycean worlds," said Madhusudhan. "And now we've observed it, in line with what was predicted. Given everything we know about this planet, a Hycean world with an ocean that is teeming with life is the scenario that best fits the data we have."
Madhusudhan says that while the results are exciting, it's vital to obtain more data before claiming that life has been found on another world. He says that while he is cautiously optimistic, there could be previously unknown chemical processes at work on K2-18b that may account for the observations. Working with colleagues, he is hoping to conduct further theoretical and experimental work to determine whether DMS and DMDS can be produced non-biologically at the level currently inferred.
"The inference of these biosignature molecules poses profound questions concerning the processes that might be producing them" said co-author Subhajit Sarkar of Cardiff University.
"Our work is the starting point for all the investigations that are now needed to confirm and understand the implications of these exciting findings," said co-author Savvas Constantinou, also from Cambridge's Institute of Astronomy.
"It's important that we're deeply sceptical of our own results, because it's only by testing and testing again that we will be able to reach the point where we're confident in them," Madhusudhan said. "That's how science has to work."
While he is not yet claiming a definitive discovery, Madhusudhan says that with powerful tools like JWST and future planned telescopes, humanity is taking new steps toward answering that most essential of questions: are we alone?
"Decades from now, we may look back at this point in time and recognise it was when the living universe came within reach," said Madhusudhan. "This could be the tipping point, where suddenly the fundamental question of whether we're alone in the universe is one we're capable of answering."
The James Webb Space Telescope is a collaboration between NASA, ESA and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA). The research is supported by a UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Frontier Research Grant.
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Crystallization stands as a prime example of self-assembly. Elementary building blocks converge, seemingly adhering to an intricate blueprint, orchestrating order from chaos. While classical theories describe crystallization as a monomer-by-monomer addition, non-classical pathways introduce complexity. Using microscopic charged particles as monomers, we uncover the mechanisms governing the formation of ionic colloidal crystals. Our findings reveal a two-step process, wherein metastable amorphous blobs condense from the gas phase, before evolving into small binary crystals. These small crystals then grow into large faceted structures via three simultaneous processes: addition of free monomers from bulk, capture and absorption of surrounding blobs, and oriented attachment of other crystals. These complex crystallization pathways occur both in bulk and on surfaces across a range of particle sizes and interaction strengths, resulting in a diverse array of crystal types and morphologies. Harnessing our ability to tune the interaction potential through small changes in salt concentration, we developed a continuous dialysis approach that allows fine control over the interaction strength in both time and space. This method enables us to discover and characterize various crystal structures in a single experiment, including a previously unreported low-density hollow structure and the heteroepitaxial formation of composite crystal structures.
Charged colloidal particles are well-known model systems for studying self-assembly, as their interactions can be finely tuned through surface charge density and surrounding ionic conditions. When oppositely charged colloidal particles interact, they can form ordered binary structures akin to atomic crystals1,2. While such electrostatically driven assemblies have been extensively investigated in the context of simple crystalline lattices3, the detailed mechanisms governing their nucleation and growth remain largely unexplored. Previous studies on binary colloidal crystals have primarily focused on equilibrium structures and phase behavior, often assuming direct monomer-by-monomer attachment4. However, accumulating evidence suggests that electrostatically driven crystallization follows more complex pathways, involving intermediate amorphous phases, aggregation-driven nucleation, and particle reorganization5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12. Despite theoretical predictions and computational models supporting these non-classical pathways8,13,14,15, direct observation has remained limited, particularly in systems where interaction potentials can be dynamically controlled16,17,18,19,20,21. Here, we investigate the formation of ionic binary colloidal crystals under conditions where electrostatic interactions dictate crystallization pathways.
We use binary mixtures of oppositely-charged colloids coated by a neutral polymer brush as model ions, carefully observing their assembly behavior as they transition from homogeneous suspensions to fully-formed macroscopic crystals. The particles interact via a superposition of a screened Coulomb interaction between their surface charges and the steric repulsion arising from overlap of their associated polymer coatings2. The pair potential for these model ions features an attractive minimum whose depth increases monotonically with decreasing salt concentration in the system. This relationship is key to understanding how variations in salt concentration influence the assembly process from dispersed particles to structured macroscopic crystals, and has been validated through the close correspondence of crystallization behavior observed within simulations accounting for these effects2,3. To initiate crystallization, we first prepare both positively and negatively charged particles in the same, precisely controlled, salt solution. We then mix the two groups of particles in an approximately 1:1 stoichiometric ratio and immediately transfer the resulting mixture into an observation cell. The time-lapse images captured through bright-field microscopy in Fig. 1a clearly show a two-step crystallization pathway. This process, which is believed to play significant roles in a range of systems13,22,23,24,25,26, begins with the rapid formation of particle blobs - a condensed liquid-like phase containing both positive and negative colloidal ions. Crystal nucleation starts within these blobs, and, as shown in Supplementary Movie 1, the crystallization front becomes visibly distinguishable as it progresses through the blob, eventually rendering it fully crystalline. Using 3D confocal microscopy to image refractive index-matched particles3, we thoroughly characterize the distinct phases present in the samples over time, confirming the amorphous nature of the blobs and pinpointing the precise locations of nucleation events within them (Fig. 1b). The transient phases were further validated by imaging quenched samples with SEM (Fig. 1c).
a Optical microscopy images showing a time-lapse of the nucleation of NaCl-like colloidal crystals via a two-step mechanism involving a metastable amorphous phase (Supplementary Movie 1). Crystal (C), liquid- (L), and gas-like (G) phases are labeled. The red dashed area highlights small blobs dissolving through Ostwald ripening. The white arrows indicate the movement of the crystallization boundary, marked by the white dotted line. b Laser-scanning confocal microscopy images showing volumetric scans of a similar two-step nucleation process for CsCl-like colloidal crystals formed from fluorescently-labeled PFPMA colloids3. (left) The 3D scans confirm the amorphous nature of the precursor liquid phase, and reveal their binary composition. (right) Crystalline regions can be seen nucleating and growing within the liquid phase. c SEM image of a quenched sample, capturing the initial transient state during the crystallization process, where both blobs and crystallites are present. All scale bars are 10 μm.
Following nucleation, the newly-formed crystallites transition into the growth phase, where they mature into faceted macroscopic crystals. This growth unfolds through a series of simultaneous mechanisms which are illustrated in detail in Fig. 2.
Sequential time-lapse microscopy images capturing the growth of CsCl-like colloidal crystals. a Well-defined faceted crystals formed via a classical nucleation pathway and growing through direct monomer-by-monomer addition from the gas phase (see also Supplementary Movie 2). b Similar crystals formed via a non-classical crystallization pathway, growing through the attachment and absorption of amorphous blobs (see also Supplementary Movie 3). c–d SEM imaging of fixed samples reveals detailed features during the blob absorption process such as well-developed CsCl crystals with particle blobs in the midst of absorption (c) and crystal facets with distinct step-edges (d), which correspond to the surface waves observed in growing crystals (Supplementary Movie 3). Certain crystals and blobs have been colored yellow and blue, respectively, for enhanced clarity. Similarly, in (d) some of the growing crystal planes have been false-colored, with white arrows indicating their growth direction. e Time-lapse optical microscopy (from Supplementary Movie 4) captures the oriented attachment of two CsCl-like colloidal crystals. The white arrow points to the contact region where the crystals locally melt and recrystallize, resulting in a single, seemingly defect-free crystal. All scale bars are 10 μm.
The most intuitive growth mechanism is monomer-by-monomer addition, where individual particles from the gas phase add to the crystal one-by-one. This is evident in Fig. 2a and Supplementary Movie 2, showing isolated crystals in contact with the gas phase growing at similar rates.
Ostwald ripening serves as a second key mechanism. In this process, the exchange of particles between the blobs and the bulk solution leads to net growth of nearby crystals through monomer addition, without necessitating direct contact between the crystals and the blobs (Fig. 1a).
A third mechanism comes into play when crystals do make physical contact with blobs. Under these conditions, particles from the blob flow directly onto the growing crystal, bypassing evaporation into the gas phase. This process manifests in experiments through the rapid deflation of the connected blob (Fig. 2b) and the emergence of surface waves that propagate from the blob to the crystal (Supplementary Movie 3). These waves are reminiscent of wetted step-edge crystal growth, where particles from a liquid phase deposit onto the edges of crystal steps and then integrate into the lattice27. Bright-field microscopy provides a comprehensive view of the entire process dynamics, while SEM images—captured from quenched samples—provide snapshots at single-particle resolution (Fig. 2c, d).
The fourth mechanism involves instances where small crystals come together and fuse in a specific, orientation-dependent manner to form a larger crystal (Supplementary Movie 4). This process differs from the more common random aggregation leading to polycrystalline structures; here, the particles align according to their crystallographic axes before merging, thereby maintaining a common crystallographic orientation across the newly formed, larger crystal28,29,30. During these oriented attachment events, we frequently observe the melting and subsequent re-crystallization of the contact region between the two crystals. This process, which facilitates the proper alignment of the crystals, results in a flawless area, completely eliminating the seam that initially separated the two structures (Fig. 2e).
While our colloidal model system allows us to observe these processes with high precision, capturing the very earliest steps of crystal formation remains challenging. We therefore employ our previously developed computational model2,3 to confirm that these mechanisms emerge naturally from our proposed interaction potential. We perform Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulations of 210 nm and 170 nm particles interacting via a pair potential that accounts for the combination of surface charge and polymer brush coating on the particles used in the experiment (details in Methods). As described throughout the rest of this article, these simulations recapitulate crystallization via a two-step process and subsequent crystal growth through Ostwald ripening and blob absorption, both on surfaces and in bulk, depending on the particle concentration and solution salt concentration.
A representative example of the formation of CsCl-like crystals can be seen in Supplementary Movie 1. Here, nucleation occurs from within these blobs, often starting from the surface where interfacial fluctuations more easily allow for transient changes in density. For lower interaction strengths, particles can rearrange resulting in blobs that are spherical to minimize surface tension, but for higher interaction strengths we also observe more dendridic gel structures14, which then crystallize through nucleation within the dense phase, followed by propagation as in Fig. 1. Absorption of neighboring blobs is common, especially at higher density where many small blobs nucleate initially. For some of these cases, we tracked the particles in the blob being absorbed and found that the vast majority of those in the final crystal arrived via direct flow rather than through evaporation from the blob then subsequent deposition.
To assess the generality of this two-step crystallization process, we conducted crystallization experiments varying the size ratio (β) between positive and negative particles. As shown in Supplementary Fig. 1a, we observed no substantial differences in the crystallization mechanism, although the resulting crystal structures varied as expected31. Specifically, we examined systems with β = 0.36, 0.43, 0.50, 0.74, and 0.81, leading to the formation of Cs6C60–, NaCl–, K4C60–, Th3P4–, and CsCl–like structures, respectively.
We also investigated if our results were influenced by gravitational settling by conducting crystallization experiments under density-matching conditions. This was achieved by using a H2O/D2O mixture as the solvent, which made the polystyrene particles buoyancy-neutral. As we show in Supplementary Fig. 1b, we again observed no substantial differences in the crystallization behavior compared to the density-mismatched samples, which was predicted based on the observation of non-classical crystallization mechanisms in simulations of bulk assembly.
We hypothesized that the strength and range of particle interactions plays a crucial role in modulating the crystal formation pathways we observed, a phenomenon recognized in a growing number of particle systems11,32,33,34,35,36. To investigate this, we first conducted a series of simulations and experiments in which crystals were allowed to form in sealed capillaries at different fixed values of Debye length (λD). Both approaches revealed similar qualitative trends: at short λD, the samples remained in a gaseous state. As λD increased, we observed a narrow window where classical crystallization occurred, followed by a regime of two-step crystallization, and finally, at even higher λD, random aggregation (Fig. 3)
a Experimental behavior of oppositely charged 210 nm (+) and 190 nm (−) diameter PS particles mixed at various volume fractions (ϕp) and interaction energy minima (Eb). As the salt concentration increases (decreasing Eb), the assembly behavior transitions from forming amorphous aggregates (blue triangles) to polycrystal networks (green squares) and finally to well-separated crystals (green/yellow diamonds) of increasing sizes. Further increasing the salt concentration results in a stable gas phase (red circles). Most samples crystallize via a non-classical pathway (green area), but a small window of Eb and ϕp leads to classical crystallization behavior (yellow area). Simulations performed with settings mirroring experimental conditions show the same qualitative trend as experiment, albeit requiring slightly stronger interactions to observe nucleation within the fixed amount of available simulation time. Experimentally, we observe that with increasing ϕp, the boundaries between the different observed final states and assembly processes shift toward less negative Eb values. b Representative optical microscopy images showing the initial and final state for samples with ϕp=0.5% and Eb = −5.27, −5.56, −5.87,−6.20, −6.56, and −68.52 kBT. The initial states were captured approximately 5 minutes after sample preparation and the final states were captured after 48 hours. Scale bar, 5 μm. c Representative snapshots from simulations of systems with ϕc=1.0% and Eb = −6.00, −6.30, −6.50, −6.70, −7.20, and −68.52 kBT, showing similar trend as in experiments. Scale bar, 5 μm.
Next, we concentrated on designing experiments that allowed us to gradually, and in a controlled fashion, scan different particle interaction strengths over time. Because the interaction strength is highly sensitive to salt concentration, we modified our experimental setup to allow for gradual and continuous variation of the salt concentration. These experiments begin with a high salt concentration (short λD), maintaining the particles in a stable gas-like state. We subsequently reduce the salt concentration by connecting the observation cell to a deionized water reservoir (Fig. 4a). As salt diffuses out of the sample into the reservoir, the Debye length and interaction strength between the particles increase, eventually initiating crystallization (Fig. 5a–c). This design provides spatiotemporal control over the salt concentration because we can predict how the profile of ions should look given the initial inside and outside concentrations and the geometry of the capillary (Fig. 5a, Methods), and allows us to monitor and capture images of the crystallization front (Fig. 5b,c and Supplementary Movie 5). The gradual decrease of salt concentration enables us to pinpoint the relatively small window of interaction strengths where the formation of amorphous blobs is completely suppressed and where instead classical crystallization takes place.
a Schematic of the experimental setup. A 50 mm long capillary, sealed at one end, is immersed in a 100 mm diameter Petri dish filled with deionized water. The Petri dish is mounted on an inverted microscope and monitored with air objectives. b Representative bright field images taken at regular intervals along the capillary at the end of the crystallization experiment, assessing crystal types, sizes, and quality as a function of distance from the open end. The zoomed-in images (bottom) show aggregates and small crystallites near the open end, progressively larger single crystals toward the middle, and a mixed region of different crystal types near the sealed end. Scale bars, 100 μm.
a Overlay of observed crystallization behavior on top of predicted salt concentration within a capillary as a function of time and distance to the open end, as computed using COMSOL51 (see Supplementary Movie 5). The experimental data points represent the positions of the crystallization front over time, determined both macroscopically (black circles) and microscopically (white circles), as well as the end of crystal growth (gray circles). The solid lines represent concentration contours for 3.55 mM (white) and 3.40 mM (gray), corresponding to approximate bond energies of 6.5 and 7.0 kBT, respectively (see “Methods). b, c Macroscopic and microscopic time-lapse images showing the evolution of the crystallization front inside the capillary. d–f Bright-field (left) and SEM (right) images showing regions where one type of crystal dominates. These regions are typically found in the central part of the capillary (indicated by a star symbol). For this sample with a size ratio of 0.81, we observed and characterized CsCl–like (d), Th3P4–like crystals (e), and a third crystal form termed L3S4 (f) which is studied further in Fig. 8. g Representative microscopy image showing small crystallites and disordered aggregates typically found near the open end of the capillary (indicated by the square symbol). h A microscopy image shows various crystal structures coexisting near the closed end of the capillary (indicated by the circle symbol), including CsCl (I), Th3P4 (II), L3S4 (III), as well as two examples of heteroepitaxial crystals (IV, V), with one still unidentified (V) (Supplementary Movie 7). All scale bars in the bright field images are 50 μm, and in the SEM images, they are 10 μm.
Continuous dialysis allows us to create well-defined, spatially and temporally variable interaction potentials between particles, enabling the identification of optimal conditions for crystal growth in a single experiment. By assessing the size and quality of the crystals in various regions of the observation cell at the experiment's conclusion, we can infer the temporal evolution of particle interaction strength that led to the formation of those crystals. For instance, in regions where the interaction strength increases very rapidly—akin to supercooling—crystal formation is interrupted, with crystalline assemblies showing small, defective, and irregular structures, along with visible presence of disordered aggregates. In contrast, in areas of the same sample where the interaction strength increases more gradually, crystals develop with well-defined polyhedral habits (Figs. 5 and 4b).
Figure 5 provides a comprehensive experimental overview, where experimental observations are superimposed onto a simulated spatiotemporal map of interaction energies in the experiments.
Continuous dialysis allows us to discover and spatially resolve crystal structures with similar nucleation energy barriers, which might be overlooked in experiments using static interaction potentials. For example, in sealed capillaries, binary mixtures with β = 0.81 primarily form CsCl–like crystals that take on macroscopic rhombic dodecahedral shapes (Figs. 5d and 6). However, under continuous dialysis, we also observe crystals structurally similar to Thorium Phosphide (Th3P4) exhibiting distinct triakis tetrahedral habits, and this is also observed in simulation for certain values of λD and volume fraction (ϕp) (Figs. 5e and 7).
a Bright-field microscopy image of CsCl–like colloidal crystals, displaying rhombic dodecahedral habits. The crystals were assembled from a 1:1 mixture of 170 nm (+) PS and 210 nm (−) particles. Scale bar, 25 μm. b SEM images and the accompanying schematics (below) display crystals in various orientations, all exhibiting rhombic dodecahedral habits bounded by {110} planes. Scale bar, 10 μm. c SEM image (bottom) and rendering (top) of the crystal surface showing the same motif, with rows of negative particles (yellow lines) converging at the intersection vertices of three equivalent {110} planes (yellow points in b). Scale bar, 1 μm. d Potential energy per particle of the entire system and representative snapshots from MD simulations display classical (purple) and non-classical (green) crystallization of CsCl–like rhombic dodecahedral crystals from bulk under two different conditions. Classical crystallization (ϕp=0.01, λ=5.41 nm, ψ±=+70/−30 mV) exhibits as a sudden decrease in energy as a crystal rapidly grows after initial nucleation, whereas two-step nucleation through a liquid phase (ϕp=0.027, λ=5.15 nm, ψ±=+50/−50 mV) is characterized by a large dwell time in the condensed state before a crystal nucleus forms within the blob. e Distribution of Steinhardt-Dellago order parameter (\(\overline{{q}_{6}}\))52 for CsCl–like crystals (orange), amorphous blobs (blue), and for an intermediate structure (red). \({\overline{q}}_{6}\) in this case can clearly distinguish the state of each particle. f Volumetric confocal scan (left) and corresponding three-dimensional reconstruction (right) of a typical CsCl–like crystal. Scale bar, 2 μm. g Comparison between the theoretical X-ray diffraction pattern of a CsCl crystal and the patterns calculated from the particle coordinates extracted from confocal scans and simulations following Ref. 3.
a SEM images and the accompanying schematics (below) showing the characteristic truncated triakis tetrahedron habit of Th3P4–like crystals. The dotted lines highlight the crystal edges, while the intersections of three adjacent {112} planes with cyclic indices. All faces of the crystals consist of equivalent {112} planes, displaying the same particle arrangement. The crystals were assembled from a 1:1 mixture of 170 nm (+) PS and 210 nm (−) particles. Scale bars, 3 μm. b A zoomed-in SEM image of one crystal face, showing the complex particle motif with yellow lines highlighting the characteristic zig-zag pattern. Scale bar, 1 μm. c Schematics showing the Th3P4 (112) plane with the zig-zag pattern highlighted in yellow, alongside the crystal's unit cell. d Time-lapse of snapshots from MD simulation showing formation of Th3P4–like crystals in bulk via a non-classical crystallization pathway, whereby particles condense into a blob and subsequently the crystal nucleates and grows within the blob. In the main panels, particles are displayed with diameters scaled by 20% to allow the crystalline order to be observable, while insets show the true particle sizes. Particles are colored according to their similarity to a Th3P4 neighborhood as in (f). e Reference distance distribution functions calculated for individual particles within a blob and Th3P4–like crystal formed and empirically identified in MD simulations. f Calculating the Kullback-Leibler divergence (KLD)53 for a particle relative to these two reference distributions allows us to classify and highlight particles as amorphous or Th3P4–like depending on if a particle is more similar (lower KLD) to amorphous or Th3P4. g Diffraction patterns calculated from coordinates of the final structure of in (d) and a natural Th3P4 crystal allow us to confirm the identity of this structure, following Ref. 3.
In addition to the Th3P4 crystals, we have discovered a previously unreported crystal structure that, surprisingly, forms in the same sample from the same building blocks and exhibits a distinctive needle-like morphology (Fig. 5f). As shown in Fig. 8a,b, this crystal features an unusual open structure with empty channels running through its entire length. By analyzing the distribution of distances between particles, we constructed the crystal's unit cell, which has a 3:4 ratio of large to small particles and a remarkably low volume fraction of 56%. Hereafter, we refer to this new crystal as L3S4. Unlike CsCl and Th3P4, L3S4 seems to nucleate only heterogeneously on the charged surface of the crystallization chamber, and simulations show that for sufficiently large surface charge the nucleation of L3S4 can be greatly enhanced relative to CsCl despite it less favorable bulk energy (Figs. 9 and Supplementary Movie 6). So far, we have only observed L3S4 formation under dialysis conditions, whereas simulations reproducibly assembled L3S4 under static conditions, suggesting that its formation might occur only within a very narrow range of λD values.
a (left) Bright-field microscopy image displaying the rod-like habit of the type (III) crystals shown in Fig. 3, formed from a 1:1 mixture of 170 nm (+) and 210 nm (−) PS particles. (right) SEM images showing particle arrangements in two characteristic planes of this crystal. b (top) MD simulations depict similar rod-like crystals nucleating on a negatively charged substrate. Cross-sections along the (100) and (010) planes reveal an unusual open structure with empty channels running through the entire length of the crystal. (bottom) The distribution of pairwise distances from simulations allows us to construct a detailed crystal unit cell with dimensions a = 254 nm, b = 509 nm, c = 923 nm, and a Cmmm (No. 65) space group symmetry with an L3S4 stoichiometry (where L stands for large and S for small particles). The particle coordinates within the unit cell, labeled from 1 to 5, are (0, 0, 0.28), (0, 0.5, 0.22), (0, 0.5, 0.5), (0.5, 0.21, 0.14), and (0.5, 0.29, 0.36), respectively. c Bright-field (left) and SEM (right) images illustrating the heteroepitaxial growth of thin triangular crystals on L3S4 substrates. d Similar heteroepitaxial growth is observed in simulations when the L3S4 crystal shown in (b) is used as a seed and allowed to grow in bulk. In this case, two types of epitaxial crystals are clearly observed: the same thin triangular crystals seen in (c) and a CsCl-type crystal. Analysis of the two epitaxial interfaces (yellow lines) reveals a close similarity between the particle arrangements of the substrate and the epitaxial crystals. Within the L3S4 crystals, negative and positive particles are colored soft pink and lavender, respectively. To enhance visualization, the color scheme shifts to pink and azure for epitaxial crystal A and red and blue for epitaxial crystal B. All scale bars in the bright field images are 50 μm, and in the SEM images, they are 2 μm.
a SEM images and MD simulation snapshot showing the coexistence of L3S4– and CsCl–like crystals nucleated on a negatively charged substrate using particles with size ratio of 0.81. Scale bars, 5 μm. b The potential energy per particle for the entire system, along with key snapshots, shows that high surface potentials (-50 mV) tend to favor the nucleation of L3S4 through a classical-like behavior, while lower surface potentials (−45 mV) promote the nucleation of CsCl-like structures via a two-step process. Key snapshots are highlighted with a bottom view of layers attached to the charged wall. c Final frames for the two simulations in (b) showing the resulting single crystals with L3S4 (top) and CsCl–like (bottom) structures. Highlighted are the particle layers in contact with the charged substrate for the two structures. The surface potentials of -50 mV and -45 mV correspond to attractions between the wall and positive particles of 2.9 and 2.6 kBT, respectively. Both simulations used λD = 5.15 nm and similar ϕp. d The interaction between the first layer of L3S4 and the surface is more attractive than for CsCl–like structure, confirming that a charged substrate is crucial for L3S4 nucleation. This interaction considers the total energy of attraction between the wall and first-layer particles, attraction between the first and second layer particles, and repulsion between like-charged particles in the first layer. The reduction in repulsion is dominant due to the arrangement of positive particles. e L3S4 unit cell highlighting two characteristic distances between the small positive particles: long (red line) and short (yellow line). Also shown is a characteristic angle between three large negative particles (purple line). By examining the (100) plane of a larger crystal, these characteristic distances and angles form easily distinguishable patterns, revealing a ∣ABBA∣ stacking sequence of small positive particles with hollow channels between A − A or B − B layers and a zig-zag pattern of negative particles between A − B layers (purple line).
While in the middle of our dialysis setup we observe regions where each one of these structures seem to be individually dominant (Fig. 5d–f), towards the sealed end of the capillary, we observe coexistance of all three of these structures and several others within a single field of view (Figs. 5h and 4b). Since these structures had the most time available to nucleate at low salt concentration, we infer that the barriers to nucleation for these structures must be similar.
So far, we have described how our dialysis setup allowed us to observe formation of numerous large binary single crystals with an array of forms for a system prepared with a fixed ratio of particle size, surface charge, and number ratio. Within our setup, we are also able to observe more complex hierarchical assemblies, in particular crystals formed through heteroepitaxial growth37 of one structure templated by another (e.g., Fig. 5h structures IV and V, Supplementary Movie 6). Focusing on samples of L3S4, we frequently observe formation of thin flag-like protrusions from the sides of L3S4 rods (Fig. 8c,d). SEM images of these flags show that they have a sharp 80 degree corner, and a surface arrangement of particles that does not belong to the structure we determined for L3S4. To inspect this behavior in more detail, we seeded MD simulations with the large L3S4 crystal from Fig. 8b in bulk, which allowed the crystal to grow in all directions. After several rounds of continued addition of particles, we observed not one but two simultaneous instances of heteroepitaxial growth, one of which produced a structure commensurate with the flags observed in SEM, and one of which we identified as CsCl–like (Supplementary Movie 7). Using our full knowledge of particle positions in the MD simulation, we are able to demonstrate that the nucleation of these secondary crystals occurs due to commensurate arrangements of particles within the two different unit cells. This investigation shows that the (210) face of CsCl and (022) face of L3S4 are able to interlock, and that the flag structure seen in simulation can be formed by extending a rhombic subset of particles from the L3S4 unit cell (Supplementary Fig. 2). The flag formed in MD simulations has a surface structure that closely matches the one observed in experiments. The compatibility of the CsCl unit cell with L3S4 may also explain why they are often observed in contact within the experiments. Another example of hetero-epitaxial growth can be observed in Fig. 5h (structure V) and Supplementary Fig. 3, where anisotropic crystals stem from a central seed, forming a repetitive branched structure. Further work is required to fully characterize these structures, as their extreme thinness and fragility make them prone to damage during the fixing process required for SEM imaging.
We believe this previously unobserved variety of crystal structures, habits, and crystallization behaviors was obscured by our inability to precisely modulate particle interaction potentials in time and space. Our continuous dialysis setup addresses this limitation, unveiling a spectrum of crystallization phenomena not readily apparent under static conditions. These capabilities reveal the underlying mechanisms governing colloidal crystallization pathways and underscore the intricate interplay between particle interactions and crystallization outcomes. This approach lays the groundwork for developing precisely tunable control over colloidal crystallization, enabling the creation of materials with tailored microstructures. A particularly promising outcome of this work is the potential to control the formation of specific structures or polymorphs by creating charged patterns on the substrate.
Low-density (ρ = 1.05g/cm3) polystyrene (PS) and low-refractive-index (n = 1.39) pentafluoropropyl methacrylate (PFPMA) colloids were synthesized via surfactant-free emulsion polymerization for bright-field microscopy and laser scanning confocal microscopy experiments, respectively3,38.
For the synthesis of 200 nm diameter positively charged PS particles, a mixture of 550 mL deionized water and 3 mL styrene monomer (≥99% from MilliporeSigma) was stirred at 330 rpm in a 1 L three-neck round-bottom flask. After purging with nitrogen for 1 hour, 0.5 g of 2,2'-azobis(2-methylpropionamidine) dihydrochloride (AIBA) (97% from MilliporeSigma), dissolved in 10 mL deionized water, was injected into the mixture. The components were then heated to 60 °C and stirred at 330 rpm under nitrogen overnight. The particles were stabilized by adding 5 mL of 5 wt% Pluronic F108 solution and washed via repeated sedimentation and resuspension cycles. Finally, the particle suspensions were dialyzed against deionized water for one week using 50 kD Spectra/Por dialysis tubing, with daily water changes to ensure complete removal of salt. Negatively charged PS particles were synthesized similarly, replacing AIBA with an equivalent weight of potassium persulfate (KPS) (≥99% from MilliporeSigma).
To prepare 375 nm diameter positively charged PFPMA particles, a mixture of 100 mL deionized water, 8 mL 2,2,3,3,3-pentafluoropropyl methacrylate monomer (SynQuest Labs), and 20 μL of (2-(methacryloyloxy)ethyl)trimethylammonium chloride comonomer (75 wt% in H2O from MilliporeSigma) was stirred at 330 rpm in a 250 mL three-neck round-bottom flask. After purging with nitrogen for 1 hour, 0.1 g AIBA, dissolved in 5 mL deionized water, was injected. The mixture was heated to 60 °C and stirred at 330 rpm under nitrogen for 12–16 hours. The particles were filtered (Whatman, pore size 20 μm) to remove aggregates, stabilized by adding 1 mL of 5 wt% Pluronic F108 solution, washed via sedimentation and resuspension, and dialyzed as for the PS particles. Negatively charged PFPMA particles were synthesized using the same procedure, excluding the comonomer and replacing AIBA with an equivalent weight of KPS.
The sizes of PS particles and negatively charged PFPMA particles were controlled by varying the monomer concentration, achieving diameters ranging from 100 nm to 700 nm. For positively charged PFPMA particles, diameters from 150 to 400 nm were obtained by adjusting the comonomer-to-monomer ratio. Larger sizes required repeated seeded growth.
Fluorescent labeling of PFPMA particles was done using the swell-deswell method39. BODIPY FL NHS ester and BODIPY 581/591 NHS ester dyes (ThermoFisher) were used for positively and negatively charged particles, respectively. Typically, 100 μL dye solution (1 mg/mL in toluene) mixed in 9 mL 60 vol% THF was added to 10 mL of particle suspension stabilized with 2.5 wt% Pluronic F108, resulting in a final concentration of 28.5 vol% THF. The mixture was swirled for 15 minutes and then rapidly diluted by a factor of 15. The dyed particles were transferred into deionized water through repeated sedimentation and resuspension cycles.
The surface potential of each particle system was measured using a Malvern Zetasizer Nano ZS with DTS1070 folded capillary cells. Measurements were performed on highly dilute samples equilibrated in 10 mM NaCl. Zeta potentials were calculated using the Smoluchowski approximation (Henry's function f(κa) = 1.5), with refractive indices of 1.39 for PFPMA particles and 1.59 for PS particles.
Oppositely charged PS particles were separately equilibrated with 0.1 wt% Pluronic F108 and 2–5 mM NaCl for 30 minutes. They were then mixed together while vortexing. The resulting mixture was promptly transferred into hydrophobized borosilicate glass capillaries (VitroCom, model 3520), which were then sealed on both ends with wax (Hampton Research) or epoxy resin (Norland 81). Capillaries were pre-cleaned in a Jelight Model 18 ultraviolet ozone (UVO) cleaner for 20 minutes. Subsequently, they were exposed to methyltrichlorosilane (99%, MilliporeSigma) vapor inside a moisture-free sealed chamber for 1 hour to hydrophobize the surface. After this treatment, the capillaries were washed with water and ethanol for three cycles and finally dried in an oven. This hydrophobization pre-treatment facilitates the formation of a polymer brush on the glass surface when in contact with a Pluronic F108 solution.
Density-matched samples were prepared similarly, using 57% deuterium oxide (D2O) instead of pure water. Refractive index-matched samples were prepared using PFPMA particles suspended in 40% DMSO solutions. These samples were allowed to crystallize either in micro-wells (Thomas Scientific) or micro-channels (Ibidi USA).
To determine the optimal crystallization conditions for each particle system, series of samples with varying NaCl concentrations were prepared, typically ranging from 2 to 5 mM in increments of 0.1 mM. The samples were monitored over several days to identify the ideal crystallization conditions.
CsCl–like crystals (space group \(Pm\overline{3}m\), No. 221) were formed using particle size ratios ranging from 0.8 to 1.0 and a number ratio of 1:1. The Wulff shape of these crystals is a rhombic dodecahedron, bound by {110} planes, reflecting their equilibrium shape as determined by surface energy minimization (Fig. 6).
Th3P4–like crystals (space group \(I\overline{4}3d\), No. 220) were formed using 170 nm (+) PS and 210 nm (−) PS particles (β = 0.81), as well as 255 nm (+) PS and 190 nm (−) PS particles (β = 0.74), both at a number ratio of 1:1. The Wulff shape of these crystals is a triakis tetrahedron, bound by {112} planes (Fig. 7).
NaCl–like crystals (space group \(Fm\overline{3}m\), No. 225) were formed using 300 nm (+) PS and 130 nm (−) PS particles (β = 0.43) at a 1:1 number ratio. A precise size ratio of approximately \(\sqrt{2}-1\) is required to form NaCl crystals; otherwise, K4C60 is typically observed. The Wulff shape of these crystals is a cube, bound by {100} planes (Fig. 10e).
a Bright-field microscopy and SEM images of K4C60–like crystals, along with accompanying schematics, display two orientations of rhombic dodecahedral habits. The green dots indicate the intersections of equivalent (110) planes. The scale bar in the bright field image is 100 μm, and in the SEM image it is 5 μm. Zoomed-in SEM images show these two orientations, exhibiting (110) and (101) top surface planes. Scale bar, 0.5 μm. b MD simulation of the same particle system as in (a) at λD = 5.9 nm with a negatively charged substrate and high density (see “Methods”) produces crystals with these two orientations and characteristic top surface planes within the same simulation box. Distance distributions of these two crystals confirm an identical K4C60–like unit cell. c Example MD simulation in bulk yielding a K4C60–like crystal via a two-step crystallization mechanism at low density and λD = 5.3 nm (see “Methods”). d Schematics showing the relationship between the particle arrangements observed on the surface of the crystals in both experiments and simulations, and the K4C60 unit cell. e Bright-field microscopy and SEM images of NaCl–like crystals displaying cubic habits bounded by {100} planes. The scale bar in the bright field image is 100 μm, and in the SEM image it is 10 μm. The zoomed-in inset shows the surface particle arrangement, consistent with the (100) plane of a NaCl-like structure. Scale bar, 1 μm. f Cs6C60–like crystals displaying rhombic dodecahedral habits bounded by {110} planes. The scale bar in the bright field image is 100 μm, and in the SEM image it is 10 μm. The zoomed-in inset shows the surface particle arrangement, consistent with the (110) plane of a Cs6C60–like structure. Scale bar, 1 μm.
K4C60–like crystals (space group I4/mmm, No. 139) were formed using 350 nm (+) PS and 160 nm (−) PS particles (β = 0.46) at a 1:4 number ratio, as well as 200 nm (+) PS and 400 nm (−) PS particles (β = 0.50) at the same number ratio. The larger particles are positioned at the body-centered cubic (bcc) lattice sites. The small particles filled all the tetrahedral interstitial sites of the (001) plane and only half of the (100) and (010) planes. The Wulff shape of these crystals is a rhombic dodecahedron, bound by distinct {110} and {101} planes, resulting in two types of orientations observed (Fig. 10a).
Cs6C60–like crystals (space group \(Im\overline{3}\), No. 204) were formed using 525 nm (+) PS and 190 nm (−) PS particles (β = 0.36) at a 1:6 number ratio. In the unit cell of this cubic lattice, the larger particles are positioned at the body-centered cubic (bcc) lattice sites, specifically at coordinates (0, 0, 0) and (0.5, 0.5, 0.5). The smaller particles occupy all tetrahedral interstitial sites, located on each face, such as in the (001) plane at coordinates (0.5, 0.25, 0), (0.5, 0.75, 0), (0.25, 0.5, 0), and (0.75, 0.5, 0), displaced by ±0.25 along the x and y axes from the face center. The Wulff shape of this crystal is a rhombic dodecahedron, bound by {110} planes (Fig. 10f).
To perform experiments at variable interaction potentials, mixtures of oppositely charged PS particles with 4.5 mM NaCl and 0.1 wt% F108 were introduced into 50-mm-long glass capillaries (inner dimensions: 2.0 mm × 0.2 mm, VitroCom) and sealed at one end. The capillaries were then immersed in 100 mm diameter Petri dishes filled with deionized water (Fig. 4). During crystallization, each capillary was imaged using a Luxonis OAK-D S2 camera, recording a time-lapse with a 10-minute delay between frames (Supplementary Movie 5). The position of the crystallization front was tracked over time using ImageJ, by identifying and tracking the boundary between the opaque area of the capillary (gas phase) and the transparent area (crystalline phase). Simultaneously, we tracked the crystallization front by taking microscopy images at regular intervals using a bright-field microscope equipped with a 10X air objective.
Bright-field images and movies were acquired using a Leica DMI3000 inverted microscope equipped with differential interference contrast optics and high-resolution cameras: a grayscale Jenoptik Gryphax Rigel and a color FLIR Grasshopper3. Crystal nucleation was observed within hours using a 100X oil immersion objective. For continuous imaging of crystal growth over several days, sealed capillary samples were glued to a 100 mm Petri dish (FisherScientific), immersed in water at room temperature, and monitored using a 10X air objective with minimal light intensity to reduce heating.
Time-lapse z-stacks of scanning fluorescent images were acquired using a Leica SP8 confocal microscope equipped with a 100X oil objective, recording the crystallization process of positively charged 375 nm and negatively charged 440 nm PFPMA particles in 40% DMSO at 30-minute intervals. The two BODIPY dyes were excited at 500 nm and 580 nm, with emission signals collected at 510–520 nm and 590–600 nm, respectively. The z-step size was set to 0.07 μm, allowing for 5 scans per particle to achieve precise tracking. To prevent dye bleaching during extended scanning, the lowest possible laser power (typically around 5% of the maximum) was used. The coordinates of oppositely charged particles were estimated from grayscale images of separated channels in the z-stack data using the TrackPy Python package40. These coordinates were imported into Blender, where sizes based on scanning electron microscopy were assigned to recreate the structure in 3D. X-ray diffraction (XRD) patterns shown in Fig. 6 were subsequently generated using Mercury software from the particle coordinates.
Electron Microscopy imaging was performed on fixed samples. Crystals formed in sealed capillaries were fixed by immersing the capillaries in a deionized water bath and carefully removing the sealant (wax or epoxy). The capillaries were then left undisturbed in the deionized water to allow the salt to diffuse into the water bath. After a few days, ion exchange resin (AmberLite MB from MilliporeSigma) was added to the samples to remove all remaining ions from the system. This ion removal process lasted for another 3–4 days, during which the water bath was changed daily. To recover the fixed crystals, the capillaries were scored with a glass cutter and carefully broken underwater. The broken capillaries were taped onto SEM stubs (Ted Pella) using conductive carbon adhesive tabs (Electron Microscopy Science), air-dried, and coated with 3-5 nm of iridium using a Cressington 208HR high-resolution sputter coater. The samples were then imaged using a MERLIN field emission scanning electron microscope (Carl Zeiss).
We estimated the temporal and spatial variations in salt concentration within the capillary using COMSOL Multiphysics. Based on the physical dimensions of the capillaries used in experiments (50 mm × 2 mm × 0.2 mm), we simulated the diffusion of NaCl ions using Fick's law:
where Jj is the flux of salt, D is the diffusion coefficient of salt (1.61 × 10−9m2/s)41, and cj is the concentration of component j. The initial NaCl concentration throughout the capillary was 4.5 mM, with boundary conditions applied such that the interface at one end was fixed at 0 mM, and there was no flux across any other interfaces. The numerical solutions were calculated for 96 hours at 15-minute intervals. Energies in Fig. 5 were computed by converting the salt concentration at a given position and time to a λD in meters using the formula,
where ϵ is the dielectric constant taken to be 80.1, ϵ0 is the vacuum permittivity, R is the ideal gas constant, F is Faraday's constant, T is the temperature and C is the salt concentration in units of mol/L42. The attractive interaction strength is then found by finding the minimum of the attractive potential between negative and positive particles given in the next section.
To model the assembly of charged colloids, we performed Langevin dynamics simulations of binary mixtures of colloidal particles using the HOOMD-Blue software43, as previously implemented2,3 (see Code Availability Statement for run and analysis scripts). A total 6750 number of charged particles were placed in the simulation boxes in a simple cubic arrangement in a 1:1 ratio at varying ϕp. Unless otherwise indicated, the radii of the positive- and negatively charged particles were taken to be 85 nm and 105 nm, respectively. The temperature was maintained by a Langevin thermostat at 1 kBT. The drag coefficient, γ was set to 0.001. The screened Coulombic interaction between two particles is computed by the Derjaguin-Landau-Verwey-Overbeek (DLVO)42 theory, expressed as \({V}_{{{{\rm{E}}}}}({h}_{ij})=2\pi {k}_{{{{\rm{B}}}}}T\epsilon {a}_{ij}{\psi }_{i}{\psi }_{j}\exp (-{h}_{ij}/{\lambda }_{{{{\rm{D}}}}})\). Here, ϵ is the solvent permittivity which was set to 80, ψi and ψj are the surface potentials for the two particles which unless otherwise indicated were set to +50 mV and −50 mV for positive and negative particles, respectively, and λD is the Debye length. hij is the distance between the surfaces of the particles. aij is the ionic radius coming from the Derjaguin approximation42 which is expressed as aij = 2/(1/ri + 1/rj), where ri and rj are the radii of the two particles. The repulsive interactions generated from the polymer brushes between two particles was computed by the Alexander-de Gennes model44,45,46,47 which is given by-
The repulsion radius, \({a}_{ij}^{R}\), present in the pre-factor is given by \({a}_{ij}^{R}=({r}_{i}+{r}_{j})/2\). L, the polymer brush length, is set to 10 nm for all simulations48. σ is the polymer brush density which is equal to 0.09 nm-249. The simulations were performed at six different values of ϕp, and for each, unless otherwise mentioned, λD was varied from 5.1 to 5.3 nm. We performed 6 simulations in each condition. Repulsive walls, which interact with the particles by a shifted Lennard-Jones potential, were used to produce a simulation box, which is convenient for analysis but is not expected to effect results given we are studying assembly from a dilute gas phase. Simulations were carried out for 4 x 109 number of steps using a dimensionless time step of 0.005 unless otherwise specified.
Simulations in Fig. 3 used sizes and charges set to match experiments performed specifically for that figure. A 1:1 mixture of positive and negative particles was placed in a closed cubic box with ϕp=1.0%, and were simulated for 109 steps. The diameters of the positive and negative particles were 210 nm and 190 nm with surface potentials of +44 mV and −54 mV, respectively. λD was chosen to give attractive well depths from −5.6 kBT to −8.77 kBT, as well as −68.5 kBT, corresponding to λD values between 5.0 and 13.8 nm. All other settings were the same as described above.
To study the effect of a charged substrate on the crystallization, we included a negatively charged wall at position \({{{{\rm{Z}}}}}_{\min }\) in the simulation box. The charged wall is formed of a hexagonal arrangement of spherical particles of radius 30 nm. The interaction between the charged wall and a colloid particle was modeled using the same combined DLVO+brush potential as between the two primary species. The surface potential of the wall particles was varied from − 45 mV to −50 mV.
In addition to simulating the size ratio of 0.81, we performed simulations with size ratio of 0.45 (rP = 176.5 nm and rN = 80 nm) and number ratio (positive to negative particles) of 1:2 to produce K4C60 crystals (see Fig. 10). Simulations using experimentally realistic surface potentials of positive and negative particle, +30 mV and −50 mV, formed crystals on a surface with wall particles having a charge of −50 mV. Those shown in Fig. 10b formed with λD=5.9 nm and volume fraction 0.0345. Bulk crystallization in Fig. 10c was observed for λD=5.3 nm with surface charges of +/− 50 mV at volume fraction 0.005. All other parameters were same as described above. Simulation trajectories were visualized using Ovito software50.
Source data are provided with this paper.
Simulations used the publicly available code HOOMD-2.943. All scripts to run and analyze simulations have been deposited in the Zenodo database under acession code https://zenodo.org/records/15225217. All raw simulation data are available from an NYU resource linked to from our project's GitHub https://github.com/hocky-research-group/Zang-NonClassical-2025.
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This research was primarily supported by the US Army Research Office under award number W911NF-21-1-0011 to S.S. and G.M.H., which also supported S.Z., C.W.L., and S.P., M.S.C. was supported as a fellow of the Simons Center for Computational Physical Chemistry at NYU (SCCPC, Simons Foundation Grant No 839534). S.P. and G.M.H. were partially funded by NIH award R35GM138312. Computational work was supported in part through the NYU IT High Performance Computing resources, services, and staff expertize, and simulations were partially executed on resources purchased by the SCCPC. We thank Bart Kahr and Steven van Kesteren for insightful discussions.
Theodore Hueckel
Present address: Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA
These authors contributed equally: Sanjib Paul, Cheuk W. Leung.
Department of Chemistry, New York University, New York, NY, USA
Shihao Zang, Sanjib Paul, Cheuk W. Leung, Michael S. Chen, Theodore Hueckel, Glen M. Hocky & Stefano Sacanna
Simons Center for Computational Physical Chemistry, New York University, New York, NY, USA
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S.S. and G.M.H. supervised and directed research. S.Z. designed and performed experiments with the assistance of C.W.L. S.P. and M.S.C. designed and conducted simulations. T.H. carried out preliminary experiments. S.S., G.M.H., and S.Z. wrote the paper. All authors discussed the results and revised the manuscript.
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Zang, S., Paul, S., Leung, C.W. et al. Direct observation and control of non-classical crystallization pathways in binary colloidal systems.
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Biogenesis of mitoribosomes requires dedicated chaperones, RNA-modifying enzymes, and GTPases, and defects in mitoribosome assembly lead to severe mitochondriopathies in humans. Here, we characterize late-step assembly states of the small mitoribosomal subunit (mtSSU) by combining genetic perturbation and mutagenesis analysis with biochemical and structural approaches. Isolation of native mtSSU biogenesis intermediates via a FLAG-tagged variant of the GTPase MTG3 reveals three distinct assembly states, which show how factors cooperate to mature the 12S rRNA. In addition, we observe four distinct primed initiation mtSSU states with an incompletely matured rRNA, suggesting that biogenesis and translation initiation are not mutually exclusive processes but can occur simultaneously. Together, these results provide insights into mtSSU biogenesis and suggest a functional coupling between ribosome biogenesis and translation initiation in human mitochondria.
Ribosomes are large macromolecular RNA-protein complexes that synthesize proteins in a highly efficient and accurate manner. Human cells contain ribosomes in the cytosol, but also within mitochondria, where they synthesize the essential core subunits of the oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS) system. Defective mitochondrial ribosomes (mitoribosomes) lead to OXPHOS deficiency and thus to a decline in cellular energy production, ultimately leading to severe mitochondrial disorders (mitochondriopathies)1. To form functional ribosomes, the assistance of auxiliary factors is required that mediate RNA processing, modification and folding, recruit and guide ribosomal proteins, and that facilitate molecular switches by releasing other factors. Mitoribosomes and their assembly factors are evolutionarily related to the prokaryotic translation system. However, their structures and assembly pathways differ substantially2,3,4,5. The 55S human mitoribosome has a higher protein and reduced RNA content compared to its bacterial counterpart. It is composed of a 39S large subunit (mtLSU) containing the 16S rRNA, tRNAVal and 52 proteins (MRPs), and a 28S small subunit (mtSSU) comprising the 12S rRNA and 30 MRPs. While all MRPs are encoded in the nucleus, synthesized in the cytosol and imported into mitochondria, the rRNA is encoded by the mitochondrial genome (mtDNA), transcribed as part of a polycistronic transcript and processed by mitochondrial RNase P and Z6,7,8,9. Due to these differences in composition and its dual genetic nature, mitoribosomes follow different biogenesis routes by forming protein-only submodules during early assembly, which are RNA-independent5. Later assembly steps ensure the proper folding of critical regions at the subunit interface, such as the peptidyltransferase center (PTC) and the decoding center (DC). These steps depend on biogenesis factors including RNA modifying enzymes like methyltransferases, helicases, chaperones and a conserved group of GTPases10. In particular, PTC folding depends on MRM2, MTERF4-NSUN4 and the GTPases GTPBP5, −6, −7, and −10, as recently revealed by high-resolution cryo-EM structures11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18. Similarly, mtSSU maturation requires MCAT, mtRBFA, the methyltransferases METTL17, -15 and TFB1M, and the GTPases ERAL1 and MTG319,20.
Loss of MTG3 (also called NOA1 or C4ORF14) causes mitochondrial translation deficiency in different model systems; embryonic lethality in mice and reduced cell viability in isolated MEFs suggest a crucial role of MTG3 in mitoribosome assembly, however the molecular consequences of MTG3 ablation have remained to be addressed21,22. Initial studies have shown that MTG3 interacts specifically with the mtSSU and not with the mtLSU or 55S, indicating a function during mtSSU assembly, similar to its bacterial homolog YqeH10,22. A previous study has shown that multiple mutations within the GTPase domain impair the ability of MTG3 to bind mtSSU particles, thus indicating the requirement of GTP-binding or -hydrolysis for mtSSU biogenesis22. Recent structural data have revealed its binding site at the subunit interface of the maturing mtSSU and suggest that MTG3 is bound very early in the assembly pathway, when the head is still immature20. The release of MTG3 from the mtSSU has been suggested to occur prior to binding of mS38 and mtRBFA20. However, the precise role of MTG3 during mtSSU biogenesis and how its release from the maturing subunit is triggered remain unknown.
Here, we combine genetic perturbation with biochemical and structural analyses to elucidate the role of MTG3 during mtSSU biogenesis. We show that loss of MTG3 leads to a substantial decrease in mitochondrial translation due to a disturbed mtSSU assembly. Surprisingly, immunoprecipitation experiments of MTG3-containing mtSSU complexes reveal the co-isolation of translation initiation factors. Cryo-EM structures of MTG3-bound mtSSU particles show that MTG3 remains bound to late maturing particles and even to initiation complexes via its N-terminal domain (NTD), preventing the docking of an rRNA helix (h44) and therefore subunit joining. Taken together, these data suggest that MTG3 may act as a quality control factor that couples late mtSSU maturation with the formation of primed translation initiation complexes.
To study the role of MTG3 in mitoribosome biogenesis, we generated MTG3 knockout cell lines using CRISPR/Cas9 technology with guide RNAs targeting its first exon. Two knockout clones were isolated for which MTG3 is not detectable via western blotting (Fig. 1a). Genomic DNA sequencing shows that both clones contain premature stop codons, leading to truncated and presumably unstable variants of MTG3 (Fig. 1b, Supplementary Fig. 1a). As both clones show a similar behavior, we proceeded with only one of them for further downstream approaches. The loss of MTG3 significantly affects cell growth and is accompanied by rapid acidification of the media even with high-glucose, indicating a mitochondrial dysfunction (Fig. 1c). Indeed, oxygen consumption rate (OCR) is strongly reduced in Mtg3−/− while extracellular acidification rate (ECAR) is elevated (Supplementary Fig. 1b). In agreement with decreased OXPHOS capacity we observed reduced in gel activity for respiratory chain complexes I and IV (Supplementary Fig. 1c). To understand the reason of the OXPHOS deficiency, we monitored mitochondrial translation by [35S]Methionine incorporation into newly synthesized mtDNA-encoded proteins, which is strongly impaired, but not completely abolished (Fig. 1d). Mitochondrial protein synthesis is restored upon expression of a FLAG-tagged variant of MTG3 in the knockout background, excluding possible off-target effects in the knockout cell line and confirming that tagged MTG3 is physiologically functional (Fig. 1d). To dissect the underlying basis of this translation defect, we analyzed the protein steady state levels of multiple nucleus-encoded components of the mitochondrial gene expression machinery, in particular ribosomal proteins, assembly- and translation factors (Fig. 1e, f). Interestingly, we observe a differential reduction in multiple MRPs of the mtSSU. The mt-rRNA-dependent MRPs uS14m and uS15m and the late binding protein mS37 are drastically decreased to 20–30%, whereas other proteins remain more stable, indicating a role of MTG3 in late maturation steps. In contrast, assembly factors such as the methyltransferases TFB1M and NSUN4 or the GTPase ERAL1 are slightly elevated. A notable exception is mtRBFA, which is slightly reduced. Components of the mtLSU are not affected or slightly increased, consistent with a role of MTG3 in mtSSU- but not mtLSU biogenesis. In agreement with the reduced protein steady state levels of mtSSU MRPs, we observe a significant reduction of 12S mt-rRNA steady state level to 40%, whereas the 16S mt-rRNA remains stable (Fig. 1g, h). The level of mRNA encoding for COX1 (MT-CO1) does not differ, suggesting that the observed defect in mitochondrial translation is not caused by a decrease in mitochondrial transcripts. To investigate the consequences of MTG3 ablation on mtSSU biogenesis in more detail, we separated mitoribosomal complexes from both wildtype and Mtg3−/− cells by sucrose density gradient centrifugation (Fig. 1i). MTG3 is only detectable in less dense (2-5) and in mtSSU-corresponding fractions (6/7) in the wildtype sample, consistent with a role of MTG3 during mtSSU biogenesis as previously suggested22. In agreement with the reduction in de novo mitochondrial translation, we observe a strong decrease in assembled 55S mitoribosomes in fraction 11 when comparing Mtg3−/− to the wildtype sample. The mtSSU in fractions 6/7 is also drastically reduced, as monitored with individual mtSSU components. However, mtSSU proteins such as mS40 or mS27 are unaffected in less dense fractions 2 to 4, indicating that intermediate complexes of the mtSSU can be stably formed independently of MTG3. Interestingly, assembly factors ERAL1 and TFB1M remain detectable or are slightly increased in mtSSU-corresponding fractions 6/7 although the overall level of mtSSU is decreased, indicating a stalling in the mtSSU assembly pathway. In contrast, mtRBFA is significantly decreased in fraction 6/7, suggesting that MTG3 action is required upstream of mtRBFA. Components of the mtLSU accumulate in fractions 8/9, as they cannot proceed to form functional 55S mitoribosomes due to the absence of sufficient matured mtSSU in Mtg3−/−. In conclusion, MTG3 ablation affects mtSSU biogenesis, leading to a reduced pool of translationally active mitoribosomes.
a Confirmation of MTG3 knock out in two cell lines generated using CRISPR/Cas9 technology. Isolated mitochondria (10 µg) from wildtype and Mtg3−/− cell lines (cl.1 and cl.2) were analyzed by western blotting with antibodies as indicated. Similar results were obtained in n ≥ 3 biologically independent experiments. b Schematic representation of the genomic locus of the generated Mtg3−/− cell line (cl.1) in comparison to the wild type sequence. The guide RNA targets exon 1 of the MTG3 gene, which encodes for a 648 aa protein. A two bp deletion and a four bp insertion in the two alleles of the Mtg3−/− cl.1 lead to premature stop codons and truncated proteins (65 aa). c Ablation of MTG3 reduces growth rate. Equal amounts of wild type and Mtg3−/− cells were seeded in three biologically independent experiments on day 0 and counted at the indicated time points (n = 3; mean ± SEM). Significance was calculated by two-sample one-tailed Student's t-test and defined as **p ≤ 0.01. d Translation of mtDNA-encoded proteins is disturbed upon loss of MTG3. Mitochondrial translation in wild type, Mtg3−/− and Mtg3−/− cells inducibly expressing MTG3FLAG was analyzed via [35S]Methionine de novo incorporation and subsequently visualized via autoradiography and with indicated antibodies. The signal in Mtg3−/− using MTG3 antibody represents unspecific binding of the antibody in whole cell lysates as we confirmed several times the loss of MTG3 in isolated mitochondria. Similar results were obtained in n ≥ 3 biologically independent experiments. e, f MTG3 loss leads to reduced mtSSU MRP level. Steady state analysis of MRPs, assembly factors, and translation-related proteins in the Mtg3−/− cells in comparison to wild type cells. Isolated mitochondria were analyzed via western blotting with indicated antibodies (e) and protein levels in Mtg3−/− were quantified relative to wild type control (f). SDHA was used as a loading control. Statistical analysis was performed as two-sample one-tailed Student's t-test with n ≥ 3 biologically independent samples shown as mean ± SEM (individual data points are shown as circles). Significance was defined as *p ≤ 0.05, **p ≤ 0.01, ***p ≤ 0.001. g, h Effect of MTG3 loss on rRNA and mRNA stability. g RNA isolated from Mtg3−/− and wild type cells was subjected to northern blotting using indicated probes (MT-RNR1: 12S rRNA; MT-RNR2: 16S rRNA; MT-CO1: mRNA encoding for COX1). 18S-rRNA was used as loading control. h Quantification of RNA signals in Mtg3−/− from (g) relative to wild type signals. Statistical analysis was performed as two-sample one-tailed Student's t-test with n = 3 biologically independent samples shown as mean ± SEM (individual data points are shown as circles). Significance was defined as ***p ≤ 0.001. i mtSSU and monosome levels are severely reduced in Mtg3−/− cells. Isolated mitoplasts (500 µg) were lysed and subjected to sucrose density gradient centrifugation. Fractions (1-16) were collected and analyzed via western blotting with antibodies against MRPs and assembly factors as indicated. Input = 10% of total. Similar results were obtained in n ≥ 3 biologically independent experiments.
To reveal the precise role of MTG3 during mtSSU biogenesis, we inducibly expressed a FLAG tagged variant of MTG3 in HEK293 cells and purified endogenous MTG3-containing complexes via MTG3FLAG-co-immunoprecipitation (Fig. 2a). Under the chosen conditions, all tested MRPs of the mtSSU co-purified via MTG3 while components of the mtLSU are not detectable, validating the assumption that MTG3 only associates with mtSSU complexes, but not with the mtLSU or the 55S mitoribosome (Fig. 2a). ERAL1 and TFB1M, but not NSUN4 co-purify with MTG3-containing mtSSU particles, suggesting that MTG3 is part of an assembly intermediate with these and other factors, consistent with previous reports20. A reciprocal experiment using ERAL1FLAG in an Eral1−/− background as a bait likewise results in the co-isolation of MTG3 and TFB1M, thus supporting this hypothesis (Supplementary Fig. 1e). In contrast to previous observations, however, MTG3 also associates with factors characteristic of late mtSSU biogenesis steps. For example, mtRBFA, one of the final mtSSU assembly factors19, can be also co-purified with MTG3. Likewise, mS37, which is the last MRP that joins the maturing mtSSU19, is also detectable, although to a slightly lesser extent compared to other mtSSU constituents. This suggests that MTG3 remains bound to very late assembly states of the mtSSU.
a MTG3FLAG co-isolates mtSSU MRPs and several mtSSU assembly factors. FLAG-immunoprecipitation was performed with lysed mitochondria from HEK293 wild type (WT) cells and a stable HEK293 cell line inducibly expressing MTG3FLAG, and subsequently analyzed via western blotting with indicated antibodies (total = 3%, eluate = 100%). Similar results were obtained in n ≥ 3 biologically independent experiments. b Schematic depiction of the mature 12S rRNA secondary structure. Regions are depicted by their level of maturation in each state, with M corresponding to the mature mtSSU (PDB: 3J9M2;). c Cryo-EM structures of the MTG3-TFB1M-mtRBFA(in)-bound small mitoribosomal subunit (mtSSU) intermediate (state A), METTL15-mtRBFA(in)-bound mtSSU (state B), and METTL15-mtRBFA(out)-bound mtSSU (state C). The 12S rRNA (red) and indicated biogenesis factors are shown as cartoon and the remaining mitoribosomal proteins (MRPs) are indicated as white transparent surface. MTG3: light blue, TFB1M: lime green, mtRBFA: indigo, METTL15: turquoise, mS38: beige2. Close-up views of the immature decoding center (d) and of the foot region (e) in state A. Coloring as in (c), with cryo-EM densities (from map A3) of immature rRNA helices shown as red surface. Close-up views of the immature decoding center with cryo-EM densities (from maps B-C3) (f, h) and of the foot region (g, i) in state B and C, respectively. (e, g, i) Close-up views of the foot region in each state, showing the densities for MTG3 (state A, map A3), or MTG3NTD and h44 with altered trajectory (state B-C, 15 Å low-pass filtered maps B1 and C1). Mature h44 is depicted by red dashed lines and would clash with MTG3 and MTG3NTD.
To further investigate the role of MTG3 during late maturation of the mtSSU, we analyzed the endogenous MTG3-containing ribosomal complexes isolated via co-immunoprecipitation with MTG3FLAG as the bait by single-particle cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM). After extensive particle classification, we obtained reconstructions for three distinct mtSSU assembly intermediates with immaturely folded 12S rRNA (States A-C) at overall resolutions ranging from 3.1 to 3.4 Å (Fig. 2b, c Supplementary Figs. 2, 3, Supplementary Table 1).
State A represents the earliest intermediate exhibiting the highest degree of immaturely folded rRNA helices in the 12S rRNA (Fig. 2b, d). Compared to the mature mtSSU2, we observe three additional densities which could be unambiguously assigned as assembly factors MTG3, TFB1M and mtRBFA, together constituting a combination of assembly factors which has not been described to date. Consistent with recently reported structural data20, MTG3 consists of a C-terminal globular GTPase domain, which resides on the face of the 12S rRNA, and a N-terminal domain (NTD), which occupies the binding site of an extended lasso structure in the mature h44 (1501-1549)19,20 (Fig. 2c, e). MTG3 binding to the mtSSU thus prevents folding of h44 into its mature state via its globular domain as well as its NTD (Supplementary Fig. 4a). TFB1M binds next to MTG3 and assists in maturation of the DC by carrying out a di-methylation reaction in h4523. The rRNA adopts a premature conformation in this state, with a completely disordered h44 (1481-1572), partially disordered h45, and a misplaced h24 in the DC due to interactions with TFB1M and mtRBFA (Fig. 2b, d).
State B and C represent later assembly intermediates in which the 12S rRNA is partially matured (Fig. 2f–i). They both do not show densities for the MTG3 globular domain or TFB1M, but contain mtRBFA and an additional density, which corresponds to the methyltransferase METTL15 (Fig. 2c). mtRBFA has previously been shown to adopt two different states on the mtSSU, termed “in” and “out”19. While states A and B contain mtRBFA in the “in” conformation, it adopts the “out” conformation in state C, which has been reported to be a hallmark of very late-stage assembly steps19. METTL15 has been shown to interact with h24 and h44 to methylate residue C1486 in h4424 (Supplementary Fig. 4b). Consistent with this, h24 and the region of h44 containing C1486 are moved towards METTL15 compared to their locations in the mature mtSSU (Fig. 2f, h, Supplementary Fig. 4b). In both state B and C, h18 and h27 adopt a mature conformation and mS38 is present. Although we do not observe density for the MTG3 globular domain in these states, the density is consistent with the NTD of MTG3 remaining associated with the mtSSU in the h44 binding site. Consistent with this, the trajectory of h44 faces away from the foot of the mtSSU and the lasso region (1501-1549) appears absent (Fig. 2c, g, i, Supplementary Fig. 4a). These observations suggest that MTG3 may remain associated to the mtSSU even during late assembly steps via its NTD, thereby preventing docking of h44 and in turn binding of the mtLSU.
A recent study provided structural snapshots of MTG3 bound to the mtSSU together with the assembly factors TFB1M, MCAT, METTL17, and ERAL120 (Fig. 3a, b). While TFB1M and MTG3 facilitate the maturation of h27, h44, and h45 in the body, MCAT and METTL17 are thought to mature the rRNA in the head. ERAL1 is located at the interface between head and body, binding the 3'end of the 12S mt-rRNA and recruiting the bS21m–uS11m–h23 module. Recruitment of mtRBFA and docking of the bS21m-uS11m-h23 module causes platform compaction and was suggested to occur after MTG3 dissociation and subsequent h44 docking. Recruitment of this module further induces di-methylation of two residues in the hairpin loop in h45 (A1583/A1584) by TFB1M.
a Table of six described assembly intermediates each compromising at least one of the assembly factors MTG3, TFB1M, or mtRBFA, as well as the mature mtSSU (PDB: 3J9M2;). Maturation of 12S rRNA modules is shown for each state (matured: “+”, unmatured: “−”). b The previously described assembly state (PDB 8CSP20) (left) as well as state A (this study) (right) are shown side-by-side, with additional modules highlighted (right). The 12S rRNA and indicated biogenesis factors are shown as cartoon and the remaining mitoribosomal proteins (MRPs) are indicated as white transparent surface. Depiction as follows (state A vs PDB 8CSP20): 12S rRNA: red vs peach, MTG3: light blue vs dark blue, TFB1M: lime green vs dark green, mtRBFA: indigo, bS21m, uS21m, uS15m: beige, METTL17: yellow, MCAT: light blue, ERAL1: dark purple. c Zoomed-in view of h18 and TFB1M in state A d Zoomed-in view of MTG3 (light blue) and uS15m (beige) in state A vs additional ordered regions of MTG3 in a previous state (PDB 8CSP20) (c, d) Densities from map A3 (c) and A2 (d) are depicted as transparent surfaces. e Side-by-side view of state B (right) and C (left) with coloring as followed: 12S rRNA: red vs peach, METTL15: dark vs light turquoise, mtRBFA: indigo vs dark violet. f Different routes of the rRNA content in state B vs state C. The model of state C is shown superimposed to the model of state B, with 12S rRNA density from state B (map B3) depicted transparent. g Close-up view of METTL15-mtRBFA(in) interaction in state B superimposed with METTL15 from state C and depicted mito-specific extension from of METTL15. The 12S rRNA and MRPs are indicated as transparent surface.
The three states we observe differ from previously reported states both in their composition and their rRNA maturation states (Fig. 3a). In state A, the head is already fully matured but METTL17 and MCAT are not present (Fig. 3b). In addition, ERAL1 is replaced by mtRBFA(in) and the bS21m–uS11m–h23 module, causing a rotation of the head by 25 Å (Fig. 3b). This also moves the NTD of TFB1M away from the bS21m-uS11m-h23 module to a location that differs from a previously reported late assembly intermediate containing mtRBFA(in) and TFB1M19 (Fig. 3a, Supplementary Fig. 5a). In addition, we observe a density that appears to correspond to a flexible helix at the N-terminus of TFB1M (Fig. 3c). Close to this region, METTL17 was previously observed to form contacts with h44 together with the flexible helix of TFB1M (Supplementary Fig. 5c). In contrast, METTL17 is absent in state A and TFB1M may instead form contacts with the partially disordered h18 (Fig. 3c, Supplementary Fig. 5c). Within the rRNA, h44 is disordered to a larger extent than previously observed and does not form any contacts with TFB1M or h45 (Supplementary Fig. 5b). In addition, h18 in the shoulder region is partially disordered and oriented towards TFB1M19,20 (Fig. 3c, Supplementary Fig. 5c), and h27 is in its mature conformation, although it has been predicted that this would lead to clashes with MTG3 and TFB1M (Supplementary Fig. 5d). This is possible because both assembly factors adopt distinct arrangements in state A compared to previous structures. In the observed conformation, MTG3 would clash with mS38, which locks h27 and h44 in their final conformation in the mature mtSSU, but mS38 is not present in our state A and replaced by interactions between TFB1M, MTG3, and the rRNA helices. Finally, h27 is in its mature conformation in state A (Supplementary Fig. 5d), which is a prerequisite for bS21m-uS11m-h23-module recruitment, platform compaction and TFB1M-NTD re-orientation. This is in contrast to the previous structure of a MTG3- and TFB1M-bound intermediate, in which h27 adopts a more immature conformation (Supplementary Fig. 5d) and which suggested that platform compaction and TFB1M catalytic activity is precluded by MTG3-bound h27 until h44 docking has occurred. Taken together, state A differs substantially from previously reported MTG3-containing mtSSU intermediates as the rRNA fold in the head and platform more closely resembles later stages of mtSSU maturation19, even though h44 docking and h18 maturation has not yet occurred.
We also observed differences in MTG3 compared to previously reported data. The NTD of MTG3 is composed of the mS27-interacting peptide (residues: 69-79) which anchors the NTD to the mitoribosome followed by a long α-helix sitting on the base of the platform (residues: 87-115) (Supplementary Fig. 5e). The NTD is connected via a linker to a helical insertion (residues: 179-195) at the GTPase domain of MTG3. This helical insertion was previously observed to partially occupy the empty GTP-binding site, preventing switch I loop from entering a GTP-binding competent conformation. Based on the bacterial homolog YqeH, it has been suggested that the helical insertion and switch I loop rearrange during the GTPase cycle, which triggers h27 and h44 maturation21,25. In state A, the long α-helix and the helical insertion of MTG3 are disordered and their previously observed position is occupied by uS15m (Fig. 3d, Supplementary Fig. 5e). In contrast to previous MTG3-bound structures, the N-terminal helix of uS15m is ordered and occupies the position of the long α-helix (Fig. 3d). In this conformation of MTG3, the nucleotide-binding site is accessible and the switch I loop may adopt a conformation competent for GTP-binding. In agreement with this, we observe a density in the nucleotide binding pocket which would be consistent with a bound nucleotide (Fig. 3d, Supplementary Fig. 5f)25. However, we refrained from modeling a ligand due to the limited resolution of the map in this region. Taken together, these data indicate that MTG3 can adopt multiple conformations while bound to the mtSSU and that its GTP-bound conformation is compatible with mature folding of h27 and binding of uS15m. This links MTG3 GTPase function to docking of its own NTD into the foot region and re-organization of rRNA content, but also to re-orientation of an MRP.
The structural data also provide insights into the role of METTL15 during mtSSU biogenesis. METTL15 interacts with h44 to methylate m4C1486, but this residue is ~40 Å away from its catalytic center in its mature conformation in state C (Supplementary Fig. 4b), resembling a previously described post-catalytic state19. In contrast, while the overall fold of the rRNA in states B and C resembles previously observed conformations, the segment containing m4C1486 appears less well ordered in state B, suggesting that it may represent an intermediate state previously not observed (Fig. 3e-f, Supplementary Fig. 4b).
Previous studies have suggested that METTL15 plays an important structural role during mtSSU biogenesis in addition to its catalytic activity as a methyltransferase19. Consistent with this previous report, we observe METTL15 together with mtRBFA in its “out” conformation (mtRBFA(out)) in state C (METTL15C). By contrast, state B contains mtRBFA in its “in” conformation together with METTL15B, a combination that has not been previously described (Fig. 3a, e). This is possible because a mitochondria-specific extension of METTL15, which would clash with mtRBFA(in), is disordered in METTL15B (Fig. 3g, Supplementary Fig. 4b). In previous mtRBFA(in) containing structures, its C-terminal extension (mtRBFA-CTE) was observed to be disordered. By contrast, we observe a density at the interface to METTL15B, which is consistent with the presence of the mtRBFA-CTE (Fig. 3g). This suggests that in state B, the mitochondrial specific extension of METTL15 is disordered, but folds upon m4C1486 methylation and maturation of this part of h44 upon transition to state C, thereby inducing a conformational switch of mtRBFA from “in” to “out”. The mtRBFA(in) conformation has been associated with earlier mtSSU intermediates than mtRBFA(out), and the transition from “in” to “out” was suggested to cause the head to rotate closer to its mature position, constituting a checkpoint in the mtSSU assembly pathway19. Our structural data suggest how conformational changes of METTL15 and mtRBFA may be coupled, and thus provide a molecular rationale for this checkpoint.
In all previously reported METTL15 and mtRBFA containing states19,20 the lasso of h44 adopts its mature conformation. It has thus been suggested that these two factors are hallmarks of the final steps of mtSSU maturation, and are released by mS37 as well as the initiation factor mtIF3 during the transition from assembly to initiation19. However, state B and C both contain a disordered h44 lasso, which is not yet docked into the foot region. Instead, its location is occupied by the MTG3NTD (Fig. 2g, i, Supplementary Fig. 4a). This suggests that docking of h44 and MTG3 dissociation is not necessarily required for late stage mtSSU assembly steps, and that initiation complex assembly could potentially commence already prior to completed mtSSU maturation.
Consistent with a potential link between mtSSU assembly and initiation complex formation, we noticed accumulation of mtSSU initiation factors, namely mtIF2 and mtIF3, together with mtSSU proteins during immunoprecipitation via FLAG-tagged MTG3 (Fig. 2a). Reciprocally, using FLAG-tagged mtIF3 to isolate native mtSSU complexes accumulated mtIF2 as well as the assembly factors mtRBFA and MTG3 (Fig. 4a). Thus, our data suggest that IC intermediates co-purify with the assembly factor MTG3 and vice versa. In agreement with this, particle classifications showed that a substantial proportion of mtSSU particles in our cryo-EM dataset indeed had translation initiation factors bound (Supplementary Fig. 2). This enabled us to resolve four distinct (pre-) translation initiation complexes ((P)-IC) (states D-G) at overall resolutions ranging from 3.1 to 3.6 Å (Fig. 4b, Supplementary Figs. 2, 3, Supplementary Table 2).
a Western blot analysis of mitoribosome complexes co-purified via mtIF3FLAG. FLAG-immunoprecipitation was performed with lysed mitochondria from wild type cells and cells inducibly expressing mtIF3FLAG. Samples (total = 3%, eluate = 100%) were subsequently analyzed via western blotting with indicated antibodies. Similar results were obtained in n ≥ 3 biologically independent experiments. b Cryo-EM structures of the mtIF3-bound small mitoribosomal subunit (mtSSU) (state D), mtIF2- and mtIF3-bound mtSSU (state E), mtIF2-bound mtSSU (state F), and mtIF2-, mRNA- and fMet-tRNAMet-bound mtSSU (state G). The 12S rRNA and indicated initiation factors are shown as cartoon and the remaining mitoribosomal proteins (MRPs) are indicated as white transparent surface. 12S rRNA: red, mtIF3: yellow, mtIF2: blue, fMet-tRNAMet: light yellow, mS37: beige. c Zoomed-in view of the codon-anticodon interaction in state G. Coloring as in (b) with mRNA backbone being depicted in purple and nucleotides being highlighted in red (A), blue (U), green (G), and yellow (C). The 12S rRNA and MRPs are indicated as transparent surface. The trajectory of the mRNA is shown by superimposing with a known IC state (7PO219;) and depicted as transparent cartoon. d–g Views of the foot region in each state, showing the densities for MTG3NTD and for h44 from the 15 Å low-pass filtered maps D1-G1. Mature h44 is depicted by red dashed lines and would clash with MTGNTD.
State D resembles a previously described structure of the PIC with mtIF3 bound19. State E additionally contains mtIF2, thus resembling another recently reported PIC26. State F represents a so-far undescribed PIC state that contains only mtIF2. State G contains mtIF2 and fMet-tRNAMet19. In this state, we observe clear density for the codon-anticodon interaction, consistent with a published IC state primed for translation initiation (Fig. 4c)19. In all four (P-)IC states, most of the mt-rRNA is matured and mtRBFA is replaced by mS37, consistent with previous data (Fig. 4b, Supplementary Table 3). However, h44 remains immature in all PICs, similar to the assembly states B and C, with the trajectory of the lasso region protruding from the complex instead of docking into the foot region. In addition, the foot region shows density which is most consistent with the presence of the MTG3NTD (Fig. 4d–g, Supplementary Table 3). This suggests that h44 maturation is not required to start IC formation and that translation initiation factors can be recruited before mtSSU maturation is finalized. However, the association of MTG3 during first steps of IC formation prevents docking of h44 and thus mtLSU recruitment to the mtSSU.
The N-terminal region of MTG3 displaces h44 from its mature conformation and is highly conserved across vertebrates (Supplementary Fig. 6a)20. Our data indicate that it may remain stably bound to the mtSSU, even when mS38 binds and the globular domain of MTG3 is displaced (Fig. 2g, i, Fig. 4d–g, Supplementary Table 3). To further dissect the impact of this domain on MTG3 function, we expressed a FLAG-tagged mutant variant of MTG3 lacking the highly conserved 10 aa (69-83) which interact with mS27 and displace h44 (ΔN-MTG3FLAG) in the Mtg3−/− cell line (Supplementary Fig. 6a). Deletion of these 10 aa does not interfere with the import of ΔN-MTG3 into mitochondria, as the upstream N-terminal pre-sequence remains preserved and ΔN-MTG3FLAG is comparably detectable in isolated mitochondria like the wildtype variant of MTG3FLAG.
To dissect the role of this N-terminal helix, we monitored mitochondrial translation by [35S]Methionine de novo synthesis in Mtg3−/− expressing MTG3FLAG wildtype or ΔN-MTG3FLAG mutant. Although mitochondrial translation seems to be slightly increased upon ΔN-MTG3FLAG expression in comparison to the full knockout, in contrast to full-length MTG3, the ΔN-MTG3FLAG can only partially restore mitochondrial translation (Fig. 5a). Interestingly, we did not observe a uniform restored translation pattern. While translation of e.g., ATP6 and ATP8 seems to be completely rescued in the mutant cell line, the levels of newly synthesized COX1 and corresponding protein steady state are only marginally increased in comparison to the full knockout, but by far not restored as by expressing MTG3FLAG. This indicates that the N-terminal region of MTG3 is essential for its full functionality. This is further supported by the fact that the mutated ΔN-MTG3FLAG cannot co-immunoisolate any mtSSU proteins, assembly factors or translation initiation factors, indicating that the N-terminal region is responsible for stable binding of MTG3 to the mtSSU (Fig. 5b). However, as indicated by the partially restored translation phenotype, translationally active mitoribosomes must be formed in Mtg3−/−+ΔN-MTG3FLAG cells.
a ΔN-MTG3FLAG lacking 10 conserved aa in the N-terminus can only partially restore mitochondrial translation. Translation of mtDNA-encoded proteins in wild type, Mtg3−/− and Mtg3−/− cell lines expressing full length (MTG3FLAG) or mutated MTG3 (ΔN-MTG3FLAG), respectively, were analyzed using [35S]Methionine de novo incorporation and visualized via autoradiography and western blotting. GAPDH was used as a loading control. Similar results were obtained in n ≥ 3 biologically independent experiments. b ΔN-MTG3FLAG does not co-purify any MRPs. FLAG-immunoprecipitation was performed with wild type cells, wild type cells expressing MTG3FLAG and Mtg3−/− cells expressing MTG3FLAG or ΔN-MTG3FLAG, respectively. Samples were analyzed using western blotting and antibodies as indicated (total = 3%, eluate = 100%). Similar results were obtained in n ≥ 3 biologically independent experiments. c, d Monosome level can be restored upon ΔN-MTG3FLAG expression. Mitoplasts (500 µg) were isolated from wild type, Mtg3−/− and Mtg3−/− cell lines expressing full length (MTG3FLAG) or ΔN-MTG3FLAG, respectively. Mitoribosomal complexes were separated via sucrose density gradient centrifugation and collected fractions (1-16) were analyzed via western blotting with indicated antibodies against MRPs and assembly factors (c) or northern blotting with probes against 12S rRNA (MT-RNR1) and 16S rRNA (MT-RNR2) (d). Similar results were obtained in n ≥ 3 biologically independent experiments. e Abundance of mt-mRNAs bound to monosomes is similar in the Mtg3−/− + ΔN-MTG3FLAG cell line in comparison to wild type MTG3FLAG. Fraction 11 from sucrose gradients from (c) were used to isolate RNA and perform NanoString analysis. Level of mt-mRNAs were normalized to 16S-rRNA and RNA abundance bound to monosomes in the Mtg3−/− + ΔN-MTG3FLAG cell line was calculated relative to Mtg3−/− + MTG3FLAG cell line (n = 3 biologically independent samples shown as mean ± SEM; individual data points are shown as circles). Statistical analysis was performed as two-sample one-tailed Student's t-test. Significance was defined as *p ≤ 0.05, **p ≤ 0.01.
Interestingly, sucrose gradient analysis revealed similar levels of 55S mitoribosomes in fraction 11 comparing Mtg3−/−+MTG3FLAG and Mtg3−/−+ΔN-MTG3FLAG, but different levels of assembled mtSSU in fractions 6/7 (Fig. 5c, d). While expressing MTG3FLAG in Mtg3−/− completely rescues the mtSSU assembly defect and leads to comparable levels of assembled mtSSU as the wildtype control, ΔN-MTG3FLAG appears incapable of restoring the pool of assembled mtSSU. In contrast, mtSSU assembly intermediates in the lower dense fractions seem to accumulate in the ΔN-MTG3FLAG-expressing cell line. The relative amount of assembly factors such as ERAL1, TFB1M, and mtRBFA co-migrating with the mtSSU is increased, considering the decreased amount of mtSSUs in fraction 6/7 in the ΔN-MTG3FLAG cell line. This suggests that the majority of mtSSU in ΔN-MTG3FLAG-expressing cells represent immature biogenesis intermediates. Nevertheless, some assembled mtSSUs seem to be able to bind the mtLSU and are thus directly transferred to the monosome pool in fraction 11, but the mitochondrial translation assay indicates that those particles are not as active as when expressing MTG3FLAG wildtype. Thus, the stable binding of MTG3 to the mtSSU during late maturation steps might ensure quality control steps and prevent the association of immature mtSSU to the mtLSU. However, as the mutant variant is not able to stably interact with the mtSSU to prevent subunit joining, some 55S particles might be formed containing defective mtSSU.
To elaborate the nature of these particles further, we asked whether they have mt-mRNA bound and whether MTG3 plays an active role in mt-mRNA loading during translation initiation. Thus, we measured the abundance of mt-mRNAs in fraction 11 relative to the 16S mt-rRNA and did not observe a strong reduction of mitoribosome-associated mt-mRNAs (Fig. 5e, Supplementary Fig. 6b). In fact, some mt-mRNAs, including MTCO1, appear to be elevated in Mtg3−/−+ΔN-MTG3FLAG compared to Mtg3−/−+MTG3FLAG cells, which might indicate a compensatory mechanism to counteract the inefficient translation of COX1. Nevertheless, the overall mt-mRNA loading does not seem to be affected, suggesting that the deletion in the NTD of MTG3 and subsequently the potential loss of bound MTG3 in the late-maturation steps does not affect the mt-mRNA binding to the mtSSU.
In order to study the role of the GTPase domain of MTG3 during mtSSU maturation similar mutational analyses were performed. A mutant variant of MTG3 with a glycine to proline substitution (G499P) in the G3 motif (switch II) was expressed in the Mtg3−/− background (MTG3-G499PFLAG). The G3 motif interacts with the γ-phosphate of a bound GTP and the G499 was shown to be essential for GTP hydrolysis in other GTPases10,27,28. Indeed, the MTG3-G499PFLAG cannot restore mitochondrial translation (Supplementary Fig. 6c), indicating that GTPase activity is abolished and mtSSU biogenesis impaired. As the ΔN-MTG3FLAG mutant was at least partially able to restore translation (Fig. 5a), the GTPase domain seems to be more relevant for the role of MTG3 in maturing the mtSSU than the NTD. To further compare and dissect the roles of these two domains, mitoribosome assembly was investigated by sucrose gradient centrifugation with cell lines expressing the mutated variants of MTG3 in comparison to Mtg3−/− and Mtg3−/−+MTG3FLAG rescue (Supplementary Fig. 6d). The MTG3-G499PFLAG mutant reveals mtSSU levels in fractions 6/7 and monosomes in fraction 11 comparable to those of Mtg3−/−, explaining the inability to restore mitochondrial translation. In contrast to the ΔN-MTG3FLAG mutant, almost no monosomes are formed in MTG3-G499PFLAG mutant. FLAG-immunoprecipitation reveals that the MTG3-G499PFLAG can co-isolate mtSSU particles, however it seems that these only resemble early-stage mtSSU intermediates (Supplementary Fig. 6e). While early-binding proteins such as mS27, uS17m and mS40 as well as early assembly factors ERAL1 and TFB1M can be co-isolated, uS15m and the late-binding MRP mS37 as well as the assembly factor mtRBFA are absent in the elution fraction. This indicates that mtSSU biogenesis gets stalled at an early assembly step when the GTPase hydrolysis function of MTG3 is abolished. Taken together, these data suggest that the GTPase activity of MTG3 is essential for mtSSU assembly.
Our structural and biochemical data suggest that mtSSU assembly and translation initiation are two processes that do not stringently occur sequentially after each other, and allow us to deduce an alternative model of mtSSU biogenesis (Fig. 6). First, the assembly factors TFB1M, MTG3 and mtRBFA(in) associate with the mtSSU to facilitate maturation of h44, h45, h44-h45-linker and parts of h27 (Supplementary Table 3). The globular CTD of MTG3 then dissociates, but MTG3 remains associated with the mtSSU via its N-terminal region thereby preventing h44 maturation. This allows the MRP mS38 to be recruited in the next step. The late-step assembly protein METTL15 is then recruited, and its catalytic activity triggers the maturation of h24 and the h44-h45 linker, thereby inducing a conformational switch of mtRBFA from “in” to “out”. Upon dissociation of METTL15, mtRBFA(out) also dissociates from the mtSSU, which allows mS37 to bind at the same position, locking the head in its final rotation towards the body. Although h44 is still immature and MTG3 remains bound via its NTD, translation initiation factors can be recruited to this mtSSU assembly intermediate. From state F onwards, fMet-tRNAMet and mt-mRNA associate with the mtSSU generating state G, while h44 remains immature. After priming of the IC by codon-anticodon formation, MTG3 must be released to allow docking and maturation of h44 at the foot and subsequent binding of mtLSU. What triggers the dissociation of MTG3 remains to be addressed. Taken together, our data suggest a mitoribosome assembly and translation initiation pathway in which MTG3 is the last factor to be released from the mtSSU before the complete mitoribosome is formed.
Intermediate states of the mtSSU are depicted as surface and factors and rRNA content is colored as in Figs. 2–4. Models for mature mtSSU IC (PDB: 7PO219), mtLSU and mature IC (PDB: 6GAW53) have been reported previously.
Ribosome biogenesis is an energetically expensive process that requires multiple auxiliary factors to mediate rRNA and protein folding and to coordinate the sequential binding of ribosomal proteins. Especially late maturation steps require the assistance of quality control factors which facilitate and monitor the folding of critical regions including the PTC and the DC. Thus, multiple biogenesis factors bind to the intersubunit interface of the mtLSU and mtSSU and thus prevent immature subunit joining. It was assumed for a long time that ribosome biogenesis and translation initiation are separated processes that follow a single stringent route and occur sequentially after each other.
Using a combination of biochemical and structural analysis, we here show that the mtSSU biogenesis factor MTG3 plays a critical role during late-stage maturation of the mtSSU. We describe several previously unobserved mtSSU assembly intermediates, which provide molecular insights into the role of the biogenesis factors MTG3, METTL15, and mtRBFA. Surprisingly, we were not able to resolve an MTG3-bound mtSSU with associated ERAL1. The reason for this could be that such particles represent a minor fraction of the sample or due to flexibility of the GTPase ERAL1. The challenge of solving GTPases co-purified with assembling mitoribosomal subunits is a common phenomenon in the field14. Nevertheless, together with previous data, these structural snapshots enable us to propose a unified model for mtSSU maturation. In addition, we show that MTG3 can remain bound to the mtSSU via its NTD until the final maturation steps and even during initiation complex assembly. Surprisingly, our data suggest that the latter can commence before the rRNA, and in particular h44, is completely matured. This suggests the existence of several mtSSU biogenesis pathways and, for at least one of them, a coupling of mtSSU maturation and translation initiation by the action of MTG3, which may act as a quality control factor.
Our biochemical analysis of cells expressing mutant variants of MTG3 provides insights into the molecular function of this factor. In particular, the differential effects of mutations within the NTD and the GTPase domain suggest a potential dual role of MTG3 during mtSSU assembly and maturation: First, MTG3 is bound to the mtSSU with its N-terminus and the globular GTPase domain. GTP hydrolysis might lead to rearrangements in the mtSSU such as h27 maturation, allowing mS38 to bind and displace the globular domain of MTG3. The GTPase activity of MTG3 seems to be essential for continuing mtSSU maturation, as the MTG3-G499PFLAG is unable to form mature mtSSUs. The N-terminus of MTG3 remains stably bound to the mtSSU during late maturation steps and even during the formation of initiation complexes, potentially acting as a quality control mechanism, preventing docking of h44 and therefore premature mtLSU binding. The N-terminal region is not conserved in yeast or bacterial MTG3 homologs, but is highly conserved in other vertebrates, suggesting its function was newly acquired in the course of evolution. Once the mtSSU is matured and primed for translation initiation, the NTD-MTG3 needs to dissociate so that h44 can mature allowing the formation of intersubunit bridges to the mtLSU. Our data do not give insights into what triggers the dissociation of MTG3, we can only speculate that other, unidentified factors might be involved. In the ΔN-MTG3FLAG cell line, the globular GTPase domain can fulfill its function, so mtSSU maturation can continue and monosomes can be formed. However, without the N-terminus, MTG3 might dissociate after mS38 has displaced the globular domain, and cannot act as a quality control factor. Thus, immature mtSSU particles bypass this critical quality checkpoint leading to premature subunit joining and thus to the formation of translational inactive or less-active mitoribosomes.
The presence of a quality control check point for proper ribosome maturation coupled to translation initiation is reminiscent to the systems described in bacteria, the eukaryotic cytosol, and also in Trypanosoma brucei mitochondria. However, the detailed molecular mechanisms differ. In bacteria, IF2 as a GTPase has been discussed as a ribosome assembly factor acting as a chaperone during cold stress29,30. The initiator tRNA has been ascribed a direct role during late maturation steps by licensing RNases to perform the final processing steps of the bacterial 16S rRNA31. For cytosolic ribosomes, a translation-like cycle has been reported to monitor the integrity and the ability of the 40S SSU to bind translation factors and the 60S LSU forming 80S-like particles32. Final maturation, including the final processing of the rRNA, occurs within these 80S-like complexes. The recruitment of the mature 60S LSU to the immature 40S depends on eIF5B, a translation factor with GTPase activity akin to bacterial IF2. After maturation of the SSU, assembly factors are released and Rli1 dissociates the particles, releasing the mature subunits into the translating pool. These 80S-like ribosomes do not represent translation initiation intermediates as they lack initiator tRNA, mRNA and eIF2. In Trypanosoma brucei mitochondria, mtIF2 acts as a quality control factor monitoring the proper folding of the DC while other late assembly factors remain bound to the mtSSU33. Together with an mtIF3-like factor, mtIF2 interacts with elements of the DC and blocks the mRNA channel preventing mRNA binding and therefore the formation of a canonical initiation complex. In contrast, we report for human mitochondria an mtSSU complex with bound initiator tRNA, mRNA and mtIF2, but with immature h44 due to the association of MTG3NTD. Thus, our data suggest that MTG3 acts as a late quality control factor which remains to be bound until all elements for translation initiation are in place. The release of MTG3 then vacates the binding site of the h44 lasso region and thus licenses the primed initiation complex to enter the translating pool by establishing intersubunit bridges to the mtLSU.
A common principle in all systems seems to be that domains close to the 3' end, such as h44, are the last regions that are matured31,33,34,35. This also includes RNA modifications such as 12S methylation within h44 and h45 catalyzed by METTL15, NSUN4, and TFB1M23,24,36. However, the 12S mt-rRNA requires no further trimming of the 5' or 3' ends after its release from the polycistronic transcript by RNase P and—Z and its assembly with MRPs, which again is distinct from the maturation process described for bacterial and eukaryotic cytosolic SSU. The binding of MTG3 to IC particles might also indicate a function as a splitting factor that dissociates 55S complexes reminiscent to the dual function of GTPBP6, which is required for PTC maturation, but which can also actively dissociate 55S mitoribosomes11,27. However, overexpression of MTG3 has no negative impact on mitochondrial translation, which is in contrast to elevated levels of GTPBP6 and thus argues against a function as a ribosome dissociation factor.
In contrast to a previous report, which suggests the dissociation of MTG3 from the mtSSU prior to binding of mS38 and mtRBFA20, our data indicate that MTG3 remains bound via its NTD to the mtSSU during final maturation steps and even during IC formation. As alternative assembly pathways might occur especially during late assembly steps, these observations are not necessarily in conflict. While it cannot be excluded that ICs with immature rRNA represent an unproductive OFF-pathway, it appears to be a common principle that ribosome maturation is a dynamic process with alternative routes to ensure efficient proper maturation of ribosomes35,37. For bacterial ribosomes, for example, it was shown that assembly blocks can join the assembling 50S LSU in a flexible order37,38. Under optimal conditions, the most effective pathway is preferred. However, the flexibility ensures that ribosome biogenesis can still continue under non-optimal conditions, such as when a ribosomal protein is depleted, through re-routing of the process. Similarly, alternative pathways that do not require MTG3 might also explain the appearance of pre-SSU states during late assembly and translation initiation, but with folded h4419,20 and also explain why translation-competent ribosomes can still be formed in Mtg3−/−, although less efficiently (Fig. 1d). In addition, different isolation strategies may lead to the enrichment of different particle populations. While Harper et al.20 enriched for METTL17-containing complexes via affinity purification of tagged METTL17, and Itoh et al.19 isolated mitoribosome population from cells deficient in TRMT2B (another known assembly factor of mtSSU), our approach followed the immunoisolation of MTG3-containing complexes. Thus, depending on the bait and background, different populations from earlier or later maturation steps will be enriched. Taken together, our data suggest an alternative pathway for mitoribosome biogenesis in which MTG3 can remain bound to the mtSSU during the first steps of translation initiation. Whether and under which conditions this pathway is physiologically relevant remains to be determined.
In summary, our work suggests the presence of an alternative mtSSU maturation pathway, where MTG3 has a quality control function during the final maturation steps of the mtSSU by preventing the docking of h44 during the IC formation primed for translation initiation.
HEK293 cell lines (Human Embryonic Kidney 293-Flp-In T-Rex, Thermo Fisher Scientific; R78007) were cultured in DMEM (Dulbecco's Modified Eagle's Medium) supplemented with 10% FCS (Fetal Calf Serum), 2 mM L-glutamine, 1 mM sodium pyruvate and 50 µg/ml uridine under standard cultivation conditions (37 °C under 5% CO2 humidified atmosphere). Cells were regularly tested to be free of Mycoplasma contaminations by GATC Biotech.
To monitor cell growth 7.5 × 104 cells were seeded into 6-wells plates on day 0 and cell numbers were counted after 1, 2, and 3 days.
HEK293 Mtg3−/− and Eral1−/− cell lines were generated by using the Alt-R CRISPR/Cas9 system (Integrated DNA Technologies) according to the manufacturer's instructions. Briefly, cells were co-transfected with Cas9 enzyme and a crRNA-tracrRNA duplex carrying a fluorescent dye to select successfully transfected cells. The crRNAs were designed to target the first exon of Mtg3 or Eral1, respectively. Knockout clones were first tested via immunoblotting and further confirmed via TOPO sequencing. Sequencing of the Eral1−/− clone revealed premature stop codons in the first exon (Supplementary Fig. 1d), leading to truncated and probably unstable variants of ERAL1.
Stable inducible HEK293 cells lines expressing C-terminal FLAG-tagged MTG3, mutant versions of MTG3 (ΔN-MTG3FLAG lacking aa 69-78 and MTG3-G499PFLAG), mtIF3 or ERAL1 were generated as described previously39,40. Briefly, cells were transfected with pOG44 and pcDNA5/FRT/TO plasmids containing the FLAG construct using Lipofectamine 3000 (Invitrogen) as transfection reagent according to the manufacturer's instructions. Two days after the transfection selection of cells carrying the FLAG construct was started using 100 µg/ml Hygromycin B and 5 µg/ml Blasticidin S.
For measuring oxygen consumption rates (OCR) and extracellular acidification rates (ECAR), a Seahorse XFe96 Extracellular Flux Analyzer (Agilent) was used according to the manufacturer's instructions. Cells (5 × 104 per well) were seeded into a Seahorse XF cell culture plate. For OCR analysis, basal respiration was determined, and subsequently different metabolic conditions were analyzed by adding 3 µM oligomycin, 1.5 µM CCCP, and 0.5 µM antimycin A and rotenone each. For ECAR analysis, acidification of the media was measured under basal conditions and after the addition of 25 mM glucose, 3 µM Oligomycin, and 25 mM 2-deoxy-D-glucose.
For in gel activity measurements of complex I and IV, first a BN-PAGE was conducted. Isolated mitochondria were solubilized (1% digitonin, 20 mM Tris-HCl pH 7.4, 0.1 mM EDTA pH 8.0, 50 mM NaCl, 10% glycerol, 1 mM PMSF) at a concentration of 2 µg/µl for 20 min on ice. After centrifugation (20,000 × g, 10 min, 4 °C), BN loading buffer (100 mM Bis-Tris pH 7, 500 mM amino caproic acid, 5% Serva Blue G250) was added to the samples, which were subsequently loaded onto a 3–10% polyacrylamide gradient gel and run at 4 °C. Gels were incubated in complex I in gel activity solution (2 mM Tris-HCl pH 7.4, 0.1 mg/ml NADH, 2.5 mg/ml nitro tetrazolium blue) or complex IV solution (0.5 mg/ml diaminobenzidine, 20 µg/ml catalase, 1 mg/ml reduced cytochrome c, 75 mg/ml sucrose, 50 mM KPi pH 7.4), respectively.
Cell lysis was performed in nonionic lysis buffer (50 mM Tris-HCl pH 7.4, 130 mM NaCl, 2 mM MgCl2, 1% NP-40, 1 mM PMSF, and 1x Protease Inhibitor Cocktail (PI-Mix, Roche)).
For isolation of mitochondria, cells were harvested and resuspended in trehalose buffer (300 mM trehalose, 10 mM HEPES-KOH pH 7.4, 10 mM KCl, 1 mM PMSF, and 0.2% BSA) and homogenized with a Homogenplus Homogenizer (Schuett-Biotech). After removing cell debris (centrifugation at 400 × g, 10 min), mitochondria were pelleted at 11,000 × g for 10 min.
To generate mitoplasts, isolated mitochondria were incubated in trehalose buffer with 0.1% digitonin for 30 min on ice following Proteinase K treatment (0.5 µg Proteinase K per 100 µg mitochondria) for 15 min and blocking of the reaction with 2 mM PMSF for 10 min.
Lysed mitoplasts (500 µg in 3% sucrose, 20 mM HEPES-KOH pH 7.4, 100 mM KCl, 20 mM MgCl2, 1x PI-Mix, 0.08 U/µl RiboLock RNase inhibitor (Thermo Fisher) and 1% digitonin) were separated by sucrose gradient ultracentrifugation (5–30% sucrose (w/v) in 20 mM HEPES-KOH pH 7.4, 100 mM KCl, 20 mM MgCl2, 1x PI-Mix) at 79,000 × g for 15 h at 4 °C using a SW41Ti rotor (Beckman Coulter). Fractions (1-16) were collected with a BioComp fractionator, precipitated with 2.5 volumes of ethanol and 1/3 volume of 3 M sodium acetate pH 6.5. Samples were subsequently used for western blotting or RNA was isolated for northern blotting or NanoString analysis.
Immunoprecipitation of FLAG-tagged proteins was performed as described previously with some modifications40. Isolated mitochondria or mitoplasts were lysed in buffer containing 20 mM Tris-HCl pH 7.4 or 20 mM HEPES-KOH pH 7.4, 100 mM NH4Cl or 100 mM KCl, 20 mM MgCl2, 10% Glycerol, 1 mM PMSF, 1x PI-Mix, 1% Triton X-100 and in some cases 0.5 mM GppNHp as indicated. After centrifugation at 16,000 × g at 4 °C for 10 min, the lysate was incubated with anti-FLAG M2 Affinity Gel (Sigma) for 1 h. For the elution of co-purified proteins, FLAG peptides were added. Eluate was either analyzed via western blotting, or used for cryo-EM.
[35S]Methionine labeling of newly synthesized mitochondrial proteins was performed as described previously40,41. Cells were incubated in methionine-free media without FCS for 10 min, followed by 10 min incubation in methionine-free media containing 10% FCS and 100 µg/ml emetine to block cytosolic translation. Then 100 µCi/ml [35S]Methionine was added and cells were incubated for 1 h. After harvesting, cells were lysed using nonionic lysis buffer (50 mM Tris-HCl pH 7.4, 130 mM NaCl, 2 mM MgCl2, 1% NP-40, 1 mM PMSF and 1x Protease Inhibitor Cocktail (PI-Mix, Roche)) and centrifuged for 2 min at 600 × g. Supernatants were collected and protein concentration was determined by Bradford. Protein samples (25 µg) were separated by SDS-PAGE followed by western blotting. Radioactive labeled mitochondrial products were visualized with Typhoon imaging system (GE healthcare).
Total RNA or RNA from sucrose gradient fractions was isolated using TRIzol reagent (Life Technologies) or the PureLink RNA Mini Kit (Invitrogen), both according to the manufacturer's instructions. RNA was separated on a denaturing formaldehyde/formamide 1.2% agarose gel and transferred to an Amersham HybondTM-N membrane (GE healthcare) or GeneScreen Plus membrane (PerkinElmer). [32P]-radiolabeled probes targeting mitochondrial RNAs were used for visualization with Typhoon imaging system (GE healthcare) (Supplementary Table 4).
RNA was isolated from sucrose gradient fractions and total mitochondrial lysate using TRIzol reagent (Life Technologies) and RNA Clean and Concentrator kit (Zymo Research). RNA was further processed following the manual (NanoString Technologies). In brief, isolated RNA pools were hybridized with TagSet (nCounter Elements XT Reagents, Nanostring Technologies) and specific probes targeting mitochondrial transcripts (Supplementary Table 4)39,42. Samples were analyzed with an nCounter MAX system (nanoString Technologies) and data were processed with nSolver software. Raw data of mt-mRNAs were normalized to the abundance of 16S rRNA in the respective fractions.
Cell lysates, mitochondria samples, or samples recovered from sucrose gradient fractions were separated on 10–18% Tris-Tricine gels and transferred onto nitrocellulose membranes (Cytiva) via semi-dry western blotting. For detection of specific proteins, primary antibodies were incubated overnight at 4 °C following incubation with secondary antibodies coupled to HRP or with fluorescence labeled antibodies for 1 h at room temperature (Supplementary Table 4). Signals were detected using ECL western blotting solution (ThermoFisher Scientific) or LI-COR Odyssey CLx system, and analyzed using Fiji Image J43.
FLAG-immunoprecipitation was conducted with lysed mitoplasts from a stable HEK293 cell line inducibly expressing MTG3FLAG. The eluate was crosslinked with 0.15% glutaraldehyde for 10 min on ice and the reaction was stopped by adding 50 mM lysine pH 7.5 and 50 mM aspartate pH 7.5. The sample was then desalted using Zeba Spin Desalting columns 7 K MWCO (Thermo Scientific) according to the manufacturer's instructions.
For grid preparation, 4 µl of the sample were applied to freshly glow-discharged R 3.5/1 holey carbon grids (Quantifoil) that were precoated with a 2–3 nm carbon layer using a Leica EM ACE600 coater, at 4 °C and 95% humidity in a Vitrobot (FEI). Grids were blotted for 5 s with a blot force of 0 and 60 s before plunge-freezing in liquid ethane.
Cryo-EM data collection was performed with SerialEM using a Titan Krios transmission electron microscope (Thermo Fisher Scientific) operated at 300 keV44. Images were acquired in EFTEM mode using a GIF quantum energy filter set to a slit width of 20 eV and a K3 direct electron detector (Gatan) at a nominal magnification of 81,000x corresponding to a calibrated pixel size of 1.05 Å/pixel. Exposures were recorded in counting mode for 3 s with a dose rate of 14.82 e−/px/s resulting in a total dose of 40.33 e−/Å2 that was fractionated into 40 movie frames. Images were acquired in 14 by 1 hole per stage movement.
Motion correction, CTF-estimation, particle picking, and extraction were performed using Warp45. Further processing was carried out using Relion 3.1.046 and final non-uniform refinement and local refinement in cryoSPARC47. A representative micrograph and the cryo-EM processing workflow are depicted in Supplementary Fig. 2. For initial processing steps, the dataset was split into four batches containing 1,521,397, 1,592,662, 1,569,593 and 1,046,895 4-times binned particles, respectively. From initial 2D classification in Relion, 2,456,047 particles were selected and joined together. From a second round of 2D classification, 663,593 “SSU candidates” and 811,261 “ambiguous SSU” particles were selected. The ambiguous set was re-classified in 2D revealing 242,768 “rescued SSU (1)” particles. The “SSU candidates” were unbinned to a factor of 2 and used for initial 3D auto-refinement and subsequent local 3D classification sorting them into 544,822 good classes (“SSU candidates (1)”) and 118,771 “ambiguous SSU (2)”. 2D classification of “ambiguous SSU (2)” revealed 53,601 “rescued SSU (2)”. All “rescued SSU” sets were joined and unbinned to a factor of 2 followed by 3D auto-refinement and local 3D classification. 78,528 “SSU candidates (2)” were rescued from those and merged with “SSU candidates (1)” ending in 623,350 good SSU particles (10.9% of initially extracted particles) for further processing.
The particles were unbinned and subjected to 3D auto-refinement with a mask around the entire SSU leading to a consensus refinement of 3.0 Å resolution. Two rounds of Bayesian polishing and CTF refinements particles followed by 3D refinement led to a “shiny” reconstruction at 2.8 Å resolution (Supplementary Fig. 2, “Shiny”). A head-focus map (Supplementary Fig. 2, “Head”) at 2.7 Å resolution was generated by subsequent focused 3D refinement with a mask encompassing the head. Signal subtraction with the same mask followed by 3D refinement with a mask around the SSU body generated a body-focused reconstruction without the SSU head (Supplementary Fig. 2, “body”) at 2.7 Å resolution.
A second round of signal subtraction with a mask around the factor binding site followed by focused 3D classification without image alignment using the same mask revealed subsets containing densities for METTL15, mtRBFA, TFB1M, MTG3, mtIF2, fMet-tRNAMet, or empty classes. Re-classification of METTL15 in combination with either mtRBFA(in) or mtRBFA(out) with a mask around METTL15 was performed to increase the signal for METTL15, which was reduced due to its intrinsic flexibility on top of the SSU. All three empty classes were joined together, and all classes were backprojected using the angles from the shiny refinement followed by filtering by local resolution. The final reconstructions of TFB1M and MTG3 (map A2), METTL15 and mtRBFA(in) (map B2), METTL15 and mtRBFA(out) (map C2), mtIF2 and fMet-tRNAMet (map G2) are summarized in Supplementary Fig. 2. The joined empty classes and mtIF2-only classes were again subjected to double signal subtraction and local refinements to subtract the SSU head and everything outside a mask encompassing the mtIF3 binding site, revealing three additional classes containing only mtIF3 or mtIF2 or both factors together (Supplementary Fig. 2, maps D2, E2, F2). Subsequent non-uniform refinement of these subsets in cryoSPARC47 led to improved maps of the respective regions (Supplementary Fig. 2, maps A-G1). Local refinements using masks encompassing the head, the body, METTL15, mtIF2 (for state F) or mtIF2 and fMet-tRNAMet (for state G) were generated in cryoSPARC (Supplementary Fig. 2, maps A-G4−6). For final model building and refinements, composite maps were generated in ChimeraX48,49 (Supplementary Fig. 2, maps A-G3). For states A-C, composite maps were generated using unsharpened local refinement maps to improve visibility of the factors, while the composite maps of state D to G were generated using sharpened local refinement maps.
In order to generate an initial model of the SSU, we rigid-body fitted all residues belonging to the SSU head into the head-focus map (Supplementary Fig. 3, “Head”) and all residues belonging to body in the global mtSSU reconstruction (Supplementary Fig. 3, “Shiny”) in ChimeraX, using a published structure from19 (PDB: 7PO1) as starting model. For state C, which mainly resembles pre-SSU-3a from19 (PDB: 7PNX), we used this model as a starting point. For state G, which mainly resembles the IC state from19 (PDB: 7PO2), we used this model as a starting point. The models were manually adjusted and rebuilt in Coot50 using both unsharpened and postprocessed maps, and subsequently refined in phenix_real_space_refine (PHENIX)51. The head and body models were then rigid-body fitted into each of the composite maps (Supplementary Fig. 3, maps A-G3) in ChimeraX followed by manual adjustments in Coot.
In all other states, published structures of factors were used as initial models and could be unambiguously fit into our densities. The models for MTG3, TFB1M, and mtRBFA(in), were taken from20 (PDB: 8CSP, 8CSR), while mtRBFA(out), METTL15, and mtIF2, mtIF3, and fMet-tRNAMet were taken from19 (PDBs: 7PNX, 7PO1, 7PO2). All residues within missing or weak density were deleted, and differently folded rRNA content was adjusted to some extent or deleted due to weak densities. Residues in h44 that differ from its mature orientation in states B and C were modeled by rigid-body fit these residues from (PDB: 7PO2) followed by manual adjustments in Coot.
In order to obtain stereochemically sound models, the models for states A-C were interactively re-build and refined using molecular dynamics force fields in ISOLDE52 within ChimeraX followed by real-space refinements against the composite maps (map A-C3) in PHENIX, while the models for states D-G were real-space refined against the composite maps (map D-G3) in PHENIX. This resulted in models with excellent stereochemistry. To obtain B-factors that adequately represent the conformational flexibility of head towards body, as well as weaker signal of the factors at the periphery of the whole mtSSU body (Supplementary Tables 1, 2), the models were refined by a final real-space refinement in Phenix against the local B-factor filtered maps (map A-G2).
Further information on research design is available in the Nature Portfolio Reporting Summary linked to this article.
Material will be available upon request. The electron density reconstructions and structure coordinates were deposited with the Electron Microscopy Database (EMDB), and with the Protein Data Bank (PDB) under accession codes 9G5B and EMD-51083 (State A), 9G5C and EMD-51084 (State B), 9G5D and EMD-51085 (State C), 9HFM and EMD-52117 (State D), 9HFN and EMD-52118 (State E), 9G5E and EMD-51086 (State F), 9HFO and EMD-52119 (State G). The following atomic coordinates were used in this study: 8CSP (human mtSSU assembly intermediate with MCAT, METTL17, TFB1M, MTG3), 8CSR (human mtSSU assembly intermediate with MCAT, METTL17, TFB1M), 7PNX (human mtSSU assembly intermediate with mtRBFA, METTL15), 7PO1 (human mtSSU with mtIF3), 7PO2 (human mtSSU with mtIF2, fMet-tRNAMet, mRNA), 3J9M (human mature mitoribosome), 6GAW (human mitoribosome with mtIF2, fMet-tRNAMet, mRNA), 6RW5 (human mitochondrial 28S ribosome in complex with mitochondrial IF2 and IF3). Source Data are provided as a Source Data file. Source data are provided with this paper.
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We thank Christian Dienemann and Ulrich Steuerwald (MPI-NAT cryo-EM facility) for technical assistance during cryo-EM sample preparation and data collection, and Tanja Gall for technical assistance during Seahorse experiments. R.R.-D., H.S.H. and P.R. were supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) under Germany's Excellence Strategy - EXC 2067/1- 390729940 (to R.R.-D., H.S.H. and P.R.), a DFG Emmy-Noether grant (RI 2715/1-1 to R.R.-D.), FOR2848 (P10 to H.S.H.), SFB1190 (P23 to H.S.H.), SFB1565 (Project number 469281184, P13 to H.S.H., P14 to P.R., P19 to R.R.-D.) and by the European Union (ERC Starting Grant MitoRNA, grant agreement no. 101116869 to H.S.H. and ERC Advanced Grant MiXpress, ERCAdG no. 101095062 to P.R.). Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Council Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them. A.F.F. was supported by a Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds Ph.D. fellowship. Funding for open access charge: SFB1565 (Project number 469281184) and Open Access Publication Funds of the Göttingen University.
Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL.
These authors contributed equally: Marleen Heinrichs, Anna Franziska Finke.
Department of Molecular Biology, University Medical Center Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany
Marleen Heinrichs, Angelique Krempler & Ricarda Richter-Dennerlein
Cluster of Excellence “Multiscale Bioimaging: from Molecular Machines to Networks of Excitable Cells” (MBExC), University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany
Marleen Heinrichs, Peter Rehling, Hauke S. Hillen & Ricarda Richter-Dennerlein
Department of Cellular Biochemistry, University Medical Center Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany
Anna Franziska Finke, Angela Boshnakovska, Peter Rehling & Hauke S. Hillen
Research Group Structure and Function of Molecular Machines, Max Planck Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences, Göttingen, Germany
Anna Franziska Finke & Hauke S. Hillen
Department of Molecular Biology, Max Planck Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences, Göttingen, Germany
Shintaro Aibara
Max Planck Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences, Göttingen, Germany
Peter Rehling
Fraunhofer Institute for Translational Medicine and Pharmacology ITMP, Translational Neuroinflammation and Automated Microscopy, Göttingen, Germany
Peter Rehling
Göttingen Center for Molecular Biosciences, University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany
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Conceptualization, R.R.-D., H.S.H.; Investigation—cell culture, biochemical approaches and sample preparation, M.H., A.K., A.B.; Investigation—cryo-EM sample preparation, data collection, data processing, A.F.F., S.A.; Investigation—building and interpretation structural models, A.F.F., S.A., H.S.H.; Writing—Original Draft, R.R.-D., A.F.F., M.H.; Writing—Review & Editing, R.R.-D., A.F.F., M.H., H.S.H., P.R.; Visualization, A.F.F., M.H.; Supervision, R.R.-D., H.S.H.
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On Wednesday, the Wikimedia Foundation announced it is partnering with Google-owned Kaggle—a popular data science community platform—to release a version of Wikipedia optimized for training AI models. Starting with English and French, the foundation will offer stripped down versions of raw Wikipedia text, excluding any references or markdown code.
Being a non-profit, volunteer-led platform, Wikipedia monetizes largely through donations and does not own the content it hosts, allowing anyone to use and remix content from the platform. It is fine with other organizations using its vast corpus of knowledge for all sorts of cases—Kiwix, for example, is an offline version of Wikipedia that has been used to smuggle information into North Korea.
But a flood of bots constantly trawling its website for AI training needs has led to a surge in non-human traffic to Wikipedia, something it was interested in addressing as the costs soared. Earlier this month, the foundation said bandwidth consumption has increased 50% since January 2024. Offering a standard, JSON-formatted version of Wikipedia articles should dissuade AI developers from bombarding the website.
“As the place the machine learning community comes for tools and tests, Kaggle is extremely excited to be the host for the Wikimedia Foundation's data,” Kaggle partnerships lead Brenda Flynn told The Verge. “Kaggle is excited to play a role in keeping this data accessible, available, and useful.”
It is no secret that tech companies fundamentally do not respect content creators and place little value on any individual's creative work. There is a rising school of thought in the industry that all content should be free and that taking it from anywhere on the web to train an AI model constitutes fair use due to the transformative nature of language models.
But someone has to create the content in the first place, which is not cheap, and AI startups have been all too willing to ignore previously accepted norms around respecting a site's wishes not to be crawled. Language models that produce human-like text outputs need to be trained on vast amounts of material, and training data has become something akin to oil in the AI boom. It is well known that the leading models are trained using copyrighted works, and several AI companies remain in litigation over the issue. The threat to companies from Chegg to Stack Overflow is that AI companies will ingest their content and return to it users without sending traffic to the companies that made the content in the first place.
Some contributors to Wikipedia may dislike their content being made available for AI training, for these reasons and others. All writing on the website is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license, which allows anyone to freely share, adapt, and build upon a work, even commercially, as long as they credit the original creator and license their derivative works under the same terms.
The Wikimedia Foundation told Gizmodo that Kaggle is paying for the data through Wikimedia Enterprise, a premium offering that allows high-volume users to more easily reuse content. It said that reusers of the content, such as AI model companies, are still expected to respect Wikipedia's attribution and licensing terms.
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Instagram on Thursday announced that it's rolling out Blend, a new feature that lets you create a custom, personalized reels feed for you and your friends. Blends are invite-only and can be created with a singular friend or with a group chat. The custom feeds are refreshed with new content each day.
The launch doesn't come as a surprise, as TechCrunch reported in March 2024 that the social network was developing the feature.
Once you join or accept a Blend invite, you will be able to browse through reels picked for each person in the chat. When someone in the group reacts to a reel, Instagram will notify you so you can keep a convo going in the DM (direct messaging) chat.
The idea behind the feature is to explore what sorts of reels your friends are into, while also connecting with them and discovering new content together. Blend aims to introduce a new social element to Instagram, bringing it closer to its roots of sharing moments with friends, something that's been overshadowed in recent years by an influx of influencers and ads.
With the launch of Blend, Instagram is giving users access to a feature that isn't available on TikTok, which is one of Instagram's biggest rivals.
For Instagram, Blend could be a way to boost reels' discovery and watch time on the social network, as it's encouraging users to watch short-form content together.
To create a Blend, you need to open a one-on-one or group DM chat and tap the new Blend icon at the top of the chat. Then, you need to select “Invite” to invite people from your DM chat to join the Blend. The Blend will be created when at least one member of the chat accepts your invite. You can revisit a Blend by going to the DM chat and tapping the Blend icon.
It's worth noting that Blend is somewhat similar to Spotify's functionality of the same name, which allows people to combine their tastes into one shared playlist that refreshes daily.
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Anti-vaccine activists with close ties to US health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are falsely claiming that the measles public health crisis in Texas is caused by a “bioweapon” targeting the Mennonite community. These activists are now trying to sell their followers a range of pseudoscientific cures—some purportedly powered by artificial intelligence—that supposedly prevent customers from contracting measles.
The claims were made in a webinar posted online last week and hosted by Mikki Willis, an infamous conspiracy filmmaker best known for his Plandemic series of pseudo-documentaries. These helped supercharge Covid-19 disinformation online and were, Kennedy has said, funded in part by Children's Health Defense (CHD), an anti-vaccine group Kennedy founded. Willis also created a video for Kennedy marking the announcement of his independent run for the presidency.
“I'm not going to be careful by calling it a virus,” Willis said in the measles webinar. “I'm going to call it what it is, and that is a bioweapon, and my belief after interviewing these families is that this has been manipulated and targeted towards a community that is a threat because of their natural way of living.” (Measles is not a bioweapon. It is a viral infection that can be easily prevented by getting a vaccine.)
The webinar was hosted by Rebel Lion, the supplement company that Willis cofounded. On the website, and prominently featured under the webinar, Willis sells and recommends a “measles treatment and prevention protocol” full of supplements and tools on the site. On the webinar, Willis claimed the protocol will help parents “get prepped for, if God forbid this does get out, and their children get sick.” Together, purchasing the full protocol costs hundreds of dollars.
“This is the standard radical anti-vaccine extremist playbook,” Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, tells WIRED. “You can see RFK Jr. has translated his anti-vaccine lies into political power. You can see others have converted it into economic power. And there's some that just do it because it makes them feel good to be listened to, to be important, to be the center of a community. There's always an ulterior motive.”
The community Willis refers to in the webinar is the Mennonite community in Seminole, a small city in west Texas, which has been the epicenter of the measles outbreak. Over 560 measles cases have been reported in Texas alone. To date, the deaths of two children have been linked to the measles outbreak, and another death is under investigation.
Willis' bogus claim about a bioweapon is part of a larger effort by the anti-vaccine community to undermine the threat posed by the infection. Many, instead, have claimed that the measles deaths were caused by other diseases or, in some cases, the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine itself. These claims are not true and “there have been no deaths shown to be related to the MMR vaccine in healthy people,” according to the Infectious Diseases Society of America.
The claims have been facilitated, in part, by Kennedy, whose response to the outbreak has been widely criticized by public health officials. Kennedy has seemingly attempted a balancing act in his response to this crisis, accurately saying the MMR vaccine is “the most effective way to prevent the spread of measles” before undermining this statement days later by claiming, without evidence, that the effectiveness of the vaccine wanes by 5 percent every year.
Kennedy last month, in an interview on Fox News, also praised doctors who have been using alternative and unproven treatments within the Mennonite community. Among those doctors is Richard Bartlett, who also appeared on Willis' webinar last week and is credited on the Rebel Lion site with sharing the measles “protocol” package for purchase.
“Not only are we going to talk to Dr. Bartlett about what's happening and what he's seen there on the front lines, but he's also going to share what he's been using and the protocols that he's been using to treat his patients,” Willis said in the webinar.
On the webinar, Bartlett pushed unproven measles treatments like the steroid budesonide and the antibiotic clarithromycin. He also urged viewers to buy a range of pseudoscientific treatments. Along with mouthwash, supplemental oxygen, and a few other items, the measles protocol includes Rebel Lion's own Fierce Immunity capsules, which cost $50 for a single bottle and contain a blend of five supplements available off the shelf that the company claims have been formulated with a supposed AI technology known as Swarm Intelligence. Swarm Intelligence was created by Anton Fliri, who says he has worked as a cancer researcher at Pfizer in the past. Fliri told Willis in a webinar last August that unlike regular AI, his technology “is the natural form of intelligence, that's the way our brain works, that's the way our body works and it doesn't hallucinate because everything we are doing is based on reality, based on the real evidence.”
Willis, Bartlett, Rebel Lion, and Fliri, who also appeared on last week's webinar, did not respond to requests for comment.
Willis' attempt to cash in on an ongoing public health crisis is reminiscent of a strategy that has been playing out for decades in the anti-vaccine community and was seen most recently during the Covid-19 pandemic. Anti-vaccine influencers and groups like America's Frontline Doctors pushed the baseless claim that ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine were viable treatments for Covid-19, encouraging followers to spend millions of dollars on these products.
From the very beginning of the measles outbreak in Texas, the anti-vaccine community has sought to undermine the threat posed by the disease, presenting false narratives about what caused the deaths and the dangers of the MMR vaccine.
Central to this push has been Children's Health Defense. Within hours of the first child's death reported in Lubbock, Texas, on February 25, the Defender, CHD's news publication, published an article citing several unsubstantiated text messages from medical professionals suggesting that the child had not died of measles.
CHD has also pushed the debunked claim that vitamin C offers protections against contracting measles. The group's website is currently promoting an ebook titled The Measles Book: Thirty-Five Secrets the Government and the Media Aren't Telling You about Measles and the Measles Vaccine. The foreword of the book is written by Kennedy, who is now the secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS).
CHD, Kennedy, and the HHS did not respond to requests for comment.
On X, anti-vaccine influencers claimed without evidence that hospital employees had mistreated the first patient, leading to their death. One of those pushing this narrative was Syed Haider, a doctor who was part of the notorious Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC), which formed during the pandemic and pushes dubious and ineffective treatments. Haider has almost 170,000 followers. Henry Ealy, a naturopathic doctor based in Oregon with 50,000 X followers, also pushed this claim. Ealy's 2022 report falsely claiming that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had altered records to boost deaths linked to Covid-19 has been cited in the past by CHD.
Marissa Brooke Alesi, an influencer known as Red Pill Patriot, posted a video on TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook claiming the child was hospitalized for pneumonia and RSV. “They then proceeded to give that child the MMR vaccination,” Alesi says, suggesting that the use of the MMR vaccine contributed to the child's death. The video has been viewed over 3 million times on Instagram alone.
Haider, Ealy, and Alesi did not respond to requests for comment.
Pierre Kory, a doctor best known for his role as the founder of FLCC and a central figure promoting ivermectin as a treatment for Covid-19, has also been pushing the narrative that measles was not the cause of the deaths of two children in Texas. In recent weeks, he has claimed without evidence that the measles crisis was, in fact, a targeted attack on the Mennonite community.
In August of last year, the American Board of Internal Medicine revoked Kory's certifications; just a month earlier, Kennedy described Kory as a “brave dissident doctor.”
“Do you want to know the real story on this case?” Kory told a physician and activist last month. “Several of us believe that they weaponized this measles virus—on purpose. She got sicker from this measles probably because they monkeyed with the virus.”
Kory did not respond to a request for comment.
Kory has called Willis a “friend,” and the pair have collaborated multiple times in the past on webinars and podcasts. In 2023, Willis turned Kory's War on Ivermectin book into a documentary.
Willis also claimed in the webinar that he has been given exclusive access to the Mennonite community in Texas after Bartlett convinced community members to speak only to him and people from CHD, and to avoid speaking to members of the mainstream media, who Willis described as “vultures.” Willis said he has interviewed at least 20 people for a short documentary that will be released in the coming days.
“This is a very contemporary example of very old tropes, which is that an extremist who's seeking to radicalize someone else, separates them from people that might persuade them otherwise, whether that's doctors, family, community, journalists who might be asking them questions to expose what's happening,” Ahmed says. “You need to separate them out so you can indoctrinate them without impediment.”
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Malaysia has become a major importer of computing systems and computer parts, such as CPUs and GPUs used for AI, from Taiwan in recent quarters, coinciding with restrictions imposed by the U.S. government on shipments of advanced GPUs for AI and HPC to Chinese entities. The surge in shipments follows increased enforcement of curbs aimed at preventing smuggled AI GPUs from entering China, as evidenced by recent busts of multiple smuggling rings and the country's commitment to further enhance enforcement. The surge is raising questions about whether Malaysia is trying to enter the cloud AI data center market, or if it is serving as a conduit for further smuggling of restricted components to China.
Exports of computer systems from Taiwan to Malaysia totaled $1873.89 billion in March, up 366% year-over-year from $401.92 million last March and up a humongous 55,117% from $3.4 million in March, 2023, according to Taiwan's International Trade Administration, as noticed by Lennart Heim.
The accelerating purchases of AI hardware ahead of the AI Diffusion Rule's coming into effect on May 15 are not entirely unexpected. Big companies from Asia, including those from China, may use Malaysia as a hub to stockpile their restricted hardware.
In fact, exports of computer systems from Taiwan to Malaysia skyrocketed in December 2023, shortly after the U.S. government restricted sales of advanced CPUs and GPUs to China, according to data from Taiwan's ITA.
However, Malaysian companies are not only importing AI servers. They also accelerated purchases of components from Taiwan, which may include AI accelerators, such as Nvidia's H100. In March, exports of computer parts from Taiwan to Malaysia increased to $60.83 million, up from $27.04 million in March 2023 and $15 million in the same month last year.
There are things to note, though. Taiwan's ITA tracks exports based on their HS codes. Computer systems, which span from laptops and tablets all the way to AI, HPC, and storage servers, are classified under the heading 8471 with different suffixes. Taiwan's ITA only allows us to track items under headings and without suffixes, so exports of computer systems from Taiwan include both inexpensive notebooks and ultra-expensive Nvidia DGX and HGX AI servers (which Nvidia classifies as 8471.50). AI accelerators and graphics cards are classified as parts of computer systems under the heading 8473 codes, with Nvidia classifying them as 8473.30.
Taiwan's exports of likely AI chips to Malaysia are surging (h/t @kakashiii111). HS84718 shows patterns consistent with AI chips. With US export controls coming May 15th, this could be a rush before the deadline—or just processing in Malaysia before shipping elsewhere. 1/ pic.twitter.com/fpLRQSOTf7April 15, 2025
Although we cannot distinguish between AI servers and cheap laptops based solely on HS codes, it is evident that exports of computer systems from Taiwan to Malaysia began to accelerate right after the U.S. imposed restrictions on shipments of advanced AI GPUs to China. The U.S. government recently asked the Malaysian government to tighten oversight of the country's high-tech exports to China, which suggests that there are suspicions that Nvidia's high-end GPUs are being funneled to China.
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According to media reports, Chinese clients are the primary customers of Malaysian cloud data centers. Therefore, it is reasonable to expect these companies to ship AI servers from Taiwan to Malaysia, now that they cannot obtain them for China. Therefore, at least some of the high-end machines shipped to Malaysia end up in local data centers.
Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom's Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.
Tom's Hardware is part of Future US Inc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. Visit our corporate site.
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Stargate, a $500 billion project headed up by OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank to build AI data centers and other AI infrastructure in the U.S., is considering investments in the U.K. and elsewhere overseas, according to a Financial Times report.
While Stargate was initially launched as a way to boost U.S. AI infrastructure, the project is allegedly weighing international expansion. In addition to the U.K., Germany and France are on the table, per the Financial Times' reporting.
Stargate remains focused on the U.S. at the moment, to be clear, as originally pitched — and it's still in the process of raising its first $100 billion. SoftBank is expected to put forward tens of billions of dollars as a mixture of debt and equity.
When Stargate was announced in January, President Donald Trump praised the initiative as a “declaration of confidence in America.”
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There's a somewhat concerning new trend going viral: People are using ChatGPT to figure out the location shown in pictures.
This week, OpenAI released its newest AI models, o3 and o4-mini, both of which can uniquely “reason” through uploaded images. In practice, the models can crop, rotate, and zoom in on photos — even blurry and distorted ones — to thoroughly analyze them.
These image-analyzing capabilities, paired with the models' ability to search the web, make for a potent location-finding tool. Users on X quickly discovered that o3, in particular, is quite good at deducing cities, landmarks, and even restaurants and bars from subtle visual clues.
Wow, nailed it and not even a tree in sight. pic.twitter.com/bVcoe1fQ0Z
— swax (@swax) April 17, 2025
In many cases, the models don't appear to be drawing on “memories” of past ChatGPT conversations, or EXIF data, which is the metadata attached to photos that reveal details such as where the photo was taken.
X is filled with examples of users giving ChatGPT restaurant menus, neighborhood snaps, facades, and self-portraits, and instructing o3 to imagine it's playing “GeoGuessr,” an online game that challenges players to guess locations from Google Street View images.
this is a fun ChatGPT o3 feature. geoguessr! pic.twitter.com/HrcMIxS8yD
— Jason Barnes (@vyrotek) April 17, 2025
It's an obvious potential privacy issue. There's nothing preventing a bad actor from screenshotting, say, a person's Instagram Story and using ChatGPT to try to doxx them.
o3 is insaneI asked a friend of mine to give me a random photoThey gave me a random photo they took in a libraryo3 knows it in 20 seconds and it's right pic.twitter.com/0K8dXiFKOY
— Yumi (@izyuuumi) April 17, 2025
Of course, this could be done even before the launch of o3 and o4-mini. TechCrunch ran a number of photos through o3 and an older model without image-reasoning capabilities, GPT-4o, to compare the models' location-guessing skills. Surprisingly, GPT-4o arrived at the same, correct answer as o3 more often than not — and took less time.
There was at least one instance during our brief testing when o3 found a place GPT-4o couldn't. Given a picture of a purple, mounted rhino head in a dimly-lit bar, o3 correctly answered that it was from a Williamsburg speakeasy — not, as GPT-4o guessed, a U.K. pub.
That's not to suggest o3 is flawless in this regard. Several of our tests failed — o3 got stuck in a loop, unable to arrive at an answer it was reasonably confident about, or volunteered a wrong location. Users on X noted, too, that o3 can be pretty far off in its location deductions.
But the trend illustrates some of the emerging risks presented by more capable, so-called reasoning AI models. There appear to be few safeguards in place to prevent this sort of “reverse location lookup” in ChatGPT, and OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, doesn't address the issue in its safety report for o3 and o4-mini.
We've reached out to OpenAI for comment. We'll update our piece if they respond.
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A federal judge has found that Google violated antitrust laws by “willfully acquiring and maintaining monopoly power” in the advertising technology market, rounding out a two-year saga after the U.S. and eight states filed its initial complaints against the Alphabet-owned company.
The court will set a briefing schedule and hearing date to determine appropriate remedies for the antitrust violations, per a Thursday filing.
The remedies could include forcing Google to break up its advertising business, like selling its Google Ad Manager, which includes the AdX ad exchange and DFP (DoubleClick for Publishers), the ad server used for publishers.
Or the courts could force behavioral remedies that would allow Google to keep its business intact, but would impose restrictions to ensure fair competition, like prohibiting Google from prioritizing its own exchange or demand in auctions.
In a separate antitrust case, another federal judge last year found that Google illegally monopolized the general internet search market. The judge has not yet issued remedies on that case, but is expected to do so in mid-2025.
In the adtech case, Judge Leonie M. Brinkema wrote in her memorandum opinion that the plaintiffs failed to prove that the “open-web display advertiser ad networks” are a relevant market where Google has monopoly power. These networks help advertisers buy display ads across the open web, so they're outside of closed ecosystems like Facebook, Instagram, and Google Search.
The judge did agree that Google violated the Sherman Act by monopolizing and unlawfully tying two parts of the adtech stack together, specifically DFP and AdX, and that Google is guilty of abuse of monopoly power in the publisher-side adtech.
“We won half of this case and we will appeal the other half,” Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google's vice president of regulatory affairs, said in an emailed statement. “The Court found that our advertiser tools and our acquisitions, such as DoubleClick, don't harm competition. We disagree with the Court's decision regarding our publisher tools. Publishers have many options and they choose Google because our ad tech tools are simple, affordable and effective.”
The Department of Justice – alongside California, Colorado, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Tennessee, and Virginia – filed suit against Google's alleged use of monopoly power over the digital ad market in January 2023.
The DOJ argued that Google achieved its monopoly through anti-competitive conduct when it purchased DoubleClick in 2008, which then became the backbone of its ad business. Google then bought AdMeld in 2011 to gain more control over the ad market's supply side. The government says this allowed Google to hike up ad prices and harm publishers by taking larger cuts of each sale.
The trial for this case began in September 2024 and lasted for three weeks, with closing arguments presented in late November.
This article has been updated to include more background about the case.
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Discord is facing a new lawsuit from the state of New Jersey, which claims that the chat app is engaged in “deceptive and unconscionable business practices” that put its younger users in danger.
The lawsuit, filed on Thursday, comes after a multiyear investigation by the New Jersey Office of Attorney General. The AG's office claims it has uncovered evidence that, despite Discord's policies to protect children and teens, the popular messaging app is putting youth “at risk.”
“We're the first state in the country to sue Discord,” Attorney General Matthew Platkin tells WIRED.
Platkin says there were two catalysts for the investigation. One is personal: A few years ago, a family friend came to Platkin, astonished that his 10-year-old son was able to sign up for Discord, despite the platform forbidding children under 13 from registering.
The second was the mass-shooting in Buffalo, in neighboring New York. The perpetrator used Discord as his personal diary in the lead-up to the attack and livestreamed the carnage directly to the chat and video app. (The footage was quickly removed.)
“These companies have consistently, knowingly, put profit ahead of the interest and well-being of our children,” Platkin says.
The AG's office claims in the lawsuit that Discord violated the state's Consumer Fraud Act. The allegations, which were filed on Thursday morning, turn on a set of policies adopted by Discord to keep children younger than 13 off the platform and to keep teenagers safe from sexual exploitation and violent content. The lawsuit is just the latest in a growing list of litigation from states against major social media firms—litigation that has, thus far, proven fairly ineffective.
Discord's child and teen safety policies are clear: Children under 13 are forbidden from the messaging app, while it more broadly forbids any sexual interaction with minors, including youth “self-endangerment.” It further has algorithmic filters operating to stop unwanted sexual direct messages. The California-based company's safety policy, published in 2023, states, “We built Discord to be different and work relentlessly to make it a fun and safe space for teens.”
But New Jersey says “Discord's promises fell, and continue to fall, flat.”
The attorney general points out that Discord has three levels of safety to prevent youth from unwanted and exploitative messages from adults: “Keep me safe,” where the platform scans all messages into a user's inbox; “my friends are nice,” where it does not scan messages from friends; and “do not scan,” where it scans no messages.
Even for teenage users, the lawsuit alleges, the platform defaults to “my friends are nice.” The attorney general claims this is an intentional design that represents a threat to younger users. The lawsuit also alleges that Discord is failing by not conducting age verification to prevent children under 13 from signing up for the service.
In 2023, Discord added new filters to detect and block unwanted sexual content, but the AG's office says the company should have enabled the “keep my safe” option by default.
“Consider me unimpressed by their PR campaign,” Platkin says. He contends that the new features are insufficient and easy to get around, and they are less than what the company has made available to users in other countries. “If you put lipstick on a pig,” he says, “it's still a pig.”
WIRED reached out to Discord for comment about its child safety measures but has not heard back.
“Together, these open design features and default settings make it so that anyone can gain direct, private access to a child user with just a few clicks,” the filings allege. Later, the AG goes further, writing that “Discord promised parents safety but made deliberate choices to design its Application and establish default settings that rendered those promises utterly meaningless.”
The lawsuit lists a half-dozen criminal cases where adults allegedly used Discord to lure and exploited children, including the case of 764, a digital far-right pedophile ring.
The lawsuit proposes several different remedies, including a court injunction requiring that Discord improve its safety features and possible financial penalties if it's found to be failing to keep its users safe.
While this appears to be the first state-level lawsuit against Discord, a number of private law firms have taken aim at the company on similar grounds. In 2022, the family of a then-11-year-old girl filed a class action lawsuit against Discord, alleging that the platform failed to implement enough safeguards to prevent her exploitation by other users. A similar case was filed in California earlier this year. Both cases are ongoing.
But these lawsuits are growing more and more common: Meta, in particular, is facing two massive lawsuits, led by dozens of states, claiming it harmed its teenage users. A similar lawsuit was filed by a coalition of school boards in the Canadian province of Ontario. The European Union, meanwhile, has crafted a suite of regulations meant to tackle these externalities—but, thus far, it is having trouble getting the American tech giants to comply.
Platkin has filed a number of other lawsuits—most recently against TikTok—in an attempt to force social media giants to improve their child protection measures.
“They can't knowingly put out a product that's unsafe for kids,” Platkin says. “I don't care if you're a social media company, or an opioid manufacturer or any other company that's telling the public your product is safe when it's not. We're going to hold the company accountable.”
Platkin says he's hopeful that the Trump administration, which has indicated some willingness to go after major social media companies, is interested in keeping children safe — not just targeting supposed conservative censorship. “Hope springs eternal for me,” Platkin says.
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Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 gives the Framework Laptop 13 a performance injection, but battery life suffers.
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In a sea of laptops that make it hard, if not impossible, to upgrade your system post-purchase, Framework has always believed in giving customers more options. That remains the case with the Framework Laptop 13, which is back for 2025 using the AMD Ryzen AI 300 Series platform.
If this latest system looks familiar, it's because it uses the same chassis as the Intel Core Ultra Series 1 system we reviewed in August. However, our review unit came equipped with a Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 processor, 16GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD, and a 2880 x 1920 display. You can buy a preconfigured system complete with an operating system already installed, or you can go crazy with custom configurations tailored to your personal preferences, right down to display bezel and expansion port colors.
Our review unit is a DIY Edition, meaning some partial assembly is required to get the system up and running. However, with a price tag approaching $2,000, potential buyers must weigh the ease of customization and repairs against the highly competitive (and cheaper) competition in the ultraportable space.
The Framework Laptop 13 chassis has remained consistent over the years to facilitate easy upgrades, which remains the case here. Our review unit even uses the same 13-inch 120Hz 2880 x 1920 IPS panel, and two bezel options were included: black and transparent purple. I opted for the purple because I wanted a system with a bit more visual flair. It attaches to the display panel with friction pins and magnets.
The chassis and lid are aluminum, with a shiny black Framework "gear" logo inlaid into the latter. The power button, located in the top right of the keyboard deck, has an LED light that lines its perimeter. The power button also has a fingerprint reader embedded for use with Windows Hello.
However, one of the most interesting parts of the Framework Laptop 13's design remains its modular expansion card bays. The laptop has two bays on either side, accommodating various ports. For example, our review unit came with USB-C, USB-A, and microSD reader expansion cards. Each card locks into place once you slide it into a free bay. A button on the bottom of the chassis for each pair of bays releases the expansion cards.
I opted to configure the review unit with two USB-C ports (at least one USB-C port is required to charge the laptop), one USB-A port, and the microSD reader. However, you can easily tailor the port allotment to suit your needs. Framework offers HDMI, DisplayPort, Ethernet, and SD reader options. If that wasn't enough, you can add storage to the system via 250GB and 1TB expansion cards. These cards are available in the standard aluminum finish or from several color options.
Pricing for the expansion cards ranges from $15 for USB-C to $125 for 1TB of storage.
Two of my gripes about our last review unit still haven't been addressed. The expansion cards are still difficult to remove from their respective bays. And the laptop's aluminum chassis doesn't match the aluminum used on the expansion cards. That makes for an unsightly color mismatch, which is unfortunately in such an expensive device.
The Ryzen AI 9 HX 370-powered Laptop 13 measures 11.68 x 9.01 x 0.62 inches and weighs 2.87 pounds, which is identical to the previous model we reviewed with a Core Ultra processor. We also brought along the Dell XPS 13 (9350), measuring 11.62 x 7.84 x 0.58 inches with a weight of 2.7 pounds, and the 2.78-pound Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i at 12.32 x 8.01 x 0.57 inches for comparison.
CPU
AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370
Graphics
AMD Radeon 890M Graphics
Memory
16GB Crucial DDR5-5600 (2 x 8GB)
Storage
1TB WD_Black SN770
Display
13.5-inch, 3:2, 2880 x 1920
Networking
AMD RZ717 Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4
Ports
3.5 mm headphone jack, four expansion slots of your choosing
Camera
1080p with privacy switch
Battery
61 WHr
Power Adapter
60W GaN charger
Operating System
Windows 11 Home
Dimensions (WxDxH)
11.68 x 9.01 x 0.62 inches
Weight
2.87 pounds
Price (as configured)
$1,986 as tested
The claim to fame for Framework's lineup has always been modularity. The company makes it incredibly easy for the layperson to swap out external ports and most internal components (ranging from the SSD to memory to the battery, to speakers, to the entire motherboard). Even if you get stumped regarding the procedure for upgrading a particular piece of hardware, you can scan the QR code on or beside that component to watch a video guide.
Since we received the DIY Edition of the Laptop 13, I had to assemble numerous components before turning on the device. The laptop ships without the keyboard deck installed, so I first inserted the two 8GB DDR5-5600 SO-DIMMs, and then installed the 1TB SSD. Next, I inserted the ribbon cable from the keyboard deck to the motherboard, and the whole thing magnetically attached to the lower chassis. I next flipped the laptop over and tightened five captive Torx screws.
The next step was to attach the translucent purple bezel to the display and install four expansion ports (two USB-C, one microSD reader, and one USB-A).
If you need to upgrade other components, like the touchpad, motherboard, or display, you can visit the Framework Marketplace to purchase whatever you need. The options are seemingly limitless.
Our review unit has a Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 processor, 16GB of Crucial DDR5-5600 memory, and a 1TB WD_Black SN770 SSD. Since this was the DIY Edition, we had to install Windows 11 onto the test machine.
Beginning with the Geekbench 6 synthetic CPU benchmark, the Laptop 13 with its Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 bested the competition in the single-core (2,894) and multi-core (12,924) tests, including its Intel Core Ultra-powered predecessor, which came in second. The third-place finisher was the Yoga Slim 9i, which managed 2,733 in the single-core benchmark and 11,038 with the multi-core benchmark.
The tables turned, however, when moving to the file transfer test, which involves copying 25GB of mixed media files. The newest Laptop 13 hit 1,546.23 Mbps compared to 1,893.79 Mbps for last year's model. The Yoga Slim 9i was the laggard in this test, delivering just 1,032.87 Mbps.
Moving on to the Handbrake benchmark, during which we transcode a 4K video file to 1080p resolution, the Laptop 13 with Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 finished the task in 4 minutes and 18 seconds – identical to the XPS 13 (9350). The previous Laptop 13 completed the task in 5 minutes and 48 seconds, while the Yoga Slim 9i took just over 6 minutes.
For stress testing, look to Cinebench 2024, where we perform 10 consecutive runs. The first run had the lowest score, coming in at 814.84. However, additional runs saw the numbers climb and stabilize in the 857 to 865 range.
Framework outfitted our test system with its premium 13.5-inch 2880 x 1920 IPS display, which refreshes at 120 Hz. This is the same panel included with the Core Ultra system that we tested last year, and there are some slight variances in the numbers we recorded.
In our color gamut tests, the Laptop 13 performed similarly to last year's model, covering 83.6 percent of DCI-P3 and 118.1 percent of sRGB (compared to 82.7 percent and 117 percent, respectively). The most significant difference came in brightness, where the new Laptop 13 hit 482.6 nits brightness compared to 451 nits for the previous model.
The Yoga Slim 9i with its OLED panel won the numbers game with 146.5 percent coverage of DCI-P3 and 206.9 percent of sRGB. However, those higher figures tend to make for an overly saturated display, which isn't always preferable, depending on your needs.
I had no real complaints with the display as I watched the Tron: Ares trailer. The extensive use of red in the trailer provided a nice contrast to the trailer's overall dark, nighttime themes. The blacks and darkened areas in the trailer didn't look as inky black as you'd get with an OLED panel, but the Laptop 13's IPS panel performed well here.
For better or worse, the keyboard deck on the Laptop 13 is identical to the one on the Core Ultra version. That means that while it has a similar look, feel, and key travel that I have previously likened positively to Apple's MacBook products, the half-height up and down arrow keys remain. While I understand that going with undersized keys saves some space, I would prefer if they were the same size as the left and right arrow keys.
Given my familiarity with the keyboard, my typing tests at keyhero.com were nearly identical to my previous go with this keyboard, as I averaged around 90 words per minute with 97 percent accuracy.
I'm not a fan of the top-hinged touchpad, which does a better job of registering clicks within the bottom half of the mousing surface than the top half. A nice haptic touchpad would be a nice addition to a laptop with a nearly $2,000 MSRP.
The 2025 edition of the Laptop 13 continues to use a pair of 2-watt speakers, mounted towards the front of the chassis. The speakers are average at best, but are perfectly suitable for run-of-the-mill productivity tasks that such a laptop will endure daily.
I primarily used the speakers to listen to music via YouTube Premium, ranging from bass and drum-heavy tracks from Kanye West's Late Registration album to an assortment of woodwinds, brass, and strings in the great Gustav Holst's The Planets. While the dynamic range and bass output weren't awe-inspiring, it was perfectly in line with other ultraportables I've tested, given the space constraints.
Framework outfits the Laptop 13 with a 1080p webcam using the same 9.2MP image sensor and 5-element lens as last year's model. Output from the camera is still a bit of a mixed bag, with an aggressive sharpening algorithm that tends to make facial details overly smooth and unnatural.
The camera is serviceable for videoconferencing duty, but if you need higher-quality hardware for your specific needs, you should consider adding one of the best webcams.
Battery life was a sore point with last year's version of the Laptop 13, and things haven't improved with this year's model. In fact, things have gotten worse. Our laptop endurance test involves browsing the web, streaming videos, and running OpenGL tests with the brightness set to 150 nits.
The Laptop 13 lasted just 9 hours and 11 minutes, less than even the 9 hours and 59 minutes we achieved when equipped with an Intel Core Ultra processor. For comparison, the Yoga Slim 9i went on for 11 hours and 3 minutes, while the XPS 13 (9350) was far and away the endurance champion with a runtime of 17 hours and 29 minutes.
The Laptop 13 has a single cooling fan that works overtime to keep the device cool under load. We performed skin temperature tests on the laptop while running the Cinebench 2024 stress test.
We measured 88.5 degrees Fahrenheit on the touchpad, while the measurement between the G and H keys came in at 115 degrees F. The hottest touch point was the underside of the chassis near the rear-central screw, which was a toasty 133 degrees F.
This section will be short. The Laptop 13 DIY Edition doesn't have an operating system installed, but Framework provided us with a product key for Windows 11 Home, which we installed for testing. Once installed, there's only one item that Framework adds to the Start Menu: the Framework Marketplace (which is nothing more than a web link to purchase accessories/components).
Everything else is just the standard installed apps/shortcuts you get with a default Windows 11 install. As for Linux operating systems on the Ryzen AI 300 Series systems, Framework says that Fedora 41, Bazzite, and Project Bluefin are supported out of the box. You can also install Arch Linux, but a few workarounds are needed to get up and running.
The Framework Laptop 13 comes with a one-year warranty.
The Laptop 13 DIY Edition is priced from $899 with a Ryzen AI 5 340 processor and a 13.5-inch 2256 x 1504 60 Hz display without RAM or an SSD. Stepping up to the Ryzen AI 7 350 brings the total to $1,029, while the Ryzen AI 9 350 increases your initial outlay to $1,659. The 2.8K display is a separate $130 upgrade.
As configured with a Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 processor, 2.8K display, 16GB RAM, a 1TB SSD, and four expansion cards (2x USB-C, USB-A, and microSD), our review sample is priced at $1,986.
If you go the prebuilt route, the Performance (Ryzen AI 7 350, 2.2K display, 16GB RAM, 512GB RAM, Windows 11 Home. 1-year warranty) costs $1,529, the Extended Productivity (Ryzen AI 5 340, 2.2K display, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD, Windows 11 Pro, 3-year warranty) costs $1,329, and the Extended Performance option (Ryzen AI 7 350, 2.2K display, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD, Windows 11 Pro, 3-year warranty) for $1,689. The range-topping Extended Pro with a Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, 2.2K display, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD, Windows 11 Pro, and a 3-year warranty costs $2,099.
Framework continues to be in a class of its own regarding laptop customization options. Sure, some other laptop manufacturers allow you to easily upgrade memory and SSDs, but Framework goes above and beyond by allowing most components to be replaced or upgraded via the Framework Marketplace.
However, that customization and upgrade prowess comes at a price premium compared to other systems. For example, the Dell XPS 13 (9350) offers similar performance, nearly 8 hours of additional runtime per charge, and costs just $1,599 (or $1,899 for a 1600p display). The Lenovo Yoga 9i is also sub-$1,900, comes with twice the memory, a 3840 x 2400 display, and lasts longer per charge.
If all you're looking for is modularity and ease of upgrades, Framework remains your only option. However, far better options are available for less money if you strictly want a productivity-centered ultraportable with long battery life.
Brandon Hill is a senior editor at Tom's Hardware. He has written about PC and Mac tech since the late 1990s with bylines at AnandTech, DailyTech, and Hot Hardware. When he is not consuming copious amounts of tech news, he can be found enjoying the NC mountains or the beach with his wife and two sons.
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A perfect example of why 8GB VRAM isn't enough for modern games.
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Nvidia's launch of its entry-level RTX 5060-series GPUs is, unsurprisingly, off to a messy start. While we reviewed the 16GB version of the RTX 5060 Ti, reports and our own outreach to AIBs (add-in board partners) suggest that Nvidia is restricting access to the 8GB version of the card. Samples for 8GB cards weren't sent out, leaving reviewers scrambling to try to pick one up at retail — which is difficult when the cards all immediately sold out. Despite those difficulties, a review by the Carbon-based Technology Research Institute on Bilibili offers some insight into the kind of performance users can expect from the lower VRAM variant.First spotted by @harukaze5719, the video includes test results of two Asus-branded triple-fan RTX 5060 Ti GPUs — one with 16GB and the other with 8GB of VRAM. Most synthetic benchmark results suggest that the increased VRAM doesn't significantly impact performance. For instance, in the 3DMark Fire Strike suite of tests, the 8GB model delivered results nearly identical to the 16GB version. Notably, both GPUs show a 20–30% performance boost over the RTX 4060 Ti 8GB and are about 5% slower than the RTX 4070.
The trend continues in 3DMark Time Spy, where the 8GB model once again posts figures nearly matching the higher VRAM version. Both RTX 5060 Ti models are around 18% faster than the RTX 4060 Ti and roughly 12–14% slower than the RTX 4070. That's basically in line with our own 16GB testing.The review also features gaming benchmarks at 1080p and 1440p resolutions, where the 8GB variant remained closely competitive with the 16GB model in titles like Cyberpunk 2077, Resident Evil 4, F1 2024, and Final Fantasy XIV. Interestingly, the 8GB card slightly outperformed the 16GB card in Counter-Strike 2, while the 16GB version delivered noticeably better results in Horizon Zero Dawn. Across 14 tested games at 1080p, the review shows the RTX 5060 Ti 8GB being 16% faster than the RTX 4060 Ti 8GB, and the 16GB model 19% faster than its predecessor. At 1440p, the 5060 Ti 8GB came out 17% faster, while the 16GB version pushes ahead by 21%.
With the RTX 50-series, Nvidia's main talking point is DLSS 4 with Multi-Frame Generation (MFG). While this feature shows promise on higher-end cards like the RTX 5090 and 5080, it doesn't translate as well to the 60-class GPUs — particularly the 8GB variant. In Cyberpunk 2077, for example, the RTX 5060 Ti 8GB inexplicably performed worse than the RTX 4060 Ti 8GB at native 1440p resolution. While enabling MFG helped improve performance, pushing it to 4x delivered underwhelming results, with the 16GB version providing 22% higher performance than the 8GB card.Overall, while the RTX 5060 Ti 8GB offers decent generational improvements over its predecessor, as well as a theoretically lower price than the 4060 Ti 8GB, the VRAM remains a concern. Performance scaling in several instances, when using DLSS 4 features, proved to be more limiting than on the 16GB card. Real-world pricing will play a big role, and it's difficult to find any of these cards in stock. But even if you can find the 8GB model, it's a tough sell for gamers looking at something for the long term.Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News to get our up-to-date news, analysis and reviews in your feeds. Make sure to click the Follow button.
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Kunal Khullar is a contributing writer at Tom's Hardware. He is a long time technology journalist and reviewer specializing in PC components and peripherals, and welcomes any and every question around building a PC.
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Astronomers have found one of the most promising indications that there could be extraterrestrial life on another planet. With the help of the James Webb Space Telescope, researchers have detected what they believe could be biosignatures of marine microorganisms on K2-18b, an exoplanet located in the habitable zone of its parent star 124 light-years away.
According to research led by the University of Cambridge, the team detected traces of dimethyl sulfide (DMS) and dimethyl disulfide (DMDS) in the planet's atmosphere. On Earth, these compounds are produced only by microbial life such as phytoplankton.
The scientists admit that there is a possibility that these substances have been produced on the planet by an unknown chemical process unrelated to microorganisms. However, they also emphasize that the data represent the strongest evidence to date for possible life on a planet other than our own. The results were published in the scientific journal The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
K2-18b is 8.6 times the mass of Earth and nearly three times its size. It lies in the direction of the constellation Leo and orbits a small, low-temperature type of star called a red dwarf. The planet is very close to its star—it takes only 33 days to complete one orbit—but due to the red dwarf's low temperature, the planet is in a region of space that, in theory, allows liquid water to exist on its surface.
This exoplanet is one of the leading potential examples of a Hycean planet, a theoretical class of worlds characterized by having vast liquid oceans and a hydrogen-rich atmosphere. According to astrobiologists, discovering a Hycean planet would represent one of the best opportunities to find extraterrestrial life.
This is not the first time that K2-18b has caught the attention of astronomers. In 2023, the same team of scientists found methane and carbon dioxide in its atmosphere. It was the first time carbon-based molecules were discovered on a planet within a habitable region of space. The researchers also identified diffuse signals at that time that looked like they could be dimethyl sulfide. And so two years later, the team took another look at the promising planet.
“We didn't know for sure whether the signal we saw last time was due to DMS, but just the hint of it was exciting enough for us to have another look with JWST using a different instrument,” said Nikku Madhusudhan, the scientist who led the research, in a press release.
“Earlier theoretical work had predicted that high levels of sulfur-based gases like DMS and DMDS are possible on Hycean worlds. And now we've observed it, in line with what was predicted. Given everything we know about this planet, a Hycean world with an ocean that is teeming with life is the scenario that best fits the data we have,” Madhusudhan said.
This story originally appeared on WIRED en Español and has been translated from Spanish.
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If you wanted a bike that didn't necessarily need painting, you can order a bike like that in titanium tubing instead.
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Are you also an expert on 3D nano-scale material science? It sounds like you only know a couple terms about stainless steel on a macro scale.
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(p.s., I sure hate milling 304 parts)
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The reviewers of Science were not and unless proven otherwise Science is a serious publication.> I hate to say this, but I personally believe that "Chinese metallurgy" is an oxymoron. The word "Chinesium" didn't come out of nowhere.That's plain racism.
> I hate to say this, but I personally believe that "Chinese metallurgy" is an oxymoron. The word "Chinesium" didn't come out of nowhere.That's plain racism.
That's plain racism.
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It's weird, and it's racist.
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Serious publication or not (which, BTW, is an instance of the Argument from Authority fallacy), they aren't immune to the problem of junk science.[1]> That's plain racism.Not the OP, but I believe the intended reading of "Chinese" in this context is "product of the present Chinese social and economic system" and has nothing to do withe race or ethnicity (e.g. it wouldn't apply to Taiwan). The present Chinese system has a significant problem with bad science.[2][1] http://retractiondatabase.org/RetractionSearch.aspx#?jou%3dS...[2] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11948-017-9939-6"China with 4353 retracted articles out of 2,741,274 documents is the leading nation in breaching scientific integrity."
> That's plain racism.Not the OP, but I believe the intended reading of "Chinese" in this context is "product of the present Chinese social and economic system" and has nothing to do withe race or ethnicity (e.g. it wouldn't apply to Taiwan). The present Chinese system has a significant problem with bad science.[2][1] http://retractiondatabase.org/RetractionSearch.aspx#?jou%3dS...[2] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11948-017-9939-6"China with 4353 retracted articles out of 2,741,274 documents is the leading nation in breaching scientific integrity."
Not the OP, but I believe the intended reading of "Chinese" in this context is "product of the present Chinese social and economic system" and has nothing to do withe race or ethnicity (e.g. it wouldn't apply to Taiwan). The present Chinese system has a significant problem with bad science.[2][1] http://retractiondatabase.org/RetractionSearch.aspx#?jou%3dS...[2] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11948-017-9939-6"China with 4353 retracted articles out of 2,741,274 documents is the leading nation in breaching scientific integrity."
[1] http://retractiondatabase.org/RetractionSearch.aspx#?jou%3dS...[2] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11948-017-9939-6"China with 4353 retracted articles out of 2,741,274 documents is the leading nation in breaching scientific integrity."
[2] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11948-017-9939-6"China with 4353 retracted articles out of 2,741,274 documents is the leading nation in breaching scientific integrity."
"China with 4353 retracted articles out of 2,741,274 documents is the leading nation in breaching scientific integrity."
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There is no intended reading that makes "Chinese metallurgy is an oxymoron" a sensible thing to post any place where you want to have a halfway reasonable conversation with strangers.
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I'm not sure anyone was saying they're immune to it, but their reputation does lend them credibility when compared to a random HN commenter that says stuff like "Chinese metallurgy is an oxymoron"
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So this article still gives me both hope that it is real, and sadness that it probably isn't.
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Look alive: The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) may have picked up signs of a potential biosignature on a steamy, ocean-covered exoplanet called K2-18b—a biosignature that, on Earth, is produced by marine life.
The main character here is dimethyl sulfide, a molecule produced by many ocean denizens, but especially plankton. If the molecule is really floating around in the atmosphere of K2-18b, it raises the tantalizing possibility that something on the world might be alive. Or at least emitting suspiciously life-like chemical signals.
K2-18b, located 120 light-years away, has been on scientists' radar since NASA's Kepler space telescope spotted it in 2015. It's about 8.6 times the mass of Earth and orbits within the habitable (or “Goldilocks”) zone of a red dwarf star.
Earlier observations from Hubble hinted that K2-18b had water vapor in its atmosphere, a claim later shown to be in error. But JWST has taken matters several steps further, doubling down on an earlier finding of dimethyl sulfide in the planet's atmosphere. The team behind the discovery, led by Nikku Madhusudhan from the University of Cambridge, includes researchers from five institutions.
The finding suggests that K2-18b may indeed be a Hycean world, or a water-covered planet with a hydrogen-rich atmosphere. But the team's observations—made using JWST's Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) and earlier data from NIRISS and NIRSpec—revealed methane and carbon dioxide, but very little ammonia, on the planet.
The curious mix suggests K2-18b hosts a watery, potentially habitable environment. Crucially, the team also found more evidence of dimethyl sulfide, along with a related molecule, dimethyl disulfide. The team's work repeats the 2023 detection and adds further credence to the possibility of life on the relatively nearby exoplanet—assuming the findings are sound and that dimethyl sulfide is produced and behaves on exoplanets the same way it does on Earth. The team's findings are published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Speaking to the BBC, Madhusudhan said his team detected a surprising amount of gas during the single observation. “The amount we estimate of this gas in the atmosphere is thousands of times higher than what we have on Earth,” he explained, saying that, if the link to life is valid, “then this planet will be teeming with life.” And should scientists confirm the presence of life on K2-18b, “it should basically confirm that life is very common in the galaxy,” Madhusudhan told the British broadcaster.
In its landmark decadal survey on astronomy and astrophysics, the National Academies made one thing clear: finding habitable worlds should be a top scientific priority. The James Webb Space Telescope is front and center in that mission—and while NASA already has plans for its eventual successor, the Habitable Worlds Observatory, that next-gen telescope won't launch for at least another decade. Until then, it's up to Webb—and the ever-reliable Hubble—to carry the torch in our search for life beyond Earth.
The detection isn't a done deal yet—it comes with a statistical confidence of around 3-sigma (about 99.73%), which makes it interesting, but not definitive. A 5-sigma detection (roughly 99.99994% confidence) is typically the gold standard for confirming a discovery. And even at 5-sigma, that would merely confirm the presence of dimethyl sulfide in the planet's atmosphere—not that the dimethyl sulfide has biotic origins. There's still a chance that abiotic (non-biological) processes or instrumental quirks could be responsible. This past Sunday, a separate team posted a paper on the preprint server arXiv suggesting the planet may not be Hycean at all, but instead a rocky world covered in magma, with hydrogen-rich skies—and virtually no chance of life.
Further observations will help to validate the team's findings. But to be clear, if life does exist on K2-18b, it's likely microbial given the apparent evidence, and not a sign of alien intelligence. As an important aside, microbial life—like plankton—existed on Earth for a billion years, a long but crucial chapter that paved the way for more complex organisms to emerge. Regardless, life has never been found beyond Earth, so confirming even a single amoeba on a distant world would be nothing short of revelatory.
At minimum, K2-18b is shaping up to be one of the most promising places to search for life beyond Earth. And at maximum—if further studies validate the recent findings—we may be getting our first chemical whiffs of a living ocean on another world.
alien lifeAstrobiologyexoplanetsmarine lifewebb space telescope
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New findings flip a previous theory of a planet's end on its head.
Researchers exposed two lichen species to Mars-like atmospheric conditions for five hours—and one performed impressively.
New Webb Telescope data confirms that asteroid 2024 YR4 poses no threat to Earth during its 2032 flyby. As for the Moon, not so much.
Captured by Webb, it's the first direct evidence of auroras on the most distant planet from the Sun.
The longest organic molecules yet found on Mars are very similar to those produced by life on Earth.
The Webb Space Telescope captured a chance alignment of a protostellar outflow and a spiral galaxy in a dazzling example of the cosmos' weirdness.
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After wowing CinemaCon with an early look, this morning Marvel released the second trailer for Fantastic Four: First Steps. And if the first trailer found them conspicuously absent, then this one is is all about one thing in particular: if this be doomsday, and Galactus' arrival on earth, then he must be heralded.
Yes, today's trailer finally gives us a good look at Julia Garner in action as Shalla-Bal, First Steps‘ take on the Silver Surfer. Introduced in the comics in 1968's The Silver Surfer #1, there Shalla was the Empress of the utopian planet Zenn-La, and the romantic partner of Norrin Radd. In the comics, it's Norrin who becomes the Silver Surfer, making a pact with Galactus (played here in First Steps by absolute legend Ralph Ineson) to become his herald in exchange for the world-eater sparing Zenn-La. Although in some plotlines Shalla interacted with the power cosmic that granted to Norrin—notably using a fragment of it to restore Zenn-La after Galactus drained it as punishment for Radd's defiance of him—First Steps marks the first time she herself is being depicted as Galactus' herald.
Shalla-Bal is not the only comics character this trailer “introduces” us to: we also learn that during the movie Sue is pregnant with her first child, and preparing to become a mother while navigating her and Reed's realities as superheroes. This will, presumably, be Franklin Richards—a one-time mutant, Franklin grows up to be an incredibly powerful reality-manipulation and psionic abilities, eventually fighting alongside his family and his sister Valeria as members of the First Family in his own rights. For now, it's up to the Fantastic generation before him to save their Earth from Galactus' threat… and, somehow, make their way across the multiverse over to the MCU's prime reality in time for Avengers: Doomsday.
The Fantastic Four: First Steps hits theaters July 25, 2025.
#TheFantasticFour: First Steps
Only in theaters July 25. pic.twitter.com/7ILkowM1ev
— Fantastic Four (@FantasticFour) April 17, 2025
Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what's next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
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Daredevil: Born Again and Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man gave us bad guys who are jerks first, and it's a great change of pace.
Daredevil: Born Again had Kingpin do what he does best, and here's the story of how that came to be.
Thunderbolts' commitment to looking like an unconventional Marvel movie even extends to its stunt work.
Plus, the new Mummy reboot recruits a Marvel star, and then some.
Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, and Joseph Quinn star in the new Marvel Studios movie.
Hugh Jackman is here to bring zen to your day in this 'Marvel Ambiance' video.
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Significant improvements for the RX 9070 series and Ryzen AI Max+ APUs.
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Stability AI, the company behind Stable Diffusion, has released ONNX-optimized models that run up to 3.3x faster on compatible AMD hardware, including select Radeon GPUs and Ryzen AI APUs on mobile.
Amuse is a platform developed by AMD and TensorStack AI that allows users to generate images and short videos locally, on AMD hardware. The latest Amuse 3.0 release not only supports these updated models but also introduces a range of new features, including video diffusion, AI photo filters, and local text-to-image generation. Amuse 3.0 and AMD optimized models require the Adrenalin 24.30.31.05 preview drivers or the upcoming Adrenalin 25.4.1 mainline release.
Over the past year, AMD has partnered with several OSVs, OEMs, and ISVs to optimize AI applications from the ground up, incorporating hardware optimizations, efficient drivers, compilers, and optimized ML models, among other enhancements. Building on this partnership, Stability AI has launched Radeon-optimized versions of its Stable Diffusion family, which include Stable Diffusion 3.5 (SD3.5) and Stable Diffusion XL Turbo (SDXL Turbo). First-party metrics report a 3.3x speedup with SD3.5 Large, dropping to 2.1x for SD3.5 Large Turbo and 1.5x for SDXL Turbo compared to the base PyTorch implementations.
Artificial Intelligence is an integral part of our daily lives, but most of it lives in the cloud and requires an active internet connection. "AI PCs" are driving the development of modern processors, which feature dedicated hardware units to accelerate machine learning operations. Take NPUs and specialized AI matrix cores, for example, which allow smaller and efficient AI models to be run locally.
RDNA 4 features AMD's second-generation AI accelerators, which offer 4x more FP16 performance (with sparsity), doubling to 8x with INT8 (again, with sparsity) versus RDNA 3. These optimized models are not architecture-bound, although AMD mandates high-end GPUs for certain models, such as SDXL, SD 3.5 Large, and Turbo. Ryzen AI APUs can leverage the built-in XDNA NPU in tandem with the Radeon iGPU. In this case, Strix Halo is the recommended choice due to its large memory buffer and raw horsepower.
Stable Diffusion models optimized for AMD hardware are tagged with the "_amdgpu" suffix and are now available for download at Hugging Face. With the necessary hardware, you can launch these models immediately in your preferred environment or AMD's Amuse 3.0, whichever suits your needs.
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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.
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Temu and Shein plan to raise prices for U.S. customers starting April 25, due to President Donald Trump's tariffs on goods shipped from China, the Associated Press reports.
The 145% tariff on products made in China, along with Trump's decision to end a customs exemption that had allowed goods under $800 to enter the U.S. duty-free, has disrupted the business models of both platforms. The report says nearly 4 million parcels, most of them from China, enter the U.S. every day under this soon-to-be-ended exemption.
Shein and Temu have gained significant popularity in the U.S. over the past few years due to the platforms' discount pricing and influencer advertising.
The Wall Street Journal reported last year that Amazon now sees Shein and Temu as bigger threats to its business than retailers like Walmart and Target. In November, Amazon launched Amazon Haul, a storefront that offers mass-produced and discounted items to take on Shein and Temu.
Shein and Temu are encouraging customers to continue shopping. The companies say they will ensure orders arrive on time and are doing what they can to minimize the impact on shoppers.
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Production at Fab 21 module 2 is set to start at least two quarters earlier.
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TSMC plans to produce 30% of its N2 (2nm-class) output in the U.S. and make its Fab 21 site near Phoenix, Arizona, an independent semiconductor manufacturing cluster, the company's management revealed during the company's earnings call on Thursday. The world's largest contract maker of chips also indicated intentions to speed up building new Fab 21 modules to produce chips on N3 (3nm-class), N2, and A16 (1.6nm-class) nodes.
"After completion, around 30% of our 2nm and more advanced capacity will be located in Arizona, creating an independent leading edge semiconductor manufacturing cluster in the U.S.," said C.C. Wei, chief executive and chairman of TSMC, in his prepared remarks. "It will also create greater economies of scale and help foster a more complete semiconductor supply chain ecosystem in the U.S."
To produce 30% of its N2 and A16 output in Arizona, TSMC will build two additional Fab 21 modules. So far, the company has confirmed plans to build at least three N2 and A16-capable fab modules in Taiwan's Hsinchu and Kaohsiung Science Parks with more modules incoming, so the island will still produce the lion's share of TSMC's advanced chips. Yet, 30% of TSMC's N2 and A16 chips produced in the U.S. is certainly a big deal.
TSMC's Fab 21 module 1 in Arizona is currently ramping up volume production of chips for its American customers using the company's N4 and N5 process technologies. Construction of the company's N3-capable Fab 21 module 2 (its second fabrication facility in Arizona) is complete, and the company is working to start installing equipment there ahead of time in a bid to pull in volume production of chips at the facility by at least a couple of quarters from its original vague schedule of 2028.
Construction of Fab 21 module 3 and module 4 — the company's facilities that will use N2 and A16 nodes — is expected to start later this year, assuming all required permits are obtained. TSMC did not reveal schedules for these Fab 21 modules, but it is reasonable to expect at least one of them to come online by early 2029 provided that TSMC acquires all the necessary equipment on time.
TSMC's Fab 21 module 5 and module 6 will use process technologies beyond A16 (think A14 and possibly more advanced), but their construction timelines and production ramp will depend on future customer demand.
TSMS's grand plan for Fab 21 is to evolve it into a GigaFab cluster with production capacity of at least 100,000 wafer starts per month, though when exactly this happens is something that remains to be seen.
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"Our expansion plan will enable TSMC to scale up to a GigaFab cluster to support the needs of our leading-edge customers in smartphone, AI and HPC applications," added Wei.
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Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom's Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.
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In a world of oversized portable speakers, the JBL Go 3 proves that great things come in small packages. This ultra-compact powerhouse delivers JBL's signature sound quality in a design that fits in your pocket, while its rugged, waterproof construction means you can take your tunes anywhere – from shower sessions to beach days, without missing a beat. For those seeking premium audio in an ultra-portable format, the Go 3 has consistently ranked among the top choices in its category.
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Amazon has dropped the price of the JBL Go 3 from $40 to just $30, offering a solid 25% discount on this mighty mini speaker. While the $10 savings might seem modest, it brings this premium portable speaker into impulse-buy territory, making it an excellent option for gift-giving or as a backup speaker.
The sound quality defies the Go 3's diminutive size. JBL's Pro Sound technology pumps out clear, balanced audio with surprisingly powerful bass response, making it perfect for personal listening or small group settings. Whether you're playing podcasts in the kitchen or sharing music at a picnic, the sound remains crisp and engaging. The speaker's optimized driver design ensures minimal distortion even at higher volumes.
Durability is a standout feature. The IP67 rating means this speaker is both waterproof and dustproof, surviving full submersion in water and keeping sand at bay. You can confidently use it poolside, take it to the beach, or even bring it into the shower without worry. The robust construction also protects against drops and bumps, making it ideal for outdoor adventures.
The design strikes a perfect balance between style and function. The rugged fabric covering adds grip while resisting wear, and the integrated loop makes it easy to attach to bags or backpacks. Available in multiple colors, it's as much a fashion accessory as it is a speaker. The minimal button layout ensures easy operation, even with wet hands.
Battery life hits five hours on a single charge – plenty for daily use and short outings. The USB-C charging port provides quick recharge times, while Bluetooth 5.1 connectivity remains stable and simple, letting you stream from any compatible device without fuss. The speaker automatically enters standby mode when not in use to conserve battery life.
At $30, the JBL Go 3 offers remarkable value for anyone seeking quality portable audio. While there are cheaper Bluetooth speakers available, few match its combination of premium sound, rugged construction, and ultra-portable design at this price point. Whether you need a travel companion, shower speaker, or just want quality sound in a compact package, this deal makes an already attractive speaker even more compelling. For the price of a few coffee shop visits, you can own a premium portable speaker from one of the most respected names in audio.
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The motor probably only has enough torque for finer tooling and grinding projects.
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An enterprising individual has shared a quick step-by-step guide showing how to convert an old Hard Disk Drive (HDD) into a small but useful variable speed disc sander. The project also requires just a modicum of time, a few simple tools, and a handful of extra components.
If you have been a computing enthusiast for more than a few years, you might have a few unwanted or dead HDDs in your possession. You might also reckon that a disc sander is a useful tool to have, but do not feel that shelling out over $100 on a dedicated device, like this one on Amazon, is worth it. If these two planets align for you, then YouTuber ProShorts101's idea might be the perfect project.
The project starts with a WD Caviar Blue WD1600AAJS. This 2009 vintage HDD offered a meager 160GB of noisy spinning rust storage. We aren't sure if this particular WD1600AAJS was still functional as data storage, but would hope not, as that would upset the gods of retro. While the 7,200 rpm motor in this 3.5-inch device might be one of the better choices available for the intended task, here it is souped-up with a 30 Amp Electronic Speed Controller (ESC), among other components.
On the topic of components, according to ProShorts101, the following list of bits and pieces is required to transmogrify your HDD into a disc sander: an old HDD, a 30A Drone ESC, a servo tester, a 12V socket, and some sand paper.
Start by disassembling the HDD, which means taking off the metal lid, removing the platter read heads and supporting assembly, and the drive controller PCB from the other side. Next, solder the ESC to the drive power pads, as shown in the video. You will then thread the ESC's cables to the front of the disc sander project. Wire up the 12V power socket and variable speed-enabling potentiometer circuit as shown.
For a clean build, ProShorts101 drilled cable routing holes, and cut and repurposed the metal lid so that only the spinning disc was exposed. This reworked lid helped secure the power socket and variable speed knob. Last but not least, it was time to cut out and mount the chosen abrasive to the spinning disc surface. ProShorts101 used lots of glue and a rough looking piece of what looked like aluminum oxide paper.
Some video viewers suggested a project-improving tweak where a Velcro surface could be added to the HDD disc, meaning a user could renew or switch sandpaper grades and types more easily.
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Finally, this upcycled HDD disc sanding tool will probably not be a serious rival to even the most budget-conscious devices available at retail. Nevertheless, it might be adequate for smaller scale tasks like sharpening nail scissors or reshaping small wooden spatulas.
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Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason.
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I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the stunning results of my testing of Arctic's Liquid Freezer III. This cooler earns its five-star rating by combining chart-topping performance with a surprisingly reasonable price.
The strongest AIO I've tested, bar none
Chart-topping noise-normalized performance
Easily handles even the 9950X3D with PBO enabled
Six-year warranty
Very reasonable MSRP of $125
Up to 6.9 mm H2O static pressure!
Intel users still have to install a custom contact frame
This is not a quiet cooler, so you may want to limit the pump and fan speeds
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Arctic is a name well-known and beloved by many PC enthusiasts for providing high-value, quality cooling solutions. I caused a bit of a controversy with my last review, where I didn't mince words, stating “the Liquid Freezer III is unimpressive.”
Well, it appears that Arctic took my feedback to heart. We're looking at the Liquid Freezer III Pro today, and let me tell you guys, they take the pro moniker very seriously. If I didn't know better, I'd swear they designed this cooler just for me. Its performance blew away my expectations – I honestly couldn't believe my own results until I tested it with both Intel's Core i7-14700K and AMD's Ryzen 9 9950X3D CPUs.
Will Arctic's Liquid Freezer III Pro make our list of best coolers on the market? There's no doubt about it. Let's take a look at the specifications and features of the cooler, then we'll go over thermal performance with both Intel and AMD CPUs, as well as noise levels. Since this is our first review including AMD's Ryzen 9 9950X3D, I'll try to spend a little more time explaining how I test coolers and why I chose the methods shown in today's review.
Cooler
Arctic Liquid Freezer III Pro
MSRP
$124.99 MSRP $89.99 Launch Discount
Radiator Material
Aluminum
Lighting
None as reviewed ARGB variants available
Warranty
6 Years
Socket Compatibility
Intel Socket LGA 1851/1700 AMD AM5 / AM4
Unit Dimensions (including fans)
398 (L) x 120 (W) x 63mm (D)
Maximum TDP (Our Testing)
>265W with Core i7-14700K and AMD's Ryzen 9 9950X3D
The packaging for the cooler is typical for Arctic, advertising the cooler on the outside. Opening the box reveals the contents, carefully protected and packaged with foam, plastic, and cardboard.
Included in the box are the following:
▶️ 38mm thick radiator
This AIO's radiator is thick. At 38mm radiator and 25mm fans, that's a combined thickness of 53mm – this will present compatibility issues with some cases. So make sure to do some measuring before buying if you're installing in an existing build.
▶️ Offset mounting for Intel and AMD CPUs
Different CPUs on the market can have different hotspots, which can impact the effectiveness of a cooler. This is why some coolers seem to do better – or worse – with AMD or Intel. Arctic refined its mounting for AMD AM4/AM5 and LGA 1851 systems, resulting in claimed performance increases of up to 9 degrees C with a 250W power limit.
▶️ Pump noise
This AIO's pump can run a little louder than some users may prefer at full speed. It doesn't interfere with my noise-normalized testing at 38.9 dBA, but as part of testing this cooler I've been investigating different ways to do noise-normalized testing at lower noise levels. To test this cooler normalized at 37.3 dBA required limiting the speed of the liquid pump. That said, if you set up this cooler using the all-in-one cable, the pump will not run at full speed except in the most intensive scenarios, resulting in a quietly running pump that never overpowers the noise of fans.
▶️ New P12 Pro Fans – and a VRM fan too!
There's more to a cooler than just the heatsink or radiator. The bundled fans have a significant impact on cooling and noise levels, as well as how the cooler looks in your case.
The new P12 Pro fans include 7 blades instead of the 5-bladed fans included with previous Liquid Freezer CPUs, and are pre-installed for convenience. Arctic claims they perform at the same level as their MAX fans, but at a lower noise level. That's not to say these fans run quietly though. As you'll see in our benchmarks below, they can get pretty loud!
Dimensions
120 x 120 x 25mm
Fan Speed
600-3000 RPM
Air Flow
Up to 77 CFM
Air Pressure
Up to 6.9 mmH2O
Bearing Type
FDB
MTTF
6 Year Warranty
Lighting
None
My results may differ from others because I place an emphasis on having results that are comparable to real world use.
This means that I test CPU coolers inside of a closed desktop case, which increases cooling difficulty compared to other testing methods - many will test CPU coolers outside of a case, on an open test bench. Open benches have lowered ambient temperatures, which in turn makes weak coolers appear stronger than they really are. Some publications have used generic thermal plates to test cooling solutions.
I reject both of these methods because they don't accurately reflect the real world conditions a CPU cooler is used in.
CPU
Intel Core i7-14700K
GPU
ASRock Steel Legend Radeon 7900 GRE
Motherboard
MSI Z790 Project Zero
Case
MSI Pano 100L PZ Black
System Fans
Iceberg Thermal IceGale Silent
My previous reviews have also tested Intel's latest platform, using the Core Ultra 9 285K Arrow Lake CPU. We're going to be retiring this from our testing suite. Between BIOS updates and Windows updates, Arrow Lake's thermal characteristics have changed in some scenarios – rendering much of our previous testing data useless.
With today's review, we're adding AMD's recently released Ryzen 9 9950X3D! This is one beast of a CPU, providing the best gaming and multithreaded performance on the market – and can prove quite challenging thermally when PBO is enabled for overclocking.
CPU
AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D
GPU
MSI Ventus 3X RTX 4070Ti Super
Motherboard
MSI X870E Carbon Wifi
Case
MSI MAG Pano 100R PZ
The installation of this cooler is simple, but a bit of a pain for Intel users due to the required use of a custom contact frame for the CPU.
1. You'll first need to remove the standard CPU socket if you're using an Intel CPU. AMD users will remove the default mounting mechanism.
2. Next you'll set the rubber standoffs on AMD systems, or carefully install the custom mounting frame for Intel systems.
You may notice the additional standoffs present in the Intel system's photo below. This is because I used another cooler's mounting to secure the CPU socket while I installed the custom frame.
3. Next, AMD users should take the mounting bars and place them on top of the rubber standoffs, securing them with the included screws. Intel users can skip to the next step.
4. Apply the included thermal paste to your CPU. If you have any questions on how to do this properly, please refer to our handy guide on how to apply thermal paste.
5. Mount the CPU block and secure it with a screwdriver.
6. Once complete, connect the cabling to the CPU block's head. For the purposes of testing, I chose the option with individual PWM control for the fans, pump, and VRM fan. However, some users may prefer the simplicity of the all-in-one cable. Connect the cables and place the VRM fan on top of the CPU block, and installation is complete!
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Features and Specifications
Albert Thomas is a contributor for Tom's Hardware, primarily covering CPU cooling reviews.
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New York City is one of those places in the world where you can get a dollar slice at 2 a.m. or have a burger delivered in less than 30 minutes, but you'll still spend two hours crawling down the highway to catch a flight.
Archer Aviation wants to change that with air taxis that it envisions flying passengers from Manhattan to nearby airports within 15 minutes.
The startup on Thursday unveiled its proposed air taxi network for New York City in partnership with United Airlines, which would allow passengers to tack on an Archer ride to their traditional airline tickets.
“We're starting with nine core nodes,” Adam Goldstein, co-founder and CEO of Archer, told me during an interview at Casa Cipriani, a members-only club at the bottom tip of Manhattan, watching helicopters land at the Downtown Skyport.
“So you have the three big international airports — JFK, LaGuardia, Newark,” Goldstein continued. “You have the three big heliports, [including] the Downtown Skyport, and then the east and west side heliports. And then the three big regionals — Teterboro, Westchester, and Long Island Republic.”
Archer has shared a similar vision for air taxi networks in cities like Los Angeles. The company is still waiting on the Federal Aviation Administration to approve its aircraft — a five-seat eVTOL (electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicle) dubbed Midnight — before it can even begin testing the routes it has planned.
Archer also still needs to get a pilot into one of its aircraft to test-fly it. So far, the company has only flown the plane autonomously with no humans inside. Its competitors, Joby Aviation and Beta Technologies, have both piloted flights.
Goldstein seemed hopeful that Archer would achieve the necessary certifications in 2026, telling TechCrunch that it would have an update about piloted flights at its next earnings call. The company went public in 2021 via a special-purpose acquisition merger, and has raised $3.36 billion to date, per PitchBook, via public and private fundraises.
In the meantime, Archer is laying the groundwork, setting up infrastructure and operations. For that, partnerships are essential.
In NYC, United will help with aircraft storage, maintenance, charging setup, and setting up vertiports (landing pads for eVTOLs) at airports. Archer has also teamed up with the fixed-base operators that run the Manhattan helipads — Atlantic Aviation, Signature, and Modern Aviation — which, Goldstein says, will give Archer passenger access and help set up the charging infrastructure.
“What makes New York very compelling is it's the No. 1 helicopter commuting city in the world, outside of São Paulo,” Nikhil Goel, Archer's chief commercial officer, said. “You don't have to squint very hard to imagine any of these helicopters that are flying by on the Hudson simply replacing them with one of our aircraft. The routes are already there. The air traffic already knows how to work with them. The FBOs and the landing facilities are already there. So there's no systemic changes that are necessary.”
Archer's plan is to start small, bringing up to five aircraft to NYC — and other cities — to practice running the routes before launching. Ten to 20 years down the line, the goal is to fly hundreds of aircraft across several cities. Archer last month began constructing Midnights at its production facility in Georgia that it built in partnership with strategic investor Stellantis. It plans to build 650 aircraft annually by 2030.
Aside from NYC and LA, Archer also plans to launch in San Francisco and Miami, but the timeline is still dependent on FAA certification, and the company hasn't picked its first U.S. launch city.
The company also has plans to launch an air taxi service in Abu Dhabi, where regulations are less strict, later this year. Goldstein said the proposed network for NYC gives people a vision they can understand.
“We're hoping people look at [Abu Dhabi] and say, ‘Oh, it's real. How is New York gonna work?'”
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Rebecca Bellan is a senior reporter at TechCrunch, where she covers Tesla and Elon Musk's broader empire, autonomy, AI, electrification, gig work platforms, Big Tech regulatory scrutiny, and more. She's one of the co-hosts of the Equity podcast and writes the TechCrunch Daily morning newsletter.
Previously, she covered social media for Forbes.com, and her work has appeared in Bloomberg CityLab, The Atlantic, The Daily Beast, Mother Jones, i-D (Vice) and more.
Rebecca has invested in Ethereum.
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American police departments near the United States-Mexico border are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for an unproven and secretive technology that uses AI-generated online personas designed to interact with and collect intelligence on “college protesters,” “radicalized” political activists, and suspected drug and human traffickers, according to internal documents, contracts, and communications that 404 Media obtained via public records requests.
This article was created in partnership with 404 Media, a journalist-owned publication covering how technology impacts humans. For more stories like this, sign up here.
Massive Blue, the New York–based company that is selling police departments this technology, calls its product Overwatch, which it markets as an “AI-powered force multiplier for public safety” that “deploys lifelike virtual agents, which infiltrate and engage criminal networks across various channels.” According to a presentation obtained by 404 Media, Massive Blue is offering cops these virtual personas that can be deployed across the internet with the express purpose of interacting with suspects over text messages and social media.
Massive Blue lists “border security,” “school safety,” and stopping “human trafficking” among Overwatch's use cases. The technology—which as of last summer had not led to any known arrests—demonstrates the types of social media monitoring and undercover tools private companies are pitching to police and border agents. Concerns about tools like Massive Blue have taken on new urgency considering that the Trump administration has revoked the visas of hundreds of students, many of whom have protested against Israel's war in Gaza.
404 Media obtained a presentation showing some of these AI characters. These include a “radicalized AI” “protest persona,” which poses as a 36-year-old divorced woman who is lonely, has no children, is interested in baking, activism, and “body positivity.” Another AI persona in the presentation is described as a “‘Honeypot' AI Persona.” Her backstory says she's a 25-year-old from Dearborn, Michigan, whose parents emigrated from Yemen and who speaks the Sanaani dialect of Arabic. The presentation also says she uses various social media apps, that she's on Telegram and Signal, and that she has US and international SMS capabilities. Other personas are a 14-year-old boy “child trafficking AI persona,” an “AI pimp persona,” “college protestor,” “external recruiter for protests,” “escorts,” and “juveniles.”
One example of an AI persona created by Massive Blue's Overwatch tool. The company adds backstories for many of its AI personas, in an apparent attempt to make them appear more realistic.
Our reporting shows that cops are paying a company to help them deploy AI-powered bots across social media and the internet to talk to people they suspect are anything from violent sex criminals all the way to vaguely defined “protestors” with the hopes of generating evidence that can be used against them.
“This idea of having an AI pretending to be somebody, a youth looking for pedophiles to talk online, or somebody who is a fake terrorist, is an idea that goes back a long time,” Dave Maass, who studies border surveillance technologies for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told 404 Media. “The problem with all these things is that these are ill-defined problems. What problem are they actually trying to solve? One version of the AI persona is an escort. I'm not concerned about escorts. I'm not concerned about college protesters. So like, what is it effective at, violating protesters' First Amendment rights?”
Massive Blue has signed a $360,000 contract with Pinal County, Arizona, which is between Tucson and Phoenix. The county is paying for the contract with an anti-human trafficking grant from the Arizona Department of Public Safety. A Pinal County purchasing division report states that it has bought “24/7 monitoring of numerous web and social media platforms” and “development, deployment, monitoring, and reporting on a virtual task force of up to 50 AI personas across 3 investigative categories.” Yuma County, in southwestern Arizona, meanwhile, signed a $10,000 contract to try Massive Blue in 2023 but did not renew the contract. A spokesperson for the Yuma County Sheriff's Office told 404 Media “it did not meet our needs.”
This image from a Massive Blue presentation for police departments shows how the company's RADAR program uses AI personas to provide law enforcement with “intelligence reports.”
Massive Blue cofounder Mike McGraw did not answer a series of specific questions from 404 Media about how Massive Blue works, what police departments it works with, and whether it had been used to generate any arrests. “We are proud of the work we do to support the investigation and prosecution of human traffickers,” McGraw said. “Our primary goal is to help bring these criminals to justice while helping victims who otherwise would remain trafficked. We cannot risk jeopardizing these investigations and putting victims' lives in further danger by disclosing proprietary information.”
The Pinal County Sheriff's Office told 404 Media that Massive Blue has not thus far been used for any arrests.
“Our investigations are still underway. Massive Blue is one component of support in these investigations, which are still active and ongoing. No arrests have been made yet,” Sam Salzwedel, Pinal County Sheriff's Office public information officer, told 404 Media. “It takes a multifaceted approach to disrupting human traffickers, narcotics traffickers, and other criminals. Massive Blue has been a valuable partner in these initiatives and has produced leads that detectives are actively pursuing. Given these are ongoing investigations, we cannot risk compromising our investigative efforts by providing specifics about any personas.”
Salzwedel added, “Massive Blue is not working on any immigration cases. Our agency does not enforce immigration law. Massive Blue's support is focused on the areas of human trafficking, narcotics trafficking, and other investigations.”
Law enforcement agencies have taken steps to prevent specifics about what Massive Blue is and how it works from becoming public. At public appropriations hearings in Pinal County about the Massive Blue contract, the sheriff's office refused to tell county council members about what the product even is. Matthew Thomas, Pinal County Deputy Sheriff, told the county council he “can't get into great detail” about what Massive Blue is and that doing so would “tip our hand to the bad guys.”
Pinal County Sheriff's Office did not respond to multiple requests for comment. The Arizona Department of Public Safety said, “From what we can ascertain, Pinal County planned to implement technology to help identify and solve human trafficking cases, and that is what we funded,” but was unaware of any of the specifics of Overwatch.
While the documents don't describe every technical aspect of how Overwatch works, they do give a high-level overview of what it is. The company describes a tool that uses AI-generated images and text to create social media profiles that can interact with suspected drug traffickers, human traffickers, and gun traffickers. After Overwatch scans open social media channels for potential suspects, these AI personas can also communicate with suspects over text, Discord, and other messaging services. The documents we obtained don't explain how Massive Blue determines who is a potential suspect based on their social media activity. Salzwedel, of Pinal County, said “Massive Blue's solutions crawl multiple areas of the Internet, and social media outlets are just one component. We cannot disclose any further information to preserve the integrity of our investigations.”
One slide in the Massive Blue presentation obtained by 404 Media gives the example of a “Child Trafficking AI Persona” called Jason. The presentation gives a short “backstory” for the persona, which says Jason is a 14-year-old boy from Los Angeles whose parents emigrated from Ecuador. He's bilingual and an only child, and his hobbies include anime and gaming. The presentation describes his personality as shy and that he has difficulty interacting with girls. It also says that his parents don't allow him to use social media and that he hides his use of Discord from them. This AI persona is also accompanied by an AI-generated image of a boy.
Another example of an AI-generated persona, along with a sample of chats showing how the AI personas interact with targeted suspects.
The presentation includes a conversation between this AI persona and what appears to be a predatory adult over text messages and Discord.
“Your parents around? Or you getting some awesome alone time,” a text from the adult says.
“Js chillin by myself, man. My momz @ work n my dadz outta town. So itz jus me n my vid games. 🎮,” Jason, the AI-generated child, responds.
In another example of how the “highly adaptable personas” can communicate with real people, the presentation shows a conversation between Clip, an “AI pimp persona,” and what appears to be a sex worker.
“Dem tricks trippin 2nite tryin not pay,” the sex worker says.
“Facts, baby. Ain't lettin' these tricks slide,” the Clip persona replies. “You stand your ground and make 'em pay what they owe. Daddy got your back, ain't let nobody disrespect our grind. Keep hustlin', ma, we gonna secure that bag💰💪✨”
A list from Massive Blue's presentation showing the types of “highly customizable” personas Overwatch can generate.
“The continuous evolution of operational, communication & recruitment tactics by bad actors drives exponential increases of threats and significant challenges in reducing demand,” says a one-page brochure provided to police departments that explains Overwatch's functionality. “The Overwatch platform harnesses the power of AI & blockchain to scale your impact without operational or technical overhead.”
Jorge Brignoni took notes for the Cochise County, Arizona, Sheriff's Office at a meeting with Massive Blue in August 2023, which 404 Media obtained. In the notes, he wrote that Overwatch does “passive engagement, then active engagement, towards commitment” with a “Bad Actor, Predator, DTO,” or drug trafficking organization. These targets are then “HAND[ed] OFF to L.E. [law enforcement] to arrest, indict, convict.”
“Why is he talking about converting folks into ‘buying something,'” Brignoni wrote. “So dumb. Talk about the widget, not how you're selling the widget to L.E.”
According to Brignoni's notes, in addition to collecting intelligence via these AI personas, Overwatch also leverages “Telco & Geo Data” and “Blockchain Data” in the form of “full transaction history, top associated wallet IDs, sending & receiving cryptocurrency, potential off-ramps (Exchange names).” The Cochise County Sheriff's Office ultimately did not buy Massive Blue and did not provide answers to 404 Media's questions about its meeting with the company.
Besides scanning social media and engaging suspects with AI personas, the presentation says that Overwatch can use generative AI to create “proof of life” images of a person holding a sign with a username and date written on it in pen.
A variety of AI-generated images of Massive Blue's personas, which are made to look realistic in an attempt to fool targets.
The Massive Blue presentation gives an example of an “Overwatch Recon Report” based on “24 hours of activity across Dallas, Houston, and Austin.” It claims that Overwatch identified 3,266 unique human traffickers, 25 percent of which were affiliated with “larger sophisticated trafficking organizations” and 15 percent of which were flagged as “potential juvenile traffickers.” 404 Media was not able to verify what these accounts were and whether they actually engaged in any criminal activity, and Massive Blue didn't respond to questions about what these accounts were and how exactly it identified them.
On top of the ongoing contract with the Pinal County Sheriff's Office and the pilot with the Yuma County Sheriff's Department last year, Massive Blue has pitched its services to Cochise County in Arizona and the Texas Department of Public Safety, according to documents obtained as part of this investigation.
In September 2023, Yuma County set up a meeting that was going to include federal law enforcement, but Massive Blue had to cancel the meeting: “That's unfortunate, we had federal agents here that focus on human trafficking ready to go,” a Yuma County sergeant wrote in an email to Massive Blue CEO Brian Haley after Haley canceled the meeting.
Much of Massive Blue's public-facing activity has been through its executive director of public safety, Chris Clem, who is a former US Customs and Border Protection agent who testified before Congress about border security last year and regularly appears on Fox News and other media outlets to discuss immigration and the border. In recent months, Clem has posted images of himself on LinkedIn at the border and with prominent Trump administration members Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Massive Blue has also relied on former Kansas City Chiefs kicker Nick Lowery to introduce and endorse Overwatch to police departments.
Clem and Lowery have spoken most extensively publicly about Overwatch, where they have described it as an amorphous “cyberwall” that can do everything from stopping human traffickers to preventing hackers from breaking into 401(k) accounts to taking money back from hackers who have stolen from you, though they provide no specifics about how that would work.
In a two-and-a-half-hour interview with podcaster Theo Von, Clem said, “My company Massive Blue, we basically use deep tech to identify the habits and process of you know, look, I worked on a physical wall, now we've created a cyberwall,” adding that he believed it would “save lives.”
Von asked, “OK, but how does your company do that?”
“Well, I'm not going to get into that too much,” Clem responded, adding that he is trying to sell the technology to US Border Patrol.
More examples of Massive Blue's AI personas, which include a “child trafficking AI persona,” an “AI pimp persona,” “college protestor,” “external recruiter for protests,” “escorts,” and “juveniles.”
On June 5, a Pinal County Board of Supervisors meeting was asked to approve a $500,000 contract between the county and Massive Blue in order to license Overwatch.
“I was looking at the website for Massive Blue, and it's a one-pager with no additional information and no links,” Kevin Cavanaugh, the then-supervisor for District 1, said to Pinal County's Chief Deputy at the Sheriff's Office, Matthew Thomas. “They produce software that we buy, and it does what? Can you explain that to us?”
“I can't get into great detail because it's essentially trade secrets, and I don't want to tip our hand to the bad guys,” Thomas said. “But what I can tell you is that the software is designed to help our investigators look for and find and build a case on human trafficking, drug trafficking, and gun trafficking.”
Cavanaugh said at the board meeting that the basic information he got is that Massive Blue uses “50 AI bots.” He then asked whether the software has been successful and if it helped law enforcement make any arrests. Thomas explained they have not made any arrests yet because they've only seen the proof of concept, but that the proof of concept was “good enough for us and our investigators to move forward with this. Once this gets approved and we get them [Massive Blue] under contract, then we are going to move forward with prosecution of cases.”
Cavanaugh asked if Overwatch is used in other counties, which prompted Thomas to invite Clem to the podium to speak. Clem introduced himself as a recently retired border agent and said that Massive Blue is currently in negotiations with three counties in Arizona, including Pinal County.
“As a resident of 14 years of Pinal County I know what's happening here,” Clem said to the Board of Supervisors. “To be able [to] use this program [...] to provide all the necessary information to go after the online exploitation of children, trafficking victims, and all the other verticals that the sheriff may want to go after.”
Cavanaugh again asked if Massive Blue gathered any data that led to arrests.
“We have not made arrests yet, but there is a current investigation right now regarding arson, and we got the leads to the investigators,” Clem said, explaining that the program has been active for only about six months. “Investigations take time, but we've been able to generate the necessary leads for the particular counties that we're involved with and also in the private sector.”
The Pinal County Board of Supervisors concluded the exchange by approving payment for a handful of other, unrelated projects, but with board members asking to delay the vote on payment for Massive Blue “for further study.”
The decision not to fund Massive Blue that day was covered in a local newspaper. Cavanaugh told the paper that he asked the company to meet with supervisors to explain the merits of the software.
“The State of Arizona has provided a grant, but grant money is taxpayer money. No matter the source of the funding, fighting human and sex trafficking is too important to risk half a million dollars on unproven technology,” he said. “If the company demonstrates that it can deliver evidence to arrest human traffickers, it may be worthwhile. However, it has yet to achieve this goal.”
404 Media's public record requests yielded several emails from Cavanaugh's office to IT professionals and other companies that provide AI products to law enforcement, asking them if they're familiar with Massive Blue. We don't know what was said in those meetings, or if they occurred, but when the Pinal County Board of Supervisors convened again on June 19 it voted to pay for Massive Blue's Overwatch without further discussion.
“Supervisor [Cavanaugh] ultimately voted for the agreement because Massive Blue is alleged to be in pursuit of human trafficking, a noble goal,” a representative from Cavanaugh's office told 404 Media in an email. “A major concern regarding the use of the application, is that the government should not be monitoring each and every citizen. To his knowledge, no arrests have been made to date as a result of the use of the application. If Overwatch is used to bring about arrests of human traffickers, then the program should continue. However, if it is just being used to collect surveillance on law-abiding citizens and is not leading to any arrests, then the program needs to be discontinued.”
In an August 7, 2024, Board of Supervisors meeting, Cavanaugh asked then-Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb for an update on Massive Blue. “So they have not produced any results? They've produced no leads? No evidence that is actionable?” Cavanaugh asked. “That would be public knowledge, that would be public information.”
“I think there's a lot of ongoing investigations that they're not going to give you information on, and we're not going to give you information on,” Lamb said.
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Trump should strive to support innovation in the energy industry, and that'll take more than erecting costly trade barriers.
President Trump and his appointees have repeatedly stressed the need to establish “American energy dominance.”
But the White House's profusion of executive orders and aggressive tariffs, along with its determined effort to roll back clean-energy policies, are moving the industry in the wrong direction, creating market chaos and economic uncertainty that are making it harder for both legacy players and emerging companies to invest, grow, and compete.
MIT Technology Review's guest opinion series, offering expert commentary on legal, political and regulatory issues related to climate change and clean energy. You can read the rest of the pieces here.
The current 90-day pause on rolling out most of the administration's so-called “reciprocal” tariffs presents a critical opportunity. Rather than defaulting to broad, blunt tariffs, the administration should use this window to align trade policy with a focused industrial strategy—one aimed at winning the global race to become a manufacturing powerhouse in next-generation energy technologies.
By tightly aligning tariff design with US strengths in R&D and recent government investments in the energy innovation lifecycle, the administration can turn a regressive trade posture into a proactive plan for economic growth and geopolitical advantage.
The president is right to point out that America is blessed with world-leading energy resources. Over the past decade, the country has grown from being a net importer to a net exporter of oil and the world's largest producer of oil and gas. These resources are undeniably crucial to America's ability to reindustrialize and rebuild a resilient domestic industrial base, while also providing strategic leverage abroad.
But the world is slowly but surely moving beyond the centuries-old model of extracting and burning fossil fuels, a change driven initially by climate risks but increasingly by economic opportunities. America will achieve true energy dominance only by evolving beyond being a mere exporter of raw, greenhouse-gas-emitting energy commodities—and becoming the world's manufacturing and innovation hub for sophisticated, high-value energy technologies.
Notably, the nation took a lead role in developing essential early components of the cleantech sector, including solar photovoltaics and electric vehicles. Yet too often, the fruits of that innovation—especially manufacturing jobs and export opportunities—have ended up overseas, particularly in China.
China, which is subject to Trump's steepest tariffs and wasn't granted any reprieve in the 90-day pause, has become the world's dominant producer of lithium-ion batteries, EVs, wind turbines, and other key components of the clean-energy transition.
Today, the US is again making exciting strides in next-generation technologies, including fusion energy, clean steel, advanced batteries, industrial heat pumps, and thermal energy storage. These advances can transform industrial processes, cut emissions, improve air quality, and maximize the strategic value of our fossil-fuel resources. That means not simply burning them for their energy content, but instead using them as feedstocks for higher-value materials and chemicals that power the modern economy.
The US's leading role in energy innovation didn't develop by accident. For several decades, legislators on both sides of the political divide supported increasing government investments into energy innovation—from basic research at national labs and universities to applied R&D through ARPA-E and, more recently, to the creation of the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations, which funds first-of-a-kind technology deployments. These programs have laid the foundation for the technologies we need—not just to meet climate goals, but to achieve global competitiveness.
Early-stage companies in competitive, global industries like energy do need extra support to help them get to the point where they can stand up on their own. This is especially true for cleantech companies whose overseas rivals have much lower labor, land, and environmental compliance costs.
That's why, for starters, the White House shouldn't work to eliminate federal investments made in these sectors under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act, as it's reportedly striving to do as part of the federal budget negotiations.
Instead, the administration and its Republican colleagues in Congress should preserve and refine these programs, which have already helped expand America's ability to produce advanced energy products like batteries and EVs. Success should be measured not only in barrels produced or watts generated, but in dollars of goods exported, jobs created, and manufacturing capacity built.
The Trump administration should back this industrial strategy with smarter trade policy as well. Steep, sweeping tariffs won't build long-term economic strength.
But there are certain instances where reasonable, modern, targeted tariffs can be a useful tool in supporting domestic industries or countering unfair trade practices elsewhere. That's why we've seen leaders of both parties, including Presidents Biden and Obama, apply them in recent years.
Such levies can be used to protect domestic industries where we're competing directly with geopolitical rivals like China, and where American companies need breathing room to scale and thrive. These aims can be achieved by imposing tariffs on specific strategic technologies, such as EVs and next-generation batteries.
But to be clear, targeted tariffs on a few strategic sectors are starkly different from Trump's tariffs, which now include 145% levies on most Chinese goods, a 10% “universal” tariff on other nations and 25% fees on steel and aluminum.
Another option is implementing a broader border adjustment policy, like the Foreign Pollution Fee Act recently reintroduced by Senators Cassidy and Graham, which is designed to create a level playing field that would help clean manufacturers in the US compete with heavily polluting businesses overseas.
Just as important, the nation must avoid counterproductive tariffs on critical raw materials like steel, aluminum, and copper or retaliatory restrictions on critical minerals—all of which are essential inputs for US manufacturing. The nation does not currently produce enough of these materials to meet demand, and it would take years to build up that capacity. Raising input costs through tariffs only slows our ability to keep or bring key industries home.
Finally, we must be strategic in how we deploy the country's greatest asset: our workforce. Americans are among the most educated and capable workers in the world. Their time, talent, and ingenuity shouldn't be spent assembling low-cost, low-margin consumer goods like toasters. Instead, we should focus on building cutting-edge industrial technologies that the world is demanding. These are the high-value products that support strong wages, resilient supply chains, and durable global leadership.
The worldwide demand for clean, efficient energy technologies is rising rapidly, and the US cannot afford to be left behind. The energy transition presents not just an environmental imperative but a generational opportunity for American industrial renewal.
The Trump administration has a chance to define energy dominance not just in terms of extraction, but in terms of production—of technology, of exports, of jobs, and of strategic influence. Let's not let that opportunity slip away.
Addison Killean Stark is the chief executive and cofounder of AtmosZero, an industrial steam heat pump startup based in Loveland, Colorado. He was previously a fellow at the Department of Energy's ARPA-E division, which funds research and development of advanced energy technologies.
Federal scientists warn that Americans could feel the effects of the new administration's devastating cuts for decades to come.
With news this week of the messaging app being used to discuss war plans, we get you up to speed on what Signal should be used for—and what it shouldn't.
A conversation with Kathleen Hicks, the former deputy secretary of defense.
A look back at the Office of Technology Assessment, the Congressional think tank that detected lies and tested tech.
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A recent study in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, published by Elsevier, explores the nutrition perspectives and attitudes of Ghanaian pregnant adolescents and adolescent mothers. The study sheds light on significant challenges, including food insecurity, economic constraints, and cultural influences, that impact the dietary habits and health of young mothers and their infants.
Researchers conducted a qualitative, community-based cross-sectional study in nine communities across three municipalities and two districts in Ghana's Central Region. Using focus group discussions, they gathered insights from 35 participants, including 13 pregnant adolescents and 22 adolescent mothers aged 12 to 19. The study utilized Braun and Clarke's reflexive thematic analysis framework to identify key themes shaping nutritional choices and challenges.
Lead author Christiana Naa Astreh Nsiah-Asamoah, PhD, University of Cape Coast, Cape Coast, Ghana, explained, "The findings of this study offer insights for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers focused on maternal and child health, especially within socioeconomically disadvantaged communities. For professionals in healthcare and community support roles, the study highlights the importance of creating tailored nutrition education programs that address the specific needs and circumstances of pregnant adolescents and adolescent mothers."
Five central themes emerged: health and well-being, infant nutrition, dietary habits, nutrition information sources, and social support. The findings revealed that adolescent mothers tend to diverge from recommended practices for infant and young child feeding. Economic limitations often led adolescent mothers to rely on less nutritious street foods, while many found exclusive breastfeeding for six months impractical, opting instead for complementary feeding. Limited access to nutrition education and inconsistent social support further compounded these challenges.
The study highlights the importance of strengthening nutrition education programs, improving access to affordable healthy foods, and enhancing community-based support systems to empower young mothers in making informed dietary decisions.
Elsevier
Nsiah-Asamoah, C. N. A., et al. (2025). Nutrition Perspectives and Attitudes Among Ghanaian Pregnant Adolescents and Adolescent Mothers. Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior. doi.org/10.1016/j.jneb.2024.12.012.
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Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center is at the forefront of a new approach to cancer treatment, called CAR T-cell therapy. The little known, but highly promising technology breakthrough makes it possible for your body to fight cancer, often without invasive surgery, offering patients new hope for the possibility of long-term remission.
However, a new survey by Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center of 1,021 adults in the United States shows 65% are unfamiliar with the personalized cancer treatment option.
Fourteen years after he was first diagnosed with an aggressive form of lymphoma, 70-year-old Chris Vogelsang knew his cancer could return. Even though he underwent several rounds and types of treatments, including a stem cell transplant, his cancer returned twice. "My energy level was terrible. I was losing weight and had night sweats," said Vogelsang. "It turned out that I was 90 percent involved with lymphoma cells in my bone marrow, which is pretty significant. I asked, 'What do I have to do to get through it so I can get on with my life?'"
In 2022, his care team at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center presented CAR T-cell therapy as an option.
"As is oftentimes the case with these sometimes very stubborn and refractory types of cancer, the options became increasingly limited," said Renier Brentjens, MD, PhD, Deputy Director and Chair of Medicine for the Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center. "CAR T-cell therapy is a massive paradigm change of how we view and think of cancers and how we treat those cancers."
Dr. Brentjens is one of the developers of CAR T-cell therapy, and has built a team of leading scientists, engineers, oncologists and nurses dedicated to advancing these treatments, improving their safety and efficacy, and making them more widely available.
When I see patients in the clinic, I ask myself, 'What do I have available that can cure them of their disease? These patients have typically gone through a lot, and the upside of CAR T-cell therapy is that they can potentially get cured and go back to their lives as a father, a mother, a student-and that, to me, is just amazing."
Marco Davila, MD, PhD, Senior Vice President and Associate Director for Translational Research at Roswell Park
CAR T-cell therapy involves extracting T cells, a type of immune cells, from a patient's blood and then taking them into a specialized lab. From there, scientists engineer the cells to recognize and kill cancer cells. The cells are then duplicated by the millions and replaced in the patient's body through an intravenous (IV) infusion.
The cells are processed in Roswell Park's newly expanded Good Manufacturing Practice Engineering & Cell Manufacturing Facility (GEM), one of the largest facilities of its kind in the United States. It contains 20 sterile rooms across two buildings, marking a transformative step for cancer research and treatment.
"This facility helps to speed up the process, with fewer obstacles in terms of getting these cells produced and getting them into patients," said Dr. Davila. "Our goal is to reach a day soon where a patient with any type of cancer can have an investigational cell and gene therapy available directly."
The results of CAR T-cell therapy so far have been highly promising, with more than half of lymphoma patients achieving remission, and in certain types of leukemia, the remission rate reaching an impressive 90 percent. Vogelsang's scans have not shown signs of cancer in his system since March 2023. CAR T-cell therapy has granted him valuable years to enjoy with his wife, Karen, and their growing family, which will soon include 10 grandchildren. Chris has also been able to return to the tennis courts, where he plays weekly with friends.
"I feel great, and I'm back to the life that I knew before," said Chris. "To have doctors and scientists who can develop therapies is beyond words. There are people who will walk into Roswell Park today and get a diagnosis. If they know CAR T-cell therapy is available for their cancer and they know that the results have been great, it offers them hope, along with their families and friends."
As of now, CAR T-cell therapy is FDA-approved only for certain types of blood cancer, but scientists hope that it will one day treat solid tumor cancers as well. To learn more about the unique resources available at the only National Cancer Institute-designated comprehensive cancer center in Upstate New York, as well as the capabilities and expertise housed within the Roswell Park GMP Engineering & Cell Manufacturing Facility (GEM), visit roswellpark.org/gmp.
This survey was conducted online within the United States by Ipsos on the KnowledgePanel® from March 14 to 16, 2025, and surveyed 1,021 U.S. adults ages 18 and older. This poll is based on a nationally representative probability sample and has margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.3 percentage points at the 95 percent confidence level, for results based on the entire sample of adults. For complete survey methodology, including weighting variables and subgroup sample sizes, please contact: [email protected].
Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center
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Research indicates an urgent need for updated vision screening policies and safer infrastructure to protect aging drivers.
Older drivers with vision impairment are dramatically more likely to stop driving or avoid challenging road conditions—with severe cases four times more likely to give up driving altogether, a national University of Michigan study finds.
Driving is essential for the mobility, independence and overall well-being of older adults. Unlike previous generations, today's older adults are driving longer, taking more trips and spending more time on the road. However, vision-related issues can complicate driving.
Based on objective vision testing and nationally representative data, the research highlights a critical gap in road safety policies, as America's aging population drives more miles than ever before.
Among Americans aged 65 and older, 14% live with either distance vision impairment or contrast sensitivity issues. But the real shock comes in how these conditions reshape driving habits: More than 25% of older drivers with vision impairment stop driving within just one year—compared to only 12% of their peers with normal vision.
Those with moderate-to-severe distance vision impairment face the steepest consequences, becoming four times more likely to cease driving entirely and up to 4.5 times more likely to avoid situations like night driving or busy highways.
What we're seeing is a cascade effect. As vision worsens, drivers self-regulate—first avoiding complex routes, then quitting altogether. But with driving so tied to independence, these decisions often come too late, after near-misses or accidents.”
Shu Xu, postdoctoral fellow, U-M Institute for Social Research
The study challenges long-standing assumptions about vision and driving safety. While contrast sensitivity (the ability to distinguish objects against similar backgrounds) was previously considered the best predictor of driving risk, the data reveals that distance acuity—particularly when combined with contrast issues—is significantly more consequential.
“This isn't about which test is better,” said Joshua Ehrlich, ISR research associate professor and associate professor of ophthalmology and visual sciences. “It's about recognizing that many older adults have multiple overlapping vision deficits. Relying solely on standard eye charts at the DMV is like only checking one symptom of a disease.”
For families, the message is clear: Healthy vision is a key part of driving and subtle changes, like struggling with glare or missing exit signs, may indicate potential issues.
On the policy front, researchers suggest key reforms: “vision-aware” road designs (e.g., high-contrast signage) and driver rehabilitation programs to help individuals adjust to declining sight.
“We're failing older drivers by using 20th-century tests for 21st-century longevity,” Xu said. “A person who can't see a street sign at dusk shouldn't have their license revoked—we should improve the visibility of street signs.”
Researchers said this work makes a key contribution to the fields of transportation, vision and aging by addressing significant gaps in the existing literature with strong, nationally representative data.
“Additionally, we incorporate multiple objective vision tests, including both distance visual acuity and contrast sensitivity, making this the first nationally representative study to examine how concurrent vision impairments influence driving cessation and avoidance, offering a more comprehensive perspective,” Xu said.
The group is currently examining transportation alternatives for older adults with vision impairments, with initial data indicating that most lack access to usable transit options.
“When driving stops, isolation often begins,” Xu said. “We need systems that don't make people choose between safety and survival.”
University of Michigan
Xu, S., et al. (2025). Driving status, avoidance, and visual impairment among older adults in the United States. Journal of Transport & Health. doi.org/10.1016/j.jth.2025.102036.
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The Mount Sinai Fuster Heart Hospital's cardiology faculty practice has received the 2024 Human Experience Pinnacle of Excellence Award® from Press Ganey, one of the nation's leading patient experience organizations.
The faculty practice is located at The Mount Sinai Hospital and has several physicians with top expertise in cardiovascular care. It is one of 10 heart centers across the country, and the only one in New York, to receive this prestigious award placing it on the leading edge of patient-centered care. This faculty practice includes physicians who see patients for general cardiology, interventional cardiology, cardiac electrophysiology, heart failure, valvular heart disease, women's heart disease, adult congenital heart disease, vascular medicine, and cardiovascular genetics. This same faculty practice received the 2023 Human Experience Pinnacle of Excellence Award® from Press Ganey.
The Pinnacle of Excellence Award recognizes top-performing health care organizations for achieving and maintaining consistently high levels of excellence in patient experience. Winners are identified based on performance for three full years of data, from April 2021 to March 2024, for patient experience, employee engagement, physician engagement, or clinical quality performance.
This award further demonstrates our commitment to serving our patients and providing a seamless experience."
Valentin Fuster, MD, PhD, President of Mount Sinai Fuster Heart Hospital
"Mount Sinai raises the bar for cardiovascular care to redefine the health care experience," says Deepak L. Bhatt, MD, MPH, MBA, FACC, FAHA, FESC, MSCAI, Director of Mount Sinai Fuster Heart Hospital and the Dr. Valentin Fuster Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. As a winner of the Press Ganey Human Experience Pinnacle of Excellence Award®, Mount Sinai Fuster Heart Hospital has ranked in the top 5 percent of health care providers in delivering patient experience over a minimum of three years. Press Ganey works with more than 41,000 health care facilities in its mission to reduce patient suffering and enhance caregiver resilience to improve the overall safety, quality, and experience of care.
Mount Sinai Health System
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European research led by University College London (UCL), together with Amsterdam UMC and the University of Basel shows that a significant proportion of patients who suffer a stroke due to carotid artery narrowing can be treated with medication only. A risky carotid artery operation, currently still the standard treatment for many patients, may then no longer be necessary for this group of patients. This research, published today in the Lancet Neurology, may lead to the global guidelines for the treatment of these patients being adjusted.
In the Netherlands, about 2,000 people with carotid artery stenosis are operated on every year after they have had a stroke. 30 years ago, large studies showed that an operation, in which a narrowing in the carotid artery is removed, reduced the risk of a new stroke. As a result, this became the international standardised treatment. Since then, the medications these patients receive alongside their surgery – such as blood thinners, medication for cholesterol and high blood pressure – have improved significantly. Researchers, including Amsterdam UMC neurologist Paul Nederkoorn, investigated whether routine carotid artery operations are still necessary in all patients. An international research group of neurologists, vascular surgeons, and radiologists together designed the ECST study to answer this question.
For the vast majority of these patients, in the Netherlands perhaps up to about 75 percent, medication alone is probably sufficient to reduce the risk of another stroke. It is a lot nicer for the patient not to have to have surgery and it saves a lot of healthcare costs. We are now going to work closely with the vascular surgeons to see how we can best fit these results into the current protocols."
Paul Nederkoorn, Amsterdam UMC neurologist
Between 2012 and 2019, the researchers examined a group of 429 patients, spread over 30 centers in Europe and Canada. All patients had a low or average chance of having another stroke within 2 years of their initial treatment. Patients with a high risk of another stroke were not included in this study, because it was uncertain beforehand whether medication alone could be equally effective for them.
Patients were divided into two groups. Half received only medication, and the other half also received standard surgery. Two years after the start of their treatment, the patients were monitored for a number of outcomes. The groups were compared on the basis of how often new strokes had occurred, how many patients had had a heart attack and in how many cases patients had had a stroke unnoticed or where there was a high risk of a new stroke due to accumulations in the carotid artery. This could be seen on the MRI scans that the participating patients received after 2 years. The two groups scored equally across all metrics, leading the researchers to conclude that the operation is not necessary for this specific patient group in addition to medication.
Senior author, Emeritus Professor at UCL Martin Brown, said: "While further follow-up and additional trials are needed to confirm these findings, we recommend using the CAR score to identify patients with carotid narrowing who can be managed with optimised medical therapy alone.
"This approach emphasises personal assessment and intensive treatment of vascular risk factors, potentially sparing many patients from the discomfort and risks of carotid surgery or stenting.
"Additionally, this method could lead to substantial cost savings for health services."
Follow-up research should show which patients have such a high risk of another stroke that they still do need surgery in addition to the medication. New techniques for detailed imaging of the atherosclerotic plaque in the carotid artery allow for the selection of particularly high-risk patients much more accurately than before. The researchers think that in the future this will be the group that may still have to undergo surgery. In this way, every patient with a stroke due to carotid artery narrowing can receive a tailor-made risk-based treatment. That saves many patients a major operation and lowers healthcare costs. The researchers expect that the national and international guidelines will soon be adjusted.
"At Amsterdam UMC, we are working together with the vascular surgeons and those low- and medium-risk patients are no longer operated on as standard," concludes Nederkoorn
Amsterdam University Medical Center
Donners, S. J. A., et al. (2025). Optimised medical therapy alone versus optimised medical therapy plus revascularisation for asymptomatic or low-to-intermediate risk symptomatic carotid stenosis (ECST-2): 2-year interim results of a multicentre randomised trial. The Lancet Neurology. doi.org/10.1016/S1474-4422(25)00107-3.
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New research to be presented at this year's European Congress on Obesity (ECO 2025, Malaga, Spain, 11-14 May) and published in The Journal of Internal Medicine shows that, in survivors of breast cancer, having an unhealthy metabolic profile or so called 'metabolic syndrome' increases the risk of breast cancer recurrence by 69%, and subsequent breast cancer mortality by 83%. The study is by Dr Sixten Harborg, Department of Oncology, Aarhus University/Aarhus University Hospital, Aarhus, Denmark. and Department of Nutrition, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, MA, USA, and colleagues.
Metabolic syndrome was characterized according to the American Heart Association, which includes the presence of three out of five abnormal findings among the risk factors: high blood pressure, high triglycerides (blood fats), low high-density lipoprotein (HDL) or 'good' cholesterol, high fasting glucose (blood sugar), and central or abdominal obesity (a waist circumference of more than 35 inches for women).
Data were obtained from observational studies and randomized controlled trials that used survival statistics and reported survival ratios to investigate how the presence of metabolic syndrome at the time of breast cancer diagnosis is associated with survival. Study data from 42,135 breast cancer survivors were pooled using statistical modelling to assess the relationship between an unhealthy metabolic profile and survival of breast cancer. The pooled estimates revealed that breast cancer survivors who had metabolic syndrome at the time of their breast cancer diagnosis experienced a 69% increased risk of recurrence and an 83% increased risk of breast cancer mortality compared to breast cancer survivors without metabolic syndrome.
Breast cancer survivors with metabolic syndrome were found to be 57% more likely to experience a breast cancer-related event (recurrence, new cancer, or death) during follow-up than breast cancer survivors without metabolic syndrome.
Interestingly, the authors looked into potential differences in the association according to geographical location of the included studies origin continent and found that the association between poorer outcomes among breast cancer survivors with metabolic syndrome was consistent across Europe, North America and Asia.
The authors conclude: "Among breast cancer survivors, metabolic syndrome was associated with poorer breast cancer outcomes. The findings of this study emphasise the importance of metabolic screening for breast cancer survivors. Future research should focus on assessing how control of blood fats, reversing diabetes, and making healthy lifestyle choices could decrease the prevalence of metabolic syndrome in this population and ultimately enhance breast cancer survival."
They add that the precise mechanisms through which metabolic syndrome heightens the risk of breast cancer and its recurrence remain unclear, but are believed to involve chronic inflammation and hormonal imbalances.
They say: "One possible explanation posits that the excessive body fat associated with metabolic syndrome results in increased levels of circulating oestrogen, which may stimulate the growth of breast cancer cells. Additionally, adiposity may induce alterations in the tumour microenvironment that facilitate metastasis, or the spread of cancer. Chronic systemic inflammation, a hallmark of metabolic syndrome, may further contribute to tumour progression by promoting cancer cell survival and impairing immune surveillance. Although our study did not investigate the biological underpinnings of the observed associations, it is likely that multiple interacting mechanisms-primarily driven by obesity-induced molecular changes and chronic inflammation-underlie the link between metabolic syndrome and poor breast cancer outcomes."
European Association for the Study of Obesity
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A University of Virginia School of Medicine scientist and collaborators have developed a much-needed new tool to increase the efficiency of genomic research and accelerate the development of new ways to improve human health.
UVA researcher Nathan Sheffield, PhD, has spent four years developing a new data standard to ensure that scientists are comparing apples to apples when doing genomic analysis. This type of analysis helps researchers understand the operating instructions for our cells and see how those instructions are carried out. The resulting insights help us understand the workings of both healthy cells and unhealthy ones, pointing us to new ways to treat and prevent disease.
Genomics is a complex field that involves analyzing vast amounts of data. This work is complicated by the number of researchers involved and the varying ways they have named "reference sequences" over the years. Reference sequences are essential tools in genomic research, often representing genetic information compiled from multiple individuals. Researchers rely on these sequences to identify gene variations driving genetic diseases and to understand how diseased cells behave differently than normal cells.
Sheffield's new standard, called refget Sequence Collections, will streamline genomics research by letting scientists more quickly and efficiently identify reference sequences. This will help ensure that the results of a genomic analysis are right and repeatable. This, in turn, can accelerate medical breakthroughs and improve our understanding of the clinical relevance of genetic variation.
Imagine a class where each student had a different version of the book. Maybe the words are slightly different, the page numbers don't match, the chapters titles and numbers aren't the same and the study questions are in a different order. Those differences in the reference text would make it hard for the students to communicate with each other about what they're learning, even if the general ideas behind the reference are basically the same. If the students could identify each version of the text exactly, and also get detailed comparisons showing how they differ, that would make it much easier to communicate ideas and compare results. In the same way, refget Sequence Collections can tame the chaos of slightly different references, improving collaboration, sharing and reproducibility of research results based on genomic data."
Nathan Sheffield, PhD, UVA researcher
For scientists, trying to identify the exact reference sequence used for published results can be a major burden. It's time-consuming and involves guesswork – the type of toil you might assume could be done automatically but often is not. Sheffield's new tool addresses that problem, helping scientists eliminate drudge work while ensuring they are comparing their data to the same references.
The tool serves as an important addition to the more than 40 genomic-research resources developed by members of the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health (GA4GH). GA4GH is a not-for-profit that sets standards and develops policies to expand genomic data use within a human-rights framework.
GA4GH previously developed refget sequences to simplify reference-sequence identification by assigning unique identifiers to single genomic sequences. Sheffield's new tool takes the next step, assigning names to groups of reference sequences, such as all the DNA sequences that correspond to a whole reference genome.
This will bring much-needed organization to genomic research while also addressing long-standing challenges that have slowed scientific breakthroughs, Sheffield says. Now automation will free scientists from the important but tedious grind of hunting up reference sequences, allowing them to focus their attention on advancing discoveries that will benefit human health.
"I hope this standard helps solve some of the difficulty the scientific community has faced integrating genomic and epigenomic data," Sheffield said. "With a standardized, approved way to refer to references, we can accelerate the understanding we gain from integrating results across many experiments."
Work on the new tool was an international collaboration led by Sheffield; Timothé Cezard at EMBL's European Bioinformatics Institute; Andy Yates at EMBL's European Bioinformatics Institute; Sveinung Gundersen at ELIXIR Norway; Shakuntala Baichoo at Peter Munk Cardiac Centre-Artificial Intelligence; and Rob Davies at Wellcome Sanger Institute, with support from LSG Work Stream Manager Reggan Thomas at EMBL's European Bioinformatics Institute and Work Stream Co-Leads Oliver Hofmann at the University of Melbourne and Geraldine Van der Auwera at Seqera.
Sheffield holds appointments in the School of Medicine's Departments of Genome Sciences and Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics, as well as in UVA's School of Data Science and in UVA's Department of Biomedical Engineering, a joint program of the School of Medicine and the School of Engineering and Applied Science.
University of Virginia Health System
Posted in: Genomics | Device / Technology News | Medical Science News
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While ChatGPT-4 excels at multiple-choice medical exams, new research reveals its weaknesses in complex clinical decision-making, raising big questions about the future of AI-powered healthcare.
Study: Assessing ChatGPT 4.0's Capabilities in the United Kingdom Medical Licensing Examination (UKMLA): A Robust Categorical Analysis. Image Credit: Collagery / Shutterstock
In a recent study published in the journal Scientific Reports, researchers evaluated ChatGPT-4's capabilities on the United Kingdom Medical Licensing Assessment (UKMLA), highlighting both strengths and limitations across question formats and clinical domains.
Artificial intelligence (AI) continues to reshape healthcare and education. With the UKMLA soon becoming a standardized requirement for new doctors in the UK, determining whether AI models like ChatGPT-4 can meet clinical benchmarks is increasingly important. While AI shows promise, questions remain about its ability to replicate human reasoning, empathy, and contextual understanding in real-world care.
Distractors tripped up AI logic: In 8 cases, ChatGPT answered correctly without multiple-choice options but failed when presented with plausible wrong answers, exposing vulnerabilities to exam-style trick questions.
The researchers tested ChatGPT-4 on 191 multiple-choice questions from the Medical Schools Council's mock UKMLA exam. The questions spanned 24 clinical areas and were split across two 100-question papers. Nine image-based questions were excluded due to ChatGPT's inability to interpret images, which the authors note as a limitation.
Each question was tested with and without multiple-choice options. Questions were further categorized by reasoning complexity (single-step vs. multi-step) and clinical focus (diagnosis, management, pharmacology, etc.). Responses were labeled as accurate, indeterminate, or incorrect. Statistical analysis included chi-squared and t-tests.
Pharmacology answers lacked certainty: Nearly 35% of drug-related responses were marked “indeterminate” without answer prompts, reflecting struggles to confidently apply dosing or treatment protocols.
ChatGPT-4 demonstrated a broad knowledge base, especially in diagnostic tasks, and performed at or above the level expected of medical graduates in structured assessments. However, it struggled with contextual clinical reasoning, especially in open-ended or multi-step management scenarios. This suggests the model may support early-stage clinical assessments but lacks the nuance required for autonomous decision-making.
Limitations include a lack of training on UK-specific clinical guidelines, which may have influenced performance on specific UKMLA questions. Furthermore, "hallucinations", fluent but incorrect outputs, pose a risk in clinical use. Ethical concerns include potential depersonalization of care and clinician deskilling due to overreliance on AI.
ChatGPT-4 performs well on structured medical licensing questions, particularly those centered on diagnosis. However, accuracy drops significantly in open-ended and multi-step clinical reasoning, especially in management and pharmacology. While LLMs show promise for supporting education and early-stage clinical support, their current limitations underscore the need for cautious integration, further training on clinical datasets, and ethical safeguards.
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Vijay holds a Ph.D. in Biotechnology and possesses a deep passion for microbiology. His academic journey has allowed him to delve deeper into understanding the intricate world of microorganisms. Through his research and studies, he has gained expertise in various aspects of microbiology, which includes microbial genetics, microbial physiology, and microbial ecology. Vijay has six years of scientific research experience at renowned research institutes such as the Indian Council for Agricultural Research and KIIT University. He has worked on diverse projects in microbiology, biopolymers, and drug delivery. His contributions to these areas have provided him with a comprehensive understanding of the subject matter and the ability to tackle complex research challenges.
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Researchers at UCL have tested a new scoring system to measure the risk of stroke in patients with narrowed arteries due to atherosclerosis, which could prevent unnecessary surgeries and stents.
Atherosclerosis is a condition where the blood vessels become narrowed and hardened due to the buildup of plaque, including in the carotid arteries, which carry blood from the heart to the brain. Atherosclerosis can lead to serious health problems like strokes and heart attacks.
Atherosclerosis is a very common condition that can affect anyone, particularly those over the age of 65, smokers and people with a high cholesterol, hypertension or family history of heart or circulatory diseases. It is estimated that atherosclerosis affecting the carotid artery causes up to 20% of strokes.
Currently, many patients undergo surgery or stenting to prevent strokes resulting from atherosclerosis. However, these procedures also carry risks of causing strokes and other serious complications at the time of the intervention.
In the new study, published in The Lancet Neurology and in collaboration with colleagues at the Amsterdam University Medical Centre and the University of Basel, researchers found that using the Carotid Artery Risk (CAR) scoring system can offer a safer alternative, by identifying patients who can be effectively treated with a combination of medications and lifestyle changes tailored to their individual risk factors (otherwise known as optimised medical therapy).
The CAR system was developed by researchers at UCL and the University of Oxford.
Senior author, Emeritus Professor Martin Brown (UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology), said: "While further follow-up and additional trials are needed to confirm these findings, we recommend using the CAR score to identify patients with carotid narrowing who can be managed with optimised medical therapy alone.
"This approach emphasises personal assessment and intensive treatment of vascular risk factors, potentially sparing many patients from the discomfort and risks of carotid surgery or stenting.
"Additionally, this method could lead to substantial cost savings for health services."
The new research paper, which was partly funded by the Stroke Association, evaluated the effectiveness of the CAR score by testing it in a randomised clinical trial involving 428 patients across 30 centres in the UK, Europe and Canada.
All patients involved in the trial were over the age of 18 and had a significant narrowing of their carotid arteries, which was picked up before it had caused symptoms or after it had caused a minor stroke.
Those with symptoms were selected using their CAR score – which takes into account factors such as the percentage of narrowing in the carotid artery and medical history – to determine who had a low to intermediate risk of stroke over the next five years and could be included in the trial. Patients with a high score were not suitable for the trial and were recommended immediate surgery or stenting.
The patients in the trial were then divided into two groups, with one group receiving optimised medical therapy alone, and the other group receiving both optimised medical therapy and additional carotid surgery or stenting.
Optimized medical therapy included a low cholesterol diet, target-adjusted cholesterol-lowering medication, treatment to lower blood pressure, antithrombotic therapy (a treatment that helps prevent blood clots from forming or growing), and regular checks to adjust the medication as necessary.
The patients were monitored through regular visits, telephone calls, and brain scans to detect strokes.
The researchers found that, over the first two years, patients in the trial who were treated with optimised medical therapy alone had very low rates of recurrent strokes and heart attacks. Those who underwent additional surgery or stenting did not experience significant benefits, considering the associated risks of these procedures.
Atherosclerosis is a common condition, and a major risk factor for heart disease and stroke. Whilst medical therapy is the first line of treatment, many of those who have medical therapy then need surgery or stenting which can lead to complications including an increased risk of stroke, and other unpleasant side effects.
The CAR risk score offers the opportunity to take away the downsides of surgery and stenting by using medical therapy alone as well as combining medical therapy with surgery. The Stroke Association is pleased to have funded this trial which indicates that some people with atherosclerosis could see the same benefits from medication and lifestyle changes that previously required surgery.
The medical therapies used to reduce the risk of stroke from atherosclerosis work by treating risk factors for stroke, including high cholesterol and raised blood pressure, which we are putting at the heart of our recommendations for the Government's 10 Year Health Plan.
Whilst we welcome the results of this study, we note the need for more research to confirm or refute these findings, so we look forward to further developments."
Dr. Louise Flanagan, Head of Research at the Stroke Association
The research was funded in the UK by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), the Stroke Association and the Leeds Neurology Foundation, and in Europe by the Swiss National Science Foundation and the Dutch Organisation for Knowledge and Innovation in Health, Healthcare and Well-Being.
University College London
Donners, S. J. A., et al. (2025). Optimised medical therapy alone versus optimised medical therapy plus revascularisation for asymptomatic or low-to-intermediate risk symptomatic carotid stenosis (ECST-2): 2-year interim results of a multicentre randomised trial. The Lancet Neurology. doi.org/10.1016/S1474-4422(25)00107-3.
Posted in: Medical Procedure News | Medical Research News | Medical Condition News
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A new research paper was published in Aging (Aging-US) Volume 17, Issue 3, on March 12, 2025, titled "DNA methylation entropy is a biomarker for aging."
Researchers Jonathan Chan, Liudmilla Rubbi, and Matteo Pellegrini from the University of California, Los Angeles, led a study that discovered a new way to measure changes in DNA that can help predict a person's age. This method focuses on how random certain chemical tags on DNA become over time. The team compared this new measurement, called methylation entropy, to existing methods and found it performed just as well-or even better. These findings support the idea that changes in our epigenetic information are closely linked to aging and could offer new tools for studying age-related diseases.
The study focused on DNA methylation, a process where chemical marks are added to DNA and help control which genes are turned on or off. Scientists have traditionally measured average methylation levels to estimate biological age using "epigenetic clocks." This study, however, takes a different approach. The researchers used buccal swabs (cells from inside the cheek) from 100 individuals between ages 7 and 84 and applied targeted bisulfite sequencing techniques to measure methylation entropy across 3,000 regions of the genome.
Entropy in this context reflects how disordered or varied the methylation patterns are at certain sites on the DNA. The researchers discovered that as people age, the entropy of methylation at many locations changes in a reproducible way. Sometimes it increases, reflecting more random patterns, and sometimes it decreases, showing more uniformity. These shifts are not always tied to how much methylation is happening, which suggests entropy provides new information beyond what traditional methods can offer.
To test how well this new metric could predict age, the team used both statistical and machine learning models. They found that methylation entropy predicted age as accurately as traditional methods, and the best results came from combining entropy with other measurements like average methylation and a method called CHALM. These combined models were able to estimate age with an average error of just five years.
"[…] methylation entropy is measuring different properties of a locus compared to mean methylation and CHALM, and that loci can become both more or less disordered with age, independently of whether the methylation is increasing or decreasing with age."
This research supports the growing theory that aging is partly caused by a gradual loss of epigenetic information-the biological "instructions" that help keep our cells working properly. This insight also connects with recent studies suggesting that restoring this lost information might reverse some signs of aging. While more research is needed to study methylation entropy in other tissues, this work points to a more precise and powerful way to measure biological aging, which could influence the future of aging-related treatments and therapies.
Aging-US
Chan, J., et al. (2025). DNA methylation entropy is a biomarker for aging. Aging. doi.org/10.18632/aging.206220.
Posted in: Medical Science News | Medical Research News
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A new second-tier soccer league says it has 15 committed teams and attracted a variety of investors ahead of its inaugural season next year.
A new second-tier U.S. women's soccer league that is launching next year says it has attracted interest from numerous investors, including an Ohio group led by movie executives that will own a founding team and invest in the league itself.
WPSL Pro aims to bridge a “critical player development gap” in the U.S. women's soccer system, according to a Wednesday statement announcing its planned 2026 launch. It will sit just beneath the two Division I U.S. women's soccer leagues, the National Women's Soccer League and USL Super League, which launched last year.
The new league already has 15 committed teams across markets including Atlanta, Dallas, North Carolina, New Jersey, Southern California, and more. It expects to have up to 20 teams when its inaugural season begins in 2026, and each team will pay a $1 million franchise fee, a person familiar with the matter confirmed to Front Office Sports.
The most recent team to commit is backed by Cleveland Soccer Group, which was founded by executives for independent film distribution company Gravitas Ventures. CSG counts as advisory board members former professional soccer players, including MLS veteran defender Justin Morrow and ex-Paris-Saint German goalkeeper Arianna Criscione.
In addition to backing one of the founding teams, CSG will invest in the league itself, and is also planning a new $50 million, 10,000-seat stadium in downtown Cleveland. That arena is expected to open next year and will be the home stadium for both the new WPSL Pro team and CSG's MLS Next Pro men's team. (MLS Next Pro is a Division III league within the U.S. soccer system that launched in 2022.)
CSG's involvement in WPSL Pro comes after a failed effort to score a NWSL expansion team last year. It ultimately lost out to a Denver-based group that won with a record-breaking expansion fee of $110 million.
WPSL Pro says that “at the heart” of its business model is the idea that “what's good for the athlete is good for business.” With that in mind, it intends to employ a profit-sharing model between clubs and athletes. Further specifics of the profit-sharing model were not disclosed, but WPSL Pro will not be the first organization in the realm of women's sports to try a revenue-sharing model. Athletes Unlimited, which was founded in 2020 and today operates women's softball, volleyball and basketball leagues, shares profits with its athletes. Unrivaled, the upstart 3-on-3 women's basketball league, tried a similarly novel approach, enticing athletes to participate by handing out equity stakes to the players it recruited for its first season.
WPSL Pro says that for early investors, the new league “represents an opportunity to get in at the ground floor of the next major growth engine in women's sports.”
Committed markets include Austin, Wichita, and Southern California.
A representative for WPSL Pro did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and a representative for CSG declined to comment.
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sportsFC Dallas
By Abraham NudelstejerStaff Writer
Staff Writer
The concept is simple, and the message is clear: a cowboy flipping in the air to kick a soccer ball with the Dallas skyline in the background, featuring the patriotic colors of red, white and blue, with stars marking the ball's trajectory.
The official FIFA World Cup 2026 Dallas Host City Poster was unveiled Thursday at an event at Klyde Warren Park, attended by representatives of the local organizing committee and the illustration creator, Matt Cliff.
“When I was approached about doing this, I realized the importance of getting it right for the world,” said Cliff, a Fort Worth resident. “Knowing that this is going to be viewed in other countries and by soccer fans all over the world is mind-boggling.”
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The World Cup will be played next summer in 16 cities in the United States, Mexico and Canada.
AT&T Stadium in Arlington, home to the Dallas Cowboys, will host the most World Cup matches, with nine total.
It will be the first time that 48 teams participate in the tournament.
Cliff said drawing the World Cup poster took him just a day because he knew immediately the concept he wanted to express in his work.
“I told my wife, ‘you're not going to see me for 12 hours.' I went into my dark cave, drew, and here we are,” Cliff said.
Each of the 2026 World Cup host cities created a poster to communicate to the world what their cities most represent.
In Dallas' case, the illustration combines the iconic image of a Texan cowboy in the middle of a modern, vibrant and cosmopolitan city.
“The FIFA World Cup Poster isn't just about design, although it is a wonderful design,” said North Texas FWC Organizing Committee Chief Marketing Officer Noelle LeVeaux. “It's really about storytelling. It's about capturing the heart of a community in a single image that will live on long after the last whistle blows.”
The World Cup draw will be held in December, and according to several reports, FIFA is planning to hold the event in Las Vegas.
So far, seven teams have secured their spots in the 2026 World Cup. Along with the three host nations, Japan, New Zealand, Argentina and Iran have all punched their tickets to the tournament.
At the Dallas Poster unveiling ceremony, Monica Paul, President of the North Texas FIFA World Cup 26 Organizing Committee, was pleased with the artwork that will represent Dallas around the world.
“I'm very excited about the poster. Matt did a fantastic job”, Paul said. “The design really incorporates our entire region from Dallas to Fort Worth and everywhere in between. This is another step closer to the World Cup in 2026.”
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News reporter with more than 25 years of experience in media outlets. He arrived at The Dallas Morning News in January 2020 and has held different positions for the DMN and Al Día. He has received several awards as a reporter and editor, including the Texas APME Awards and the José Martí Award.
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Carlo Ancelotti's future at Real Madrid now hangs by a thread following their UEFA Champions League exit at the hands of Arsenal at the quarter-final stage.
In fact, reports today suggested that the Italian could move on as early as the end of the month soon after the Copa del Rey against Barcelona on April 26.
Even if that does not turn out to be the case, there is a big possibility that Ancelotti might not be in charge of the team in the summer when Real Madrid travel to the USA for the FIFA Club World Cup.
As such, SPORT now reports that Santiago Solari could step in as Real Madrid's interim manager should Ancelotti be dismissed ahead of the FIFA Club World Cup, which will be held in mid-June in the United States.
Currently serving as the club's Director of Football, Solari would be tasked with preparing the team for the tournament if Ancelotti's departure is confirmed following the end of the La Liga season, scheduled to conclude between 24 and 25 May.
Real Madrid are set to debut in the Club World Cup on 18 June against Saudi side Al Hilal, meaning Solari would have around 24 to 25 days to work with the squad before their opening match.
However, one complication is the international break immediately after La Liga ends, during which a significant portion of the squad will be away with their national teams.
Still, Solari's familiarity with the squad and the club's structure would ease the transition and allow him to hit the ground running.
This would not be his first experience in the role. In October 2018, Solari stepped in after Julen Lopetegui was sacked, although his time in charge was short-lived.
He was dismissed on 11 March 2019 after a disastrous week: elimination by Barcelona in the Copa del Rey, another El Clasico defeat in La Liga, and a shock Champions League exit against Ajax.
Should he be appointed, Solari would lead the team until a permanent manager is found, although there is still a possibility the club secures a new coach before the Club World Cup begins, meaning he may not even take charge of a match.
Bayern Munich have been urged to sign a back-up to striker Harry Kane after their elimination from the Champions League.
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DALLAS- American Airlines (AA) has been named the Official North American Airline Supplier for the FIFA World Cup 26™, which will take place across Canada, Mexico, and the United States.
The airline joins forces with Qatar Airways (QR), FIFA's Global Airline Partner, to offer a unified travel experience for players and fans across the continent.
As part of this landmark collaboration, American Airlines will help streamline domestic travel between FIFA World Cup 26™ Host Cities such as Dallas (DFW), Los Angeles (LAX), Toronto (YYZ), and Mexico City (MEX).
Meanwhile, international arrivals will remain under the purview of Qatar Airways, ensuring a seamless travel framework.
American Airlines' (AA) designation as the Official North American Airline Supplier highlights its strategic role in one of the world's largest sporting events.
With over 2,200 daily flights across North America, AA is well-positioned to connect fans, officials, and teams efficiently to the 16 host cities.
This partnership allows AAdvantage® members and Qatar Airways Privilege Club Avios users to redeem miles for match tickets, adding value for frequent flyers.
Additionally, sweepstakes and promotional opportunities are being rolled out through AA's digital channels, offering US residents aged 18 and above a chance to win tickets, including for the final match.
The collaboration with Qatar Airways, FIFA's Global Airline Partner through 2030, ensures comprehensive international connectivity. Qatar Airways retains exclusive international flight rights, while American Airlines focuses on domestic travel within North America.
This synergy between the two oneworld® alliance partners will provide a seamless travel experience for international fans arriving in North America and for domestic travel between host cities like Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, and Miami.
Caroline Clayton, Chief Marketing Officer and Senior Vice President of Communications at American Airlines, expressed enthusiasm about the partnership: “We are proud to partner with FIFA and look forward to connecting fans to all FIFA World Cup 26™ matches.
As the home team for this historic event, we look forward to flying fans across North America to experience the passion, energy, and diversity of the beautiful game.”
Romy Gai, FIFA Chief Business Officer, highlighted the strategic importance of American Airlines: “Having American Airlines on board as an Official Supplier further enhances our ability to deliver an exceptional FIFA World Cup in 2026.
Their unmatched domestic network and deep connection to the American public make them a great fit for a tournament that will captivate millions across North America.”
Thierry Antinori, Chief Commercial Officer at Qatar Airways, also commented: “As the Official Global Airline Partner of FIFA and the FIFA World Cup 2026™, we are proud to play a central role in bringing fans from across the globe to this highly anticipated tournament.
With American Airlines joining as the Official North American Airline Supplier and oneworld® partner, we believe that, together, through our expansive networks and world-class loyalty programs, we can offer millions of travelers a seamless and rewarding journey to the FIFA World Cup 2026™.”
The FIFA World Cup 26™ will be the largest in history, featuring:
This tournament will showcase the world's best soccer talent and highlight the cultural diversity and sporting passion of North America.
The host cities include Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Houston, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle, Toronto, Vancouver, Mexico City, Guadalajara, and Monterrey.
The final match will be held at MetLife Stadium in New York/New Jersey on July 19, 2026.
With American Airlines at the forefront of transportation logistics, fans can expect a well-organized and memorable experience.
The airline's centennial anniversary in 2026 aligns with this historic event, further emphasizing its commitment to connecting people and celebrating global unity through sport.
American Airlines and Qatar Airways are enhancing the fan experience through their loyalty programs. AAdvantage® members and Qatar Airways Privilege Club members will have the opportunity to redeem points for match tickets starting later in 2025.
This initiative not only rewards loyal customers but also makes the tournament more accessible to dedicated fans.
The sweepstakes, which began on April 17, 2025, allow AAdvantage® members to enter for a chance to win tickets to the final match, adding an extra layer of excitement.
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Kevin Derby is a seasoned US-based journalist with a passion for uncovering the truth and telling compelling stories. With over a decade of experience in the field, Kevin has covered a wide range of topics from breaking news and human-interest stories and in-depth investigative reports. His dedication to journalistic integrity and his keen eye for detail have earned him a reputation as a trusted voice in the media.
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Programming note: Watch the full interview with FIFA president Gianni Infantino on CNN's “World Sport” airing on CNN International at 8:30 a.m. ET and again at 5:30 p.m. ET.
FIFA president Gianni Infantino told CNN Sports the governing body is keeping player health at the forefront as the soccer calendar expands with more intense summer competition during what is usually the sport's off-season.
With the worldwide players union filing legal claims over the expanded Club World Cup this summer and next year's World Cup, Infantino told CNN that FIFA is “always concerned” about the soccer calendar and highlighted the Arsène Wenger-led player welfare task force the governing body announced in October.
“(He) is one of the top, top coaches, managers of soccer in the world and he's analyzing all of that when it comes to the FIFA Club World Cup,” Infantino said.
“It is a competition which takes place once every four years. The winner plays seven games – which is like one game and a half, almost, more a year – so it doesn't have a big impact.
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Why soccer players are demanding change to a calendar that has left them ‘at the limit'
“What happens in world soccer is that there are many games for very few teams, very few players. Those who reach maybe the final stages of all competitions – which again is very rare because usually a team wins maybe one competition but doesn't win them all – so, all in all, it balances itself out quite a bit.
“But we're very careful about the calendar and about the health of the players. I mean, we want to do everything for the players to be in the best conditions to perform in the best way … and that's what many players tell me as well, what you want is to play rather than to train, right?”
The first edition of the newly expanded and reorganized Club World Cup takes place this summer in the United States from June 15 to July 13 as something of a warm-up event for next year's World Cup, hosted in the US, Canada and Mexico.
This year's tournament will feature 32 teams compared to seven from previous editions, plus group and knockout stages.
In October, FIFPRO filed a complaint to the European Commission over what it describes as an “oversaturated international football calendar” that “risks player safety and wellbeing,” among other concerns.
That complaint came after June's legal claim against FIFA's decision to “unilaterally” set the sport's calendar, which includes the expanded World Cup and Club World Cup. The October complaint also said FIFA faces a “conflict of interest as a competition organizer and governing body.”
The previous format – which hasn't been removed from the calendar but renamed as the FIFA Intercontinental Cup – was a single-elimination, knockout tournament that took place over just 10 days compared to a month.
Of course, there has to be a shiny new trophy up for grabs for this new glitzy tournament – if the $1 billion dollar prize pot wasn't enough motivation for the players.
Infantino describes the new trophy, which uses a key to open up from a flat plate into something that resembles a gold-plated gyroscope, as the “coolest trophy in all of sports.”
Infantino adds that the expanded version of the tournament will allow fans to see more of the world's best players in one place, with Vinícius Jr., Kylian Mbappé, Lionel Messi, Erling Haaland, Rodri, Jude Bellingham and Harry Kane, among others, set to take part.
Plus, he says, it will help settle the debate between fans about which team can call itself the best.
“We created a new World Cup because soccer, the way it's organized, on one side you have the countries and on the other side you have the teams, the clubs,” Infantino explains. “We have a World Cup for the countries, and we didn't have a World Cup for the clubs.
“And we thought it's actually quite good to know which team is the best in the world. When you win the Super Bowl, right, you are the world champion because you are the best in the world, but in soccer, this doesn't exist.
“So we created a new Club World Cup, the World Cup for the 32 best teams in the world, from Europe, from South America, North America, Africa, Asia, everywhere in the world. And we will determine in 63 games, it's 63 Super Bowls in one month … which of those teams is the best in the world.”
© 2025 Cable News Network. A Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All Rights Reserved. CNN Sans ™ & © 2016 Cable News Network.
American Airlines has announced that it is partnering with FIFA, becoming the official North American Airline Supplier for the FIFA World Cup 2026, which will take place in the summer of 2026.
On April 17, 2025, American Airlines announced that it has secured air travel rights for the FIFA World Cup 2026 across Canada, Mexico and the United States to deliver a “seamless travel experience in North America.”
American Airlines plans to provide more than 2,200 daily flights to the cities hosting the FIFA World Cup 2026™. The airline will also partner with Qatar Airways, which is the Global Airline Partner for FIFA, to connect fans to all the upcoming matches.
“We look forward to flying fans across North America to experience the passion, energy and diversity of the beautiful game,” said Caroline Clayton, Chief Marketing Officer and Senior Vice President of Communications of American Airlines.
“Together [with American Airlines], through our expansive networks, we can offer millions of travelers a seamless and rewarding journey to the FIFA World Cup 2026,” added Qatar Airways Chief Commercial Officer Thierry Antinori.
The 2026 tournament will take place in Canada, Mexico, and the United States, and will feature 48 teams, three host countries and 16 host cities. It will consist of 104 matches and is expected to be the most attended and watched sporting event in history.
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Carlo Ancelotti is expected to leave Real Madrid after their catastrophic Champions League exit to Arsenal, per reports.
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Florentino Perez is paying a heavy price for failing to buy a replacement for the incredibly influential German, who retired last summer
Real Madrid fans turned up at Santiago Bernabeu on Wednesday anticipating another miracle. What they got was a mess, the inevitable result of Florentino Perez's negligence.
Madrid spent the majority of the evening bombarding the Arsenal area with crosses and long balls but, as a bitterly frustrated Thibaut Courtois pointed out, it was an exercise in futility, given Joselu wasn't there to get on the end of them.
But then, it wasn't as if Madrid had the guile in midfield to pick holes in the Gunners' backline. Indeed, Joselu wasn't the only member of last year's double-winners who was sorely missed across both legs of the humiliating 5-1 aggregate loss to Arsenal. Toni Kroos was also conspicuous by his absence - because Perez failed to replace him, too, and that's proven an even bigger oversight on the part of the president.
With the great Luka Modric now well past his best, Madrid no longer have a single player capable of dictating the play or opening up defences in the same way that the Croat and Kroos did for a decade. Truth be told, the whole make-up of the midfield looks wrong, with Aurelien Tchouameni clearly not good enough to serve as the kind of No.6 that a team like Madrid requires, and Eduardo Camavinga still a work in progress. Even Jude Bellingham's free role looks like a luxury Real can ill-afford as those stationed in front of him do so little from a defensive perspective.
It's clear, then, that Madrid need to belatedly find another Kroos - or the next best thing - if they are to reclaim their place at the summit of European football. Below, GOAL runs through six possible solutions to Real's defensive midfield problem...
Following a crushing defeat to Arsenal in the Champions League last eight, frustrated Real Madrid fans are demanding Carlo Ancelotti is sacked.
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07:29 EDT 17 Apr 2025, updated
07:29 EDT 17 Apr 2025
By
KIERAN GILL
Enzo Maresca will get to assess Andrey Santos in person this summer as the Strasbourg starlet will play for Chelsea at the Club World Cup.
The 20-year-old Brazilian has enjoyed an excellent loan with the French sister club, though it is not yet fully confirmed where he will be spending next season.
However, Mail Sport can confirm the midfielder will have his chance to impress Maresca and Co in two months' time as he will be selected to join the first-team squad in the United States for the FIFA tournament.
It is entirely possible and perhaps even likely that Santos, who speaks perfect English, will then stay with Chelsea for the forthcoming 2025-26 campaign after performing so superbly for Strasbourg throughout 2024-25.
But sources have described the situation as fluid and confirmation is only expected once Chelsea and Strasbourg get the opportunity to decide together at the end of the season. Both BlueCo sides are concentrating on their respective run-ins currently as they strive for the highest form of European football available to them.
Chelsea signed Santos at the age of 18 from Brazilian side Vasco da Gama.
After being recalled from a loan with Premier League Nottingham Forest in January 2024, he was sent to Strasbourg, where he has become a star in Ligue 1.
He is the top-tackling midfielder in French top-flight football this season, and also the second-top scorer from midfield.
The Club World Cup will begin on June 16 for Chelsea, although they do not yet know who they will facing after Club Leon were kicked out of the Club World Cup due to a multi-club conflict with another participating side.
They will then face Flamengo on June 20, and ES Tunis on June 24.
sportsFC Dallas
By José Sánchez CórdovaAudience Sports Producer
Audience Sports Producer
It's been a big week for American Airlines.
The Fort Worth-based airline announced Tuesday that members of its AAdvantage loyalty program would have access to free Wi-Fi on flights starting in 2026. Now, American is joining forces with FIFA to become the official North American Airline Supplier of the 2026 World Cup.
American, which currently offers more than 2,200 daily flights to the tournament's 16 host cities, secured air travel rights across Canada, Mexico and the United States for the World Cup. According to a news release from American, FIFA's current global airline partner Qatar Airways will retain exclusive flight rights for other international flights and the two airlines will collaborate to offer travel experiences for players, fans and other stakeholders throughout the tournament.
“We are proud to partner with FIFA and look forward to connecting fans to all FIFA World Cup 26 matches,” Caroline Clayton, American Airlines' Chief Marketing Officer and Senior Vice President of Communications, said in a Thursday release. “As the home team for this historic event, we look forward to flying fans across North America to experience the passion, energy and diversity of the beautiful game.”
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Through this partnership, American will promote various offers and opportunities surrounding the World Cup, including a chance for members of its loyalty program to win World Cup match tickets and redeem their miles for access to tournament matches.
East Texas native and joint-all-time U.S. men's national team top-scorer Clint Dempsey said partnerships like this one between FIFA and American Airlines are part of the tournament's efforts to grow soccer and connect more people to the World Cup.
“You want this to make the most impact possible,” Dempsey said about the World Cup. “You want this to feel big, and by having official sponsors like American Airlines, you get that feeling.”
The partnership furthers the connection between North Texas and the world's largest sporting event. AT&T Stadium in Arlington, the home of the Dallas Cowboys, is slated to host nine matches during the tournament, the most of any venue. At least five D-FW locations have also been identified as potential sites for team base camps during the tournament.
Beyond the sporting impact, the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center in downtown Dallas was recently selected as FIFA's International Broadcast Center for the World Cup. The convention center will host the main broadcast feed for all tournament games and temporarily bring about 2,000 media members covering the World Cup to town.
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José Sánchez Córdova is an audience sports producer. He has previously written about business, art, entertainment and food for The Dallas Morning News. A recent graduate from the University of Notre Dame, he is originally from Guaynabo, Puerto Rico.
A review of the back pages across the continent as Arsenal convincingly beat Real Madrid in the Champions League quarter-finals.
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“America welcomes the world,” FIFA President Gianni Infantino said Wednesday in Washington. “That's how it has been, is and will be.”
The head of international soccer's governing body said Wednesday that he has received assurances from the White House that, despite increased scrutiny of visitors to the country since President Donald Trump's return to office, fans from abroad will be welcomed for the 2026 World Cup.
“America is a welcoming country,” FIFA President Gianni Infantino said during a promotional visit to Washington for this summer's Club World Cup. “America welcomes the world. Fans from all over the world will come. … They will be welcome here. America welcomes the world. That's how it has been, is and will be.”
After meeting with Trump last month in Washington, Infantino met with Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel last week in Miami to discuss security and potential issues involving the hundreds of thousands of fans from abroad expected to attend the men's tournament in the United States, Mexico and Canada.
On Tuesday, Infantino discussed matters with Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy.
FIFA also will stage the largest World Cup in history — 48 teams, up from 32 — in 11 U.S. cities, plus three in Mexico and two in Canada. With three countries involved, many fans are expected to cross international borders to see their team play.
Since Trump's inauguration, some international travelers have reported problems entering the country amid the White House's immigration crackdown.
In a brief interaction with reporters Wednesday, Infantino said, “It is very important we have the engagement of the different government agencies to make sure that security is guaranteed, that fans can travel to the U.S. and around the U.S., that transportation is working perfectly, that the world will be welcomed.”
In early March, Trump signed an executive order establishing a White House task force to coordinate federal agencies in “planning, organizing and executing” the Club World Cup and the World Cup. Trump will chair the task force, while Vice President JD Vance will serve as vice chair. An executive director managing daily operations will be appointed.
“We got all these guarantees from the government, who is very, very engaged to make sure this Club World Cup is a huge success because this will pave the path as well for next year,” said Infantino, who has visited the United States frequently in recent months. FIFA, a Zurich-based organization, opened a Miami office last year.
Featuring 32 pro teams from around the world, the Club World Cup will take place from June 14 to July 13 at 12 U.S. venues, including Audi Field, which will stage three first-round matches: Juventus (Italy) vs. Al Ain (United Arab Emirates) on June 18, Red Bull Salzburg (Austria) vs. Al Hilal (Saudi Arabia) on June 22 and Al Ain vs. Wydad (Morocco) on June 26.
FIFA has not disclosed ticket sales, but Infantino's multi-city tour suggests they are slow. The visit to Washington was arranged on short notice following visits to Philadelphia and Atlanta. FIFA recently began using World Cup access as a way to boost Club World Cup tickets, offering the opportunity to buy 2026 seats by purchasing Club World Cup packages.
“Come to the games!” Infantino said to reporters. The 55-year-old native of Switzerland led the charge to expand the Club World Cup — it has featured seven teams for most of its 25-year history — and conduct it over a month in the summer instead of 11 days in December. This year's event features defending champion Manchester City, Real Madrid and Lionel Messi's Inter Miami.
“I don't have any concerns about ticket sales,” Infantino told reporters in Philadelphia last week. “We'll have full stadiums in America.”
FIFA pledged $1 million to each of the tournament's host cities to invest in soccer-related projects. How that money will be distributed, however, has not been detailed.
Washington was selected for the club tournament after being rejected for the World Cup. Initially considered a sure bet because it is the nation's capital, Washington merged its bid with Baltimore after FIFA expressed concerns about Northwest Stadium in Landover, Maryland. Despite M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore headlining the joint bid, the effort failed. The closest World Cup venue to the D.C. area is in Philadelphia.
Joao Felix could be set for a stunning return to Benfica in time for the Club World Cup. The Portugal international is currently on loan at AC Milan having failed to secure a starting spot in Enzo Maresca's side after completing his Chelsea transfer in the summer.
Felix has failed to make his mark at the San Siro thus far and offered just one assist in Serie A since arriving in Italy earlier this year. The 25-year-old has produced eight goals in 33 appearances in all during 2024/25 with half of those coming in the Europa Conference League.
The forward's indifferent form has not peturbed Benfica's interest in facilitating a return for the player who started his professional career with the club. Felix departed Benfica in 2019 still a teenager when La Liga side Atletico Madrid agreed a mammoth £113million deal, amid interest from Manchester City and Real Madrid.
Signing a seven-year deal, Felix became the fifth most expensive transfer of all-time. But the starlet has yet to live up to that billing despite showing flashes of his quality for Atletico, Chelsea and AC Milan.
Reports in Portugal claim that Benfica want to take Felix on loan despite his struggles, and would like to see their Club World Cup campaign boosted by his presence. It would make the third time Benfica have attempted to secure Felix's return having failed to sign him in the two previous summers.
The Club World Cup gets underway in June, and FIFA have opened the transfer window earlier to allow teams the opportunity to sign players in time for the tournament. Players will be permitted to register for the competition between June 1 and June 10 before a second period is open from June 27 and July 3, in time for the tournament's knockout stage.
Benfica face Bayern Munich, Auckland City and Boca Juniors, but could face Chelsea later in the competition that kicks off on June 14. The Blues have been matched up with Esperance de Tunis and Flamengo, and await their third opponent after Club Leon were expelled.
Felix has already admitted that he plans to return to Benfica in his career. On an episode of Benfica Play in 2020, as reported by Mundo Deportivo, he said: "Now I see how happy I was at Benfica. I plan to return one day and leave my mark on the club."
Former AC Milan and Chelsea defender Marcel Desailly believes that despite his talent, Felix has struggled to find the correct environment to flourish. The Frenchman reckons a move to Paris Saint-Germain may be the most suitable destination for him to realise his ability.
Speaking to Milan Presse , Desailly said, "Joao Felix is a player with great talent, but he has still not found his place. He's been at Chelsea, Atletico Madrid, and now Milan without making any real impact.
At this moment of his career, he needs a club with a clear philosophy that can build its project around him, put him at ease to express his potential that we still haven't really seen. I would suggest Paris Saint-Germain.
"‘What Joao Felix lacks is not technique, but character. He is not a leader. At this moment, he is not what Milan need, because he lacks the mental strength to revive the Rossoneri. And vice versa."
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Ricardo Piatti analyzes Jannik Sinner's return to the circuit, predicting great success for the Italian number one.
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Jannik Sinner is finalizing details to prepare for that highly anticipated comeback, which is getting closer and closer. After a few weeks in the dark due to circumstances, the Italian number one is starting to make more public appearances by training at the facilities where the Monte Carlo Masters 1000 was recently held or by sharing training sessions with circuit colleagues like Matteo Berrettini.
The Italian player, who has given few interviews during this challenging period, confessed that he accepted those months of suspension to avoid a worse outcome. Just days away from seeing him return at the Rome tournament, excitement is building around Sinner, who will come back in the same role he left, as a strong favorite in everything.
"This whole situation has been very unpleasant for Sinner, but he will surely turn it into something positive. I think during these months Jannik holds a very important card to win Roland Garros, Wimbledon, and the US Open," said Ricardo Piatti to SuperTennis TV. Last year he went far in several tournaments such as the French Grand Slam, but it is true that the San Candido native has room to further increase his lead over his pursuers, besides that winning a title immediately upon his return would be quite a statement of intent.
The depth of Italian tennis
"I am sure that during these months of pause, Jannik has not stopped. During the pandemic, for example, it was one of the most crucial development phases for him. He trained physically three times a week and played tennis every day. 10 or 15 years ago, everyone won the Davis Cup and the BJK Cup except Italy, which lagged behind. Now, however, with all the tennis in Italy, we are in the right position: it is evident that having the world number 1 is an advantage, but if he is not number one, there are other players who can enter the top 10 and win tournaments."
This news is an automatic translation. You can read the original news, "Sinner tiene una carta muy importante bajo la manga para ganar Roland Garros, Wimbledon y el US Open"
View the discussion thread.
18 abr. 2025 21:00
Espanyol o X
Cuota: 1.36
19 abr. 2025 14:00
X o Valencia
Cuota: 1.58
19 abr. 2025 16:00
Menos de 2.5
Cuota: 2.38
19 abr. 2025 16:00
Bournemouth gana
Cuota: 2.75
Ricardo Piatti analyzes Jannik Sinner's return to the circuit, predicting great success for the Italian number one.
Streaming Challenger Tallahassee live tennis
🎾 Murphy Cassone vs Joel Schwaerzler
* You can watch and bet on this match live here..
Jannik Sinner is finalizing details to prepare for that highly anticipated comeback, which is getting closer and closer. After a few weeks in the dark due to circumstances, the Italian number one is starting to make more public appearances by training at the facilities where the Monte Carlo Masters 1000 was recently held or by sharing training sessions with circuit colleagues like Matteo Berrettini.
The Italian player, who has given few interviews during this challenging period, confessed that he accepted those months of suspension to avoid a worse outcome. Just days away from seeing him return at the Rome tournament, excitement is building around Sinner, who will come back in the same role he left, as a strong favorite in everything.
"This whole situation has been very unpleasant for Sinner, but he will surely turn it into something positive. I think during these months Jannik holds a very important card to win Roland Garros, Wimbledon, and the US Open," said Ricardo Piatti to SuperTennis TV. Last year he went far in several tournaments such as the French Grand Slam, but it is true that the San Candido native has room to further increase his lead over his pursuers, besides that winning a title immediately upon his return would be quite a statement of intent.
The depth of Italian tennis
"I am sure that during these months of pause, Jannik has not stopped. During the pandemic, for example, it was one of the most crucial development phases for him. He trained physically three times a week and played tennis every day. 10 or 15 years ago, everyone won the Davis Cup and the BJK Cup except Italy, which lagged behind. Now, however, with all the tennis in Italy, we are in the right position: it is evident that having the world number 1 is an advantage, but if he is not number one, there are other players who can enter the top 10 and win tournaments."
This news is an automatic translation. You can read the original news, "Sinner tiene una carta muy importante bajo la manga para ganar Roland Garros, Wimbledon y el US Open"
View the discussion thread.
18 abr. 2025 21:00
Espanyol o X
Cuota: 1.36
19 abr. 2025 14:00
X o Valencia
Cuota: 1.58
19 abr. 2025 16:00
Menos de 2.5
Cuota: 2.38
19 abr. 2025 16:00
Bournemouth gana
Cuota: 2.75
Ricardo Piatti analyzes Jannik Sinner's return to the circuit, predicting great success for the Italian number one.
Streaming Challenger Tallahassee live tennis
🎾 Murphy Cassone vs Joel Schwaerzler
* You can watch and bet on this match live here..
Jannik Sinner is finalizing details to prepare for that highly anticipated comeback, which is getting closer and closer. After a few weeks in the dark due to circumstances, the Italian number one is starting to make more public appearances by training at the facilities where the Monte Carlo Masters 1000 was recently held or by sharing training sessions with circuit colleagues like Matteo Berrettini.
The Italian player, who has given few interviews during this challenging period, confessed that he accepted those months of suspension to avoid a worse outcome. Just days away from seeing him return at the Rome tournament, excitement is building around Sinner, who will come back in the same role he left, as a strong favorite in everything.
"This whole situation has been very unpleasant for Sinner, but he will surely turn it into something positive. I think during these months Jannik holds a very important card to win Roland Garros, Wimbledon, and the US Open," said Ricardo Piatti to SuperTennis TV. Last year he went far in several tournaments such as the French Grand Slam, but it is true that the San Candido native has room to further increase his lead over his pursuers, besides that winning a title immediately upon his return would be quite a statement of intent.
The depth of Italian tennis
"I am sure that during these months of pause, Jannik has not stopped. During the pandemic, for example, it was one of the most crucial development phases for him. He trained physically three times a week and played tennis every day. 10 or 15 years ago, everyone won the Davis Cup and the BJK Cup except Italy, which lagged behind. Now, however, with all the tennis in Italy, we are in the right position: it is evident that having the world number 1 is an advantage, but if he is not number one, there are other players who can enter the top 10 and win tournaments."
This news is an automatic translation. You can read the original news, "Sinner tiene una carta muy importante bajo la manga para ganar Roland Garros, Wimbledon y el US Open"
View the discussion thread.
18 abr. 2025 21:00
Espanyol o X
Cuota: 1.36
19 abr. 2025 14:00
X o Valencia
Cuota: 1.58
19 abr. 2025 16:00
Menos de 2.5
Cuota: 2.38
19 abr. 2025 16:00
Bournemouth gana
Cuota: 2.75
Alexandra Eala has ambitions to win the top titles in professional tennis.
The 19-year-old announced herself on the world stage by reaching the semi-finals of the Miami Open.
Eala defeated three Grand Slam champions in successive matches to reach the last four, and she certainly made a great impression on the fans that watched her play.
The tennis world is eager to see just how far Alexandra Eala can go in the sport, and she has the drive and desire to reach the very top.
Every tennis player dreams of winning at least one Grand Slam title in their career.
Very few have reached the pinnacle of the sport however, and Eala aims to get there, and she wants the biggest title of them all.
During an interview with Talking Tennis, Eala was asked if she would prefer to win a World number one or win a Grand Slam, and the Filipino player chose winning the Wimbledon Championships.
“Grand slam. Wimbledon,” the World number 72 said. “But if I could I would choose both!”
Eala is a left handed player who hit some thunderous forehands throughout the Miami Open, especially off the return of serve.
Her athleticism also made it difficult for her opponents to hit through her, and she is very resilient on court.
Eala's playing style and characteristics on court have seen her compared with fellow leftie Leylah Fernandez, who reached the 2021 US Open final.
When asked about those comparisons, Eala also shared what she thinks about the World number 26, who she has yet to play on the WTA Tour.
“I am not familiar with those comparisons but I think Leylah is a great player. She made the final at the US Open a couple of years back, so she is a girl who plays in her own way,” she said.
“I am not too close with her, we have had a couple of interactions, she seems like a nice girl. So I am not mad about that at all! She is a good player.”
A year after he bid adieu to Roland Garros for the last time as a player, 14-time French Open champion Rafael Nadal will receive a special tribute at the venue where he was virtually unbeatable for the most part of his career.
The Spanish legend called time on his illustrious career after the Davis Cup Finals late last year, having amassed 22 Grand Slam titles, and will be honoured on Court Philippe Chatrier at the end of the day session on the tournament's opening day – May 25.
“Rafa made history at Roland Garros and his 14 titles will perhaps remain unequalled,” tournament director Amelie Mauresmo said. “The idea is to have a vision for the future and also to celebrate those who thrilled us in the past.”
The French Open will also honour the retiring Richard Gasquet and 2000 champion Mary Pierce.
“To mark Rafa's first season post-retirement, a ceremony will take place following the conclusion of the day session's three fixtures,” the organisers said in a news release. “An immersive and entertaining exhibition dedicated to the legendary Spaniard will also run for the duration of the tournament at the Roland-Garros Tenniseum.”
Nadal won the French Open nine times in 10 years from 2005 to 2014, and triumphed five more titles in six years from 2017 through 2022. His Grand Slam tally is second only to Novak Djokovic's 24.
The organisers had not organised a proper farewell for Nadal after he lost to Alexander Zverev in the first round as the Spaniard had not said unequivocally that it was his final participation in the tournament.
“We wanted to do the tribute last year, to be transparent, but he refused at the time,” Mauresmo said. “He wasn't sure that it was his last Roland Garros. Now that he is retired, he is happy to receive it,” Mauresmo, a two-time Grand Slam champion, said.
The 38-year-old Nadal already has a statue at the venue of the clay-court Grand Slam. He will also feature in an exhibition in the tournament museum and lend his voice to the official French Open trailer.
The next generation of ATP players have started to make some significant breakthroughs in 2025.
Although he is still only 21-years-old, Carlos Alcaraz has solidified his position on the ATP Tour as one of the best players in the world.
This was evident from the start of the clay court season, where Alcaraz won the Monte Carlo Masters for the first time.
Despite winning the prestigious title, Alcaraz admitted he did not play his best after suffering a scare against another young star.
The match where Alcaraz looked particularly at risk came in the quarter-finals against Frenchman Arthur Fils.
Fils led by a set and had three break point opportunities in the latter stages of the second, but was unable to capitalise on them.
After their match, Alcaraz emphasized Fils' power as a huge strength and was full of praise for the 20-year-old.
Fils has quickly put that disappointment behind him and is now into the quarter-finals of the Barcelona Open.
The world number 14's improvements have been noticed by many including Patrick McEnroe, who took to social media to wax lyrical about Fils.
Patrick McEnroe, who is the brother of John and is a former doubles Grand Slam champion in his own right, has predicted Fils to make a big run at Roland Garros this year in a post on X (formerly known as Twitter).
“Add Arthur Fils to the list of under 21 players that are coming like a ton of bricks,” said McEnroe. “I can see him making a big BIG run @rolandgarros. Now wouldn't that be fun!!!”
Add Arthur Fils to the list of under 21 players that are coming like a ton of bricks I can see him making a big BIG run @rolandgarros Now wouldn't that be fun!!!
McEnroe is not the only person who thinks that Fils will make some noise at Roland Garros, but his previous history at the tournament will need to change if that is the case.
Despite being a French player, Fils has never won a main draw match at Roland Garros after suffering two consecutive opening round losses.
The first of those was a tricky encounter against 29th seed Alejandro Davidovich Fokina, but a year later it was Fils in that seeded position.
However, Fils was unable to take advantage of that seeded ranking and was beaten in four sets by Italian Matteo Arnaldi.
Fils will be looking to make history at Roland Garros this year, as a Frenchman has not reached the quarter-finals of the Paris major since Richard Gasquet in 2016.
While the 20-year-old is just getting his career started, Gasquet will be retiring at Roland Garros next month.
The next generation of ATP players have started to make some significant breakthroughs in 2025.
Although he is still only 21-years-old, Carlos Alcaraz has solidified his position on the ATP Tour as one of the best players in the world.
This was evident from the start of the clay court season, where Alcaraz won the Monte Carlo Masters for the first time.
Despite winning the prestigious title, Alcaraz admitted he did not play his best after suffering a scare against another young star.
The match where Alcaraz looked particularly at risk came in the quarter-finals against Frenchman Arthur Fils.
Fils led by a set and had three break point opportunities in the latter stages of the second, but was unable to capitalise on them.
After their match, Alcaraz emphasized Fils' power as a huge strength and was full of praise for the 20-year-old.
Fils has quickly put that disappointment behind him and is now into the quarter-finals of the Barcelona Open.
The world number 14's improvements have been noticed by many including Patrick McEnroe, who took to social media to wax lyrical about Fils.
Patrick McEnroe, who is the brother of John and is a former doubles Grand Slam champion in his own right, has predicted Fils to make a big run at Roland Garros this year in a post on X (formerly known as Twitter).
“Add Arthur Fils to the list of under 21 players that are coming like a ton of bricks,” said McEnroe. “I can see him making a big BIG run @rolandgarros. Now wouldn't that be fun!!!”
Add Arthur Fils to the list of under 21 players that are coming like a ton of bricks I can see him making a big BIG run @rolandgarros Now wouldn't that be fun!!!
McEnroe is not the only person who thinks that Fils will make some noise at Roland Garros, but his previous history at the tournament will need to change if that is the case.
Despite being a French player, Fils has never won a main draw match at Roland Garros after suffering two consecutive opening round losses.
The first of those was a tricky encounter against 29th seed Alejandro Davidovich Fokina, but a year later it was Fils in that seeded position.
However, Fils was unable to take advantage of that seeded ranking and was beaten in four sets by Italian Matteo Arnaldi.
Fils will be looking to make history at Roland Garros this year, as a Frenchman has not reached the quarter-finals of the Paris major since Richard Gasquet in 2016.
While the 20-year-old is just getting his career started, Gasquet will be retiring at Roland Garros next month.
Bolavip, like Futbol Sites, is a company owned by Better Collective. All rights reserved.
April 16, 2025 10:27PM EDT
By Natalia Lobo
In tennis, momentum can be fleeting. One moment a player is dominating the tour, the next they're sidelined by injuries, trying to rebuild. Bianca Andreescu has lived both realities. Just a few years ago, she was considered one of the sport's brightest stars, even having a positive record against Serena Williams. Now, after several long breaks from competition, she's working toward a full comeback.
Andreescu was born in Canada and spent part of her childhood in Romania, where she started playing tennis. Her early promise was clear, and she climbed the junior rankings quickly before turning professional.
By her late teens, she was already making waves on the WTA Tour. With a bold playing style and a strong mindset, she stood out as someone capable of competing with the game's best. But injuries and personal struggles slowed her rise.
Over the past few seasons, Andreescu has missed major tournaments and spent long periods away from the court. Despite those setbacks, she hasn't lost sight of what she's capable of.
Andreescu during the 2024 US Open (Sarah Stier/Getty Images)
Andreescu's 2019 US Open victory over Serena Williams was a historic moment for Canadian tennis. She became the first player from Canada to win a Grand Slam singles title and the first to win the Canadian Open in 50 years. Her wins over Williams, first in Toronto, then in New York, made headlines around the world. At Flushing Meadows, she held her nerve in a packed Arthur Ashe Stadium to defeat one of the game's greatest champions 6-3, 7-5.
see also
He was world's No. 6, defeated Edberg and Becker, earned the nickname ‘Marathon Man,' and retired at 29
She also won the Indian Wells Open earlier that season, becoming the first wildcard to take the title. That same year, she finished the season ranked World No. 5, despite missing some time due to injury. Her aggressive, varied style and willingness to mix pace and spin earned her fans and praise from tennis commentators worldwide.
Andreescu won the 2019 US Open singles title (Sarah Stier/Getty Images)
But just as quickly as she rose, Andreescu began to face serious setbacks. A knee injury sidelined her for all of 2020. She returned to the tour in 2021 but struggled to regain consistency. In 2023 and 2024, a stress fracture in her back kept her out for nearly a year.
Then, in early 2025, she underwent emergency surgery for appendicitis, ruling her out of the Australian Open. “The surgery went smoothly, and I'm on the road to recovery,” she wrote on Instagram, later adding that she hoped to return during the clay season.
Injuries have tested not just her body but her mindset. In interviews, Andreescu has spoken openly about how much she has learned about herself during time away from the sport. In 2024, she told The New York Times, “Honestly, I've learned more through injuries than through actually playing tennis.”
Andreescu got injuried during the 2019 WTA Finals (Lintao Zhang/Getty Images)
Andreescu also spent time away from the game exploring other interests. She went on a spiritual retreat in Costa Rica, practiced yoga, and volunteered with animal rescue and women's shelters. She has said that tennis is no longer her entire identity and that her new approach to life has helped her manage the mental side of the sport.
see also
He made the Top 20, criticized Federer and Hewitt, got arrested and hit rock bottom: ‘I never chose tennis'
As the 2025 season unfolds, fans are eager to see whether Bianca Andreescu can once again channel the brilliance that made her a Grand Slam champion.
Natalia is a sports journalist at Bolavip US, where she covers soccer, tennis, and the broader sports world. She also works as an entertainment journalist at Spoiler US, focusing on the film industry, series, reality TV, and celebrity news. With a diverse background that includes reporting on sports, fashion, and culture, she brings a rich and varied perspective to her current roles. Natalia holds a Bachelor's degree in Communication and Media from the Universidad Central of Venezuela (UCV) and has over eight years of experience in digital media. She has previously contributed her bilingual skills in English and Spanish to outlets such as Revista Exclusiva and Cambio16.
Bolavip, like Futbol Sites, is a company owned by Better Collective. All rights reserved.
Feature
F1 ACADEMY Content Editor
Sainz concedes he needs to 'pick fights a bit better' after race-ending contact with Tsunoda in Bahrain
‘This track will always be special to me' – Bearman reflects on returning to Jeddah one year on from rollercoaster debut
BETTING GUIDE: Who are the favourites as F1 heads to Saudi Arabia?
MUST-SEE: Get a behind-the-scenes look at Brad Pitt's role in Apple Original Films' upcoming ‘F1' movie
‘Where dreams are born' – Sebastian Vettel on his Race4Women event, his grassroots mission and guiding female racers in Saudi Arabia
The 2025 F1 ACADEMY field has traded Shanghai's expansive layout for the fast-paced, tight and twisty Jeddah Corniche Circuit as the grid prepares for Round 2 of the season.
Whilst in-season testing earlier this month allowed the 18 drivers to get acquainted with the Saudi Arabian venue, even bigger tests lie in store on for the Grand Prix weekend…
READ MORE: Farah AlYousef announced as Wild Card entry for Round 2 of the 2025 F1 ACADEMY season in Jeddah
The frustration was evident from Maya Weug in China after the Ferrari driver failed to convert her pole position into victory in Race 2. Speaking post-race, she rued her cautious approach of trying to avoid making a mistake on the rolling start which left her vulnerable to be overtaken by Doriane Pin.
Maya Weug will hope to bounce back as she lost out to Doriane Pin in Shanghai's Race 2
Although she believes she should have been leading the Drivers' Standings, the reality is she has a five-point deficit to Pin heading to a track that favoured the Mercedes junior last year. Whilst Pin seized both pole positions and would have been on course for back-to-back wins if not for a post-race penalty in Race 2, Weug finished five seconds behind her on track.
During the in-season test at Jeddah, Weug acknowledged that there were things she was doing wrong last year that she's addressing. If she can master her one-lap pace and seal a second consecutive pole, the limited overtaking opportunities around Jeddah should play in her favour.
READ MORE: Untouchable Pin sees off Weug to take Shanghai Race 2 victory
Pin might be sitting pretty at the top of the Drivers' Standings, but the French racer hasn't got much breathing room from the pack behind. Two points behind second-place Weug, Chloe Chambers delivered back-to-back podiums in Shanghai but knows she needs to nail her Qualifying on a regular basis, a feat that proved to be a struggle last season.
Alisha Palmowski is the leading rookie in fourth and is brimming with confidence after winning the reverse grid Race 1 last time out. Despite this, the Red Bull Racing driver felt that the trip to the Chinese circuit would be one of her weakest weekends of the year.
Based off her efforts in testing, the Briton seems happier with the set-up direction as she set the fastest time across the three days of running.
Alisha Palmowski is the leading F1 ACADEMY rookie so far this year
She leads the quintet of rookies inside the top-eight, with herself, Alba Larsen, Emma Felbermayr, Ella Lloyd and Rafaela Ferreira all separated by 10 points. Larsen put together an impressive performance in Shanghai, qualifying in third and only losing that spot on the podium in the latter stages of Race 2 to Chambers.
READ MORE: ‘Where dreams are born' – Sebastian Vettel on his Race4Women event, his grassroots mission and guiding female racers in Saudi Arabia
One driver who was down but far from out after Shanghai was Lia Block. Contact from Ferreira in Practice left the Williams driver out of Qualifying with damage, but she did manage to salvage a P9 finish in Race 2.
Picking herself back up and setting her sights on pole, Block returns to the track she made her debut at last year and will be desperate to demonstrate the potential that went untapped in China.
Lia Block will be hoping for a smoother weekend in Jeddah
The smoother track surface might make tyre degradation less of a concern for the drivers, but the Jeddah Corniche Circuit will be a monumental test of their mental agility.
Darting in between the high-speed corners with the walls close at hand, the room for error is minimal. To add to the task, temperatures will reach beyond 30C across Practice and both races, with focus then switching to Qualifying under the floodlights.
Balancing all these variables will be a demanding job for the drivers and their teams, which could provide those who missed out points in Shanghai a much-needed chance to shake up the order.
READ NEXT: ‘One of the most gripping races in F1 history… a genuine humdinger' – David Tremayne remembers the first Saudi Arabian GP
Don't miss your chance to experience the fastest street circuit in Formula 1...
F1 FANTASY: Strategist Selection – What's the best line-up for the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix?
IT'S RACE WEEK: 5 storylines we're excited about ahead of the 2025 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix
Piastri's manager Mark Webber reveals how Australian has stepped up against 'serious artillery' of his opposition in 2025
'I understood why they call him the Iceman' – Antonelli opens up on experience of meeting namesake Kimi Raikkonen
‘One of the most gripping races in F1 history… a genuine humdinger' – David Tremayne remembers the first Saudi Arabian GP
NEED TO KNOW: The most important facts, stats and trivia ahead of the 2025 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix
F1 NATION: ‘A champion is cooking' and why Norris vs Piastri is ‘fire and ice' – it's our Bahrain GP review with Mark Webber
Piastri's manager Mark Webber reveals how Australian has stepped up against 'serious artillery' of his opposition in 2025
Wheatley vows to lead Kick Sauber ‘in my own way' as he explains challenge ahead of Audi's arrival
Sainz concedes he needs to 'pick fights a bit better' after race-ending contact with Tsunoda in Bahrain
© 2003-2025 Formula One World Championship Limited
Live Blognew
Special Contributor
Sainz concedes he needs to 'pick fights a bit better' after race-ending contact with Tsunoda in Bahrain
‘This track will always be special to me' – Bearman reflects on returning to Jeddah one year on from rollercoaster debut
The storylines to get excited about as F1 ACADEMY returns in Jeddah
BETTING GUIDE: Who are the favourites as F1 heads to Saudi Arabia?
MUST-SEE: Get a behind-the-scenes look at Brad Pitt's role in Apple Original Films' upcoming ‘F1' movie
F1 FANTASY: Strategist Selection – What's the best line-up for the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix?
Farah AlYousef announced as Wild Card entry for Round 2 of the 2025 F1 ACADEMY season in Jeddah
TECH WEEKLY: Was Ferrari's Bahrain floor upgrade a success – and will it help them at the twisting Jeddah Corniche Circuit?
‘I could have done better' – Tsunoda reflects on scoring maiden points for second Red Bull car in 2025 after P9 in Bahrain
F1 NATION: ‘A champion is cooking' and why Norris vs Piastri is ‘fire and ice' – it's our Bahrain GP review with Mark Webber
© 2003-2025 Formula One World Championship Limited
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Sometimes, making great art is an exercise in disappointing your heroes.
“I remember Gene Hackman, one of his advices to me when I worked with him was, ‘Never work with a first-time director,'” Willem Dafoe told IndieWire while discussing his new film “The Legend of Ochi,” which hails from first-time director Isaiah Saxon. “Obviously, I didn't follow his advice, but may he rest in peace.” (Dafoe and the late Hackman starred together in 1988's “Mississippi Burning.”)
Dafoe currently has his pick of coveted roles from elite auteurs — in 2024 alone, he starred in films from Robert Eggers, Yorgos Lanthimos, Tim Burton, and Jason Reitman. So it takes a lot for a new filmmaker to dazzle him. But Saxon and his directorial debut “The Legend of Ochi” were something special. A throwback to fantasy epics like “The NeverEnding Story,” the film immerses viewers in an ocean of matte paintings and puppets to depict the fictional town of Carpathia, where villagers live in fear of an adorable species called Ochi. Nobody loathes the creatures more than Dafoe's Maxim, who blames them for his wife's death and assembles an army of young boys to exterminate the magical beings from the Carpathian forests.
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What convinced Dafoe to don World War I armor and chase after a cute Gremlin-like creature with a bunch of kids? The actor said it was a combination of Saxon's animation pedigree — the director has spent decades applying his distinct stop-motion approach to music videos through his studio Encyclopedia Pictura — and the director's visceral passion for the material that proved to be irresistible.
“When they have a certain passion and their approach is very personal, I think this is something that I don't know for a fact, that Isaiah has been living with for a long time,” Dafoe said. “It had a strong impulse behind it; it wasn't just another film. You like to get people when they're trying to make something that they'll die if they don't make it.”
Dafoe has always been an actor who embraces a new challenge, so he delighted in the opportunity to use a puppet as one of his primary scene partners. He explained that the petite Ochi puppets were actually part of a large rig operated by six people — a phenomenon that only accentuated his character's perception that these tiny creatures were actually monsters that deserved to be feared.
“Physical is where I live. Acting is all about doing things if you ask me,” Dafoe said. “And because it's kind of this low-tech stuff, like with the puppets, for example, it's interesting when you're doing a scene with the Ochi, you're doing the scene with, basically, six people rolled into one. It's fun when you're playing across to see all that's going behind animating this creature. And of course, you're not concentrating on that, but you get that energy of this very distinct, very concentrated six people or whatever it is, operating this puppet that's reacting to you. So it's a very engaging place to be. It sounds strange. You'd think it would be otherwise that maybe you'd fall out, but in fact, it sucks you in.”
In some ways, acting alongside a team of puppeteers brought Dafoe back to his days doing experimental theater with companies like The Wooster Group, in which he performed in the 1980s. While the actor never worked with puppets on stage in such a large capacity, his background in experimental performance gave him a comfort level with projecting human emotions in response to actions that were not necessarily cued by other human characters.
“Sometimes, we'd be working in very unconventional performance modes. Sometimes, we do our cueing or have some kind of reference offstage that we'd have to follow,” he said. “So that has a similar kind of concentration, where you have an outside reference, and you're going to that, and that kind of gives you a super concentration. That's a very good thing to have when you are performing because the world drops away and you're doing what you're doing. There's no flourish, there's no extra, there's almost no ego. You are really giving up… It's like an athlete. You are concentrating on following that thing, and that's where everything in your body is going. And that way you get a real pure presence.”
An A24 release, “The Legend of Ochi” opens in New York and Los Angeles on Friday, April 18, before expanding nationwide on April 25.
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We use vendors that may also process your information to help provide our services. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA Enterprise and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
By Nellie Andreeva
Co-Editor-in-Chief, TV
As if! had been the response to fans' wishes for a Clueless followup with Alicia Silverstone as Cher — until now.
A Clueless TV series with Silverstone attached to star and executive produce has landed at Peacock for development. It is written and executive produced by the Gossip Girl duo of Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage of Fake Empire and Dollface creator Jordan Weiss, with the 1995 movie's writer-director Amy Heckerling and producer Robert Lawrence also executive producing.
Silverstone is set to reprise her signature role as Cher in the sequel series, from CBS Studios in association with Universal Television, a division of Universal Studio Group.
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CBS TV Studios owns the TV rights to the Paramount feature classic which starred Silverstone, Stacey Dash, Brittany Murphy and Paul Rudd.
Watch on Deadline
Six years ago, the studio developed a different Clueless series reboot centered around Dash's Dionne character, which also went to Peacock for development. It ultimately did not move forward.
CBS Studios remained high on the IP title, eventually taking a brand new stab with a new creative team, Schwartz, Savage and Jordan Weiss, and Silverstein on board as Cher.
The project was taken out to the marketplace and landed at Peacock again, which also had maintained its interest in a Clueless series.
CBS TV Studios' predecessor, Paramount Network Television, was behind the 1996 half-hour comedy series Clueless, created by Heckerling, which ran for three seasons, one on ABC and two on UPN, with Rachel Blanchard playing Cher since Silverstone was not available, with Dash reprising her role as Dionne.
The Clueless movie (and 1996 series), loosely adapted from Jane Austen's 1815 novel Emma, chronicled the adventures of Cher Horowitz, a stylish, wealthy and popular California girl who attends Bronson Alcott High.
This marks the second high-profile series based on classic Paramount/CBS IP that CBS Studios has recently sold to an outside streamer, joining Little House On the Prairie at Netflix.
The O.C. creator Schwartz and Savage are co-showrunners/EPs on Megan Park's Sterling Point series for Amazon. The duo developed and executive produced the CW's Gossip Girl. Their series credits also include the CW's Nancy Drew, Apple's City On Fire, Hulu's Looking For Alaska and the Gossip Girl reboot on Max. Fake Empire is repped by WME.
Weiss co-wrote and directed the 2024 Max film Sweethearts and is a writer on the upcoming Freakier Friday movie sequel. She is repped by UTA, Mosaic and Felker Toczek Suddleson.
Silverstone got high marks from fans after reprising her Clueless character in a Super Bowl ad two years ago. She next stars in the Acorn TV series Irish Blood and will also be seen in the indie Pretty Thing, Yorgos Lanthamos' Bugonia and the Netflix holiday movie Merry Little Ex-Mas. Silverstone is repped by UTA, Untitled Entertainment and Gang, Tyre, Ramer, Brown & Passman.
A post shared by Alicia Silverstone (@aliciasilverstone)
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By Justin Kroll
Film Editor
EXCLUSIVE: Pete Davidson is in negotiations to co-star opposite Nicholas Hoult in Amazon MGM Studios' How to Rob a Bank, from director David Leitch, Imagine Entertainment, and 87North Productions. Leitch is directing with insiders saying the the film will be released in theaters.
Plot details are being kept under wraps but given Leitch's track record of delivering on big thrills and fun set pieces in films like Bullet Train, Deadpool 2 and most recently The Fall Guy, expect something similar in scope. 87North's Kelly McCormick and David Leitch will produce alongside Imagine's Brian Grazer, Jeb Brody, and Allan Mandelbaum. Mark Bianculli wrote the script, for which plot details are being kept under wraps, and will executive produce.
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Leitch films always tend to draw top talent and this film is no difference with an A-list ensemble expected to join the cast.
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Davidson most recently wrapped production on the film The Pick Up for Amazon MGM where he stars opposite Keke Palmer and Eddie Murphy, and can be seen next in A24's Wizards. In 2023, Davidson starred in Peacock's Bupkis, a semi-autobiographical comedy series he also co-created, co-wrote and executive produced.
In 2020, Davidson co-wrote, executive produced, and starred in the critically acclaimed film The King of Staten Island. Additional credits include the Netflix stand-up special, Pete Davidson: Turbo Fonzarelli, Bodies Bodies Bodies for A24, The Suicide Squad for Warner Bros' DC, Paramount's Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, Trainwreck, Neon's Big Time Adolescence, Netflix's Set It Up, and Peacock's Meet Cute. Davidson was a cast member on NBC's Saturday Night Live from 2014-2022. Davidson is represented by WME, Ayala Cohen Management and attorney Josh Sandler at Granderson Des Rochers.
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Glen Powell‘s passion for working with acclaimed directors continues with a buzzy, yet untitled comedy alongside Judd Apatow.
Powell will star in the next film as directed by Apatow in which Powell will portray “a country western star in free fall,” which is giving real “A Star Is Born” vibes. Powell will also co-write the script alongside Apatow, and the project is being fast-tracked by Universal Pictures.
Both Apatow and Powell will also produce the comedy, as will former Universal Pictures President of Production Kevin Misher via his Misher Films banner.
Powell, who previously penned “Hit Man” with auteur Richard Linklater and is writing a Broadway musical with Ryan Murphy, will produce alongside Dan Cohen through their Barnstorm banner's newly minted first look deal with Universal. Powell first collaborated with Universal for “Twisters,” and his company Barnstorm is also producing the recently announced “The Natural Order” for the studio, with Powell attached to star and Barry Jenkins directing.
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Apatow's relationship with Universal began with his 2005 directorial debut “The 40-Year-Old Virgin,” and he has since directed “Knocked Up,” “Funny People,” “This is 40,” “Trainwreck,” and “The King of Staten Island” for the studio.
Senior Executive Vice President of Production Development Erik Baiers will oversee this latest project on behalf of Universal.
Jenkins and Apatow are not the only acclaimed filmmakers with whom Powell has projects in the works. Powell recently wrapped production on John Patton Ford's revenge thriller “Huntington” for A24 and Studio Canal, and he'll next be seen in Edgar Wright's “The Running Man” adaptation for Paramount Pictures. He will also lead the Hulu comedy series “Chad Powers” based on an Eli Manning sketch about a quarterback whose college career ends after bad behavior; Powell is executive producing the series under Barnstorm.
As for Apatow, the untitled Universal Pictures comedy is one of the many features he is developing. He is currently in production on HBO Documentary Films' two-part documentary on the life and career of Mel Brooks for HBO Documentary Films; Apatow is producing and co-directing with Michael Bonfiglio. Apatow was also announced in 2024 to be directing “Cola Wars,” a film about the battle for market share between Coca Cola and Pepsi to become America's favorite soda. Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment is producing that one, with the film being written by “Acapulco” co-creators Ben Queen and Jason Shuman.
Powell is represented by CAA and Johnson Shapiro Slewett & Kole. Apatow is represented by WME, Mosaic, ID and Ziffren Brittenham LLP.
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By Armando Tinoco
Staff Writer
Vin Diesel has a message for Universal Pictures, urging the studio to provide fans with a release timeframe for the next installment in the Fast & Furious franchise.
In a new social media post, Diesel pleaded with the film studio to share with “the best fans in the world” when the next movie will be released.
“Universal… Please tell the best fans in the world, when the next movie is coming out. Please…,” Diesel shared on Instagram.
Diesel shared a photo of himself as Dominic Toretto and his co-star Michelle Rodriguez as Letty Ortiz. The actor also used the hashtag “#LosBandoleros2,” which referenced the short film Los Bandoleros that served as a prequel to 2009's Fast & Furious 4.
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The short film was released as part of the special edition home release of Fast & Furious 4, focused on Diesel's Dominic as he sets up the hijacking of a fuel tanker in the Dominican Republic. Rodriguez, Sun Kang, Tego Calderón and Don Omar also starred.
A post shared by Vin Diesel (@vindiesel)
Days before, Diesel shared a post where he also alluded to a sequel to Los Bandoleros.
“As I continue to travel this beautiful world… I ponder which would be the most magical desert for Los Bandoleros 2!” he shared.
A post shared by Vin Diesel (@vindiesel)
Diesel previously shared the projects he was working on in 2025, which included Fast X: Part 2, set to be the grand finale of the Fast & Furious franchise.
Diesel also hinted that he was continuing “the fight to bring Fast X2, the finale, back to LA this summer.”
The actor had previously expressed his desire to film the latest installment of the Fast & Furious franchise in LA to help the local economy following the devastating wildfires.
“Last week, during the fires that displaced LA… my sister Jordana [Brewster] reached out to me and said… Please have Universal film the rest of Fast X Part 2 in LA,” Diesel said.
He continued, “Los Angeles needs it now more than ever… Los Angeles is where Fast and Furious started filming 25 years ago… and now Fast will finally return home. All love…”
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The subject of filmmaker Sepideh Farsi's upcoming Cannes documentary “Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk,” the Palestinian artist and photojournalist Fatma Hassona, as well as her family, has allegedly been killed during an Israeli missile strike on her building in Gaza. Set to be featured as part of Cannes' parallel section ACID, which is run by France's Association for the Diffusion of Independent Cinema (l'ACID), the film follows Hassona as she captures the atrocities being committed in her homeland via her camera, as well as helping those who are grieving tremendous loss.
In a release shared with IndieWire, the filmmakers behind the project, as well as members of the ACID team said of Hassona, “Her smile was as magical as her tenacity: bearing witness, photographing Gaza, distributing food despite the bombs, mourning, and hunger. We heard her story, we rejoiced at each of her appearances to see her alive, we feared for her.”
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Farsi shared the unfortunate news of Hassona's death via the French publication Libération, in which she wrote, “She had just turned 25. I got to know her through a Palestinian friend in Cairo, while I was desperately searching for a way to reach Gaza, while hitting blocked roads, seeking the answer to a question both simple and complex. How does one survive in Gaza, under siege for all those years? What is the daily life of Palestinian people under war? What is it that Israel wishes to erase in this handful of square kilometers, with so many bombs and missiles?”
The Iranian filmmaker labeled Israel's action as being in line with “genocide” and put the blame not only on its governing body, but all of the international “accomplices” involved in supporting what she sees as a campaign of terror against the Palestinian people. Farsi also shared an excerpt from one of Hassona's poem, titled “The man who wore his eyes,” which reflects the overwhelming presence of death she faced, as well as the fullness of the life she lived. Please read it below.
Maybe I'm ushering in my death
now
Before the person standing in front of me loads
His elite sniper's rifle
And it ends
And I end.
Silence.
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In the early days of “American Idol,” contestants — including current judge Carrie Underwood –developed a thick skin while facing harsh criticisms from original judge Simon Cowell. But social media has turned everyday viewers into the harshest critics of all and one producer says it's worse than ever.
Casting producer Audrey Pine Wright took to Instagram on April 16, 2025, to address how bad the online hate has become and urged viewers to “be kind.” Many current contestants thanked Wright for speaking out as they try to deal with the deluge of mean-spirited comments coming their way.
A post shared by Audrey Pine Wright (@audreypinewright)
Wright, who has been an artist manager for more than a decade and a casting producer on “Idol” since season 20, per LinkedIn, has posted numerous videos about the inner workings of the show for those curious about auditioning in future seasons. But on April 16, she recorded a video with a different purpose, focused on the importance of “being kind to people.”
Wright said, “So, of course, all of the contestants come on the show knowing that they are going to be out there for all of the world to see. That comes with the territory of being in the public eye. But I have seen some of the most vile comments about contestants that I've ever seen in past years.”
“I don't know if it's the world that we live in or if it's just people hiding behind their screen,” she continued. “Probably a little bit of both.”
Acknowledging that viewers are free to comment, good or bad, on each singer, she urged her followers, “However you want to react to the artists performing, do it with kindness and humility, and the tiniest bit of grace goes a long way. There's no need to comment on somebody's looks or whether or not you feel they deserve to be there. They all deserve to be on that (‘Idol') oval.”
“So, when you're watching the show,” Wright concluded, “just remember, these are human beings trying to make a go at their careers. All of them, whether or not they are part of celebrity families or not, everybody's vying for the same position. So, just be kind.”
A post shared by penny (@pennysamar)
Multiple season 23 contestants expressed their gratitude to Wright for her message, including Slater Nalley, Kyana Fanene, and Drew Ryn, who commented, “🙌 Say it again”
Thunderstorm Artis wrote, “We are blessed to have you” and Zaylie Windsor added, “THIS🙌🏻”
Fellow casting producer and “Idol” warmup host Josh Randall chimed in, “Kindness costs nothing, but can mean everything ❤️”
Some contestants have tried a variety tactics for addressing mean comments, including Top 24 artist Penny Samar, who made a tongue-in-cheek “diss track” about herself (seen above). After the judges said her facial expressions were too exaggerated during her audition, viewers began peppering her with similar but far more searing comments online.
Meanwhile, Baylee Littrell, the son of Backstreet Boy Brian Littrell, has been widely scrutinized on social media as a “nepo baby,” with some fans accusing “Idol” of advancing him because of his famous dad.
His mom stuck up for the 22-year-old singer on social media, writing on April 7, “Love you bub! I love your heart ! I love your song writing , I love your voice! Don't listen to the negative peeps hating on you because of who your dad is You have so many people who love you for who you are and how talented you are! Keep shinning! Keep on keeping on! You have always carved your own path, and will continue too! We are so proud of you!!!!”
“American Idol” season 23 airs Sunday and Monday nights at 8 p.m. Eastern time on ABC and is available to stream on Hulu and Disney+.
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As the number of projects going into production gets cut, disruptive trade policy will only drive up prices for costumes and sets for U.S. shoots.
By
Katie Kilkenny
Labor & Media Reporter
Hollywood is bracing as President Trump's promised (and ever-fluctuating) tariffs threaten to balloon the price of materials required for physical production, from lumber to fabric.
For many in the production space, fears are mounting that the current and threatened tariffs, as well as the unpredictability of the future of global trade, could harm the already-weakened state of domestic film and television set work.
Creatives who spoke to The Hollywood Reporter largely aren't yet feeling the impacts of the latest developments in import taxes. After Trump announced a baseline tariff on all imported goods with further penalties for about dozens of countries on April 2, he reversed course and now the 10 percent baseline, a 25 percent tariff on certain Canadian and Mexican goods, cars and steel and aluminum imports and a 145 percent tariff on Chinese goods is in effect, for now.
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But some industry types aren't taking any chances. Construction coordinator Karen Higgins, who has worked on projects like WandaVision and Twin Peaks: The Return, says she and others in her cohort are stockpiling materials. Still, she notes, “You can only store so much lumber.”
Mike Orth, the senior project manager at North Hollywood's full-service set shop 41 Sets, has been telling customers that if their projects don't happen soon, prices for his company's services could go up based on increased materials costs. “Paint suppliers are saying that the tariffs are going to affect them and that we can expect a 30 percent increase on paint materials,” he notes.
While no production department would be spared the brunt of an escalated trade war, the art department would be hit particularly hard given its reliance on raw materials. To construct sets, crew members frequently use lumber that might often be sourced from Canada and Southeast Asia, plywood from Southeast Asia and steel from China.
Tobey Bays, the business agent for property craftspersons' union IATSE Local 44, thinks there could be a “significant increase” in costs for big builds if tariffs escalate. If that is the case, says Bays, who earlier in his career worked asa leadman for ER and Thirteen, “There might be some artistic decisions that will be made” — like projects opting for simpler builds, more on-location work and more visual effects.
The wardrobe department would also see unique impacts. Productions often source fabrics from all over the world and sometimes import rental costumes from well-known houses in Europe. U.S.-based vendors could also face steeper costs and raise prices: Diana Foster, the president and owner of North Hollywood's costume rental and manufacturing service United American Costume Co., buys shoes in Mexico and Guatemala, leather and furs in Canada, fabrics in the U.K. and trims from Pakistan and India to service her shop's specialty of original and reproduction clothing from 1770 to 1970. She also ships costume rentals and purchases across borders to wherever clients' productions are taking place.
She says any increased costs would have to be passed on to the producers. “You can't have these independent companies in the motion picture industry who have already tried to recover from COVID, from two union strikes, absorb any more in overhead,” she says. “They just can't do it.”
In a contractionary industry environment, with the state of the business still delicate, several creatives also express concerns that any additional production costs might supercharge the decades-long trend of productions moving overseas for savings. “I think people are really worried as to how to keep the small number of state-based jobs that are here if we can't source things [from other countries] cheaply and quickly,” assistant costume designer Shealyn Biron (Ford v Ferrari, Bombshell) says.
“The industry has been hit hard by a confluence of events — COVID, the strikes, the [L.A.] fires, box office being down, people changing their viewing habits,” says director and former studio exec George Huang (Swimming With Sharks), a professor at UCLA's School of Theater, Film & Television. “I just worry that with everything else taken as a whole, does this become the feather on the hood of a car that's dangling on the edge of a cliff?”
Which poses the question: Could Trump's tariffs — implemented for the stated purpose of bringing manufacturing back to the U.S. and persuading Americans to invest in more domestically-produced products — ironically have the opposite effect on American film and television, pushing it ever more overseas?
With Trump adding tariff exemptions on April 11 to iPhones, computers and other electronics, it's clear that any punitive tariffs could be here today and gone tomorrow. But as Huang points out, this period of total unpredictability arrives as studios are more risk-averse than ever. “The uncertainty economically for everyone is definitely causing a slowdown or just a bit of a pause on everything,” he says. “The studios were skittish before. Now they're really skittish.”
This story first appeared in the April 16 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
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By
Maya Georgi
Chappell Roan is once again asking her fans to keep it more casual. On the latest episode of Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers' Las Culturistas, the pop singer discussed how several fans online mischaracterized the viral Saturday Night Live skit in which Yang compared Roan's massive success with the internet-famous pygmy hippo Moo Deng. “People don't have to get mad on my behalf,” Roan said. “I wasn't even mad!” she exclaimed.
In fact, Roan found the skit funny. “That is SNL, it's comedy,” Roan stated, adding, “It was so light-hearted. It was, to me, harmless.”
Popular on Rolling Stone
At the time, Drag Star winner Sasha Colby even confirmed Roan's good sense of humor to Yang. “I was like ‘Is she okay?' Sasha was like, ‘yeah girl, she's laughing, she's loving it.” Meanwhile, co-host Rogers also recalled “getting texts from people asking ‘are Bowen and Chappell okay?'” and being confused by it. “Why are we assuming that people don't have a sense of humor?” he said.
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For Roan, the whole misunderstanding only proved how often fans online cross boundaries. “Even if you didn't think the Moo Deng sketch was funny, you don't have to say anything,” she said.
Since her breakout moment in 2024, Roan has been open about her struggles with fame and being a highly visible person in public. In her Rolling Stone cover story, Roan shared how far certain fans have gone to get a picture with her or talk to her, and even revealed that she's had stalkers. “I don't want to be agoraphobic. That's [how] most of my peers [feel],” she said at the time. “Every fucking artist is on this page. Everyone is uncomfortable with fans. Some people just have more patience. I fucking don't.”
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The 2025 Berlin Film Festival jury, led by Todd Haynes, fell hard for their eventual Golden Bear winner “Dreams (Sex Love),” the third entry in a trilogy from Norwegian director Dag Johan Haugerud. Now, Strand Releasing has announced the acquisition of the film, about the fallout of a young woman's (Ella Øverbye) crush on her female French teacher (Selome Emnetu), for North American release. Strand will also release the prior films in Haugerud's Oslo Trilogy, “Sex” and “Love,” this summer as well. Watch the trailer for “Love” below.
Here's the official synopsis of Berlin winner “Dreams,” as a refresh: “In ‘Dreams,' Johanne falls in love for the first time, with her teacher. To preserve her feelings, she documents her emotions and experiences in writing. When her mother and grandmother read what she has written, they are initially shocked by its intimate content but soon see that it has literary potential. As they debate whether to publish it, Johanne navigates the gap between her romantic fantasy and reality, and all three women confront their differing views on love, sexuality, and self-discovery.”
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“Sex,” about the complicated friendship between two straight, middle-aged men who muse on desire and shifting sexuality, premiered at the Berlinale in February 2024; “Love,” about two healthcare workers who bond over their own approaches to romance and relationships, premiered at the Venice Film Festival later in 2024.
Back at the Berlinale, “Dreams (Sex Love)” was not to be confused with another film, the similarly titled “Dreams,” in the competition and from director Michel Franco — perhaps why it was necessary to include the parenthetical. “Dreams (Sex Love)” was one of the best films to premiere at this year's Berlinale, with IndieWire's Harrison Richlin writing, “In truth, one of the deep studies Haugerud seems to explore in his work is how dreams aren't just held while one is sleeping, but as a function of our daily lives.”
Jon Gerrans of Strand Releasing negotiated the deal for the trilogy with Maren Kroymann and Cinthya Calderon of m-appeal world film sales.
The Oslo Trilogy, as it's deemed, is set for an exclusive New York City engagement beginning with “Love” on May 16, followed by “Sex” on June 13, and “Dreams” on September 12 at Film Forum. The films will have national rollouts after their respective opening dates in cities around North America.
Haugerud's films join a Norwegian tradition alongside another Oslo Trilogy, from Joachim Trier, who directed “Reprise,” “Oslo, August 31st,” and “The Worst Person in the World” as a triad as well.
“We're thrilled to be taking this exciting trilogy through Film Forum and across North America. Mr. Haugerud's thoughtful and beautifully crafted films should resonate well with audiences here as they have in their native country and throughout Europe,” said Gerrans.
Current Strand films in release include “Marcello Mio,” “Meeting with Pol Pot,” and “Viet and Nam,” as well as Lisa Cholodenko's restoration of “High Art” and the restoration of James Bidgood's “Pink Narcissus.”
Watch the trailer for “Love” below.
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By Justin Kroll
Film Editor
EXCLUSIVE: Netflix and Jennifer Lopez are building on their strong partnership for the superstar's next project, with plans to team her with an iconic director. Sources tell Deadline that Oscar winner Robert Zemeckis has come on to direct an adaptation of The Last Mrs. Parrish, with Lopez on board to star.
The film is in development with Oscar-nominee Andrea Berloff and Oscar nominee John Gatins penning the script. This marks a reunion for Zemeckis and Gatins, who worked together on the Oscar-nominated Denzel Washington drama Flight.
Liza Chasin is producing for 3dot Productions along with Molly Sims for Something Happy Productions, and Lopez, Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas and Benny Medina for Nuyorican Productions. Margaret Chernin of 3dot will exec produce as will Lynne Constantine and Valerie Constantine, Jack Rapke and Derek Hogue.
Based on the Liv Constantine novel, the story follows a con artist (Lopez) who targets a wealthy couple — the Parrishes — as her next victims. She infiltrates the pair by befriending the wife and seducing the husband, with the master plan of becoming the next Mrs. Parrish, only to discover that the wife's life is far more complicated than she could have imagined.
Watch on Deadline
The 2018 novel was a Reese Witherspoon book club pick, has sold more than 1 million copies and been published in about three dozen countries.
Lopez and Netflix have had a strong partnership that includes action thriller The Mother and sci-fi epic Atlas, and Last Mrs. Parrish gives her another edgy project to sink her teeth into. Lopez has been working with prolific directors of late including Bill Condon, who directed her Sundance pic Kiss of the Spider Woman. That film will get an awards-season release in theaters in the fall..
RELATED: ‘Kiss Of The Spider Woman' Star Jennifer Lopez Waited “Whole Life” For Movie Musical – Sundance Studio
While Zemeckis' long list of blockbusters include the Back to the Future franchise, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Cast Away and the Oscar-winning Forrest Gump, this film brings him back to his adult thrillers like What Lies Beneath and Allied.
Zemeckis' latest directorial effort was last year's Here for Sony Pictures and Miramax that reunited him with Tom Hanks and Robin Wright. An intimate story taking place in one location over the span of generations, the film premiered at AFI Fest and closed out the Chicago Film Festival, where Zemeckis received the festival's Founder's Award.
The Last Mrs. Parrish falls under Chasin's creative partnership with Netflix, which sees her produce feature films via her shingle 3dot. The latest film from the partnership, The Life List starring Sofia Carson, has spent three weeks at No. 1 on the Netflix Global Top 10 Films List (English). It also falls under the creative partnership between Lopez's Nuyorican and Netflix, where Lopez, producing partner Goldsmith-Thomas and longtime manager Benny Medina are producing a slate of films, TV series, scripted and unscripted content, with an emphasis on projects that support diverse female actors, writers and filmmakers.
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By Nellie Andreeva
Co-Editor-in-Chief, TV
An original Emily In Paris cast member is leaving but it may not be who you think as all three of Emily's (Lily Collins) romantic interests will be back next season. That includes OG flame Gabriel, played by Lucas Bravo, following months of speculation whether the actor will continue on the show.
Announcing a May start of production on Season 5 — first in Rome and then in Paris — for a 2025 premiere, Netflix has confirmed returning cast for the new installment. It includes Season 3 series regulars Collins (Emily Cooper), Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu (Sylvie Grateau), Ashley Park (Mindy Chen), Bravo (Gabriel), Samuel Arnold (Julien), Bruno Gouery (Luc) and William Abadie (Antoine Lambert) as well as Lucien Laviscount as Emily's former boyfriend Alfie, who, as Deadline reported in January, will be back full-time next season, and Eugenio Franceschini (Marcello) who was introduced in Season 4 as new recurring character. No word yet on fellow new addition Thalia Besson (Genevieve) who also may join them.
The list hints that Franceschini, whose Italian heir Marcello was romancing Emily at the end of Season 4, may have been promoted to a series regular, though Netflix would not reveal the status of the returning cast beyond confirming that all will be in multiple episodes.
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Missing from the list of returning cast is Camille Razat, who had been a series regular for the first four seasons as Camille, Emily's onetime friend and main rival for Gabriel's heart. This is not surprising as Camille packed up and left toward the end of Season 4 after one last go at a relationship with Gabriel under false pretenses as she faked a pregnancy.
Asked by Deadline at the time of the Season 4 release in September whether Alfie and Camille were both out of the picture, Emily In Paris creator Darren Star said, “Not necessarily. I mean people come and go out of people's lives in shows for a period of time, but it doesn't mean that they're off the table.”
It is not clear whether Alfie will be back for work, love or both. His boss Antoine also is returning next season, and the last time we saw Alfie, he had moved on from Emily with a new girlfriend, though Emily In Paris is known for keeping on-and-off romances going.
Questions about Bravo's return for Season 5 started circulating in October when the actor admitted publicly that he was unsure whether he wanted to continue, admitting he felt “frustrated” and playing Gabriel was “not fun anymore” as the character was “being slowly turned into guacamole.”
As Deadline reported in January, while U.S. series typically have series regular cast members under multi-year contracts, they don't have options on French actors like Bravo, so he had to sign on to return. At the time, conversations with the actor already had started and were moving in a positive direction.
As expected, given that Emily was asked to relocate to Rome for work at the end of the Season 4 finale, Season 5 will begin production in Rome, this May before moving to Paris later in the summer.
“She didn't change her Instagram handle to Emily in Rome. She is working in Rome sometimes. Sylvie's company has an office in Rome. Emily's getting that on its feet,” Star told Deadline in September. “I don't necessarily think that it means a permanent — in my mind, it's definitely not a permanent — move to Rome. We're not leaving Paris.”
It will be a very quick turnaround because Netflix has confirmed that, as announced in January, Season 5 will premiere in 2025.
Creator-writer Star executive produces Emily In Paris with Tony Hernandez, Lilly Burns, Andrew Fleming, Stephen Brown, Alison Brown, Robin Schiff, Grant Sloss and Joe Murphy. The series is produced by MTV Entertainment Studios, Darren Star Productions and Jax Media.
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By
Naomi LaChance
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) acknowledged during a leadership summit in Anchorage this week that “we are all afraid” three months into President Donald Trump's second term in office. Murkowski has been a fairly outspoken critic of Trump in a Republican Party that publicly worships him.
An audience member asked Murkowski what she would say to people who are feeling afraid or to the lawmakers who represent them.
“We are all afraid,” the Republican told the audience of 500 nonprofit leaders. She paused, then added: “It's quite a statement. But we are in a time and a place where I certainly have not been before. And I'll tell ya, I'm oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice, because retaliation is real. And that's not right. But that's what you've asked me to do. And so I'm going to use my voice to the best of my ability.”
“I've got to figure out how I can do my best to help the many who are so anxious and are so afraid,” Murkowski said.
Murkowski voted to convict Trump in his 2021 impeachment trial, when he was charged with inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol. She is the only Republican who voted to defund Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). She was also one of only three Republican senators to vote against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's confirmation, and one of two to vote against FBI Director Kash Patel.
Trump called Murkowski “lousy” and “worse than a Democrat” at a 2022 rally in Alaska, and supported her opponent in her Senate election that year.
“She is the worst. I rate her No. 1 bad, and we have a couple of bad ones, but she's by far the worst,” Trump said.
Murkowski said Monday that protesters should continue challenging Trump. “Keep calling. Keep the emails. Keep the social media going,” she said.
“It's important that the concerns continue to be raised, rather than allow the fatigue of the chaos grind you down,” she added. “Don't let it grind you down.”
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Murkowsi said the situation is “as hard as anything that I have been engaged in, in the 20-plus years I've been in the Senate.”
“It is head spinning,” she said of Trump's second term. “It seems that just when you've made a little bit of progress on one issue that had caused so much anxiety, there's another one.” Murkowski noted that she had recently texted Trump's Chief of Staff Susie Wiles about rumors that AmeriCorps would be cut, but she wasn't sure if that approach would be effective. Two days later, DOGE placed hundreds of AmeriCorps employees on leave.
Murkowski also addressed the possibility that Republicans in Congress would significantly cut Medicaid, the government health insurance program for low-income and disabled people. About 23 percent of Alaskans were on Medicaid in 2023, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. “I'm not saying you can't touch Medicaid at all,” she said. “What I hope we're moving away from is an $880 billion cut to Medicaid. Because if that happens, this is going to be a very, very different state.”
Last month, Murkowski told reporters that Republican lawmakers are afraid of Trump.
“That's why you've got everybody just zip-lipped, not saying a word, because they're afraid they're going to be taken down — they're going to be primaried, they're going to be given names in the media,” Murkowski said. “We cannot be cowed into not speaking up.”
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“It may be that Elon Musk decides that he's going to take the next billion dollars he makes off Starlink and put it directly against Lisa Murkowksi. And you know what? That may happen. But I'm not giving up one minute, one opportunity to try to stand up for Alaska,” she said.
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On Monday, Murkowski said that Congress needs to take an active role.
“Sometimes it's easy, particularly when things are so turbulent and really very, very chaotic right now, you want to be able to blame somebody else, but we cannot,” she said. “Congress has ownership in this, and this is where I say it's sitting down with our colleagues to say, ‘We have a role here too.' We just can't say, ‘Well, we'll let the courts sort it out.' We've got to step it up.”
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The legendary John Williams once set the soundtrack for the billion-dollar franchise. Now a new generation of Hollywood composers that he inspired are giving the Force a whole new feel.
By
Tim Greiving
What is the definition of “Star Wars music”? Maybe, to paraphrase Jimmy Carter, you just know it when you hear it.
Most people would answer by pointing to the man who invented and canonized this unique subgenre: John Williams, composer of nine Star Wars films from 1977 to 2019, the original themes for two spinoffs and a district of Disneyland. Williams established an orchestral, operatic musical language, rich with tuneful character themes and draped in classical tradition, a style now so deeply familiar and revered that it is, for many fans, holy scripture.
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But as this sprawling galaxy continues to expand, the artists behind every new adventure are questioning what the musical topography should — and can — be.
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In the most recent Darwinian leap, a trailer for the second season of Andor was soundtracked with the countrified clang of electric guitar in Steve Earle's Iraq War protest anthem, “The Revolution Starts Now.” An apt text for the show's grown-up political ambitions, but a surprising, maybe even discordant, sound for the galaxy far, far away.
“Every living thing has to evolve as it goes forward, right?” says Steven Gizicki, who ran the music department at Lucasfilm in its last years under George Lucas, a time when they were developing such animated series as Star Wars Detours — an irreverent, and ultimately ill-fated, co-production with Robot Chicken, full of pop songs. For the animated Star Wars: Rebels, Gizicki says, “We had conversations about: What can this sound like? How far can we push it?”
“The obstacle was just reverence,” he continues. But “I think we who are reverent also sort of have blinders on because … ‘Jedi Rocks.' Enough said.”
Gizicki is referring to the funky pop song that Lucas inserted into the 1997 “Special Edition” of Return of the Jedi, written by Jerry Hey and performed by a CGI band. “Jedi Rocks” is both an anomaly and a healthy reminder: Star Wars music, even under Lucas, was always more eclectic than just heroic brass fanfares and noble leitmotifs.
Even in the original Star Wars, Williams wrote galactic bebop for the alien “Cantina Band,” and for Jedi, he wrote bizarro baroque music for Jabba's palace and the jungly celebration song “Yub Nub” for the Ewok choir. (At one point, Lucas considered hiring the band Toto to write a finale song.) For the prequel films, Williams stretched his score palette to include pagan choral cantatas, throat singing — and, yes, even electric guitar.
But as new composers were tasked with stepping into his Chewbacca-sized shoes, the prevailing “house” style Williams had so firmly established loomed like an enormous shadow. Most of the scorers for these satellite Star Wars projects grew up worshiping Williams, who inspired some of them to become composers themselves. They were also working for Kathleen Kennedy, an old friend of Williams, and for Disney — a modern corporation reluctant to take experimental risks.
John Powell, who scored 2018's Solo: A Star Wars Story, joked to composer Michael Giacchino (Rogue One) that the assignment was “like walking through a minefield in clown shoes.”
The first serious break from the prevailing Williams soundtrack came courtesy of Jon Favreau and The Mandalorian. For the inaugural Disney+ Star Wars series, Favreau wanted to take this familiar-but-new character into familiar-but-new musical territory. He found the perfect co-pilot in composer Ludwig Göransson, who had proved he could stir the beloved, nostalgic flavors of Bill Conti's Rocky music into a fresh, hip-hoppy dish with his score for Creed.
“There's only one John Williams, and no one's going to make that music better than what he did,” says Göransson. “I think what I proved with Creed was how you can take a franchise and breathe new life into it while still honoring it.”
Göransson realized that “if you start with orchestra and strings or brass, you're just doomed from the beginning” — so he began by messing around with bass recorders, electric guitar, sampled boot spurs and synths. He eventually found his way into a Williams-esque main theme for Mando, still with lots of elegant Star Wars-ian orchestration, but he infused his score with Old West, samurai and retro-futuristic elements for a satisfying mutation that was entirely his own.
Andor stretched the definition even further. Composer Nicholas Britell and showrunner Tony Gilroy took a conceptual approach, coding each of the story's cultures with its own musical language; the planet Ferrix, for instance, was scored with metallurgical sounds. Britell wrote in-world funeral music for live musicians playing retrofitted instruments, and he also used analog synths to evoke the sense of a “retro past.” (Season two is co-scored by Brandon Roberts.)
In both cases, Göransson and Britell were working for creators with eccentric visions and creative autonomy. When Natalie Holt was asked to score the Obi-Wan Kenobi series, she had to satisfy both director Deborah Chow's desire for a more modern sound and Kennedy's decision to commission Williams for a main theme and insisting on more orchestral nostalgia.
“It was a lot of pressure,” admits Holt, who received helpful encouragement from Giacchino and Powell as she began her daunting task of scoring a beloved character — and writing a new Darth Vader theme. “I think Ludwig and Nicholas had an easier time,” she says, “because they were in a different area where there's less expectation. Michael and John and I had more of that weight of responsibility, of dealing with beloved heritage characters who already had themes.”
When the show Loki came out, Holt's socials filled with “unadulterated fan love” — but when Obi-Wan premiered, “it was a bit more mixed,” she laughs. “Obviously Marvel fans are hugely passionate, but they don't come with quite the same level of, what's the word … interrogation?”
There is reverence, but also more leeway, on the interactive side. Composer Gordy Haab has done impressive Grammy-winning work in a Williams accent on games like Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. But these games also feature a diverse variety of in-world music, including tunes by Mongolian metal band The Hu. The music team for Survivor cooked up a wild setlist — “Mos Eisley Cantina by way of Coachella,” as Electronic Arts president of music Steve Schnur put it — and enlisted actual Coachella acts, indie bands like Joywave and Altın Gün, to provide original jukebox tunes that characters (and players) can jam out to inside Pyloon's Saloon.
“My audience is obviously much younger than the fans of the movies from the '70s and the '90s, in many cases,” says Douglas Reilly, vp at Lucasfilm Games. “They also expect the music to match what they are doing in a way that is very different than what we do on the linear side. I think our incremental approach has allowed us to explore that space, and to push those boundaries, but not do it in a way that breaks fan expectation around what this stuff sounds like overall — and it still feels like Star Wars music at the end of the day. … That balance of new and old is the alchemy that makes the fans feel like they're having something authentic.”
So what, exactly, is Star Wars music?
“Jedi Rocks.” Enough said.
This story first appeared in the April 16 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
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The Tribeca Festival is looking uptown for a centerpiece TV premiere: Season 3 of fan-favorite series “The Gilded Age” will debut at the festival, along with a slew of other notable series.
The 2025 Tribeca Festival, presented by OKX, announced its lineup of television and original independent episodic series. The Festival will take place from June 4 to 15 in New York City, with the features already having been launched earlier this week.
Highlights of the TV program include the Season 3 premiere of Paramount+'s “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds,” the season finale of “Godfather of Harlem,” and the world premiere of Apple TV+ drama “Smoke.” The NOW section, which is dedicated to new independently created pilots and series, has Mandy Patinkin in “Seasoned,” as well as Lili Reinhart, Cooper Raiff, Betty Gilpin, and Mark Ruffalo in “Hal & Harper.” Lena Dunham is among the panelists as well, and will preview her Netflix series “Too Much” with exclusive clips and commentary.
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“Television is one of the most powerful storytelling mediums of our time, and Tribeca is proud to be a home for the visionaries who are redefining it,” Tribeca Festival Director and SVP of Programming Cara Cusumano said. “Tribeca TV is a cornerstone of our festival—an essential platform where innovation, artistry, and audience converge. As the lines between film and television continue to blur, our commitment to championing exceptional stories in all forms remains steadfast.”
Tribeca Festival Senior Programmer Liza Domnitz added, “TV-lovers' choices often seem overwhelmingly vast these days. We are excited to help our audience hone in on a selection of new series and returning favorites that they can experience at Tribeca in a truly exclusive way. From the luminous cast of ‘The Gilded Age' to the denizens of starship Enterprise (‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds'), the TV section offers an exclusive, post-screening discussion before the rest of the world gets a chance to partake. Our NOW program speaks to the rapidly expanding universe of independently made episodic series and the buy-in from the creative community.”
Check out the full list below.
TV
“The Furry Detectives: Unmasking A Monster” (AMC Networks) New Series World Premiere. “The Furry Detectives: Unmasking A Monster,” a four-part documentary, unpacks the 2018 Furry Zoosadist Leaks, exposing a horrifying conspiracy of animal abuse lurking beneath the Furry Fandom's playful exterior. Navigating the line between amateur sleuthing and official police investigation, the pack fights for the victims and defends their community from the evil within. The series is directed and executive produced by Theo Love (The Legend of Cocaine Island) and produced by Alex Gibney's Jigsaw Productions. After the Screening: A conversation with series director Theo Love and producer Julia Lindau.
“The Gilded Age” (HBO) – Season Three World Premiere. Following the Opera War, the old guard is weakened. The Russells stand poised to take their place at society's head. Bertha sets her sights on a prize that would elevate the family to unimaginable heights; George risks everything on a gambit that could revolutionize the railroad industry. Agnes refuses to accept Ada's new position as lady of the house. Peggy meets a doctor from Newport whose family is less than enthusiastic about her career. After the Screening: A conversation with Carrie Coon, Morgan Spector, Christine Baranski, Louisa Jacobson and Denée Benton and series creator Julian Fellowes.
“The Godfather of Harlem” (MGM+) – Season Four Finale. In Season 4 of Godfather of Harlem, Bumpy Johnson (Forest Whitaker) continues his bloody war for control of Harlem against New York's Mafia families, while contending with the arrival of gangster Frank Lucas (Rome Flynn). After Malcolm X's (Jason Alan Carvell) tragic assassination, Bumpy must also grapple with his daughter Elise's (Antionette Crowe-Legacy) involvement with the Black Panthers. After the Screening: A conversation with Forest Whitaker, Ilfenesh Hadera, Lucy Fry, Antoinette Crowe-Legacy and series Showrunner and Executive Producer Chris Brancato.
“Outrageous” (BritBox) – New Series World Premiere. Outrageous is the story of six aristocratic sisters who refused to play by the rules, their often-scandalous lives making headlines around the world. Set against the gathering storm clouds of the 1930s, masked by the decadence, frivolity and lavishness of British high society, Outrageous will bring the full, uncensored story of the Mitford sisters to the screen for the first time – a story of family bonds and betrayals, public scandal, political extremism, love, heartache and even imprisonment. After the Screening: A conversation with Joanna Vanderham, Shannon Watson, Zoe Brough and series Creator Sarah Williams and Executive Producer Matthew Mosley.
“Smoke” (Apple TV+) – New Series World Premiere. Inspired by true events, Smoke follows a troubled detective and an enigmatic arson investigator as they pursue the trails of two serial arsonists. Starring Taron Egerton as arson investigator ‘Dave Gudsen' and Jurnee Smollett as police detective ‘Michelle Calderone,' the cast of Smoke also features Rafe Spall, Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine, Hannah Emily Anderson, Anna Chlumsky, Adina Porter, Academy Award nominee Greg Kinnear, and John Leguizamo. After the Screening: A conversation with Taron Egerton, Jurnee Smollett and Creator, Executive Producer and Writer Dennis Lehane.
“Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” (Paramount+) – Season Three World Premiere. In season three of “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds,” we reconnect with the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise, still under the command of Captain Pike (Anson Mount), as they face the conclusion of season two's harrowing encounter with the Gorn. But new life and civilizations await, including a villain that will test our characters' grit and resolve. An exciting twist on classic Star Trek, season three takes characters both new and beloved, to new heights and dives into thrilling adventures of faith, duty, romance, comedy and mystery with varying genres never before seen on any other Star Trek. After the Screening: A conversation with Anson Mount, Ethan Peck, Celia Rose Gooding, Carol Kane, and Executive Producers Alex Kurtzman, Akiva Goldsman, and Henry Alonso Myers.
“We Were Liars” (Prime Video) – New Series World Premiere. Based on the best-selling novel by E. Lockhart, We Were Liars, the series follows Cadence Sinclair Eastman and her tight-knit inner circle, nicknamed the Liars, during their summer escapades on her grandfather's New England private island. The Sinclairs are American royalty — known for their good looks, old money, and enviable bond — but after a mysterious accident changes Cadence's life forever, everyone, including her beloved Liars, seems to have something to hide. After the Screening: A conversation with Executive Producers Julie Plec, Carina Adly MacKenzie and E. Lockhart, and select cast.
Tribeca Talks: In Conversation with Lena Dunham. Multi-hyphenate Lena Dunham returns to her Tribeca stomping grounds to discuss her highly anticipated return to TV, Too Much. Via exclusive clips and commentary, Dunham will delve into the Netflix series (premiering this summer) she co-created with her husband Luis Felber and how it mirrors her own departure from NYC to start a new life in London. Starring Megan Stalter and Will Sharpe with guest stars including Rita Wilson, Andrew Scott, Andrew Rannells, Janicza Bravo, Rhea Perlman, and Emily Ratajkowski.
NOW Special Screenings
“Hal & Harper” (United States) New York Premiere – Episodes 1-3. Hal and Harper, two codependent siblings living in L.A., are doing their best to navigate long term relationships, friendships, and situationships. When their Dad makes a big announcement, the two are forced to consider the current state of their lives, as well as their complicated childhood. While exploring the trauma of their past, and the dramatic changes of their present, Hal & Harper & Dad chart the evolution of their family, while discovering the ways their intense bond has shaped the ways they interact with those they love, for better or worse. Starring Cooper Raiff, Lili Reinhart, Mark Ruffalo, Betty Gilpin, Havana Rose Liu, and Addison Timlin. Created by Cooper Raiff. After the Screening: A conversation with Cooper Raiff, Lili Reinhart, Mark Ruffalo, Betty Gilpin, Addison Timlin, and Executive Producers Daniel Lewis and Clementine Quittner.
“Mrs. America” (United States) World Premiere – Episodes 1 & 2. The stakes are high, and the heels are higher, as married women across the nation compete for the coveted Mrs. America crown in this funny and inspiring documentary series. Created by Penny Lane.
“The Price of Milk” (United States) World Premiere – Episodes 1-3. The untold battle behind the ‘90s ‘Got Milk' campaign leads an investigative romp from the dairy farm to the White House, diving into Americans' love/hate relationship with milk. Directed by Yoni Brook and Nicholas Bruckman.
NOW Showcase
“Bulldozer” (United States) New York Premiere. After discovering her boyfriend's infidelity, Jo spirals and ends up involuntarily committed to a psychiatric facility. Upon her release, Jo attempts to rebuild her life, find love, and figure out what's wrong with her (be it physical or mental). Starring Joanna Leeds, Nat Faxon, Mary Steenburgen, Kate Burton, Harvey Guillén, Chris “CP” Powell, Allen Leech, Tim Bagley, Nick Armstrong, Andrew Friedman, and Leonard Robinson. Created by Joanna Leeds.
“Earth to Percy” (United States) World Premiere. Floating 250 miles above the earth, NASA Astronaut Percy Dennis discovers the rest of the crew has made plans to hang out in Maui after their mission, but he's not invited. Shocked to learn his friendships are not what he thought they were, he refuses to let it go even as his world unravels. Starring Jeremy Beiler, Amy Schumer, Josh Charles, Wyatt Cenac and Maya Rudolph. Created by Jeremy Beiler.
“Mother, May I Have A Kidney?” (United States) World Premiere – Episodes 1 & 2. When Doug learns he's in need of a kidney transplant and the perfect match is his estranged mother, he's forced to embark on a journey towards reconciliation with his family. Starring Doug Plaut, Tina Benko, Charlotte Ray Rosenberg, Darius de Haas, Troy Iwata, and Myra Lucretia Taylor. Created by Veronica Reyes-How.
“Seasoned” (United States) World Premiere. Based on the real lives of Mandy Patinkin and Kathryn Grody, Seasoned follows the delightfully tumultuous relationship and life of this successful, gregarious, deeply committed, slightly insane married couple. As they navigate a society that feels as if it's crumbling around them, will they remain standing? Starring Mandy Patinkin and Kathryn Grody. Created by Gideon Grody-Patinkin and Ewen Wright.
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Julia Garner's Silver Surfer, AKA Shalla-Bal, has been finally unveiled in the latest trailer for “The Fantastic Four: First Steps.”
The film, which stars Pedro Pascal, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Vanessa Kirby, and Joseph Quinn as the titular foursome, is set in 1960s Manhattan during the time of when the first comic book of the characters was released. The feature will serve as the origin story for Pascal's Reed Richards, AKA Mr. Fantastic, Vanessa Kirby's Sue Storm, AKA the Invisible Woman, Quinn's Johnny Storm, AKA the Human Torch, and Moss-Bachrach's Ben Grimm, AKA the Thing. Ralph Ineson also plays villain Galactus, with Paul Walter Hauser, Natasha Lyonne, and John Malkovich co-starring.
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Matt Shakman (“WandaVision”) directs “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” from a script by Jeff Kaplan and Ian Springer. This is the first “Fantastic Four” iteration since the 20th Century deal with Marvel. Prior to the sale, the first “Fantastic Four” film was released in 2005, followed by 2007 sequel “The Silver Surfer.” The franchise was revived in 2015 with the standalone film “Fantastic Four.”
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“First Steps” star Quinn recently told Entertainment Weekly that his interpretation of the Human Torch is different from previous franchise installments. The character was originally (and most famously) played by Chris Evans in 2005.
“He's a man that leads with a lot of bravado, which can be an affront sometimes. But also he's funny,” Quinn said of the character. “Myself and [Marvel Studios boss] Kevin [Feige] were speaking about previous iterations of him and where we are culturally. He was branded as this womanizing, devil-may-care guy, but is that sexy these days? I don't think so. This version of Johnny is less callous with other people's feelings, and hopefully there's a self-awareness about what's driving that attention-seeking behavior.”
Feige additionally said in a 2023 interview with Entertainment Weekly that the “First Steps” film will be a “pillar” of the MCU franchise.
“‘Fantastic Four' is the foundation for everything that came after in the comics,” Feige said while first announcing the project. “There's certainly been versions of it [onscreen], but never inhabiting the storytelling of the MCU. And that's something that is really exciting for us. People will start to hear more about that soon. We plan on that being a big pillar of the MCU going forward, just the way they've been in the comics for 50 or 60 years.”
Check out the new trailer below.
“The Fantastic Four: First Steps” premieres July 25 in theaters from Marvel Studios and Disney.
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Director Matt Shakman's new take on the legendary Marvel team hits theaters this summer.
By
Ryan Gajewski
Senior Entertainment Reporter
Fantastic Four: First Steps teases a possible new addition to Marvel's First Family in the movie's latest trailer.
Ahead of its theatrical release July 25, the Marvel Studios title released the trailer online Thursday after it debuted earlier this month during Disney's CinemaCon presentation. Director Matt Shakman's feature offers a new take on the superhero quartet who made their first comic book appearance in 1961.
Fantastic Four: First Steps stars Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic, Vanessa Kirby as Sue Storm/The Invisible Woman, Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm/The Human Torch and Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Ben Grimm/The Thing.
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In the new footage for the 1960s-set project, Reed Richards and Sue Storm learn that they are expecting a baby, spurring a complicated response. “We can do this,” Kirby says.
Our heroes face threats from Galactus but are determined to stay united, even as the public begins to lose faith in them. “We will face this together,” Kirby adds. “We will fight it together — as a family.” Toward the end of the trailer, Julia Garner's Silver Surfer briefly glides across the screen to offer a warning.
The latest version of the screenplay is from Eric Pearson, who also worked on Marvel's forthcoming Thunderbolts*. The First Steps cast includes Ralph Ineson as Galactus, along with Paul Walter Hauser, John Malkovich and Natasha Lyonne.
Following an unreleased Roger Corman-produced feature in the 1990s, the Fantastic Four hit the big screen with director Tim Story's 2005 movie that starred Chris Evans, Jessica Alba, Ioan Gruffudd and Michael Chiklis as the titular group. Although critics were unimpressed, the movie did well at the box office and spawned a 2007 sequel.
The team was rebooted for Josh Trank's 2015 feature starring Miles Teller, Kate Mara, Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Bell. This one underperformed at the box office and holds a mere 9 percent Rotten Tomatoes critical score.
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By
Brenna Ehrlich
When Amanda Knox was locked away in an Italian prison in 2007 for a murder she didn't commit, she'd find solace in singing. “Most of the people in prison knew my voice before they knew who I was,” she says; she favored sad songs by folks like Joanna Newsom and Regina Spektor. “People would hear me sing, and then they would yell down the hallway to hear certain songs. So I was basically like the jukebox for a while.” After a prison priest taught her how to play piano, she would practice on a paper keyboard in her room.
Eddie Lowery had a similar experience back in the Eighties, locked up in a Kansas facility for a rape he's since been cleared of, noodling on a guitar his mother sent him. “At night, I would put my headphones on and I'd listen to the local rock-music station,” he says. “I'd lay there pretending I was onstage, playing next to these guys, with my guitar.”
And then there's Bill Dillon, who wrote his first song on a roll of toilet paper after being hosed down and sent to solitary back in the 1980s. The track was called “Black Robes and Lawyers,” and he honed it using gear Lynyrd Skynyrd donated to his Florida facility.
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“It was basically a statement: Why isn't anybody listening to me?” he says. Dillon was wrongly convicted in 1981 for murder, and neither of the titular figures in the song title were swayed by his claims of innocence.
Flash forward to 2025, and all three of these formerly incarcerated people have been exonerated — Knox in 2015 after serving nearly four years, Lowery in 2003 after nine years, and Dillon in 2008 after 27 years. Now, their musical dreams are coming true. All three are members of the Exoneree Band, an iteration of which recently performed with Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready at the annual National Innocence Network Conference in Seattle.
“It was a joyous yet really heavy environment in terms of psychologically and healing,” McCready says. His wife, Ashley, is the board president of the Washington Innocence Project and helped him get involved. “I think music is critical to healing humans.”
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The Exoneree Band got their start in 2011 at a conference in Cincinnati, playing that song Dillon wrote on a roll of toilet paper. “We did kind of a talent show among our exonerees from all different projects from all over the country,” says Lara Zarowsky, an executive and policy director of the Washington Innocence Project. “There's a lot of talent in our community, as you might imagine. One of the main ways that some of them have made it through prison was through music.”
The original lineup was Lowery (lead guitar), Dillon (guitar and bass), Darby Tillis (vocals and bass), Antoine Day (vocals and drums), and Raymond Towler (guitars and keys). Together, the guys had served a collective 85 years. “We realized that we were better together, as a band,” says Dillon, who is currently on a break from the group while he awaits a heart transplant. “I had a catalog, so it was easy for us to go right out and play. We were raising awareness about wrongful convictions.
The band has since played at independent Innocence Network organization concerts across the country and any stage that will have it; Grammy-winning producer Jim Tulio even produced Dillon's 2014 solo record. Tillis died in 2014, and Dillon has been off the road, but they're still considered part of the band — which now includes Knox on vocals and bassist Ted Bradford, who was exonerated after 10 years for a rape that DNA evidence proved he did not commit.
On April 5, the band hit the Rabbit Box in Seattle after the 2025 conference, where McCready filled in on guitar. “We did a couple of Pearl Jam songs,” he says. Namely “Black” and “Yellow Ledbetter, which Knox sang backup on. “I don't generally do those songs with anybody except for my band, but this is such an important occasion that I felt like: I'll do whatever these guys want to do, and I feel honored to be part of it.”
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Last weekend, me and the Exoneree Band performed at the annual Innocence Network Conference. I'd love to tell you a little about the band. Between us, we've served more than 102 years of wrongful imprisonment. It's an honor and privilge to celebrate our freedom with music. pic.twitter.com/kxk8dbDibj
Knox, a Seattle native who advocates against wrongful convictions, has known Pearl Jam for years. “They reached out to me when I first came home, because they had long been really supportive of these cases,” she says. “Truly the first exoneree that I ever met was Damian Echols through Pearl Jam, at Eddie Vedder's house. It was just the most awesome thing to just be rocking out with Mike on the stage at the Rabbit Box.”
“She has great intuition,” McCready adds. “While we were playing, she was singing backup for ‘Black' and totally adding this cool dimension of pain and beauty and magic. I was playing along with it and catching it.”
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The band also played a few of Lowery's originals, such as “Name of Justice,” about our broken court system, and “My Cell,” which he wrote about those nights spent listening to the radio, picturing himself playing alongside his heroes. It's a dream that was realized that night as the band stood toe-to-toe with a Nineties legend.
Knox, who says she's been into music since she was old enough to belt Disney songs, says she's next in line to teach the band some originals. She recently released her memoir, Free. “I gave the group a whole bunch of original songs that I've made in the meantime,” she says, adding that she's been working with Chris Ballew of Presidents of the United States of America. “The band just has a really special bond. I think it's really great that we get the opportunity not just to tell our stories, but to tell our stories through an art form. It's always been a source of comfort for me.”
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Amid her astronomical rise, the singer-songwriter is trying to stay true to what has gotten her this far: her honest way with words, and the fans who deeply relate to them.
By
Hannah Dailey
At the beginning of the year, Gracie Abrams found herself in a rare bind. For one of the first times in her life, she says, “I felt like I had nothing to say.”
The 25-year-old musician had scheduled a week to spend at Long Pond Studio working on new music with her longtime collaborator, Aaron Dessner, when she realized that she was at a loss for inspiration — a frustrating position for Abrams, who isn't just one of Gen Z's most prolific songwriters, but has also been writing songs since she was a kid. “I was actually quite aggravated with myself that I had booked that time,” she says now, months later. “I went into it being like, ‘Oh, I'm going to waste Aaron's time.' I felt a little bit disconnected from myself.”
It's understandable why Abrams might have felt at loose ends. After releasing her second album, the Dessner-produced The Secret of Us, last June, she went from the cusp of main-pop-girl status to bona fide stardom and has careened ever since on a career-affirming thrill ride that refuses to slow down. The witty, self-effacing album full of catchy acoustic anthems and searing appraisals of romantic disappointments debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200, and Abrams' momentum only snowballed that fall when its deluxe version produced her first top 10 Billboard Hot 100 hit, “That's So True,” a snarky post-breakup kiss-off that became inescapable on TikTok. She has also been traveling basically nonstop for years, piggybacking a catalytic stint opening for Taylor Swift — her childhood hero — on The Eras Tour with her own sold-out fall run of U.S. theaters; she'll play North American arenas this summer, including two nights at New York's Madison Square Garden.
Add to that list a second Grammy nomination (best pop duo performance for “us.,” her duet with Swift), her first turn as Saturday Night Live musical guest and the monthlong run of arena dates she wrapped in Europe just days before our conversation, and we're almost caught up with everything Abrams has accomplished over the past 10 months. On this March evening, she's poised and seemingly at ease with the nonstop nature of her life lately as we talk beside a vintage-looking piano tucked inside Ella's Lounge at the Brooklyn Paramount, where in a few hours, she and Dessner will play an acoustic charity show supporting World Central Kitchen at what is now, for her, an exceedingly rare small-venue stop. But she admits the pressure does occasionally get to her, as it did during that bout of writer's block over the new year.
“ ‘That's So True' was the first song I've had that did what it did,” she explains, a cup of tea steeping nearby to help combat a sinus infection lingering from the tour. “Every time I sat down to try to write something, I felt a little sick. I was thinking, like, ‘How do I do something that will beat it?'
“There are more people [than ever] telling you what's going on charts-wise, radio-wise, streaming numbers, whatever,” she says. “That can start to be internalized, and I actually really hate how that feels.”
Since she signed to Interscope Records in 2019, Abrams and her team have strategically built up to this moment. Constantly releasing music and touring, her crowd sizes have ballooned as each project has performed better than the last; after a couple of EPs, she earned her first Billboard 200 entry in 2023 with debut album Good Riddance, also produced by Dessner, peaking at No. 52. Her rapid ascent since is comparable to those of fellow 2024 breakouts Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan — though Abrams is hesitant to see herself as their peer. “When I think about both of their rises, it's like, boom,” she says, her eyes widening. “I feel like I've almost slipped under the radar a little bit [in comparison].”
But to the extent that may be true, it's only because of how steadily she has grown over the past several years. “This is obviously her big breakout moment, but there was no skipping of steps or taking shortcuts,” Interscope Capitol chairman/CEO John Janick tells Billboard. “She never wanted to rush anything — she really cared and wanted to make sure people heard her music in the right way and really connected with it. We're all just trying to figure out how to continue to make the train move.”
Right now, that means simply trying to keep up with how fast things are happening. Backstage at the Paramount, where much of Abrams' team is gathered to support her tonight, Interscope Geffen A&M (IGA) vp of pop/rock marketing Hannah Gold explains that they meet “every Tuesday without fail” to discuss how they can best pounce on opportunities, like when the star's live Vevo performance of Secret of Us single “I Love You, I'm Sorry” started going viral in October. They immediately clocked the trend and released the recording on streaming services, which boosted the studio version of the track to a new Hot 100 peak of No. 19 shortly after. “It's kind of like the war room where we're like, ‘OK, what are the things that we can do to help this spark that's happening organically?' ” she says.
But while her label is tuned into all that's buzzing around her, Abrams' strategy for staying above water is entirely the opposite. She has learned to spend as little time as possible scrolling social media, where everything from her signature bob and chiseled abs to her rumored romance with actor Paul Mescal have become lightning rods for discourse, and incessant stan wars are fueled by people picking apart her music and pitting her against her peers. As Abrams sees it, as long as she doesn't look at the hate, “It doesn't exist.
“I can know that 10 people a day are having that conversation on Twitter — that's cool for them,” she continues, shrugging. “I'm just going to mind my own business, really. I feel like any time I've slipped into paying too much attention to that, I'm less present in my life, I'm less available for people I know and love. It's not good for me as a person, it's not good for the art that I want to make. It's boring as hell.”
Ignoring her own inner voices is harder. She eventually pushed through with Dessner at Long Pond and emerged with a handful of songs that are the foundation for her next project — likely a new album, she thinks, though she has considered dividing the material into EPs. But making sure she's not psyching herself out as her career takes flight is a continual challenge.
“I've just been trying to take the pressure off myself to have to reinvent,” she says. “I hope that I don't get in my own way so much.”
It's two hours until showtime, and there are so. Many. Bows. These accessories, part of the unofficial Gracie fan uniform, adorn the heads of both girls so young they have to hold a parent's hand as they cross Flatbush Avenue in Downtown Brooklyn and young women old enough to grab drinks at the bar before taking their seats at the venue.
Though smaller than usual, the gathering here offers a sample-size glance at the types of crowds Abrams has been drawing. Many of the fans are newbies who caught on to her after her recent career spike, like 7-year-old Ara, who discovered her on Spotify just months ago but is now Abrams-obsessed. To prove it, she and best friend Mazzy passionately perform the bridge of lead Secret of Us single “Risk” for me and reveal that, inspired by their new idol, they've started writing songs together.
But there are also O.G. fans like 18-year-old Ariana, who tells me she has adored Abrams since she first heard enduring fan-favorite deep cut “21” and saw her back in 2022 at the Bowery Ballroom. She says that watching her favorite musician's explosion over the past few months — after previously thinking of Abrams as “my little underground artist” — has felt “insane,” her bow rippling as she shakes her head incredulously.
It's crazy to Abrams, too. Growing up in Los Angeles, she didn't have grandiose pop star ambitions. As a studious, introverted kid, she simply found songwriting therapeutic — “It was what made me feel like I could, like, bear everything,” she says — and took inspiration from Swift and Joni Mitchell, whom she recalls listening to on car rides to school with her mother. The daughter of director J.J. Abrams and production executive Katie McGrath, she spent the first couple years of her career fielding questions about being a so-called “nepo baby”; now, she has arguably surpassed her dad's level of fame (well, at least in the eyes of Gen Z).
When Interscope first expressed interest in her as a teenager, it had nothing to do with Abrams' Hollywood pedigree. “She's done this on her own without taking any of the shortcuts,” Janick says, remarking that he still hasn't even met the singer's parents. “It was purely signing her based on how she was as a person and a songwriter. That's what we were interested in.”
The label was drawn in by Abrams' honest, evocative pen, which she started showcasing in high school by using Instagram as an “impulsive diary” to upload song snippets and bond with the ever-growing base of followers who related to her lyrics. She says she was wary at first about involving a third party in her relationship with those fans — because “it did feel so personal from the jump” — but Interscope was willing from the beginning to make sure doing right by her listeners informed every decision. After spending a year studying international relations at Barnard College, she eventually felt comfortable signing with the label.
“I mean this in the greatest way possible: I don't think it feels like there's a major label running things,” she tells me backstage before she is whisked away to get ready. “Everything — and I hope that the fans feel this way, too — feels as connected as it did six years ago.”
That bond is on full display tonight as Abrams takes the stage in Brooklyn, where she stops to chat with audience members and reciprocate screamed “I love you's” between almost every song. Four separate times, she and Dessner are interrupted by a different fan shouting to say that it's their birthday today; each time, she gasps sincerely and offers felicitations.
“The way she respects her fans, herself and her craft are an inspiration to me,” Noah Kahan, who tapped Abrams for his “Everywhere, Everything” remix in 2023, tells Billboard. “And a reminder that you can live a crazy and unfamiliar life and still remain true to who you are.”
Abrams has strived to create these types of community spaces with her fans since the beginning of her career, even when they couldn't gather in person. When the pandemic forced her to cancel her first-ever tour in 2020, she concocted an idea for a series of virtual 100-capacity gigs — dubbed Minor Bedroom Shows — that were available by city to mimic the course she originally had scheduled, something her team thinks planted the seeds for her booming international demand today. “She was like, ‘I want to route it like a tour,' ” IGA's Gold recalls. “ ‘I want the fans in each market to start meeting each other so when they come to see me in real life, they know each other.' ”
The Zoom shows also helped cultivate an audience that was desperate to see her in real life once she hit the road, something she finally did in September 2021, when she performed for the very first time before 300 people at the Constellation Room in Orange County. Then in 2022, Olivia Rodrigo, an early and vocal champion of Abrams, offered her the first of two crucial supporting gigs in Abrams' touring career. “She gave me such a shot, opening for her on the SOUR tour,” she says of Rodrigo. “I adore her with my whole heart for forever and ever.”
Rodrigo gushes right back. “Gracie has such a singular voice when it comes to songwriting,” she tells Billboard. “I think it's rare to be so young and already have developed your very own lane. You can hear a song and instantly know if it's a Gracie Abrams song even if she wasn't singing it. That is so special and a real testament to her talent and influence.”
Carole Kinzel and Shirin Nury, Abrams' agents at CAA, were already planning her 2023 Good Riddance tour when the friendship-beaded opportunity of a lifetime came knocking: an invitation to support Swift on the biggest stadium trek in history. They quickly rerouted some of Abrams' headlining dates to make it work — “Quite honestly, for an opportunity like that, we would have rearranged just about anything,” Kinzel says — and she spent six months across 2023 and 2024 flourishing under her idol's wing. Studying Swift every night on the road, Abrams learned to command stadiums that would swallow most artists up while managing to also make them feel intimate. The lessons have come in handy on her Secret of Us tour, where she has made packed arenas feel cozy by performing on a B-stage decorated to look like her bedroom, a callback to her backdrop in those first virtual shows.
Tracking her progression, it's natural to wonder if Swift-size stadiums are in Abrams' future as a headliner. Her CAA team thinks they're in reach — but is that something she wants for herself? “Hell yeah,” Abrams answers without hesitation.
But then she pauses. “I could have never imagined myself admitting to that,” she continues, more slowly. “I think having had the privilege of opening for Taylor in the stadiums that we played, to now have a visual reference and a real sense of what it feels like to be on a stage in that environment… It's something that I miss and desperately hope to earn over time.”
A week after the Paramount show, Abrams is still glowing. “It was a sweet little hang,” she says brightly over the phone.
She's on the opposite coast now, back in her native Los Angeles and in a car on her way to rehearsal for Billboard's Women in Music, where she'll perform “I Love You, I'm Sorry” and accept the Songwriter of the Year honor — and, hopefully, catch up with Doechii, whose music Abrams says she's “quite addicted to” at the moment. (A video from the ceremony will later show the two chopping it up.) She also says she has been streaming Lady Gaga's MAYHEM nonstop: “When I think about songwriter greats, she has been top of mind recently.”
Moments for her own songwriting seem to come fewer and farther between these days, but Abrams finds them whenever she can. Despite having only three weeks between the end of the Secret of Us tour's European leg and the Asia run's April 3 kickoff show in Singapore, she spent a precious free Saturday with Dessner at New York's Electric Lady Studios before heading to L.A. Abrams says they went in hoping to nail just one particular song, but emerged 12 hours later having worked on “a bunch” of tracks for the next project, which comes together in her head more and more with each scattered studio session.
“Aaron and I are catching each other in these little pockets between hectic times,” she explains. “Every day that I live with the music, things start to become a little clearer. There's something we're starting to crack that is making both of us feel energized.”
She also found time recently to reteam with one of her first collaborators. Abrams initially met Benny Blanco when she was dating his then-intern, Blake Slatkin (who produced much of her early work), and first worked with him over five years ago on minor's title track, which was followed by her appearance on his 2021 song “Unlearn.” For “Call Me When You Break Up,” off Blanco's new collaborative album with fiancée Selena Gomez, he tapped Abrams to guest — and with a No. 46 Hot 100 peak, the track became her seventh career entry on the chart.
“What's so cool about her music is that she really tells it how it is, whether it makes her look great or not so great,” Blanco raves on a call. He remembers how she was once “much more shy” in the studio and says he was “blown away” by how quickly and confidently Abrams stacked her own harmonies on “Call Me.”
“She makes these songs that are huge in stadiums now, yet they also still feel like she's whispering them into your ear in your bedroom at three in the morning,” he adds, excitedly pointing out that his car just passed a billboard in Manhattan with her face on it. “She's just a force to be reckoned with.”
The billboard, it happens, was for Hourglass Cosmetics, which just announced Abrams as the face of its new campaign. She's also a Chanel ambassador; her CAA team carefully curated both deals to bring her more opportunities beyond music — though Kinzel and Nury note that they're “saying no to a lot” because of how full Abrams' plate already is. (Abrams also tells me that she has “loads of ambitions” outside of songwriting and touring, but those, for now, are “sacred.” When I ask if she would like to act, she replies politely, “I don't know what I want to attempt to speak into existence at this point in time,” though she does say she may someday like to compile her poetry and journal musings from years on the road into a book or something similar.)
One thing Abrams definitely saves room for, though, is celebrating the people who've helped get her to where she is. The day before our call, she attended She Is the Music's Women Sharing the Spotlight event highlighting the work of her mostly female team — much of which has been with her since the beginning — and accepted an award on the group's behalf. “It's definitely been intentional,” Abrams says of professionally surrounding herself with “badass women.” “I lean on these women. I admire the way that they work. I think all of us are equally invested, and I think that the fact that we get to learn from each other is a really beautiful thing.”
“Gracie is an artist who lives and breathes what she stands for — and she wants women at the table, period,” adds Abrams' longtime manager, Alex DePersia. “For me, being in this group of women who genuinely support each other is so, so powerful.”
Abrams also feels lucky to have some of the women she has looked up to since she was a tween become mentors she can turn to if she ever needs advice. There's Lorde, who's a calming presence just to be around — “She's like 800 years old inside … whenever we're together, I feel my nervous system regulate differently” — and of course, Swift. When things start to get overwhelming by way of public scrutiny, Abrams says simply being in the Eras superstar's orbit helps put things in perspective.
“It's like, I really don't have it that bad in terms of invasion of privacy, you know what I mean?” she says. “I feel like I learned a lot from her, obviously, but one of the things that I've felt lucky to observe is how extreme it can be [for her]. It helps right-size my own s–t.”
On that front, Abrams says she hasn't let prying eyes or snapping phone cameras change how she approaches her everyday life or dating. (“That would be so unfortunate,” she says with a laugh.) And, much like Swift, she also continues to write about her relationships in vivid detail, regardless of how many listeners may or may not be dissecting the lyrics for clues about, say, a certain Gladiator II star.
Overall, she seems strikingly well-adjusted to the public pressures of her mounting fame. Maybe it's because of her upbringing, or the fact that she has been preparing for this moment so gradually for the past six years, but “That's So True” co-writer Audrey Hobert suggests that her childhood best friend is simply preternaturally suited for greatness.
“She's completely built for it,” Hobert tells me over Zoom in the middle of unpacking her new L.A. apartment. (The pair previously lived together for two years in the city, writing much of The Secret of Us in their shared digs, but Abrams recently relocated to New York to be closer to work, telling me that “the walking of it all is really good for my brain.”)
“I've never watched someone work harder for longer,” Hobert says. “I don't think anyone should have to go through certain aspects of what this job brings if you're really good at it and you're successful, but I would say — you don't really hear that girl complain. You don't.
“Even to me, her safe person,” she emphasizes. “She is genuinely grateful at her core. It's not just something she says.”
For Abrams, it's a clear creative vision and sense of purpose that sustains her — even in flashes of self-doubt when, for a moment, she can't quite find the right words. That's why she says one of her main priorities now is finding ways to stay centered during all the chaos, whether by journaling constantly, daydreaming about “disappearing to the woods” to spend “days and days reading” as soon as her schedule relents or redefining what exactly “topping” herself means: writing a song, perhaps, that makes her feel even more passionate than composing “That's So True” drunk on the roof of Electric Lady with Hobert did, even if that song never beats it in terms of numbers. Take away all the noise and, from the beginning, it's always just been about her writing and whom she writes for — and she wants to make sure she's not missing out on either by moving a “million miles an hour.”
“I think the best use of me as a human being on this planet, at least right now, is trying to use my writing or storytelling to make as many people as possible feel connected to themselves and to this community,” she says.
With conviction coloring her voice, she adds: “That is what I think I'm here for right now.”
This story appears in the April 19, 2025, issue of Billboard.
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Barbara Broccoli is bridging the pond between British and U.S. cinema, even after relinquishing the James Bond franchise to Amazon. Broccoli and her franchise co-producer and half-brother Michael G. Wilson recently sold the creative control of the Bond property to Amazon MGM for a rumored $1 billion. Now, Broccoli has been announced as one of the BFI Fellows for the newly launched BFI America from the British Film Institute.
BFI America is being billed as a “champion the work of the BFI in the U.S. and internationally, including the vital preservation and restoration work of the BFI National Archive, and maintain the organization's enduring partnership with U.S. cinema and its vibrant film community.” In addition to Broccoli, other board members include director Terry Gilliam, Varo Money founder Colin Walsh, producer Deborah Schindler, producer Penelope Wong, and UCLA professor Dr. Mali Heled Kinberg.
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“The UK and the U.S. share deep and rich connections in cinema,” Ben Roberts, BFI Chief Executive, said in an official statement. “We are excited to celebrate our continued cultural collaboration and present these extraordinary treasures from the BFI National Archive to U.S. audiences.”
BFI America debuted as part of the 90th anniversary of the BFI National Archive. A reception will be held April 23 in Los Angeles ahead of the TCM Classic Film Festival, where six films from the BFI National Archive's collection will screen. The features include an original British release dye-transfer Technicolor print of “Jaws,” as introduced by BFI Chief Executive Ben Roberts, and a rare 1945 nitrate release print of Michael Curtiz's “Mildred Pierce.” BFI will also be hosting “From Across the Pond: Sights & Sounds of the British Film Institute,” a Club TCM event at The Roosevelt Hotel with special guest Guillermo Del Toro.
TCM will additionally have the “Salute to the BFI” with two nights of classic British films on the TCM channel in June, ranging from “The Private Life of Henry VIII” to “Gaslight.”
The BFI National Archive has previously collaborated with various U.S.-based organizations, including Martin Scorsese's Film Foundation and the George Eastman Museum. The BFI frequently lends rare archival prints for restorations and screenings including the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, The Museum of Modern Art, SIFF Seattle, and the aforementioned TCM Classic Film Festival, as well.
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Bruce Springsteen has released “Blind Spot,” the latest song from the coveted box set of lost albums, Tracks II, that he announced this month. “Blind Spot” is the first song ever to be released from the Streets of Philadelphia Sessions, an album known among fans as the “loops record.” Listen below.
Springsteen recorded the 10-song album in the wake of its Oscar-winning title track. Inspired by West Coast hip-hop, he experimented with drum samples before creating his own bank of original “loops” with engineer Toby Scott. As such, Springsteen is the primary player on the whole record, though additional input comes from Patti Scialfa, Soozie Tyrell, Lisa Lowell, and his 1992-1993 touring band. Completed, mixed, and slated for a 1995 release, the album wound up being shelved when Springsteen decided to reunite with the E Street Band.
The song's lyrics concern doubt and betrayal in relationships, Springsteen said in a press release. “That was just the theme that I locked in on at that moment. I don't really know why. Patti and I, we were having a great time in California. But sometimes if you lock into one song you like, then you follow that thread. I had ‘Blind Spot,' and I followed that thread through the rest of the record.”
Of the decision to shelve the record, he went on, “I said, ‘Well, maybe it's time to just do something with the band, or remind the fans of the band or that part of my work life.' So that's where we went. But I always really liked Streets of Philadelphia Sessions… during the Broadway show, I thought of putting it out [as a standalone release]. I always put them away, but I don't throw them away.”
Tracks II arrives June 27, presenting a trove of seven albums of never-before-heard Springsteen music spanning from 1983 to 2018. With the initial announcement, he shared “Rain in the River,” which appears on the Perfect World collection—the one LP on Tracks II that was not originally conceived as a standalone album. The two songs shared so far are the first of 74 never-before-heard tracks that form the bulk of the bumper box set.
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The second and final season of the fantasy series has a teaser trailer and an unusual release strategy.
By
James Hibberd
Writer-at-Large
Major news in the long-awaited return of Netflix‘s The Sandman.
The streamer has released a teaser trailer (below) for the second and final season of the fantasy series, which stars Tom Sturridge as Dream. There's also a premiere date — well, actually, two launch dates, as Netflix has decided to split the roll out of the second season into two parts.
Volume 1 will comprise six episodes to debut July 3, while Volume 2 will have five episodes premiering July 24. It's a strategy Netflix usually reserves for its highest-profile titles (such as Stranger Things).
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Here's the official description: “After a fateful reunion with his family, Dream of the Endless (Tom Sturridge) must face one impossible decision after another as he attempts to save himself, his kingdom, and the waking world from the epic fallout of his past misdeeds. To make amends, Dream must confront longtime friends and foes, gods, monsters, and mortals. But the path to forgiveness is full of unexpected twists and turns, and true absolution may cost Dream everything. Based on the beloved award-winning DC comic series, the second season of The Sandman will tell Dream's story arc in full to its thrilling conclusion.”
The second and final season is from showrunner Allan Heinberg and director Jamie Childs. The show has been caught up in controversy for being based on the DC comic by Neil Gaiman (along with Sam Keith, and Mike Dringenberg). Gaiman — who is also an executive producer on the series — has been accused of sexual misconduct and has been sued for sexual assault.
Following those allegations in January, Netflix announced the second season of The Sandman would be its last. “The Sandman series has always been focused exclusively on Dream's story, and back in 2022, when we looked at the remaining Dream material from the comics, we knew we only had enough story for one more season,” Heinberg said in a statement. “We are extremely grateful to Netflix for bringing the team all back together and giving us the time and resources to make a faithful adaptation in a way that we hope will surprise and delight the comics' loyal readers as well as fans of our show.”
The allegations came amid Gaiman having several other projects at various stages, including the Amazon miniseries Anansi Boys and a concluding 90-minute episode of Amazon's Good Omens.
Season one of The Sandman premiered in August 2022 to largely positive reviews from critics and fairly strong audience numbers. It spent seven weeks in Netflix's worldwide top 10 (based on the company's internal data) and six weeks on the Nielsen streaming charts in the United States.
But the allegations against Gaiman has overshadowed the series. He was accused of sexual misconduct by several women last year in a podcast titled Master, produced by Tortoise Media. On Jan. 13, a New York magazine story detailed several more allegations against the writer.
Gaiman denied the allegations in a blog post, writing, “I'm far from a perfect person, but I have never engaged in non-consensual sexual activity with anyone. Ever. I went back to read the messages I exchanged with the women around and following the occasions that have subsequently been reported as being abusive. These messages read now as they did when I received them — of two people enjoying entirely consensual sexual relationships and wanting to see one another again. At the time I was in those relationships, they seemed positive and happy on both sides.”
Rick Porter contributed to this report.
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By
Daniel Kreps
Randy Newman returned to late-night television with a performance of his 1972 song “Political Science” on Everybody's Live With John Mulaney.
The legendary singer-songwriter also played a rendition of his oft-covered “I Think It's Going to Rain Today” on the Netflix show, Newman's first late-night performance since a Covid-era virtual performance on The Tonight Show in June 2020 and his first onstage performance in over two years.
Randy Newman performs Political Science on Everybody's Live with John Mulaney pic.twitter.com/yPHp8W9Ud1
Since the pandemic, Newman has only appeared onstage on less than a handful of times, including a Newport Folk pop-up show in July 2021 and a New Orleans Jazz Fest set in May 2022.
However, the 81-year-old singer's legacy continues to be felt across the music industry, notably at the 2025 Grammy Awards, where an all-star lineup of artists — including Brad Paisley, Sheryl Crow, Dawes, St. Vincent and Brittany Howard — performed his classic “I Love L.A.” to open the ceremony, a rendition that was a tribute to the city following the massive wildfires earlier this year; Newman did not take part in that performance.
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Given the current administration, “Political Science” was a fitting choice for Newman's return, as its a satirical song that poked fun at America's foreign policy at the time it was written. Newman previously played the song on late-night during the George W. Bush administration in 2006, performing it on The Colbert Report.
Wednesday's episode of Everybody's Live also featured guests David Letterman, Nikki Glaser, Hannibal Buress, “the thing that lives behind the dumpster in Mulholland Drive,” and a surprise cameo by Jimmy Kimmel, who appeared onstage as an officially 6-foot-tall person:
John Mulaney assembles men of every height in a single line with surprise guest Jimmy Kimmel as the official 6'0. #EverybodysLive pic.twitter.com/WTpgcTK0o9
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By
A.A. Dowd
For a movie about an apocalyptic clash of vampires and gangsters, Sinners has moments of unexpected jubilance, even rapture. Take, for instance, the scene where a young, idealistic musician performs for the crowd at a newly opened juke joint in the Mississippi Delta of 1932. How good is Sammie (Miles Caton), a preacher's son and aspiring bluesman? When he plays and sings, all of history seems to metaphysically come together, conjuring visions of music's past and future. Suddenly, a rock & roll axeman is crashing this 1930s party, shredding like Hendrix. Someone scratches a turntable. Tribal dancers stomp and sway alongside breakdancers, all in one continuous shot that becomes an anachronistic continuum of Black musical expression across the ages. It's sublimely excessive. And then the camera tilts up from the throng of sweaty revelers to reveal a canopy of brightly glowing embers. Yes, the roof is on fire.
Lots of sparks fly from Sinners, a cluttered but often rollicking original vision from Ryan Coogler, the writer-director who revitalized the Rocky series with Creed and reinvigorated the Marvel model with Black Panther (and, to a lesser extent, its baggier sequel). Relieved at last from franchise duty, Coogler has applied his considerable chops to a supersized supernatural thriller that betrays the depth of his interest in Black legacy, the blues, and a more lawless American yesterday. Watching the movie, you get the impression of a gifted artist convinced he may never get another chance to spend this kind of money again. As a result, Sinners often plays like several very different films crammed onto one IMAX screen, for better and worse. It's not just genres of music that mingle over the course of its leisurely 137 minutes.
On the surface, for example, Sinners is a monster movie, pitting the nightlife of a Depression-era town against creatures of the night. But this is also Coogler's riff on the Western, with circling buzzards and black hats; his stylish crime-flick pastiche, with sleek suits and loaded guns; and a Southern Gothic melodrama about the sins of the father and the return of prodigal sons. Most eccentrically, and rewardingly, the movie is a kind of musical: Even the vampires are handed a couple of numbers, twisting sweet Irish ballads into unholy cult prayers. When characters aren't banging out their own songs, composer Ludwig Göransson is enveloping them in his country-fried symphony of guitar, banjo, and harmonica.
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Rather than build the movie around bright-eyed Sammie (a dreamer inadvertently drawing the darkness closer with his song), Coogler doubles down on Michael B. Jordan — the tragically murdered Oscar Grant of his Fruitvale Station, the hungry Adonis of his Creed, the complexly villainous Killmonger of his Black Panther. Here, via a dual performance, Jordan plays Smoke and Stack, twin brothers back in their hometown after consecutive stints in the trenches of WWI and Capone's Chicago. The two have stolen enough from warring mob families to buy an old sawmill from the Klan, with plans to transform it into a bustling watering hole for the community. “Only money can give you power,” reasons Smoke; he's the more serious of the brothers, identifiable by a glower or, conversely, a lack of the wolfish grin Jordan adopts whenever he's playing the slicker, cockier Stack.
Nearly an hour elapses before evil descends upon the saloon. Along the way, Coogler deliberately lays out the geography of his small-town setting (sometimes one step at a time, via a couple long, unbroken shots) and builds his ensemble cast as the brothers assemble the staff and entertainment for opening night. Veterans of Spike Lee's battlefield, Delroy Lindo and Omar Benson Miller bring a glancing but palpable sense of history to the relationships of this prohibition-era South. And after his time in the skittishly sexless Marvel Cinematic Universe, Coogler seems liberated by the opportunity to follow characters with actual libidos. There's nothing chaste about Smoke's rekindled romance with the usefully witchy Annie (Wunmi Mosaku), nor Stack's pricklier reunion with feisty flapper Mary (Hailee Steinfeld), who's eager to see him head down south again in a whole other sense.
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Something wicked their way comes, belatedly, in the form of Remmick, a nomadic bloodsucker drawn by Sammie's music. Jack O'Connell creepily plays the fiend like a cult leader, not looking to feast so much as assimilate. If the delayed pivot into horror recalls another bar-set vampfest, From Dusk Till Dawn, the real source of inspiration here is the widescreen claustrophobia of John Carpenter, with a collection of desperate good guys holed up inside a sanctuary they're forced to defend from circling bad guys. Coogler even mimics the famous blood test from The Thing, this time with cloves of garlic to determine who among them is not themselves. Of course, that's just another continuum, like the one that links gospel to rock and soul: The line connecting Coogler to Carpenter runs further back, through Howard Hawks classics about camaraderie among men under duress.
Truthfully, Sinners might be more interesting before the vampires show up. Coogler has fun with the logistics of letting the wrong one in, as former friends and neighbors try to finagle an invitation they didn't need before. But there's little new or novel about his play on the lore. All that gnashing and suckling is old hat — as old as the burgundy fedora Jordan slips on when playing the more jovial of these brothers in arms. And what, exactly, do the monsters represent? The allure of transgression? The stubbornly undying evil of the KKK? (The first of the head vamp's unwilling recruits is a pair of clueless hood-wearers.) It's most tempting to see them as the phantom of a lie Smoke and Stack tell themselves — their belief that they can truly buy into power and buy out of the racist world they've always known. But Coogler doesn't really commit to any one coherent metaphor. Maybe that's more blessing than curse in our age of baldly allegorical horror movies.
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Still, one might wish the filmmaker did commit to better sketching in the personal drama at the center of Sinners. His characters and relationships don't evolve much beyond the archetypal. That goes for Jordan's twin protagonists, whose conflict comes down to a sliver of exposition regarding their shared, traumatic childhood. Why cast an actor as charismatic as this star and then hand him two underwritten parts? Sammie, a troubadour of nearly messianic stature, is no more richly developed. He sings and yearns and then plays his larger role in a story that stretches forward in time, hitting multiple endings along the way, including a couple smuggled into the credits.
But if Sinners is messy, it's sometimes pretty glorious, too. Coogler is swinging wide and far beyond the boundaries of franchise fare. Having spent most of his career finding loopholes in the devil's pact of Hollywood hit-making (which is to say, finding ways to assert himself during Marvel maintenance), he's now dabbled in something personal: a genre-blending blast of blood, sex, and homespun Delta blues. When the flaws fade from memory, you'll probably remember what's grand about Sinners: the musicality of its editing; the melody of a Tommy gun righteously firing on monsters much worse than vampires; and the moment when Coogler triumphantly expands his aspect ratio, like curtains lifting to reveal a brightly lit stage.
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By Melanie Goodfellow
Senior International Film Correspondent
A Palestinian artist and photojournalist who is the protagonist of a documentary due to premiere in Cannes in May has been killed in an Israeli air strike.
Fatima Hassouna died with nine members of her family in a direct strike on their home in Gaza City on Wednesday.
Hassouna, who had gained international recognition for her photojournalism capturing the impact on the Gaza Strip's civilian population of the Israeli military campaign, appears in French-Iranian director Sepideh Farsi's Put Your Soul On Your Hand And Walk.
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Hassouna was killed 24 hours after the documentary was announced as having been selected for parallel Cannes section ACID, running from May 14 to 23 alongside the main festival.
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The work revolves around video conversations between Farsi, whose credits include Berlinale-selected animated feature The Siren, and Hassouna. They began when the director connected with the young woman while researching a wider documentary on the events unfolding in Gaza.
“She was such a light, so talented. When you see the film you'll understand,” Farsi told Deadline. “I had talked to her a few hours before to tell her that the film was in Cannes and to invite her.”
Farsi recounts that Hassouna was open to the idea of attending the screening, as long as she could return to Gaza afterwards.
“She said, ‘I'll come, but I have to go back to Gaza. I don't want to leave Gaza,” said Farsi. “I was already in touch with the French Embassy. We'd just started the process. I was worried about how to get her out and back in safely. I didn't want to have the responsibility of separating her from her family.”
“Now the whole family is dead. I'm trying to find out if her parents are dead but for sure Fatima and her sisters and brothers are dead. One of the sisters was pregnant. On a video call two days ago, she showed me her belly. It's so horrible and devastating. Fatima herself had gotten engaged a few months ago.”
Farsi says she now fears that Hassouna may have been targeted because of her photojournalism work. According to figures released by the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) on February 16 at least 157 journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza, and many more injured, since the beginning of the war.
“I was trying to be a voice and accentuate her and now I don't know. I even feel guilty… maybe they targeted her because the film was announced. I don't know. We'll never know.” she said.
“The Israeli army said it bombed the house because there was a Hamas officer in there, which is totally false. I know the whole family. It's nonsense. It's just so devastating.”
Israel's bombing and invasion of Gaza began in October 2023 in response to Hamas's October 7 attacks on southern Israel, which killed 1,200 people and resulted in the taking of 251 hostages.
Eighteen months on, at least 51,065 people have died according to figures released by the Hamas-run Gaza health authority, endorsed by the United Nations, although statistical research published by the Lancet medical journal in February suggested this figure may be 15,000 higher.
Another 116,505 people have also been injured in the Gaza Strip, while 90 percent of the territory's 2.1 million-strong population has been displaced. Of the 251 hostages taken during the October 7 attack, 59 remain in the Gaza Strip, with around 24 of them still believed to be alive.
France's Association for the Diffusion of Independent Cinema, which organizes the ACID sidebar in Cannes and then promotes the films across the year in cinemas across France, put out a statement expressing its “horror' at the news of Hassouna's death.
“We met Fatima Hassouna when we discovered Sepideh Farsi's film Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk. Her smile was as magical as her tenacity: bearing witness, photographing Gaza, distributing food despite bombs, grief, and hunger. Her story reached us, and we rejoiced at each of her appearances to know she was alive; we feared for her,” it read. “Yesterday, we learned with horror that an Israeli missile targeted her building, killing Fatima and her family.”
“We had watched and programmed a film in which this young woman's life force was nothing short of miraculous. This is a different film than the one we will carry, support, and present in every theater, starting with Cannes.”
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By Melanie Goodfellow, Andreas Wiseman
EXCLUSIVE: Terrifier franchise backer Cineverse has announced the start of production for its reimagining of cult Santa slasher movie Silent Night, Deadly Night in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
The production has unveiled a first image of Rohan Campbell (The Hardy Boys, Halloween Ends) in the role of protagonist Billy Chapman, who goes on a killing spree dressed in a Santa suit.
He is joined in the cast by Ruby Modine as Pamela, a colleague on whom Chapman develops an unrequited crush, as well as newly announced casting additions Mark Acheson, David Lawrence Brown, and David Tomlinson.
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The movie is scheduled to release in the North America in time for Christmas 2025 on December 12.
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Silent Night, Deadly Night tells the story of a child who is traumatized after seeing his parents killed by a man dressed as Santa Claus. Years later, he dons a Santa suit himself and gets bloody revenge. The movie spawned multiple sequels over the years and a loose remake in 2012.
The reboot of the franchise, Silent Night, Deadly Night is written and directed by Mike P. Nelson (Wrong Turn, V/H/S/85) and produced by the original 1984 Tri-Star film's producers Scott Schneid and Dennis Whitehead and New Dimension's Jamie R. Thompson (Old Henry, Gunslingers), Rebel 6's Erik Bernard, and White Bear Films' Jeremy Torrie
Crew for the film include Director of Photography Nick Junkersfeld, Production Designer Oscar Fenogolio, Costume Designer Laura DeLuca, Stunt Coordinator Kristen Sawatzky, Special Effects Doug Morrow, Casting Director Jim Heber, Composers Blitz Berlin, and Line Producer Tanya Brunel.
“As production officially kicks off this week, we are excited about the magic that is being made with both the original team behind the 1984 classic teaming up with a new vision from Mike P. Nelson,” said Cineverse Chief Content Officer Yolanda Macias. “We are delighted to welcome fans back into the Silent Night, Deadly Night universe with a reimagining that is sure to bring lots of merry mayhem.”
“Silent Night Deadly Night has become a beloved cult classic since my partner Dennis and I created it with Michael Hickey over 40 years ago,” said original SNDN and reboot producer Schneid. “Den and I are huge fans of Mike's work, and his unique talents have reinvented the spirit of the original, taking us on a slayride that audiences won't soon forget.”
When it was released in 1984, the first Silent Night, Deadly Night quickly became the most controversial movie of the year. The film's original distributor Tri-Star pulled the film from theaters following outrage from parents, but this move only served to bolster its cult status.
Executive producers are Steven Schneider (Insidious) Anthony Masi (Halloween: 25 Years of Terror, Unknown Dimension), and Sarah Eilts. Brandon Hill and Brad Miska (Terrifier 3) are overseeing for Cineverse and will executive produce alongside Erick Opeka and Macias, Bondit Media Capital's Matthew Helderman and Luke Taylor. Financing is Bondit Media Capital and Royal Bank of Canada.
Studiocanal is handling worldwide sales excluding North America and releasing theatrically in its markets of UK & IRE, France, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Benelux and Poland). Silent Night, Deadly Night is the first acquisition for Studiocanal's new in-house genre label Sixth Dimension.
Mike P Nelson is repped by Brillstein Entertainment Partners, Writ Large, and Jackoway Austen Tyerman Wertheimer Mandelbaum Morris Bernstein Trattner Auerbach Hynick Jaime LeVine Sample & Klein. Campbell is represented by CAA, Webster Talent Management and Sol22. Modine is represented by UTA and Goodman, Genow, Schenkman, Smelkinson & Christopher.
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By
Emily Zemler
Haley Joel Osment was arrested for alleged public intoxication and possession of an unidentified controlled substance in Mammoth Lakes, California, earlier this month.
The actor was identified as an “unruly skier” at Mammoth Mountain Ski Area by the Mammoth Lakes Police Department, according to Entertainment Weekly. Osment was held by ski patrol until around 2 p.m. when police arrived and arrested him. He is no longer in custody. Charges have yet to filed against Osment and the Mono County district attorney will determine whether to prosecute the case.
Osment, who lost his home in the Eaton Fire earlier this year, has had occasional run-ins with the law. In 2006, he was charged with a DUI and marijuana possession after being involved in a car crash, and was sentenced to three years probation. In 2018, the actor was involved in a verbal scuffle at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas, with police being called about an “unruly passenger.”
Although Osment is best known as a child actor, who memorably starred in The Sixth Sense, he has continued to appear onscreen in recent years. He co-starred in Zoë Kravitz's 2024 directorial debut, Blink Twice, and he is set to play an undisclosed role in the second season of Netflix's Wednesday. Recently, Osment joined the cast of Poker Face‘s Season Two, which will premiere May 8 on Peacock.
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“I've done some really off-the-wall stuff, and stuff that people might not expect,” Osment told Rolling Stone of his career choices in 2015. “That's one way to work through people's expectations of you.”
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The long-awaited sequel from Columbia Pictures stars Jodie Comer and Aaron Taylor-Johnson.
By
James Hibberd
Writer-at-Large
A second trailer for Danny Boyle‘s long-awaited zombie-horror thriller 28 Years Later has been released.
Below is Columbia Pictures' official second trailer for the film, which returns fans to a post-apocalyptic U.K. plagued by the infected undead. Writer Alex Garland (Civil War) has teamed with the Oscar-winning Boyle for the first of two sequels.
The official description: “It's been almost three decades since the rage virus escaped a biological weapons laboratory, and now, still in a ruthlessly enforced quarantine, some have found ways to exist amidst the infected. One such group of survivors lives on a small island connected to the mainland by a single, heavily-defended causeway. When one of the group leaves the island on a mission into the dark heart of the mainland, he discovers secrets, wonders and horrors that have mutated not only the infected, but other survivors as well.”
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The film 28 Years Later stars Jodie Comer, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Jack O'Connell, Alfie Williams and Ralph Fiennes.
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“I still love an apocalypse, British-style,” Boyle said last month at CinemaCon. “I still love the infected. And I still love blowing shit up.” He also teased fans will have to be patient to see 28 Days Later original star Cillian Murphy in the new planned trilogy: “Like all good things in life, you may have to wait a little while for him to make his appearance.” Murphy, who won an Oscar for his role in Oppenheimer, also executive produces the new films.
Nia DaCosta, who directed the forthcoming second film, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, was also at the event. “While it's very much informed by 28 Days Later, the script for The Bone Temple is very different,” DaCosta said. “I was able to let my freak flag fly.”
28 Years Later will be released in theaters on June 20.
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Among the hundreds of thousands who watched pop star Katy Perry and an all-female crew blast off aboard a Blue Origin spacecraft on April 14, 2025, was her former “American Idol” castmate Luke Bryan.
While appearing on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” the following night, Bryan described how he “accidentally” found himself live streaming the entire event from his farm in Franklin, Tennessee — mainly because he was worried it might “blow up.”
Perry was one of six women on the April 14 Blue Origin flight, along with “CBS Mornings” anchor Gayle King, former TV personality Lauren Sánchez, NASA rocket scientist Aisha Bowe, film producer Kerianne Flynn and bioastronautics research scientist and activist Amanda Nguyen.
When Kimmel asked Bryan what he thought of Perry's participation, Bryan replied, “I accidentally started following it. I was doing my morning walk around the farm, which turns into checking Instagram and stuff, and I saw where she was, like, posting on her Instagram that it was happening at 8:30 central, and totally got roped into the moment. I went and clicked on the links!”
Bryan said he had reached out to Perry when she announced she'd be part of the flight, telling Kimmel, “I had sent her a text going, ‘Good luck, wow, that's crazy you're getting to do that!”
“Couple months later, there I am walking around my farm, watching the one-hour telecast of it,” Bryan quipped, then mimicked the live stream announcer giving play-by-play details of the launch.
Bryan added, “It roped me in because when you have a friend (going), I mean, let's let's face it — it could blow up! So, I wanted it to not do that.”
Of Blue Origin's 31 missions thus far, Perry's was the 11th flight with crew members, per People. The outlet said Blue Origin's spacecraft have taken 52 people past the Kármán line, the “internationally recognized boundary of space,” before returning to Earth.
When Kimmel asked Bryan whether he saw what Perry said after her space mission, the country star said, “I saw her kiss the ground, which — that would be my reaction, too.”
Kimmel then played a clip of Perry moments after returning to Earth, when she was asked how it felt to “officially” be an astronaut.
“I feel super connected to love, so connected to love,” Perry replied. “I think this experience has shown me you never know how much love is inside of you, like how much love you have to give.”
Laughing, Kimmel asked Bryan, “I mean, what do you think went on in that thing!?”
Looking puzzled, Bryan joked, “Was there a pre-flight meal? Did Bezos serve mushrooms on it? Like, I really want to go to space now!”
“It must have been quite the euphoric ride through the cosmos,” he added. “Maybe she'll debrief me on those emotions.”
When Kimmel asked Bryan whether he'd want to be a “space cowboy” on a similar flight, the dad of two teen boys said his family would give him a “resounding no,” but that his curiosity has been piqued.
“It'd be a very delicate negotiation,” he smiled. “I probably would do it just because, I mean, you got to take that chance.”
“Do you?” Kimmel laughed. “Do you? No, you don't, you really don't have to take that chance!”
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The K-pop star and 'Fifty Shades of Grey' lead are joined by actors Enzo Vogrincic and Sophie Wilde in Loewe's annual Paula's Ibiza campaign.
By
Erin Lassner
E-Commerce Writer
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Summer is here — according to Loewe, that is. The luxury fashion house has officially dropped its annual Paula's Ibiza collection, now available to shop at loewe.com and net-a-porter.com.
The campaign imagery stars Aespa member and Loewe brand ambassador Giselle alongside actors Jamie Dornan, Sophie Wilde and Enzo Vogrincic. With the iconic tomato motif at the forefront, the accompanying collection highlights flowing shapes, breezy silhouettes, botanical prints, textural knits and whimsical accessories.
The free-spirited pieces span both womenswear and menswear and, as always, draw inspiration from the iconic Paula's boutique in Ibiza.
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With creative direction from the one and only Jonathan Anderson, the Loewe Paula's 2025 campaign was shot on the coast of Portugal by acclaimed New York-based photographer Gray Sorrenti.
In classic Loewe form, the capsule includes a hefty selection of cheeky-meets-luxe accessories and charms to add a personal touch to the brand's lineup of both women's bags and men's bags. The keychains and bag charms range from animals and insects to florals and foods, including, of course, tomatoes.
Related: Bag Charms Are Dominating Celebrity Street Style
Related: Ralph Lauren Designs First-Ever Exclusive Collection for Neiman Marcus
See more campaign imagery and shop the full Loewe + Paula's Ibiza 2025 summer capsule now at Loewe and Net-a-Porter.
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Uncle Waffles is excited to take part in the spread of amapiano music in the U.S., and her Coachella performance is doing exactly that. The singer shares how amapiano music is growing globally, how she felt headlining the Brooklyn Mirage, her preference of Kendrick Lamar and Beyoncé and more!
What do you think of Uncle Waffles? Let us know in the comments!
Tetris Kelly:Bringing the ‘Chella vibes with my girl. Uncle Waffles, what's going on, boo?
Uncle Waffles:Hey!
We're happy to have you here, but you gotta start by saying, you know, for the people out there that don't know you, how did you come up with the name? How did we get there?
So I'm Uncle Waffles. There isn't really a cool backstory. My friends came up with it in high school, and it just kind of carried on to where I am currently. It was never meant to be Uncle Waffles. It was just meant to be “Waffles,” but my manager decided that “Uncle Waffles” made me more unique. So here we are.
Listen, my name is Tetris, girl, so I understand. It also was a high school nickname, so it just happens. And then here we are.
Then here you are, like, yeah, I love it.
Well, you're playing one of the hottest parties at Coachella. I gotta say, I'll be having myself a good time at Revolve. So how do you feel to be heading out there?
I am so excited. I'm so excited to be bringing the sound to the world. You know, I know a lot of people. They probably won't know what amapiano is, but I'm excited to be their first experience of it. I hope everyone loves it after they get to see me, you know.
I mean, like, what can people expect from your set?
Keep watching for more!
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Samples drilled by the Curiosity rover on Mars have revealed abundant signs of a carbon cycle that remained hidden from orbital scans, alongside clues of how life may have been wiped out on the planet.
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NASA's Curiosity rover has found some of the best evidence yet that ancient life may have existed on Mars — and an answer for what could have wiped it out.
When drilling into rocks on Mount Sharp, the central peak of the Red Planet's Gale Crater, the rover found evidence of siderite, an iron carbonate whose presence suggests Mars once had a carbon cycle. This hints that Mars once had potentially habitable conditions, and therefore possibly even life.
The finding, hidden from satellite scans, raises hopes that once samples collected by the Perseverance rover are brought to Earth, scientists may find evidence that ancient life once thrived on our now-desiccated neighbor. The researchers published their findings April 17 in the journal Science.
"When it became apparent that these rocks contained siderite in such high quantities, I was unbelievably excited," study lead-author Ben Tutolo, an associate professor with the department of earth, energy and environment at the University of Calgary, told Live Science. "One of the biggest questions in Mars science is: 'Where are all the carbonates?' So I knew right away how important this discovery was."
For roughly the last 4 billion years, Earth's carbon cycle has been key to its habitability — cycling carbon between the atmosphere, land and ocean, thus providing the key material for all living things and setting the atmospheric thermostat for them to thrive. The slow carbon cycle makes up half of this system. Spewed out from volcanoes, carbon dioxide is absorbed by calcium-rich oceans to form limestone rock that is subducted back into the mantle, heated and released once more.
Related: Mars was once a 'vacation-style' beach planet, Chinese rover scans reveal
Yet despite Mars showing plentiful signs that ancient rivers and lakes once criss-crossed the planet, neither rovers nor satellite scans had found any evidence of carbonate minerals that would imply a carbon cycle there.
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The Curiosity rover's discovery changes all of that. Landing on Mars' Gale Crater in 2012, the rover has traversed 21 miles (34 kilometers) of the 96-mile-wide (154 km) meteor impact crater, dutifully investigating the geology within. In 2022 and 2023, Curiosity drilled four samples from rocks in the crater and analyzed the mineralogy using its onboard X-ray diffractometer before beaming the results back to Earth.
When Tutolo and his colleagues unpacked this analysis, they found that the rocks didn't just contain traces of siderite, they were rich in it — making up between 5 % to 10% of the sample's total weight. Mixed among the carbonate were other minerals, particularly highly water-soluble magnesium sulfate salts, which the researchers believe are acting to "mask" the siderite's signal from satellite scans.
"Because similar rocks containing these salts have been identified globally, we infer that they, too, likely contain abundant carbonate minerals," Tutolo said. "Summing the carbonate that all of these deposits likely contain indicates that they may hold a substantial portion of the CO2 that was formerly implicated in warming Mars."
The researchers believe that if their sample is representative of the whole planet, it likely points to Mars having an "imbalanced" carbon cycle. As Mars seemingly lacked Earth-like plate tectonics, toward the tail-end of its habitability Mars likely recycled its carbon into its atmosphere through chemical reactions with acidic water, a hypothesis supported by the presence of sulfate and iron-oxide minerals found within the sample.
—NASA may have unknowingly found and killed alien life on Mars 50 years ago, scientist claims
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But this process was top-heavy, pulling more carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and into rocks than it released back. In the long run, this diminished the planet's ability to support an atmosphere, possibly snuffing out Mars' ancient life at the same time it began to flourish on Earth.
"Life may have been forming about that time on Earth. Our oldest fossils are about 3.5 billion years old and life must have formed before then," Janice Bishop, a senior research scientist at the Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute and the writer of an accompanying perspective piece on the study, told Live Science. "As the atmospheric gasses [on Mars] were lost over time to space, the atmosphere became thinner and the planet became colder. Estimates of surface ages indicate that Mars has been cold and dry for at least 2 billion years."
Further revelations won't come from a direct retrieval of samples collected on Mars' surface any time soon — that mission is significantly over budget and delayed. But Curiosity is set to continue exploring the Martian surface to understand how the rocks there formed, and what it finds can be included in simulations of the planet's ancient climate.
Ben Turner is a U.K. based staff writer at Live Science. He covers physics and astronomy, among other topics like tech and climate change. He graduated from University College London with a degree in particle physics before training as a journalist. When he's not writing, Ben enjoys reading literature, playing the guitar and embarrassing himself with chess.
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Space photo of the week: Mars rises over the moon's horizon at the best possible time
NASA rover watches 'fiendish' Martian 'dust devils' collide in rare case of extraterrestrial cannibalism
'Useless' female organ discovered over a century ago may actually support ovaries, study finds
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It doesn't matter whether you're the Ghostbusters or Mulder and Scully — every paranormal operation needs an HQ.
It doesn't matter whether you're the Ghostbusters, Mulder and Scully, or the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense — every paranormal operation worth its salt needs a solid headquarters.
Watch new episodes of SurrealEstate Thursdays at 10/9c on SYFY.
The same rule applies to the Roman-Ireland Agency on SYFY's SurrealEstate (now in the midst of its third season), and thanks to star Sarah Levy, fans can take a good look around the office where the team led by Luke Roman (Tim Rozon) and Susan Ireland (Levy) strategizes over how to best tackle haunted properties. Generally speaking, the office is as standard as they come, with a reception area, coffee station, desks, and conference rooms. At first glance, you'd never be able to tell this business specializes in ghosts and demons.
"It feels wonderful to be in this brand-new office," Levy says in the video below. "It's just a different feel, a different vibe. There's just a lot more space to talk and hang out. That's one of the things I love about it the most."
SurrealEstate's Tim Rozon & Sarah Levy Celebrate the Return of [Spoiler] in Season 3, Episode 2SurrealEstate's Tim Rozon & Sarah Levy Tease Their Favorite Episodes Coming up in Season 3SurrealEstate's Tim Rozon & Sarah Levy Tease "Nerve-Wracking" Season 3 Twists
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Sadly, the agency has had some recent trouble finding someone to take over the front desk from Zooey L'Enfant (Savannah Basley). In a recent interview with SYFY WIRE, Levy noted that the scariest thing for the agency personnel is not supernatural threats, but the anxiety of having to acclimate to new co-workers.
"Especially walking up to the desk in the [office] and somebody else is sitting at reception, there's a bit of a record scratch when you see somebody else sitting there," she said. "It does throw off the dynamic that you, as actors, have created with each other, seeing Savannah at the desk and [Maurice] stopping by, and all of our gang hanging in the office. Seeing somebody brand new, you're not as comfortable moving through the set as actors would normally be. So it definitely was a bit of like life imitating art in that sense."
SurrealEstate Season 3 drops new episodes every Thursday at 10:00 p.m. ET on SYFY.
The first two episodes of the season — "Buckaroo" and "Night Terrors" can be streamed for free here and here!
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VERNAL, Utah — In (pre)historic Vernal, Utah, just three hours east of Salt Lake City, visitors walk in the footsteps of dinosaurs, hike, bike, and raft amidst geological wonders, and gaze into the unknown under a starry Dark Sky. Adventure awaits for guests seeking day trips, long weekends, and extended stays this summer.
“There is so much to discover in Vernal's rugged landscape steeped in rich history,” said Uintah County Tourism & Events Director Lesha Coltharp. “We are proud to share our beloved destination with outdoor lovers, stargazers, paranomal aficionados, geology enthusiasts, and anyone in search of their next adventure.”
Featured summer must-sees, must-dos, and upcoming events near Vernal include:
Signature Sites
Dinosaur National Monument
Discover fragments of a long-ago world where the largest land creatures of all time once roamed and died. Experience the “Wall of Bones” fossil quarry, the only place in the world where visitors can view over 1,500 bones all located in one mountain side.
International Dark Sky Park
Astrophiles flock to Steinaker State Park, an official International Dark Sky Park located just seven miles north of Vernal. This premier stargazing destination is also an outdoor playground for camping, boating, fishing, and more.
Red Fleet State Park
Newly opened after a multi-million dollar renovation, Red Flled sets under the large red sandstond cliffs that make it known as Little Lake Powell. Guests will enjoy camping, boating, fishing, paddleboarding, cliff jumping, and mountain biking. Hiking under 200 million year old dinosaur tracks is just an added bonus.
Skinwalker Ranch
Recognized as the most scientifically studied paranormal hotspot on the planet, Skinwalker Ranch is a 512-acre secure site that has been monitored for decades with armed security and 24-hour surveillance. Located 35 minutes from Vernal and not open to the public, this remote location was involved with a Pentagon-funded black budget project studying UFO activity and is known for studying other intelligences and possible interdimensional phenomena.
UFO Valley Campground
This homestead features elevated views of what some consider to be the most paranormally-active spot in the country, if not the world. The property includes a 10-site campground and trail system permitting limited access atop ‘the mesa,' which legend says was cursed by the Navajo tribe and has since seen countless strange encounters and unexplained anomalies.
Outdoor Recreation
Hiking
Dinoland Trails curates individual trail experiences across Vernal's expansive landscape. With hundreds of miles of trails winding through breathtaking scenery, paths of all lengths and difficulty levels cater to beginners, families, and experienced hikers year-round.
Biking
Thrill-seekers and casual riders can find their bliss on a mountain bike trail. Enjoy everything from challenging terrains to leisurely single-track trail, including 35 miles of intermediate riding at McCoy Flats.
Rafting
Forty-four miles of the Green River and 71 miles of the Yampa River meander through the heart of Dinosaur National Monument, offering Class I to Class III rapids and an opportunity to explore the area's rich geological history and formations.
Off-Roading
Jeep, ATV, and OHV tours and excursions abound for exploring Vernal's diverse, rugged landscapes from breathtaking desert expanses to lush, forested trails.
Upcoming Events: Save the Date
June 5 – 7: Vernal Rock Rally
June 14: Dirty Dino Gravel Race
July 4: Freedom Fest
Aug. 22 – 24: Dinah SOAR Days
Sept. 3 – 6: PhenomeCon
For an up-close-and-personal look into the Vernal experience, the Small Town Comeback YouTube docuseries reveals the local personality and driven entrepreneurial spirit of the Dinosaurland community.
Planning the perfect visit to Vernal, UT, from where to eat, sleep, and explore, begins at dinoland.com.
For more information about Utah's Dinosaurland, visit dinoland.com or contact Christa Graff, of Graff Public Relations, at christa@graffpr.com or 435-640-7921.
About Dinosaurland
Utah's “Dinosaurland” is an exciting destination for outdoor recreation and taking a step back into prehistory. Visitors can enjoy a variety of museums and historical sites, outdoor activities, exploring, and relaxation in rugged nature. Vernal and the rest of Uintah County, Utah, has always been a land of adventure, for millions of years. For more information, visit dinoland.com.
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Thursday, April 17th 2025, 11:14 am
Several News On 6 viewers reported seeing a line of lights moving across the night sky, prompting speculation about unidentified flying objects.
Despite their drone-like appearance, these lights are most likely Starlink satellites launched by SpaceX. The satellites often appear in a closely spaced formation shortly after launch, creating a visual effect sometimes described as a "string of pearls."
Image Provided By: Mary Jo Knox, Craig Co., Vinita, Ok. (Estella)
According to Starlink, this phenomenon is especially visible during the first few days after launch, when the satellites are still close together and reflecting sunlight or light. During this period, the satellites are often only visible during the first couple of days due to changes in the orientation of the solar panels and the addition of sunshades, which were implemented to reduce their brightness and impact on astronomical observations.
Image Provided By: James Bedford, Sand Springs
A STARLINK SATELLITE OBSERVING GROUP on Facebook shared a video of some in Coweta, Oklahoma, on Wednesday night.
The sunshades, known as "VisorSats," block sunlight from reflecting off the satellites' surfaces, while the adjusted solar panel angles further reduce visibility.
For those interested in observing Starlink satellites, timing and viewing conditions are crucial. The satellites are most visible shortly after launch, under clear skies, and when the sun's angle allows for optimal reflection. Websites like Heavens-Above and FindStarlink offer real-time tracking to help skywatchers plan their observations.
The FindStarlink website confirmed the satellites' location in Oklahoma.
It also predicts that the satellites could be visible on Thursday and Friday night as well.
Editor's note: Video courtesy of Mary Jo Knox, Craig Co., Vinita, Okla.
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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.
Aerospace engineer Mike Bara breaks down the states best ranked for preparing for an alien invasion on 'The Ingraham Angle.'
A group of unidentified flying objects spotted by Navy sailors is raising eyebrows after witnesses reported watching the oddly-shaped aircraft rise from the ocean before jetting off in a synchronized fashion last year.
The four aircraft were spotted by sailors aboard USS Jackson while off the coast of California last year, Jeremy Corbell, co-host of the "Weaponized" podcast, told Fox 11.
"[This] is a machine that is able to outpace, outmaneuver, and outperform anything that we know of that's been made by technology and terrestrial nations," Corbell said.
VIRAL CIA FILE ABOUT ALIENS ATTACKING SOLDIERS TAKES OFF WITH UFO INTRIGUE
An aircraft is seen in a GOFAST video released by the Pentagon. (Department of Defense)
The UFOs reportedly emerged from the Pacific Ocean and were spotted by sailors before showing up on the ship's radar, an unnamed witness told Corbell.
Footage recorded by the Navy warship and obtained by Corbell shows the four aircraft grouping together before racing off in unison.
"Everybody on the ship knew they were seeing something extraordinary," Corbell said. "So obviously people thought it was important to document and then finally witnesses came forward."
PENTAGON SOLVES ONE OF ITS HIGHEST-PROFILE UFO MYSTERIES
A recording shows a UFO flying by USS Omaha off the coast of San Diego in July 2019. (Jeremy Corbell/WeaponizedPodcast)
The Navy and Corbell did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment.
Corbell noted the footage shows the objects do not have a wing or tail, raising questions regarding the aircraft's ability to fly. However, Corbell does not believe the unidentified objects are nefarious or operated by a foreign adversary.
"I'd rather these things be from another planet than an adversarial nation, because if it was an adversarial nation then their ability to weaponize that technology would be unprecedented," Corbell said. "Luckily, we don't see a fingerprint for that."
However, military officials claim the sighting was never recorded.
FORMER DEFENSE OFFICIAL MAKES EARTH-SHATTERING UFO REVELATION AS UNEXPLAINED DRONES LEAVE MILLIONS ON EDGE
"[The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office] has no record of this alleged UAP incident," a Pentagon spokesperson told Fox News Digital in a statement.
The flying objects draw striking similarities to the infamous "Tic Tac"-shaped aircraft sighting by USS Nimitz off the coast of Southern California in 2004. The incident drew national attention in 2017, exposing previously unknown programs within the Department of Defense relating to UFO research.
In 2020, the Pentagon released three unclassified Navy videos from November 2004 and January 2015.
UFO HEARING: EX-PENTAGON OFFICIAL SAYS GOVERNMENT 'CABAL' IS HIDING 'THE FACT THAT WE ARE NOT ALONE'
"The aerial phenomena observed in the videos remain characterized as ‘unidentified'," the Pentagon said in a statement.
Last year, a Pentagon official testified to Congress that the Pentagon had solved a well-known mystery surrounding a flying object spotted by USS Theodore Roosevelt in 2016.
The UFO spotted flying at high speeds above the Atlantic Ocean was nothing out of the ordinary, but instead a trick of the eye causing objects to appear as if they were moving much faster, referred to as a "parallax," according to Dr. Jon Kosloski, the director of the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office.
RUSSIAN UFO ENGAGEMENTS, SECRET ‘TIC TAC' REPORT AND 3 KEY FIGURES SLIP UNDER RADAR AT CONGRESSIONAL HEARING
"Through a very careful geospatial intelligence analysis and using trigonometry, we assess with high confidence that the object is not actually close to the water, but is rather closer to 13,000 feet," Kosloski said.
As for the four aircraft spotted by Navy sailors last year, Corbell believes there is no cause for alarm.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
"This UFO phenomenon has been here for a long time, this is not something new, it's nothing to worry about," Corbell said. "It is something that we need to face head on and that's what Congress is trying to do, is get people to get past the stigma so we can know and understand what is this technology, who is operating it and what is the intent."
Fox News Digital's Michael Dorgan contributed to this report.
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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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
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Legal Statement. Mutual Fund and ETF data provided by
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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.
Aerospace engineer Mike Bara breaks down the states best ranked for preparing for an alien invasion on 'The Ingraham Angle.'
A group of unidentified flying objects spotted by Navy sailors is raising eyebrows after witnesses reported watching the oddly-shaped aircraft rise from the ocean before jetting off in a synchronized fashion last year.
The four aircraft were spotted by sailors aboard USS Jackson while off the coast of California last year, Jeremy Corbell, co-host of the "Weaponized" podcast, told Fox 11.
"[This] is a machine that is able to outpace, outmaneuver, and outperform anything that we know of that's been made by technology and terrestrial nations," Corbell said.
VIRAL CIA FILE ABOUT ALIENS ATTACKING SOLDIERS TAKES OFF WITH UFO INTRIGUE
An aircraft is seen in a GOFAST video released by the Pentagon. (Department of Defense)
The UFOs reportedly emerged from the Pacific Ocean and were spotted by sailors before showing up on the ship's radar, an unnamed witness told Corbell.
Footage recorded by the Navy warship and obtained by Corbell shows the four aircraft grouping together before racing off in unison.
"Everybody on the ship knew they were seeing something extraordinary," Corbell said. "So obviously people thought it was important to document and then finally witnesses came forward."
PENTAGON SOLVES ONE OF ITS HIGHEST-PROFILE UFO MYSTERIES
A recording shows a UFO flying by USS Omaha off the coast of San Diego in July 2019. (Jeremy Corbell/WeaponizedPodcast)
The Navy and Corbell did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment.
Corbell noted the footage shows the objects do not have a wing or tail, raising questions regarding the aircraft's ability to fly. However, Corbell does not believe the unidentified objects are nefarious or operated by a foreign adversary.
"I'd rather these things be from another planet than an adversarial nation, because if it was an adversarial nation then their ability to weaponize that technology would be unprecedented," Corbell said. "Luckily, we don't see a fingerprint for that."
However, military officials claim the sighting was never recorded.
FORMER DEFENSE OFFICIAL MAKES EARTH-SHATTERING UFO REVELATION AS UNEXPLAINED DRONES LEAVE MILLIONS ON EDGE
"[The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office] has no record of this alleged UAP incident," a Pentagon spokesperson told Fox News Digital in a statement.
The flying objects draw striking similarities to the infamous "Tic Tac"-shaped aircraft sighting by USS Nimitz off the coast of Southern California in 2004. The incident drew national attention in 2017, exposing previously unknown programs within the Department of Defense relating to UFO research.
In 2020, the Pentagon released three unclassified Navy videos from November 2004 and January 2015.
UFO HEARING: EX-PENTAGON OFFICIAL SAYS GOVERNMENT 'CABAL' IS HIDING 'THE FACT THAT WE ARE NOT ALONE'
"The aerial phenomena observed in the videos remain characterized as ‘unidentified'," the Pentagon said in a statement.
Last year, a Pentagon official testified to Congress that the Pentagon had solved a well-known mystery surrounding a flying object spotted by USS Theodore Roosevelt in 2016.
The UFO spotted flying at high speeds above the Atlantic Ocean was nothing out of the ordinary, but instead a trick of the eye causing objects to appear as if they were moving much faster, referred to as a "parallax," according to Dr. Jon Kosloski, the director of the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office.
RUSSIAN UFO ENGAGEMENTS, SECRET ‘TIC TAC' REPORT AND 3 KEY FIGURES SLIP UNDER RADAR AT CONGRESSIONAL HEARING
"Through a very careful geospatial intelligence analysis and using trigonometry, we assess with high confidence that the object is not actually close to the water, but is rather closer to 13,000 feet," Kosloski said.
As for the four aircraft spotted by Navy sailors last year, Corbell believes there is no cause for alarm.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
"This UFO phenomenon has been here for a long time, this is not something new, it's nothing to worry about," Corbell said. "It is something that we need to face head on and that's what Congress is trying to do, is get people to get past the stigma so we can know and understand what is this technology, who is operating it and what is the intent."
Fox News Digital's Michael Dorgan contributed to this report.
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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Legal Statement. Mutual Fund and ETF data provided by
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Scientists have discovered evidence of large quantities of biosignature chemicals — only known to be made by life on Earth — on an exoplanet more than 100 light-years away. It could be the most promising sign yet of alien life.
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Chemical fingerprints of life have been found on a distant exoplanet by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). It is the "most promising" evidence yet for alien life, scientists say.
These chemicals were detected in the atmosphere of an exoplanet named K2-18b, which is located 124 light-years away from Earth and orbits its star in the habitable zone — the region around a star where liquid water can exist on a planet's surface — according to a new study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters on April 17.
On Earth, these molecules — dimethyl sulfide (DMS) and dimethyl disulfide (DMDS) — are only produced by life, such as marine algae and other microbes. Before now, DMS and DMDS hadn't been definitively detected in the atmospheres of any other planets or moons. While it is theoretically possible for these chemicals to be created without the presence of life, they are considered potential biosignatures on other worlds.
"Our findings provide new independent evidence for the possibility of a biosphere on K2-18 b" and "present an important step forward in the search for signatures of life on exoplanets," the researchers wrote in the paper.
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K2-18b, which is 2.6 times the size of our planet and 8.6 times the mass, is suspected to be a "hycean world," meaning that it potentially has a planet-wide ocean and an atmosphere rich in hydrogen.
In a previous paper published in 2023, the same team of researchers detected methane (CH₄) and carbon dioxide (CO₂) in the planet's atmosphere, marking the first time that carbon-based molecules had been found in the atmosphere of an exoplanet in its star's habitable zone. The scientists also discovered potential signs of DMS. However, the levels of DMS had "low statistical significance," so the researchers couldn't be certain that it was indeed present.
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"We didn't know for sure whether the signal we saw last time was due to DMS, but just the hint of it was exciting enough for us to have another look with JWST using a different instrument," Nikku Madhusudhan, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Cambridge and lead author of both studies, said in a statement.
In the latest study, the researchers found that new measurements of the planet's atmosphere taken by JWST's Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI) show specific features that can only be explained by the presence of either DMS or DMDS. Due to the similarities of these two molecules, they appear very alike in the measurements that JWST takes from the atmospheres of exoplanets, meaning it is hard to tell which molecule is present in greater quantities.
"This is an independent line of evidence, using a different instrument than we did before and a different wavelength range of light, where there is no overlap with the previous observations," Madhusudhan said. "The signal came through strong and clear."
The researchers noted that levels of DMS and/or DMDS in the atmosphere may be as high as 10 parts per million by volume, which is much higher than the levels seen here on Earth, which are below one part per billion by volume.
The researchers said that these observations have reached a "three-sigma" level of significance. This means there is just a 0.3% probability that they occurred by chance. To confirm a discovery, scientists typically require a five-sigma significance level, where there is below a 0.00006% probability of occurring by chance.
DMS and DMDS are not known to be produced in large quantities through non-biological processes on Earth, meaning that their detection in such large quantities on K2-18b is a major indicator for the potential presence of life.
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"Given everything we know about this planet, a Hycean world with an ocean that is teeming with life is the scenario that best fits the data we have," Madhusudhan said.
The researchers said that more measurements need to be taken to achieve five-sigma significance and also differentiate between the presence of DMS and DMDS. They hope to take these measurements soon, whenever they can get the JWST to look at this exoplanet for a few more hours. They also noted that the presence of DMS and/or DMDS could have arisen from as-yet-unknown chemical reactions not involving any life at all, which they hope to test experimentally.
"It's important that we're deeply sceptical of our own results, because it's only by testing and testing again that we will be able to reach the point where we're confident in them," Madhusudhan said. "That's how science has to work."
Jess Thomson is a freelance journalist. She previously worked as a science reporter for Newsweek, and has also written for publications including VICE, The Guardian, The Cut, and Inverse. Jess holds a Biological Sciences degree from the University of Oxford, where she specialised in animal behavior and ecology.
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Human skeletons from a large stone tomb may help archaeologists understand a mysterious pre-Inca population in Peru.
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The battle-scarred skeletons of two dozen people have been discovered in Peru, revealing new evidence of an ancient conflict.
The site, El Curaca, is located in the Atico River Valley in south coastal Peru and was occupied around A.D. 1000 to 1450 by the Chuquibamba or Aruni people, who lived there before and after Spanish conquest. Archaeologists know little about the Aruni, beyond the many petroglyphs they left on cave walls in the area.
But in October 2024, Jósef Szykulski of the Institute of Archaeology at the University of Wrocław in Poland and his team launched an excavation at the site and uncovered a large circular stone tomb filled with 24 skeletons of men, women and children.
The collective burial included fragments of pottery, bone and stone tools, corn cobs and textiles. Preliminary analysis of the skeletons — which were wrapped in textiles — suggested that all of the people died due to injuries consistent with battle wounds.
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The bodies were buried in a tomb along with rich grave goods, so Szykulski concluded that their side won the battle, with their surviving compatriots giving the massacred victims an honorable burial, according to a translated Facebook post.
Szykulski and his team are continuing their work in Peru until the end of April. They are currently documenting the skulls using 3D scanning, working to conserve the textiles they found, and analyzing the pottery and wood items recovered from the burial.
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The ongoing research project, funded by the National Science Centre of Poland, will also use ancient DNA analysis in the future to better understand the pre-Inca archaeological cultures of the Atico River Valley region.
Kristina Killgrove is a staff writer at Live Science with a focus on archaeology and paleoanthropology news. Her articles have also appeared in venues such as Forbes, Smithsonian, and Mental Floss. Killgrove holds postgraduate degrees in anthropology and classical archaeology and was formerly a university professor and researcher. She has received awards from the Society for American Archaeology and the American Anthropological Association for her science writing.
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