Business Sentiment
Sentiment Legend:
Negative < 44
Mixed 46-54
Positive > 56
The bill would also expand Florida's “guardian” program, which allows school employees to be trained to handle guns.
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Florida Republicans have introduced a new bill in the state Senate that would expand a controversial gun program and allow open carry for some students and faculty on college and university campuses across the state.
Senate Bill 896, sponsored by state Sen. Don Gaetz (R), is currently being considered for advancement within multiple committees in the Florida Senate. The bill would allow certain employees, faculty, and students to openly carry their personal firearms on campus grounds.
The bill would make it a felony to discharge a weapon within 1,000 feet of a school during school hours or when an activity at a school is taking place. The legislation would also authorize colleges and universities “to participate in the school guardian program.”
That program was established by the Republican-led state legislature following the 2018 school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. It allows school districts to request their respective sheriff's office to train school employees — including teachers, faculty, and other support staff — to become armed “guardians,” to carry their weapons anywhere on school grounds. Schools are also authorized to enlist community members to become guardians, or to hire private security guards for that purpose.
Critics lambasted the legislation at the time as unnecessarily enabling more guns on school grounds, rather than addressing the gun violence epidemic in the U.S. Notably, armed guards at schools rarely stop mass shootings, research has shown, and there are numerous examples of guns being mishandled by authorized individuals on school grounds.
Still, Gaetz attempted to justify the bill by citing a mass shooting at Florida State University earlier this year, insinuating that his proposal could have prevented the massacre from taking place.
“We're living in a world where our institutions are being threatened,” Gaetz said in a recent interview. “I'm sorry that I'm having to do this, but it just seems as though places in our society that we thought were safe, even sacrosanct, are now becoming targets.”
The comment from the state senator seems to reference two separate talking points from pro-gun Republicans: that more guns make society safer or less prone to violent crime; and that gun-free zones are inherently dangerous.
Both talking points have been contradicted by studies examining such claims.
Speaking to Miami's WPLG in September about proposals like Gaetz's, Florida State University student Madalyn Propst, who was on campus during the April shooting, expressed opposition to the idea.
“It will solve nothing,” Propst said. “If there had been multiple students that were armed during the shooting back in April, then I wouldn't have been able to run and turn a corner and get away. I would have run and tried to get away and then met with another scared student with a firearm who doesn't know who's the actual perpetrator.”
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Instead of classifying swastikas and nooses as hate symbols, the Coast Guard now defines them as “potentially divisive.”
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The Coast Guard's new workplace harassment manual, which no longer classifies nooses and swastikas as hate symbols, quietly went into effect on Monday.
The Washington Post was the first to report about the planned changes, in mid-November. The Trump White House derided that reporting as “false,” and just hours later — after the proposed updates were met with widespread outcry — military officials released a memo claiming that the symbols would remain banned.
However, that memo appears to have been ignored entirely in the new manual, which classifies swastikas and nooses not as overt hate symbols but only as “potentially divisive.”
The word “hate” now appears only three times within the manual. In one of those instances, the word is used to explain that “the terminology ‘hate incident' is no longer present” in the Coast Guard's policies.
The manual also notes that “any symbols or flags co-opted or adopted by hate-based groups as representations of supremacy, racial or religious intolerance, or other bias” are now to be treated as “potentially divisive symbols.”
The new manual also places restrictions on how higher-ups can respond to displays of what were previously classified as hate symbols. In the past, when such an image was found in Coast Guard facilities, a commander could take immediate action, removing the symbol and disciplining the officer responsible.
The new manual, however, requires a step-by-step process to remove such symbols, requiring “commanders, commanding officers, officers-in-charge, and supervisors” to consult with “servicing legal offices” when nooses, swastikas, or other white supremacist imagery is found. After that review, they “may order or direct the removal” of individuals who displayed such symbols.
The word “may” means their removal is not required, and is left to the discretion of those higher-ups.
The new guidelines also shrink the timeframe in which a person can report harassment based on “potentially divisive” symbols.
“Except in cases involving allegations of sexual harassment, reports must be made within forty-five (45) calendar days of an incident or in the case of a series of incidents, the most recent incident, with discretion for reports to be accepted beyond this time frame,” the policy states.
The previous standard allowed for an indefinite amount of time to report on hate symbols.
When the changes were first reported on last month, critics noted that reporting white supremacist imagery within such a narrow timeframe was not always feasible, especially in closed quarters.
“If you are at sea, and your shipmate has a swastika in their rack, and you are a Black person or Jew, and you are going to be stuck at sea with them for the next 60 days, are you going to feel safe reporting that up your chain of command?” an anonymous Coast Guard official said to The Washington Post at the time.
“We don't deserve the trust of the nation if we're unclear about the divisiveness of swastikas,” that same official said.
The swastika is the best-known symbol of Nazi Germany, which systemically murdered 6 million Jewish people and millions of others during the Holocaust. The symbol remains widely recognized as an emblem of antisemitism.
Critics lambasted the changes to the harassment manual.
“As hate and antisemitism rise through our nation, this Admin should be ashamed for downplaying the meaning of these symbols,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland) said on Bluesky.
“The confusion and contradiction that surrounds this debacle needs to be fixed completely and comprehensively, without any legalese,” Rep. Joe Courtney (D-Connecticut) said in a press release issued by his office.
“The swastika was the symbol hundreds of thousands of Americans fought and gave their lives to defeat. It is not ‘potentially divisive,' it's a hate symbol,” historian Deborah Lipstadt toldThe Washington Post this week.
December is the most critical time of year for Truthout, because our nonprofit news is funded almost entirely by individual donations from readers like you. So before you navigate away, we ask that you take just a second to support Truthout with a tax-deductible donation.
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This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the following terms:
Chris Walker is a news writer at Truthout, and is based out of Madison, Wisconsin. Focusing on both national and local topics since the early 2000s, he has produced thousands of articles analyzing the issues of the day and their impact on the American people. He can be found on most social media platforms under the handle @thatchriswalker.
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The EU has unveiled its first-ever housing strategy, but is it enough to see off the far right and rescue a generation shut out of affordable living?
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Donald Trump may rage about Europe being a multicultural hell facing “civilisational” collapse. As a proud real estate guy, however, he must be impressed by one feature of European life: the house prices, and the extent to which even progressive governments have abandoned housing to the markets.
Since 2010, average sale prices in the EU have surged by close to 60%. In some countries, such as the Netherlands, house prices have doubled in a decade. Rents, meanwhile, have increased by almost 30% on average in the last 15 years. The rent average masks dramatic spikes experienced in some countries: 208% in Estonia, 177% in Lithuania, 108% in Ireland and 107% in Hungary. If property has been a lucrative bet for wealthy investors, the cost of a home is a financial ordeal for millions of people whose incomes have been outpaced.
Younger Europeans are bearing the brunt, with many barely able to rent independently or with any security, let alone afford a mortgage, even when they are in work. New research by the EU agency Eurofound (European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions) reported extraordinary levels of housing precarity:
30% of 25- to 34-year-olds in the EU live with their parents. (In Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Poland, the rate is almost 50%).
Young Europeans spend almost one-third of their income on housing.
Rents have inflated so much in Ireland, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Bulgaria that a worker between 18 and 34 has to spend more than 80% of their wage on a two-room flat.
No wonder Jaume Collboni, the mayor of Barcelona, says housing poses a threat to the EU as big as Russia. The price of a home in his city has risen by almost 70% in the past decade.
A range of factors is driving the affordability crisis, including a post-pandemic surge in construction costs. But the biggest structural issue, say experts, is “financialisation” – where homes are treated as a market asset whose value is expected to keep rising to generate profits for investors, rather than a basic human right. In a shift dating back to the 1980s, many European governments have disengaged from direct social housing provision. Home ownership has slumped, even in countries where it used to be an ingrained part of the culture.
The resulting crisis is not just a downer for young people still sharing a kitchen with their “full nester” parents – it is an economic drag. Employers can't attract workers to the fastest-growing cities because this is where housing prices have escalated most.
Essential workers are being priced out, undermining public services. Ireland has had to recruit thousands of healthcare workers whose jobs often require them to be close to hospitals. “We are now completely dependent on non-EU workers in our [healthcare] professions,” Phil Ní Sheaghdha, president of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, told a Eurofound conference in Dublin last month. “What we don't tell them is that when they get here, they will have no place to live, or if they do, that 70% of their wages, if they are working as a nurse, is going to be spent on rent.”
Housing inequality is, in some countries, feeding the success of far-right parties that peddle a narrative of zero-sum competition between migrants and locals for scarce resources. In that sense, housing has become Europe's political timebomb, say experts.
However, that risk of even more voters being drawn to the extremes is finally stirring action from the EU. On Tuesday, the European Commission unveiled its first-ever affordable housing strategy, which gives governments more leeway to subsidise affordable housing. Current rules, for example, have blocked authorities in the Netherlands from helping low-income households with housing. These are “the missing middle”, who are not poor enough to qualify for social housing yet can't afford to buy or rent.
The new EU strategy takes aim too at short-term rentals, with new EU legislation expected to be framed by the end of 2026. This could allow local authorities in areas of “housing stress” to limit rentals.
The demand from Collboni and other mayors for €300bn a year in extraordinary Covid-style joint EU funds to construct affordable housing has not been taken up. Nor is there any radical move against speculation.
European governments have the real power at national level. They are under mounting pressure to disrupt the “asset” model and reinvest directly in social housing on a scale not seen since after the second world war, and extend eligibility beyond just the poorest groups. The fact that the EU is stepping in shows at least an awareness of what is at stake.
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The $40m film – directed by Brett Ratner, who has been accused of sexual misconduct – follows Melania Trump in the days before the 2025 inauguration
Amazon has released the first trailer for next year's documentary on Melania Trump.
The film will follow the first lady in the 20 days before the 2025 inauguration and has “unprecedented access” with promises of “exclusive footage capturing critical meetings, private conversations, and never-before-seen environments”.
“Witness history in the making” is the tagline.
It's also a comeback vehicle for disgraced director Brett Ratner, who was accused of sexual misconduct by a number of women back in 2017. The film-maker moved to Israel in 2023 and called himself a “proud Zionist” on Instagram at the time. He is known to be a close friend of Benjamin Netanyahu.
The trailer features Donald Trump as Melania assists him on camera. “My proudest legacy will be that of peacemaker,” he says before she adds “peacemaker and unifier”.
“Everyone wants to know, so here it is,” says Melania later in the footage.
“The 20 days of my life, preceding the US presidential inauguration, constitutes a rare and defining moment – one that warrants meticulous care, integrity, and uncompromising craftsmanship,” she said to Fox News, where the trailer was first exclusively shared. “I am proud to share this very specific moment of my life – 20 days of intense transition and planning – with moviegoers and fans across the globe.”
Amazon reportedly spent $40m for the rights to the documentary, which the first lady originally conceived of in November 2024, and will also release a three-part docuseries on showing her life travelling between New York, Washington DC and Palm Beach.
Ratner is also set to bring back his Rush Hour franchise after Trump reportedly intervened in order to get the fourth film financed. The film will be distributed by Paramount, a company recently bought by Skydance and backed by Larry Ellison, a friend of the president.
In a bombshell exposé in the Los Angeles Times, six women including actors Natasha Henstridge and Olivia Munn, accused Ratner of sexual misconduct. Henstridge claimed he forced her to perform oral sex on him while Munn alleged that he masturbated in front of her in his trailer on the set of After the Sunset. Ratner denied the allegations.
Melania will be released in cinemas on 30 January.
Food bloggers liken Richard Hart to Christopher Columbus for ‘stomping' on a country that has welcomed him
A noted British baker has provoked a furore in Mexico by saying on a podcast the country does not “really have much of a bread culture”.
Richard Hart, who opened the Green Rhino bakery in Mexico City in June, also said the country's wheat was “not good … completely highly processed, full of additives” and its sandwiches – tortas – were made “on these white ugly rolls that are pretty cheap and industrially made”.
The comments were made in April on the PopFoodie Radio podcast but went viral this month when they were picked up by food bloggers and commentators, who voiced outrage at the idea of a foreigner criticising their cuisine.
“He wants to be the Christopher Columbus of bread,” said pastry chef Tania Medina on TikTok. “It's not fair for you to stomp on where you're going to open, and even less so if it's not your country and that country is welcoming you with so much affection, so much love.”
Hart, who has worked with Gordon Ramsay and René Redzepi of Noma restaurant in Copenhagen, issued an apology on Monday on Instagram. He said: “Since I moved to Mexico, I fell in love with the people and this city. However, my words did not reflect that respect – in this country I am a guest and I forgot to act like one.”
He is the latest British chef to land in hot water for insulting or meddling with national cuisines, including Jamie Oliver's addition of chorizo to Spanish paella, Mary Berry adding white wine to spaghetti bolognese and Nigella Lawson putting cream in her carbonara.
In Mexico, where food is considered a national treasure, the comments struck a particularly sensitive nerve.
“Mexicans are very defensive of their culture and their traditions,” said Rodrigo Sierra, whose Instagram video reacting to Hart's comments went viral. “I'm sure Richard Hart didn't mean it maliciously or out of complete disrespect. What he did do was make a very ignorant comment, without considering the consequences.”
The remarks come at a tense moment in Mexico City, where many have accused foreign arrivals of driving up rent for locals, a phenomenon that has led to furious and at times violent protests in the capital.
Commentators took particular issue with Hart's criticism of the bolillo, a white roll that is a staple of everyday Mexican food, whether for making tortas or mopping up the remnants of traditional dishes.
“The bolillo is a popular bread, a bread that has served most Mexicans, lower classes, middle class, upper class, but it's a cheap bread because it has to be cheap, it's a practical bread, it is an everyday bread,” said Sierra. “Classifying it as an ‘ugly' bread just because it serves the needs of a population that can't spend 100 pesos on the bread that this baker sells in his bakery seems to me like a very poor point of view.”
Sierra noted that Mexico had more than 600 kinds of bread, including pan de muerto, which is made for Day of the Dead celebrations and placed on altars honouring the deceased.
“Bread is embedded in our culture … it's an important part of a Mexican's ritual,” he added. “You can't say that bread doesn't have a culture or that Mexicans don't have a bread culture just because you're referring to your type of bread. It's a very Eurocentric view to say that we don't have a bread culture if we don't have European breads.”
Complex plan would involve EU lending €90bn to Ukraine, which some fear could destabilise Eurozone. Putin says move is akin to ‘theft'
After months of debate, EU leaders will decide on Thursday whether or not to use Russia's immobilised assets to fund Ukraine in what could be a make-or-break moment for Europe.
The EU has frozen €210bn (£184bn, $247bn) of Russian central bank assets which are mostly held at Euroclear in Brussels. As the fourth anniversary of the full-scale invasion approaches, the EU wants to use this money to generate a loan for Ukraine.
Under the complex plan, the EU would borrow from Euroclear to provide Ukraine with an initial €90bn loan, about two-thirds of Kyiv's funding needs for 2026 and 2027. The EU expects Ukraine's other allies to provide the rest.
Kyiv would only repay the money to the EU if and when Russia agreed to pay reparations for the colossal damage inflicted during the war. The EU would then repay Euroclear. Throughout the cycle, Russia would remain the legal owner of the assets.
Euroclear, often described as a bank for banks, was until recently a little known part of global financial plumbing. It is now looking after €40.7tn worth of assets for its clients, who include central banks, investment banks and supranational organisations. The company has its roots in the Belgian outpost of what became the Wall Street bank JP Morgan. It does not hold any paper money, but enables the electronic exchange of cash and securities (a stock, a bond or some other instrument to raise capital).
EU leaders agreed in 2024 to take the interest on Russia's frozen sovereign wealth for Ukraine. But touching the assets is a much more controversial step. Decision-makers in Brussels, Paris and Berlin feared damaging global investor confidence in the eurozone.
The calculus changed in October when Germany's relatively new chancellor, Friedrich Merz, came out decisively in favour of a plan to use the assets without confiscation. Germany shares concerns about eurozone stability, but sees the bigger economic threat coming from Russia's imperial ambitions.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump has halted new US military aid for Ukraine. European nations, grappling with stagnant economies and public spending pressures, are not doing nearly enough to fill the gap, according to the Kiel Institut in Germany.
And Ukraine is running out of money fast: Kyiv needs an estimated €136bn in 2026 and 2027 to fund its defence and keep afloat, according to the European Commission. Without new funds by spring, Ukraine risks going bankrupt, unable to pay soldiers, teachers and police.
Trump's proposals for US companies to profit from the Russian assets, including via joint projects with Russia, have also galvanised European leaders to secure them for Ukraine.
Vladimir Putin has said using the frozen assets to finance a loan would be akin to “theft of someone else's property”. The Russian president and his advisers have issued dark warnings about the consequences for European economic stability and investor faith in the eurozone.
The Russian Central bank has launched a $230bn claim for damages against Euroclear, which is already fighting more than 100 legal cases in Russia. Putin has signed a series of decrees, most recently in October, making it easier for the Kremlin to seize western private and state assets in Russia, in retaliation for any confiscation of assets.
Belgium, the host of the lion's share of the assets, has described the EU plan as “fundamentally wrong”. The Belgian government argues the plan would be seen as confiscation and that without strong EU guarantees, it could be left with multibillion euro bills if Moscow is successful in suing Euroclear and seizing Belgian property in Russia.
While EU courts would not recognise a Russian court judgment, Moscow-friendly jurisdictions, such as Kazakhstan or China, could seek to enforce any claim against Belgium by seizing assets in their countries.
Belgium has said it will not accept the plan unless all its concerns are met, including cast-iron guarantees from other EU countries covering 100% of any claims against Euroclear. The Belgian government also wants other countries with Russian frozen assets to use them for Ukraine, including the UK, Japan, Canada, the US, Switzerland and Norway.
In theory, there is a plan B. EU member states could use unallocated funds in the EU budget as collateral for a loan for Ukraine – a tried-and-tested method of raising money, which was proposed by the European Commission this month. Belgium, backed by Italy, Bulgaria and Malta, argues this is a legally safer way to help Kyiv, leaving the Russian billions intact for Ukraine's reconstruction.
Other officials involved in the decision argue the frozen-assets plan is the only real option. Borrowing secured against the EU budget requires unanimity and Hungary's anti-Ukraine government has already said it would veto such a move.
The reparations loan, in contrast, only requires a majority agreement. In theory Belgium could be outvoted, but high-ranking EU officials have indicated they do not want to go down that road.
If the summit, scheduled to run on Thursday and Friday, ends with no clear plan to fund Ukraine, the EU's credibility would be in tatters. Europe would find it even harder to sway peace talks orchestrated by a transactional US president who has already dismissed the continent's leaders as weak.
Merz issued a stark warning about the risks of failing to agree the frozen assets plan: “If we do not succeed in this, then the European Union's ability to act will be severely damaged for years, if not longer, and we will show the world that we are incapable of standing together and acting at such a crucial moment in our history.”
Agreement would trigger an outpouring of relief, but the difficulties would be far from over. Even if EU leaders sign off on the frozen assets idea, it would still need to be turned into law to meet Ukraine's urgent military and civilian needs by springtime.
Decisions on the immense cost of rebuilding Ukraine – $524bn, €506bn by the latest estimate – remain unclear. Any peace agreement also has to resolve the issue of Ukraine's borders and security when Russia shows no obvious interest in ending the war.
Afrikaners check in for their departure to the U.S. at O.R. Tambo Airport in Johannesburg, South Africa, in February.ILAN GODFREY/The New York Times News Service
The Trump administration has been using illegal foreign labour to process the white South Africans who are being granted refugee status in the United States under a controversial new U.S. program, the South African government says.
Seven Kenyans who were handling applications from the white Afrikaner minority were arrested this week because they were illegally working at a U.S.-run processing centre in Johannesburg without the required work visas, South African officials said on Wednesday.
The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump protested the raid on its processing centre, demanding “immediate clarification” from the South African government. The arrests are expected to cause further deterioration in the fractured relationship between the two countries.
“Interfering in our refugee operations is unacceptable,” State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott said in a statement.
The Trump administration has been cracking down on migrants and foreign workers in the United States, arresting and deporting thousands of them, and it is unclear why it decided to hire Kenyans on tourist visas for its high-profile program for white South Africans.
Opinion: Trump's mass deportation policy is taking American democracy with it
South Africa's Home Affairs Department said it executed “a routine, lawful operation in Johannesburg, targeted at suspected violations of South African immigration law” on Tuesday after receiving intelligence reports about illegal labour.
“During the operation, seven Kenyan nationals were discovered engaging in work despite only being in possession of tourist visas, in clear violation of their conditions of entry into the country,” the department said in a statement. “They were arrested and issued with deportation orders and will be prohibited from entering South Africa again for a five-year period.”
Visa applications for Kenyans to perform the processing work in Johannesburg had earlier been rejected, it said.
The fact that U.S. government officials were co-ordinating their processing operations with undocumented foreign workers “naturally raises serious questions about intent and diplomatic protocol,” the department said.
The Trump administration has claimed that the Afrikaners – the white minority who dominated South Africa during the apartheid era – are targeted for unfair discrimination by authorities today. It has announced plans to admit thousands of them to the United States under the new refugee program, which it launched in May by flying 59 of them to Washington in a chartered jet.
1.2 million immigrants disappeared from U.S. labour force while Trump in office, early data show
At the same time, the United States has drastically cut back on traditional refugee programs for those fleeing war zones or violence. It has imposed the lowest-ever annual cap on refugee admissions, allowing only 7,500 to enter the United States, of whom the majority would be white South Africans.
Mr. Trump has been escalating his campaign against the South African government throughout this year, falsely accusing it of illegally seizing farmland from white farmers and perpetrating a “genocide” against the white minority.
Official crime statistics show that only two farmers have been killed in South Africa in the latest six-month period. The government denies that the white minority has any legitimate claim to refugee status. Only a tiny percentage of the estimated three million Afrikaners has applied for refugee status under the U.S. program.
As the dispute intensified this year, Mr. Trump eliminated all U.S. aid programs for South Africa and imposed a 30 per cent tariff on South African goods.
After assuming the rotating presidency of the G20 group of countries last month, the U.S. government said it would prohibit South Africa from participating in any of the group's meetings over the next year, even though South Africa is a longstanding G20 member and was host of the group's latest summit.
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Warner Bros. Discovery is officially rejecting Paramount's buyout offer, calling it “illusory” and arguing that the existing plan to sell most of the media company to Netflix is a better deal for shareholders.
Warner, abbreviated as WBD, is the parent company of CNN. On Wednesday morning, the company filed a formal response to Paramount's hostile takeover bid launched last week.
The hostile bid “provides inadequate value and imposes numerous, significant risks and costs on WBD,” the board said in a letter to shareholders.
The decision ultimately rests with those shareholders, some of whom have already said that they'll reject the company's advice and tender their shares to Paramount for $30 per share.
Executives at Paramount argue that their proposal provides “more value and certainty.”
Executives at WBD say the hostile play is anything but certain.
The fundamental concern raised by WBD is about whether Paramount is “good for the money,” so to speak. The Paramount offer is financed in large part by the royal families of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Abu Dhabi.
Paramount says it has “air tight financing” and that any suggestion otherwise is “absurd.”
But the WBD side has questioned why Paramount's current owners are enlisting outside help instead of putting up more of the funds personally.
Earlier this year, David Ellison and his father, Larry, the Oracle billionaire, took control of Paramount after a protracted, politically tainted merger process.
Larry Ellison is worth about $240 billion, according to Forbes' calculations, making him the third richest man in the world.
Paramount has said that the Ellison family is fully backstopping the bid. Wednesday's letter from WBD refutes that: “It does not, and never has.”
In recent days, some US lawmakers have raised alarms about the Middle Eastern financing arrangement.
“This transaction raises national security concerns because it could transfer substantial influence over one of the largest American media companies to foreign-backed financiers,” Reps. Sam Liccardo and Ayanna Pressley wrote in a letter to WBD.
Paramount has said in SEC filings that Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Abu Dhabi have agreed to give up any voting rights and governance role in Warner if the deal goes through. But that, in turn, has intensified questions about why the royal families are seeking to make the investment.
On Tuesday, another financing partner, Jared Kushner's private equity fund Affinity Partners, withdrew from the process. “With two strong competitors vying to secure the future of this unique American asset, Affinity has decided no longer to pursue the opportunity,” said Affinity, which has a substantial investment from the Saudi sovereign wealth fund.
“We continue to believe there is a strong strategic rationale for Paramount's offer,” Affinity added in its statement.
The corporate tug-of-war may drag on for months. Paramount's current offer to buy up shares is set to expire on January 8, but could be extended.
Wall Street analysts say Paramount could come back with a higher bid, file a lawsuit, or take other steps.
In the meantime, Netflix is moving forward with its plan to swallow up the Warner Bros. movie studio, the HBO Max streaming service and other immensely valuable Hollywood assets.
“We have a solid deal in place,” co-CEOs Greg Peters and Ted Sarandos told employees in an email. “It's great for our shareholders, great for consumers, and a strong way to create and protect jobs in the industry. We're confident we'll get it over the finish line — and we're genuinely excited about what's ahead.”
Trump enters Warner Bros. fight, says it's ‘imperative that CNN be sold'
Under the current plan, WBD will split itself into two publicly traded pieces next summer, and then Netflix will seek regulatory approval to buy the Warner Bros part. The other piece, to be named Discovery Global, will contain CNN and other channels.
President Trump said last week that he will be involved in the regulatory review and suggested that he favored Paramount's bid, although he has also complained about the Ellisons in recent days.
His preference for Paramount was expressed through his derision for CNN. “I think the people that have run CNN for the last long period of time are a disgrace,” Trump said. “I think it's imperative that CNN be sold.”
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Ukraine says that failure to provide a financial lifeline to Kyiv backed by Russian assets would have grave consequences beyond the current war, and for Europe's future.
"Failure to decide tomorrow would be a catastrophe for every single European," Iryna Mudra, deputy head of President Zelensky's office, told the Kyiv Independent on Dec. 17 in a written statement.
European leaders will gather in Brussels for a summit on Dec. 18–19 to decide on the fate of a "reparations loan," a plan to lend up to 210 billion euros ($245 billion) to Ukraine using immobilized Russian central bank reserves.
"If immobilized Russian assets remain untouchable despite a clear legal and financial mechanism, the lesson will be that European solidarity ends where fear of action begins, even in self-defense," Mudra told the Kyiv Independent. "That precedent will not stay confined to Ukraine."
Ukraine needs new financing urgently. Without additional assistance, the country will run out of cash by spring 2026. Ukraine needs a colossal 135 billion euros ($160 billion) in 2026 and 2027 to sustain its army and keep the state afloat, according to International Monetary Fund and EU estimates.
With the second Trump administration withholding new U.S. support and Europe repeatedly sidelined in Russia-U.S. brokered peace talks, frozen Russian assets have been increasingly viewed as crucial for funding Kyiv and showcasing Europe's strategic leverage. Yet, some EU member states remain hesitant to back the plan to lend these funds to Ukraine.
"This is about something way beyond just Ukraine. It is about Europe's agency, and how we see ourselves in the future," Mudra said.
"The reparations loan is therefore a test case for Europe's future and will show whether it can act as a strategic union when confronted with aggression and whether Europe is able to take care of its own security and destiny."
Mudra's comments echo the words of German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who said on Dec. 15 in a joint press conference with President Volodymyr Zelensky that, should the reparations loan fail, "the European Union's ability to act will be severely damaged for years, if not longer."
EU envoys took part in a series of meetings every day this week in Brussels in a last attempt to address outstanding concerns before the leaders meet tomorrow.
Belgium, which houses Euroclear, the financial institution holding the vast majority of the assets, has long expressed opposition to the plan, citing legal and financial risks.
Italy, Bulgaria, Malta and Belgium on Dec. 12 expressed further reservations to the plan, and pushed for the EU to find alternatives to the reparations loan to continue financing Ukraine.
But joint European borrowing, the Commission's alternative option to the reparations loan, would be subject to unanimity — meaning that all 27 countries would need to agree. Slovakia and Hungary, the bloc's most pro-Russia members, would likely veto any such plan.
Most analysts agree that the reparations loan is a well-crafted policy response to Ukraine's financing needs and Russia's continued war in Ukraine.
Two legal opinions released over the last week from multinational firm Covington & Burling and a group of prominent international lawyers both point out that it would be almost impossible for Russia to find a court or tribunal that would hear or enforce a case against Belgium.
Theoretically, a majority of European countries could bypass Belgium and approve the reparations loan. But the EU's top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, said on Dec. 15 that it would be important to get Belgium on board.
In addition to Merz's vocal backing of the plan, seven EU countries said that they "strongly support" the reparations loan in a different joint declaration on Dec. 7.
Roughly $300 billion in Russian central bank reserves were immobilized when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. Two-thirds of those are held in Belgium.
Economics reporter
Luca is the economics reporter for the Kyiv Independent. He was previously a research analyst at Bruegel, a Brussels-based economics think tank, where he worked on Russia and Ukraine, trade, industrial policy, and environmental policy. Luca also worked as a data analyst at Work-in-Data, a Geneva-based research center focused on global inequality, and as a research assistant at the Economic Policy Research Center in Kampala, Uganda. He holds a BA honors degree in economics and Russian from McGill University.
A man looks at floral tributes left by mourners at the promenade of Bondi Beach in Sydney on Wednesday.DAVID GRAY/AFP/Getty Images
The surviving suspect who allegedly carried out Australia's worst mass shooting in decades was charged with 59 offences on Wednesday, including terrorism and 15 counts of murder.
Naveed Akram, 24, remains in hospital after he was shot by police during an attack on a Jewish gathering at Sydney's Bondi Beach on Sunday. The authorities had waited to charge him until he was out of a coma and had “appropriate cognitive ability” to understand what was happening, New South Wales Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon told reporters.
In a statement, the NSW Joint Counter Terrorism Team alleged Mr. Akram “engaged in conduct that caused death, serious injury, and endangered life to advance a religious cause and cause fear in the community.”
Police say the alleged gunmen who opened fire at a Hanukkah celebration in Sydney's Bondi Beach had traveled to Mindanao in the Philippines last month, as investigators probe ties to extremist networks.
Reuters
“Early indications point to a terrorist attack inspired by ISIS,” the statement said, adding that Mr. Akram remains in hospital under police guard.
On Tuesday, it emerged that Mr. Akram and his father – 50-year-old Sajid Akram, who was killed during the attack – spent most of November in the Philippines, where they are believed to have connected with a web of militant organizations linked to ISIS, also known as the Islamic State.
According to the immigration bureau in the Philippines, the two men flew into Davao, the capital of the southern island of Mindanao, on Nov. 1, and departed from there for Sydney on Nov. 28.
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Major Catherine Dela Ray, a police spokeswoman in Davao, said the two men did not stay in the city, but travelled elsewhere on the island. A comprehensive investigation has been launched, she added, looking into who they met with and where they stayed.
For decades, Mindanao was the base of Abu Sayyaf, a deadly terrorist group that, in 2014, pledged allegiance to the Islamic State and tried to set up a caliphate in the Philippines.
In March, 2024, after a five-year “all-out war” against the group, including the months-long bloody siege of Marawi, which had been seized by militants, the Philippines declared Abu Sayyaf had been “dismantled,” with all but a handful of its leaders “neutralized.”
In a Wednesday statement, the Armed Forces of the Philippines said there were only an estimated 50 fighters with various terrorist groups operating in Mindanao, down from more than 1,200 in 2016.
The AFP listed 10 top militant commanders killed in the past decade, including Abu Sayyaf leader Isnilon Hapilon, and said it “continues to record significant improvements in its domestic security situation, particularly in areas of Mindanao previously affected by terrorism.”
Independent terrorism experts have cast doubt on that assessment, estimating there may still be hundreds of Islamic State-linked fighters operating in the Philippines, along with associated radical preachers and mosques that the authorities have struggled to crack down on.
Mourners escort the coffin of Rabbi Eli Schlanger, who was killed during a shooting at a Jewish Hanukkah celebration on Sunday.Jeremy Piper/Reuters
Last year, Australia's National Security agency warned in a report that Abu Sayyaf was “rebuilding its membership and influence in local communities, while continuing a low-level insurgency against Philippine security forces.” Other Islamist militant groups also continue to operate in Mindanao, the report said.
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., through a spokesperson, said Wednesday he “strongly rejects” any characterization of Mindanao or the Philippines as a “training hot spot” for the Islamic State.
Editorial: The fight against the growing darkness of antisemitism
In a statement, the country's National Security Council said: “Currently, there is no validated report or confirmation that the individuals involved in the Bondi Beach incident received any form of training in the Philippines.”
Drieza Lininding, who runs a civil society organization based in Marawi, said the security situation in the city has transformed in recent years, and it is now “one of the safest places in Mindanao.”
“ISIS were defeated and eliminated in 2017,” she said. “There are some remnants, according to the military, but we can count them on our fingers and those remaining are in hiding.”
While the Islamic State's footprint in the country has been vastly reduced, Rommel Banlaoi, chairman of the Manila-based Philippine Institute for Peace, Violence and Terrorism Research, said it was likely the Akrams were able to connect with figures linked to armed groups in Mindanao. He expressed concern their case “can provide a template for others to follow.”
“We are now facing a new wave of terrorism about 25 years after 9/11,” he said, adding that this was driven by “an antisemitic, anti-Jewish agenda as a result of Israeli military action in Gaza.”
Despite its defeat in Syria and Iraq, the Islamic State “remains a resilient and evolving global threat,” the United Nations warned in August, adding that the group continues to carry out attacks in multiple countries and is radicalizing potential recruits online.
Opinion: Condemnations of antisemitism are necessary. But they are simply not enough
Naveed Akram, who was born and raised in Australia, has been linked to groups in Sydney long accused of spreading Islamic State propaganda and ideology, including one led by preacher Wisam Haddad, who earlier this year lost a court case alleging he spread hate speech against Jews.
In a statement to The Globe and Mail, Mr. Haddad said no evidence had been produced “showing any personal, organizational, or instructional link between” himself and Mr. Akram.
“Wisam Haddad has never been charged, tried, or convicted of ISIS membership, leadership, or support,” he said, adding that claims about his alleged extremism “rely on conflation, misidentification, vague terminology, and unsubstantiated, racially discriminatory assertions.”
Two gunmen opened fire during a Hanukkah celebration on Sydney's Bondi beach, killing 15 people, including a child, officials said Monday, in what Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called an act of antisemitic terrorism that struck at the heart of the nation.
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Ultra-conservative Christian organisations look to reshape global health landscape as new aid agreements open door to demands restricting family planning services
The sudden stop work order on USAID in January 2025 sent shock waves around the world. Many health clinics were immediately shut down, leaving millions without access to vital medicines and facilities, with potentially deadly consequences, especially for HIV patients, children, and women and adolescent girls.
To many, the subsequent axing of 83% of USAID programmes seemed like pure nihilism, engineered by ideologues who wanted to kill off the agency. But there was a long-term vision behind the destruction. The gutting of USAID has cleared a path for the next phase of a plan to reshape the global health landscape, say reproductive justice campaigners.
“Consider the first nine months [of the Trump administration] as round one,” Beth Schlachter, senior director of US external relations at MSI Reproductive Choices, told delegates at the recent International Conference on Family Planning (ICFP) in Bogotá, Colombia. “Now they've taken down the system of US foreign assistance, the [government] is rebuilding it.”
The anti-rights movement – also known as the anti-gender movement – refers to a global network of political leaders, religious institutions, civil society groups as well as billionaire families and individuals that seek to undermine progress across a wide spectrum of issues. These include abortion, LGBTQ rights, trans rights, non-traditional family structures and comprehensive sexuality education.
They do this by lobbying governments, supporting court cases, discrediting international efforts to advance equality, spreading disinformation, and funding non-profit organisations that align with their values.
Until Everyone is Free, a report by Purposeful, an organisation focused on girls' activism in Africa, described the “anti-rights tide” as a “transnational and orchestrated rollback of rights and freedoms fuelled by far-right extremism and authoritarianism on a scale unseen in modern history”.
Many influential groups, including Family Watch International, C-Fam and the Alliance Defending Freedom are ultra-conservative US-based Christian organisations with strong links to governments in Africa, Asia and Latin America. There are similar groups in Europe and Australia.
Such organisations have gained prominence in recent years, with support from governments including those of the US and Hungary. They spend hundreds of millions of dollars on advocacy, lobbying, litigation and media campaigns.
While independently funded and run, they use similar tactics and rhetoric, emphasising national sovereignty, “family values”, parental rights, freedom of speech and religious freedom, which they promote among partners in poorer countries by speaking at international conferences, particularly in Africa, and training policymakers and campaigners in the US.
Key to that rebuilding are the new bilateral aid agreements the US is negotiating with governments. These deals, said Schlachter, will almost certainly come with conditions to make it harder for organisations to provide family planning services.
Schlachter is not the only expert to warn governments and NGOs to be on high alert for attempts by the US and ultra-conservative Christian organisations to undermine progress in sexual and reproductive health.
The Guardian spoke to leaders of reproductive justice organisations about what is coming next, and what effect these plans could have on women and girls around the world.
In October, the Institute for Women's Health (IWH) in Washington DC celebrated the fifth anniversary of the Geneva Consensus Declaration (GCD), a 2020 manifesto from the first Trump administration that states that “there is no international right to abortion, nor any international obligation on the part of states to finance or facilitate abortion”. It was immediately condemned by more liberal governments and rights groups: Amnesty International said it believes the GCD endangers lives and flies in the face of human rights and decades of health research.
During the Washington event, Hungary, one of the original sponsors of the GCD, welcomed Guinea as the latest signatory, bringing the total number of supporting states to 40, half of them in Africa. Valerie Huber, president of the Institute for Women's Health and architect of the GCD, said the goal is to reach 80 countries in the next three years, creating “an invincible force for women's health, strong families, and national sovereignty that no international pressure can break”.
Huber is leading efforts to turn GCD principles into active policies in partner countries through her Protego project, a development that has alarmed many experts and activists. “Any policy based on GCD is catastrophic for bodily autonomy and reproductive rights. We should all be concerned and watchful for what's coming out of the US,” says Jamie Vernaelde, a senior researcher at reproductive justice NGO Ipas.
In a statement to the Guardian, Huber rejected the idea that the GCD represents a threat to women's health. “The GCD's actual stated goals include reducing maternal mortality, improving health outcomes across the life course, and promoting health coverage for all. Claims that it ‘endangers lives' contradict the document itself.”
The goals of the Protego project are outlined in a 62-page guide called the Women's Optimal Health Framework. Vernaelde described the document as being “dressed up in language that asserts the value of women and girls”, but with “few specific recommendations”. She added that it goes against science-based health policies and “barely mentions any form of modern contraceptive methods, and excludes marginalised communities, such as people living with HIV, people who use drugs, sex workers, and sexual and gender minorities. No mention is made of adolescent access to comprehensive sexuality education; it prioritises parental rights over children's rights.
“It is trying to supplant [human rights] frameworks that already exist.”
Huber denied there was a lack of detail and that the project attempts to replace existing human rights consensus. “The framework contains over 1,000 citations and provides comprehensive, evidence-based information … and provides countries with research-based alternatives that align with their cultural values and sovereignty.”
The framework does not mention abortion, other than to say it is not a form of contraception, but it states that it is “consistent with the foundational pillars of the GCD”, and Huber has spoken publicly about the potential of the project to support countries in their defence against donors that, she argues, seek to impose progressive “ideology”, such as access to safe, legal abortion, on to nations.
Huber said the IWH's approach “focuses on reducing circumstances that lead women to consider abortion through robust support systems, quality healthcare, and education. This pro-woman approach addresses root causes”.
Huber advocates for abstinence-based education instead of comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) – the UN and World Health Organization-backed process of teaching age-appropriate information about sexuality and sexual and reproductive health. Research on the impact of CSE shows that it equips young people with the knowledge and skills to stay safe, maintain healthy relationships, take fewer risks and understand gender equity and rights.
In October 2023, a pilot Protego project was launched in Guatemala, which has one of the highest rates of teen pregnancy in Latin America, and was designated the “pro-life capital of Latin America” by former president Alejandro Giammattei.
One of the first Protego initiatives was a “parent-child communication guide” launched by Huber and the then education minister, giving tips on how to discuss sensitive issues, including advice on sexual relationships. It emphasises parental rights, seemingly playing to the rightwing moral panic that parents are losing control over their children. Efforts to introduce CSE to schools in Guatemala already faced numerous barriers. Protego's parent guide will further undermine those efforts, placing parental control above children's rights.
Now, the focus is on Protego in Africa. Uganda, an initial sponsor of the GCD, was an early adopter of Protego, with the first lady and minister for education Janet Museveni signing up in February 2024. As in Guatemala, one of the first initiatives was a school curriculum that will serve as an alternative to CSE, and has allegedly been handed to Huber for review. Burundi gave its support in October 2025.
“This project is gaining traction,” says Vernaelde.
“The fact that some organisations oppose our approach reflects ideological differences and perhaps discomfort with our rejection of ideological colonialism, not deficiencies in our frameworks or approach,” said Huber.
For Rahom Maria Bukirwa, programme manager at the Women's Probono Initiative (WPI), a Ugandan legal aid organisation focused on women's rights, Protego is just the latest development in a multipronged attack from religious conservative groups. “As a woman I have experienced the patriarchy – being first born and having a younger brother – it has been there constantly. But being in this [rights] space I see how it plays out on a larger scale.”
She said narratives around same-sex marriage and relations – strictly outlawed in the country – family values, national sovereignty, and the sexualisation of children through CSE, are shaping the country's laws, policies and social attitudes. This is in part because they have direct access to lawmakers while NGOs such as WPI are often shut out of discussions. “In government, allyship is money oriented. The advantage that anti-rights groups have is a flexible network of funding. For us [rights-focused NGOs] we have a strict funding environment, so it's hard to get into those rooms,” says Bukirwa.
After causing chaos by abruptly stopping USAID in January, the US government is negotiating new aid packages with governments around the world. The plan, outlined in the America first global health strategy, is to sign bilateral agreements with 71 countries that will become self-reliant after a number of years.
The main focus is on fighting HIV, and the prevention and treatment of malaria, TB and polio. A draft memorandum of understanding makes virtually no mention of sexual and reproductive health.
“We know family planning will not be a priority; abortion will not be a part of the conversation; abstinence will be a focus,” says Nelly Munyasia, executive director of Reproductive Health Network Kenya.
Kenya was heavily reliant on USAID for family planning products. Losing that funding has led to a severe shortage of contraceptives. Shelves are empty and women looking for renewal of drugs or devices are being turned away. Without new money, the shortages will continue.
But concern is not just that sexual and reproductive health is being defunded; the fear is that the bilateral agreements will come with conditions to force governments to comply with the US administration's values. “Many governments are excited that the US is coming in with funding,” says Schlachter. “[But] the US is highly transactional, [and] we don't know the full extent of what the Trump administration will ask as payback for the investment. It's a complete Trojan horse moment.”
These conditions are likely to align with the expanded “global gag rule” which, when it comes into force early next year, will include governments for the first time in its stipulation that any recipient of US health funding must certify that neither it, nor any other NGO with which it works, promotes or provides abortion.
Munyasia's concern is that if US health aid becomes conditional on the global gag rule, groups such as hers, the largest provider of family planning services in the country, are at risk. The US has said it will only funnel money through faith-based groups, not NGOs, which it has accused of wasting money. “We will see surveillance on organisations that work around abortion and contraceptives for adolescents,” says Munyaisa. “It's going to be terrible; it's already terrible.
“If the Kenyan government complies we will see a lot of organisations deregistered and an increase in women dying of backstreet abortion. We fear this as civil society and we fear for women and girls.”
Schlachter echoes Munyasia's fears. “[Bilateral agreements are] the next stage that will limit access to [family planning] services even further. If programmes shrink it will mean more pregnancy, more unsafe abortions, more women dying – it's a continuation of that destruction phase, with more destruction,” she says.
Some countries, most recently Zambia, Zimbabwe and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, are boosting their own family planning budgets. Kenya is not among them. Munyasia believes this puts Kenya in a particularly vulnerable position. “For countries that have already found ways of mitigating, they can negotiate [with the US], they have the upper hand. They will look at the memorandum of understanding and say this yes, this no. But countries like Kenya, my dear country, is at zero [domestic funding for family planning].”
“Destruction, consolidation and creation,” is how Neil Datta, executive director at the European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual and Reproductive Rights, characterises the Trump administration's modus operandi.
If the shutdown of USAID is the destruction, and new bilateral agreements are consolidation, the “creation” phase will see a new system of services that offer alternatives to established sexual and reproductive health facilities.
Examples that already exist include crisis pregnancy centres that try to dissuade women from accessing abortion care; abstinence-based education programmes instead of comprehensive sexuality education; and natural family planning clinics as a substitute for modern contraception.
Most of these services are funded by governments or church-organised NGOs (ChONGOs), but not always. The EU recently withdrew funding from three World Youth Alliance (WYA) projects after a review showed they did not align with EU values and were one-sided or biased when it came to “sexual and reproductive health rights”. WYA denies the accusations. One of its core services is Femm, a health and fertility app funded by anti-abortion Catholic campaigners.
Another programme is Teen Star, a curriculum that teaches children about natural fertility and is already active in 30 countries.
“These anti-gender services do not just offer an alternative, they are genuine health risks,” says Datta.
Where once anti-gender services were seen as a nuisance or peculiarity, today they are gaining political support.
In Europe this “alternative framework” received $131.7m (£99m) in funding across 80 organisations between 2019 and 2023, according to a report authored by Datta.
Renewed US aid, the expanded global gag rule, and support for projects such as Protego means there is a “potential funding and legal framework ready to jump start anti-gender services around the world. [This is] what we need to be prepared for in the months ahead,” says Datta.
MOSCOW, December 17. /TASS/. Air defenses intercepted and shot down 94 Ukrainian drones over Russian regions and the waters of the Azov and Black Seas overnight, the Defense Ministry reported.
In the Krasnodar Region, two people were injured by falling UAV debris. A private garage and a power line were damaged during the drone raid in the Voronezh Region.
TASS has compiled the main information about the attacks.
- On-duty air defenses downed 94 Ukrainian fixed-wing drones over Russian regions, the Defense Ministry reported.
- According to the report, 31 UAVs were shot down over the Krasnodar Region, 22 over the Rostov Region, 10 over the Voronezh Region, eight each over the Saratov Region and the Azov and Black Seas, four over the Volgograd Region, and three over the Bryansk Region.
- Two civilians were wounded by falling drone debris in the Slavyansky district of the Krasnodar Region. They have been taken to the hospital, the region's operational command said.
- Drone fragments were found in the private sector of the town of Slavyansk-na-Kubani and in the settlement of Pribrezhny.
- Several houses sustained damage to roofs and windows.
- Power lines in Slavyansk-na-Kubani have also been damaged.
- The region's operational command later reported that UAV fragments were also discovered at nine addresses in the Krasnoarmeysky district in the Krasnodar Region.
- Private houses were damaged, no casualties were reported.
- A private house and a power line sustained damage following the drone raid in the Voronezh Region. No residents have been injured, Governor Alexander Gusev said.
I wrote an article asking if Trump Derangement Syndrome is real. The backlash exposed how emotional pain now justifies any act of hate
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I recently wrote an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal under the headline “Is ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome' real?” It went viral almost instantly. Within hours my inbox was flooded with angry messages. I was accused of defending a fascist, labelled a protector of paedophiles, told I had blood on my hands, and sent messages wishing me dead. A surprising number came from fellow therapists. The irony would be funny if it weren't so revealing. Many of the same people who preach emotional maturity responded with volatility and cruelty, mirroring the very traits they usually claim to condemn. Their outrage became a form of moral elevation. Their sense of injury became a license to attack.
As a psychotherapist practising in New York City and Washington, DC, I see this logic every week. Patients insist they “had no choice” but to lash out at a partner, ghost a friend, or retaliate at work because they “felt disrespected”. These aren't extremists. They're ordinary people who have absorbed a cultural belief that emotional pain automatically grants moral authority. The parallels between individual psychology and the wider culture are striking.
Consider two recent American incidents. Last year, Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, was shot dead on a Manhattan street. The alleged shooter's rage at the insurance industry was treated by many as if it explained, or excused, the crime. Online and in the streets, he was elevated to folk-hero status. Barely nine months later, the conservative activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated on stage at a university event in Utah. Within hours, pockets of the internet justified the murder as political payback. In both cases, violence was filtered through grievance rather than rejected outright. The grievance became a badge of righteousness. The sense of injury became a license to celebrate bloodshed.
This same worldview now shapes far more mundane situations. You dislike your job? It must be a toxic workplace. A friend disagrees with you? He's a narcissist. A colleague corrects you? That's emotional abuse. Experiences that once required patience or perspective to manage are now framed as injuries inflicted by someone else. Words used in therapy, such as trauma, toxic, unsafe and triggered, have drifted far from their clinical purpose and are applied to everyday frustrations as if mild discomfort were equivalent to harm. In America, this mindset is often reinforced by therapists who rarely challenge their patients and instead rush to affirm every feeling. “Of course it's their fault, not yours” has become an all-too-familiar refrain.
Empathy is not the problem. The way we weaponise it is. When ordinary frustrations are recast as psychological injuries, the person who feels hurt instantly ascends to the moral high ground and often believes they are entitled to respond in ways they would normally recognise as excessive. Grievance becomes an emotional permission slip.
Social media supercharges this dynamic. Outrage has become performance art. Platforms reward sharpness, not nuance. People compete to be the most aggrieved because grievance now signals virtue. Call everything harm and treat every slight as an injury, and suddenly the calmest voice looks apathetic while the angriest looks righteous.
This is not only an American phenomenon. Britain is wrestling with the same drift. On campuses, speakers are shut down not because they pose danger but because their ideas feel uncomfortable. In workplaces, people worry that modest dissent may trigger a social or professional backlash. In families, political disagreements once shrugged off are now treated as personal assaults. The fear is not violence but ostracism. Yet the psychology is identical: if I feel harmed, whatever I do next must be justified.
This emotional logic has hardened into identity. More people now define themselves not by what they value but by what they believe has wronged them. Victimhood becomes a personal brand. Patients in my office cling to slights because letting go would mean giving up the story that gives them meaning. The same trend appears in politics, where movements define themselves through the injuries they claim to have suffered. Once grievance becomes identity, stepping back feels impossible because it threatens the sense of self.
This crosses ideological lines. I have worked with conservative clients who believe they are persecuted by progressive colleagues, and progressive clients convinced their conservative relatives threaten their emotional safety. Both sides insist their pain is unique. Both respond to discomfort as if it were danger. Both interpret disagreement as attack.
What makes this grievance culture so corrosive is its refusal of complexity. Once someone sees themselves as wronged, they are often unwilling to entertain any fact or nuance that might soften their moral certainty. Compromise looks like weakness. Ambivalence looks like betrayal. When grievance becomes the frame, people stop asking what is true and lock themselves into a victim mindset that leaves no room for growth. The outcome is predictable: more conflict, more fragility, emotions treated as evidence.
None of this means emotional pain is trivial. It's not. But emotional pain is not the same as injury or trauma, and it does not justify retaliation. Public life depends on the ability to tolerate uncomfortable feelings without turning them into moral authority. Without that capacity, every disagreement becomes an emotional arms race, and the loudest claim of victimhood wins.
The backlash to my WSJ piece was only one small expression of this psychology. The people who wished me harm thankfully did not act on their anger. But the underlying logic – “I feel wronged therefore I may attack” – is the same one that cheered two assassinations. A culture organised around grievance eventually loses the ability to function. When feelings eclipse facts and discomfort is treated as injustice, the guardrails of public life collapse.
The solution is emotional clarity, not emotional hardness. We need to relearn the difference between discomfort and danger, offence and injury, disagreement and harm. Resilience means being able to feel without letting those feelings distort reality. Responsibility means refusing to let grievance run the show.
Britain, like the United States, still has time to resist this drift. Doing so will require something increasingly rare: the ability to feel wronged without assuming that feeling gives you permission to do whatever you want.
Jonathan Alpert is a psychotherapist in New York City and Washington, DC and author of ‘Therapy Nation' (HarperCollins, forthcoming 2026). He can be followed on X here.
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Former Manchester United captain Roy Keane was notoriously fearless and intimidating. During his 12 years at Old Trafford, the Irish midfielder got his hands on 17 trophies and left his mark on many an opposing player.
But one of his most enduring contributions to the game was a comment made after a UEFA Champions League match in 2000, when he invoked a prawn sandwich to deride soccer's gentrification.
“Some people come to Old Trafford, and I don't think they could spell football, never mind understand it,” Keane complained. “They've had a few drinks and probably a few prawn sandwiches and they don't realize what's going on out on the pitch.”
It was a cutting remark that captured the media's imagination, spawning the derogatory term “prawn sandwich brigade” for privileged fans who were out of touch with soccer's working-class roots, perhaps more interested in the social scene than cheering for the team. Historically, prawns were a luxury commodity and a subtle display of status and wealth when served at high tea. Rising ticket prices in the Premier League era had been squeezing out traditional fans and their seats had been taken by an upper-crust, fair-weather fanbase.
A quarter of a century after Keane scornfully accused those supporters of hushing the atmosphere inside soccer stadiums, fans and broadcasters still reference anyone partial to a prawn sandwich with a sneer.
They might not use the phrase over in the United States, but many can relate to the sentiment around major sports events like the Super Bowl, where the price of admission has become prohibitive to many.
Two weeks before this year's showpiece game between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Kansas City Chiefs in New Orleans, CNN reported that Super Bowl LIX was set to be the most expensive ever, with the average price hovering around $9,800. Factor in the travel, accommodation, food and merchandise, and this is an experience that few outside the top 1% could even conceive of; it's for corporate fans who are just as interested in networking, celebrity-spotting and attending exclusive parties as the action on the field.
FIFA President Gianni Infantino and US President Donald Trump have gleefully described the 2026 World Cup as an event of 104 Super Bowls, and it seems as though the matches are priced accordingly. To watch any of the three host nations play their opening game next summer will cost an average of $1,825, triple the price of Qatar's opening game in 2022 and almost three-and-a-half times the price of Russia's first match in 2018.
Globally, soccer fans are furious. Writing on X, the England fan Nigel Seeley, described the prices as “insane.” A dedicated supporter for 30 years, Seeley posted a list of the prices being quoted to the England Supporters Travel Club for each of the eight games they might play, including a price of between $4,185 and $8,860 for the final.
He said, “I think I will be watching the final at home if England reach it. Headed for the groups, hopefully do the quarterfinal and home. I just can't justify paying that money, it's a joke.”
Perhaps in response to some of the criticism, FIFA announced on Tuesday a new tier of pricing for some dedicated supporters of each qualified team, allowing certain fans to attend matches for just $60. But, in a confusingly worded statement, it wasn't clear how many tickets would actually be sold at the reduced price, only that each participating member association would be responsible for allocation.
Soccer is still a developing sport in the US, but despite FIFA's stated commitment to grow it globally, the Beautiful Game's world governing body does not seem too concerned about the generally inflated prices. They have reported that 2 million tickets have already been sold and claim “extraordinary global demand” for 20 million more.
At the tournament draw in Washington, DC, Trump praised Infantino, saying, “You've set new records on ticket sales, that is an amazing thing. The numbers are beyond any numbers.”
But when the tournament kicks off on June 11 in Mexico City, who will be in attendance? And will the 16 stadiums across Mexico, Canada and the US all be sold out?
If FIFA's ambitious Club World Cup tournament earlier this summer is any indication, there might be some cause for concern. The games were overpriced and some were played in half-empty stadiums, with large swathes of open seating obvious to the broadcast cameras.
A World Cup is a soccer tournament for the globe, but the United States and its 11 host cities look anything but welcoming now. Iran and Haiti are on the government's banned list and fans from those countries will be denied entry. Following a fatal ambush of two National Guard soldiers in the capital, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said that more countries would be added to the list – and the administration was true to its word, announcing Tuesday that it was adding full and partial restrictions and entry limitations to many other countries, including World Cup participants Ivory Coast and Senegal.
The message from many administration officials around the tournament has encouraged supporters to come to the US for the games and then leave quickly.
“We want them to celebrate. We want them to watch the game. But when the time is up, they'll have to go home,” Vice President JD Vance said at the White House earlier this year.
Meanwhile, White House rhetoric suggests that it will become increasingly difficult for anyone to secure travel visas to the US; potentially years of social media activity will have to be disclosed and DNA samples provided, so it may be that the bulk of the tickets will have to be purchased by American-based fans in the midst of a well-documented affordability crisis.
When push comes to shove, how many will be forced to concede that spending thousands of dollars on just 90 minutes of soccer pales in comparison to the responsibility of providing health care for the family or putting meals on the table?
Ahead of its biggest ever World Cup tournament, FIFA has been accused of greed on an industrial scale, gouging the pockets of supporters who are the lifeblood of the game. Unless they make further concessions on pricing, they may find that they've bitten off more than they can chew.
Real fans bring energy and noise; they will provide the soundtrack of the tournament. They may also drown out the sounds of clinking champagne glasses and all the prawn sandwiches being devoured in the hospitality seats.
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A bipartisan group of four U.S. senators on Dec. 16 introduced the Decreasing Russia Oil Profits (DROP) Act of 2025, a bill that would impose targeted sanctions on anyone dealing in Russian oil.
The bill was brought forth by Republican Dave McCormick, Democrat Elizabeth Warren, Democrat Chris Coons, and Republican Jon Husted. If passed, it would require U.S. President Donald Trump to sanction any purchasers, transporters, or facilitators of Russian oil products within 90 days.
The sanctions would effectively bar any dealers in Russian oil from the U.S. financial system.
"Any nation or entity that buys Russian oil is actively funding Russia's aggression in Ukraine," Senator McCormick said in a press release.
"(Russian President Vladimir) Putin has demonstrated he is unserious about bringing this war against Ukraine to a close, and continuing to fuel the war machine should carry consequences."
Ukraine's Ambassador to the U.S., Olha Stefanishyna, praised the legislation on social media and said the measure indicates "strong bipartisan support for further economic pressure on the aggressor."
The proposed legislation allows for limited exceptions to the sanctions, including the possible option to exempt purchasers from penalties if they pay a fee into an account designated for Ukraine for every barrel of Russian oil they buy.
The new bill arrives as the White House is once again pressing for negotiated settlement to end Russia's war against Ukraine. Trump's envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, held two rounds of talks in Berlin Dec. 14-15 with a Ukrainian team led by President Volodymyr Zelensky.
While Trump has made winning a peace deal in Ukraine a priority of his administration, he has been slow to impose economic sanctions against Russia. In October 2025, Trump lodged the first sanctions against Russia of his term, targeting the oil giants Rosneft and Lukoil.
The measures froze the firms' U.S.-based assets and threatened secondary penalties for foreign entities engaging with them, but Washington has extended a waiver that lets Lukoil-branded gas stations abroad stay in business through late April 2026.
Another bipartisan sanctions bill, separate from the DROP Act, was heavily edited at the administration's request, giving Trump broad powers to waive penalties. The sanctions bill, sponsored by Senators Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal, has lagged in Congress.
Senior News Editor
Abbey Fenbert is a senior news editor at the Kyiv Independent. She is a freelance writer, editor, and playwright with an MFA from Boston University. Abbey served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ukraine from 2008-2011.
"The clock is ticking on Roman Abramovich to honor the commitment he made when Chelsea FC was sold and transfer the 2.5 billion pounds to a humanitarian cause for Ukraine," Starmer said on Dec. 17.
Ukrainian forces have regained control over 16 square kilometers (6.2 square miles) in the northern part of Pokrovsk, Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said on Dec. 17 following his participation in the 32nd Ramstein-format Defense Contact Group meeting.
The man is suspected of helping Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) coordinate strikes on Ukrainian Armed Forces' warehouses with ammunition and drones.
If Russia's demands were not met through diplomatic efforts, Vladimir Putin warned that Russia would "liberate" what he claimed were its "historical lands" on the battlefield.
Oleksandr Korniyenko was appointed deputy speaker of the parliament in 2021. Since then, the party has been led by lawmaker Olena Shuliak.
The U.S. is planning new sanctions on Russia's energy sector to ramp up pressure on Moscow if President Vladimir Putin rejects a peace deal with Ukraine, Bloomberg reported citing sources familiar with the situation.
The Kyiv Independent's Martin Fornusek sits down with Denmark's European Union Affairs Minister Marie Bjerre and Sweden's European Union Affairs Minister Jessica Rosencrantz to discuss Ukraine's progress toward EU accession, Hungary's continued block on opening negotiation clusters, and the impact of Ukraine's latest major corruption scandal.
Mstyslav Chernov's "2000 Meters to Andriivka," a documentary chronicling Ukrainian troops' perilous advance to retake a strategically important village from Russian forces, has been nominated for best documentary feature.
Russia attacked the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia with KAB bombs the morning of Dec. 17, injuring at least 26 people, including a child, Governor Ivan Fedorov said.
"The lesson will be that European solidarity ends where fear of action begins, even in self-defense,” Iryna Mudra, Zelensky's top legal advisor, told the Kyiv Independent.
"We would secure a demilitarized zone between the belligerent parties and, to be specific, we would also move against corresponding Russian violations and attacks," German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said.
Explosions rocked an oil refinery in the Russian city of Slavyansk-on-Kuban amid a Ukrainian drone attack overnight on Dec. 17, media reported.
The bill would impose targeted sanctions on anyone dealing in Russian oil, effectively barring them from the U.S. financial system.
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Reuters
12:21 JST, December 17, 2025
Dec 16 (Reuters) – FIFA introduced on Tuesday a small number of $60 “Supporter Entry Tier” tickets, aiming to make next year's World Cup more affordable for fans of qualified teams.
Football's governing body said that the discounted tickets would cover all 104 matches of the tournament, including the final.
The cheaper tickets will make up 10% of Participating Member Associations' (PMAs) allocations.
The PMAs, which represent competing national teams and manage dedicated fan ticket programmes, will handle the ticket allocation process.
They will also define their own criteria to prioritise tickets for “loyal fans” closely connected to their national teams.
“In total, half of each PMA's ticket allocation will fall within the most affordable categories: 40% under the Supporter Value Tier and 10% under the new Supporter Entry Tier,” FIFA said in a statement.
“The remaining allocation will be split evenly between the Supporter Standard Tier and the Supporter Premier Tier,” it added.
Fans who apply through PMA ticketing programmes and whose teams fail to progress to the knockout stage will have administrative fees waived for refund requests.
The announcement comes amid growing scrutiny of ticket pricing ahead of the 2026 tournament, set to take place from June 11 to July 19 across Canada, Mexico, and the United States.
Last week, Football Supporters Europe (FSE) accused FIFA of imposing “extortionate” ticket prices that could prevent average fans from attending the event.
FSE director Ronan Evain told Reuters on Tuesday that while the new pricing was a step in the right direction it was “clearly not sufficient”.
He noted that following a team to the final would cost $480 under category four, but jumps to $6,900 for category three, meaning one fan “sitting in the same section” as another could pay 15 times more.
Evain also said there was a lack of transparency around ticket distribution.
“FIFA doesn't provide any guidelines or obligations for the PMAs. They have the freedom to choose how they distribute the tickets,” he said.
According to the BBC, this will mean about 400 of the cheaper tickets will be available for England and Scotland in their group games, yet Evain said that most PMAs don't disclose the number of tickets.
FIFA said in its statement on Tuesday that PMAs were requested to ensure that these cheaper tickets were “specifically allocated to loyal fans who are closely connected to their national teams”.
Evain also raised concerns about accessibility for fans with disabilities. “The cheapest they can get all the way to the final is $7,000 and they also must pay full price for companion seats, meaning that following a team to the final could cost $14,000,” he said.
Reuters has put Evain's points to FIFA for comment.
Despite the backlash, FIFA reported strong interest in the sale's third phase draw, which began on December 11 and will remain open until January 13, driven by the release of match schedules, venues and kick-off times.
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The Yomiuri Shimbun
11:38 JST, December 17, 2025
Tokyo Dome Corp.'s new augmented reality Godzilla attraction opened on Wednesday at Tokyo Dome City in Bunkyo Ward, Tokyo.
By putting on goggles and headphones, “Godzilla AR: Godzilla vs Tokyo Dome” allows visitors to feel as if they have stepped into a movie. As visitors watch Godzilla advance toward Tokyo Dome in the outdoor attraction, they can see an about 100-meter-tall 3D Godzilla appear amid real-world structures, such as Tokyo Dome.
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Graffity Inc., a Tokyo-based firm involved in the development of AR content, codeveloped the visual elements.
The attraction is about 10 minutes long. The fee is ¥1,300 and is open to visitors aged 10 and up. Tokyo Dome aims to draw 100,000 visitors annually.
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President Donald Trump said that he was ordering a blockade be imposed off the coast Venezuela to prevent any sanctioned oil tankers from entering or leaving the country.
MOSCOW, December 17. /TASS/. Western countries, together with the Kiev regime, are using African groups to carry out acts of sabotage against the interests of Russia and China, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Vershinin said in an interview with TASS.
According to the deputy minister, the "criminal actions of the Kiev regime and its patrons, who cooperate with local terrorist groups and provide them with support," pose a grave threat not only to Africa, but to the entire world.
"They are using these groups, in particular, to terrorize the civilian population of certain Sahel states and to carry out acts of sabotage against the interests not only of Russia, but of other countries as well," the diplomat warned. "They exploit the financial and economic dependence of African states and organizations to impose their own ‘rules,' and to draw them into the West's geopolitical adventures against Russia, China, and others," he added.
As Vershinin emphasized, not everything depends solely on Africa itself. "Just as during the period of Western colonialism, from which many of the continent's current problems originate, the region remains subject to extremely strong external influence. The interests of extra-continental countries and transnational corporations — primarily former metropolises — are intertwined in most crisis situations. They continue to extract local resources and manipulate political processes," he added.
MOSCOW, December 17. /TASS/. The West is attempting to destabilize the situation in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, the countries with which Russia's cooperation is gaining momentum, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Vershinin said in an interview with TASS.
"We see significant potential in new regional formats aimed at the sovereign development of African countries. In this context, we attach particular importance to strengthening cooperation with the Confederation of Sahel States (AES), which brings together our friendly partners Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger. Unfortunately, Western countries are waging a large-scale campaign to destabilize the situation in the AES states, which are at the forefront of the fight against terrorism in Africa," he said.
As Vershinin noted, Russia considers strengthening the confederation's counterterrorism capabilities and promoting the socio-economic development of its member states to be priority objectives. "To this end, in addition to efforts on the bilateral track, a new Russia-AES format was launched this year. In April, we held the first meeting of foreign ministers, which became the confederation's foreign policy debut. This was followed by talks among ministers of justice, defense, and education. We intend to maintain this positive momentum in other areas as well," the diplomat said.
Vershinin also pointed out that Moscow is paying increasing attention to building multifaceted cooperation with Africa's subregional communities.
MOSCOW, December 17. /TASS/. Russia will help strengthen the defense capabilities of African countries and is already assisting in building their capacity to counter internal and external threats, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Vershinin said in an interview with TASS.
"In line with the objectives set out in the 2023 Foreign Policy Concept of the Russian Federation — in particular, supporting the sovereignty and independence of African states through the provision of security assistance, as well as facilitating the settlement and resolution of armed conflicts on the African continent — we are contributing to the strengthening of African countries' defense capabilities," Vershinin said. "We are helping to build their capacity to counter internal and external threats, primarily terrorism," he added.
According to him, prospects for creating a sustainable architecture for Africa's socio-economic, investment, infrastructure, and technological development are "difficult to imagine without the swift resolution of the acute challenges facing the continent in the area of peace and security." "There are indeed serious problems, and their impact on the situation in Africa must not be underestimated," the diplomat noted. "These include, above all, the threats of terrorism and extremism, transnational crime, internal political crises, interethnic conflicts, and interstate disputes. The situation is particularly difficult in the Sahara-Sahel region, the Horn of Africa, and the Great Lakes area," he added.
Moscow is convinced that effective and long-term settlements in the region's hotspots can be achieved primarily "with Africans themselves playing the leading role in this process and exclusively in their own interests." "Our approaches in this area are based on unconditional respect for the sovereignty of African states, the principles of mutual respect and equality, non-imposition of ready-made solutions, and the provision of assistance in those areas and to the extent requested by our African partners," the official said. "We consistently support the cornerstone principle of ‘African solutions to African problems' and the key goal set by the African Union in its Agenda 2063 — to ‘silence the guns' by 2030," he added.
Live Updates
• Venezuela latest: President Donald Trump yesterday said he was ordering a complete blockade of sanctioned oil tankers coming to and leaving Venezuela. He also demanded oil, land and assets from the country that he claimed it had “stole” from the US.
• Health care subsidies: In defiance of Speaker Mike Johnson, GOP centrists are signing onto a Democratic effort to force a vote on extending soon-to-expire enhanced Obamacare subsidies.
• Trump address: The president said he will deliver remarks to the nation tonight at 9 p.m. ET. The White House said his speech will highlight the administration's actions during the past year and tease priorities for 2026.
• On Capitol Hill: Former special counsel Jack Smith is testifying in a closed-door deposition before a House committee regarding his prosecutions of Trump.
The move by four GOP centrists to back a Democratic effort to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies is not about “party loyalty,” one of those lawmakers said today.
“We worked in earnest, good faith to get there, and (House Speaker Mike Johnson) did, too, with us,” GOP Rep. Mike Lawler of New York told CNN's Dana Bash.
“This is not an indictment of (Johnson). He has a very difficult job. He's got 219 other personalities to deal with, but there is great frustration among myself and many others about a very simple fact, which is we have a responsibility to govern.”
“This is not about party loyalty,” Lawler said. “This is about doing the job I was elected to do and forcing the body to actually work. And that's what we did today by signing this discharge, by forcing a vote.”
“Ultimately,” he said, “if the end result … is bipartisan compromise, then we did our job.”
Lawler is one of three House Republicans in a district that was won by Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris in 2024.
He blamed both Republican and Democrats over the Affordable Care Act subsidies that are set to expire at the end of the year.
“Both leaders have failed here because we don't have a bill on the floor,” he said.
Some Republican members of the Senate Armed Services Committee left a classified briefing on the controversial follow-up strike on survivors of an attack on an alleged drug boat satisfied by Admiral Frank Bradley's explanation and the legal justification for the second strike, while others — particularly Democrats on the committee — were still skeptical.
GOP Sen. Eric Schmitt insisted that the strike was “100% legally justified,” arguing that the survivors were trying to flip the boat back over to continue trafficking drugs, and noting they reviewed the 40-page legal justification for the strike.
“If any Democrat comes out here and questions that they're lying to you,” he declared. “They're lying to you because they don't like Pete Hegseth, they don't like President Trump, and they're willing to throw service members and highly decorated military men and women under the bus.”
Sen. Tim Sheehy acknowledged the video is “not pretty” but insisted that strikes like this are necessary, and indicated that his colleagues “don't like the messy reality” of combat. “The processes we're using to find, fix and finish these terrorists are the same processes we've been using across multiple combatant commands, geographies all over the world, multiple administrations, Republican and Democrat…we've been conducting 1000s of strikes like this for years,” he said.
However, GOP Sen. Mike Rounds would not say whether he agrees with the legal justifications given for the strike, after being pressed by CNN multiple times. “They're clear in terms of what they're sharing with us. And I think the best thing I can tell you is, is that I will not be an armchair quarterback at this point,” he said.
Pressed on if he was satisfied by the legal justification, he said Bradley “did a very good job,” but would not answer when asked if he agreed with the administration's position.
Democratic members of the committee were skeptical of the legal justification, and insisted that the video of the follow-up strike should be released to the public so that Americans can evaluate it for themselves.
Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal was not satisfied by the legal justification provided. “I think there are serious questions about criminal culpability here, and there is certainly a need for more intensive, thorough investigation, an immediate subpoena for all of the records, documents, orders, after action, reports and other videos, and I'm deeply worried that there may be a loss or disruption of evidence here.”
One of the Republicans who joined Democrats' effort to force a floor vote on extending Affordable Care Act subsidies said he was faced with a Hobson's choice before he signed onto their push, undercutting his leadership.
Pennsylvania Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick had introduced his own legislation to extend the subsidies – for two years, instead of Democrats' three, and with major reforms attached – but faltered in his push to get leaders to put it on the floor.
“The only thing worse than a clean extension with no anti-fraud and no income caps is a cliff. So obviously left with a Hobson's choice,” he told reporters after signing onto Democrats' effort.
He denied there was a breakdown in communication with the speaker, arguing, “We've been in constant communication every step of the way.” He said he believed leaders ultimately didn't bring his legislation to the floor because they feared it'd pass the House.
“That's what they were worried about. That's a terrible reason to not bring a bill to the floor. His fear that it's going to pass. That's called democracy. That's called making the House work,” Fitzpatrick said.
Asked if the speaker has lost control of the House, the congressman said he “wouldn't say that” but that he believed Johnson could have handled the situation differently.
“We'll see what the Senate does. That's really the next question,” he said.
Tensions within the House GOP conference flared on Wednesday after enough moderates crossed party lines and signed onto an effort by Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries to force a floor vote to extend enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies after a deal with GOP leadership to get an amendment vote on their own measure fell apart.
“They're stabbing the rest of the party in the back,” GOP Rep. Eric Burlison told CNN, arguing that House Republicans took a “bold stand” in putting forth their own health care plan and the moderates' support for the Democratic effort is “a betrayal to the rest of us Republicans.”
The Missouri Republican warned that his colleagues are being “short sighted” on the political implications since people will still see higher costs, adding, “what we really need to do is a wholesale reform of the Obamacare system, that in such a way that actually reduces premiums for people.”
Rep. Nick LaLota, another New York Republican, said he “probably would” sign onto Jeffries' petition if it's his only option, though he would prefer a “hybrid” approach with more ACA reforms.
Pressed on Johnson's handling of the issue, LaLota responded, “he needs to do better. He needs to allow for a vote that both addresses the short and long term issues of Obamacare.”
Rep. Mike Lawler, one of the swing district Republicans who signed onto Jeffries' petition, responded to Burlison's criticism, saying, “I represent my district. My district elected me. He did not, and my view is that I have a job to do on behalf of my constituents.”
“We exhausted every effort to find an agreement within our conference. If folks chose not to find a path forward, they left us with no option but to sign that three-year discharge. If they don't want that to pass, then they should be working to find an alternative vehicle,” he said.
Lawler said Speaker Mike Johnson has a “very difficult job,” adding that while Johnson hasn't been able to unify House Republicans behind a plan including ACA credit extensions, “my frustration is not at him.”
“I'm here to do a job. I'm not here to be a potted plant or a vote just for leadership. I'm here to represent my constituents and get something done. This requires bipartisan compromise,” he said.
House Speaker Mike Johnson insisted he has control of his chamber, after swing-district members of his conference aligned with Democrats for a discharge petition to force a vote on soon-to-expire enhanced Affordable Care Act tax credits.
“I have not lost control of the House,” Johnson told CNN.
Johnson said the “razor-thin” margin he has to manage was responsible for the blow to his leadership team.
“We have the smallest majority in US history. These are not normal times,” he said.
Johnson continued: “There are processes and procedures in the house that are less frequently used when there are larger majorities. That's when you have the luxury of having 10 or 15 people who disagree on something, you know you don't have to deal with it.”
Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, the first Republican to sign onto Democrats' discharge petition to force a vote on expiring ACA subsidies, said he bucked his party leadership because “we have a job to do.”
“I don't want to say he didn't take it seriously, but we just have a difference of opinion on something that's very, very important to us,” Fitzpatrick told CNN of House Speaker Mike Johnson, “and, you know, we've all shared with him, we have a job to do and that's to represent our people back home.”
Asked whether Johnson would schedule a vote by end of week, or wait until the petition officially ripens in the new year, the Pennsylvania Republican said: “It's a question for him.”
“We've done our job and gotten it across the 218 threshold. It's coming for a vote. It's going to pass,” he added.
Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin expressed optimism about the Obamacare-related discharge petition moving in the House, hoping it will unlock movement in health care talks.
“I think we've got a chance, and that's what all we've been asking for, is to give us a chance to vote on a bill that protects more families from these outrageous health insurance premiums,” Durbin told CNN.
“I wouldn't want to be a Republican going home and trying to explain my opposition to that,” he added.
Republican Sen. Eric Schmitt downplayed the impact of four House Republicans signing onto a Democratic-led discharge petition to extend expiring enhanced Obamacare subsidies for three years, arguing it will not create additional pressure on Republicans in the Senate to extend the premium tax credits.
“We've already voted on a plan that extends Obamacare failure. We're looking for reform,” Schmitt said. “If the Democrats are serious about reform, I think we're willing to have that conversation.”
Schmitt stated his preference that Republicans tackle health care costs through the reconciliation process.
“The Democrats had their chance. They destroyed health care with Obamacare. They've made everything more expensive,” he said.
GOP Sen. Jim Banks said he's unsure where the discharge petition in the House might direct talks but argued continuing the subsidies without reform is not the answer.
“The Republican plan that we voted on last week, the Democrats killed would have expanded Health Savings Accounts, created more competition in health care. That's how you bring down health care costs, not extending subsidies and running up the national debt by trillions of dollars just to help a few people. We need to help everybody,” Banks told CNN.
Former special counsel Jack Smith today defended his criminal investigation into President Donald Trump in a closed-door deposition before the House Judiciary Committee as he faces scrutiny from Republican lawmakers.
“The decision to bring charges against President Trump was mine, but the basis for those charges rests entirely with President Trump and his actions, as alleged in the indictments returned by grand juries in two different districts,” Smith said in portions of his opening statement obtained by CNN.
Smith was called to testify about Trump's alleged mishandling and retention of classified documents and his role in attempting to overturn the 2020 election, according to sources familiar with the investigation.
He is also seeking to clarify issues surrounding the use of phone records he subpoenaed of lawmakers Trump spoke with about the election scheme.
Smith, a longtime public corruption prosecutor, was appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland in November 2022 to oversee the investigations after Trump announced he was running for president again.
He brought criminal charges against Trump in 2023. The former president pleaded not guilty in both cases and neither went to trial.
The case on mishandling classified documents ended with District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, nullifying Smith's office. The 2020 election and January 6 case was hamstrung by a landmark Supreme Court decision and dropped after Trump was re-elected.
CNN's Evan Perez contributed to this report.
House Speaker Mike Johnson said President Donald Trump's reaction to the murder of Rob Reiner was “not the way I would have done it,” adding that he does not communicate in the same way as the president.
Johnson called the fatal stabbings of the Hollywood director and his wife, producer Michele Singer Reiner, an “unspeakable family tragedy.”
After being pressed further to respond to the president's Truth Social post attacking Reiner, Johnson acknowledged that he wouldn't have spoken the same way Trump did.
“I'm asked to give running commentary on everything that the president says every five minutes of the day, as well as all of my colleagues here,” Johnson said.
“I don't communicate the same way,” he continued. “I am my own person, and I speak, you know, from my voice and the president and I address issues differently sometimes. That's not the way I would have done it. It's not the way I have done it. You know, that's, that's my comment on it. I don't know what else I can say.”
Announcing what he referred to as “the biggest merger in history, the merger of Main Street and Wall Street,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent offered more details Wednesday on how “Trump Accounts” would work.
At an event at the Treasury department Wednesday morning debuting trumpaccounts.gov, Bessent characterized the new accounts as an opportunity for US families to build generational wealth. Eligible US parents of children born between January 1, 2025 and December 31, 2028, can open a tax-advantaged savings account their children can access, starting at age 18 — or if they leave money in the account throughout their lives — for education, housing or retirement.
“Through the Trump accounts, we're creating an ownership economy where all citizens become shareholders in American wealth,” Bessent said.
The federal government will contribute seed funding of $1,000 per account next year; and Bessent said he anticipates families, philanthropists, employers and states will also contribute.
“World-renowned investor Ray Dalio has joined what we are calling the 50-state challenge,” Bessent said. “Through the 50-state challenge, we are inviting every philanthropist in every state across the country to partner with us in building generational wealth for America's children through Trump accounts.”
Dalio would be representing Connecticut, he added.
Separately on Wednesday, BlackRock announced that it would match the federal government's contribution for their own roughly 9,400 US employees accounts. The exact size of the company's match, however, has yet to be set, but companies are allowed to contribute up to $2,500 a year.
Earlier this month, Michael and Susan Dell pledged $6.25 billion to the “Trump Accounts.”
In a stunning blow to House Speaker Mike Johnson, four GOP lawmakers have agreed to back a Democratic push to extend pandemic-era enhanced Obamacare subsidies.
Those four GOP centrists — New York Rep. Mike Lawler and Pennsylvania Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick, Ryan Mackenzie and Rob Bresnahan — have officially opted for what they have been describing as the nuclear option.
By signing onto Democrats' procedural maneuver to force a floor vote on their proposed three-year extension of enhanced Affordable Care Act tax credits, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries now has the 218 signatures needed guarantee a vote under discharge petition rules.
That floor vote cannot be forced until January, however, under those same rules.
Those same four centrists have criticized Democrats' plan as flawed. But in a sign of desperation, the typically leadership-aligned centrists chose to defy Johnson and sign onto the Democrats' push rather than allow the enhanced subsidies to expire at year's end.
Former special counsel Jack Smith has arrived on Capitol Hill this morning for his closed-door deposition with the House Judiciary Committee.
As he entered, Smith did not answer questions from CNN.
Read more on Smith's congressional testimony this morning.
A second Republican centrist is minutes away from signing onto House Democrats' push to extend enhanced Obamacare subsidies for three years after weeks of infighting with Speaker Mike Johnson over the matter.
Rep. Mike Lawler, who represents a battleground New York district, told CNN he is on his way to the floor to sign the discharge petition. Lawler has worked closely with fellow GOP centrist Rep Brian Fitzpatrick to secure a vote on their own compromise measure.
But when Johnson rejected that effort, the two centrists decided to back Democrats' push.
Once Lawler signs on, Democrats will only need two more Republicans to force a floor vote on their bill. While it would likely pass the House, a similar measure has already failed in the Senate.
GOP centrist Brian Fitzpatrick dramatically stepped up his public battle against Republican leadership this morning as he signed onto a Democratic effort to force a vote on extending soon-to-expire enhanced Obamacare subsidies.
Fitzpatrick has strongly criticized the Democrats' three year extension, which he says does nothing to reform the costly pandemic-era program, such as enforce stricter income limits.
But in a sign of desperation for the normally leadership-aligned GOP congressman, Fitzpatrick chose to defy Speaker Mike Johnson and sign onto Democrats' push. The Pennsylvania Republican is the first lawmaker from his party to sign onto the measure, which now needs just three more Republicans to force a floor vote under the discharge petition rules.
The move will immediately ramp up pressure on other GOP centrists who intentionally did not rule out signing the Democratic petition as they tried to hardball their own leadership into allowing a compromise measure to extend and reform the subsidies to come to the floor. That effort failed on Tuesday, triggering Fitzpatrick's move.
Republicans, including Reps. Mike Lawler of New York and Kevin Kiley of California, will now need to decide if they too will sign onto the position.
Fitzpatrick telegraphed his move in a late night meeting of the House Rules Committee, where he was making a final push for his bipartisan compromise measure.
“I think the only thing worse than a clean extension without any income limits and any reforms – because it's not a perfect system. The only thing worse than that would be expiration,” Fitzpatrick said Tuesday night when asked about the Democratic push. “And I would make that decision.”
GOP Rep. Dan Newhouse of Washington announced that he will not seek reelection in 2026, as Republican angst on Capitol Hill grows with fear of more retirements.
Newhouse is one of the only remaining Republicans still in Congress who had voted to impeach President Donald Trump in 2021.
The GOP currently holds a narrow majority in the House. That has created a challenge for congressional Republicans who need near-unanimous support of the party to advance legislation.
President Donald Trump is expected to participate in a dignified transfer later today for two US service members killed in Syria over the weekend. It will take place at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware around 1:15 p.m. ET.
Later tonight, at 9 p.m. ET, he will deliver an address to the nation from the White House's Diplomatic Reception Room.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News yesterday that the president will be addressing “the historic accomplishments that he has garnered for our country over the past year.”
On Capitol Hill: Meanwhile, former special counsel Jack Smith is set to testify about his prosecutions of Trump in a closed-door deposition before the House Judiciary Committee.
Sources told CNN that Smith plans to testify about Trump's alleged mishandling and retention of classified documents and his role in attempting to overturn the 2020 election, as well as issues surrounding the use of phone records. Smith has continually denied his work was politically motivated and said that he is willing to testify publicly regarding his investigations into Trump.
Also today, Senate and House Armed Services committees will receive closed briefings on the US military's strike on an alleged drug boat on September 2.
CNN's Kit Maher, Casey Gannon, Katelyn Polantz and Annie Grayer contributed to this reporting.
The Trump administration appears to have been rocked yesterday, following the publication of several interviews with Susie Wiles, US President Donald Trump's chief of staff.
Wiles said on X that Vanity Fair's articles were “a disingenuously framed hit piece” missing context, while Trump gave Wiles a vote of confidence in an interview later Tuesday. Meanwhile, Vanity Fair has offered recorded proof of some of the quotes that she has disputed.
Here are some of the key takeaways from the interviews:
CNN's Catherine Nicholls contributed to this reporting.
US President Donald Trump has once again ratcheted up pressure on Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, this time ordering a “total and complete blockade” of sanctioned oil tankers coming to and leaving the country.
Here are the latest developments in Trump's ongoing campaign against Marudo:
CNN's Kit Maher, Kevin Liptak, Jose Alvarez, Lex Harvey, Morgan Rimmer, Alison Main and Manu Raju contributed to this reporting.
President Donald Trump announced that he will deliver a live address from the White House tonight.
“My Fellow Americans: I will be giving an ADDRESS TO THE NATION tomorrow night, LIVE FROM THE WHITE HOUSE, at 9 P.M. EST. I look forward to ‘seeing' you then. It has been a great year for our Country, and THE BEST IS YET TO COME!” Trump posted on Truth Social yesterday.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News later that the president will be addressing “the historic accomplishments that he has garnered for our country over the past year.”
Leavitt also said Trump may tease some policy actions coming in the new year.
“President Trump will be talking about what's to come. The best is truly yet to come, as he often says,” Leavitt said.
CNN has reached out to the White House for more information.
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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth arrives to brief members of Congress on military strikes near Venezuela, Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025, at the Capitol in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., speaks to reporters following the weekly policy luncheons at the Capitol, Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate gave final passage on Wednesday to an annual military policy bill that will authorize $901 billion in defense programs while pressuring Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to provide lawmakers with video of strikes on alleged drug boats in international water near Venezuela.
The annual National Defense Authorization Act, which raises troop pay by 3.8%, gained bipartisan backing as it moved through Congress. It passed the Senate on a 77-20 vote before lawmakers planned to leave Washington for a holiday break. Two Republicans — Sens. Rand Paul and Mike Lee — and 18 Democrats voted against the bill.
The White House has indicated that it is in line with President Donald Trump's national security priorities. However, the legislation, which ran over 3,000 pages, revealed some points of friction between Congress and the Pentagon as the Trump administration reorients its focus away from security in Europe and toward Central and South America.
The bill pushes back on recent moves by the Pentagon. It demands more information on boat strikes in the Caribbean, requires that the U.S. keep its troop levels in Europe at current levels and sends some military aid to Ukraine.
But overall, the bill represents a compromise between the parties. It implements many of Trump's executive orders and proposals on eliminating diversity and inclusion efforts in the military and grants emergency military powers at the U.S. border with Mexico. It also enhances congressional oversight of the Department of Defense, repeals several years-old war authorizations and seeks to overhaul how the Pentagon purchases weapons as the U.S. tries to outpace China in developing the next generation of military technology.
“We're about to pass, and the president will enthusiastically sign, the most sweeping upgrades to DOD's business practices in 60 years,” said Sen. Roger Wicker, the Republican chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Still, the sprawling bill faced objections from both Democratic and Republican leadership on the Senate Commerce Committee. That's because the legislation allows military aircraft to obtain a waiver to operate without broadcasting their precise location, as an Army helicopter had done before a midair collision with an airliner in Washington, D.C. in January that killed 67 people.
“The special carve-out was exactly what caused the January 29th crash that claimed 67 lives,” Sen. Ted Cruz, the Republican chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, said at a news conference this week.
Cruz said he was seeking a vote on bipartisan legislation in the next month that would require military aircraft to use a precise location sharing tool and improve coordination between commercial and military aircraft in busy areas.
Republicans and Democrats agreed to language in the defense bill that threatened to withhold a quarter of Hegseth's travel budget until he provided unedited video of the strikes, as well as the orders authorizing them, to the House and Senate Committees on Armed Services.
Hegseth was on Capitol Hill Tuesday ahead of the bill's passage to brief lawmakers on the U.S. military campaign in international water near Venezuela. The briefing elicited contrasting responses from many lawmakers, with Republicans largely backing the campaign and Democrats expressing concern about it and saying they had not received enough information.
The committees are investigating a Sept. 2 strike — the first of the campaign — that killed two people who had survived an initial attack on their boat. The Navy admiral who ordered the “double-tap” strike, Adm. Frank “Mitch” Bradley, also appeared before the committees shortly before the vote Wednesday in a classified briefing that also included video of the strike in question.
Several Republican senators emerged from the meeting backing Hegseth and his decision not to release the video publicly, but other GOP lawmakers stayed silent on their opinion of the strike.
Democrats are calling for part of the video to be released publicly and for every member of Congress to have access to the full footage.
“The American people absolutely need to see this video,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat. “I think they would be shocked.”
Lawmakers have been caught by surprise by the Trump administration several times in the last year, including by a move to pause intelligence sharing with Ukraine and a decision to reduce U.S. troop presence in NATO countries in eastern Europe. The defense legislation requires that Congress be kept in the loop on decisions like that going forward, as well as when top military brass are removed.
The Pentagon is also required, under the legislation, to keep at least 76,000 troops and major equipment stationed in Europe unless NATO allies are consulted and there is a determination that such a withdrawal is in U.S. interests. Around 80,000 to 100,000 U.S. troops are usually present on European soil. A similar requirement also keeps the number of U.S. troops stationed in South Korea at 28,500.
Lawmakers are also pushing back on some Pentagon decisions by authorizing $400 million for each of the next two years to manufacture weapons to be sent to Ukraine.
Trump and Hegseth have made it a priority to purge the military of material and programs that address diversity, anti-racism or gender issues, and the defense bill would codify many of those changes. It will repeal diversity, equity and inclusion offices and trainings, including the position of chief diversity officer. Those cuts would save the Pentagon about $40 million, according to the Republican-controlled House Armed Services Committee.
The U.S. military has long found that climate change is a threat to how it provides national security because weather-related disasters can destroy military bases and equipment. But the bill makes $1.6 billion in cuts by eliminating climate-change related programs at the Pentagon.
Congress is writing a closing chapter to the war in Iraq by repealing the authorization for the 2003 invasion. Now that Iraq is a strategic partner of the U.S., lawmakers in support of the provision say the repeal is crucial to prevent future abuses. The bill also repeals the 1991 authorization that sanctioned the U.S.-led Gulf War.
The rare, bipartisan moves to repeal the legal justifications for the conflicts signaled a potential appetite among lawmakers to reclaim some of Congress's war powers.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Pages from the U.S. Affordable Care Act health insurance website healthcare.gov are seen on a computer screen in New York, Aug. 19, 2025. (AP Photo/Patrick Sison, File)
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., meets with reporters as Republicans struggle with a plan to address growing health care costs, at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., speaks to reporters following the weekly policy luncheons at the Capitol, Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., speaks to reporters following a strategy session with House Republicans, at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
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WASHINGTON (AP) — Four centrist Republicans broke with Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday and signed onto a Democratic-led petition that will force a House vote on extending for three years an enhanced pandemic-era subsidy that lowers health insurance costs for millions of Americans.
The stunning move comes after House Republican leaders pushed ahead with a health care bill that does not address the soaring monthly premiums that millions of people will soon endure when the tax credits for those who buy insurance through the Affordable Care Act expire at year's end. The action sets the stage for a renewed intraparty clash over health care in January, something Republican leaders had been working to avoid, just weeks before another government funding deadline at the end of that month.
The moderate Republicans were able to force the issue by signing a petition, led by Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York, to vote on a bill that would extend the subsides for three years.
Republican Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick, Robert Bresnahan and Ryan Mackenzie, all from Pennsylvania, and Mike Lawler of New York signed on Wednesday morning, pushing it to the magic number. A vote on the subsidy bill could come as soon as January under House rules.
“Unfortunately, it is House leadership themselves that have forced this outcome.” Fitzpatrick said in a statement.
Johnson told reporters Wednesday that “I have not lost control of the House” and he noted that Republicans have a razor-thin majority that allows a small number of members to employ procedures that would not usually be successful in getting around leadership.
“These are not normal times,” said Johnson, R-La.
The revolt against GOP leadership came after days of talks centered on the health care subsidies.
Johnson had discussed allowing more politically vulnerable GOP lawmakers a chance to vote on bills that would temporarily extend the subsidies while also adding changes such as income caps for beneficiaries. But after days of discussions, the leadership sided with the more conservative wing of the party's conference, which has assailed the subsidies as propping up a failed marketplace through the ACA, which is widely known as “Obamacare.”
House Republicans pushed ahead Wednesday a 100-plus-page health care package without the subsidies. Instead, the measure focuses on long-sought GOP proposals designed to expand insurance coverage options for small businesses and the self-employed.
Fitzpatrick and Lawler tried to add a temporary extension of the subsidies to the bill, but were denied.
“Our only request was a floor vote on this compromise, so that the American People's voice could be heard on this issue. That request was rejected. Then, at the request of House leadership I, along with my colleagues, filed multiple amendments, and testified at length to those amendments,” Fitzpatrick said. “House leadership then decided to reject every single one of these amendments.
“As I've stated many times before, the only policy that is worse than a clean three-year extension without any reforms, is a policy of complete expiration without any bridge,” Fitzpatrick said.
Lawler, in a social media post, similarly said that “the failure of leadership” to permit a vote had left him with “no choice” but to sign the petition. He urged Johnson to bring the plan up for an immediate floor vote.
Jeffries, for several weeks, had called on Republicans to sign his discharge petition. He particularly challenged Republicans in competitive congressional districts to join the effort if they really wanted to prevent premium increases for their constituents.
“Mike Johnson needs to bring the bill to the floor today,” Jeffries said. “Our position from the very beginning was that we are standing on the right side of the American people who want to see the Affordable Care Act tax credits extended, and we're appreciative that we now have the bipartisan coalition to get that done.”
The GOP holds a 220-213 majority in the House, which means defections from just a sliver of the conference can upend leadership's plans. Johnson has been able to negotiate that challenge largely by making accommodations to the more conservative wing of his conference. This time, it was the moderates who revolted.
The defectors largely represent districts that Democrats have targeted in their bid to retake the majority, with Democrats promising to make health insurance costs a central issue in next year's midterms.
Even if the Democrats' subsidy bill were to pass the House, which is far from assured, it would face an arduous climb in the Republican-led Senate.
Republicans last week voted down a three-year extension of the subsidies and proposed an alternative that also failed. But in an encouraging sign for Democrats, four Republican senators crossed party lines to support their proposal.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., argued against the Democratic extension as “an attempt to disguise the real impact of Obamacare's spiraling health care costs.”
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York said that the 218th signature for the Democrats' bill showed that the demand from the American people for an extension is undeniable, but “the damage has now been done, no matter what happens.”
“Because at this point Republicans have made it impossible to prevent many Americans from paying more on their monthly premiums on January 1st. And Republicans can't even say they tried to stop it,” Schumer said.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., said leadership would continue to have discussions with members “about a few different options.” It's still possible that GOP leaders could bring up Fitzpatrick's bill or a similar measure if the only other option is watching the Democrats' three-year extension pass.
In the Senate, there clearly is an appetite from a bipartisan group of senators to allow for a subsidy extension as long as some changes to the program are made.
Almost two dozen Republicans and Democrats met late Monday to talk about a last-minute fix. They emerged discussing ways to end the stalemate, including a possible two-year extension of the subsidies with changes that would narrow who could receive them. They also discussed adding some version of a GOP proposal to create health savings accounts that would help people purchase insurance.
___
This story has been corrected to reflect that the next government funding deadline comes at the end of January, not the end of December.
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When speaking at the U.S.-Saudi Investment Forum, President Donald Trump slammed officials who pushed radical climate change policies, saying, "We have to investigate them immediately."
A federal judge's extraordinary decision to refer Hagens Berman to the Department of Justice for possible unlawful conduct escalated to an appeals court this week, marking one of the toughest challenges yet for a high-profile law firm known, in part, for its aggressive climate litigation.
The referral came as part of a lawsuit that Hagens Berman brought related to a separate topic, alleged drug-related injuries, and involved Judge Paul Diamond taking the rare step of asking the DOJ to review whether Hagens Berman acted unlawfully.
Diamond noted in an order on Dec. 2 that a court-appointed lawyer, known as a special master, found Hagens Berman engaged in a yearslong effort to bring "fraudulent" complaints in the case in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Hagens Berman also obstructed discovery and "doctored evidence," the special master found. The order noted that the firm's apparent "misconduct bordering on criminal" warranted the DOJ's involvement.
TOP ENERGY GROUP CALLS FOR PROBE INTO SECRETIVE 'NATIONAL LAWFARE CAMPAIGN' TO INFLUENCE JUDGES ON CLIMATE
The Department of Justice headquarters on Feb. 19, 2020, in Washington, D.C. (Drew Angerer)
Hagens Berman has aggressively pushed back on the allegations and turned to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit for relief. The firm accused the judge of bias, noting it had recently sought Diamond's recusal from the case and claiming the judge could be retaliating.
"To rebut the charge in the court below would risk fomenting even greater ire of the district judge—ire that would be calamitous for petitioners' clients," Hagens Berman lawyers wrote. "To remain silent is to permit a baseless accusation leveled by an Article III judge no less, to hang like a dark, ignominious cloud over petitioners' professional reputation."
The clash comes as Hagens Berman continues positioning itself as a go-to firm for high-risk litigation, including environmental cases, even as its track record in that arena shows mixed results.
Last month, the firm filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of Washington state homeowners against ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron and other fossil fuel companies. The suit alleges the companies sparked a rise in natural disasters that has driven up homeowners' insurance premiums and claims they mounted a "coordinated and deliberate scheme to hide the truth about climate change and the effects of burning fossil fuels."
Fuel prices at a Shell gas station in Burien, Washington, on Wednesday, March 9, 2022. (Chona Kasinger/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
But in addition to the DOJ referral, Hagens Berman has thus far struggled to secure clear victories or settlements in its climate cases and was dealt some legal blows in that realm in 2018.
Efforts to reach a Hagens Berman representative for comment were unsuccessful by press time.
Judge William Alsup, a Clinton appointee, tossed out San Francisco and Oakland's case, which was brought by Hagens Berman against fossil fuel companies over the alleged effects of climate change. Alsup called the scope of the cities' claims in that case "breathtaking."
"It would reach the sale of fossil fuels anywhere in the world, including all past and otherwise lawful sales, where the seller knew that the combustion of fossil fuels contributed to the phenomenon of global warming," Alsup wrote.
The cities dropped Hagens Berman as their representation after a series of adverse decisions in the case.
CLIMATE LAWFARE CAMPAIGN DEALT BLOW IN SOUTH CAROLINA
People march as they take part in a strike to demand action on the global climate crisis on Sept. 20, 2019, in New York City. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
The law firm also lost in a similar case that same year in New York. In that dismissal, the late Judge John Keenan, a Reagan appointee, again found Hagens Berman's lawsuit was far too expansive.
"The City has not sued under New York law for claims related to the production of fossil fuels in New York," Keenan wrote. "The City brings claims for damages caused by global greenhouse gas emissions resulting from the combustion of Defendants' fossil fuels, which are produced and used ‘worldwide.'"
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The DOJ review, if upheld by the 3rd Circuit, could now overshadow the firm's more recent endeavors and raises the stakes for the practice as it continues to take on ambitious cases.
Ashley Oliver is a reporter for Fox News Digital and FOX Business, covering the Justice Department and legal affairs. Email story tips to ashley.oliver@fox.com.
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Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, a consistent opponent of President Donald Trump on foreign policy since the beginning of his second administration, made an explicit call for the United Nations to intervene against U.S. military operations in the region.
Trump's saber-rattling against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has exasperated political divisions in South America, with some leaders welcoming military action and others pleading for international protection.
“I call on the United Nations to fulfill its role. It has not been present. It must assume its role to prevent any bloodshed,” Sheinbaum said on Wednesday morning during a press conference. “The entire world must ensure that there is no intervention and that there is a peaceful solution.”
Trump designated the Venezuelan government as a foreign terrorist organization on Tuesday, accusing the Maduro government of supporting “terrorism, drug smuggling, and human trafficking.”
Trump has enacted a “total and complete blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers going into, and out of, Venezuela” as a means of leverage against the Maduro regime, citing the 2007 nationalization of oil assets owned by the United States and other foreign nations by Maduro's predecessor, Hugo Chavez.
“All of which,” Trump ordered, “must be returned to the United States, IMMEDIATELY.”
“Because of President Trump's declaration and the situation in Venezuela, we reiterate Mexico's position, in accordance with the Constitution, of non-intervention or foreign interference, self-determination of peoples, and peaceful resolution of disputes,” Sheinbaum explained.
She added, This is our position, based on conviction and the Constitution. It must be the position of any Mexican president, regardless of the opinions of the Venezuelan regime and the Maduro presidency.”
A government statement from Venezuela on Tuesday called the “irrational military blockade” a “grotesque threat.”
The U.S.'s naval blockade affects sanctioned oil tankers in Venezuelan waters. A full blockade would be illegal, unless in response to an attack.
However, not all leaders are as opposed to the White House's high-handed management of South American geopolitics, dubbed the “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine by officials.
Chilean President-elect Antonio Kast, widely seen as an analogue to Trump's brand of right-wing populism, has vocally supported a hypothetical military action against the Maduro regime.
“Clearly, we cannot intervene in that because we are a small country,” Kast said on Tuesday. “But if someone is going to do it, let it be clear to them that they would solve for us, and for all of Latin America, for all of South America, a giant problem.”
Colombian President Gustavo Petro, an arch-critic of Trump-era interventionism in Latin America, has lambasted Kast as a “Nazi” and a “fascist,” calling him and his political project “death in human form.”
Petro's comments forced him into a difficult situation after a reporter on social media demanded to know why the Colombian leader has so vociferously condemned Kast while failing to acknowledge Maduro as a “narco-dictator.”
“Maduro is a dictator for concentrating powers; there is no evidence in Colombia that he is a narco. That is a narrative of the USA,” Petro responded Tuesday on social media — a statement notable for its use of the word “dictator,” given Colombia and Venezuela's historic alliance against U.S. aggression.
WILES SAYS VENEZUELA STRIKES WILL CONTINUE UNTIL MADURO ‘CRIES UNCLE'
“Kast is the son and believer of the Nazis,” Petro continued. “He belongs to the German generation that escaped from Germany not to save themselves from Hitler but to save themselves from Hitler's defeat, which is very, very different.”
A government statement from Venezuela on Tuesday called the “irrational military blockade” a “grotesque threat.”
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
The Warner Bros. water tower is seen at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, Calif., Friday, Dec. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)
Skydance Media CEO David Ellison attends the premiere of “Fountain of Youth” at the American Museum of Natural History, May 19, 2025, in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File)
Ted Sarandos arrives at the premiere of “The Electric State” on Monday, Feb. 24, 2025, at The Egyptian Theatre in Los Angeles. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File)
The Netflix logo is shown in this photo from the company's website on Feb. 2, 2023, in New York. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)
The CNN logo is displayed at the entrance to the CNN Center in Atlanta on Feb. 2, 2022. (AP Photo/Ron Harris, File)
Ted Sarandos poses for the World Premiere of the Netflix Series “Emily in Paris” season 5, in Paris, France, Monday, Dec. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard)
NEW YORK (AP) — Warner Bros. Discovery is recommending its shareholders reject an unsolicited buyout offer from Paramount Skydance in favor of a rival bid from Netflix it said will better serve their interests and the entertainment company's audiences.
The Warner board said in a letter to shareholders on Wednesday that Paramount's “inferior” offer carried “significant risks and costs,” in large part because it relies heavily on borrowed money – whereas the Netflix offer is backed by a company worth more than $400 billion.
Warner, which owns the Warner Bros. Pictures movie studio and HBO, agreed earlier this month to a cash-and-stock offer from Netflix valued at $72 billion. As part of that deal, Warner would first spin off its its cable TV assets, including CNN and Discovery. Days later, Paramount made a hostile, all-cash offer for all of Warner's properties valued at $77.9 billion.
With the fate of marquee movie-making and streaming services on the line, a Warner deal with either company would face intense scrutiny from U.S. regulators.
Paramount has argued that its offer — coming from a smaller company — would face an easier road with regulators. Warner's board disputed that claim in its letter to shareholders, who ultimately have the power to decide which offer to accept.
Netflix offered Warner shareholders $23.25 in cash, plus $4.50 in Netflix shares, for each share of Warner. Paramount is offering $30 in cash for each share of Warner.
Warner's stock price fell more than 1% Wednesday to $28.52 per share. Shares of Paramount fell 5.4%, while those of Netflix rose 2.5%.
An acquisition by Netflix would be completed only after Warner finalizes its previously announced separation of its cable operations.
Paramount urged Warner shareholders on Wednesday to tell the company they prefer Paramount's “superior offer.”
“We will continue to move forward to deliver this transaction, which is in the best interest of (Warner) shareholders, consumers, and the creative industries,” Paramount CEO and Chairman David Ellison said.
Paramount has claimed it made six different bids that Warner leadership rejected before announcing its deal with Netflix on Dec. 5.
Critics of Netflix's deal say that combining the massive streaming company with Warner's HBO Max would give it overwhelming market dominance, whereas the Paramount+ streaming service is far smaller.
“This is something that we've heard for a long time — including when we started the streaming business,” Netflix co-CEOs Greg Peters and Ted Sarandos said in a filing through Warner Bros. “Our stance then and now is the same — we see this as a win for the entertainment industry, not the end of it.”
Warner shareholders have until Jan. 8 to vote on Paramount's offer.
Bids from both Netflix and Paramount have raised alarm for what they could mean for film and TV production. While Netflix has agreed to uphold Warner's contractual obligations for releasing films in theaters, critics fear the streaming giant will ultimately favor online releases. Paramount and Warner Bros. are two of the biggest studios left in Hollywood.
A combination of Paramount and Warner would bring CBS and CNN under the same roof. That could raise questions about news media consolidation and shifts in editorial control — as seen at CBS News leading up to and following Skydance's $8 billion purchase of Paramount, which it completed in August.
President Donald Trump has been vocal about his plans to play a role in regulatory approval.
Trump has said Netflix's deal “could be a problem” because of the potential for an outsized control of the market. The Republican president has a close relationship with Oracle's billionaire founder Larry Ellison — the father of Paramount's CEO.
Affinity Partners, an investment firm run by Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, previously said it would invest in the Paramount deal. But on Tuesday, the firm announced it would be dropping out.
The sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and Qatar are backing Paramount's bid, a detail some analysts say should be drawing more scrutiny.
“The same U.S. officials and regulators who've sounded alarms about China's influence on TikTok should be crying foul here,” said Mike Proulx, vice president and research director at Forrester, a market research company. “The stakes on (Warner's) fate are higher and wider-reaching than a single short-form video app.”
Warner's board cited concern about the involvement of foreign investors in its letter to shareholders.
It also was critical of Paramount's decision to use an Ellison family trust to backstop the offer for Warner, which it said is not the same thing as a “full and unconditional financing commitment.” The family trust lost billions in value this month after shares of Oracle tumbled on concerns it was spending too much on artificial intelligence.
_____
AP Business Writer Matt Ott contributed to this story from Washington.
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Fox News senior foreign policy correspondent and anchor Gillian Turner reports on news that footage of the September strike on alleged drug boats will be restricted on 'Special Report.'
The Senate sent a colossal defense package to President Donald Trump's desk on Wednesday, checking off one of the last remaining items of the year in the process.
Lawmakers banded together to pass the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), a roughly $901 billion package crammed to the brim with defense policy that unlocks funding for several of the Trump administration's national defense priorities.
The measure passed through the upper chamber on a 77-20 bipartisan vote. It's a perennial legislative exercise lawmakers undertake, and one that normally comes and goes with little fuss, given that Congress typically bookends the year with it.
SENATE ADVANCES $901B DEFENSE BILL AS CONGRESS RACES INTO YEAR-END LEGISLATIVE SPRINT
President Donald Trump during a Mexican Border Defense medal presentation in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Dec. 15, 2025. (Bonnie Cash/UPI/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
But this year, the NDAA hit some snags in the House that threatened its survival. And while the drama was not as fiery in the Senate, there were still lingering issues with certain provisions that gave lawmakers heartburn.
Bipartisan frustration erupted over a provision that would roll back some safety standards in the Washington, D.C., airspace. It comes on the heels of the collision between a Black Hawk helicopter and passenger jet near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport earlier this year that killed 67 people.
Senate Commerce Committee Chair Ted Cruz, R-Texas, sought an amendment to the package that would have stripped the provision and instead included his ROTOR Act that would mandate technology in aircraft to boost awareness of air traffic.
CONGRESS UNVEILS $900B DEFENSE BILL TARGETING CHINA WITH TECH BANS, INVESTMENT CRACKDOWN, US TROOP PAY RAISE
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, talks with reporters after Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., attended a Republican senate luncheon in the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Nov. 1, 2023. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, also appears. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
But any amendment to the package would have sent it back to the House. Cruz instead plans to tack on his legislation to spending bills down the line.
"I'm seeking a vote on the ROTOR Act as part of any appropriations measure before the current continuing resolution expires at the end of next month," Cruz said.
Other provisions, like a requirement for the Pentagon to release the unedited footage of boat strikes in the Caribbean in exchange for fully funding the Department of War's travel fund, raised eyebrows but didn't slow down the package's success.
That provision comes as lawmakers demand more transparency in the Trump administration's strikes against alleged drug boats, and in particular, as they seek the release of the footage from a Sept. 2 double-strike on a vessel.
MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE SAYS SHE WILL VOTE 'NO' ON PROPOSED NDAA, BLASTS FOREIGN AID SPENDING
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, during a news conference at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Dec. 11, 2025. (Daniel Heuer/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio briefed all senators on the strikes this week. Senate Republicans left largely satisfied, while Senate Democrats charged that Hegseth wouldn't show the unedited footage to every lawmaker in the upper chamber.
"He refused," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said. "The administration came to this briefing empty-handed. That's the major question that we face, and if they can't be transparent on this, how can you trust their transparency on all the other issues swirling about in the Caribbean."
Still, the package is filled with several provisions that both sides agree to, including guarantees for Ukrainian assistance, and repeals of the 1991 and 2002 authorizations of use of military force (AUMFs) for the Gulf War and Iraq War, respectively, among several others.
With the NDAA now headed for Trump's signature, the Senate still has more on its agenda before fleeing Washington until the new year.
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Senate Republicans want to ram through nearly 100 of Trump's nominees, and both sides are eyeing a five-bill spending package that could alleviate some concerns heading into the looming Jan. 30 deadline to fund the government.
"This defense authorization act, although it doesn't have as much in there for defense as a lot of us would like, is a step in the right direction," Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said. "And I think the defense appropriations bill, which hopefully we'll vote on later this week, is another example of the investment that we need to be making, to ensure that in a dangerous world, we are prepared to defend America and American interests."
Alex Miller is a writer for Fox News Digital covering the U.S. Senate.
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Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen greets state senators before giving a speech on June 2, 2025, in Lincoln, Neb. (Justin Wan/Lincoln Journal Star via AP, File)
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz listens as President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office of the White House, Oct. 16, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)
Nebraska will become the first state to implement new work requirements for some people with Medicaid health insurance under a law President Donald Trump signed last year.
Gov. Jim Pillen, a Republican, announced Wednesday that the requirement would take effect in the state May 1 and could impact about 30,000 people who have slightly higher incomes than traditional Medicaid beneficiaries.
“We're not here to take everybody to the curb,” he said. Instead, he said, the aim is “making sure we get every able-bodied Nebraskan to be part of our community.”
The sweeping tax and policy law Trump signed in July requires states to make sure many recipients are working by 2027 but gave them the option to do it sooner.
The law mandates that people ages 19 to 64 who have Medicaid coverage work or perform community service at least 80 hours a month or be enrolled in school at least half-time to receive and keep coverage.
It applies only to people who receive Medicaid coverage through an expansion that covers a population with a slightly higher income limit. Forty states and the District of Columbia have opted to expand the coverage income guidelines under former President Barrack Obama's 2010 health insurance overhaul.
Of 346,000 Nebraska residents enrolled in Medicaid as of May, about 72,000 were in the higher income expansion group.
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Some people will be exempted, including disabled veterans, pregnant women, parents and guardians of dependent children under 14 or disabled individuals, people who were recently released from incarceration, those who are homeless and people getting addiction treatment. States can also offer short-term hardships for others if they choose.
All Medicaid beneficiaries who are eligible because of the expansion will be required to submit paperwork at least every six months showing they meet the mandate.
Those who don't would lose their coverage.
The reporting requirement is twice as frequent as it is for most people covered by Medicaid now. That change means more work for the state agencies — and for some of them, extensive and likely expensive computer program updates.
Pillen said he does not expect the state government to increase staffing to make the changes.
When and how to implement the change is likely to be on the agenda for governors and state lawmakers across the country as legislative sessions start — most of them in January.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that the requirement will reduce Medicaid costs by $326 billion over a decade — and that it will result in 4.5 million people becoming uninsured each year starting in 2027. Currently, about 77 million Americans are covered by Medicaid.
Because most people covered by Medicaid who are able to work already do, it's not expected to increase employment rates.
Mehmet Oz, the administrator of the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services, joined Pillen's announcement via a video feed and said the administration believes there are jobs available across the country, and the challenge is connecting people with them.
“Most people who are able-bodied on Medicaid actually want to get a job,” Oz said.
Georgia implemented similar requirements in 2023. Far fewer people are covered than projected, in part because of the work and reporting requirements.
Arkansas tried another variation of Medicaid work requirements — later blocked by a judge — that saw 18,000 people kicked off coverage in the first seven months after it took effect in 2018.
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Fox News chief congressional correspondent Chad Pergram reports on the continuing fight over healthcare ahead of the holiday recess on ‘Special Report.'
Four moderate House Republicans are rebelling against Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., to join his Democratic counterpart in forcing a vote on enhanced Obamacare subsidies set to expire at the end of this year.
Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., Ryan Mackenzie, R-Pa., Rob Bresnahan, R-Pa., and Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., all joined a discharge petition by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., on his push for a three-year extension of the subsidies.
A discharge petition is a mechanism for overriding the will of House leaders to get a chamber-wide vote on specific legislation, provided it has support from a majority of lawmakers.
In this case, the four House Republicans' signatures put Jeffries' petition at 218 — clinching the critical majority threshold.
THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO WHERE WE STAND WITH A HEALTHCARE PACKAGE
Four Republicans joined a push by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on Obamacare subsidies. (Evan Vucci/AP Photo; J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo)
"I've always supported bipartisan solutions that would bring about healthcare affordability in this country," Mackenzie told Fox News Digital on Wednesday of his decision. "Leader Jeffries and the Democrats have refused to sign onto either of those bipartisan solutions. And so at this point, our leadership is not calling up a bill to extend the [Obamacare] tax credits."
He called for a vote on the Democrat-led solution as well as two bipartisan bills offering one and two-year extensions, respectively, with reforms.
It comes despite Johnson warning Republicans earlier on Wednesday not to support Jeffries' petition, arguing it was not the best way to legislate.
CONGRESS FACES HOLIDAY CRUNCH AS HEALTH CARE FIX COLLIDES WITH SHRINKING CALENDAR
Rep. Mike Lawler leaves after a meeting of the House Republican Conference in Washington, March 4, 2025. (Tierney L. Cross/Getty Images)
Johnson told CNBC's "Squawk Box" that it was effectively "doing an end-run around the majority party, the speaker or the regular process is not the best way to make law."
The House is expected to vote on a bill that Republicans say is aimed at lowering healthcare costs for all Americans, without extending the subsidies — which they argue are part of a deeply flawed public healthcare system.
Moderate Republicans offered several amendments to the legislation aimed at extending the Obamacare subsidies during a House Rules Committee meeting to advance the bill on Tuesday, but all were rejected by their fellow GOP lawmakers on the panel.
Rep. Ryan Mackenzie, R-Pa., arrives for a House Education and Workforce Committee hearing in Washington, May 7, 2025. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
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"While I have been working for a bipartisan compromise with reforms, the failure of leadership to allow a vote on the floor left me with no choice but to sign the Democrats' discharge petition," Lawler said in a statement on X.
"The speaker should immediately bring it to the floor for an up-or-down vote and let the House do the work of the American people."
Because of the timing constraints of a discharge petition, the earliest the House could consider the Jeffries bill would be early next year.
Elizabeth Elkind is a politics reporter for Fox News Digital leading coverage of the House of Representatives. Previous digital bylines seen at Daily Mail and CBS News.
Follow on Twitter at @liz_elkind and send tips to elizabeth.elkind@fox.com
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Pages from the U.S. Affordable Care Act health insurance website healthcare.gov are seen on a computer screen in New York, Aug. 19, 2025. (AP Photo/Patrick Sison, File)
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., meets with reporters as Republicans struggle with a plan to address growing health care costs, at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
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WASHINGTON (AP) — Four centrist Republicans broke with Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday and signed onto a Democratic-led petition that will force a House vote on extending for three years an enhanced pandemic-era subsidy that lowers health insurance costs for millions of Americans.
The stunning move comes after House Republican leaders pushed ahead with a health care bill that does not address the soaring monthly premiums that millions of people will soon endure when the tax credits for those who buy insurance through the Affordable Care Act expire at year's end.
Democrats led by Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York needed 218 signatures to force a floor vote on their bill, which would extend the subsides for three years.
Republican Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick, Robert Bresnahan and Ryan Mackenzie, all from Pennsylvania, and Mike Lawler of New York signed on Wednesday morning, pushing it to the magic number of 218. A vote on the subsidy bill could come as soon as January under House rules.
“Unfortunately, it is House leadership themselves that have forced this outcome.” Fitzpatrick said in a statement.
Johnson told reporters Wednesday that “I have not lost control of the House” and he noted that Republicans have a razor-thin majority that allows a small number of members to employ procedures that would not usually be successful in getting around leadership.
“These are not normal times,” said Johnson, R-La.
The revolt against GOP leadership came after days of talks centered on the health care subsidies.
Johnson had discussed allowing more politically vulnerable GOP lawmakers a chance to vote on bills that would temporarily extend the subsidies while also adding changes such as income caps for beneficiaries. But after days of discussions, the leadership sided with the more conservative wing of the party's conference, which has assailed the subsidies as propping up a failed marketplace through the ACA, which is widely known as “Obamacare.”
House Republicans pushed ahead Wednesday a 100-plus-page health care package without the subsidies, instead focusing on long-sought GOP proposals designed to expand insurance coverage options for small businesses and the self-employed.
Fitzpatrick and Lawler tried to add a temporary extension of the subsidies to the bill, but were denied.
“Our only request was a floor vote on this compromise, so that the American People's voice could be heard on this issue. That request was rejected. Then, at the request of House leadership I, along with my colleagues, filed multiple amendments, and testified at length to those amendments,” Fitzpatrick said. “House leadership then decided to reject every single one of these amendments.
“As I've stated many times before, the only policy that is worse than a clean three-year extension without any reforms, is a policy of complete expiration without any bridge,” Fitzpatrick said.
Lawler, in a social media post, similarly said that “the failure of leadership” to permit a vote had left him with “no choice” but to sign the petition. He urged Johnson to bring the plan up for an immediate floor vote.
Jeffries, for several weeks, had called on Republicans to sign his discharge petition. He particularly challenged Republicans in competitive congressional districts to join the effort if they really wanted to prevent premium increases for their constituents.
“Mike Johnson needs to bring the bill to the floor today,” Jeffries said. “Our position from the very beginning was that we are standing on the right side of the American people who want to see the Affordable Care Act tax credits extended, and we're appreciative that we now have the bipartisan coalition to get that done.”
Even if the subsidy bill were to pass the House, which is far from assured, it would face an arduous climb in the Republican-led Senate.
Republicans last week voted down a three-year extension of the subsidies and proposed an alternative that also failed. But in an encouraging sign for Democrats, four Republican senators crossed party lines to support their proposal.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., argued against the Democratic extension as “an attempt to disguise the real impact of Obamacare's spiraling health care costs.”
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New York City police are on the hunt for a suspect who they say stabbed a Jewish man in the chest while making "anti-Jewish" statements on Tuesday.
Police released images and a brief video of the suspect, who remains unidentified. Authorities say the victim is a 35-year-old man who got into a dispute with the suspect after an apparently random encounter on the street. The victim's injuries were not life-threatening, and he received care at a nearby hospital.
"At approximately 4:10 P.M., in the vicinity of Kingston Avenue and Lincoln Place, in the confines of the 77th Precinct, a 35-year-old male victim was walking when he was approached by an unidentified individual. The unidentified individual made anti-Jewish statements and then proceeded to stab the victim in the chest with a knife," police told Fox News Digital in a statement.
"The individual was last seen fleeing the location on foot towards Sterling Place and Albany Avenue," they added.
STUDENT ARRESTED AFTER DISRUPTING DAVE PORTNOY'S PIZZA REVIEW WITH ANTISEMITIC RANT CAUGHT ON VIDEO: POLICE
New York City police are on the hunt for a suspect who they say stabbed a Jewish man in the chest while making "anti-Jewish" statements on Tuesday. (NYPD)
The incident is being investigated by the NYPD Hate Crimes Task Force, police say.
Footage of the incident circulating on social media shows the two men squaring off in a minutes-long dispute. The would-be victim followed the suspect after their confrontation initially broke off, at which point the suspect turned and stabbed at the victim.
LUIGI MANGIONE RAISED ‘RED FLAGS' IN MCDONALD'S CONFRONTATION WITH POLICE, BODY LANGUAGE EXPERT SAYS
Footage of a suspect who police say stabbed a Jewish man while making anti-Jewish statements in New York City on Tuesday, December 16, 2025. (NYPD)
NYC Mayor Eric Adams condemned the stabbing in a statement.
"Evil, hateful, antisemitic violence must come to an end. We cannot let this hate persist in our city, and we will never back down. We are praying for this man and his family, and the NYPD Hate Crimes Division is investigating this incident as we speak."
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Police requested that anyone with information regarding the incident call the NYPD's Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) or for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782). The public can also submit their tips by logging onto the Crime Stoppers website at https://crimestoppers.nypdonline.org/, on X @NYPDTips.
Anders Hagstrom is a reporter with Fox News Digital covering national politics and major breaking news events. Send tips to Anders.Hagstrom@Fox.com, or on X: @Hagstrom_Anders.
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Four centrist Republicans have handed House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) a huge win by joining a Democratic-backed move to force a vote on the extension of Obamacare enhanced subsidies.
Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) was the first to sign a Jeffries-led discharge petition, swiftly followed by Reps. Mike Lawler (R-NY), Rob Bresnahan (R-PA), and Ryan Mackenzie (R-PA), to get to the necessary 218 signatures, forcing the hand of Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA). Jeffries's bill would extend the subsidies, which are set to expire on Dec. 31, for three years.
“As I've stated many times before, the only policy that is worse than a clean three-year extension without any reforms, is a policy of complete expiration without any bridge,” Fitzpatrick wrote in a statement. “Unfortunately, it is House leadership themselves that have forced this outcome.”
The four Republican rebels, along with some others, have been pushing for bipartisan options to extend the Obamacare subsidies. They made their dramatic move Wednesday morning after their efforts were nixed in the House Rules Committee on Tuesday night.
Republicans joining a Democratic discharge petition is an embarrassment to Johnson, who has already faced similar attempts from his own members to bypass leadership and force votes they do not want to have.
But Johnson denied the successful petition is a sign of him “losing control of the House.” He said Republicans are “working through very complex issues” and they are “keeping the productive conversation going.”
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) said GOP leadership hasn't looked at timing for Jeffries's discharge petition yet. But it will likely happen in January, given the end of session for the calendar year is Friday, and the discharge petition needs seven days to “ripen.”
Scalise noted the bill is likely to be a fruitless Democratic attempt in the long run, given it has already been rejected in the Senate.
“They know it's not a lawmaking exercise,” Scalise said.
Lawler, who on Tuesday said it was “political malpractice” not to have a vote on extending the subsidies, explained on Wednesday why he signed the discharge petition.
“While I have been working for a bipartisan compromise with reforms, the failure of leadership to allow a vote on the floor left me with no choice but to sign the Democrats discharge petition,” he said.
Bresnahan also said in a statement that “doing nothing was not an option” and while he never intended to support the three-year extension, “it is the only option remaining.”
The move by the four Republicans comes a day after Johnson said Tuesday there would be no vote on Obamacare subsidies because “it just was not to be.” Centrists still pushed for amendments to bring up various extension proposals in the Rules Committee on Tuesday night, though none of them were accepted.
Regardless of the centrist Republican frustration and Obamacare drama, a GOP-led healthcare bill, which does not include the subsidies, is still set to proceed later Wednesday. The procedural rule passed mostly along party lines, with one Republican, Rep. Jen Kiggans (R-VA), voting against it. Kiggans was another Republican with an Obamacare amendment which was voted down in by the Rules Committee Tuesday night.
Whether centrist Republicans actually vote for Jeffries's bill when it does eventually come to the floor remains to be seen. Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-CA) said he's undecided on how he'll vote.
HOUSE RULES COMMITTEE TANKS CENTRIST REPUBLICANS LAST-DITCH EFFORT TO EXTEND OBAMACARE SUBSIDIES
“My goal is to get something enacted that will stop us from going off this cliff,” Kiley said. “And so whether that will be the right thing to do or not to facilitate that outcome, I think, is very unclear right now.”
Regardless of a vote on Obamacare subsidies being force, they will still expire at the end of the year. On the Senate's part, Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) said “we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
David Sivak contributed to this report.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth arrives to brief members of Congress on military strikes near Venezuela, Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025, at the Capitol in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., speaks to reporters following the weekly policy luncheons at the Capitol, Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate gave final passage to an annual military policy bill Wednesday that will authorize $901 billion in defense programs while pressuring Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to provide lawmakers with video of strikes on alleged drug boats in international water near Venezuela.
The annual National Defense Authorization Act, which raises troop pay by 3.8%, gained bipartisan backing as it moved through Congress, and the White House has indicated that it is in line with President Donald Trump's national security priorities. However, the legislation, which ran over 3,000 pages, revealed some points of friction between Congress and the Pentagon as the Trump administration reorients its focus away from security in Europe and towards Central and South America.
The bill pushes back on recent moves by the Pentagon. It demands more information on boat strikes in the Caribbean, requires that the U.S. keep its troop levels in Europe at current levels and sends some military aid to Ukraine.
But overall, the bill represents a compromise between the parties. It implements many of Trump's executive orders and proposals on eliminating diversity and inclusion efforts in the military and grants emergency military powers at the U.S. border with Mexico. It also enhances congressional oversight of the Department of Defense, repeals several years-old war authorizations and seeks to overhaul how the Pentagon purchases weapons as the U.S. tries to outpace China in developing the next generation of military technology.
“We're about to pass, and the president will enthusiastically sign, the most sweeping upgrades to DOD's business practices in 60 years,” said Sen. Roger Wicker, the Republican chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Still, the sprawling bill faced objections from both Democratic and Republican leadership on the Senate Commerce Committee. That's because the legislation allows military aircraft to obtain a waiver to operate without broadcasting their precise location, as an Army helicopter had done before a midair collision with an airliner in Washington, D.C. in January that killed 67 people.
“The special carve-out was exactly what caused the January 29th crash that claimed 67 lives,” Sen. Ted Cruz, the Republican chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, said at a news conference this week.
Cruz said he was seeking a vote on bipartisan legislation in the next month that would require military aircraft to use a precise location sharing tool and improve coordination between commercial and military aircraft in busy areas.
Republicans and Democrats agreed to language in the defense bill that threatens to withhold a quarter of Hegseth's travel budget until he provides unedited video of the strikes with the House and Senate Committees on Armed Services, as well as the orders authorizing them.
Hegseth was on Capitol Hill Tuesday ahead of the bill's passage to brief lawmakers on the U.S. military campaign in international water near Venezuela. The briefing elicited contrasting responses from many lawmakers, with Republicans largely backing the campaign and Democrats expressing concern about it and saying they had not received enough information.
The committees are investigating a Sept. 2 strike — the first of the campaign — that killed two people who had survived an initial attack on their boat. The Navy admiral who ordered the “double-tap” strike, Adm. Frank “Mitch” Bradley, also appeared before the committees shortly before the vote Wednesday in a classified briefing that also included video of the strike in question.
Lawmakers have been caught by surprise by the Trump administration several times in the last year, including by a move to pause intelligence sharing with Ukraine and a decision to reduce U.S. troop presence in NATO countries in eastern Europe. The defense legislation requires that Congress be kept in the loop on decisions like that going forward, as well as when top military brass are removed.
The Pentagon is also required, under the legislation, to keep at least 76,000 troops and major equipment stationed in Europe unless NATO allies are consulted and there is a determination that such a withdrawal is in U.S. interests. Around 80,000 to 100,000 U.S. troops are usually present on European soil. A similar requirement also keeps the number of U.S. troops stationed in South Korea at 28,500.
Lawmakers are also pushing back on some Pentagon decisions by authorizing $400 million for each of the next two years to manufacture weapons to be sent to Ukraine.
Trump and Hegseth have made it a priority to purge the military of material and programs that address diversity, anti-racism or gender issues, and the defense bill would codify many of those changes. It will repeal diversity, equity and inclusion offices and trainings, including the position of chief diversity officer. Those cuts would save the Pentagon about $40 million, according to the Republican-controlled House Armed Services Committee.
The U.S. military has long found that climate change is a threat to how it provides national security because weather-related disasters can destroy military bases and equipment. But the bill makes $1.6 billion in cuts by eliminating climate-change related programs at the Pentagon.
Congress is writing a closing chapter to the war in Iraq by repealing the authorization for the 2003 invasion. Now that Iraq is a strategic partner of the U.S., lawmakers in support of the provision say the repeal is crucial to prevent future abuses. The bill also repeals the 1991 authorization that sanctioned the U.S.-led Gulf War.
The rare, bipartisan moves to repeal the legal justifications for the conflicts signaled a potential appetite among lawmakers to reclaim some of Congress's war powers.
Congress will also permanently lift U.S. sanctions on Syria as part of the legislation, following up on the Trump administration's decision to temporarily lift many penalties. The nation is rebuilding after its former leader Bashar Assad was deposed, and supporters of the new government say that permanently lifting the sanctions will spur the country's economic reconstruction and encourage the establishment of democracy.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
The Warner Bros. water tower is seen at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, Calif., Friday, Dec. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)
Skydance Media CEO David Ellison attends the premiere of “Fountain of Youth” at the American Museum of Natural History, May 19, 2025, in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File)
Ted Sarandos arrives at the premiere of “The Electric State” on Monday, Feb. 24, 2025, at The Egyptian Theatre in Los Angeles. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File)
The Netflix logo is shown in this photo from the company's website on Feb. 2, 2023, in New York. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)
The CNN logo is displayed at the entrance to the CNN Center in Atlanta on Feb. 2, 2022. (AP Photo/Ron Harris, File)
Ted Sarandos poses for the World Premiere of the Netflix Series “Emily in Paris” season 5, in Paris, France, Monday, Dec. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard)
NEW YORK (AP) — Warner Bros. Discovery is recommending its shareholders reject an unsolicited buyout offer from Paramount Skydance in favor of a rival bid from Netflix it said will better serve their interests and the entertainment company's audiences.
The Warner board said in a letter to shareholders on Wednesday that Paramount's “inferior” offer carried “significant risks and costs,” in large part because it relies heavily on borrowed money – whereas the Netflix offer is backed by a company worth more than $400 billion.
Warner, which owns the Warner Bros. Pictures movie studio and HBO, agreed earlier this month to a cash-and-stock offer from Netflix valued at $72 billion. As part of that deal, Warner would first spin off its its cable TV assets, including CNN and Discovery. Days later, Paramount made a hostile, all-cash offer for all of Warner's properties valued at $77.9 billion.
With the fate of marquee movie-making and streaming services on the line, a Warner deal with either company would face intense scrutiny from U.S. regulators.
Paramount has argued that its offer — coming from a smaller company — would face an easier road with regulators. Warner's board disputed that claim in its letter to shareholders, who ultimately have the power to decide which offer to accept.
Netflix offered Warner shareholders $23.25 in cash, plus $4.50 in Netflix shares, for each share of Warner. Paramount is offering $30 in cash for each share of Warner.
Warner's stock price fell more than 1% Wednesday to $28.52 per share. Shares of Paramount fell 5.4%, while those of Netflix rose 2.5%.
An acquisition by Netflix would be completed only after Warner finalizes its previously announced separation of its cable operations.
Paramount urged Warner shareholders on Wednesday to tell the company they prefer Paramount's “superior offer.”
“We will continue to move forward to deliver this transaction, which is in the best interest of (Warner) shareholders, consumers, and the creative industries,” Paramount CEO and Chairman David Ellison said.
Paramount has claimed it made six different bids that Warner leadership rejected before announcing its deal with Netflix on Dec. 5.
Critics of Netflix's deal say that combining the massive streaming company with Warner's HBO Max would give it overwhelming market dominance, whereas the Paramount+ streaming service is far smaller.
“This is something that we've heard for a long time — including when we started the streaming business,” Netflix co-CEOs Greg Peters and Ted Sarandos said in a filing through Warner Bros. “Our stance then and now is the same — we see this as a win for the entertainment industry, not the end of it.”
Warner shareholders have until Jan. 8 to vote on Paramount's offer.
Bids from both Netflix and Paramount have raised alarm for what they could mean for film and TV production. While Netflix has agreed to uphold Warner's contractual obligations for releasing films in theaters, critics fear the streaming giant will ultimately favor online releases. Paramount and Warner Bros. are two of the biggest studios left in Hollywood.
A combination of Paramount and Warner would bring CBS and CNN under the same roof. That could raise questions about news media consolidation and shifts in editorial control — as seen at CBS News leading up to and following Skydance's $8 billion purchase of Paramount, which it completed in August.
President Donald Trump has been vocal about his plans to play a role in regulatory approval.
Trump has said Netflix's deal “could be a problem” because of the potential for an outsized control of the market. The Republican president has a close relationship with Oracle's billionaire founder Larry Ellison — the father of Paramount's CEO.
Affinity Partners, an investment firm run by Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, previously said it would invest in the Paramount deal. But on Tuesday, the firm announced it would be dropping out.
The sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and Qatar are backing Paramount's bid, a detail some analysts say should be drawing more scrutiny.
“The same U.S. officials and regulators who've sounded alarms about China's influence on TikTok should be crying foul here,” said Mike Proulx, vice president and research director at Forrester, a market research company. “The stakes on (Warner's) fate are higher and wider-reaching than a single short-form video app.”
Warner's board cited concern about the involvement of foreign investors in its letter to shareholders.
It also was critical of Paramount's decision to use an Ellison family trust to backstop the offer for Warner, which it said is not the same thing as a “full and unconditional financing commitment.” The family trust lost billions in value this month after shares of Oracle tumbled on concerns it was spending too much on artificial intelligence.
_____
AP Business Writer Matt Ott contributed to this story from Washington.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
In a stunning blow to Speaker Mike Johnson, four GOP lawmakers on Wednesday agreed to back a Democratic push to extend pandemic-era Obamacare subsidies.
Those four GOP centrists — New York Rep. Mike Lawler and Pennsylvania Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick, Ryan Mackenzie and Rob Bresnahan — have officially opted for what they have been describing as the nuclear option.
Now that they have signed onto Democrats' procedural maneuver to force a floor vote on their proposed three-year extension of enhanced Affordable Care Act tax credits, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has the 218 signatures needed guarantee a vote under discharge petition rules. That floor vote cannot be forced until January, however, under those same rules.
Here's what's in the House GOP health care bill
Those same four centrists have criticized Democrat' plan as flawed. But in a sign of desperation, the typically leadership-aligned centrists chose to defy Johnson and sign onto Democrats' push rather than allow the enhanced subsidies to expire at year's end.
The House on Wednesday is expected to vote on a separate, narrower health care proposal from GOP leadership that does not address the expiring subsidies – all but guaranteeing that the money will lapse and spike premiums for tens of millions of Americans next year. A bipartisan group of senators is also working on a parallel track to strike their own health care agreement.
The centrists intentionally had not ruled out joining the Democratic petition as they tried to pressure their own leadership into allowing a compromise measure that would extend and reform the subsidies to come to the floor. That effort failed on Tuesday.
Fitzpatrick, the first Republican to sign on Wednesday, telegraphed his move in a late night meeting of the House Rules Committee, where he was making a final push for his separate, bipartisan compromise measure.
“I think the only thing worse than a clean extension without any income limits and any reforms – because it's not a perfect system – the only thing worse than that would be expiration,” Fitzpatrick said Tuesday night when asked about the Democratic push. “And I would make that decision.”
Lawler similarly emphasized that he did not fully support Democrats' bill, but suggested inaction was unacceptable.
“This procedural step is not an endorsement of the bill written. I continue to believe any extension should be targeted, fiscally responsible, and include income eligibility limits and safeguards against fraud, similar to the bipartisan discussions underway in the Senate,” he said in a statement after singing onto the petition.
“But when leadership blocks action entirely, Congress has a responsibility to act. My priority is ensuring Hudson Valley families aren't caught in the gridlock.”
While such a bill would likely pass the House, a similar measure has already failed in the Senate.
Senate Republican Leader John Thune shrugged when asked Wednesday if the Senate would take up such a bill if it passed the House. “We'll cross that bridge if we come to it,” he told reporters.
This story has been updated with additional details.
CNN's Arlette Saenz and Ted Barrett contributed to this report.
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Britain announced that it will rejoin the European Union's Erasmus student exchange program in 2027, six years after it ditched the scheme during fractious Brexit negotiations.
The government said rejoining the scheme was a “huge win” for young Britons, and will ensure that “everyone, from every background, has the opportunity to study and train abroad.”
Erasmus allows students to spend a year at foreign universities while paying the same fees as their domestic peers. The agreement will also allow Prime Minister Keir Starmer to show the British public that his push to improve relations with the EU is beginning to bear fruit.
But this fruit has come at a price. Britain's contribution for the 2027/28 academic year will be £570 million ($760 million). Although this fee represents a 30% discount to the default terms under the current trade deal with the EU, it is around twice what Britain paid to take part in Erasmus while it was still a member of the bloc.
The costly reintroduction of a pre-Brexit perk could raise uncomfortable questions about how and whether Britain is benefiting from its decision to leave the EU, which was taken in 2016 and implemented in 2020. Talk of Brexit remains something of a taboo in British politics – at least on the right – but recent polls show that public opinion towards the EU is softening, with only a fraction of Britons able to point to any benefits from leaving the bloc.
The groundwork for Wednesday's announcement was laid during a summit between British and EU leaders in May, in which both sides agreed to “deepen our people-to-people ties, particularly for the younger generation.” Since coming to power last year, Starmer has stressed the need for Britain to forge closer ties with the EU, following years of antagonism during the Brexit negotiations.
The Erasmus program was canceled in 2020 by Boris Johnson, then the Conservative prime minister, who claimed it did not offer value for money. But Chatham House, a London-based think tank, wrote in a 2021 report that: “Far from acting as a drain on the economy, Erasmus has facilitated the movement of well-funded students into the UK for limited periods, during which they have provided a lucrative customer base for the higher education, services and hospitality sectors.”
It estimated that Britain made a net profit of £243 million ($324 million) per year from its participation in Erasmus. As well as financial benefits, a European Commission report in 2019 found that more than 1 million “Erasmus babies” – children whose parents met while one or both was on an Erasmus exchange program – have been born since the program started in the 1980s.
Irene Tracey, Vice-Chancellor at the University of Oxford, said the program also bolstered Britain's standing in the world in subtler ways.
“Even a brief visit to the UK – people love their time here,” Tracey told the BBC. “Many of these people are going to go on and become leaders of the public and private sector – or leaders of their countries – and that's a good thing. We service that swirl of global talent. That's soft power, and soft diplomacy.”
Nick Thomas-Symonds, Britain's minister for EU relations, said Wednesday's agreement is “about more than just travel: it's about future skills, academic success, and giving the next generation access to the best possible opportunities.”
Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission who herself studied in Britain, said reviving the Erasmus program in Britain would open the door “to new shared experiences and lasting friendships” between British and European students.
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A person carries a shopping bag in Philadelphia, Dec. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)
(AP Illustration / Peter Hamlin)
NEW YORK (AP) — Welcome to exhausted America 2025: Most adults are more than a little fine with doling out cash as gifts, and many plan to be asleep before midnight on New Year's Eve, according to a new AP-NORC poll.
About 6 in 10 Americans say cash or gift cards are “very” acceptable as holiday presents, but they're much less likely to say that about a gift that was purchased secondhand or re-gifted, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
“Cash is OK for the grandkids I guess,” said Nancy Wyant, 73, in rural central Iowa. “But I'm a gift giver.”
Come New Year's Eve, she'll be fast asleep before 2026 rolls around. “At our age, we don't do anything,” the retired bus driver said with a laugh of herself and her live-in partner. “He's set in his ways.”
They'll be joined by the 44% of Americans who say they won't stay up to greet 2026, according to the poll. About half of U.S. adults age 45 or older won't make it to midnight, compared with around one-third of adults under age 45.
Consider 23-year-old Otis Phillips in Seattle, an outlier for his age. He, too, will turn in early. “It's one of the holidays that doesn't really feel special to me,” said the master's student.
AP correspondent Donna Warder reports on a new holiday poll.
Cash is a safer gift for younger adults. The poll found about two-thirds of Americans under 45 say cash is a “very” acceptable holiday gift, compared with 55% of adults age 45 or older.
“Everything's too expensive nowadays. And I don't want to go buy a gift for somebody and then it turns out they don't like it. So cash,” said Gabriel Antonucci, 26, a ski resort cook in Alaska, about an hour outside of Anchorage.
Most people at least grudgingly accept various gift types, with about 9 in 10 saying cash or gift cards are at least “somewhat” acceptable and about 6 in 10 saying the same for secondhand gifts and re-gifted items.
Teresa Pedroza, a 55-year-old mom of two adult sons in central Florida, is mostly not on board.
“I don't like it when kids say they want cash, or I should get teenagers gift cards,” she said. “It kind of takes some of the charm away from gift giving.” But she acknowledged reaching for cards a time or two out of convenience.
About three-quarters of adults under age 45 say secondhand gifts are at least “somewhat” acceptable, compared with about 6 in 10 adults age 45 or older. About 4 in 10 adults age 45 or older say secondhand gifts are “somewhat” or “very” unacceptable.
It's not just your pesky neighbors who leave their holiday decorations up into January. About one-third of U.S. adults say they'll leave them up after New Year's Day.
It's more common for people to leave their decorations up after the holiday season than to put them up early, according to the poll. About 2 in 10 Americans say they put up holiday decorations before Thanksgiving.
“I just had my husband bring down the bins. If we weren't expecting company, I wouldn't even bother to decorate, honestly. I'm tired of doing that,” said Pedroza, the Florida mom of two.
About one-quarter of U.S. adults say they're planning to watch sports on Christmas Day, while only 5% will head for a movie theater.
Men are much likelier than women to say they'll watch sports on Christmas, and older Americans are much more likely than younger Americans to tune in. About 2 in 10 adults under age 45 say they plan to watch sports on Christmas, compared with about 3 in 10 adults age 45 or older.
Phillips does plan to break out his red sweater with the green Christmas tree that one of his grandmothers knitted for him a couple of years ago.
“She made all kinds of things for me growing up,” he said. “This is by far my favorite.” Phillips has it in rotation for his part-time job as a grocery checkout clerk.
He's the outlier once again. Women are much likelier than men to say they'll wear a holiday sweater or accessories.
About 3 in 10 U.S. adults say they will give a gift to their pet this year.
In Iowa, Wyant's nearly 3-year-old boxer-Great Dane mix named Indy is among them.
“She's a very spoiled dog,” Wyant said. “She's got too many toys, so she's getting treats this year. She loves her treats.”
And the red felt elf that parents move around the house every night as a Santa spy to see which kids have been naughty or nice? Only about 1 in 10 U.S. adults say they'll do Elf on the Shelf.
“Noooo,” Pedroza said when asked if she'd ever done the elf for her kids. “My younger son was very well-behaved. I didn't have to use any kind of tactics.”
___
The AP-NORC poll of 1,146 adults was conducted Dec. 4-8 using a sample drawn from NORC's probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 4 percentage points.
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Briana DiTommaso, head winemaker at Provocativo, shares her "nice and simple" holiday spritzer recipe, along with some helpful tips.
In the weeks since "American Pie" actress Tara Reid believed she might have been drugged at a bar, the topic of drink tampering — and how to guard against it — has drawn national attention.
The incident unfolded in November after Reid ordered a glass of wine at a hotel in Rosemont, Illinois, while visiting the state for ComicCon.
As noted in a police report obtained by Fox News Digital, Reid said there were "a bunch of people in the lobby that were supposedly YouTubers" — adding that most "had their phones out and the whole thing felt suspicious."
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Reid said she ordered a glass of wine at the hotel bar. She then walked away briefly to introduce herself to an influencer.
When she returned, she noticed a napkin covering her drink. She later reported blacking out and waking up in a hospital hours later, with no memory of what occurred.
Authorities and safety experts continue to urge caution after actress Tara Reid described blacking out following an alleged drink-tampering incident. (iStock; John Sciulli/Getty Images for Jane Owen Public Relations)
Police, however, told Fox News Digital they found no evidence to support the claim of drink tampering.
"While we do not have any evidence that a drink was tampered with, it is a good reminder to never leave a drink unattended," the police said in a statement.
Despite this, Reid said in a statement shared with Fox News Digital, "Something happened to me."
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Jeff Katz, a self-defense instructor in New Jersey, said there are a variety of products on the market to help prevent drink tampering from occurring.
He pointed to drink test strips that detect incapacitating drugs — such as ketamine and benzodiazepines — plus scrunchie-style covers that are designed to keep drinks protected.
"If you see any changes to your drink, such as color, taste, consistency — do not drink it."
"I have even heard of a nail polish company that allows you to paint your nails with a specific nail polish," Katz also told Fox News Digital.
"If you dip your finger into a spiked drink, the nail polish color will change to indicate that the drink has been tampered with."
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While products can help, the best protection is vigilance, Katz said.
"A man could reach his hand over your drink to grab a napkin and stealthily put something in your drink without raising suspicion," Katz said.
Experts note that staying connected with friends is essential, urging groups to quietly monitor each other's drinks throughout the night. (iStock)
"If you need to use the restroom and don't want to take your drink with you, get a new drink when you get back," he added.
He also emphasized the importance of staying connected to friends.
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"If you do decide to leave with someone, make sure a trusted friend can track your location in case they need to notify police if they haven't heard from you," Katz suggested.
"The obvious way to do this is with your phone, but bad actors know this and could just ditch the phone, so make sure you have a second way for somebody to track you."
Friends can help keep each other safe by staying aware when drinks are left unattended. (iStock)
Carole Lieberman, M.D., a psychiatrist based in Beverly Hills, California, told Fox News Digital she's treated victims of drink tampering in the past.
She said the issue goes beyond simply keeping an eye on your beverage.
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"If a stranger comes up to you and suggests drinking together, don't let flattery cloud your judgment," she said.
"It might just be someone harmless who wants to get to know you, but it could be someone with ill intentions — especially if they ask you to go somewhere with them, leaving your drink unattended."
Police say they found no evidence of drink tampering, but Reid maintains that she believes something happened to her. (Kevin Winter/Getty Images)
Above all, Lieberman recommended keeping an eye on your drink and being mindful of even small changes.
"If you see any changes to your drink, such as color, taste, consistency — do not drink it," she cautioned.
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"If you notice that anything has changed with regard to your drink — such as, it's been moved or covered, or ice has been put into it — do not drink it. And don't drink too much in general," she added, "especially if you are in a public place."
Fox News Digital's Christina Dugan Ramirez contributed reporting.
Andrea Margolis is a lifestyle writer for Fox News Digital and Fox Business. Readers can follow her on X at @andreamargs or send story tips to andrea.margolis@fox.com.
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Fox News senior medical analyst Dr. Marc Siegel joins ‘The Ingraham Angle' to discuss the Trump administration potentially reclassifying marijuana and its impact on health.
Cannabis has been linked to some significant medical benefits, but recent research calls those into question.
A major new analysis published in JAMA examined more than 2,500 scientific papers from the last 15 years, including other reviews, clinical trials and guidelines focused on medical marijuana.
"While many people turn to cannabis seeking relief, our review highlights significant gaps between public perception and scientific evidence regarding its effectiveness for most medical conditions," Dr. Michael Hsu of University of California – Los Angeles (UCLA) Health Sciences, author of the study, said in a press release.
Many medical claims about cannabis are not supported by strong scientific evidence, according to a comprehensive review published in JAMA. (iStock)
The researchers — led by UCLA with contributions from Harvard, UC San Francisco, Washington University School of Medicine and New York University — set out to determine how strong the research is on the effectiveness of medical cannabis and to offer evidence-based clinical guidance.
MYSTERIOUS MARIJUANA-LINKED VOMITING DISORDER GETS OFFICIAL WHO CODE AS ER CASES JUMP
The review found that evidence supporting most medical uses of cannabis or cannabinoids is limited or insufficient, the release stated.
"Whenever a substance is widely used, there is likely to be a very wide set of outcomes," Alex Dimitriu, MD, double board-certified in Psychiatry and Sleep Medicine and founder of Menlo Park Psychiatry & Sleep Medicine, told Fox News Digital.
"Cannabis is now used by about 15 to 25% of U.S. adults in the past year, for various reasons ranging from recreational to medicinal. This study points to the reality that this widely used substance is not a panacea," said Dimitriu, who was not involved in the study.
There are very few conditions for which cannabinoid therapies have clear, well-established benefits backed by high-quality clinical data, according to the researchers.
HEAVY DRINKERS CUT ALCOHOL USE BY NEARLY 30% AFTER ADOPTING ONE NEW HABIT, STUDY FINDS
The strongest evidence supports FDA-approved cannabinoid medications for treating specific conditions, including HIV/AIDS-related appetite loss, chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting, and certain severe pediatric seizure disorders.
The review identified significant safety concerns, with high-potency cannabis use among young people linked to higher rates of mental health issues. (iStock)
For many other conditions that are commonly treated with cannabis — such as chronic pain, insomnia, anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder — evidence from randomized trials did not support meaningful benefit.
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The analysis also examined safety concerns — in particular, how young people using high-potency cannabis may be more likely to suffer higher rates of psychotic symptoms and anxiety disorder.
Daily inhaled cannabis use was also linked to increased risks of coronary heart disease, myocardial infarction (heart attack) and stroke when compared with non-daily use.
Daily inhaled cannabis use is associated with increased cardiovascular risks, including coronary heart disease, heart attack and stroke. (iStock)
Based on these findings, the review emphasizes that clinicians should weigh potential benefits against known risks when discussing cannabis with patients.
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The authors suggest that clinicians screen patients for cardiovascular risk, evaluate mental health history, check for possible drug interactions and consider conditions where risks may outweigh benefits.
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They recommend open, realistic conversations and caution against assuming that cannabis is broadly effective for medical conditions.
The review highlights the need for caution, urging clinicians to weigh risks, screen patients appropriately and avoid assuming cannabis is broadly effective. (iStock)
"Patients deserve honest conversations about what the science does and doesn't tell us about medical cannabis," Hsu said.
This article is a narrative review rather than a systematic review, so it did not use the strict, standardized methods that help reduce bias in how studies are selected and evaluated, the researchers noted.
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The review notes further limitations, including that some evidence comes from observational research rather than randomized trials, which means it cannot establish cause and effect.
The trial results also may not apply to all populations, products or doses.
Khloe Quill is a lifestyle production assistant with Fox News Digital. She and the lifestyle team cover a range of story topics including food and drink, travel, and health.
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While NIH director Jay Bhattacharya focuses on podcasting, his second in command is dramatically remaking the agency.
Updated at 12:29 p.m. on December 17, 2025 When Donald Trump nominated Jay Bhattacharya to be the director of the National Institutes of Health, a shake-up seemed inevitable. Typically, the agency—a $48 billion grant-making institution and the world's largest public funder of biomedical research—has been led by a medical researcher with extensive administrative experience. Bhattacharya was a health economist without specialized training in infectious disease, who'd come to prominence for his heterodox views on COVID policies and who has criticized the NIH for stifling dissent.
The NIH has been transformed this year. And most of the layoffs, policy changes, and politically motivated funding cuts—notably, to infectious-disease research—have happened under Bhattacharya's watch. But inside the agency, officials describe Bhattacharya as a largely ineffectual figurehead, often absent from leadership meetings, unresponsive to colleagues, and fixated more on cultivating his media image than on engaging with the turmoil at his own agency. “We don't really hear from or about Jay very much,” one official told me. (Most of the current and former NIH officials who spoke with me for this article requested anonymity out of fear of retaliation.) Many officials call Bhattacharya “Podcast Jay” because of the amount of time that he has spent in his office recording himself talking. “Bhattacharya is too busy podcasting to do anything,” one official told me.
Instead, Matthew Memoli, the agency's principal deputy director, “is the one wielding the axe,”the official said. This time last year, Memoli was a relatively low-ranking flu researcher at the NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). Then, in January, the Trump administration appointed him to be the agency's acting director. At the time, other NIH officials considered Memoli to be a placeholder, temporarily empowered to carry out the administration's orders. But “there's been no change since Jay got put in,” one NIH official told me. To the agency officials I spoke with, Memoli, now second in command, still looks to be very much in charge.
Neither Bhattacharya nor Memoli agreed to an interview; the Trump administration responded to my request for comment after this story was published. This account did “not reflect Dr. Bhattacharya's leadership approach or the way decisions are made at NIH,” Andrew Nixon, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, said in an email. “Dr. Bhattacharya has deep respect for the agency, its staff, and its scientific mission, which is rooted in gold-standard science and in the interests of public health.” To better understand Bhattacharya and Memoli's leadership, I spoke with 18 current and former NIH officials, whose positions at the agency have spanned a breadth of specialties and administrative roles, and reached out to several of Bhattacharya's former colleagues. The officials' first impressions of Bhattacharya—who has argued that the NIH could do more “to promote innovative science”—were of an outsider and a radical, whose ideas could have changed the agency for better or worse. In recent months, NIH officials have come to see him as so disengaged that they hardly worry about his impact. Memoli, by contrast, knows just enough about the agency—and, in particular, its approach to infectious disease—to help destroy it.
Memoli's appointment to acting director in January floored his colleagues—many of whom had never heard his name before. Like Bhattacharya, Memoli had no previous track record of executive leadership or in overseeing the awarding of federal grants. But officials quickly deduced what about Memoli might have appealed to the administration: In 2021, he described COVID-vaccine mandates as “extraordinarily problematic” in an email to Anthony Fauci, then the director of NIAID, whom the Trump administration has repeatedly tried to discredit. Then, last year, when asked to submit a routine statement about diversity, equity, and inclusion, Memoli sent in one that called the term DEI “offensive and demeaning.” By September, the NIH, under Bhattacharya's leadership, had done away with DEI statements for its scientists, describing them as “loyalty oaths” that Memoli had “courageously stood against.”
In his two months as acting director, Memoli enacted the Trump administration's agenda with aplomb, pushing through the mass cancellation of grants focused on topics such as DEI, transgender health, and COVID-19; multiple NIH leaders were ousted while he was acting director, including Jeanne Marrazzo, who served as the director of NIAID until early April. “His major function was to do the administration's bidding,” Michael Lauer, who led the NIH's grant-making division before he departed the agency in February, told me.
That same month, while Memoli was still acting director, he began to call Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s attention to the flu-vaccine research he'd done with his mentor, Jeffery Taubenberger, another NIAID scientist. By early May—after Memoli had been installed as Bhattacharya's deputy, and Taubenberger as the acting director of NIAID—HHS had redirected about half a billion dollars, once set aside to develop new COVID-19 vaccines and drugs, to their vaccine work. (Outside researchers criticized the grant as an unjustifiably enormous sum; in an email to me in May, Memoli insisted that the grant would support “more than one project,” but did not answer follow-up questions about how much of that sum would furnish his research specifically.)
Part of a deputy's job is to take some load off the director. But under normal circumstances, people “wouldn't really notice who the deputy director is,” one official told me; the director is expected to set policy and lead. Although Bhattacharya has continued to reiterate his own goals for the NIH—including advancing more innovative research—his recent visions for the agency have largely followed administration talking points such as diverting resources toward chronic disease and clamping down on “dangerous” virological research. Yet the director seems out of touch with the reality of that agenda: In his public appearances, internal meetings, and on social media, Bhattacharya has delivered conflicting and sometimes erroneous accounts of the NIH's grant-making policies. Both publicly and internally, he has fixated more on defending himself against criticism he received for his COVID-policy views from 2020 than on the NIH's current state of affairs, several officials said.
Bhattacharya, in his own way, still seems to be serving the administration by championing its talking points. But Memoli is the one most visibly throttling the NIH's capacity to fund research and pushing out some of the agency's most experienced and internally respected leaders. To officials at the agency, his actions look like those of a leader who has been given broad discretion to shrink down the agency's infectious-disease work—an area where he may have a few personal grievances. “People are afraid of him,” one official said, pausing. “I'm afraid of him.”
Memoli's history at the NIH appears to have given him a particular zeal for dismantling it. In his two decades at the agency, Memoli has developed a reputation as a self-aggrandizing co-worker, eager to champion himself and dismissive of people he hasn't felt he could benefit professionally from, three officials who worked with him prior to 2025 told me. At various points, scientists at the agency lodged complaints about his unprofessional behavior toward colleagues, two NIH officials told me. Memoli, meanwhile, complained that “he wasn't being given enough,” one of them said. Some of his scientific work was solid, but peers inside and outside the agency criticized some as unremarkable, leaving Memoli with a chip on his shoulder, the two officials said.
Of the NIH's 27 institutes and centers, NIAID, where Memoli once worked, has been among the hardest hit this year, losing most of its senior leadership and a large number of its infectious-disease-focused grants. Since January, multiple officials who denounced the administration's stance on infectious diseases and vaccines have had Memoli brush aside their concerns in meetings, then been ousted from their roles, three officials told me.
Given the Trump administration's desire to pare down infectious-disease research, NIAID and prominent officials such as Marrazzo, who succeeded Fauci as director, were always clear targets for cuts. (Yesterday, Marrazzo filed a lawsuit that named Memoli and Bhattacharya and that alleged that she was illegally fired after she had filed a whistleblower complaint about actions of NIH leadership that endangered public health; HHS declined to comment on the lawsuit.) But in some cases, three officials told me, Memoli appears to have pushed lesser-known officials out of their roles after more personal clashes, including Sarah Read, who was NIAID's principal deputy director and who repeatedly questioned the circumstances of Memoli and Taubenberger's sizable vaccine grant. (Read has since left the agency.) Memoli also recently detailed Carl Dieffenbach, the director of NIAID's Division of AIDS, to another branch of NIH after the two clashed over the administration's approach to HIV research. Days later, he gave Dieffenbach a scoring of one out of five on a performance review—potential grounds for termination—before human-resources personnel forced him to revise that rating, because he lacked evidence for them, two officials told me. (Read and Dieffenbach declined to comment.)
Memoli has also argued that funding for HIV-vaccine research—which Dieffenbach oversaw—is wasteful and should be cut. The NIH is expected to soon divert up to a third of its AIDS budget toward improving the delivery of existing HIV tools, such as the new drug lenacapavir. At least some of that push has come from Bhattacharya, who has publicly advocated (including on his own The Director's Desk podcast) for reallocating HIV funds on the grounds that established interventions could resolve the AIDS crisis on their own. But whereas Bhattacharya has waffled when asked how such an investment would affect other research, two officials told me, Memoli has insisted in internal meetings that it should come at the expense of research into HIV vaccines, which is widely considered to be essential to ending the HIV pandemic. Despite being a vaccine researcher himself, he's “gleefully making these cuts,” one official told me. “Because it means he did something.”
Allowing Memoli to be the executor of the Trump administration's cuts could serve the independent-thinker persona that Bhattacharya has tried to cultivate. But the NIH officials I spoke with, and one scientist who knew Bhattacharya prior to his appointment at the agency, doubted that his distance was so calculated. Trying to discredit the scientific establishment from the sidelines is far easier than trying to enact reform from its center. At the NIH, the embittered insider may leave the more memorable legacy.
This story was updated to include a comment from the Department of Health and Human Services.
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Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
From left, European Council President Antonio Costa, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen arrive for an EU Summit at the European Council building in Brussels, March 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Omar Havana, File)
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen addresses a media conference regarding Ukraine's financing needs for 2026-2027 at EU headquarters in Brussels, Wednesday, Dec. 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Harry Nakos)
A view of the headquarters of Euroclear in Brussels, on Oct. 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert, File)
BRUSSELS (AP) — European Union leaders are about to attempt something they've never tried before. The chances of failure are significant. Their actions this week could set dangerous precedents and a wrong move could undermine trust among the bloc's 27 member countries for years to come.
At a summit starting on Thursday, many of the leaders will press for tens of billions of euros in frozen Russian assets held in Europe to be used to meet Ukraine's economic and military needs for the next two years.
Ukraine is on the verge of bankruptcy. The International Monetary Fund estimates that it will require a total of 137 billion euros ($160 billion) in 2026 and 2027. It must get the money by spring. The EU has pledged to come up with the funds, one way or another.
“One thing is very, very clear,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told EU lawmakers on Wednesday. “We have to take the decision to fund Ukraine for the next two years in this European Council.”
European Council President António Costa, who will chair the summit, has vowed to keep the leaders negotiating until an agreement is reached, even if it takes days.
The European Commission has proposed that the leaders use some of the frozen assets — totaling 210 billion euros ($246 billion) — to underwrite a 90 billion-euro ($105 billion) “reparations loan” to Ukraine. The U.K., Canada and Norway would fill the gap.
The plan is contentious. The European Commission insists that its reasoning and legal basis are sound. But the European Central Bank has warned that international trust in the euro single currency could be damaged, if the leaders are suspected of seizing the assets.
Most of the frozen assets belong to the Russian Central Bank and are held in the financial clearing house Euroclear, which is based in Brussels. Belgium fears Russian reprisals, through the courts or in other more nefarious ways.
Euroclear fears for its reputation. It believes the commission's idea is legally shaky and that international investors might look elsewhere, if it transfers the Russian assets to an EU debt instrument, as von der Leyen's plan demands.
Last week, the Russian Central Bank announced that it's suing Euroclear in a Moscow court. The chances that the case will succeed appear limited, but the move does increase pressure on all parties before the summit.
The commission, the EU's powerful executive branch, has proposed a second option. It could try to raise the money on international markets, much in the way it underwrote a major economic recovery fund after the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
Belgium prefers this option. But plan B would require all 27 leaders to agree for it to work, and Hungary refuses to fund Ukraine. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán sees himself as a peacemaker. He's also Russian President Vladimir Putin's closest ally in Europe.
In contrast, plan A — the reparations loan — only requires a majority of around two-thirds of member countries to pass. Hungary can't veto it alone. Slovakia might say no. Belgium, Bulgaria, Italy and Malta remain to be convinced.
Even if all six countries reject the loan to Ukraine — which would only be refunded if Russia ends its war and pays hundreds of billions of euros in war damages, something many Europeans doubt Putin would do — they still wouldn't have a blocking minority.
Running a steamroller over Belgium, which has a great stake in the outcome and deep concerns about the loan, could undermine the entire European project, making it infinitely more difficult to find voting majorities on other issues in the future.
But on the eve of the summit, it remained unclear precisely how the plan would work, what kind of guarantees each country would give to reassure Belgium it doesn't face Russia alone, and even whether the leaders can actually approve it outright this week.
“It's a really new approach. Everyone has questions,” according to a senior EU diplomat involved in the negotiations, which continued on Wednesday. “You're talking about mobilizing public finances. Parliaments might need to weigh in. It's not easy.”
The diplomat was appointed to brief reporters on the latest developments on the condition that he not be named.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
President Donald Trump amplified a social media post on his Truth Social platform on Tuesday, calling for the arrest of former FBI Director Christopher Wray and former Attorney General Merrick Garland.
“Someone should be arrested. Wray & Garland,” Truth Social account @Jay_Anthony45 posted on Tuesday night. The comment was in response to an earlier Trump post about the August 2022 FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago. “… And many others!!!” Trump said in the “reTruth.”
“Unreasonable Search and Seizure!!! That was the FBI's CRIMINAL RAID on Mar-a-Lago. This can never be allowed to happen again!!! President DJT,” the president said in his original post.
Trump's social media post came hours after Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) released newly declassified emails showing that FBI agents did not believe they had the legal authority to raid Mar-a-Lago in August 2022 but did so anyway after being pressured to do so by Biden Justice Department officials.
FBI HAD DOUBTS ABOUT PROBABLE CAUSE FOR MAR-A-LAGO RAID, EMAILS SHOW
“Received shocking new docs today from DOJ & FBI showing FBI DID NOT BELIEVE IT HAD PROBABLE CAUSE to raid Pres Trump's Mar-a-Lago home but Biden DOJ pushed for it anyway,” Grassley said in a post on X. “Based on the records Mar-a-Lago raid was a miscarriage of justice.”
Received shocking new docs 2day from DOJ & FBI showing FBI DID NOT BELIEVE IT HAD PROBABLE CAUSE to raid Pres Trump's Mar-a-Lago home but Biden DOJ pushed for it anyway Based on the records Mar-a-Lago raid was a miscarriage of justice Read for urself: https://t.co/qbJNT0tcRE pic.twitter.com/ljWdjndhHE
The information posted by Grassley revealed communication between the FBI and Justice Department officials in the weeks leading up to the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago. As the Washington Examiner previously reported, FBI agents expressed doubt over concerns that the “evidentiary basis for a warrant was thin.” Those concerns were ignored, and the DOJ proceeded to obtain “a wide-ranging warrant covering the then-former president's residence, office, and storage areas at the Palm Beach, Florida, property.”
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
The sudden and severe foreign aid cuts imposed this year by U.S. President Donald Trump, along with funding reductions from other countries, shuttered thousands of schools and youth training centers and crippled child protection programs in the Cox's Bazar refugee camp, home to 1.2 million members of Myanmar's persecuted Rohingya minority in Bangladesh.
Hasina, a Rohingya refugee girl, sits inside the Rohingya refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, Thursday, Nov. 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Mahmud Hossain Opu)
An aerial view of a Rohingya refugee camp, home to over a million of Myanmar's persecuted Rohingya minority, is pictured in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, Tuesday, Nov. 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Mahmud Hossain Opu)
Ten-year-old Rohingya refugee Mohammed Arfan, left, sells snacks inside the Rohingya refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, Friday, Nov. 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Mahmud Hossain Opu)
Thirteen-year-old Rohingya refugee Rahamot Ullah collects plastic waste from a drainage canal inside the Rohingya refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, Saturday, Nov. 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Mahmud Hossain Opu)
Brown sandals of 13-year-old Mohammed are propped against the wall, alongside sparkly pink sneakers belonging to his sister, inside their shelter in the Rohingya refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, Saturday, Nov. 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Mahmud Hossain Opu)
UKHIYA, Bangladesh (AP) — In moments when she is alone, when there is a break in the beatings from her husband, the girl cries for the school that was once her place of peace in a world that has otherwise offered her none.
Ever since the military in her homeland of Myanmar killed her father in 2017, forcing her to flee to neighboring Bangladesh with her mother and little sisters, the school had protected Hasina from the predators who prowl her refugee camp, home to 1.2 million members of Myanmar's persecuted Rohingya minority.
An aerial view of a Rohingya refugee camp, home to over a million of Myanmar's persecuted Rohingya minority, is pictured in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, Tuesday, Nov. 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Mahmud Hossain Opu)
It had also protected her from being forced into marriage. And then one day in June, when Hasina was 16 years old, her teacher announced that the school's funding had been taken away. The school was closing. In a blink, Hasina's education was over, and so, too, was her childhood.
With her learning opportunities gone, and her family worried that foreign aid cuts would make their fight for survival in the camps even more perilous, Hasina — along with hundreds of other girls under the age of 18 — was quickly married off. And, just like Hasina, many of the girls are now trapped in marriages with men who abuse them.
“I dreamed of being something, of working for the community,” Hasina, now 17, says softly. The Associated Press is withholding her full name to protect her from retaliation by her husband. “My life is destroyed.”
The sudden and severe foreign aid cuts imposed this year by U.S. President Donald Trump, along with funding reductions from other countries, shuttered thousands of the camps' schools and youth training centers and crippled child protection programs. Beyond unwanted marriages, scores of children as young as 10 were forced into backbreaking manual labor, and girls as young as 12 forced into prostitution. With no safe space to play or learn, children were left to wander the labyrinthine camps, making them increasingly easy targets for kidnappers. And the young and desperate were picked off by traffickers who promised to restore what the children had lost: Hope.
In a sweltering building not far from the cramped shelter where her husband tortures her, Hasina plays nervously with the strap of her pink mobile phone case, emblazoned with the words “Forever Young.”
She is still young, she says. But the aid cuts forced her into womanhood and into a nightmare. Not long after marrying her husband, she says, he isolated her from her family and began to beat and sexually abuse her. She daydreams daily of school, where she was a whiz at English and hoped to become a teacher. Now, she is confined largely to her shelter, cooking and cleaning and waiting with dread for the next beating.
If she had any way to escape, she says, she would. But there is nowhere to go. She cannot return to Myanmar, where the military that killed thousands of Rohingya in 2017 during what the U.S. declared a genocide remains in charge of her homeland.
Now, her husband is in charge of her future, though she no longer sees one.
“If the school hadn't closed,” she says, “I wouldn't be trapped in this life.”
Kristen Gelineau has covered Myanmar's persecuted Rohingya people since 2017. Her reporting has exposed atrocities committed by Myanmar's ruling military, including systematic rape of Rohingya women and girls and widespread use of torture against civilian prisoners.
Life has always been dangerous for the 600,000 children languishing in these chaotic, overcrowded camps, where a squalid jumble of bamboo and tarpaulin shelters are jammed onto landslide-prone hills. But Trump's decision in January to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development has made it even more so, the AP found in interviews with 37 children, family members, teachers, community leaders and aid workers.
Violations against children in the camps have risen sharply this year, according to UNICEF, the United Nations' children's agency. Between January and mid-November, reported cases of abduction and kidnapping more than quadrupled over the same time period last year, to 560 children. And there has been an eightfold increase in reports of armed groups' recruitment and use of children for training and support roles in the camps, with 817 children affected. Many members of the armed groups are battling a powerful ethnic militia across the border in Myanmar. The actual number of cases is likely higher due to underreporting, according to UNICEF, which lost 27% of its funding due to the U.S. aid cuts and subsequently shuttered nearly 2,800 schools.
“The armed groups, with their roots in Myanmar, are operating in the camps, using the camps as a fertile ground for recruiting young people,” says Patrick Halton, a child protection manager for UNICEF. “Obviously, if children are not in learning centers and not in multipurpose centers, then they're more vulnerable to this.”
Verified cases of child marriage, which the U.N. defines as the union of children under age 18, rose by 21% and verified child labor cases by 17% in the year to September, compared to the same time period last year. Those statistics are likely to be a significant undercount, says Halton.
“With the funding cuts, we had to downscale a lot in terms of the education,” Halton says. “It's meant that children have not necessarily had things to do, and we've therefore seen this rise in children being married, children being in child labor.”
Though the U.S. spent just 1% of its budget on foreign aid, Trump dubbed USAID wasteful and shut it down, a move that has proven catastrophic for the world's most vulnerable. In Myanmar, the AP found the aid cuts have caused children to starve to death, despite U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio's statement to Congress that “No one has died” because of the dissolution of USAID. A study published in The Lancet journal in June said the U.S. funding cuts could result in more than 14 million deaths, including more than 4.5 million children under age 5, by 2030.
In the Bangladesh camps, the U.S. — which has long been the biggest provider of aid to the predominantly Muslim Rohingya — slashed its funding by nearly half compared to last year. The overall Rohingya emergency response is only 50% funded for 2025, and aid agencies say next year is expected to be far worse.
In a statement to the AP, the State Department said the U.S. has provided more than $168 million to the Rohingya since the beginning of Trump's term, although data from the U.N.'s financial tracking service show the U.S. contribution in 2025 is $156 million. Asked about the disparity, the State Department said the U.N.'s financial tracking service had not been recently updated and “generally does not show the latest information on all U.S. funding.”
The department said it had “advanced burden sharing and improved efficiency” in the Rohingya response, resulting in 11 countries increasing their funding by more than 10% year on year, collectively contributing $72 million.
“The Trump Administration continues to pursue the diplomatic efforts to encourage additional countries to help shoulder the burden,” the statement said.
The department didn't respond to the AP's request for evidence that the U.S. had influenced other countries' funding decisions for the Rohingya response.
When the schools shut down, hundreds of underage girls — some as young as 14 — were married off, says Showkutara, executive director of the Rohingya Women Association for Education and Development. Her network of contacts across the camps have also reported an increase in kidnapping and trafficking, as well as a huge surge in the prostitution of girls as young as 12 since the aid cuts.
“After the school closures, they had no space to play. ... That's why they're playing on the roads, far away from their blocks,” says Showkutara, who goes by one name. “There are some groups who are targeting the children.”
While UNICEF managed to repurpose some of its remaining funding, enabling the agency to recently reopen most of its learning centers, scores of schools run by other aid groups are still shut, and thousands of children remain out of class. And aid workers are anticipating even steeper funding cuts next year, leaving the schools' futures uncertain. Save the Children has only secured a third of its funding target for life-saving services for 2026, meaning 20,000 children attending its schools are at risk of losing their education starting in January, says Golam Mostofa, the group's area director for Cox's Bazar, the closest city to the camps.
Meanwhile, Showkutara says, the children locked out of learning by the initial closures are forever lost: Both metaphorically, in the case of girls like Hasina who were married off to men who will never let them return to school even if they reopen, and literally, in the case of children who vanished into the trafficking network.
“It's too late,” she says.
The little boy sits slumped on a plastic stool under the punishing sun, his cheeks streaked with sweat, a cooler of freeze pops and other treats at his dirty feet. Ever since 10-year-old Mohammed Arfan's school closed, this is where he spends 10 hours a day, seven days a week, selling snacks and daydreaming of the small schoolroom where he once felt safe and loved.
He had just finished his math lessons the day that his teacher told him the school's funding was gone. As he walked home, he and his friends began to cry.
“I thought that I would not see my friends anymore, and that I was losing my future,” he says.
Ten-year-old Rohingya refugee Mohammed Arfan, left, sells snacks inside the Rohingya refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, Friday, Nov. 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Mahmud Hossain Opu)
With no lessons to occupy his time, and his parents worried about their seven children's survival, Arfan's mother told him he would need to work to help keep the family fed.
He was terrified. If the camp's kidnappers or thieves targeted him while he was working, he knew he was too small to fight back.
But he had no choice, and so his daily drudgery began. Each morning, he wakes at 7 and walks for half an hour to the factory to pick up the treats. Then, hoisting the 15-kilogram (30-pound) cooler upon his bony shoulder, he walks another 30 minutes to the corner of the dusty road where he sets up shop among the garbage, rotting banana peels and swarms of flies. For his efforts, he takes home around 200 to 300 taka ($1.60 to $2.50) a day.
There are boys like Arfan all over the camps, selling food they're desperate to eat and collecting trash in exchange for cash, shoulders slumped with exhaustion, skin seared by the sun.
In a drainage ditch next to a row of stinking latrines, 13-year-old Rahamot Ullah wades up to his waist in water clouded with raw sewage, plucking from the muck discarded pieces of plastic. Five hours of rummaging through the waste will generally net him enough plastic to trade for around 50 taka (40 cents).
His eye blazes with blood from the bamboo that pierced it 10 days earlier while slogging through the sewage. He began coming here soon after his school shut down, in the hopes he could collect enough trash to pay the 500 taka ($4) a month fee for private lessons. Many months, that fee has remained out of reach.
He worries he will drown in the ditch. And he worries that his dreams of becoming a camp official or a teacher will never come true.
Thirteen-year-old Rohingya refugee Rahamot Ullah collects plastic waste from a drainage canal inside the Rohingya refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, Saturday, Nov. 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Mahmud Hossain Opu)
Back on the street corner, Arfan, too, feels his dreams dying. He shouldn't be here, he says, voice barely audible above the incessant shrieking of horns from the rickshaws racing past, just inches from his cooler.
“I feel shame working,” he says. “This is the time I should be studying.”
Each night when the sun sets, Arfan packs up and heads back to his shelter. And it is here where he lies on a mat on the bamboo floor, crying himself to sleep and pining for the life he was forced to leave behind.
The laughter that once filled Noor Zia's classroom has been replaced by tears. Nearly every day, she says, her former students stop by to see if the school has reopened, only to break down when told it has not.
Zia often finds herself in tears, too. Before the aid cuts, she was the head teacher of 21 early learning centers that served 630 children aged 3-5. But the closures left her without a job, making it even harder for her to keep her family alive on the camp's meager rations.
“My heart is still crying, because my family depends on this job,” she says, sitting in the empty classroom, where the wall behind her is adorned with a drawing of the Myanmar flag — a country most of her students, born in the camps, have never seen.
The funding cuts' pain goes beyond the school closures. Skills development programs that kept thousands of children occupied were also halted. Healthcare, nutrition and sanitation services have been reduced. In camps crawling with scabies and other diseases, the results of the reductions are clear on the children's scrawny bodies. Lesions line their slender limbs. The wet, rattling coughs of babies fill the fetid air. Atop a muddy hill, clusters of kids scratch ferociously at their heads, while a 4-year-old stoically plucks nits from her friend's scalp.
Bangladesh has barred the Rohingya from leaving the camps to find work, so they are reliant upon humanitarian aid to survive. But the U.N.'s World Food Program, which had counted the U.S. as its largest donor, says it only has enough funds to continue providing food rations through March.
The prospect of a ration cut has terrified families. With no country offering the Rohingya large-scale resettlement, many have opted to make a run for it, with devastating results. Nearly a third of the 1,340 Rohingya who have fled Bangladesh by boat this year have died or gone missing en route, according to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.
Noor Kaida, a 17-year-old whose dreams of becoming a doctor were dashed when she was married off after her school shut, says she has lost two young relatives to traffickers. Shattered by the school closures, the 13- and 16-year-old girls believed traffickers who promised them a better life in Malaysia, Kaida says. Other passengers on the girls' boats later told Kaida's family both girls were killed; one by drowning, and the other at the hands of a trafficker.
“If the school wasn't closed, they wouldn't have had to take these risks,” Kaida says. “Because of the funding cuts and the school closures, thousands of girls were scattered in different places and their lives have been ruined.”
The 13-year-old boy had been missing for nine days when the call came in from an unfamiliar number.
“Baba, I'm leaving,” Mohammed told his frantic father. “I'm on the big boat now. Pray for me.”
The call disconnected, and Mohib Ullah knew his worst nightmare had come true: Just like so many other children in recent months, his boy had been taken by traffickers. Ullah — who has no relation to Rahamot Ullah — called back again and again, but the phone was switched off.
Mohammed — whose full name the AP is withholding for safety reasons — had been miserable since his school closed. The kindhearted boy who loved to read and learn, especially English, had long dreamed of becoming a teacher. When his education ended, he told his father through tears that his life was over. Ullah promised to try and find money for private school, but as a widower caring for four children, it was impossible.
Brown sandals of 13-year-old Mohammed are propped against the wall, alongside sparkly pink sneakers belonging to his sister, inside their shelter in the Rohingya refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, Saturday, Nov. 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Mahmud Hossain Opu)
The teen hatched a plan, which he shared in secret with his big sister, Bibi: He would go with a trafficker to Malaysia, and find a future there. Bibi tried to talk him out of it; traffickers who take children on the long, dangerous journey generally detain the youngsters at the end until their parents pay a fee for their release. The children of parents who can't pay are often tortured, and sometimes killed. Bibi warned her brother that their father would never be able to afford the trafficker's payment.
But Mohammed didn't care. “It's better to withstand two years of torture than stay here in a hopeless camp,” he told his sister. “It's better to die if I can't continue learning.”
In a panic, Bibi shared her brother's plan with their father, who was horrified; he knew how deadly the journey to Malaysia can be. He ordered his son to stay put, and to stay patient. The schools will reopen someday, he assured Mohammed. But the teen was convinced they would not.
And so, one morning in October, Mohammed left his family's shelter and never returned. Ullah scoured the camps and called relatives, searching for any trace of his son. He couldn't sleep, couldn't eat. He has already lost another son, an 8-year-old who suddenly died on the anniversary of Ullah's wife's death, after crying all day about missing his mother and then saying he felt unwell. The prospect of losing one more child was unbearable.
Mohammed's call came on Oct. 21. And then, for over six weeks, there was silence.
On Dec. 6, Ullah's phone finally rang. It was Mohammed — still alive, but sick and sobbing. The traffickers were demanding 380,000 taka ($3,100) for his release — an astronomical sum that Ullah told Mohammed he did not have. But the terrified boy begged his father to try and find it.
Ullah knew if couldn't, his son would likely be killed. And so he pleaded with anyone he could think of for any money they could spare. In the end, he collected just enough, and Mohammed was set free in Malaysia.
Ullah does not know what will become of his boy, who is still so young and wandering around a country that is alien to him.
“If he could have continued his studies, he could have been a teacher, he could have stayed near me,” Ullah says, blinking back tears. “Now he's left me and I can't see him. So I lost my dream, too.”
His voice cracks as he describes what was long one of his greatest joys: The sight of his son coming home from school, backpack slung across his shoulders.
Now, the stacks of workbooks Mohammed once pored over sit in his bedroom, untouched. His brown sandals are propped against the wall, alongside the sparkly pink sneakers belonging to the sister who tried in vain to stop him.
And, hanging from a piece of bamboo, gathering dust, is his backpack.
—-
Contact AP's global investigative team at [email protected] or https://www.ap.org/tips/.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
A Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor was shot and killed inside his suburban Boston home.
The suspect fled the scene and is currently being sought by police. Nuno F.G. Loureiro, 47, was found fatally wounded in his home on Monday night and pronounced dead at the hospital on Tuesday. He was mourned by the university, described as an “imaginative scholar, gifted administrator, and enthusiastic mentor” by MIT President Sally Kornbluth in a statement.
“In the face of this shocking loss, our hearts go out to his wife and their family and to his many devoted students, friends, and colleagues,” she said.
“This shocking loss for our community comes in a period of disturbing violence in many other places. It's entirely natural to feel the need for comfort and support,” Kornbluth continued. “In time, the many communities Nuno belonged to will create opportunities to mourn his loss and celebrate his life.”
Dozens gathered outside Loureiro's home for a candlelight vigil.
The U.S. Ambassador to Portugal, John Arrigo, also extended his condolences.
“I extend my deepest condolences to the family, friends, and colleagues of Nuno Loureiro, who led MIT's Plasma Science and Fusion Center. We honor his life, his leadership in science, and his enduring contributions,” he said in a statement.
Loureiro had emigrated from Portugal and joined MIT in 2016. At the time of his death, he was a faculty member in the departments of Nuclear Science & Engineering and Physics and the Director of MIT's Plasma Science and Fusion Center.
His murder comes just one day after the Brown University shooting, leading to some speculation that the two could be connected. However, a law enforcement source with knowledge of both investigations told ABC News there was no evidence to suggest a connection between the two.
He was widely mourned by his fellow faculty, who inundated him with praise.
“Nuno was not only a brilliant scientist, he was a brilliant person,” Dennis Whyte, the Hitachi America Professor of Engineering, who previously served as the head of the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering and director of the Plasma Science and Fusion Center, told MIT News. “He shone a bright light as a mentor, friend, teacher, colleague and leader, and was universally admired for his articulate, compassionate manner. His loss is immeasurable to our community at the PSFC, NSE and MIT, and around the entire fusion and plasma research world.”
POLICE RELEASE VIDEO TIMELINE OF BROWN UNIVERSITY SHOOTING SUSPECT BEFORE AND AFTER ATTACK
Several mourned his death as a major blow to scientific advancement in the field of plasma physics.
“Nuno was a champion for plasma physics within the Physics Department, a wonderful and engaging colleague, and an inspiring and caring mentor for graduate students working in plasma science. His recent work on quantum computing algorithms for plasma physics simulations was a particularly exciting new scientific direction,” Deepto Chakrabarty, the William A. M. Burden Professor in Astrophysics and head of the Department of Physics, told the outlet.
A Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor was shot and killed inside his suburban Boston home.
The suspect fled the scene and is currently being sought by police. Nuno F.G. Loureiro, 47, was found fatally wounded in his home on Monday night and pronounced dead at the hospital on Tuesday. He was mourned by the university, described as an “imaginative scholar, gifted administrator, and enthusiastic mentor” by MIT President Sally Kornbluth in a statement.
“In the face of this shocking loss, our hearts go out to his wife and their family and to his many devoted students, friends, and colleagues,” she said.
“This shocking loss for our community comes in a period of disturbing violence in many other places. It's entirely natural to feel the need for comfort and support,” Kornbluth continued. “In time, the many communities Nuno belonged to will create opportunities to mourn his loss and celebrate his life.”
Dozens gathered outside Loureiro's home for a candlelight vigil.
The U.S. Ambassador to Portugal, John Arrigo, also extended his condolences.
“I extend my deepest condolences to the family, friends, and colleagues of Nuno Loureiro, who led MIT's Plasma Science and Fusion Center. We honor his life, his leadership in science, and his enduring contributions,” he said in a statement.
Loureiro had emigrated from Portugal and joined MIT in 2016. At the time of his death, he was a faculty member in the departments of Nuclear Science & Engineering and Physics and the Director of MIT's Plasma Science and Fusion Center.
His murder comes just one day after the Brown University shooting, leading to some speculation that the two could be connected. However, a law enforcement source with knowledge of both investigations told ABC News there was no evidence to suggest a connection between the two.
He was widely mourned by his fellow faculty, who inundated him with praise.
“Nuno was not only a brilliant scientist, he was a brilliant person,” Dennis Whyte, the Hitachi America Professor of Engineering, who previously served as the head of the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering and director of the Plasma Science and Fusion Center, told MIT News. “He shone a bright light as a mentor, friend, teacher, colleague and leader, and was universally admired for his articulate, compassionate manner. His loss is immeasurable to our community at the PSFC, NSE and MIT, and around the entire fusion and plasma research world.”
POLICE RELEASE VIDEO TIMELINE OF BROWN UNIVERSITY SHOOTING SUSPECT BEFORE AND AFTER ATTACK
Several mourned his death as a major blow to scientific advancement in the field of plasma physics.
“Nuno was a champion for plasma physics within the Physics Department, a wonderful and engaging colleague, and an inspiring and caring mentor for graduate students working in plasma science. His recent work on quantum computing algorithms for plasma physics simulations was a particularly exciting new scientific direction,” Deepto Chakrabarty, the William A. M. Burden Professor in Astrophysics and head of the Department of Physics, told the outlet.
President Donald Trump ordered a blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers coming in and out of Venezuela and designated Nicolas Maduro's government a foreign terrorist organization.
Trump made the announcement in a threatening message on Truth Social on Tuesday, boasting that the South American nation was “completely surrounded by the largest Armada ever assembled in the History of South America.” He warned that pressure would only increase and demanded the government “return to the United States of America all of the Oil, Land, and other Assets that they previously stole from us.”
“For the theft of our Assets, and many other reasons, including Terrorism, Drug Smuggling, and Human Trafficking, the Venezuelan Regime has been designated a FOREIGN TERRORIST ORGANIZATION. Therefore, today, I am ordering A TOTAL AND COMPLETE BLOCKADE OF ALL SANCTIONED OIL TANKERS going into, and out of, Venezuela,” Trump declared, adding that Venezuelan migrants and criminals that entered during the “weak and inept” Biden administration were being returned “at a rapid pace.”
The theft Trump repeatedly derides refers to the nationalization of foreign oil assets in the country by Maduro's predecessor, Hugo Chavez, in 2007. The president said all assets must be returned to the U.S. “IMMEDIATELY.”
Trump's comments mark his biggest escalation against Maduro yet, marking a move that could place crippling economic and political pressure on Caracas.
In August, the Trump administration accused Maduro of being a “narco-terrorist,” offering a $50 million bounty for information leading to his arrest. On Sept. 2, the United States began its air campaign against alleged drug boats in the Caribbean Sea. The strikes have killed 94 people, with White House chief of staff Susie Wiles saying in a Vanity Fair interview published Tuesday that they would continue until Maduro “cries uncle.”
The strikes on the suspected drug vessels are widely interpreted as an unsubtle threat to the Maduro government, showing that Washington is fully willing and ready to use lethal force against Venezuela, coming alongside the largest buildup of U.S. military forces in the Caribbean since the 1990s. The logistical effort required to maintain the buildup has fed speculation that Trump could be gearing up for massive strikes against Venezuela, intended to cripple the Maduro government and force him out.
It has conducted simulated bombing runs against Venezuela using heavy B-52 and B-1 bombers.
Trump and administration officials have even gone so far as to deliver unsubtle threats against the life of Maduro himself.
“I would say yeah,” Trump responded when asked in a November 60 Minutes interview if Maduro's days were numbered. “I think so, yeah.”
The president has repeated the line several times since.
SEIZED OIL TANKER IS ANOTHER POINT TO TRUMP'S PRESSURE CAMPAIGN ON MADURO
U.S. officials explained the Trump administration's strategy to the Wall Street Journal last month, saying that the increasing pressure could push some within Venezuela's security elite to turn against Maduro and force him out of power before any military intervention is needed.
Pressure has only increased on Venezuela since. Over the past week, U.S. special forces boarded the Skipper, a sanctioned vessel transporting Venezuelan oil, in the first move of its kind. Most oil exports go to China.
In this article
Rohit Prasad, a top Amazon executive overseeing its artificial general intelligence unit, is leaving at the end of this year, the company confirmed Wednesday.
As part of the move, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in a blog post that the company is reorganizing the AGI unit under a more expansive division that will also include its silicon development and quantum computing teams. The new division will be led by Peter DeSantis, a 27-year veteran of Amazon who currently serves as a senior vice president in its cloud unit.
Jassy said the company is reorganizing its AI teams as it believes it has reached an "inflection point" with the technologies.
Amazon has been trying to beat the perception held by some industry watchers that it's falling behind rivals in developing AI products. The company released its own foundation models, called Nova, as it races to compete with OpenAI, Google and Anthropic. It also makes its own line of Trainium custom AI chips that compete with Nvidia.
"With the foundation that's been built, the traction we're seeing, and Peter's leadership bringing unified focus to these technologies, we're well-positioned to lead and deliver meaningful capabilities for our customers," Jassy wrote. "I'm excited about what this team will build and how these foundational technologies will help shape Amazon's future."
DeSantis will report directly to Jassy, he noted. The company is also tapping Pieter Abbeel, who joined Amazon in 2024 after it acquired robotics startup Covariant, to lead Amazon's frontier model research team within the AGI group.
DeSantis joined Amazon in 1998, starting in the early days of Amazon Web Services as a general manager, and working his way up to become an SVP in 2016. For the past four years, he's led the AWS computing product teams, which include compute, storage, database, security and custom chip development, according to his LinkedIn page.
Prasad, who joined Amazon in 2013, previously served as a head scientist for Alexa before he was tapped in August to steer the company's development of AGI.
Jassy said in the memo that Prasad has been "missionary, passionate, and selfless, and I'm grateful for his leadership, his technical vision, and everything he's built here."
WATCH: Amazon and OpenAI in talks for a $10 billion investment deal
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At least 34 U.S.-sanctioned oil tankers with a history of carrying Venezuelan oil are currently at sea in the Caribbean, according to a new analysis obtained by CNBC on Wednesday.
And at least 12 of those tankers appear to be filled with crude oil from Venezuela, according to vessel location data from Kpler, a global trade intelligence company.
One of the tankers, Skipper, was seized by the U.S. forces in the Caribbean last week and was being taken to the United States.
Kpler provided the analysis a day after President Donald Trump vowed to impose a "complete and total blockade" on sanctioned oil tankers moving in and out of Venezuela. Trump also deemed the nation's ruling Maduro regime a foreign terrorist organization.
The U.S. is expected to block only sanctioned tankers carrying oil from Venezuela, not similar vessels that have other nations' crude, including oil from Iran and Russia, according to Kpler.
"In light of President Trump's recent announcement, these tankers may be exposed to heightened scrutiny and potential enforcement actions by U.S. authorities," Dimitris Ampatzidis, senior risk and compliance Analyst at Kpler, told CNBC.
In a separate report to clients on Wednesday, Kpler said that a blockade of Venezuelan oil should not lead to higher crude prices.
"The move has so far failed to provide a meaningful boost to oil prices or to overturn underlying fundamentals, largely because the market is two-tiered and even the sanctioned segment remains crowded," Kpler's report said.
Oil prices rallied by nearly 2% on Wednesday.
Chevron is the only company authorized by the United States to carry Venezuelan crude to the U.S.
"Oil bound for the US under Chevron's license could continue to flow," Kpler's report said.
"This suggests that Venezuelan supply to sanctioned markets would be disrupted, while volumes destined for the US would remain intact, with China- and Cuba-bound cargoes bearing the brunt of the impact."
Besides Skipper, the 11 sanctioned tankers that appear to be carrying Venezuelan crude are Star Twinkle 6, Hyperion, Boceanica, Lydya N, Bandra, Soldier, Avril, Phenix VI, Manuela Saenz, Dianchi and Baisha.
Venezuela has produced around 900,000 barrels of crude oil and condensate so far in 2025, accounting for roughly 1% of the total global supply.
Kpler data indicates China buys about 76% of Venezuela's output.
The U.S. has imported around 17% of Venezuela's output in 2025. That is about half of the percentage of output imported in 2024.
Cuba, Spain and Italy are the other significant customers of Venezuela's oil.
"Cargoes bound for the US are expected to remain intact, while China and Cuba are likely to seek substitutes from Russia and Iran," Kpler's report noted.
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Billionaire hedge fund manager Ray Dalio and his wife, Barbara, have committed to seed Trump accounts, a type of investment account for kids.
"Ray has joined what we are calling the 50-state challenge," Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a press conference on Wednesday. "We are inviting every philanthropist in every state across the country to partner with us in building generational wealth for America's children through Trump accounts."
The Dalio grant will fund $250 per child for approximately 300,000 children in Connecticut. This applies to children who live in a ZIP code where the median income is less than $150,000. About 87% of Connecticut ZIP codes meet that criteria, according to a CNBC analysis of Census Bureau data.
"Barbara and I believe strongly in the importance of equal opportunity and believe this initiative is an important step in that direction," Ray Dalio, who is the founder of the investment firm Bridgewater Associates, said in a statement.
A Wednesday update on trumpaccounts.gov ahead of the announcement named the Dalios in a section on additional support: "Michael and Susan Dell, Ray and Barbara Dalio. More to come."
The Dalio family and Dalio Philanthropies have previously donated over $280 million to nonprofit causes in Connecticut.
Trump accounts were created under President Donald Trump's "big beautiful bill," which Congress passed in July.
Babies born in 2025 through 2028 will each receive a one-time $1,000 deposit in their account. There are no income requirements, and everyone is eligible for the government's seed money, as long as the child is a U.S. citizen.
To open a Trump account, an election must be made on IRS Form 4547. The form can be filed separately or with your 2025 tax return. Beginning in mid-2026, you can also make the election online at trumpaccounts.gov.
Earlier this month, the pilot program got a significant boost when Michael Dell, founder and CEO of Dell Technologies, and his wife, Susan, announced a $6.25 billion pledge to help fund the new savings accounts for children.
Children 10 or under and born before Jan. 1, 2025 — who wouldn't qualify for the $1,000 initial deposit from the government — may also be able to receive $250 from the Dell family grant deposited to their Trump account if they live in a ZIP code where the median income is $150,000 or less.
A growing number of companies have announced they will match contributions to Trump accounts for their employees, including BNY and BlackRock. During a roundtable event at the White House in June, Dell vowed to match the government's seed money "dollar for dollar" for his employees' kids.
BNY announced on Dec. 11 that the company will match the federal government's $1,000 seed money for eligible newborns of its U.S. employees. On Wednesday, BlackRock said it would also match the one-time $1,000 donation for children of its U.S. employees.
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Billionaire hedge fund manager Ray Dalio and his wife, Barbara, have committed to seed Trump accounts, a type of investment account for kids.
"Ray has joined what we are calling the 50-state challenge," Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a press conference on Wednesday. "We are inviting every philanthropist in every state across the country to partner with us in building generational wealth for America's children through Trump accounts."
The Dalio grant will fund $250 per child for approximately 300,000 children in Connecticut. This applies to children who live in a ZIP code where the median income is less than $150,000. About 87% of Connecticut ZIP codes meet that criteria, according to a CNBC analysis of Census Bureau data.
"Barbara and I believe strongly in the importance of equal opportunity and believe this initiative is an important step in that direction," Ray Dalio, who is the founder of the investment firm Bridgewater Associates, said in a statement.
A Wednesday update on trumpaccounts.gov ahead of the announcement named the Dalios in a section on additional support: "Michael and Susan Dell, Ray and Barbara Dalio. More to come."
The Dalio family and Dalio Philanthropies have previously donated over $280 million to nonprofit causes in Connecticut.
Trump accounts were created under President Donald Trump's "big beautiful bill," which Congress passed in July.
Babies born in 2025 through 2028 will each receive a one-time $1,000 deposit in their account. There are no income requirements, and everyone is eligible for the government's seed money, as long as the child is a U.S. citizen.
To open a Trump account, an election must be made on IRS Form 4547. The form can be filed separately or with your 2025 tax return. Beginning in mid-2026, you can also make the election online at trumpaccounts.gov.
Earlier this month, the pilot program got a significant boost when Michael Dell, founder and CEO of Dell Technologies, and his wife, Susan, announced a $6.25 billion pledge to help fund the new savings accounts for children.
Children 10 or under and born before Jan. 1, 2025 — who wouldn't qualify for the $1,000 initial deposit from the government — may also be able to receive $250 from the Dell family grant deposited to their Trump account if they live in a ZIP code where the median income is $150,000 or less.
A growing number of companies have announced they will match contributions to Trump accounts for their employees, including BNY and BlackRock. During a roundtable event at the White House in June, Dell vowed to match the government's seed money "dollar for dollar" for his employees' kids.
BNY announced on Dec. 11 that the company will match the federal government's $1,000 seed money for eligible newborns of its U.S. employees. On Wednesday, BlackRock said it would also match the one-time $1,000 donation for children of its U.S. employees.
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In this article
Oracle stock dipped about 5% on Wednesday following a report that discussions with Blue Owl Capital on backing a $10 billion data center in Michigan had stalled, although the cloud company later disputed the report.
Blue Owl had been in talks with Oracle about funding a 1-gigawatt facility for OpenAI in Saline Township, Michigan, according to the Financial Times.
However, the plans fell through due to concerns about Oracle's rising debt levels and extensive artificial intelligence spending, the FT reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
This comes as some investors raise red flags about the funding behind the rush to build ever more data centers.
The concern is that some hyperscalers are turning to private equity markets rather than funding the buildings themselves, and entering into lease agreements that could prove risky.
Other AI names also sank on Wednesday, with Broadcom down 5%, Nvidia down 3%, AMD down 4% and CoreWeave falling 5%.
Blue Owl did look into the project, but pulled out due to unfavorable debt terms and the structure of repayments, according to a person familiar with the company's plans who asked not to be named in order to discuss a confidential matter.
Blue Owl is still involved in two other Oracle sites, the person said.
The person added that Blue Owl was also concerned that local politics in Michigan would cause construction delays.
Oracle later responded to the FT report, saying the project was moving forward and that Blue Owl was not part of equity talks.
"Our development partner, Related Digital, selected the best equity partner from a competitive group of options, which in this instance was not Blue Owl. Final negotiations for their equity deal are moving forward on schedule and according to plan," Oracle spokesperson Michael Egbert said in a statement.
The cloud company did not name the firm involved in current equity talks for the project.
"The notion that Blue Owl walked away is unequivocally false. This is an exceptional project that drew significant interest from equity partners," Related Digital spokesperson Natalie Ravitz told CNBC.
Ravitz said the equity partner working on the project has "unparalleled expertise in the space" but did not name the firm.
The site, which is expected to begin construction in the first quarter next year, is currently in pre-construction with "strong support" from Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, she added.
CNBC has reached out to the FT for comment.
The FT said that Blackstone is in discussions to potentially replace Blue Owl Capital as a financial partner for the data center, although no deal has been signed yet.
Blue Owl Capital has been the primary investor in Oracle's data center projects in the U.S., including a $15 billion center in Abilene, Texas, and an $18 billion site in New Mexico, the FT said.
"This appears to be a case where the deal simply wasn't the right one, and seasoned investors understand that success does not require winning every transaction," Evercore ISI analysts wrote in a note on Wednesday.
The bank added that digital infrastructure remains a "core growth vertical" for the Blue Owl, noting an upcoming digital infrastructure fund in 2026 that would add to its $7 billion fund announced in May.
Oracle has $248 billion in lease commitments for data centers and cloud capacity commitments over the next 15 to 19 years as of Nov. 30, the company said in its latest quarterly filing. That is up almost 148% from August.
In September, the cloud computing giant raised $18 billion in new debt, according to an SEC filing. That same month, OpenAI announced a $300 billion partnership with Oracle over the next five years.
By the end of November, the company owed over $124 billion, including operating lease liabilities, according to the filing.
Oracle shares are down about 50% from the high of $345.72 reached in September.
Read the full FT story here.
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In this article
Oracle stock dipped about 5% on Wednesday following a report that discussions with Blue Owl Capital on backing a $10 billion data center in Michigan had stalled, although the cloud company later disputed the report.
Blue Owl had been in talks with Oracle about funding a 1-gigawatt facility for OpenAI in Saline Township, Michigan, according to the Financial Times.
However, the plans fell through due to concerns about Oracle's rising debt levels and extensive artificial intelligence spending, the FT reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
This comes as some investors raise red flags about the funding behind the rush to build ever more data centers.
The concern is that some hyperscalers are turning to private equity markets rather than funding the buildings themselves, and entering into lease agreements that could prove risky.
Blue Owl did look into the project, but pulled out due to unfavorable debt terms and the structure of repayments, according to a person familiar with the company's plans who asked not to be named in order to discuss a confidential matter.
Blue Owl is still involved in two other Oracle sites, the person said.
The person added that Blue Owl was also concerned that local politics in Michigan would cause construction delays.
Oracle later responded to the FT report, saying the project was moving forward and that Blue Owl was not part of equity talks.
"Our development partner, Related Digital, selected the best equity partner from a competitive group of options, which in this instance was not Blue Owl. Final negotiations for their equity deal are moving forward on schedule and according to plan," Oracle spokesperson Michael Egbert said in a statement.
The cloud company did not name the firm involved in current equity talks for the project.
CNBC has reached out to the FT for comment.
The FT said that Blackstone is in discussions to potentially replace Blue Owl Capital as a financial partner for the data center, although no deal has been signed yet.
Blue Owl Capital has been the primary investor in Oracle's data center projects in the U.S., including a $15 billion center in Abilene, Texas, and an $18 billion site in New Mexico, the FT said.
"This appears to be a case where the deal simply wasn't the right one, and seasoned investors understand that success does not require winning every transaction," Evercore ISI analysts wrote in a note on Wednesday.
The bank added that digital infrastructure remains a "core growth vertical" for the Blue Owl, noting an upcoming digital infrastructure fund in 2026 that would add to its $7 billion fund announced in May.
Oracle has $248 billion in lease commitments for data centers and cloud capacity commitments over the next 15 to 19 years as of Nov. 30, the company said in its latest quarterly filing. That is up almost 148% from August.
In September, the cloud computing giant raised $18 billion in new debt, according to an SEC filing. That same month, OpenAI announced a $300 billion partnership with Oracle over the next five years.
By the end of November, the company owed over $124 billion, including operating lease liabilities, according to the filing.
Oracle shares are down about 50% from the high of $345.72 reached in September.
Read the full FT story here.
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Four moderate House Republicans rebelled against House Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday, joining Democrats to force a vote on extending key Affordable Care Act subsidies that are set to expire at the end of the year.
If approved, the measure will extend ACA tax credits for three years.
If those subsidies expire as scheduled, the prices of Obamacare health insurance premiums that millions of Americans personally pay will skyrocket.
The stunning defections by the quartet of Republicans came a day after Johnson, R-La., said that GOP leaders would not allow a vote under normal procedures on keeping the enhanced ACA tax credits alive into 2026.
Johnson earlier Wednesday morning urged GOP caucus members not to join Democrats in the procedural end-run around him.
Lacking sufficient Republican support to extend the credits, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., in November created a so-called discharge petition, which would force a vote on an extension once it obtained signatures from 218 House members.
Democrats only have 214 members, so they needed four Republicans for that measure to work.
Johnson on Wednesday was asked about the discharge petition on CNBC's "Squawk Box." He said that "doing an end-run around the majority party, the speaker or the regular process is not the best way to make law."
But about two hours later, four moderate Republicans signed the petition: Brian Fitzpatrick, Rob Bresnahan and Ryan Mackenzie, all of Pennsylvania, and Mike Lawler of New York signed the petition.
"When leadership blocks action entirely, Congress has a responsibility to act," Lawler said in a statement after signing the petition. "My priority is ensuring Hudson Valley families aren't caught in the gridlock."
The vote on extending the ACA subsidies is critical for vulnerable House Republicans up for reelection in 2026 as the GOP tries to hang on to its razor-thin majority. Lawler on Tuesday said not holding a vote on the subsidies would be "political malpractice."
If the measure clears the House, it would still need to be approved by the Senate. Last week, the Senate rejected a similar measure that would have extended the subsidies for three years.
"Under this proposal, people making $500k+ per year would continue to be eligible for what were supposed to be temporary COVID-era subsidies," said Senate Majority Leader John Thune's spokesperson Ryan Wrasse in a social media post on Wednesday.
Johnson and GOP leadership are pushing a separate health-care bill that would not extend the enhanced subsidies. The House will vote on that bill, which would provide cost-sharing aid for consumers, on Wednesday.
Johnson told "Squawk Box" that GOP caucus members could tackle health insurance costs in early 2026.
"We're looking at another reconciliation package, for example, in the first quarter of next year, which will have a number of other revisions and reforms to the system, and all of it is geared, again, for reducing premiums, increasing access to care and quality of care," the speaker said.
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Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller told CNBC on Wednesday that he will "absolutely" emphasize the importance of central bank independence to President Donald Trump.
Waller is one of five finalists to potentially succeed Jerome Powell when the Federal Reserve chairman's term ends in May. He is scheduled to have an interview with Trump on Wednesday.
"Absolutely," Waller said when asked by CNBC's Steve Liesman whether he would emphasize Fed independence during his interview with the president.
"I spent 20 years of my life working on central bank independence and why it was important," he said at the Yale CEO Summit. "I have a long paper trail on this."
Trump regularly weighs in on Fed decisions, accusing the central bank of moving too slowly to cut interest rates. The president has been a harsh critic of Powell and has mused publicly about firing him before his term is up.
This has raised fears among some investors that Trump will try to install a pliant ally as Fed chair after Powell leaves the central bank. But Waller said Trump already makes his views about Fed decisions clear on Truth Social, leaving no confusion about where the president stands on monetary policy.
The biweekly breakfast between the Fed chair and Treasury Secretary is the appropriate venue for communication between the White House and the central bank rather than face-to-face meetings with the president, Waller said.
Waller told CNBC that he views rates as still 50 to 100 basis points above a neutral rate that is not stimulative or restrictive.
"We still got some room that we could bring things down," Waller said.
National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett has been viewed as the front-runner to succeed Powell, though some high-level people close to Trump have pushed back on his candidacy. Former Fed Governor Kevin Warsh is also on the short list.
"I think you have Kevin and Kevin. They're both — I think the two Kevins are great," Trump told The Wall Street Journal last week.
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U.S. prosecutors charged top executives of bankrupt subprime auto lender Tricolor Holdings with what they described as a yearslong, "systematic fraud" scheme that sent shockwaves through the banking sector earlier this year.
In an indictment unsealed in Manhattan, prosecutors allege that from at least 2018 through September 2025, founder and CEO Daniel Chu and chief operating officer David Goodgame orchestrated a series of fraudulent schemes that let Tricolor obtain billions of dollars from lenders and investors by misrepresenting the value of its loan collateral.Tricolor sold used cars to customers with limited or poor credit in the south and southwest, and told the court they had more than $1 billion in assets at the time it declared bankruptcy in September.
Tricolor executives repeatedly pledged the same auto loans to multiple lenders at the same time, or "double-pledged" assets to banks, and manipulated loan data so that delinquent or charged-off loans appeared eligible for financing, the indictment said.
Banks including JPMorgan and Jefferies Financial Group had lent hundreds of millions of dollars to Tricolor and auto parts maker First Brands by the time they failed, both in the same month, fueling concern on Wall Street that stresses in the private credit and leveraged lending markets might spread.
Jefferies and some regional banks briefly tumbled in mid-October on growing fears that more bad loans were lurking around the corner. One day, Utah's Zions Bancorporation dropped more than 13%, Arizona's Western Alliance Bancorp fell more than 10% and the SPDR S&P Regional Banking ETF (KRE) lost more than 6%.
The same month, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said that the bankruptcies at Tricolor and First Brands were signs that corporate lending practices had grown too lax over the past decade.
"When you see one cockroach, there are probably more," Dimon said in a conference call. "Everyone should be forewarned on this one."
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Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller is slated to speak at at the Yale CEO Summit on Wednesday.
Waller is one of the five finalists considered to replace Fed Chairman Jerome Powell when his term expires in May. He's set to be interviewed by President Donald Trump this week, CNBC's Steve Liesman reported. Trump has signaled that Kevin Warsh and Kevin Hassett are the frontrunners to succeed Powell, however.
Waller, who was appointed to the Fed's board by Trump and confirmed by the Senate in late 2020, has emerged this year as one of the central bank's strongest voices pushing for rate cuts. The Fed lowered rates by a quarter point at each of its past three meetings. Waller previously dissented in July, when policymakers opted to keep rates unchanged.
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The Warner Bros. Discovery board on Wednesday said it unanimously recommended that WBD shareholders reject a takeover offer from Paramount Skydance and stick with a "superior" proposal from Netflix.
Last week, Paramount launched a hostile bid for WBD, taking a $30-per-share, all-cash offer directly to shareholders. Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison has argued that the deal, which equates to an enterprise value of $108.4 billion, is better than Netflix's and that a Paramount-WBD combination would have better chances of winning regulatory approval.
"Following a careful evaluation of Paramount's recently launched tender offer, the Board concluded that the offer's value is inadequate, with significant risks and costs imposed on our shareholders," Samuel Di Piazza, chair of the Warner Bros. Discovery board, said in a news release. "We are confident that our merger with Netflix represents superior, more certain value for our shareholders and we look forward to delivering on the compelling benefits of our combination."
The formal rejection, which was expected, potentially sets the stage for a new, higher bid from Paramount. Ellison told CNBC last week he had already informed WBD CEO David Zaslav that the $30-per-share bid isn't the company's "best and final" offer. Paramount can announce a new offer, aimed directly at shareholders, at any time.
Still, Paramount said Wednesday it doesn't plan to increase its offer yet.
"I have been encouraged by the feedback we have received from WBD shareholders who clearly understand the benefits of our offer," Ellison wrote in a statement. "We will continue to move forward to deliver this transaction, which is in the best interest of WBD shareholders, consumers, and the creative industries."
If Paramount does eventually up its bid, WBD signaled in its rejection it wants more of the funding to come directly from the Ellison family.
The WBD board noted the Paramount bid includes more than $40 billion of financing that is separate from the Ellison family despite Paramount claiming the funding has a "full backstop" from the family. On Tuesday, Jared Kushner's Affinity Partners exited its involvement in the bid, which also includes roughly $24 billion from Gulf state sovereign wealth funds.
"Despite their own ample resources, as well as multiple assurances by PSKY during our strategic review process that such a commitment was forthcoming — the Ellison family has chosen not to backstop the PSKY offer," the board said in a letter to shareholders.
Di Piazza told CNBC's David Faber on "Squawk Box" on Wednesday that the board would have appreciated more involvement from Ellison's father, billionaire Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison.
"We were not confident that one of the richest people in the world would be there at closing," Di Piazza said. "Doing a deal is great; closing a deal is better."
Netflix has proposed a cash-and-stock transaction for WBD's streaming and studio assets, worth an equity value of $72 billion or enterprise value of roughly $83 billion, including debt. Under that deal, Warner Bros. Discovery's portfolio of cable networks would be spun out into a separate entity.
"Netflix made a compelling offer — it was heavy in cash, certainty of close, a high termination fee, and they responded to the operating issues that we were concerned about," Di Piazza told CNBC. "PSKY had every opportunity to deal with that broad range of issues, and they chose not to."
WBD noted that Netflix's bid had "no need for any equity financing and robust debt commitments," given Netflix's market valuation of more than $400 billion.
"It was not a hard choice," Di Piazza told CNBC.
He also dismissed antitrust questions surrounding both proposals: "Either of these deals can get done. Both of these deals will have to fight their way through the [Department of Justice]."
Di Piazza said the company will hold a shareholder vote in spring or early summer, though he said the date hasn't been set.
Mario Gabelli, GAMCO Investors CEO and a WBD shareholder, told CNBC's Becky Quick on Wednesday that while he was previously leaning toward the Paramount offer, "the most important part is to keep it in play," hoping for more back-and-forth from both bidders.
Netflix on Wednesday said it "welcomes" the Warner Bros. Discovery board's recommendation.
"This was a competitive process that delivered the best outcome for consumers, creators, stockholders and the broader entertainment industry," Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said in a statement. "Netflix and Warner Bros. complement each other, and we're excited to combine our strengths with their theatrical film division, world-class television studio, and the iconic HBO brand, which will continue to focus on prestige television."
Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters on Wednesday told CNBC the board's recommendation sends "a pretty clear message."
"Our deal structure is clean, it's certain, we're a scaled company ... we've got strong investment-grade balance sheet," Peters told "Squawk Box."
He similarly dismissed antitrust questions, saying share of U.S. TV viewership is still competitive and that the audiences for Netflix and HBO Max streaming services are complementary.
Peters said if regulators were to take Netflix to court, it would fight for the deal: "We have a good case, and we believe that we should defend that case and make that case strongly."
Correction: This article has been updated to correct that Netflix has a market valuation of more than $400 billion. A previous version misstated the figure.
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German lawmakers are widely expected to approve a defense spending package worth more than 50 billion euros ($58.6 billion) on Wednesday, as the country moves to bolster its national security capabilities in the wake of the Ukraine war.
Meeting agenda documents for the Bundestag's Budget Committee show politicians are set to discuss the defense procurement proposals on Wednesday. The committee can both approve and block major purchases.
According to German media, the proposed expenditure — which is expected to be passed — includes 22 billion euros for personal protective equipment and clothing for military personnel, and around 10 billion euros for upgrades to infantry fighter vehicles, air defense, and missile systems.
European defense stocks rallied on Wednesday morning as investors awaited the outcome of the meeting, which is widely expected to result in approval of the new military budget.
By 11:12 a.m. in London (6:12 a.m. ET), the Stoxx Europe Aerospace and Defense index was 1.2% higher, led by German defense giants Renk, up 2.8%, Hensoldt, up 2.4%, and Rheinmetall, which gained 1.8%.
Shares in the sector sold off on Tuesday, with the broader index shedding 1.8% in the session amid rising hopes of a peace deal to end the war in Ukraine.
Since the start of the year, the Stoxx Europe Aerospace and Defense index has surged more than 50%, with some regional defense players more than doubling in value amid commitments from regional governrements and the NATO military alliance to ramp up defense spending.
The pledges are widely expected to boost European firms' bottom lines, with regionally headquartered companies already reporting record order backlogs and huge upswings in income.
German companies in particular have been beneficiaries of the regional defense boom, after the country's government reformed historic legislation to pave the way for increased security spending. Arms manufacturer Rheinmetall, for instance, has seen its stock surge 150% this year.
"Germany's roughly 50 billion [euro] defense procurement package, widely regarded as the largest single approval for defense equipment in the country's post-war history, is set to benefit listed European defense primes such as Rheinmetall and Hensoldt, alongside a broader group of European suppliers to a lesser extent," Dmitrii Ponomarev, a product Manager at VanEck, which manages a defense ETF, told CNBC on Wednesday.
They added that the move reflects a "long-overdue effort to rebuild military capabilities after decades of underinvestment."
"Importantly, today's decision does not alter Germany's overall defense budget, which was agreed earlier, but instead represents the formal parliamentary sign-off on specific procurement contracts, effectively converting previously allocated funds into firm orders," VanEck added. "This is a step investors have been waiting for, as it improves current revenue visibility for the sector."
Michael Field, chief equity strategist at Morningstar, told CNBC's "Squawk Box Europe" on Wednesday that the expected news out of Germany was "good in many ways."
"Normally these things take some time to get through government, but the process seems to be speeding up which is good news for these companies," he said, adding that the money reportedly earmarked for military protective equipment showed the German government would have to spend huge amounts to catch up after years of underspending.
"I think it's certainly good news. Is it all priced in? Today's share price moves upward would suggest not completely," he added.
Field named Rheinmetall as one of Europe's "best in class" defense firms, noting that it is one of the world's biggest armaments manufacturers.
"If you need specific armaments, you basically have to go to them," he told CNBC. "I think more companies like this … are all trying to develop their own specialties, which will hopefully [see Europe] become a defense hub in global terms."
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Warner Bros. Discovery still isn't interested in Paramount Skydance's offer.
Paramount's latest bid "is inadequate, with significant risks and costs imposed on our shareholders" compared to Netflix's bid, which "represents superior, more certain value for our shareholders," said Samuel Di Piazza, the chair of WBD's board of directors, in a statement to shareholders on Wednesday morning.
In a letter to shareholders, WBD's board recommended that shareholders reject Paramount's all-cash bid of $30 per share in favor of Netflix's cash-and-stock offer. Paramount wants to buy all of WBD, including its cable channels, while Netflix's bid of $27.75 per share is for WBD's studio, HBO, and HBO Max. A key difference between the two bids revolves around the value of WBD's TV networks, such as CNN and TNT, which Netflix isn't interested in buying.
Di Piazza said that Paramount's seventh proposal "once again fails to address key concerns that we have consistently communicated," including about Paramount's financing.
Paramount has said its bid is fully backstopped by Larry Ellison, one of the richest people in the world and father to Paramount CEO David Ellison. The WBD board said in the letter to shareholders that it relies "on an unknown and opaque revocable trust" whose assets or liabilities are subject to change.
Meanwhile, Netflix is paying with cash and stock. Its shares have fallen recently but surged more than 600% from mid-2022 to mid-2025. Netflix has a market cap of over $400 billion.
While Paramount has said that it would have an easier time securing regulatory approval than Netflix, the WBD board says it "does not believe there is a material difference in regulatory risk" between the two proposals.
The Ellisons are close to President Donald Trump. However, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos has pitched the president on the deal and seems to have earned some respect. Trump has called Sarandos a "great person," though he added that the Netflix-Warner Bros. deal "could be a problem" on the regulatory front. Still, the president hasn't come out publicly in favor of one side in the deal.
WBD also said its board "repeatedly engaged" with interested parties, including the Ellisons. Paramount had previously said that WBD went quiet late in the bidding process.
Paramount responded to WBD's statement on Wednesday morning, saying that its offer gives WBD shareholders "superior value" to Netflix's and "the certainty of 100% cash."
"I have been encouraged by the feedback we have received from WBD shareholders who clearly understand the benefits of our offer. We will continue to move forward to deliver this transaction, which is in the best interest of WBD shareholders, consumers, and the creative industries," David Ellison said in a statement.
Paramount can't be surprised by WBD's decision to stick with its Netflix deal.
Ellison was overheard saying last week that if WBD's leadership were to "accept the offer exactly as it is today, right, then they're admitting breach of fiduciary duty," Business Insider previously reported.
That's because Paramount said its $30-per-share hostile bid was nearly identical to its previous offer to WBD. Public companies are obligated to act in the best interests of shareholders. So if WBD's board had changed its mind, it could have opened itself up to shareholder lawsuits.
WBD had said in a statement after Paramount's hostile bid that it would "carefully review and consider Paramount Skydance's offer" in a way that was "consistent with its fiduciary duties and in consultation with its independent financial and legal advisors."
Now that WBD's board has given Paramount the cold shoulder again, it's Ellison's move.
The aspiring media mogul told CEO David Zaslav that Paramount's latest offer wasn't its "best and final," which suggests that a higher bid could be coming. Just how much appetite Paramount has to escalate the bidding war is the key question.
If no higher bid comes, WBD's investors have until January 8 to back Paramount, though it could extend that deadline. WBD would owe Netflix a $2.8 billion reverse breakup fee if its shareholders chose Paramount.
Read the full letter to shareholders here:
Dear Fellow Shareholders,
As your Board of Directors, we are committed to acting in your best interest. In this spirit, in October, we launched a public review of strategic alternatives to maximize shareholder value. This followed three separate proposals from Paramount Skydance ("PSKY"), as well as interest from multiple other parties.
That thorough process, overseen by the Board with the assistance of independent financial and legal advisors, as well as our management team, led to the company entering into a merger agreement with Netflix on December 4, with the substantial benefits to WBD shareholders described below. Having failed to submit the best proposal for you, our shareholders, PSKY launched an offer nearly identical to its most recently rejected proposal.
As a Board, we have now conducted another review and determined that PSKY's tender offer remains inferior to the Netflix merger. The Board continues to unanimously recommend the Netflix merger, and that you reject the PSKY offer and not tender your shares.
Below, and in more detail in our 14D-9 filing, we highlight the many reasons for the Board's determination. None of these reasons will be a surprise to PSKY given our clear, and oft-repeated, feedback on their six prior proposals.
The terms of the Netflix merger are superior. The PSKY offer provides inadequate value and imposes numerous, significant risks and costs on WBD.
The value we have secured for shareholders through the Netflix merger is extraordinary by any measure.
Our agreement with Netflix gives WBD shareholders $23.25 in cash, plus $4.50 in shares of Netflix common stock (based on a collar range of $97.91 - $119.67 in the Netflix stock price at the time of closing), plus the additional value of the shares of Discovery Global and the opportunity to participate in future potential upside following Discovery Global's separation from WBD. The entire Board is confident in our recommendation that Netflix represents the best value-creating path for shareholders.
PSKY has consistently misled WBD shareholders that its proposed transaction has a "full backstop" from the Ellison family. It does not, and never has.
PSKY's most recent proposal includes a $40.65 billion equity commitment, for which there is no Ellison family commitment of any kind. Instead, they propose that you rely on an unknown and opaque revocable trust for the certainty of this crucial deal funding. Despite having been told repeatedly by WBD how important a full and unconditional financing commitment from the Ellison family was — and despite their own ample resources, as well as multiple assurances by PSKY during our strategic review process that such a commitment was forthcoming — the Ellison family has chosen not to backstop the PSKY offer.
And a revocable trust is no replacement for a secured commitment by a controlling stockholder. The assets and liabilities of the trust are not publicly disclosed and are subject to change. As the name indicates, revocable trusts typically have provisions allowing for assets to be moved at any time. And the documents provided by PSKY for this conditional commitment contain gaps, loopholes and limitations that put you, our shareholders, and our company at risk.
Amplifying the concerns about the credibility of the equity commitment being offered by PSKY, the revocable trust and PSKY have agreed that the trust's liability for damages, even in the case of a willful breach, would be capped at 7% of its commitment ($2.8 billion on a $108.4 billion transaction). Of course, the damage to WBD and its stockholders were the trust or PSKY to breach their obligations to close a transaction would likely be many multiples of this amount.
WBD's merger agreement with Netflix is a binding agreement with enforceable commitments, with no need for any equity financing and robust debt commitments. The Netflix merger is fully backed by a public company with a market cap in excess of $400 billion with an investment grade balance sheet. The debt financing for the PSKY bid relies on an unsecure revocable trust commitment as well as the credit worthiness of a $15 billion market cap company with a credit rating at or only a notch above "junk" status from the two leading rating agencies. The financial condition and creditworthiness of PSKY, which, if its proposed transaction were to close, would have a high gross leverage ratio of 6.8x 2026E debt to EBITDA with virtually no current free cash flow generation before synergies, raise substantial risks for its acquisition of WBD. Such debt levels reflect a risky capital structure that is vulnerable to even potentially small changes in the PSKY or WBD business between signing and closing.
Additionally, PSKY contemplates $9 billion in synergies from the mergers of Paramount/Skydance and their offer for WBD. These targets are both ambitious from an operational perspective and would make Hollywood weaker, not stronger.
The Board's review was full, transparent and comprehensive — establishing a level playing field that fostered a rigorous and fair process.
The Board repeatedly engaged with all parties, including extensive engagement with PSKY and its advisors over the course of nearly three months. We held dozens of calls and meetings with its principals and advisors including four in-person meetings and meals between David Zaslav and David and/or Larry Ellison and provided multiple opportunities for PSKY to offer a proposal that was superior to those of the other bidders, which PSKY never did.
After each bid, we informed PSKY of the material deficiencies and offered potential solutions. Despite this feedback, PSKY has never submitted a proposal that is superior to the Netflix merger agreement.
Despite PSKY's media statements to the contrary, the Board does not believe there is a material difference in regulatory risk between the PSKY offer and the Netflix merger.
The Board carefully considered the federal, state, and international regulatory risks for both the Netflix merger and the PSKY offer with its regulatory advisors. The Board believes that each transaction is capable of obtaining the necessary U.S. and foreign regulatory approvals and that any difference between the respective regulatory risk levels is not material. The Board also notes that Netflix has agreed to a record-setting regulatory termination cash fee of $5.8 billion, significantly higher than PSKY's $5 billion break fee.
The PSKY offer is illusory.
The offer can be terminated or amended by PSKY at any time prior to its completion; it is not the same thing as a binding merger agreement. The first paragraph of the offer states it is "subject to the conditions set forth in this offer to purchase (as it may be amended or supplemented from time to time)" and continues on the next page, "we reserve the right to amend the Offer in any respect (including amending the Offer Price)". In addition, the offer is not capable of being completed by its current expiration date, due to the need for, among other things, global regulatory approvals, which PSKY indicates may take 12-18 months. Nothing in this structure offers WBD shareholders any deal certainty.
The PSKY offer provides an untenable degree of risk and potential downside for WBD shareholders.
There will be additional costs associated with PSKY's offer that could impact shareholders.
When considering the PSKY offer at this juncture, it is important to note that its acceptance could incur significant additional costs to shareholders — all of which PSKY has ignored in their communications. WBD would have to pay Netflix a $2.8 billion termination fee, which PSKY has not offered to reimburse. In addition, WBD would incur approximately $1.5 billion in financing costs if we do not complete our planned debt exchange as agreed to with certain of our debtholders, which would not be permitted by the PSKY offer. This additional $4.3 billion in potential costs represents approximately $1.66 per share to be borne by WBD shareholders if the offer does not close.
We look forward to moving ahead with our combination with Netflix and delivering the compelling and certain value it will create for shareholders. We urge you to carefully read the 14D-9 filed with the SEC this morning and available on our website, which more fully details the strategic review process and the Board's reasons for its recommendation to you.
Sincerely,
The Warner Bros. Discovery Board of Directors
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Sometimes I use ChatGPT and it seems stunningly obvious that AI is going to have a transformative effect on my life. I use it more every day.
And other times I find myself yelling at ChatGPT in ALL CAPS, because it can't do basic, simple tasks — ones I could reasonably farm out to a 5th grader. Or even worse: It can't do basic tasks but won't tell me it can't do them, and tries to fudge a result instead. And that makes me wary of using it again.
Does this sound familiar?
It turns out that the AI business has a great term for this dichotomy: "The jagged frontier," coined in a 2023 research paper. Here's another way of putting it, via Reuters:
"It might be a Ferrari in math but a donkey at putting things in your calendar," said Anastasios Angelopoulos, the CEO and cofounder of LMArena, a popular benchmarking tool."
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That quote comes from a report looking at the struggles various businesses have had implementing AI in their work. It's a theme we've been hearing a lot about over the last few months, like the MIT study that found that 95% of companies were getting "zero return" on their AI investment.
This issue is core to the "Is AI a bubble and when will it pop?" question, of course. Which is a very important question, with some $2 trillion in investment in play.
But I think it's not the only question: The tech isn't going away, so many of us are unquestionably going to be using AI in all kinds of ways, no matter what.
So a more practical question is: What kind of tasks can AI do reliably well today — reliably enough that businesses (and the rest of us) can use it day in and day out — and which ones are going to take a while to sort out? And which ones may never be something we can hand over to AI?
This is a pretty good summary of the ongoing experiments we're working out in real time, right now.
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This report is from this week's CNBC's The China Connection newsletter, which brings you insights and analysis on what's driving the world's second-largest economy. You can subscribe here.
Latest data from China showed a key gauge on consumption falling to its weakest level in nearly three years. But it does not capture the full story.
American membership warehouse clubs are telling something more nuanced: they are finding success in drawing consumers who are willing to pay a hefty membership fee in exchange for premium goods at reasonable prices. On top of that, those stores provide no-frill "treasure-hunt" shopping experiences to sweeten the deal.
Sam's Club, the membership-based warehouse retail arm of Walmart, opened its new store in Beijing last month, followed by another one in Shanghai on Tuesday. They drew large crowds, snarling traffic for hours and keeping consumers in long queues.
Walmart plans to open 10 new Sam's Club outlets in China this year — its fastest expansion ever — and is on track to reach this target, with its 10th store opening in Guangzhou next week.
Such warehouse stores have long been known as places to buy large quantities of household staples at cheaper prices.
Even though it's less typical in China, where grocery habits have historically skewed toward high-frequency, smaller-basket shopping, this retail model is starting to find its customers.
"Here they do buy it because of the value and niche products," said Cameron Johnson, Shanghai-based senior partner at consulting firm Tidal Wave Solutions. He said residents in his compound often ask in group chats whether others want to split oversized packs.
Sam's Club has leaned into that proposition: a shopping experience and product lineup distinct from conventional supermarkets and online retailers, paired with annual membership fees ranging from 260 yuan to 680 yuan ($37-$97). Shoppers get modest discounts — but the bigger draw is access to curated merchandise that they can't find elsewhere.
"It's a membership model that consumers pay the membership fee upfront, and as a result, they get a full set of services," said Weiwen Han, a Hong Kong-based partner at Bain & Company.
Walmart entered China in 1996 with its first hypermarket and Sam's Club warehouse chain in Shenzhen.
But the hypermarket format — which combines a supermarket and department store — has lost momentum as digital retail took off. Sprawling online marketplaces, such as Alibaba and JD.com, with their aggressive discounts and convenience, have squeezed out traditional grocers and foreign players such as France-based Carrefour.
Walmart has closed almost 150 hypermarkets in China since 2020, with just 279 stores operational as of July, down from 412 in 2020.
But Sam's Club has proven an enduring strength for the company. The chain has turned warehouses into both shopping destinations and e-commerce delivery hubs, while filling shelves with products consumers can't easily comparison-shop elsewhere, including exclusive items under its house brand Member's Mark and Marketside.
Beyond online grocery ordering and delivery, the clubs offer an offline experience where shoppers can browse and "treasure hunt" — something local e-commerce players struggle to replicate, Han said.
The bet is paying off. Sam's Club has become one of the China's fastest-growing foreign retailers, with 56 outlets nationwide, compared to Costco's seven stores in the country. The market also helped fuel Walmart's strongest net sales growth globally. In the third quarter, Walmart's net sales in China surged 21.9% year on year to $6.1 billion, exceeding the broader Walmart International segment's average growth rate of 10.8%.
That blend of curated products and digital convenience helps explain why the model has gained traction with affluent shoppers — and why one store visit can translate into multiple online orders.
Many shoppers won't return often in person. They'll make one trip to browse, then rely on the mobile app for five to 10 deliveries from the same store, said Curtis Alan Ferguson, former president of Coca-Cola Greater China and Korea and now managing partner at Ventech China, a venture capital firm focused on consumer startups.
For some, the appeal is the outing itself — a well-designed, predictable version of discovery shopping. "It's more of a … 'let's go to Disney' here," Ferguson said.
Aside from the physical shopping experience, Walmart says speed is part of the stickiness. "Our team in China delivers extremely fast, with nearly 80% of digital orders delivered within one hour," Doug McMillon, Walmart's CEO, said on the company's third-quarter earnings call.
Ferguson said suppliers also like working with Sam's Club because the volumes can justify unique packaging or sizes. "People bend over backwards to give [Sam's Club] the quality they desire," he said. "If you have … Sam's or Costco pulling your brand … that gives you some other cachet."
Few local rivals have managed to seriously challenge Sam's Club and Costco in membership retail — and not for lack of trying.
Alibaba's Freshippo, the Chinese tech giant's grocery business, shuttered its last members-only store in August.
However, regional chain Pangdonglai, which started in Xuchang, a city in the heartland of Henan, is widely viewed as a standout success.
Pangdonglai's appeal is that it operates on a "people-first philosophy" where emotional value and trust matter more than scale, said Olivia Plotnick, founder of Shanghai-based marketing agency Wai Social.
But the Henan store has struggled to scale beyond its home base. Its distinctive culture and high operational standards can be difficult to replicate — and to defend — in larger, more competitive cities, said Plotnick.
"Consumers with real demand for premium value are still willing to pay, but those seeking rational, low-price essentials are shifting toward discount formats," Plotnick said.
As China's consumer slump drags on, the warehouse clubs that offer quality goods at reasonable prices, and provide a store experience that online competitors can't easily rival, are emerging as rare bright spots in the sector.
https://www.cnbc.com/video/2025/12/15/chinas-property-sector-ailing-but-bofa-sees-some
Helen Qiao, Chief greater China economist at BofA Global Research, spoke about the challenges in China's property sector. She says though it has been a drag on the mainland economy, she sees some signs of strength.
Zerlina Zeng, head of Asia credit strategy at CreditSights, discussed the reason behind the strong performance of offshore Chinese yuan-denominated bonds.
Alex Stamos, Corridor chief product officer and former Facebook chief security officer, joined "The Exchange" to discuss the future of AI regulation and why China is leading the pack for open-weight AI models.
Chinese chipmaker MetaX spikes nearly 700% in debut. The company began trading in Shanghai on Wednesday and saw it shares jump from 104.66 yuan ($14.86) to 829 yuan. MetaX Integrated Circuits develops semiconductors for AI applications.
China's economic slowdown deepened in November. Consumption, investment and industrial output growth fell short of expectation and worsened from previous readings.
Government jobs draw flocks of China's youths. As many as 3.7 million applicants are vying for one of the 38,100 entry-level government roles that start next year. The slump in private sector jobs is drawing people to the civil service.
This is a really tough time for China's 90% or middle class. They're trading down, they're buying Luckin' Coffee, they're shopping on Pinduoduo, they're watching shows on Kuaishou.
— Shaun Rein, managing director of the China Market Research Group
Chinese markets traded higher Wednesday. Hong Kong's Hang Seng index rose 0.82%, and the mainland CSI 300 advanced 1.83% after Chinese chipmaker MetaX Integrated Circuits soared almost 700% in its market debut.
The Hang Seng Index is up nearly 26% year to date, while the CSI 300 has risen 16.39% across the same period of time.
The offshore yuan last traded at 7.0421 against the dollar.
— Lee Ying Shan
Dec. 20: 1- and 5-year loan prime rate
Dec. 22-27: 19th session of the National People's Congress Standing Committee
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Taken from CNBC's Daily Open, our international markets newsletter — Subscribe today
The U.S. November jobs report has something for everybody.
Those convinced of weakness will highlight the higher-than-expected unemployment rate as well as the number of jobs shrinking in October.
On the other hand, proponents of a strong economy will focus on jobs growth in November beating estimates, and point out that the increase in the unemployment rate was mostly because the labor force grew, as CNBC's Jeff Cox noted.
Without any definitive judgment that can be made on the state of the labor market, traders left their bets on interest rate cuts in January mostly unchanged. It's currently at 25.5%, around one percentage point higher than before the release of the November jobs report, according to the CME FedWatch tool.
"Today's data paints a picture of an economy catching its breath," said Gina Bolvin, president at Bolvin Wealth Management Group. "Job growth is holding on, but cracks are forming. Consumers are still standing, but not sprinting."
That ambivalence was reflected in markets as well. Major U.S. indexes were mixed: The S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.24% and 0.62% respectively, while the Nasdaq Composite registered a mild gain of 0.23%, thanks to Tesla stock closing at an all-time high.
Whether you're a bull or a bear, Tuesday's tea leaves will show you what you want to see — but beware confirmation bias.
The S&P 500 fell for a third consecutive session. The Dow Jones Industrial Average retreated Tuesday, but the Nasdaq Composite ticked up. Asia-Pacific markets traded mixed Wednesday. Japan's Nikkei 225 edged higher amid data showing the country's exports grew more than expected in November.
Amazon could invest $10 billion in OpenAI. The two companies are in talks over a deal involving the investment and an agreement for OpenAI to use Amazon's artificial intelligence chips, a source told CNBC.
Greater Chinese stocks see mixed market debuts. Shares of MetaX Integrated Circuits, a mainland Chinese chipmaker, rocketed roughly 700% on Wednesday, as it listed in Shanghai. Meanwhile, Hong Kong's largest licensed crypto exchange Hashkey saw a muted rise of 3% on its debut on the city's stock exchange.
Trump designates the Venezuelan government as a 'terrorist organization.' In a post on Truth Social on Tuesday night stateside, Trump also ordered a blockade of sanctioned oil tankers moving in and out of the country.
[PRO] An eyewear brand as an AI winner? Citibank reiterated their "buy" rating on this name on Monday, saying that it will be a leader in the AI glasses market — which will grow more than 100% annually until 2034, the bank added.
When growth got stuck in the chimney: A look back at the U.K. in 2025
At the beginning of the year, most expected the U.K. to grow by between 1.3%-1.5%, according to the regular comparison of independent forecasts compiled by the Treasury. The outcome has been more or less in line with those expectations.
The lackluster performance of the U.K. economy does not, however, appear to have adversely affected the stock market. The FTSE 100 is up by more than 18% year to date, and currently on target to outperform the S&P 500 for the first time since 2022 and for only the third time in a decade.
— Ian King
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Ben & Jerry's co-founder Ben Cohen has slammed parent Magnum Ice Cream Company, saying it is "destroying" the brand, in an interview with CNBC.
The world's largest standalone ice cream business, Magnum, is only a week old but has already had a lifetime of corporate drama.
Ben & Jerry's CEO Jochanan Senf, appointed by Unilever, has said changes to the terms of the board, including a nine-year term limit, setting a board cadence with "protocols on engagement" and an obligation to comply with Magnum's code of business integrity, would strengthen governance and transparency.
Cohen, however, said statements made by Magnum about the governance changes were "Orwellian."
"They said that they're enhancing the social mission when they're actually destroying it. They said that they're future-proofing the Board of Directors when they're actually dismantling it," Cohen told CNBC. "It's another desperate power grab."
By Monday, three directors had been ousted from the independent board of Ben & Jerry's, in a new twist to the conflict between the brand named after its well-known founders and its parent company over the brand's social mission. It's a row that newly listed Magnum inherited from consumer giant Unilever when it officially spun off into an independent company last week.
The changes to Ben & Jerry's corporate governance "aim to preserve and enhance the brand's historical social mission and safeguard its essential integrity," a spokesperson told CNBC in an emailed statement. "Since 2000, the Board has worked with the company to ensure Ben & Jerry's is a vital voice for social change and to amplify movements that shape a more just and equitable world," they added.
Magnum said Chair Anuradha Mittal — one of the board members notified of their ineligibility — no longer meets the criteria to serve as a member of the board following "internal investigations," the company said, declining to give further details.
"Initially, they were trying to get rid of the chairman of the [independent] board, by making these unfounded allegations that she's 'not fit to serve'. They weren't able to substantiate that, so now they're saying, well, she served for too long," Cohen said. "It's arbitrary, and it's illegal."
Ben & Jerry's was sold to Unilever in 2000 in a deal that allowed the brand to maintain an independent board as well as the right to make decisions on its social mission. Since 2021, however, growing discontent by the board as well as founders Cohen and Jerry Greenfield over what they call attempts to "silence" the social mission. CNBC has reached out to Unilever for comment.
Unilever, and now Magnum, retains primary responsibility for all matters not relating to the social mission or matters expressly delegated to the Ben & Jerry's board, including financial and operational aspects.
Magnum has said the governance structure of Ben & Jerry's poses material reputational and business risks.
Unilever and Magnum have repeatedly said that Ben & Jerry's isn't for sale.
"Ben & Jerry's is a proud, thriving and integral part of The Magnum Ice Cream Company, and it is not for sale," the Magnum spokesperson said. "Since the acquisition in 2000, Unilever and now TMICC has taken Ben & Jerry's from 4 to 46 countries, sales have increased six-fold, and we have invested nearly half a billion euros in the social mission."
Ben & Jerry's is one of the ice cream group's four global power brands, alongside the Heartbrand, Magnum and Cornetto. In 2024, Ben & Jerry's brought in 1.1 billion euros ($1.3 billion) to group revenue, making it the third largest revenue generator among the group's portfolio of more than 100 brands. The four brands combined accounted for 82% of the group's total full-year revenue.
Unilever first announced plans to spin off its ice cream unit in March last year. "We needed real focus on ice cream," Magnum CEO Peter ter Kulve told CNBC's Squawk on the Street last week, highlighting how the company is managing to grow both market share and volumes.
Since the pure ice cream stock debuted on public markets in Amsterdam and New York on Dec. 8, the stock has risen about 10% and is now valued at nearly 9 million euros. The company has set a revenue growth target of between 3% and 5% from 2026.
But Cohen, who still works at the brand, doesn't see any benefit of the brand he co-founded in 1978 staying part of the ice cream group.
"They're being short-sighted, but I also think that they just don't understand," he said of management. "They don't understand that the value of Ben & Jerry's is tied up in the position that it has established as being in the forefront of businesses that have a concern for the overall benefit of the society, as opposed to just maximizing profits."
"Investors would be a lot better off if Magnum finally sold this asset, which they are in the process of devaluing, and instead took the money and bought some other middle-of-the-road brands, because that's what they're good at," he added. "There's a lot of money to be made in middle of the road stuff, but they ought to stick to their knitting and not try to not try to force Ben & Jerry's to become just another one of their middle of the road brands."
In September, Cohen and Greenfield launched the campaign #FreeBenAndJerrys, calling for their parent company to allow it to become "an independently owned company with socially-aligned investors and once again free to honor its social mission and live by its brand values, without compromise."
The campaign is aimed at encouraging a group of investors who believe in the social mission to buy the brand back.
"We have that group, they're ready," Cohen said, while adding that Unilever and now Magnum refuse to divulge the necessary financial information investors need to make a rational offer. Cohen declined to name the investors.
Unilever said in its third-quarter earnings report that Ben & Jerry's grew mid-single digits, supported by the ongoing success of newly launched innovations such as new dairy, non-dairy flavours and Scoopapalooza, but didn't specify other financial information on a brand-by-brand basis.
Magnum declined to provide further financial information on Ben & Jerry's.
Ben & Jerry's has a three-part mission: a social mission, a product mission, and a financial mission, which Cohen says are all equally significant and interrelated. "It's something that people who are brought up in the Unilever traditional system can't understand. It took us a long time to figure it out… and they're just trying to make us into another piece of frozen mush."
The Magnum spokesperson said the company "remains unequivocally committed to Ben & Jerry's three-part mission," adding that it continues to advocate for a range of causes.
"There's no way that Ben & Jerry's can maintain the values that built it into the brand that it is today without becoming owned by a group of investors that actually support the social mission instead of trying to destroy it," said Cohen about the brand that has "peace, love and ice cream" as its slogan.
Magnum CEO ter Kulve told the Financial Times earlier this month that Cohen and Greenfield ought to "hand over to a new generation."
But Cohen says it's not about him as an individual, but about maintaining the values of the company. "Values don't get old," he said.
"I have no problem handing over the company to this group of investors that support the values… and if Magnum actually supported the social mission, I'd have no problem with them doing it."
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OpenAI is in discussions with Amazon about a potential investment and an agreement to use its artificial intelligence chips, CNBC confirmed on Tuesday.
The details are fluid and still subject to change but the investment could exceed $10 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be named because the talks are confidential. The Information first reported on the potential deal.
The discussions come after OpenAI completed a restructuring in October and formally outlined the details of its partnership with Microsoft, giving it more freedom to raise capital and partner with companies across the broader AI ecosystem.
Microsoft has invested more than $13 billion in OpenAI and backed the company since 2019, but it no longer has a right of first refusal to be OpenAI's compute provider, according to an October release. OpenAI can now also develop some products with third parties.
Amazon has invested at least $8 billion into OpenAI rival Anthropic, but the e-commerce giant could be looking to expand its exposure to the booming generative AI market. Microsoft has taken a similar step and announced last month that it will invest up to $5 billion into Anthropic, while Nvidia will invest up to $10 billion in the startup.
Amazon Web Services has been designing its own AI chips since around 2015, and the hardware has become crucial for AI companies that are trying to train models and meet growing demand for compute. AWS announced its Inferentia chips in 2018, and the latest generation of its Trainium chips earlier this month.
OpenAI has made more than $1.4 trillion of infrastructure commitments in recent months, including agreements with chipmakers Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices and Broadcom. Last month, OpenAI signed a deal to buy $38 billion worth of capacity from AWS, its first contract with the leader in cloud infrastructure leader.
In October, OpenAI finalized a secondary share sale totaling $6.6 billion, allowing current and former employees to sell stock at a $500 billion valuation.
WATCH: Oracle says there have been ‘no delays' in OpenAI arrangement after stock slide
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Jared Kushner is walking away from Paramount's bid for Warner Bros. Discovery.
Affinity Partners, a Florida-based private equity firm founded by President Donald Trump's son-in-law, will not participate in financing Paramount's $108 billion bid for WBD, a person close to the matter told Business Insider. The person said Affinity was expected to invest $200 million, a relatively small amount of the total bid.
In a statement to various news outlets, an Affinity spokesperson confirmed the end of the firm's participation.
"The dynamics of the investment have changed significantly since we initially became involved in October. We continue to believe there is a strong strategic rationale for Paramount's offer," the spokesperson said.
Affinity did not respond to Business Insider's requests for comment.
Affinity and Jared Kushner were identified as a financing partner in Paramount's 367-page SEC filing on December 8, in which it made the bid for WBD. Its other external financing partners include wealth funds from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Abu Dhabi.
Kushner's father-in-law's presence looms large in the deal. President Donald Trump, who said he would be involved, has long-standing ties to David Ellison's father, Oracle billionaire Larry Ellison, who is backing the Paramount bid.
While Trump publicly praised Netflix and its co-CEO, Ted Sarandos, the president also said that a combo of Netflix and WBD "could be a problem" due to the size.
Kushner's exit is the latest development in the media war among Paramount Skydance, Netflix, and WBD.
On December 5, Netflix announced that it would acquire WBD for an equity value of $72 billion. The streaming giant edged out other bidders, like Paramount and Comcast.
Days later, Paramount launched a hostile bid of $30 per share for all of WBD, with CEO David Ellison urging WBD's shareholders to tender their shares and switch teams from Netflix to Paramount.
He wrote a letter to the shareholders on December 10, criticizing WBD's advisors for not giving Paramount's offer the same treatment as Netflix's. He described the sales process as "opaque."
Paramount's stock price is down more than 5% over the past five days but up 32% since the start of the year. WBD's stock price is up about 170% since the start of the year.
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Shares of Chinese chipmaker MetaX Integrated Circuits soared nearly 700% in their market debut in Shanghai on Wednesday, after the company raised nearly $600 million in its initial public offering.
Shares, which were priced at 104.66 yuan in the IPO, closed at 829 yuan on debut, marking a 692% jump.
Similar to Moore Threads, which saw a robust debut at the start of the month, MetaX develops graphics processing units for artificial intelligence applications, tapping into a fast-growing sector driven by rising adoption of AI services.
MetaX is part of a growing cohort of local chipmakers building AI processors, reflecting Beijing's push to reduce dependence on U.S. chips following Washington's tech curbs on export of high-end technology to China.
Washington has imposed export curbs on U.S. chip behemoth Nvidia, barring sales of its most advanced AI chips to China.
Newer Chinese players such as Enflame Technology and Biren Technology have also entered the AI space, aiming to capture a share of the billions in graphics processing unit, or GPU, demand no longer served by Nvidia. Chinese regulators have also been clearing more semiconductor IPOs in their drive for greater AI independence.
Earlier this month, shares of Moore Threads, a Beijing-based GPU manufacturer often referred to as "China's Nvidia," soared by more than 400% on its debut in Shanghai following its $1.1 billion listing.
Macquarie's equity analyst Eugene Hsiao said investor enthusiasm around Chinese AI-chip IPOs such as MetaX is partly shaped by longer-term expectations that China will build a self-sufficient semiconductor ecosystem as tensions with the U.S. persist.
"For that to work, you need these players. You need names like Moore Threads, Meta X, etc," he said.
"So I think when investors are looking at these IPOs, they implicitly are thinking about the nationalistic element," Hsiao noted, adding that the main driver of the frenzy, however, was the firms' growth potential.
— CNBC's Dylan Butts contributed to this article.
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The recent downturn in the cryptocurrency market has led investors to be more cautious, especially in areas that were previously trending.
The recent downturn in the cryptocurrency market has led investors to be more cautious, especially in areas that were previously trending. This situation may open up new opportunities for strategies focused on managing risks. The range of crypto investment options has grown significantly and now includes buying cryptocurrencies directly, investing in ETFs, derivatives, and shares of companies involved in mining and crypto infrastructure.Despite the expanded investment landscape, challenges remain due to high leverage, valuations, and funding issues that have affected various sectors within the crypto market. John D'Agostino from Coinbase Institutional observes that more investment vehicles for Bitcoin have made it easier for retail and institutional investors to enter the market, but that detailed strategies are essential for managing exposure and leverage.Bitcoin's price has fallen drastically, losing 36% from a peak of $126,223 in early October, and remains about 30% under that high. Companies holding Bitcoin as a treasury, such as Strategy Inc., have experienced significant losses, with their stock down sharply from previous heights. Investors have become wary of overpaying for these assets, leading to a more cautious approach.Mining companies like IREN, CleanSpark, Riot, and MARA, which had been popular with investors, have also faced difficulties. These firms are now shifting to AI data centers, transitioning from their original business models. Despite being top performers in the past, concerns about profitability and the burden of heavy debt have negatively impacted their stocks.As the crypto and AI sectors are expected to become increasingly interconnected, energy needs for U. S. data centers are projected to grow. Morgan Stanley suggests that converting crypto miners could help alleviate a portion of this energy shortfall. Brian Dobson emphasizes the importance of looking at mining companies for both crypto and AI investment opportunities.To address underperformance, some firms are focusing on actively managed or hedged strategies. Sigel's VanEck Onchain Economy ETF has performed well by avoiding high-leverage companies. Activist investor Eric Jackson's EMJ Crypto Technologies has created a new actively hedged digital-asset treasury that generates yield without relying on equity or debt.Amidst market fluctuations, Bitcoin continues to strengthen its standing, backed by significant institutional investment. Harvard University's endowment and several sovereign wealth funds are now investing in Bitcoin. As more investment options emerge, the market is evolving to resemble more traditional commodities or stocks, with regulated exchanges also enhancing investor confidence.
With information from Reuters
MD does not stand behind any specific agenda, narrative, or school of thought. We aim to expose all ideas, thinkers, and arguments to the light and see what remains valid and sound.
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Dogecoin and Shiba Inu slipped during U.S. hours as rising sell volume pushed both tokens below key technical levels, extending weakness across the meme coin segment while ether underperformed other majors.
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Polkadot's DOT drops 3% to $1.83 as crypto markets reverse lower
Strong selling pressure overwhelmed positive Coinbase integration news as the psychological $1.90 level failed to hold.
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Dogecoin and Shiba Inu slipped during U.S. hours as rising sell volume pushed both tokens below key technical levels, extending weakness across the meme coin segment while ether underperformed other majors.
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Polkadot's DOT drops 3% to $1.83 as crypto markets reverse lower
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The increasing potential of quantum computing presents a fundamental threat to the cryptographic foundations of modern digital infrastructure, including the blockchain technologies that underpin many secure transactions. Tushin Mallick, Maya Zeldin, and Murat Cenk, from Northeastern University and Ripple Inc, alongside Cristina Nita-Rotaru of Northeastern University, investigate how these emerging quantum capabilities reshape blockchain security and performance. Their work addresses a critical challenge: simply replacing existing cryptographic tools with quantum-resistant alternatives is not enough, and can even introduce new vulnerabilities or severely impact operational efficiency. This research systematically examines the specific points of weakness within blockchain architectures and evaluates how different post-quantum cryptographic adaptations affect system performance, trust mechanisms, and the overall viability of decentralised networks, offering crucial insights for building truly quantum-resistant blockchain systems.
This comprehensive study explores the evolving landscape of blockchain technology, with a particular focus on the critical need for post-quantum cryptography (PQC) and improved scalability. Researchers investigated several major blockchains, assessing their vulnerabilities to potential attacks from future quantum computers and evaluating potential solutions to enhance both performance and security. The work represents a thorough examination of the field, laying the groundwork for further investigation and development. The study highlights the significant threat that quantum computers pose to current blockchain cryptography, as most platforms rely on algorithms susceptible to attacks from Shor's algorithm.
A central theme is the urgent need to transition to PQC algorithms, designed to resist attacks from both classical and quantum computers. Researchers examined various PQC approaches and their potential implementation across different blockchain networks. The study also identifies scalability as a major obstacle to wider blockchain adoption, noting limitations in transaction throughput and storage capacity. The research provides a comparative analysis of prominent blockchains, including Bitcoin, Ripple (XRP), and Algorand, assessing each platform's strengths, weaknesses, and approaches to both PQC and scalability. The study acknowledges the importance of Layer-2 scaling solutions as a means of improving throughput without altering the core blockchain structure. Researchers also note the increasing storage demands of blockchain networks, which present challenges for node operators and network decentralization.
This research undertakes a detailed evaluation of post-quantum (PQC) preparedness across seven prominent blockchain platforms, selected for their diverse architectural designs and significant presence within the blockchain ecosystem. Researchers meticulously examined these platforms, representing proof-of-work, proof-of-stake, byzantine fault tolerance, and proof-of-history consensus mechanisms, to assess their resilience against emerging quantum threats. The work focuses on identifying cryptographic components vulnerable to quantum attacks and evaluating the feasibility of integrating proposed PQC solutions within existing blockchain designs. To achieve this, the team conducted a detailed survey of each blockchain's cryptographic foundations and consensus protocols, pinpointing specific areas susceptible to attacks from quantum algorithms.
This involved analyzing how each platform currently utilizes digital signatures, key exchange protocols, and hash-based constructions, and then assessing the potential impact of quantum computing on these core functionalities. The study then evaluated countermeasures proposed by each blockchain, including the adoption of lattice-based signature schemes and Winternitz One-Time Signature schemes for account recovery. Furthermore, the research rigorously analyzed the performance implications of adopting PQC signature schemes, specifically focusing on throughput, latency, and block interval. The team investigated how larger signature and public key sizes, characteristic of many PQC algorithms, affect on-chain data size, network propagation speeds, and overall ledger growth. Simulations and analyses were conducted to determine how these factors impact the number of transactions per block and the potential for degradation in system efficiency and scalability.
This work examines the implications of adopting post-quantum cryptography within blockchain systems, focusing on four key areas of impact. The study identifies vulnerabilities within existing blockchain architectures, particularly in consensus mechanisms, identity management, and transaction validation, and surveys proposed adaptations to post-quantum primitives. Researchers demonstrate that simply replacing current cryptographic tools with post-quantum alternatives is insufficient, requiring careful architectural redesign to maintain both security and operational efficiency. The analysis of seven prominent blockchains reveals the cryptographic foundations underpinning their operation.
Bitcoin relies on ECDSA for transaction authentication and SHA-256 for its Proof-of-Work puzzle, while Ethereum utilizes ECDSA, BLS, and KZG commitments alongside Keccak-256 hashing and VDFs within its Proof-of-Stake consensus. Algorand employs FALCON signatures and SHA-256 hashing with a Pure Proof-of-Stake mechanism, and Solana uses EdDSA and W-OTS signatures with Keccak-256 hashing and Proof of History. Avalanche utilizes ECDSA and SHA-256/Ripemd160 with its Snowman consensus, while Monero employs EdDSA and Keccak-256 with Proof of Work. XRPL uses EdDSA and ECDSA with SHA-256 and RPCA. Ethereum's transition to Proof-of-Stake in September 2022 is highlighted, demonstrating a shift towards more energy-efficient consensus.
Researchers note that Ethereum finalizes blocks approximately every 6. 4 minutes after two-thirds of validators attest to their correctness. Ethereum supports two account types, Externally Owned Accounts and Contract Accounts, forming the basis for decentralized applications. Researchers also note that Ethereum supports zk-SNARKs for enhanced privacy and scalability, and account abstraction for flexible verification logic.
The emergence of quantum computing presents a significant challenge to the security of blockchain systems, which currently rely on cryptographic methods vulnerable to quantum attacks. This research demonstrates that simply replacing existing cryptographic primitives with post-quantum alternatives is insufficient; a more comprehensive redesign of blockchain architectures is necessary. The study identifies vulnerabilities within key blockchain components, including consensus mechanisms, identity management, and transaction validation, and analyzes how post-quantum adaptations impact system performance and operational efficiency. Findings reveal that integrating post-quantum signature schemes introduces trade-offs affecting scalability, latency, and the incentive structures that underpin blockchain ecosystems.
Researchers determined that maintaining both security and performance requires careful consideration of protocol design and governance, extending beyond mere cryptographic substitution. While acknowledging that transitioning to post-quantum cryptography is complex, the work emphasizes the need for coordinated standardization, hybrid cryptographic infrastructures, and a sustained balance between security, performance, and decentralization. The authors note that the analysis focuses on current blockchain designs and that future innovations may offer alternative solutions. Further research is needed to explore the long-term implications of post-quantum cryptography and to develop practical strategies for mitigating the risks posed by quantum computers to blockchain security.
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XRP slid sharply on Wednesday, breaking below the $1.92 support zone as elevated selling pressure collided with violent cross-asset volatility during U.S. trading hours.
The move came amid abrupt reversals in bitcoin, U.S. equities and AI-linked stocks, leaving altcoins exposed as liquidity thinned and derivatives positioning reset.
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Aptos drops 5% to $1.50 as volume spikes above monthly average
The token has resistance at the $1.53 and then the $1.64 levels.
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Shares of crypto-linked companies are rallying after the price of bitcoin BTC$85,816.95 surged more than 2.8% in an hour to rise above $90,000, marking a fresh high and reigniting interest across the sector.
The price jump triggered gains across mining stocks, trading platforms and cryptocurrency infrastructure firms. Bitcoin miner Hut 8 (HUT) outperformed the wider sector, rising 14.4% to $42, while rival CleanSpark (CLSK) saw a 5.1% rise after the opening bell to top $12, and Riot Platform (RIOT) rose 3.5% to near $14.
Read more: Bitcoin re-takes $90,000 as price spikes early in U.S. session
These mining firms depend heavily on bitcoin's price for revenue, with rising BTC prices often meaning fatter mining margins and a more sustainable environment. However, HUT had surged 20% in early trading after announcing a 15-year, $7 billion lease agreement with AI infrastructure firm Fluidstack.
Potential catalysts for the broader rally include traders weighing the possibility of Fed Governor Chris Waller as the frontrunner to succeed Jerome Powell as the next Chair of the Federal Reserve. Waller has made dovish comments, saying the neutral fed funds rate may be 50 to 100 basis points below previous expectations.
However, on prediction markets, the Feds' perceived future policy direction doesn't appear to be as dovish. On Polymarket, traders are assigning a 77% probability to a no rate cut next month. On Kalshi odds are at 78%. CME's FedWatch shows a similar chance.
Coinbase (COIN), the largest publicly traded crypto exchange in the U.S., also posted solid gains, up 2.27% to $258. The company earns a cut of trading volume, which typically spikes during volatile periods, as December has been proving to be.
The company is also set to unveil a series of upgrades later in the day, which are expected to include tokenized assets, onchain AI agents, and additional Base features.
Bitcoin treasury firm Strategy (MSTR), which holds 671,268 BTC worth $60.3 billion, rose 1.6% to $170. While bitcoin rose to surpass the $3,000 mark, several other cryptocurrencies saw similar performance, with ether increasing 2.3% in an hour to surpass $3,000 and XRP rising 2.5% to near $2.
The broader crypto market is showing signs of renewed momentum after weeks of consolidation.
Read more: Bitcoin shorts scramble for the exits as BTC climbs
UPDATE (Dec. 17, 15:51 UTC): Updates to add prediction markets' odds for rate cuts.
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Aptos drops 5% to $1.50 as volume spikes above monthly average
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By NEXT.io
- 17 Dec, 2025
Whale.io has officially launched the $WHALE NFT collection on Solana, introducing the next phase of the platform's native token rollout and bringing the community one step closer to the upcoming Token Generation Event (TGE).
The $WHALE NFTs – presented as fully tradable digital cards – represent a new value layer within the Whale ecosystem. Each card holds a fixed amount of $WHALE tokens locked on-chain and backed 1:1, making them redeemable at any time for the underlying tokens. Minting is now live exclusively at mintwhale.io, where users can acquire these asset-backed cards and begin trading immediately on secondary marketplaces such as Magic Eden.
This format transforms $WHALE into a hybrid asset: a collectible card that behaves like a traditional NFT while carrying real, instantly verifiable token value. Cards can be freely transferred, sold, or held, with the assurance that the locked $WHALE can always be unlocked and returned to the Whale.io platform when needed.
Because every card is transparently backed by real $WHALE, value remains anchored and fully verifiable on-chain at all times.
$WHALE continues to serve as the native currency across Whale Originals titles, including Crock Dentist and Blackjack. Holders use it for gameplay, Battlepass purchases, staking rewards, and exclusive in-platform features – a utility that is available today and will expand significantly after TGE.
Upcoming features include a Staking mechanism (locking liquid $WHALE into cards) and a dedicated Token Swapping interface for one-click redemption. Whale.io has also reaffirmed its commitment to regular market buybacks followed by permanent token burns to support long-term token health.
The $WHALE NFT collection is available for minting exclusively at mintwhale.io. Detailed card tiers, pricing, and redemption instructions are displayed on the site. All on-chain activity remains fully transparent through Whale.io's established Treasury wallets.
Community members are invited to follow @Whalegames_en on X for real-time mint updates, secondary market insights, and announcements on future roadmap milestones.
Whale.io is an online casino and sportsbook platform, recognized for its proprietary Whale Originals games and innovative reward systems. With $WHALE at its core, the platform combines provably fair gaming with community-owned economics and transparent tokenomics.
For complete details on the $WHALE NFT collection, users can visit mintwhale.io or whale.io.
Information on the future direction of Whale.io Casino and the Whale Token is available here:
Website: https://mintwhale.io/
Socials: https://linktr.ee/whalesocials_tg
Whale Spokesperson
Whale.io
[email protected]
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FEATURED: How Quantum Computing Could Bring Crypto Chaos
Hut 8 (HUT), which spun off its bitcoin-mining business to become an energy infrastructure provider, announced a deal to build a 245-megawatt data center for Anthropic in Louisiana, with potential to grow the AI infrastructure supply deal to 2,295 MW. HUT stock surged early Wednesday as it aims to retake its 50-day moving average after a recent sell-off. Google (GOOGL)…
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Ethereum's price has come under renewed pressure after failing to break out of a two-month downtrend. ETH briefly attempted a recovery last week but quickly lost momentum.
Weak investor support has pushed Ethereum lower, raising concerns about its ability to sustain a meaningful recovery in the near term.
On-chain data indicate that profit levels for both long-term and short-term holders have declined. Both cohorts now sit at similar profitability levels, signaling reduced conviction across the market. This convergence suggests neither group is realizing meaningful gains at current price levels.
The MVRV Long/Short Difference has slipped below the zero line, reinforcing this trend. The reading indicates neither long-term nor short-term holders hold dominant unrealized profits. If the indicator declines further, Ethereum short-term holder profits could dominate, increasing downside risk and reflecting fragile investor sentiment.
Want more token insights like this? Sign up for Editor Harsh Notariya's Daily Crypto Newsletter here.
Ethereum's macro activity has weakened noticeably. Active addresses on the network have fallen to a seven-month low. This decline highlights reduced participation from ETH holders, signaling less engagement with the network during the ongoing price weakness.
Lower activity suggests investors see limited incentive to transact amid stalled price action. Reduced network usage often reflects fading confidence. Without renewed demand or catalyst-driven activity, Ethereum may struggle to regain momentum in the short term.
ETH is trading at $2,929, marking its third drop below $3,000 this month. Ethereum price's breakout attempt earlier last week failed to hold. The rejection reinforced the prevailing downtrend and signaled limited buying interest at higher levels.
Bearish indicators suggest Ethereum could retest the $2,762 support level. This zone has historically acted as a critical floor. While downside pressure exists, a deeper decline appears limited unless broader market conditions deteriorate significantly.
A shift in investor sentiment could alter the outlook. Reclaiming $3,000 as support remains essential. A sustained move above this level could allow ETH to challenge $3,131. Such a recovery would invalidate the bearish thesis and signal a breakout from the downtrend.
Read original story Ethereum Price Drops Below $3,000 Amid Declining Holder Conviction by Aaryamann Shrivastava at beincrypto.com
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Today, Polygon Labs is making a strategic investment in Boys Club, designed to advance Polygon's mission of being the go-to blockchain for payments more practical and accessible to more people. Boys Club will work closely as a creative collaborator with Polygon on key initiatives while continuing to operate as an independent organization.
Since 2021, Boys Club has built one of the most recognizable cultural voices in technology and Web3. Known for its approach to technology and business reporting for people who hate technology and business reporting, Boys Club has built a trusted community across newsletters, podcasts, events, and partnerships with leading brands like Coinbase, Sotheby's, and a16z. Their team translates abstract technology into human, humorous, and culturally resonant stories.
As Polygon continues to build the infrastructure for cross-border and cross-chain payments, stablecoins, and everyday financial experiences, Boys Club brings the cultural fluency needed to connect these innovations with mainstream audiences.
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Polygon Lab's work is increasingly oriented toward real-world adoption: global payments and financial experiences people and institutions use every day.
But infrastructure alone is not enough. New technology becomes valuable when people understand it, trust it, and see real use for themselves in it. Boys Club excels at translating complex systems into language and stories that resonate. Their ability to communicate why something matters helps achieve Polygon's goal of building the rails for the next generation of money movement.
Boys Club will be able to reach audiences who want to be nerdsnipped but not through developer docs. With this strategic investment, Polygon reinforces its commitment to both sides of adoption: robust infrastructure and killer cultural creation.
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They will continue to work across the broader crypto and tech landscape, including with Base, Solana, Aptos, and other ecosystems.
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Is Bitcoin really going to drop back to $10,000?
Bitcoin's price could drop back toward $10,000, according to a warning from Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Mike McGlone, as the world's largest cryptocurrency shows growing signs of bearish exhaustion.
While some investors continue to view the recent pullback as a temporary correction within a longer-term bull market, others are increasingly questioning whether Bitcoin's peak for this cycle has already been reached.
McGlone's comments have reignited concerns about a deeper drawdown, pointing to a potential return to price levels last seen before Bitcoin's explosive 2020–2021 rally.
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McGlone said many of the catalysts that once fueled Bitcoin's meteoric rise have already materialized, leaving the asset vulnerable to mean reversion.
Referencing Strategy chairman Michael Saylor's recent remark that his company buys Bitcoin with capital it “can't afford to lose,” McGlone acknowledged Saylor's role in legitimizing the asset during its 2020 breakout, when Bitcoin traded near $10,000.
“I admire and respect Mr. Saylor,” McGlone said. “But much of what the market had been looking forward to has occurred — ETFs, U.S. leaders recognizing Bitcoin's benefits, and broader mainstream adoption.”
A Path Toward $10,000 Bitcoin –“We buy Bitcoin with money we can't afford to lose.” Michael Saylor, at the Economic Club of Miami event last evening.I admire and respect Mr. Saylor, and it was his arrival in 2020 — when Bitcoin traded near $10,000 — that helped fuel the 10x… pic.twitter.com/0CDBxCZYYc
— Mike McGlone (@mikemcglone11) December 16, 2025
McGlone added that the rapid expansion of the broader crypto ecosystem has diluted Bitcoin's perceived scarcity.
“There were zero cryptocurrencies in 2009. Now there are roughly 28 million listed on CoinMarketCap,” he said.
“Own it or wear it — I expect Bitcoin to revert back toward $10,000,” he added.
These remarks stand in stark contrast to the bullish narratives from Saylor and other industry leaders who continue to project six-figure Bitcoin prices in the coming years.
Could Bitcoin really fall back to $10,000? CCN asked ChatGPT and Grok to weigh in on the possibility.
ChatGPT offered a cautious assessment, suggesting Bitcoin may be exhibiting late-cycle characteristics rather than early-stage growth dynamics.
“The market is displaying classic signs of saturation,” the AI said. “Institutional access has improved, regulatory clarity has increased, and speculative enthusiasm appears fully priced in.”
According to ChatGPT, Bitcoin's long-term viability remains intact; however, this does not rule out severe drawdowns.
“Historically, Bitcoin has experienced multiple declines of 70% to 85% following major peaks,” it noted. “A move toward significantly lower levels would be consistent with prior post-euphoria phases.”
While stopping short of endorsing McGlone's $10,000 target outright, ChatGPT said such an outcome “cannot be ruled out.”
Grok, the AI chatbot developed by Elon Musk's xAI, was less diplomatic.
“People keep acting shocked when Bitcoin falls — like it hasn't done this exact thing over and over again,” Grok said.
“The only thing more volatile than Bitcoin is the confidence of its most vocal supporters.”
Grok argued that much of the current demand is driven by narrative rather than organic usage.
“When everyone's already bullish, there's no one left to buy,” it said. “That's when gravity kicks in.”
Still, Grok stopped short of declaring Bitcoin finished.
“A brutal drawdown wouldn't kill Bitcoin,” it added. “But it would absolutely humble a lot of price targets that sound ridiculous even by crypto standards.”
From a technical perspective, CCN analyst Valdrin Tahiri said Bitcoin's decline appears to be nearing its final phase, though not before another notable drop.
Tahiri noted that Bitcoin is tracing a five-wave downward structure following its all-time high, a pattern commonly associated with trend exhaustion.
“The most likely target for its conclusion is between $70,100 and $72,000,” Tahiri said, adding that a strong rebound could follow once those levels are reached.
At the time of reporting, Bitcoin was trading around $87,173, down nearly 6% over the past seven days.
“Bitcoin's failure to reclaim $91,500 has shifted the balance decisively back in favor of the bears,” he wrote.
He added: “With momentum weakening and wave structure indicating a lower trajectory, BTC appears vulnerable to another sharp decline before any meaningful recovery can begin.”
Until key resistance levels are reclaimed, Tahiri concluded, “the path of least resistance remains down.”
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Data Integrity
The data integrity offered by blockchain can significantly enhance border security measurements through the immutability and transparency of data. Figure 1 depicts the characteristics of data identity; it shows how blockchain technology can also provide an efficient and secure platform for managing border security operations. Some key benefits include immutable record-keeping, secure identity verification, traceability and transparency, streamlined data sharing, and smart contracts for compliance.35
Streamlined Data Sharing: Security agencies and international partners could benefit from secure and efficient data sharing produced by blockchain technology. This streamlined data exchange can enhance collaboration and coordination among various authorities, enabling faster and more effective responses to potential security threats and emergencies. This would enable customs and border agencies to achieve a seamless “data pipeline” from end to end. Permissioned36 blockchains facilitate the secure sharing of pertinent information. These blockchain networks, managed by supply-chain consortia, allow continuous access and updates
for all involved parties, empowering regulatory bodies to maintain precise and dependable data while sourcing it from appropriate channels.37
Identity Management
Blockchain technology has the potential to significantly enhance identity management by offering secure, decentralized, and immutable solutions to identity-related challenges. Figure 2 depicts the characteristics of how the technology can work to improve identity management through mechanisms such as decentralization, immutable records, self-sovereign identification (SSI), verification and authentication, and interoperability.
Decentralization and Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI): As mentioned previously, Self-Sovereign Identity refers to the concept of an individual owning their own identity without the need for central authorities or intermediaries. Using decentralized technologies emphasizes allowing users to manage and control their identity-related information, including personal data and credentials. SSI enables users to store their identity data, selectively share it as needed, and maintain control over its use, reducing reliance on centralized entities. Decentralization, however, broadly refers to the distribution of control and data across a network of nodes or participants, eliminating the need for a single central authority. Decentralization reduces the reliance on centralized authorities, providing individuals greater control over their identity data. SSI empowers users to manage and share their information selectively, enhancing privacy and control.38
Secure Authentication: Blockchain systems use cryptographic methods, digital signatures, private keys, etc., to enable secure authentication processes. Users have unique digital identifiers that authenticate their identity when interacting with various services or systems. This method ensures that only authorized individuals can access their information. Implementing measures significantly reducing the risk of identity theft and fraud is critical. Blockchain's cryptographic security features can play a significant role in safeguarding identity data and preventing malicious activities.39
In 2022, U.S. goods and services trade with Mexico reached $855.1 billion, making Mexico our second-largest trading partner.40 According to the Department of Commerce, U.S. exports of goods and services to Mexico totaled $362.5 billion in 2022, which accounted for 13 percent of total U.S. exports and 43 percent of Mexican imports. U.S. exports supported an estimated 1.1 million jobs in 2019.41 Mexico recently became the United States' principal trade partner in early 2023. Bilateral trade totaled $263 billion in the first four months of the year, accounting for more than 15 percent of total U.S. trade. This data underscores the heightened significance of ensuring faster, more secure, and more efficient delivery of processes today.
Supply Chain Security
The 2012 National Strategy for Global Supply Chain Security42 emphasizes the need for efficient and secure movement of goods through a resilient global supply chain system. It highlights collaboration among stakeholders, integration of efforts across government agencies, and enhanced risk management to address evolving threats and ensure continuity of operations.43 Blockchain technology offers transformative potential for customs operations at the Mexico–US border by introducing a transparent, immutable ledger system that securely tracks goods, streamlines documentation, and automates compliance verification through smart contracts. When integrated with Internet of Things (IoT)44 devices, blockchain enables real-time monitoring of goods, capturing data such as location and conditions during transit. This innovation enhances trust, security, and operational effectiveness by ensuring transparency, authenticity, and accountability at every stage of the supply chain.45
Smart contracts reduce costs and administrative burdens while automating payments and compliance processes. Its decentralized structure prevents tampering and unauthorized access, fostering confidence among stakeholders, enabling efficient auditing, and facilitating rapid dispute resolution. Together, these capabilities have the potential to revolutionize cross-border supply chains, making them more efficient, transparent, and secure.46
INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION
Stakeholder Collaboration
Collaboration between Mexican and U.S. agencies in border security is essential to address shared challenges such as arms trafficking, drug smuggling, and human trafficking. This cooperation is based on intelligence sharing, joint operations, and mutual respect for national sovereignty.47 In this context, blockchain technology emerges as a promising tool to improve transparency and efficiency in border processes. By providing an immutable ledger accessible to all authorized parties, blockchain enables real-time tracking of goods and automated compliance verification, reducing costs and increasing trust among stakeholders.48
Figure 3 illustrates the key stakeholder agencies in Mexico and the United States that can work together to establish a binational framework to safeguard the border. The US Department of Homeland Security can engage in collaboration with several Mexican counterparts, including the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit (Secretaría de Hacienda y Crédito Público), the Ministry of the Interior (Secretaría de Gobernación), and the National Guard (Guardia Nacional). Similarly, the US Department of Defense can coordinate efforts with the Secretary of National Defense (Secretaría de la Defensa Nacional). Additionally, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) can foster collaboration with the Secretary of Public Security and Citizen Protection (Secretaría de Seguridad Pública y Protección Ciudadana). The Department of Justice, working in coordination with Mexico's Attorney General's Office (Fiscalía General de la República), can strengthen judicial and prosecutorial collaboration to combat transnational crime and enhance border security. On a diplomatic front, the US Department of State can establish collaborative ties with the Mexican Secretary of Foreign Affairs (Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores).
The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) with the Mexican Ministry of Finance and Public Credit (SHCP: Secretaría de Hacienda y Crédito Público), Ministry of Interior (SEGOB: Secretaría de Gobernación), and National Guard (GN: Guardia Nacional):
US Department of Defense with the Mexican Secretary of National Defense (SEDENA: Secretaría de la Defensa Nacional):
U.S. Central Intelligence Agency with the Mexican Secretary of Public Security and Citizen Protection (SSPC: Secretaría de Seguridad y Protección Ciudadana):
U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) with Mexican Attorney General's Office (FGR: Fiscalía General de la República):
U.S. Department of State with the Mexican Secretary of Foreign Affairs (SRE: Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores):
Disaster Response
Blockchain technology, renowned for its decentralized and immutable ledger system, offers a transformative solution in disaster response and humanitarian aid efforts. Its decentralized nature ensures transparent and tamper-proof record-keeping of critical data, such as supply chain logistics, donations, and resource allocation, fostering stakeholder trust and accountability. By enabling secure and rapid transactions, automating processes through smart contracts, and providing resilient data storage, blockchain streamlines aid distribution, expedites resource allocation, and prevents fraud. Furthermore, its ability to enhance donation traceability, establish digital identities, and ensure data integrity makes blockchain a powerful tool in revolutionizing the efficiency, transparency, and effectiveness of disaster relief efforts.49
Such characteristics could enhance disaster response efforts along the international border in three ways. The first advantage is the transparent and immutable ledger feature. This is what ensures crucial information remains secure and unaltered. Thus, accountability and mitigating the risk of fraudulent activities is enhanced.50 Secondly, blockchain's capability for secure and rapid transactions, emphasized by Zwitter & Boisse-Despiaux facilitates direct peer-to-peer transactions, minimizing delays in delivering aid to affected regions.51 Additionally, its decentralized data storage safeguards critical information redundantly across nodes, reducing the vulnerability to data loss during infrastructure failures.52
Furthermore, the utilization of smart contracts, advocated by the Stellar Development Foundation and Clarke, enables automated aid distribution based on predefined conditions, streamlining assistance processes.53 Blockchain's role in enhancing donation traceability, as outlined by Almaghrabi & Alhogail, ensures transparency in tracking contributions, fostering trust among donors.54 Moreover, blockchain facilitates identification and credentialing, as suggested by the Council of Europe, aiding in verifying the legitimacy of beneficiaries and preventing identity fraud.55 Lastly, the technology's immutable nature supports data integrity and recovery, which is essential for reconstructing critical information post-disaster.56
INTELLIGENCE SHARING AND SECURE COMMUNICATIONS
Creating a shared blockchain platform for securely exchanging immigration, customs, and other relevant data between Mexico and the United States could improve collaboration and decision-making processes related to border management.
The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency is actively testing advanced blockchain solutions and specifications to bolster its capacity to safeguard American businesses against intellectual property rights (IPR) theft. Blockchain technology could aid in combating IPR violations by allowing CBP to exchange data securely and efficiently with manufacturers, retailers, rights holders, and importers.57 However, to fully harness the potential of blockchain technology at the border, a collaborative blockchain framework between the two border-sharing countries is crucial. By establishing a unified platform, both countries can streamline customs procedures, facilitating smoother and quicker clearance processes for goods crossing the border.
Blockchain's inherent characteristics, such as tamper-proof data records and encrypted transactions, ensure the integrity and security of customs-related information, including import/export documentation, tariffs, and inspection records. This technology enables real-time data sharing between Mexican and US customs authorities, allowing immediate access to accurate and updated information on shipments and trade activities. Such accessibility reduces delays and redundancies in customs clearance and helps combat trade-related fraud and smuggling by providing a transparent and immutable ledger of transactions. Additionally, the shared blockchain platform promotes interoperability between the customs systems of both nations, fostering standardized processes and improving coordination in managing cross-border trade, ultimately fostering economic growth and bolstering bilateral trade relations.
Moreover, while protecting intellectual property rights remains a vital focus, CBP should also broaden its scope, recognizing that blockchain technology can significantly improve border operations beyond trade. Implementing a shared blockchain technology at the Mexico-US border can significantly bolster efforts to detect and apprehend criminals attempting to cross the border unlawfully. Utilizing blockchain's secure and transparent ledger system allows for the creation of a unified and tamper-resistant database that can be shared between Mexican and US law enforcement agencies. This platform enables the real-time exchange of critical information related to criminal activities, including known criminal profiles, alerts on suspects, and crime patterns, thus facilitating swift identification and tracking of potential threats. By utilizing encrypted keys and immutable records, blockchain ensures the secure storage and transmission of sensitive data while maintaining the privacy of individual information. This collaborative approach could enhance the capacity of both countries' border security agencies to detect and intercept criminal elements, including traffickers, smugglers, and individuals involved in illegal activities, thereby fortifying efforts to maintain safety and security along the border.
Blockchain technology offers several features that can enhance the security and transparency of communications within and between government organizations. Data integrity, transparency, decentralization, and encryption are pivotal in developing secure organizational communications. This is essential to prevent potential hackers from taking advantage of crucial weak spots to maintain the homeland's security.58 The immutability of blockchain ensures that once information is added to the chain, it cannot be altered retroactively without the network's consensus. This feature can help maintain the integrity of sensitive government data and communications. Blockchain networks use cryptographic techniques to secure data. This ensures that communications are encrypted and protected from unauthorized access, enhancing the security of sensitive information.59 The transparent nature of blockchain allows authorized personnel to trace and verify the origin and movement of data. This transparency could increase accountability within government communications.60 Distributed ledger technology (DLT) removes the need for a central authority, which can reduce the risk of a single point of failure and improve the resilience of communication networks against cyberattacks.61
CONCLUSION
Blockchain technology offers promising solutions to the complex challenges faced along the Mexico-United States border. By leveraging blockchain's decentralized ledger system, both governments could enhance security measures, streamline trade processes, and foster economic growth along the common border. The immutable and transparent nature of blockchain offers opportunities for secure identity verification, transparent data sharing, and efficient supply chain management. All of which could enhance the free flow of goods and people across the common border. While blockchain has its limitations and challenges, its potential to transform border management and cross-border trade is undeniable. As governments and businesses continue to explore and implement blockchain solutions, collaboration, and innovation will be key to unlocking the full benefits of this transformative technology. With careful planning and strategic implementation, blockchain has the potential to revolutionize border security and trade, ushering in a new era of efficiency, transparency, and prosperity for border communities on both sides of the Mexico-United States border.
(No artificial intelligence was used in writing this article.)
References
35 IBM, n.d.; FerdH, 2024.
36 A permissioned blockchain is a type of blockchain network where access is restricted to authorized users or entities. Unlike public blockchains, which are open to anyone, permissioned blockchains require permission to join and participate.
37 Okazaki, 2018; Kharche, Badholia, & Upadhyay, 2024.
38 Stockburger et al., 2021; Gillis, 2022; Shardeum Content Team, 2023b.
39 Choudhary, 2023; Kiania, Jameii, & Rahmani, 2023; W3C, 2022.
40 Office of the United States Trade Representative, n.d.
41 U.S. Department of State, 2023.
42 Ellison, Harwood, Kaye, & Ram, 2025; Office of the Director of National Intelligence, 2024.
43 U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 2012.
44 Internet of Things (IoT), which refers to a network of interconnected devices embedded with sensors, software, and other technologies to collect and exchange data over the internet.
45 Ganne, 2018; Singh, 2024; McDaniel, 2019.
46 Gaur & Gaiha, 2020; Henry et al., 2023; Notomoro, 2024.
47 U.S. Department of State, 2025.
48 NuvoCargo, 2024.
49 Forbes Technology Council, 2024; Gatsby, 2024.
50 Chawre, n.d.; Zhang, Sheng, & Liu, 2024.
51 Zwitter & Boisse-Despiaux, 2018.
52 De Filippi, Mannan & Reijers, 2020; Dart, 2024.
53 Stellar Development Foundation, n.d.; Clarke, 2023b.
54 Almaghrabi & Alhogail, 2022.
55 G'sell & Martin-Bariteau, 2022.
56 Stellar Development Foundation, n.d.
57 CBP, 2020.
58 IBM. n.d.
59 Fairchild, 2023.
60 Jung, 2019.
61 Barney et al., 2023.
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Dr. Danny W. Davis is a retired Army lieutenant colonel. An infantryman, he spent most of his 20-year career with airborne, ranger, and special forces units. Since leaving the Army Danny has worked overseas in a US State Department sponsored training program, worked with teenagers in a Junior ROTC program, and done consulting work for the US Army in the homeland security enterprise. Danny joined Texas A&M University's Bush School in 2007, where he is an associate professor, for terrorism, homeland and cyber security. He holds two degrees from Texas A&M, a bachelor's in history and a Ph.D. in education. His master's in international relations was earned at Troy State University.
Javier Diaz Vazquez holds a Master's in Public Administration from the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University and a Bachelor's in Business Administration from Universidad de las Américas Puebla. He also earned certificates in Global Business from Harvard Business School Online and Advanced International Affairs from the Bush School. In 2022, he founded Criptomex, a crypto-mining service managing over 200 miners. In the summer 2023, he interned at the Political Affairs office at the Embassy of Mexico to the United States.
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On 14 October 2025, the Information Commissioner's Office (the ICO) hosted its annual Data Protection Practitioners Conference, with a number of Burges Salmon's lawyers in attendance.
There was an interesting session delivered on lessons learned from cyber-attacks. The slides from the session are available online here. In this session, the ICO talked about 5 actionable insights coming out of the range of cyber attacks that they have been involved with.
In the table below, we set out the 5 actionable insights and the comments from the ICO on these. We have also added comments on how these apply to pension schemes trustees.
The ICO's five actionable insights
Key takeaways for trustees
The 5 actionable insights from cyber attacks that the ICO has dealt with are an interesting lessons learned piece that trustees should be aware of. From a pensions perspective, the key actions and takeaways are:
Multi-Factor Authentication: Trustees without MFA should implement it as a priority, both for email use and portal use (where relevant).
Data and Asset Mapping: Schemes should have an up to date data and asset map to understand their cyber footprint. Trustees can then make informed, risk-based decisions on the extent to which they would like to review their suppliers (both from a processes and a contractual perspective).
Understanding third party processes: Linked to reviewing their suppliers, trustees should be asking questions of their third party suppliers, including their scheme administrators. Based on the ICO's actionable insights, some of the questions to ask include:
whether they carry out vulnerability scanning and/or penetration testing and how frequently;
whether they have a clear patching policy and that critical vulnerabilities are addressed promptly; and
whether they have appropriate monitoring in place and that alerts are reviewed and acted upon promptly.
"It is in the character of growth that we should learn from both pleasant and unpleasant experiences"
https://ico.org.uk/media2/xqkhjbaa/beyond-the-headlines-actionable-insights-and-lessons-learned-from-cyber-attacks.pdf
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As Bitcoin coils near a critical turning point, capital is beginning to rotate toward altcoins with the cleanest continuation structures. Ethereum, Solana, and Avalanche are all trading near key technical zones in the short term, but beneath the surface, their setups diverge meaningfully. When volatility compresses at the market level, relative structure matters. This comparison focuses on which altcoin is best positioned to lead once expansion returns.
Ethereum ETHUSDT: Strong Base, But Momentum Lags
Ethereum continues to respect its rising daily trend support, with higher lows intact on both the 4H and daily timeframes. However, the ETH price remains capped below its near-term resistance zone, with momentum indicators struggling to expand decisively.
On the 4H chart, ETH is consolidating rather than compressing aggressively, suggesting stability—but not urgency. RSI is holding in the neutral-bearish zone, yet it lacks the impulsive characteristics typically seen ahead of strong breakout phases. Meanwhile, MACD suggests a bullish crossover is impending, but as it remains within the negative range, no major impact can be expected. Therefore, the Ethereum price is structurally strong but currently more reactive than leading.
Avalanche AVAXUSDT: Volatile Structure, Higher Risk
AVAX shows wider price swings and less structural clarity. While it has rebounded from recent lows, the 4H chart reveals inconsistent higher-low formation, and daily resistance remains relatively distant.
Momentum has not improved largely, but volatility expansion without tight compression often leads to fakeouts rather than sustained breakouts. AVAX would need additional consolidation to build a higher-probability setup. Hence, the Avalanche price is momentum-driven but structurally noisy and higher risk.
Solana SOLUSDT: The Cleanest Breakout Structure
Solana stands out on both the 4H and daily timeframes. Price is compressing tightly beneath resistance while consistently printing higher lows—a classic breakout structure. Volatility has contracted sharply, often a precursor to expansion moves.
RSI remains elevated but not overheated, and SOL continues to show relative strength against both ETH and the broader altcoin market. Importantly, invalidation levels are clearly defined, making risk management cleaner. Hence, the Solana price is the best balance of structure, momentum, and clarity.
Among the three, Solana currently offers the highest-quality 4H/Daily breakout setup. Its tightening compression, sustained relative strength, and controlled momentum profile give it an edge over ETH's slower build and AVAX's volatility. If Bitcoin resolves higher from its own compression zone, SOL appears best positioned to respond with an impulsive continuation move rather than a delayed reaction.
The Bottom Line
While ETH and AVAX both remain in constructive trends, neither currently matches the clarity of Solana's setup. SOL's tight compression beneath resistance, persistent higher-low formation, and controlled momentum profile offer a cleaner risk-to-reward framework than its peers. In environments where Bitcoin resolves from compression, altcoins with the most efficient structures tend to move first—and move hardest. Unless SOL loses its higher-timeframe support, it remains the most compelling breakout candidate among the three as traders position for the next phase of market expansion.
Select market data provided by ICE Data Services. Select reference data provided by FactSet. Copyright © 2025 FactSet Research Systems Inc.Copyright © 2025, American Bankers Association. CUSIP Database provided by FactSet Research Systems Inc. All rights reserved. SEC fillings and other documents provided by Quartr.© 2025 TradingView, Inc.
Crypto investors have been growing impatient as altcoins continue to lag behind Bitcoin. For months, crypto traders have been asking the same question: Is altcoin season dead, or just delayed? According to several well-known market experts, the Altcoin season may not be gone at all; it simply hasn't started yet.
Here's when the altcoin season is going to start.
Why Altcoin Season Has Been Delayed
Raoul Pal, a prominent macro investor, says the biggest mistake investors are making is assuming the old four-year cycle to repeat.
According to him, debt maturity was extended during 2021–2022, which quietly stretched the cycle by roughly one year. This change reduced liquidity in the expected “banana zone,” delaying the usual altcoin rally.
Because of this delay, Pal believes the 4-year crypto cycle has stretched into a five-year structure. In his view, the key economic indicator to watch is the ISM index. Historically, when ISM rises above 50, strong rallies in Bitcoin, Ethereum, and later altcoins tend to follow.
When Could Altcoin Season Start?
Speaking directly about when the altcoin season could arrive, Pal said;
“Our best guess remains well into 2026, probably around Q2. That's when the liquidity cycle is most likely to peak.”
Most importantly, Pal has pushed back against claims that crypto is entering a long bear market. Instead, he argues the market is still building toward its next major move.
Other Experts Begin to Agree
Pal's outlook is no longer a lonely one. Market strategist Tom Lee has also pointed out that when the ISM index moves back above 50, it has historically aligned with powerful moves in Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Meanwhile, this supports Pal's view that crypto's biggest gains may still lie ahead.
Altcoin Chart Backs The Timeline
Popular crypto trader Ash Crypto shared a chart showing the crypto market without the top 10 coins. The chart suggests prices are sitting on strong, long-term support, similar to levels seen before past altcoin rallies.
Ash says major altcoin runs usually begin only after the U.S. Federal Reserve ends quantitative tightening (QT). When QT stops, money slowly returns to the market, which helps risk assets like altcoins move higher.
He also explains that altcoin rallies do not start easily. Prices often move sideways or fall first, with sharp drops and liquidations that shake out weak traders.
According to Ash, the current market structure looks similar to 2020. If this pattern repeats, it could point to an altcoin rally starting around 2026.
Looking at the Altcoin Season Index, it is currently at 37, showing that the market is still far from a true altcoin season.
FAQs
Yes. Extended periods of Bitcoin dominance often lead to higher volatility and lower liquidity in smaller tokens, which can amplify losses during pullbacks. Investors may need to adjust position sizing, focus on liquidity, or reassess exposure to highly speculative altcoins until broader market conditions improve.
Altcoins tend to benefit more from rising liquidity because they are generally higher-risk assets. If financial conditions ease, capital often flows first into Bitcoin and large-cap tokens, then rotates into smaller projects as investors seek higher returns.
Smaller blockchain projects, decentralized finance protocols, and early-stage token investors typically see the largest percentage gains during altcoin rallies. Exchanges, market makers, and retail traders can also experience increased volumes and activity as broader participation returns to the market.
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A growing number of new studies have found that, at least for some cells, death isn't the end, but the beginning of something wholly unexpected.
The biological cycle of our existence seems relatively straightforward: we're born, we live, we die. The end.
But when you examine existence at the cellular level, things get a bit more interesting. You, me, and all of the 108 billion or so Homo sapiens who've ever walked the Earth have all been our own constellation of some 30 trillion cells. Each of our bodies is a collective organism of living human cells and microbes working in cooperation to create what our minds view as “life.” However, a growing number of new studies have found that, at least for some cells, death isn't the end. Instead, it's possibly the beginning of something new and wholly unexpected.
A growing snowball of research concerning a new class of AI-designed multicellular organisms known as “xenobots” is gaining scientific attention for their apparent autonomy. In September 2024, Peter Noble, PhD, a microbiologist from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, along with Alex Pozhitkov, PhD, a bioinformatics researcher at the City of Hope cancer center, detailed this research on the website The Conversation.
Xenobots are cells that form new roles beyond their original biological function—for example, using hairlike cilia for locomotion rather than transporting mucus. Because they appear to reassemble into this new form and function, the authors argue that xenobots form a kind of “third state” of life, wherein cells can reorganize after the death of an organism to form something new. These forms likely wouldn't materialize in nature, but xenobots show that cells have a surprising ability to adapt to changes in their environment. Experiments with human cells, or “anthrobots,” exhibit this behavior, too.
“Taken together, these findings … challenge the idea that cells and organisms can evolve only in predetermined ways,” the authors write in The Conversation. “The third state suggests that [an organism's] death may play a significant role in how life transforms over time.”
The implications for these cellular robots, or biobots, are pretty big—imagine tailor-made medicines crafted from your own tissues to avoid a dangerous immune response. But they also form a complicated picture of what a cell actually is. At least, that's what evolutionary biologist and physician William Miller thinks. He's the co-author of the 2023 book The Sentient Cell, which explores ideas found in the Cellular Basis of Consciousness (CBC) theory suggesting that cells retain a kind of consciousness. Miller believes that xenobots are just another example of how we don't give credit to the inherent cognitive—or even conscious—abilities of the cells that make up our bodies.
“The organism as a whole no longer responds as it had, but subsets of cells are active, decision-making, and problem-solving,” Miller says. “So this fundamentally reconstitutes how we see the living frame … the fundamental unit of biological agency is the conscious cell.”
Consciousness is a notoriously slippery term, and one whose definition can change based on fields of a study, context, or even across time. Famously, the 17th-century philosopher, mathematician, scientist, and all-around smart guy René Descartes thought only the human mind was conscious (which led to some inhumane experiments). Thankfully, today science recognizes various types of consciousness throughout the animal kingdom; but when it comes to forms of life fundamentally unlike us, human biases of what can be conscious or intelligent slowly creep in.
“We, as humans, have very limited capacity and finely honed ability to see intelligence in medium-sized objects moving at medium speeds through three-dimensional space,” says Tufts University developmental and synthetic biologist Michael Levin, PhD, in a video exploring cellular intelligence. His lab constructed xenobots, and he says human beings are bad at recognizing intelligence when it's “extremely small or extremely large.”
For Miller, the concept of a sentient cell is a fundamental sea change in biology that challenges some Neo-Darwinian ideas like “survival of the fittest.” Because cells must work in concert to be successful, a more accurate microbial catchphrase might be “I serve myself best by serving others,” Miller says.Putting the intelligent cell at the center of biology “spills out an entirely new biological narrative where genes are not controlling, genes are tools. In which we understand why organisms choose to stick together in their trillions, to solve problems, [for] decision-making, mutual support, partnerships, synergies, co-dependencies, collaboration—it's not survival of the fittest,” Miller says.
Many scientists aren't sold on this brave new future for biology. A 2024 letter published in the journal EMBO Reports] describes CBC theory as “merely an intellectual exercise without empirical evidence” and the authors remain equally skeptical of consciousness claims regarding xenobots or other “third state” organisms.
“It's been known for maybe 75 years or more that cells can be induced to develop abnormally when taken out of context and cultured in vitro. This is nothing new,” University of California, Santa Cruz plant biologist Lincoln Taiz, PhD and co-author of the letter, said in an email. “When an insect herbivore secretes hormones into plant leaves, causing the leaves to form galls [abnormal growths] that serve as houses for the insect, is that a ‘third state' of life?” Taiz has also tackled what he describes as “myths” surrounding plant consciousness and co-authored a review in 2019 titled “Plants Neither Possess nor Require Consciousness.”
And for Wendy Ann Peer, PhD, a biologist at the University of Maryland who also served as co-author of the dissenting CBC letter, the idea of cellular consciousness simply lacks the scientific rigor necessary to be considered a theory. “With the scientific method, there has to be a control and a hypothesis that's clearly tested,” Peer says. “And the key for your hypothesis is that it has to be falsifiable.”
When cells are taken out of context and are no longer exchanging information or signals from nearby cells, different genes can be expressed than what's normal, Peer says. Simply put, the xenobots are an advanced version of “animal caps,” a well-known technique in developmental biology in which cells retain the ability to differentiate into other cells.
While some experts say cells are more than just automatons following strict genetic orders, scientists still overwhelmingly define consciousness as pertaining to something with a nervous system and a brain capable of yielding a subjective point of view. However, despite this disagreement, both groups agree on at least one important point—understanding cells and exploring their many capabilities is a huge opportunity. Taiz compares the potential use of anthrobots in medicine to humans behaving as their own “gall-forming insects in plants,” via altering the development of stem cells to create particular cell behaviors.
Meanwhile, Miller agrees. “Levin's work is a good example of trying to discern how to partner with cells to create living forms to help humans,” he says. “We're learning to do what cells do, and we're going to partner with them if we're smart.”
Conscious or not, it looks like cells will undoubtedly play a starring role in the unfolding future of human health.
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Darren lives in Portland, has a cat, and writes/edits about sci-fi and how our world works. You can find his previous stuff at Gizmodo and Paste if you look hard enough.
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New research suggests that disrupted brain circuits in Down syndrome may be linked to a shortage of a specific molecule that the nervous system relies on to develop and work properly. The team says that bringing this molecule back, known as pleiotrophin, might help support brain function in Down syndrome and potentially other neurological conditions, possibly even later in life.
The work was done in laboratory mice, not in people, so it is not close to becoming a treatment. Even so, the researchers found that giving pleiotrophin improved brain function in adult mice after the brain had already finished forming. This raises the possibility of an advantage over earlier strategies aimed at strengthening Down syndrome related brain circuits, which would have required action during very narrow windows in pregnancy.
"This study is really exciting because it serves as proof-of-concept that we can target astrocytes, a cell type in the brain specialized for secreting synapse-modulating molecules, to rewire the brain circuitry at adult ages," said researcher Ashley N. Brandebura, PhD, who was part of the research team while at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and is now part of the University of Virginia School of Medicine. "This is still far off from use in humans, but it gives us hope that secreted molecules can be delivered with effective gene therapies or potentially protein infusions to improve quality of life in Down syndrome."
Understanding Down syndrome and its health impacts
Down syndrome affects about 1 in 640 babies born each year in the United States, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It results from an error in cell division during development and can be associated with developmental delays, hyperactivity, a shorter lifespan, and a higher risk of health issues that can include heart defects, thyroid problems, and hearing or vision difficulties.
Salk scientists led by Nicola J. Allen, PhD, set out to learn more about what drives Down syndrome by examining proteins inside brain cells in mouse models of the condition. They focused on pleiotrophin because it normally appears at very high levels at key stages of brain development and plays important roles in building synapses, the connections between nerve cells, and in shaping axons and dendrites, which help neurons send and receive signals. The researchers also noted that pleiotrophin levels are reduced in Down syndrome.
To test whether restoring pleiotrophin could improve brain function, the team used engineered viruses called viral vectors to deliver it to the right place. Viruses are often associated with illnesses like the flu, but researchers can modify them so they do not cause disease and instead carry helpful material. In this case, the virus was stripped of harmful components and loaded with beneficial cargo -- pleiotrophin -- so it could deliver the molecule directly into cells.
Astrocytes, synapses, and brain plasticity
The scientists reported that supplying pleiotrophin to astrocytes, a major type of brain cell, produced substantial effects. Among the changes, the number of synapses increased in the hippocampus, a region involved in learning and memory. The team also saw an increase in brain "plasticity" -- the ability to create or adjust connections that support learning and memory.
"These results suggest we can use astrocytes as vectors to deliver plasticity-inducing molecules to the brain," Allen said. "This could one day allow us to rewire faulty connections and improve brain performance."
Broader implications and next steps
The researchers emphasize that pleiotrophin is unlikely to be the only factor behind circuit problems in Down syndrome. They say more work is needed to understand the many contributors involved. Still, they argue that the results show the approach itself can work, and that it might eventually help beyond Down syndrome, including in other neurological diseases.
"This idea that astrocytes can deliver molecules to induce brain plasticity has implications for many neurological disorders, including other neurodevelopmental disorders like fragile X syndrome but also maybe even to neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer's disease," Brandebura said. "If we can figure out how to 'reprogram' disordered astrocytes to deliver synaptogenic molecules, we can have some greatly beneficial impact on many different disease states."
After finishing her postdoctoral training at Salk, Brandebura plans to continue this line of research at UVA Health. There, she is part of the UVA Brain Institute, the Department of Neuroscience and the Center for Brain Immunology and Glia (BIG Center).
Findings published and funding
The results were published in the journal Cell Reports. The article is opening access, meaning it is free to read. The research team included Brandebura, Adrien Paumier, Quinn N. Asbell, Tao Tao, Mariel Kristine B. Micael, Sherlyn Sanchez and Allen. The scientists report no financial interest in the work.
Support came from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, grant F32NS117776.
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Here's the likely story of the secret stash.
Here's what you'll learn when you read this story:
Silver was the Vikings' treasure of choice. Their affinity for the metal gives discoveries of silver artifacts significant historical value—much like a treasure recently found in the mountains of Norway, one that had sat undisturbed since the 9th century AD.
Before farmer Tårn Sigve Schmidt was able to carve a new road for his tractor on his mountainous farm near Årdal, northwest of Oslo, he had to call in archaeologists to make sure there were no unique areas he was about to disturb. It's a good thing he did.
Seven inches beneath the floorboards of what was likely once a house for Viking slaves, a team of archaeologists found four heavy silver bracelets, all with different decorations, likely from over 1,100 years ago.
“At first, I thought it was a question of some twisted copper wires that you can often find in agricultural land,” field archaeologist Ola Tengesdal Lygre said in a translated statement from the University of Stavanger, “but when I saw that there were several next to each other and that they were not copper at all, but silver, I realized that we had found something exciting.”
Further investigation showed that, at one point, a “large and powerful Viking farm” was located on the property, with multiple houses and shelter for animals. The location gave the owners control of the entry into the fjord. The excavation crew also found soapstone pots, rivets, knife blades, and whetstones for sharpening tools.
But nothing is quite as exciting as buried treasure.
“This is definitely the biggest thing I have experienced in my career,” Volker Demuth, project manager at the Archaeological Museum at the University of Stavanger, said in a statement. “This is a unique find, because we very rarely find such objects exactly where they were placed. As a rule, such valuable objects are discovered on fields that have been plowed, where an object has been completely taken out of its original context. Since the silver hoard has not been moved, it can give us completely new insights into life and society in the Viking Age.”
The bracelets were transported within the block of soil they were found to the museum. X-rays were taken, and the team will test soil samples to help give a broader picture of the setting, including if the silver was wrapped in a cloth when it was buried. The bracelets are reminiscent of the necklaces found in Hjelmeland in 1769, and the archaeologists haven't yet ruled out a connection between the two discoveries.
Experts believe that the farm was the victim of arson at one point, likely coinciding with a period of unrest during the Viking Age in Norway, which stretched from from 800 AD to 1050 AD. The farm and the discovered silver were likely from the 9th century, archaeologists believe.
“If people who lived on this farm had to flee from an attack,” Demuth said, “it would be natural to hide away the valuables you had before escaping to the mountains. And perhaps in a place where you would not have thought that a treasure was hidden.”
The research team hasn't yet found anything more in the same area but will extend the search thanks to the silver find.
With no silver mines in Norway at the time of the stashing, any silver owned by the Vikings had to come from abroad, either through trade, as a gift, or even as loot from a raid. The Vikings traded in silver more than gold, likely a byproduct of the regions in which they traveled.
“This is an absolutely fantastic find,” said Ole Madsen, the museum's director, “which gives us completely unique knowledge about one of the most central eras in Norway, namely the Viking Age. We will exhibit this as soon as it is ready to be displayed.”
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Ageing erodes human immunity, in part by reshaping the T cell repertoire, leading to increased vulnerability to infection, malignancy and vaccine failure1,2,3. Attempts to rejuvenate immune function have yielded only modest results and are limited by toxicity or lack of clinical feasibility1,3,4,5. Here we show that the liver can be transiently repurposed to restore age-diminished immune cues and improve T cell function in aged mice. These immune cues were found by performing multi-omic mapping across central and peripheral niches in young and aged animals, leading to the identification of Notch and Fms-like tyrosine kinase 3 ligand (FLT3L) pathways, together with interleukin-7 (IL-7) signalling, as declining with age. Delivery of mRNAs encoding Delta-like ligand 1 (DLL1), FLT3L and IL-7 to hepatocytes expanded common lymphoid progenitors, boosted de novo thymopoiesis without affecting haematopoietic stem cell (HSC) composition, and replenished T cells while enhancing dendritic cell abundance and function. Treatment with these mRNAs improved peptide vaccine responses and restored antitumour immunity in aged mice by increasing tumour-specific CD8+ infiltration and clonal diversity and synergizing with immune checkpoint blockade. These effects were reversible after dosing ceased and did not breach self-tolerance, in contrast to the inflammatory and autoimmune liabilities of recombinant cytokine treatments6,7. These findings underscore the promise of mRNA-based strategies for systemic immune modulation and highlight the potential of interventions aimed at preserving immune resilience in ageing populations.
Ageing has a profound effect on the immune system, including the T cell repertoire, leading to reduced immune resilience1,2,3. Central to this decline in humans and most other mammals is the involution of the thymus. Thymic involution curtails naive T cell output, contracts T cell receptor (TCR) repertoire diversity and blunts primary responses, whereas peripheral T cells accrue dysfunctional states that heighten susceptibility to infection, vaccine failure and cancer.
Efforts to counter immune ageing have primarily focused on reversing thymic involution through hormones8, cytokines9, small molecules10 and heterochronic parabiosis11, or by directly modulating haematopoiesis12. Although these strategies have provided valuable insights into immune ageing, they have been limited by effect size, toxicity or clinical feasibility4,5.
Here we describe an approach for reconstituting thymus-derived factors in the liver to address age-related immune decline (Fig. 1a). We first identified signalling pathways in the thymus and peripheral blood T cells that decline with age. We then delivered mRNAs encoding these factors (DLL1, FLT3-L and IL-7) to the liver using lipid nanoparticles (LNPs). We found that this approach significantly improved immune response in ageing mice in both vaccination and cancer immunotherapy models with no adverse side effects or evidence of increased autoimmunity. These results highlight the potential of this approach to improve immune function and, more broadly, to use the liver as a transient ‘factory' for replenishing factors that decline with age.
a, Overview of the approach to restore age-declining immune trophic cues by hepatic expression of Dll1, Flt3l and Il7 mRNAs. b, Spatial ligand–receptor interactions between thymic cortical epithelial cells (cTECs) and thymocytes decline with age (left), and ssGSEA shows reduced Notch pathway activity in circulating T cells (right). n = 47 spatial arrays and 96,683 blood T cell transcriptomes across 21 ages. Data are represented as violin plots with median + interquartile range. Statistical significance was determined by Mann–Whitney tests. c, cTEC–T cell IL-7 interaction (left) and downstream pathway in circulating T cell (right) activities are likewise diminished with age. n = 47 spatial arrays and 96,683 blood T cell transcriptomes across 21 ages. Data are represented as violin plots with median + interquartile range. Statistical significance was determined by Mann–Whitney tests. d, Thymus weight decreases with age (n = 18; 3 per timepoint). Interstitial FLT3-L levels are reduced in aged thymus by ELISA (n = 3 per group). Data are mean ± s.e.m.; statistical significance was determined by a two-tailed unpaired Student's t-test. e, mRNA (DFI; Dll1, Flt3l and Il7) constructs formulated in SM-102 LNPs. f, Representative RIBOmap images 6 h post-DFI show robust ribosome-bound transcripts in the liver. A representative image from three imaged DFI-treated animals is shown. g, Single-cell quantification: translating Dll1, Flt3l and Il7 in the liver and spleen by RIBOmap (n = 1 for Luc and n = 3 for DFI). h, Immunofluorescence of DLL1 protein over 0–48 h after 5 µg DFI reveals transient induction in total liver and hepatocyte surface (phalloidin co-stain). Fold induction from baseline (0 h) is shown. n = 32 fields of view from n = 3 animals per time point per condition. Data are mean ± s.e.m. i, ELISA for FLT3-L levels in serum and the liver after 10 µg recombinant FLT3-L or 5 µg DFI at 3–48 h. Liver concentrations were normalized to liver weight; fold change from 0 h is shown. n = 3 animals per time point per compartment per condition. Data are mean ± s.e.m.; area under the cover (AUC) over 48 h compared by a two-tailed unpaired Student's t-test. j, ELISA for IL-7 in serum and the liver after 10 µg recombinant IL-7 or 5 µg DFI at 3–48 h with liver normalization and fold change from 0 h. n = 3 animals per time point per compartment per condition. Data are mean ± s.e.m.; 48-h AUC compared by a two-tailed unpaired Student's t-test. NS, not significant.
A functional T cell repertoire depends on pro-survival and trophic cues: cytokines, hormones and self-peptide MHC, which are abundant in healthy individuals but diminish with age, contributing to immune decline13,14,15.
To nominate potentially immune restorative cues, we profiled trophic signalling across the mouse lifespan using single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) or TCR-seq of peripheral blood T cells and spatially resolved Slide-TCR-seq on the thymus, the principal organ of T cell production16. After quality control, the dataset comprised approximately 97,000 circulating T cell transcriptomes (CD4+ and CD8+) and 47 spatial arrays covering approximately 1.26 million thymic positions spanning the day of birth to 90 weeks of age (Extended Data Fig. 1a–h). Ageing shifted T cell states, with loss of naive (Tcf7, Sell and Ccr7) and stem-like populations (Bcl11b, Lef1, Id3 and Sox4), and expansion of (virtual) memory (Cd44, Eomes, Gzmb and Tbx21) and exhaustion-like phenotypes (Pdcd1, Havcr2, Ctla4, Lag3, Tigit, Gzmk and Entpd1), consistent with previous mouse and human studies17,18 (Extended Data Figs. 1e,h,i and 2).
Using spatial proximity to infer bona fide cell–cell interactions (rather than co-regulation alone), we used permutation-based null models to identify age-dependent receptor–ligand pairs between thymocytes and thymic epithelial cells (TECs). Cortical TEC–T cell signalling declined markedly with age, whereas medullary TEC–T cell interactions were relatively preserved (Extended Data Fig. 3a,b). Integrating spatially informed interaction analysis with single-sample Gene Set Enrichment Analysis (ssGSEA) of peripheral blood-circulating T cells revealed age-linked attenuation of Notch1/3 and IL-7 signalling (Fig. 1b,c and Extended Data Fig. 3c,d). Although thymic stromal cells primarily act locally to support T cell maturation and selection, several of their soluble products accumulate in the thymus, enter the circulation and contribute to systemic immune homeostasis13,19. Consistently, intrathymic as well as circulating T cells from aged mice showed reduced expression of Notch, IL-7 and FLT3-L target genes and diminished downstream activity (Fig. 1b,c and Extended Data Fig. 3e,f). Soluble FLT3-L, produced in part by intrathymic fibroblasts and required to sustain T cell function in aged and post-transplant settings, also declined in thymic homogenates20,21 (Fig. 1d and Extended Data Fig. 3g).
These findings motivated us to transiently reconstitute age-diminished immune signalling using three immune trophic factors — DLL1 (to activate Notch), FLT3-L and IL-7 — in aged hosts. We selected DLL1 over DLL4 based on a more favourable safety and immunological profile: DLL4 is linked to angiogenesis and vascular remodelling and can overly restrict lymphoid differentiation, whereas we hypothesized that DLL1 supports T cell development without suppressing B cell output22,23.
To bypass the structural and functional constraints of the involuted thymus, we reconstituted the identified signalling pathways ectopically in the liver. The unique haemodynamics and anatomical features of the liver enable priming and maintenance of adaptive immunity, and its protein-synthesis capacity is preserved even at advanced ages, making it a suitable site to modulate circulating T cells24,25,26.
We chose mRNA delivery over recombinant proteins because recombinant cytokines clear rapidly, necessitating frequent high-dose administrations that often result in significant toxicity6,7. By contrast, mRNA allows for more controlled, transient protein production, and recent advances have further optimized mRNA stability and functionality while minimizing immune-related side effects for in vivo applications6,27,28,29. In addition, canonical Notch ligands are transmembrane proteins and require cell–cell contact, precluding soluble delivery. We therefore packaged mRNAs encoding DLL1 (Dll1), FLT3-L (Flt3l) and IL-7 (Il7) (collectively, DFI), or firefly luciferase (Luc) or GFP controls, in an SM-102 LNP formulation (Fig. 1e, Extended Data Fig. 4a–e and Supplementary Fig. 1a–e). All mRNAs were m1Ψ modified and 5′-m7GpppNm capped. Primary hepatocytes expressed DLL1 on the surface and secreted biologically active IL-7 and FLT3-L into the supernatant after transfection (Extended Data Fig. 4a–c). Systemic LNP administration predominantly targeted the liver with minimal translation in other tissues (Fig. 1f,g, Extended Data Fig. 4d,e and Supplementary Fig. 1f,g). In situ profiling of ribosome-bound (rather than endosome-trapped) transcripts (RIBOmap) confirmed robust translation of all three DFI mRNAs in hepatocytes in vivo (Fig. 1f and Extended Data Fig. 4d,e), indicating hepatic expression and release with negligible off-target translation30.
We next assessed pharmacokinetics and safety. Dll1 mRNA induced sustained DLL1 on the surface of hepatocytes for approximately 48 h (ref. 31) (Fig. 1h and Extended Data Fig. 4f). mRNA-encoded FLT3-L achieved comparable serum half-life but higher single-dose systemic levels than recombinant FLT3-L (Fig. 1i). Intravenous recombinant IL-7 produced a sharp serum spike, whereas mRNA-encoded IL-7 yielded lower-amplitude, sustained levels with an approximately tenfold lower peak over 24 h (Fig. 1j). Because secreted IL-7 binds to heparan-sulfate proteoglycans, a substantial fraction of mRNA-delivered IL-7 remained in the hepatic extracellular matrix up to 24 h after serum levels normalized (Fig. 1j), potentially providing a compartmentalized source of IL-7 for cells traversing the sinusoids, where they also encounter hepatocyte-bound DLL1 (refs. 32,33).
Despite prolonged bioavailability of the three factors, we observed no changes in body weight, transaminases or liver function, and only minimal hepatic inflammation on histopathology after 4 weeks of DFI mRNA–LNPs in aged mice (Extended Data Fig. 4g–l), consistent with previous studies of SM-102 formulations6,34. By contrast, recombinant FLT3-L and IL-7 administered on the same schedule (two doses per week for 28 days) induced marked elevations of GM-CSF, IL-10, IL-12 and IL-1β, underscoring the greater risk of systemic inflammation with recombinant cytokines (Supplementary Tables 2 and 3 and Supplementary Fig. 1h,i).
Ageing is accompanied by a loss of naive T cells and accumulation of (virtual) memory and exhaustion-like states, most pronounced in CD8+ T cells and driven by thymic involution, chronic antigen exposure and inflammation1,17,18. We observed these shifts in our longitudinally profiled cohorts (Fig. 2a and Extended Data Figs. 1i and 2b,c). This bias towards the memory phenotype in ageing compromises responses to new antigens. We therefore asked whether DFI rebalances naive T cell representation.
a, Age-related decline in circulating naive T cells (Tcf7, Sell and Ccr7) and accumulation of exhausted-like T cells (Pdcd1, Ctla4, Lag3, Tigit, Entpd1 and Tnfrsf9) in mouse peripheral blood across age. Linear regression (red lines) shows Pearson's R and significance versus age. b–d, Flow cytometry of spleens from adult (6 weeks) and aged (72 weeks) mice treated twice weekly with DFI or control (Luc) mRNA–LNPs for 28 days. Absolute numbers of naive T cells (CD44−CD62L+; b) and memory T cells (CD44+CD62L−/+; c), and naive-to-memory T cell ratio (d) are shown. n = 4 per group. Data are mean ± s.e.m.; one-way ANOVA with Dunnett's post-hoc test. CM, central memory; EM, effector memory. e, TCR repertoire diversity from bulk V(D)J sequencing (n = 5 adult, 12 aged + Luc and 9 aged + DFI). Data are mean ± s.e.m. f, Rag2–eGFP tracing of thymocyte maturation (DN, double-positive (DP), single-positive (SP) CD4+ and SP CD8+) demonstrating increased thymopoiesis after DFI treatment. n = 3 mice per time point. Negative control refers to Rag2–eGFP−/−. Data are mean ± s.e.m. (error bands); repeated-measures two-way ANOVA with Dunnett's post-hoc test was used. g, Quantification of TCR excision circles (TRECs) in peripheral blood indicating recent thymic emigrants (n = 12 adult, 12 aged + Luc and 9 aged + DFI); data are mean ± s.e.m.; one-way ANOVA with Tukey post-hoc test. h, Representative spatial STARmap projections of splenic dendritic cell (DC) subtypes from adult, Luc-treated and DFI-treated mice. i, Quantification of cDC1, cDC2 and other DC subsets per field of view (FOV; adult = 404, Luc = 386 and DFI = 408 FOVs from one animal per condition); data are represented as violin plots with median + interquartile range; one-way ANOVA with Tukey post-hoc test. j, Differential expression of activation markers (Cd40, Cd83, Cd86 and H2-K1) in the indicated DC subsets. FC, fold change. k, Spatial STARmap projections of splenic B cell subtypes. l, Relative abundance of mature (Cd19+, Ms4a1+, Cd22+ and Cd40+) and age-associated (Cd19+, Ms4a1+, Itgax+ and Tbx21+) B cells per FOV (adult = 404, Luc = 386 and DFI = 408 FOVs from one animal per condition); data are represented as violin plots with median + interquartile range; one-way ANOVA with Tukey post-hoc test.
Aged mice (72 weeks old) received DFI mRNA–LNPs or Luc mRNA–LNPs twice weekly for 28 days. DFI (but not individual factors) increased both frequency and absolute number of circulating naive (CD44−CD62L+) CD4+ and CD8+ T cells (Fig. 2b and Extended Data Fig. 5). Repeated administration of recombinant IL-7 has been shown to promote the proliferation of mature T cell subsets35,36,37. In line with this, Il7 mRNA alone expanded effector-memory (CD44+CD62L−) cells; however, full DFI did not increase memory subsets (Fig. 2c and Extended Data Fig. 5c–e). Consequently, the naive-to-memory ratio rose in the blood and spleen of DFI-treated animals, indicating complementary or moderating activity of the three signals when delivered in combination (Fig. 2d and Extended Data Fig. 5b).
To delineate the origin of these DFI-induced shifts in the T cell compartment of aged mice, we next analysed the spleen, peripheral blood, bone marrow and thymus of adult and aged mice. Deep bulk V(D)J sequencing showed no increase in clonality following DFI conditioning (Fig. 2e), arguing against homeostatic proliferation and favouring enhanced thymic output as a driver of the observed increase in naive T cell counts. Although aged thymuses displayed reduced mass and cellularity relative to young controls, 28 days of DFI partially restored both (Extended Data Fig. 6a–c). Although overall distributions of double-negative (DN), double-positive or single-positive thymocytes were preserved, DFI selectively expanded early DN1–DN3 thymocytes — the stages of early T lineage commitment — and induced Rag2 in thymocytes of Rag2–eGFP mice within 12 h, followed by increased mature single-positive CD4+ and CD8+ thymocytes towards youthful levels after 28 days of treatment (Fig. 2f and Extended Data Figs. 6d–f and 7a–c). Consistent with these data, TCR excision circles in peripheral blood were elevated (Fig. 2g), and Nur77 expression was elevated in circulating T cells (Extended Data Fig. 7d–f), indicative of an increase in recent thymic emigrants.
Because thymic output depends on progenitor supply, we examined haematopoiesis. With ageing, HSCs expand in number but increasingly adopt a myeloid-biased differentiation program12,38,39; we recapitulated HSC expansion and CD150high myeloid-biased HSC enrichment with age, which DFI did not reverse (Extended Data Fig. 8a–d). Multipotent progenitors were largely unchanged aside from an increase in lymphoid-primed multipotent progenitors after DFI (Extended Data Fig. 8b). By contrast, DFI robustly expanded common lymphoid progenitors (CLPs), which are markedly depleted with age, in bone marrow and increased the number of circulating CCR9+ (but not CCR7+) CLPs, which are associated with preferential thymus homing38,40 (Extended Data Figs. 8e–i and 9a–c). CCR9 surface levels on CLPs rose from the bone marrow to the thymus in DFI-treated mice, mirroring the dynamics found in young animals and absent in aged controls (Extended Data Fig. 9c–e), consistent with a peripheral priming of circulating CLPs that potentially augments thymic entry. Together, these data support a model in which liver-expressed DLL1, together with systemic FLT3-L and IL-7, boosts CLP production, survival and recruitment to the thymus, thereby increasing thymopoiesis. Thus, DFI enhances naive T cell output by amplifying committed lymphoid progenitors and facilitating intrathymic maturation, without reprogramming HSC composition.
Beyond T cells, DFI mitigated ageing-associated phenotypes in antigen-presenting and B cell compartments. DFI preferentially expanded splenic conventional type 1 dendritic cells (cDC1s), which are critical for antigen cross-presentation and decline in number and co-stimulatory function with age, probably by sustained FLT3-L-dependent differentiation from FLT3+ progenitors20,41,42 (Fig. 2h,i and Supplementary Fig. 2a–c). In situ-seq of spleens by STARmap revealed cDC1 enrichment within periarteriolar lymphoid sheaths and a concomitant upregulation of H2-K1 and co-stimulatory molecules (CD40, CD83 and CD86), consistent with improved priming capacity43 (Fig. 2j and Supplementary Fig. 2a–c). In addition, we observed a reduced abundance of splenic age-associated B cells (CD19+, Ms4a1+, Itgax+ and Tbx21+) and an expansion of mature follicular-like B cells (CD19+, Ms4a1+, Cd22+ and CD40+) localized to B cell follicles following DFI treatment44,45 (Fig. 2k,l and Supplementary Fig. 2a–e).
On the basis of the above findings, we next tested whether DFI could restore adaptive immune function in aged animals. As a test case, we looked at vaccine response, a T cell-mediated process known to be blunted by ageing. In an adjuvanted ovalbumin (OVA) prime–boost model in adult (6 weeks) and aged (72 weeks) mice, aged cohorts showed fewer OVA-specific CD8+ T cells in the spleen and blood upon vaccination, impaired antigen-driven proliferation and reduced IL-2 and IFNγ production on recall, approaching levels of sham-vaccinated mice (Supplementary Fig. 3a–d). These deficiencies align with the impaired T cell-mediated vaccine responses commonly observed in older animals and humans1,46. Pre-conditioning aged mice with individual factors or the full DFI combination before vaccination showed that Il7 mRNA alone increased total T cell counts, whereas only DFI increased both total T cells and the frequency of OVA-specific CD8+ cells, yielding approximately twofold more antigen-specific CD8+ T cells in the spleen and a similar increase in blood35,36,37 (Fig. 3a–d and Supplementary Fig. 3e,f).
a, Experimental design. Aged mice received DFI or control (Luc) mRNA–LNPs twice weekly for 28 days, then were immunized with adjuvanted OVA. b, Total splenic T cells (live CD45+CD3+) per spleen (n = 4 per group). Data are mean ± s.e.m.; one-way ANOVA with Tukey post-hoc test. c, Frequency of SIINFEKL–H-2K(b) tetramer+CD8+ T cells in the spleen (n = 4 per group). Data are mean ± s.e.m.; one-way ANOVA with Tukey post-hoc test. d, Absolute number of SIINFEKL–H-2K(b) tetramer+CD8+ T cells per spleen (n = 4 per group). Data are mean ± s.e.m.; one-way ANOVA with Tukey post-hoc test. e, Frequency of naive T cells (CD44−CD62L+) in the spleen (n = 4 per group). Data are mean ± s.e.m.; one-way ANOVA with Tukey post-hoc test. f, Frequency of exhausted-phenotype T cells (CD62L−PD1high) in the spleen (n = 4 per group). Data are mean ± s.e.m.; one-way ANOVA with Tukey's post-hoc test. g, Proportions of naive (TN) and exhausted (TEX) T cells and the TN:TEX ratio after repetitive OVA or sham (vehicle) vaccination (n = 4 per treatment). h, Functional antigen recall: fold change in intracellular cytokines following 6-h SIINFEKL restimulation versus DMSO vehicle. IL-2 (left) and IFNγ (right) mean fluorescence intensity (n = 4 per group). Dotted lines indicate no change (fold change = 1.0); Data are mean ± s.e.m.; two-tailed unpaired t-tests. i, Age–response modelling. In a longitudinal cohort covering increasing ages, SIINFEKL–H-2K(b) tetramer frequencies were fit with a quadratic (second-order) polynomial regression with 95% confidence bands (d.f. = 29, R2 = 0.9116). This standard curve was used to estimate an ‘immunological vaccination response age' for numerically 52-week-old mice preconditioned with either DFI or Luc mRNA–LNPs before immunization (N = 40 total; n = 4 per age and treatment). The P value comparing the estimated vaccination response ages of the two treatment groups was calculated using a two-tailed unpaired t-test.
In addition to the reduced generation of new immune cells, ageing is characterized by the progressive shift to dysfunctional states by existing cells2,17. Aged mice were shown to accumulate PD1highCD62L− T cells, which we confirmed using scRNA-seq and flow cytometry in our longitudinal cohorts12,47 (Fig. 2a and Extended Data Fig. 1e,i). This phenotype expanded further with repeated vaccination, unlike in adults (Fig. 3f). DFI conditioning preserved a higher naive fraction post-vaccination and reduced PD1highCD62L− cells (with a reduced effect from IL-7 alone), together producing a more balanced T cell composition (Fig. 3e–g and Supplementary Fig. 3g). Functionally, CD8+ T cells from DFI-treated mice generated higher levels of IL-2 and IFNγ upon antigen-specific restimulation, whereas OVA-specific CD4+ frequencies and cytokines were largely unchanged (Fig. 3h and Supplementary Fig. 4a–e), suggesting that DFI preferentially supports CD8+ T cell responses.
In a longitudinal vaccination study across the lifespan of C57BL6/J mice, we found that DFI treatment increased vaccine-induced T cell counts in aged mice to levels comparable with those seen in much younger mice, effectively rejuvenating their response by approximately 24 weeks (Fig. 3i). Together, the full DFI combination, but not its single components, counteracts age-related defects in CD8+ vaccine responses, consistent with the broader principle that aged immunity retains the capacity to mount robust immune responses when sufficiently stimulated48.
We next tested whether DFI improved responsiveness to tumour immunotherapy, which also diminishes with ageing. In B16-OVA melanoma and MC38-OVA colon carcinoma, we found that aged mice showed faster tumour progression and poorer survival than adults; immune checkpoint inhibition (ICI) with PDL1 blockade that controlled tumours in adults conferred little benefit in aged cohorts (Supplementary Fig. 5a–h), mirroring reports of age-dependent efficacy of PD1 or CTLA4 ICI48,49,50.
Pre-conditioning aged hosts with DFI for 28 days followed by a 72-h washout to control for direct antitumour effects improved endogenous control of MC38-OVA, increasing spontaneous rejection rates and prolonging survival (Supplementary Fig. 5e–h). In the more aggressive B16-OVA model, DFI drove complete rejection in 40% of aged mice, whereas all controls succumbed within 3 weeks despite anti-PDL1 treatment (Fig. 4a–d). Co-administration at treatment onset similarly delayed progression and improved survival over PDL1 blockade alone in aged animals with established tumours (Fig. 4e–h).
a, Experimental design. Aged mice received DFI or control (Luc) mRNA–LNPs for 28 days, followed by subcutaneous B16-OVA tumour challenge and two doses of anti-PDL1 checkpoint blockade. b, Tumour growth over time in the B16-OVA model (n = 8 per group). Three out of eight animals did not establish a measurable tumour (black arrow). c, Tumour size on day 12 (mean ± s.e.m.; two-tailed unpaired t-test). d, Kaplan–Meier survival analysis for the B16-OVA cohort (n = 8 per group; log-rank test). e, Design of adjuvant DFI or Luc LNP therapy combined with anti-PDL1 checkpoint blockade in established B16-OVA tumours. f, Tumour growth trajectories during combination therapy (n = 10 per group). g, Tumour size on day 14 (mean ± s.e.m.; two-tailed unpaired t-test). h, Kaplan–Meier survival curves for combination treatment (n = 10 per group; log-rank test). i, Schematic of a parallel adjuvant DFI + anti-PDL1 experiment terminated at day 12 for immune profiling with matched tumour sizes. j, Tumour size at day 12 (n = 5 per group). k, Absolute counts of live TILs in explanted tumours (n = 5 per group). l, CD8+ T cell frequency (left) and CD4:CD8 ratio (right) among TILs (n = 5 per group). m, Relative (left) and absolute (right) numbers of tumour-specific SIINFEKL–H-2K(b)+ TILs (n = 5 per group). For j–m, data are mean ± s.e.m.; statistical significance was determined by a two-tailed unpaired Student's t-test. n, Uniform manifold approximation and projection (UMAP) of scRNA-seq of CD45+CD3+ TILs (n = 34,104 cells). TFH, follicular helper T; TH, helper T; Treg, regulatory T. o, CITE-seq feature plot showing CD8+SIINFEKL–H-2K(b)+ (Tet+) TILs. p, Expression of canonical markers of tumour recognition and exhaustion in Luc-treated versus DFI-treated TILs. q, Relative abundance of transcriptional clusters among CD8+Tet+ clonotypes. All comparisons were by two-tailed unpaired t-tests (o–q). r, Shannon diversity of bystander (Tet−) and tumour-specific (Tet+) TCR clonotypes across treatments.
In young mice, ICI confers antitumour immunity primarily through expansion and activation of tumour-specific CD8+ T cells. Ageing impairs this process, and elderly mice and humans show diminished CD8+ T cell infiltration and intratumoural effector function. To probe the underlying mechanism of the observed antitumour effects, we analysed tumour-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) on day 12 post-implantation, before significant tumour size divergence (Fig. 4i,j). Total TIL numbers were unchanged (Fig. 4k), but DFI increased the frequency of intratumoural CD8+ T cells and consequently lowered the CD4:CD8 ratio (Fig. 4l); SIINFEKL-loaded tetramers confirmed intratumoural enrichment of antigen-specific CD8+ cells (Fig. 4m and Supplementary Fig. 5i). In parallel, naive CD8+ cells expanded systemically (Supplementary Fig. 5j,k), suggesting that rejuvenated peripheral pools contribute to the TIL compartment.
scRNA–V(D)J profiling and CITE-seq using oligo-conjugated SIINFEKL–H-2Kb tetramers resolved eight canonical CD8+–CD4+ TIL states and delineated tumour antigen-specific T cells (Fig. 4n,o and Supplementary Fig. 5l–o). With DFI, both tumour-specific and bystander clonotypes showed lower expression of exhaustion-associated genes (Havcr2, Gzmk, Lag3, Pdcd1 and Tigit) and moderately higher Entpd1 (CD39) expression, consistent with increased tumour-antigen engagement or tissue residency rather than terminal dysfunction51 (Fig. 4p). The naive-like fraction among tetramer+CD8+ TILs rose approximately 1.8-fold (Fig. 4q and Supplementary Fig. 5o), and clonal diversity (as assayed by Shannon index) increased in both tetramer+ and bystander repertoires (Fig. 4r and Supplementary Fig. 5p), indicating broader recruitment and intratumoural TCR repertoire breadth.
Together, DFI conditioning alone boosted endogenous antitumour control and synergized with PDL1 blockade to enhance therapeutic efficacy in aged hosts. Alongside recent work with mRNA-encoded cytokines6, these data highlight liver-encoded delivery of immune modulators as a strategy to mitigate age-related immune dysfunction and overcome components of immunotherapy resistance.
To define durability and safety of DFI, aged mice received DFI or control mRNA–LNPs for 28 days and were then observed off-treatment for 28 days (Supplementary Fig. 6a). Thymic output rose during dosing, as evidenced by elevated TCR excision circles, and returned to baseline thereafter (Supplementary Fig. 6b,c), consistent with the short half-life of mRNA and the rapid decline of thymocyte Rag2 expression after a single dose (72 h or less; Fig. 2f and Extended Data Fig. 7c). STARmap of whole spleens showed that, despite waning thymic export, splenic T cell and dendritic cell numbers remained modestly elevated at day 28 post-cessation (Supplementary Fig. 6d–g), indicating partial persistence of peripheral remodelling. However, when vaccination occurred 4 weeks after stopping DFI, previously observed benefits such as higher vaccine-specific T cells, fewer exhaustion-like cells and favourable naive–effector-memory balance were no longer evident (Supplementary Fig. 6h–k). Thus, immune enhancement by our approach is largely confined to the dosing window and reverses upon withdrawal.
We next assessed whether DFI would exacerbate autoimmune disease. In NOD mice, which are prone to type 1 diabetes due to frequent generation of autoreactive TCRs, 4 weeks of DFI or control mRNA was followed by 6-month monitoring of glycaemia, glycosuria and disease onset (Fig. 5a). In addition, we quantified frequencies of CD8+ T cells specific to the NRP-V7 mimotope, a known target in NOD mice52 (Extended Data Fig. 10a). DFI did not alter blood glucose levels, diabetes onset or autoreactive T cell frequencies versus control littermates (Fig. 5b,c), whereas NOD.Cg-Tg(TcraTcrbNY8.3)1Pesa/DvsJ (NY8.3) NOD mice with a genetically encoded NRP-V7-restricted TCR uniformly developed diabetes within 8 weeks, providing a positive-control threshold. We did not observe any treatment-related adverse effects over the course of this 6-month study.
a, Experimental design to evaluate autoimmune risk in NOD mice receiving DFI or control (Luc) mRNA–LNPs. NY8.3 mice, carrying an autoreactive TCR specific for NRP-V7 (KYNKANAFL), served as positive controls. Type 1 diabetes (T1D) onset was defined by blood glucose > 200 mg dl−1 in two consecutive measurements or by glucosuria. b, Longitudinal monitoring of blood glucose (top) and frequency of NRP-V7-specific TCRs in peripheral blood (bottom) of NOD mice treated as in panel a. NY8.3 (n = 5), NOD + Luc (n = 9) and NOD + DFI (n = 9). Data are mean ± s.e.m. c, Kaplan–Meier analysis of cumulative T1D incidence in NY8.3 (n = 5), NOD + Luc (n = 9) and NOD + DFI (n = 9) groups. Statistical significance was tested using log-rank (Mantel–Cox) tests. d, Experimental set-up to test antigen-specific T cell tolerance in Act-mOVA mice. OT-I (CD8+, OVA257–264) and OT-II (CD4+, OVA329–337) transgenic mice served as positive controls for OVA-targeted responses. e, Frequencies of SIINFEKL–H-2K(b) tetramer+CD8+ T cells in peripheral blood of Act-mOVA mice treated with Luc or DFI mRNA for 28 days. n = 5 per group. Data are mean ± s.e.m.; one-way ANOVA with Tukey's post-hoc test; P values are shown for Act-mOVA comparisons. WT, wild type. f, Frequencies of AAHAEINEA–I-A(b) tetramer+CD4+ T cells in the peripheral blood of Act-mOVA mice treated as in panel e. n = 5 per group. Data are mean ± s.e.m.; one-way ANOVA with Tukey's post-hoc test; two-tailed P values are indicated for Act-mOVA comparisons. g, Serum anti-OVA IgG ELISA (OD450–570) in Act-mOVA mice after Luc or DFI mRNA treatment followed by OVA–complete Freund's adjuvant prime and OVA–incomplete Freund's adjuvant boost (O) or sham vaccination (S). Wild-type (n = 5) vaccinated mice served as positive controls. Data are mean ± s.e.m.
To test safety in a model with intact central tolerance, we used Act-mOVA mice, which constitutively express germline-encoded OVA53 (Fig. 5d). This allowed us to use the same potent model antigen as in our previous vaccination experiments; however, in this case, OVA was subject to central tolerance. Despite enhancing responses to exogenous OVA in aged wild-type mice, DFI neither induced OVA-specific CD4+ or CD8+ T cells after 4 weeks (Fig. 5e,f) nor broke humoral tolerance after adjuvanted OVA challenge in Act-mOVA mice, in contrast to wild-type controls (Fig. 5g).
Finally, in experimental autoimmune encephalitis, a polyclonal, antigen-driven central nervous system autoimmunity model, DFI was administered every 3 days following experimental autoimmune encephalitis induction by MOG35–55 peptide immunization and thereafter until symptom onset. Aged mice showed delayed disease onset, consistent with impaired T cell priming and previous reports, but worse subsequent clinical deterioration54,55 (Extended Data Fig. 10b–d). In line with our earlier vaccination experiments, DFI increased peripheral, but not central nervous system-infiltrating MHC class II I-Ab–MOG-specific CD4+ T cells after induction (Extended Data Fig. 10e,f) and did not worsen clinical scores or spinal cord inflammation and demyelination (Extended Data Fig. 10d,g,h). In adults, DFI neither increased MOG-reactive T cells in the periphery nor aggravated disease (Extended Data Fig. 10c,e–h), indicating correction of age-related deficits rather than indiscriminate immune amplification.
Together with the vaccination data, these results show that DFI transiently augments antigen-specific immunity in aged hosts while preserving self-tolerance across several models. The effects are reversible and temporally restricted, supporting liver-encoded systemic immune modulation as a novel strategy to improve immunity in older individuals.
Here we have showed that immune function can be improved by repurposing the liver as a platform for ectopic production of immune factors. Our results show that delivery to the liver of mRNA encoding DLL1, IL-7 and FLT3-L in combination successfully enhanced immune function in aged mice. This approach provides a scalable alternative to more invasive methods of immune rejuvenation, such as thymic transplantation56 or HSC manipulation12, which are clinically challenging. In addition, our disease-agnostic strategy holds potential for synergizing with other immunostimulatory treatments, as we observed in the context of ICI treatment.
Although the biological roles of IL-7 and FLT3-L are well established, with both factors known to support thymopoiesis, dendritic cell expansion and peripheral T cell homeostasis20,21,35,36,37,41,42, combining them with DLL1 and delivering them to hepatocytes enables the creation of a transient, rejuvenated immune milieu in aged mice, distinct from conventional approaches based on recombinant protein infusion, which lack spatial control and tend to require chronic dosing or come with high toxicity. By using mRNA, we mitigated the systemic inflammation and autoimmune sequelae typically associated with recombinant cytokine-based therapies. However, the transient nature of mRNA delivery necessitates repeated administrations to sustain therapeutic effects. The long-term consequences of continuous exposure to these factors, especially in aged individuals should be analysed through extensive long-term safety studies.
Ageing affects the immune system beyond T cell biology, encompassing epigenetic57 and metabolic58 remodelling in lymphocytes, dysfunction in myeloid subsets59 and structural alterations in stromal networks60. Future studies may therefore uncover additional strategies and factors to holistically target the hallmarks of immune ageing1.
In summary, this study demonstrates that transiently repurposing the liver to express and secrete various therapeutic proteins could be a generalizable approach to engineering physiological processes. By mimicking specific signalling niches within the liver or secreting proteins for systemic circulation to restore homeostatic signals throughout the body, this strategy has the potential to improve health outcomes and address a wide range of human diseases and conditions.
All experiments were performed in compliance with all relevant ethical regulations as approved by the Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBC) of the Broad Institute (protocol #IBC-2017-00146). All animal experiments were approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee of the Broad Institute (protocol ID 0017-09-14-2). Animal maintenance complied with all relevant ethical regulations and were consistent with local, state and federal regulations as applicable, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals.
G-blocks encoding the human α-globin 5′ untranslated region (UTR) and 3′ FI element were synthesized de novo by IDT. In vitro transcription vectors were cloned by inserting UTRs into a pET45 vector via Gibson assembly using Gibson Assembly Master Mix (E2611L, NEB) and transformation into chemically competent Stbl3 cells. A hard-coded A30LA70 polyA tail was added by PCR and ligation using the KLD enzyme mix (New England Biolabs). Subsequent coding sequences were inserted by digestion with NcoI and XhoI and Gibson assembly. Plasmid sequences were verified via next-generation sequencing, long-read sequencing (Primordium Labs) and PCR to verify the length of polyA tails.
Plasmids were linearized, and a T7-driven in vitro transcription reaction (Life Technologies) was performed to generate mRNA with 101 nucleotide long polyA tails. The 5′ UTR and the 3′ FI elements contained sequences from the human α-globin gene. Capping of mRNA was performed in concert with transcription through addition of a trinucleotide cap1 analogue CleanCap, and m1Ψ-5′-triphosphate (TriLink) was incorporated into the reaction instead of uridine-5′-triphosphate (UTP; Supplementary Fig. 1a). LiCl-based purification of mRNA was performed, mRNAs were then checked on an agarose gel and by a TapeStation RNA ScreenTape Analysis (Agilent; Supplementary Fig. 1b,c) before aliquoting at 1 µg µl−1 and storing at −80 °C.
We engineered a formulation of mRNA-encoded DFI within biodegradable lipopolyplexes, along with control formulations (Fig. 1e). To do this, we formulated LNPs by combining SM-102 as ionizable lipid, 1,2-distearoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine (DSPC), cholesterol and 1,2-dimyristoyl-rac-glycero-3-methoxypolyethylene glycol-2000 (DMG-PEG-2000) in a molar ratio of 50:10:38.5:1.5. These were formulated into LNPs along with mRNA using microfluidic mixing using a NanoAssemblr Ignite nanoparticle formulation system (Cytiva). In brief, an ethanol phase containing the above formulated lipidoid, phospholipid, cholesterol and DMG-PEG master mix was mixed with an aqueous phase (10 mM citrate buffer, pH 3) containing mRNA at a flow rate ratio of 1:3 and at a lipidoid:RNA weight ratio of 10:1. Upon formulation, mRNA–LNPs were diluted in sterile NaCl and the buffer was exchanged by concentrating with a 30-kDa spin filter (UFC9030, MilliporeSigma) to replace residual ethanol. NaCl-diluted mRNA–LNPs were stored at 4 °C until use. For all subsequent experiments, we utilized these SM-102 mRNA–LNPs encapsulating m1Ψ-5′-triphosphate-modified and m7GpppNm-capped DFI, Luc or GFP mRNA, respectively.
The hydrodynamic size, polydispersity index (PDI) and zeta potential (ZP) of LNPs were measured using a DynaPro NanoStar II (Wyatt). The mRNA encapsulation efficiency of LNPs were determined using a modified Quant-iT RiboGreen RNA assay (Invitrogen) and found to be more than 85% on average (Supplementary Fig. 1d). LNP endotoxin levels were consistently found to be less than 1 endotoxin unit per ml. The average hydrodynamic diameter was approximately 75 nm with a polydispersity index of 0.02–0.03 (Supplementary Fig. 1e).
Unless otherwise stated, mammalian cells were maintained in T75 flasks (156499, Thermo Fisher) at 37 °C with 5% CO2 in either DMEM-GlutaMAX (10569044, Thermo Fisher) or RPMI-GlutaMAX (61870127, Thermo Fisher). All media were supplemented with 10% FBS (97068-085, VWR) and 1× penicillin–streptomycin (15140122, Thermo Fisher). For growth of primary T cells, media were also supplemented with 50 µM 2-mercaptoethanol (21985023, Thermo Fisher). Images of transfected cells were acquired on a Leica DMI8 Confocal Microscope running Leica Application Suite X (1.4.3), equipped with a Lecia Stellaris 5 camera using an HC PL APO CS2 ×20/0.75 DRY objective and a pinhole setting of 1 Airy Unit. Images were processed using Fiji (https://imagej.net/software/fiji/downloads).
Cells were prepared and stained according to the staining protocol of each experiment outlined below, pelleted at 500g for 5 min and resuspended in 200 µl of flow cytometry buffer (PBS supplemented with 2% EDTA (15575020, Life Technologies) and 5% FBS (97068-085, VWR)). Samples were run on Beckman Coulter Cytoflex LX flow cytometers and analysis was performed using the FlowJo v10 software. Representative schemes for gating and threshold setting of each experiment are shown in the Extended Data and Supplementary figures.
All peptide–MHC tetramers were obtained from the NIH Tetramer Core Facility. Before viability dye and surface antibody staining, cells were incubated with appropriately titrated tetramer combinations. Unless stated otherwise, tetramer staining was performed in PBS for 20 min on ice, followed by washing and addition of antibody cocktails and/or fixation.
For OVA vaccination experiments, SIINFEKL–H-2Kb–PE and SIINFEKL–H-2Kb–APC tetramers were used at 1:100 dilution and AAHAEINEA–I-Ab–PE and AAHAEINEA–I-Ab–APC tetramers were used at 1:20 dilution. For central tolerance experiments in Act-mOVA mice, the same SIINFEKL–H-2Kb tetramers (1:100 dilution) were used in combination with AAHAEINEA–I-Ab–PE and AAHAEINEA–I-Ab–APC tetramers (1:20 dilution). Non-vaccinated wild-type T cells (negative) and OT-I and OT-II T cells (positive) were included as staining controls for MHC class I and class II tetramers, respectively.
For autoimmunity experiments in NOD mice, KYNKANAFL–H-2Kb–PE and KYNKANAFL–H-2Kb–APC tetramers were used at 1:50 dilution, with NY8.3 T cells serving as positive controls for staining.
For experimental autoimmune encephalitis (EAE) experiments in C57BL/6J mice, GWYRSPFSRVVH–I-Ab–PE and GWYRSPFSRVVH–I-Ab–APC tetramers were used at 1:25 dilution. Control tetramers consisted of I-Ab-restricted human CLIP87–101 (PVSKMRMATPLLMQA) conjugated to PE and APC, also at 1:25 dilution.
All animal experiments were approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee of the Broad Institute (protocol ID 0017-09-14-2). Animal maintenance complied with all relevant ethical regulations and were consistent with local, state and federal regulations as applicable, including the NIH Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals. Animals were kept on a 12-h light–dark cycle between 68 °F and 79 °F and 30–70% humidity. Mice were acclimated at the animal facility for at least 7 days before performing any experiments. The sample size for vaccination experiments was decided based on a previous publication with similar experiments48. The sample size for tumour experiments was decided based on previous publications with similar experiments49,50. The sample size for NOD experiments was decided based on a previous publication with similar experiments52. The sample size for EAE experiments was decided based on a previous publication with similar experiments61. For all other exploratory experiments, no sample size calculations were performed. For all experiments, allocation of mice into experimental groups was randomized after stratifying for age and sex. Separate investigators performed treatment and data collection. Data-collecting investigators, for example, for tumour size measurements, were blinded to the treatment groups. Data-analysing investigators were not blinded to the treatment groups, as they involved internal controls, with the exception of pathologists for toxicity studies, who were blinded for the analyses. Experimental and control animals were treated equally and, when possible, housed in mixed cages.
mRNA–LNPs (5 µg of each mRNA, equal molar, normalized to the control RNA) in a total volume of 100 μl sterile NaCl were injected through slow retro-orbital injection into each mouse. For Luc imaging, sterile NaCl injection was used as negative control. For all other experiments investigating DFI mRNA–LNPs, Luc mRNA–LNPs were used as negative control.
In vivo activity of Luc following delivery of Luc mRNA–LNPs was measured using a Competent IVIS-Perkin Elmer IVIS Spectrum CT System (Perkin Elmer). Mice were injected through retro-orbital injection with Luc mRNA–LNPs at a dose of 5 μg mRNA per mouse, and bioluminescence imaging was performed on an IVIS imaging system (PerkinElmer). At 6 h post-injection, mice were anaesthetized with isoflurane and intraperitoneally injected with D-luciferin potassium salt (150 mg kg−1 (body weight)). Mice or dissected organs were imaged 10 min post-injection using auto-exposure settings. The luminescent activity was quantified using Aura 4.0 imaging software.
To assess DLL1 protein induction following DFI, mice were intravenously injected with either 5 µg DFI mRNA–LNPs in 100 µl NaCl. The mice were then anaesthetized with isoflurane and rapidly decapitated. Liver tissue samples were harvested from the mediolateral lobe and placed in Tissue-Tek O.C.T. Compound. Then, the liver tissue in O.C.T. was frozen in liquid nitrogen and stored at −80 °C. Liver DLL1 levels were measured using immunofluorescence. In brief, liver tissue was cryo-sectioned at 15 µm thickness, fixed with 4% paraformaldehyde for 15 min and permeabilized with 0.5% Triton X-100 and 100 mmol l−1 glycine diluted in PBS for 10 min. Samples were blocked with blocking buffer (10% normal donkey serum (017-000-121, Jackson ImmunoResearch) in PBS–0.1% Tween-20) and stained with anti-DLL1 antibody (ab10554, Abcam; 1:800 dilution in blocking buffer) at 4 °C overnight. Samples were then washed with PBS–0.1% Triton X-100 for 3 × 10 min, stained with AF546-labelled secondary antibody (A10040, Invitrogen; 1:500 dilution in blocking buffer) at room temperature for 1 h and washed with PBS–0.1% Triton X-100 for 3 × 10 min. Samples were then stained with DAPI and AF488-phalloidin (A12379, Invitrogen) according to the manufacturer's protocol to visualize the plasma membrane of hepatocytes. Liver DLL1 levels were quantified by taking the immunofluorescence signal intensity normalized to DAPI intensity at 6, 12, 24 and 48 h after injection (n = 3 mice per condition and time point). Uninjected littermates served as baseline controls (0 h). Tissue concentrations were expressed as fold change relative to baseline.
To assess cytokine induction following DFI or recombinant protein administration, mice were intravenously injected with either 5 µg DFI mRNA–LNPs in 100 µl NaCl or 10 µg recombinant mouse IL-7 (217-17, PeproTech) or 10 µg recombinant mouse FLT3-L (250-31L, PeproTech) in NaCl containing 0.1% BSA. Blood samples were collected by terminal cardiac puncture using EDTA-coated syringes and transferred to BD Microtainer tubes (365974, BD). Plasma was separated by centrifugation at 2,000g for 10 min at room temperature and snap frozen for later analysis.
Liver tissue samples were harvested from the mediolateral lobe, weighed for normalization and snap frozen. Frozen tissue fragments were homogenized on ice in 200 µl PBS containing protease inhibitor cocktail (P8340-1ML, Sigma) using a pre-chilled glass douncer with 15 strokes. Homogenates were clarified by centrifugation (10,000 rpm for 10 min at 4 °C), and supernatants were stored at −80 °C. IL-7 and FLT3-L levels in both the serum and liver were quantified using ELISA kits (mouse IL-7, EMIL7, Invitrogen; mouse FLT3-L, EMFLT3L, Invitrogen) according to the manufacturer's protocol. Absorbance was measured at 450 nm with 570-nm background subtraction, and cytokine concentrations were calculated using logistic regression fitted to the standard curve. Samples were processed in technical triplicates, and the mean value was used for biological replicates.
Serum and liver cytokine levels were measured at 6, 12, 24 and 48 h after injection (n = 3 mice per condition and time point). Uninjected littermates served as baseline controls (0 h). Tissue concentrations were normalized to organ weight and expressed as fold change relative to baseline.
To assess age-dependent changes in thymic cytokine levels, thymus lobes were isolated from untreated C57BL/6J mice across a range of ages, including 3, 6, 12, 18 and 24 months (n = 3 per age group). Thymic tissue was weighed, snap frozen and processed identically to liver samples. FLT3-L concentrations were determined by ELISA, normalized to thymus weight and used to calculate total cytokine abundance across the lifespan.
Adult (6 weeks) and aged (72 weeks) mice were immunized with 1 mg ml−1 full-length OVA protein emulsified in complete Freund's adjuvant (EK-0301, Hooke Laboratories), followed by one booster dose of 1 mg ml−1 protein emulsified in incomplete Freund's adjuvant (IFA; EK-0311, Hooke Laboratories). Mice were injected with antigen emulsified in complete Freund's adjuvant (CFA) subcutaneously at two sites on the chest, injecting 0.1 ml at each site (total of 0.2 per mouse). The needle was kept inserted in the subcutaneous space for 10–15 s after each injection to avoid leakage of the emulsion. A booster injection of antigen emulsified in IFA was administered 14 days after immunization with antigen–CFA emulsion. The booster was given as a single subcutaneous injection with 0.1 ml of IFA emulsion, at one site on the sternum. Serum, peripheral blood or spleen samples were obtained 21 days after the initial immunization, unless otherwise specified.
OVA-expressing melanoma B16 (B16-OVA) and MC38 (MC38-OVA) cell lines were provided by M. Kilian. Mice were inoculated subcutaneously with 1 × 105 B16-OVA or 5 × 105 MC38-OVA in Matrigel Matrix (Corning). Tumour growth was monitored daily by measuring with digital calipers using the two largest perpendicular axes until the area (0.5 × larger diameter × smaller diameter2). The size of the tumours was assessed in a blinded, coded manner every day following treatment start and recorded as tumour volume. Mice were euthanized when tumours reached 2,000 mm3 or upon ulceration. Of anti-PDL1 antibody (10 F.9G2, BioXCell), and/or control hamster and/or control rat IgG antibody (BioXCell), 100 μg was injected intraperitoneally every 3 days, as previously described, unless otherwise specified49.
For all vaccination experiments, at the indicated time points post-vaccination, approximately 100 μl of blood was collected with EDTA-coated capillary tubes from each mouse and then transferred to an EDTA-coated tube. The collected blood samples were centrifuged at 2,000g for 10 min, followed by transferring the resulting plasma into another tube, and antibody staining was performed using the eBioscience one-step Fix/Lyse Solution (10X; 00-5333-54, Thermo Fisher). In brief, 50 or 100 µl of blood samples was incubated with 50 or 100 µl twofold concentrated antibody cocktails (1:100 final dilution) as well as TruStain FCX (anti-mouse CD16/32, clone 93; BioLegend; 1:50 final dilution) for 20 min at 4 °C in the dark, followed by the addition of 4 ml of one-step Fix/Lyse Solution and 15-min incubation at room temperature in the dark. Samples were then washed twice with 10 ml of PBS followed by centrifugation at 500g for 5 min and finally resuspended in 200 µl flow cytometry buffer. In the case of tetramer staining, samples were pre-incubated with the respective twofold concentrated tetramers (1:20 to 1:100 final dilution) for 20 min on ice in the dark, followed by incubation with twofold concentrated antibody cocktails (1:100 final dilution) as well as TruStain FCX (anti-mouse CD16/32, clone 93; BioLegend; 1:50 final dilution) for another 20 min at 4 °C in the dark.
On day 21 following the initial subcutaneous immunization with OVA–CFA, mouse spleen single-cell suspensions were prepared in RPMI 1640 medium by mashing tissue against the surface of a 70-μm cell strainer (64752-00, BD Falcon). Then, the single-cell suspension was centrifuged at 500g for 5 min and the supernatant was removed. Red blood cells were lysed by adding 1 ml of ACK lysis buffer (Thermo Fisher) at 4 °C for 1.5 min, followed by centrifugation and removal of the supernatant. The cells were washed once with RPMI 1640 medium and then resuspended with RPMI 1640 medium (10% FBS and 1% penicillin-streptomycin antibiotic). Of splenocytes from each mouse, 4 × 106 were cultured in RPMI medium and stimulated with SIINFEKL peptide (synthesized at 99% purity by GenScript) at a final concentration of 1 μg ml−1 for each peptide for CD8+ T cell recall or 1× Cell Stimulation Cocktail containing phorbol 12-myristate 13-acetate and ionomycin (00-4970-03, eBioscience) for CD4+ T cell recall. The GolgiStop transport inhibitor cocktail (554724, BD) was added according to the manufacturer's instruction 2 h later. Then, 6 h later, the cells were collected and washed with flow cytometry buffer (PBS with 2% FBS) before Fc block with TruStain FCX (anti-mouse CD16/32, clone 93; BioLegend; 1:50 final dilution) and surface antibody staining for 20 min at 4 °C. Cells were washed with a flow cytometry buffer and then fixed and permeabilized using a BD Cytoperm fixation/permeabilization solution kit (554714, BD) according to the manufacturer's instructions. Cells were washed in perm/wash solution, followed by intracellular staining (for 45 min at 4 °C) using a cocktail of the respective cytokine or transcription factor antibodies. Finally, the cells were washed in perm/wash solution and suspended in a staining buffer. Samples were washed, resuspended in 200 µl flow cytometry buffer and acquired on a Beckman CytoFLEX LX Flow Cytometer. Analysis was performed using FlowJo v10 software.
Snap-frozen spleens were submitted to Adaptive Biotechnologies for deep TCRβ repertoire profiling. Genomic DNA was extracted using the DNeasy Blood & Tissue Kit (69504, Qiagen), followed by deep sequencing of rearranged Tcrb gene segments using the immunoSEQ mmTCRB Deep Sequencing platform (Adaptive Biotechnologies). Library preparation, high-throughput sequencing and initial data processing, including demultiplexing, quality filtering and V(D)J gene annotation, were performed by Adaptive Biotechnologies using their proprietary pipeline. Output files included productive clonotype frequencies and diversity metrics used for downstream analysis.
To quantify thymic output, signal joint T cell receptor excision circles (sjTRECs) were measured from peripheral blood. A total of 100 µl of cardiac blood was collected from mice following terminal anaesthesia and centrifuged to pellet cellular material. Genomic DNA was extracted using the DNeasy Blood & Tissue Kit (69504, Qiagen) according to the manufacturer's instructions.
Analysis was performed using an Bio-Rad CFX Opus Real-Time PCR system, following previously published protocols for sjTREC detection in C57BL/6 mice62,63. The sjTREC-specific primers used were: forward, 5′-CCAAGCTGACGGCAGGTTT-3′; reverse, 5′-AGCATGGCAAGCAGCACC-3′. To control for input DNA variability, amplification of the constant region of the Tcra gene was used as an endogenous reference. The Tcra primer sequences were: forward, 5′-TGACTCCCAAATCAATGTG-3′; reverse, 5′-GCAGGTGAAGCTTGTCTG-3′. Cycle threshold (Ct) values were determined in technical duplicates for both targets. Relative sjTREC content was calculated as ΔCt = Ct_TREC − Ct_TCRA. For clarity, values are reported as −ΔCt, such that higher values reflect greater relative sjTREC abundance.
NOD/ShiLtJ (NOD) mice were treated with DFI mRNA or Luc mRNA encapsulated in SM-102 LNPs twice per week for 4 weeks followed by clinical and molecular monitoring for the development of T1D. NY8.3 mice transgenic for the autoreactive TCR recognizing NRP-V7 were included as a positive control group. Experimental end point (onset of T1D) was reached in animals with blood glucose levels of more than 200 mg dl−1 in two independent measurements or in animals developing glucosuria52,64.
EAE was induced as previously described61. All animals were of a C57BL/6J background. Mice were immunized subcutaneously with 100 μg of MOG35–55 peptide (110582, Genemed Synthesis) emulsified in CFA, which was freshly prepared by combining 20 ml of IFA (BD263910, BD Biosciences) with 100 mg of Mycobacterium tuberculosis H37Ra (231141, BD Biosciences) at a 1:1 ratio (v/v; 5 mg ml−1 final concentration). Each mouse received two subcutaneous injections of 100 μl of the MOG–CFA emulsion.
Pertussis toxin (180, List Biological Laboratories) was administered intraperitoneally at 320 ng per mouse (1.6 ng μl−1 in 200 μl PBS) on the day of immunization and again 48 h later. Mice were monitored twice daily and scored for EAE symptoms using the following clinical scoring system: 0 for no signs; 1 for limp tail; 2 for hindlimb weakness; 3 for hindlimb paralysis; 4 for forelimb paralysis; and 5 for moribund.
To assess the effects of DFI on disease progression, mice were randomly assigned to receive DFI or Luc control mRNA–LNPs after immunization until symptom onset. mRNA–LNPs were administered every 3 days starting on the day of immunization and continued until the onset of clinical symptoms in the first animals (day +15). To avoid repeated anaesthesia, intraperitoneal injection was used instead of retro-orbital delivery of mRNA–LNPs. All clinical scoring was performed in a blinded manner.
To isolate central nervous system (CNS)-infiltrating lymphocytes, mice were terminally anaesthetized and perfused transcardially with ice-cold PBS. Spleens were collected and weighed, and brains and spinal cords were harvested. Spinal cords were flushed by hydrostatic pressure. CNS tissues were minced and enzymatically digested in RPMI supplemented with Liberase (5401119001, Roche) for 30 min at 37 °C with gentle agitation. Following digestion, tissues were dissociated by 20 trituration cycles using a 10-ml serological pipette and filtered through a 70-μm cell strainer.
Mononuclear cells were enriched by 30% isotonic Percoll density gradient centrifugation at 800g for 30 min at room temperature without brake. The cell pellet was washed in PBS and resuspended in 200 μl PBS for downstream staining. For tetramer staining, 100 μl of the cell suspension was incubated for 1 h at room temperature with PE-conjugated or APC-conjugated I-Ab tetramers at a 1:25 dilution. The following tetramers were used: MOG38–49–I-Ab–PE and MOG38–49–I-Ab (GWYRSPFSRVVH; PE and APC; NIH Tetramer Core Facility) and control human CLIP87–101–I-Ab (PVSKMRMATPLLMQA, PE and APC; NIH Tetramer Core Facility). After tetramer incubation, cells were washed and stained for extracellular markers using standard flow cytometry antibodies. Following final washes, cells were resuspended in 200 μl flow cytometry buffer (PBS + 2% FBS + 2 mM EDTA) and immediately analysed.
Mice were perfused intracardially with ice-cold 1× PBS followed by ice-cold 4% paraformaldehyde (PFA). Spinal columns were harvested and post-fixed overnight in 4% PFA at 4 °C. For histopathological analysis of both meningeal and parenchymal compartments, spinal columns were subsequently transferred to 0.5 M EDTA (pH 7.4; S28291GAL, Thermo Fisher Scientific) and decalcified at 4 °C with continuous inversion for 7 days.
Following decalcification, tissues were processed in toto, paraffin-embedded, sectioned and mounted on glass slides. Serial sections were stained with haematoxylin and eosin and Luxol Fast Blue to assess inflammation and demyelination, respectively. All histological analyses were performed by a board-certified anatomical pathologist (IDEXX BioAnalytics).
Microscopic lesions were evaluated using established semiquantitative grading systems. Inflammatory changes were scored on a four-point scale as previously described65,66, ranging from no detectable inflammatory cells (score 0), to scattered infiltrates (score 1), perivascular clustering (score 2), and extensive perivascular cuffing with parenchymal extension or diffuse infiltration (score 3). Demyelination was graded based on Luxol Fast Blue staining from minimal subpial demyelination (score 1), through marked subpial and perivascular involvement (score 2), confluent subpial or perivascular demyelination (score 3), to extensive demyelination affecting one-half (score 4) or the entirety (score 5) of the spinal cord section, often accompanied by parenchymal immune infiltration.
All samples were well preserved with minimal or no autolytic or decalcification artefacts. Numerical scores were used to quantify total lesion burden and to compare the severity and prevalence of pathological changes across treatment groups.
STARmap padlock and primer probes were designed as previously described67. For the 64-gene STARmap data collection, 2–6 pairs of primer and padlock probes (Supplementary Table 4) were designed for each gene.
The mice used in this study were anaesthetized with isoflurane and rapidly decapitated. The mouse spleen tissue was collected and placed in Tissue-Tek O.C.T. Compound. Two biological replicates were collected for each condition (Luc, DFI and wild type). For the post-DFI-treatment analysis, three biological replicates were collected for each condition (NaCl, Luc, DFI and 4-weeks post-DFI). Then, the spleen tissue in O.C.T. was frozen in liquid nitrogen and stored at −80 °C. For mouse spleen tissue sectioning, the spleen tissue was transferred to cryostat (CM1950, Leica) and cut into 20-μm cross -ections at −20 °C. The slices were transferred and attached to glass-bottom 24-well plates pretreated with 3-(trimethoxysilyl)propyl methacrylate and poly-D-lysine.
The STARmap procedure was conducted as previously described67. In brief, the spleen slices were fixed with 400 μl 4% PFA in 1× PBS at room temperature for 15 min, then permeabilized with 600 μl pre-chilled methanol at −20 °C for 1 h. The samples were then taken from −20 °C freezer to room temperature for 5 min, then quenched with 400 μl quenching solution (0.1 mg ml−1 yeast tRNA, 0.1 U μl−1 SUPERase·In RNase inhibitor, 100 mM glycine and 0.1% Tween-20 in PBS) at room temperature for 10 min. After quenching, the samples were rinsed with 600 μl PBSTR (1× PBS supplemented with 0.1% Tween-20 and 0.02 U μl−1 SUPERase·In RNase Inhibitor) twice. Then, the samples were incubated with 200 μl of 1× hybridization buffer (2× SSC, 10% formamide, 20 mM ribonucleoside vanadyl complex, 0.1 mg ml−1 yeast tRNA, 0.1 U μl−1 SUPERase·In, 1% Triton X-100, pooled padlock and primer probes at a concentration of 10 nM per oligo) at 40 °C in a humidified oven with parafilm wrapping and shaking for 20 h. The samples were washed with 300 μl PBSTR twice and 300 μl high-salt washing buffer (4× SSC dissolved in PBSTR) once, for 20 min at 37 °C for each wash. Finally, the samples were rinsed once with 300 μl PBSTR at room temperature.
The samples were then incubated with a 200 μl ligation mixture (0.1 Weiss U μl−1 T4 DNA ligase, 0.5 mg ml−1 BSA and 0.2 U μl−1 of SUPERase·In RNase inhibitor in 1× T4 DNA ligase buffer) at room temperature for 3 h with gentle shaking. After the ligation reaction, the samples were washed twice with 300 μl PBSTR and then incubated with 200 μl rolling circle amplification mixture (0.2 Weiss U μl−1 Phi29 DNA polymerase, 250 μM dNTP, 20 μM 5-(3-aminoallyl)-dUTP, 0.5 mg ml−1 BSA and 0.2 U μl−1 of SUPERase·In RNase inhibitor in 1× Phi29 buffer) at 4 °C for 30 min then 30 °C for 3 h with gentle shaking. The samples were washed twice with 0.1% Tween-20 in PBS (PBST) before being temporarily stored at 4 °C overnight.
The next day, the samples were treated with 300 μl freshly prepared modification mixture (20 mM methacrylic acid NHS ester in 100 mM sodium bicarbonate buffer) at room temperature for 1 h and then washed once by PBST for 5 min. The samples were rinsed once and then incubated with 200 μl monomer buffer (4% acrylamide, 0.2% bis-acrylamide and 0.2% tetramethylethylenediamine in 2× SSC) at 4 °C for 15 min. Then, the buffer was aspirated, and 50 μl polymerization mixture (0.2% ammonium persulfate dissolved in pre-cooled monomer buffer) was added to the centre of the sample and immediately covered by Gel Slick-coated glass coverslip (72226-01, Electron Microscopy Sciences). The polymerization reaction was performed for 1 h at room temperature in an N2 box, then washed by PBST twice for 5 min each. The samples embedded in hydrogel were digested with 300 μl proteinase K mixture (0.5 mg ml−1 proteinase K and 1% SDS in 2× SSC) at 37 °C for 3 h, then washed by PBST three times for 5 min each. Subsequently, the samples were treated with 200 μl dephosphorylation mixture (0.25 U μl−1 Antarctic phosphatase, 0.5 mg ml−1 BSA in 1× Antarctic phosphatase buffer) at 37 °C overnight and washed by PBST three times for 5 min each.
For SEDAL sequencing, each sequencing cycle began with treating the sample with 800 μl stripping buffer (60% formamide and 0.1% Triton X-100 in H2O) at room temperature twice for 10 min each, followed by washing with 1 ml PBST three times for 5 min each. Then, the samples were incubated with a 250 μl sequencing mixture (0.1875 U μl−1 T4 DNA ligase, 0.5 mg ml−1 BSA, 10 μM reading probe and 5 μM decoding probes in 1× T4 DNA ligase buffer) at room temperature for at least 5 h. The samples were washed with 900 μl washing and imaging buffer (10% formamide in 2× SSC buffer) three times for 10 min each, then immersed in washing and imaging buffer for imaging. Images were acquired using Leica TCS SP8 confocal microscopy with ×40 oil immersion objective (NA 1.3) and a voxel size of 194 nm × 194 nm × 350 nm (x × y × z). DAPI staining was performed before the first cycle using 5× DAPI in PBST for 3 h at room temperature. The DAPI signal was collected at the first cycle of imaging. Four cycles of imaging were performed to decode 64 genes.
After SEDAL sequencing, the samples were treated with 800 μl of stripping buffer three times at room temperature for 10 min each. The samples were then washed with 1 ml PBST three times for 5 min each. To visualize the plasma membrane and aid cell segmentation, the samples were treated with 300 μl Flamingo staining mixture (1× Flamingo fluorescent gel stain and 5× DAPI in PBS) at room temperature overnight, then washed with 300 μl PBST three times for 5 min each. The Flamingo signal was collected and the DAPI signal was reimaged while the samples were immersed in PBST with 0.1× Flamingo fluorescent gel stain.
STARmap data analysis was performed as previously described43,67. In brief, image deconvolution was achieved with Huygens Essential (v21.04; Scientific Volume Imaging (http://svi.nl)), using the CMLE algorithm, with SNR:10 and 10 iterations. Image registration, spot calling and barcode filtering were performed as previously described.
For 3D cell segmentation, a synthetic image with improved contrast between cell nuclei was generated by multiplying the inverted Flamingo staining image and DAPI staining image after enhancing contrast using Fiji for each field of view (FOV). A StarDist 3D segmentation model was then trained using a manually labelled training dataset created from the synthetic data68. Subsequently, the model was applied to predict segmentation for each FOV.
For tissue region identification, to isolate low-frequency (that is, large length scale) transcriptional patterns over the tissue, Laplacian smoothing over a spatial Delaunay triangulation (that is, a nearest neighbour mesh of cells) was performed. The specific low-pass filter used was a heat kernel with time t = 10. Principal component analysis was then performed on the resulting low-pass-filtered cell-by-gene matrix to identify region features, followed by clustering in the principal component space to produce categorical region labels. K-means was used for clustering to avoid smoothing-induced spatial autocorrelation artefacts69.
For quality control and cell-type classification, cells with less than two reads and expressed fewer than two genes were excluded. Gene expression profiles were normalized and scaled using standard Scanpy procedures70. A hierarchical clustering approach was then utilized to create a three-level cell-type annotation (Supplementary Fig. 2a). Initially, 24 clusters were identified through k-means clustering of the preprocessed gene expression profile containing 19 genes, which were further categorized into four level 1 cell types (T cells, B cells, macrophages and dendritic cells; Supplementary Fig. 2b). Cells lacking expression of any of the selected 19 gene markers were removed from subsequent analysis. Each level 1 cell-type underwent additional k-means clustering to establish level 2 annotations (Supplementary Fig. 2c). Level 2 CD4+ or CD8+ T cells then underwent a level 3 k-means clustering using a panel of 15 markers for further refinement in classification (Supplementary Fig. 2d).
Sixteen genes were profiled to validate the expression pattern of the three therapeutic mRNAs on liver and spleen tissues. The three therapeutic mRNAs, Dll1, Il7 and Flt3l, were profiled using RIBOmap, whereas the 13 cell-type marker genes were profiled using STARmap. RIBOmap enables the quantification of translation levels of Dll1, Il7 and Flt3l, which is a better reflection of protein production than mRNA levels. RIBOmap also excludes endosomal and extracellular mRNA signals, which are commonly found in mRNA-injected tissue samples. For both RIBOmap and STARmap, 5–6 pairs of primer and padlock probes were designed as described in Zeng et al.30 (Supplementary Tables 1 and 4). The mice used in this experiment were anaesthetized with isoflurane and rapidly decapitated. The mouse liver and spleen tissues were collected and placed in Tissue-Tek O.C.T. Compound. Three biological replicates with therapeutic mRNA injections were collected, and one control sample with Luc mRNA injection was collected. Then, the liver and spleen tissues in O.C.T. were frozen in liquid nitrogen and stored at −80 °C.
The RIBOmap procedure was conducted similarly to the STARmap procedure described above30. The only difference is that RIBOmap splint probes targeting the 18S rRNA were included in the hybridization mixture. Data analysis was performed as described in the STARmap data analysis section. The translation levels of Dll1, Il7 and Flt3l were quantified at a single-cell level.
Heart blood was aspirated by cardiac puncture using EDTA-precoated syringes and collected in BD Microtainer Tubes with potassium EDTA additive (365974, BD). Serum was isolated by centrifugation at 2,000g for 10 min at room temperature and snap frozen on dry ice. All samples were received by IDEXX BioAnalytics and stored securely at −80 °C before analysis. Serum AST, ALT, CK, albumin, triglycerides and GGT were measured by an Olympus AU5400 (IDEXX BioAnalytics). Samples demonstrating haemolysis were excluded from the analysis.
Heart blood was aspirated by cardiac puncture using EDTA-precoated syringes and collected in BD Microtainer Tubes with potassium EDTA additive (365974, BD). Serum was isolated by centrifugation at 2,000g for 10 min at room temperature and snap frozen on dry ice. All samples were received by IDEXX BioAnalytics and stored securely at −80 °C before analysis. Samples were tested on the Milliplex MAP mouse cytokine/chemokine magnetic bead panel (MCYTOMAG-70K-PMX, Millipore) according to the kit protocol as qualified. Data were collected by xPONENT 4.3 (Luminex) and data analysis was completed using BELYSA 1.1.0 software. The data collected by the instrument software are expressed as median fluorescence intensity (MFI). MFI values for each analyte were collected per each individual sample well. Analyte standards, quality controls and sample MFI values were adjusted for background. Calibrator data were fit to either a five-parameter logistic or four parameter logistic model depending on best fit to produce accurate standard curves for each analyte. Quality control and sample data were interpolated from the standard curves and then adjusted according to the dilution factor to provide calculated final concentrations of each analyte present in the sample. Samples demonstrating haemolysis were excluded from the analysis.
To evaluate the hepatic safety of LNP administration, liver tissue was harvested from female C57BL/6J mice. Twelve mice (n = 4 per group) comprising adult untreated controls, aged mice treated for 28 days with Luc–LNPs and aged mice treated for 28 days with DFI–LNPs were intracardially perfused under terminal anaesthesia with ice-cold 1× PBS, followed by 4% PFA. Livers were dissected, post-fixed in 4% PFA overnight at 4 °C and submitted to IDEXX BioAnalytics for blinded histopathological assessment.
Upon receipt, liver tissues were trimmed, paraffin embedded, sectioned and mounted onto glass slides. Sections were routinely stained with haematoxylin and eosin to assess general histology and hepatocellular integrity. Serial sections were stained with Masson's Trichrome to visualize connective tissue and assess the presence of fibrosis. Microscopic evaluation was performed by board-certified veterinary pathologists blinded to treatment groups. Histopathological changes were graded for severity using a standardized semi-quantitative scale: 0 for no significant findings, 1 for minimal, 2 for mild, 3 for moderate, and 4 for severe. Evaluation criteria adhered to the International Harmonization of Nomenclature and Diagnostic Criteria standards (https://www.toxpath.org/inhand.asp). Numerical lesion scores were used to quantify both prevalence and severity of histological changes within and across experimental groups.
Heart blood was obtained through cardiac puncture in mice following cervical dislocation and stored in 0.5% EDTA for subsequent processing. Red blood cells were lysed using 1 ml ACK lysis buffer (Thermo). Freshly isolated immune cells post-lysis of red blood cells were blocked with rat anti-mouse CD16/32 (0.5 μg per well, eBioscience). Subsequently, respective antibodies in PBS were added in a total volume of 50 μl and stained for 30 min. eFluor 780 fixable viability dye (eBioscience) was used per the manufacturer's protocol to exclude dead cells.
For scRNA-seq, cells were divided into eight aliquots per animal sample and pre-incubated for 10 min with titrated amounts of TotalSeq hashtag antibodies (C0301-C0308, BioLegend). Cells were sorted on a BD Aria Fusion cell sorter using a 100-μM nozzle and four-way purity mode. From peripheral blood, viable T cells (live, CD45+ and CD3+) were sorted in 20 μl 0.04% BSA in PBS and kept on ice until processing.
Single-cell capture, reverse transcription and library preparation were conducted on the Chromium platform (10X Genomics) with the single-cell 5′ reagent v2 kit (10X Genomics) following the manufacturer's protocol, using 40,000 cells as input per channel. Each pool of cells underwent library quality testing, and library concentration was assessed. The final library for each pool was subjected to paired-end sequencing (26 bp and 92 bp) on one Illumina NovaSeq 6000 S2 lane. Raw sequencing data were processed and aligned to the mouse genome (GRCm39 — mm39) using the CellRanger pipeline (10X Genomics, v7.1.0).
Seurat datasets were generated for blood T cells at each time point. Singlets were identified per the published Seurat vignette (https://satijalab.org/seurat/articles/hashing_vignette.html) and used for downstream analyses. In addition, only cells with more than 500 and less than 4,000 unique features were detected, and less than 5% of mitochondrial counts were considered for further analysis. Blood datasets for each age group underwent merging and integration using the harmony package, following the guidelines in the published vignette (https://portals.broadinstitute.org/harmony/SeuratV3.html). The integration process involved the application of the following arguments: NormalizeData(), FindVariableFeatures(selection.method = “vst”, nfeatures = 2000),ScaleData(), RunPCA(), RunHarmony(“orig.ident”, plot_convergence = TRUE, dims.use = 1:20), RunUMAP(reduction = “harmony”, dims = 1:20), FindNeighbors(reduction = “harmony”, dims = 1:20), FindClusters(resolution = 0.5). After removing cells failing quality control, integration was reiterated with the same settings, and final transcriptional clusters for downstream analyses were identified using the FindClusters function (resolution = 0.7).
Annotation of mouse peripheral blood datasets was carried out manually, based on the final transcriptional clustering post-quality control and integration, using canonical marker genes and differential gene expression analyses through the FindAllMarkers function in Seurat. For subsequent visualization subsets for CD8 T cells (clusters: CD8_T activated, CD8_T cytotox, CD8_T effector-like, CD8_T exhausted, CD8_T IFN-responsive, CD8_T memory-like and CD8_T naive-like; 56,967 cells) and CD4 T cells (clusters: CD4_T activated, CD4_T IFN-responsive, CD4_T memory-like/naive, CD4_T naive and Treg; 39,716 cells) were built and a new UMAP embedding based on the harmony components was calculated.
The statistical significance of changes in cell-type abundance over time in the single-cell data was assessed using Pearson correlation through the cor.test(…, method= “pearson”) function. For visualization, log2 fold changes of cell-type proportions at each time point relative to the 4-week time point were computed and graphically represented. Cell types exhibiting a significant correlation with increasing age (P < 0.05) were colour annotated. Density UMAP visualization was performed using the ggplot2 stat_density_2d() function.
B16-OVA were explanted at day +12 post-injection so that tumour sizes remained comparable between treatment groups. Tumour tissues were minced and enzymatically digested in RPMI supplemented with Liberase (5401119001, Roche) for 30 min at 37 °C with gentle agitation. Following digestion, tissues were filtered through a 70-μm cell strainer and centrifuged. The resulting cell pellet was resuspended in a 40% Percoll–PBS solution and layered on top of a 80% Percoll–PBS solution in 50 ml followed by centrifugation at 1,260g for 20 min at room temperature with the acceleration at the lowest setting and no break. The middle interface layer containing TILs was isolated and stained with a fixable viability dye (eFluor780) respective fluorophore-labelled antibodies, as well as an oligo-conjugated and PE-labelled H-2Kb SIINFEKL dextramer (JD02163DXG PE 25, Immudex). Cells were sorted on a Sony MA900 cell sorter using a 100-μM nozzle. Viable T cells (live, CD45+ and CD3+) were sorted in 20 μl 0.04% BSA in PBS and kept on ice until processing. Single-cell capture, reverse transcription and library preparation were conducted on the Chromium platform (10X Genomics) with the single-cell 5′ reagent v2 kit (10X Genomics) following the manufacturer's protocol, using 20,000 cells as input per channel. Each pool of cells underwent library quality testing, and library concentration was assessed. The final library for each pool was subjected to paired-end sequencing (10 bp, 10 bp and 90 bp) on one Illumina NovaSeq X 25B lane. Raw sequencing data were processed and aligned to the mouse genome (GRCm39 — mm39) using the CellRanger pipeline (10X Genomics, v7.1.0).
Single-cell transcriptomic and V(D)J data were generated from four parallel runs, each consisting of sorted TILs isolated and pooled from two animals. Raw gene expression and antibody-derived tag (ADT) matrices using the conjugated oligo sequence (CCCATATAAGAAA) of the H-2Kb SIINFEKL dextramer were processed in R (v4.3.2) using the Seurat package (v5.3.0)71. Cells were retained if they expressed at least 200 but no more than 7,000 genes and exhibited less than 5% mitochondrial gene content. Genes detected in fewer than three cells (CreateSeuratObject(…,min.cells = 3)) were excluded. ADT assays were normalized using centred log-ratio transformation. TCR contig annotations were added to the scRNA dataset per sample using scRepertoire (v2.0.7)72. Clones were called based on the CDR3 amino acid sequence throughout the study. Clonal proportion was calculated per run. For downstream analyses, only cells with annotated TCR were used. T cells were projected onto the default TIL reference atlas using ProjecTILs (v3.5.2) to enable canonical cell-type annotation73. For visualization, the reference atlas UMAP embedding was used. H-2Kb-SIINFEKL dextramer staining was analysed from ADT assays. Cells with a centred log-ratio-normalized tetramer signal of more than 1.7 were classified as SIINFEKL specific (Tet+). Thresholding was guided by ridge plot distribution and cell-type distribution of the signal. Clonal diversity was calculated using scRepertoire function clonalDiversity(…,cloneCall = “aa”). Treemap plots of the tetramer-positive TCR repertoire were generated using the treemap package (v2.4-4). To this end, cells per treatment condition were downsampled to the same number of cells and used for visualization.
Upstream data generation and analysis have been published elsewhere16. For each pair of cell types at each time point, a Z-score was computed by comparing the observed frequency of cell interactions for the pair within a 50-μm radius to the null hypothesis of the frequency of cell interactions for the same pair within a 150-μm radius. Subsequently, these Z-scores were plotted over time, and Pearson's r was used to assess the strength of the correlation between changing Z-scores and age.
Upstream data generation and analysis have been published elsewhere16. We used the Squidpy74 integration of CellPhoneDB75 and Omnipath76 to identify shifts in receptor–ligand interactions at each time point. Subsequently, the mean values of each receptor–ligand cell–cell pair across time were used to calculate Spearman's R correlation and a P value. After correcting the P values through Bonferroni correction, unique interactions were categorized into those decreasing and increasing with age for visualization.
Chemicals and enzymes are listed as name (catalog number, vendor): Tissue-Tek O.C.T. Compound (4583, SAKURA); glass bottom 24-well plates (P24-1.5H-N, Cellvis); 3-(trimethoxysilyl) propyl methacrylate (M6514, Sigma-Aldrich); poly-D-lysine (A-003-M, Sigma-Aldrich); 16% PFA (15710-S, Electron Microscopy Sciences); UltraPure DNase/RNase-free distilled water (10977023, Invitrogen); methanol (34860-1L-R, Sigma-Aldrich); PBS (10010-023, Gibco); Tween-20, 10% solution (655206, Calbiochem); yeast tRNA (AM7119, Thermo Fisher Scientific); SUPERase·In RNase inhibitor (AM2696, Thermo Fisher Scientific); UltraPure SSC, 20× (15557044, Invitrogen); formamide (655206, Calbiochem); ribonucleoside vanadyl complex (S1402S, New England Biolabs); T4 DNA ligase, 5 Weiss U μl−1 (EL0012, Thermo Fisher Scientific); Phi29 DNA polymerase (EP0094, Thermo Fisher Scientific); deoxynucleotide (dNTP) solution mix (N0447L, New England Biolabs); UltraPure BSA (AM2618, Thermo Fisher Scientific); 5-(3-aminoallyl)-dUTP (AM8439, Thermo Fisher Scientific); methacrylic acid NHS ester, 98% (730300, Sigma-Aldrich); DMSO, anhydrous (D12345, Invitrogen); acrylamide solution, 40% (161-0140, Bio-Rad); Bis solution, 2% (161-0142, Bio-Rad); ammonium persulfate (A3678, Sigma-Aldrich); N,N,N′,N′-tetramethylethylenediamine (T9281, Sigma-Aldrich); Gel Slick Solution (50640, Lonza Bioscience); OminiPur SDS, 20% (7991, Calbiochem); proteinase K solution, RNA grade (25530049, Thermo Fisher Scientific); Antarctic phosphatase (M0289L, New England Biolabs); DAPI (D1306, Molecular Probes); 10% Triton X-100 (93443, Sigma-Aldrich); and Flamingo fluorescent protein gel stain (1610490, Bio-Rad).
For immunohistochemistry, immunofluorescence and STARmap analyses of DLL1: anti-DLL1 antibody 1:800 (ab10554, Abcam) and AF546-labelled secondary donkey anti-rabbit IgG antibody 1:500 (A10040, Invitrogen) were used.
For mouse T cell analyses, anti-mouse IL-2 PE 1:100 (clone JES6-5H4, lots B351622 and B377599; 503808, BioLegend), anti-mouse CD45 BV510 1:100 (clone 30-F11, lots B386738, B360620 and B384034; 103138, BioLegend), anti-mouse IFNγ APC 1:100 (clone XMG1.2; lots B354911, B370994 and B396246; 505810, BioLegend), anti-mouse/human CD44 PE 1:100 (clone IM7, lot B343363; 103024, BioLegend), anti-Mo CD8a eBioscience eFluor 450 1:100 (clone 53-6.7, lot 2527379; 48-0081-82, Invitrogen), rat anti-mouse CD4 PerCP 1:100 (clone RM4-5, lots 2279727, 3201956 and 1334056; 553052, BD Bioscience), anti-mouse CD62L APC 1:100 (clone MEL-14, lot B371017; 104412, BioLegend), anti-mouse CD3 FITC 1:100 (clone 17A2; lots B388315, B388061 and B406287; 100204, BioLegend), hamster anti-mouse TCRβ APC 1:100 (clone H57-597; lot 3030398 and 2076848; 553174, BD Bioscience), TruStain FcX anti-mouse CD16/32 1:50 (clone 93; lots B398113, B380119, B368516, B372578 and B419152; 101320, BioLegend), eBioscience Fixable Viability Dye eFluor 780 1:1,000 (lot 2752774; 65-0865-14, Invitrogen), anti-mouse CD4 PE-Cy5.5 1:500 (clone RM4-5, lot B398342; 100514, BioLegend), anti-mouse CD8a BV510 1:100 (clone 53-6.7, lot B427044; 100752, BioLegend), anti-mouse/human CD44 PE 1:200 (clone IM7, lot B343363; 103024, BioLegend), anti-mouse CD62L APC 1:100 (clone MEL-14, lot B371017; 104412, BioLegend), anti-mouse CD3 Pacific Blue 1:100 (clone 17A2, lot B427533; 100214, BioLegend) and anti-mouse CD279 (PD1) APC 1:100 (clone 29F.1A12, lot B376789; 135210, BioLegend).
For mouse thymus analyses, anti-mouse CD4 PE-Cy5.5 1:500 (clone RM4-5, lot B398342; 100514, BioLegend), anti-mouse CD8a BV510 1:100 (clone 53-6.7, lot B427044; 100752, BioLegend), anti-mouse CD25 PerCP 1:200 (clone PC61, lot B378943; 102028, BioLegend), anti-mouse/human CD44 PE 1:200 (clone IM7, lot B417002; 103007, BioLegend), rat anti-mouse CD117 APC 1:100 (clone 2B8, lot 3199305; 553356, BD Bioscience), anti-mouse CD28 FITC 1:100 (clone E18, lot B373960; 122008, BioLegend), anti-mouse CD24 Pacific Blue 1:500 (clone M1/69, lot B385383; 101820, BioLegend), anti-mouse TCRβ chain PE/cyanine7 1:400 (clone H57-597, lot B394527; 109222, BioLegend), rat anti-mouse CD45R/B220 BUV661 1:100 (clone RA3-6B2, lot 3292032; 612972, BD Bioscience), TruStain FcX anti-mouse CD16/32 1:50 (clone 93, lots B398113, B380119, B368516, B372578 and B419152; 101320, BioLegend) and eBioscience Fixable Viability Dye eFluor 780 1:1,000 (lot 2752774; 65-0865-14, Invitrogen).
Further information on research design is available in the Nature Portfolio Reporting Summary linked to this article.
All single-cell profiling data of circulating T cells and B16-OVA TILs in ageing mice are available on Zenodo77 (accession number 17385897). All spatial profiling (RIBOmap and STARmap PLUS) data of liver and spleen samples are available on Zenodo78 (accession number 13858686). All spatial profiling (Slide-TCR-seq) data of thymuses across age are available on Zenodo79 (accession number 17525729). The mouse genome assembly (GRCm39) was used for data alignment (NCBI RefSeq assembly; GCF_000001635.27).
All codes necessary to reproduce all spatial thymus RNA-seq analyses (https://github.com/immunoliugy/aging_mouse_thymus) and all RIBOmap and STARmap PLUS analyses (https://github.com/wanglab-broad/hepatic_recon) are available on GitHub.
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We thank all members of the Zhang laboratory and M. Kilian for their support and useful discussions; and the Broad Comparative Medicine and the Broad Flow Cytometry Core staff for their technical support and guidance. F.Z. is supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute; the K. Lisa Yang Brain-Body Center at MIT; the Broad Institute Programmable Therapeutics Gift Donors; the Pershing Square Foundation, William Ackman and Neri Oxman; and by the Phillips family and J. and P. Poitras. M.J.F. was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation; 512475649), supported by an EMBO Postdoctoral Fellowship (ALTF 689-2023) and acknowledges the support from the Deutsche José Carreras Leukämie-Stiftung (DJCLS 01ZI/2022), the Dr. Rolf M. Schwiete Stiftung (Project ID 2025-018) and the Else Kröner-Fresenius-Stiftung (2025_EKMS.52). X.W. acknowledges support from the Merkin Institute Fellowship, the Packard Fellowship, the Sloan Research Fellowship and the NIH DP2 New Innovator Award. S.L. acknowledges support from Impetus Grants, the Mark & Lisa Schwartz AI Initiative, the Margaret Q. Landenberger Research Foundation and BroadIgnite.
Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Cambridge, MA, USA
Mirco J. Friedrich, Julie Pham, Blake Lash, Rhiannon K. Macrae & Feng Zhang
Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, MA, USA
Mirco J. Friedrich, Julie Pham, Jiakun Tian, Hongyu Chen, Jiahao Huang, Niklas Kehl, Sophia Liu, Blake Lash, Fei Chen, Xiao Wang, Rhiannon K. Macrae & Feng Zhang
McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA
Mirco J. Friedrich, Julie Pham, Blake Lash, Rhiannon K. Macrae & Feng Zhang
Department of Brain and Cognitive Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA
Mirco J. Friedrich, Julie Pham, Blake Lash, Rhiannon K. Macrae & Feng Zhang
Department of Biological Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA
Mirco J. Friedrich, Julie Pham, Blake Lash, Rhiannon K. Macrae & Feng Zhang
Department of Chemistry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA
Jiakun Tian, Hongyu Chen, Jiahao Huang & Xiao Wang
Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, MA, USA
Sophia Liu
Harvard Stem Cell Institute, Cambridge, MA, USA
Fei Chen
Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA
Fei Chen
Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, MA, USA
Xiao Wang
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M.J.F. and F.Z. conceived the project. M.J.F. designed all the experiments with input from F.Z., R.K.M. and other authors. M.J.F. and J.P. performed and analysed all the experiments relating to identification and in vivo reconstitution of immune trophic factors. J.T., H.C. and J.H. performed the STARmap and RIBOmap experiments and analyses. M.J.F., J.P. and S.L. performed the longitudinal scRNA–TCR-seq and Slide-TCR-seq experiments. N.K. and S.L. performed the longitudinal scRNA–TCR-seq and Slide-TCR-seq analyses. B.L. provided assistance and guidance in cloning and production of mRNA–LNPs. F.C. and X.W. provided critical mentorship and guidance in technical procedures. F.Z. supervised this research and experimental design with support from R.K.M. M.J.F. and R.K.M. wrote the manuscript with input from all authors.
Correspondence to
Feng Zhang.
M.J.F. and F.Z. are co-inventors on US provisional patent application no. 63/530,465 filed by the Broad Institute and MIT relating to this work. F.Z. is a scientific advisor and cofounder of Beam Therapeutics, Pairwise Plants, Arbor Biotechnologies, Aera Therapeutics and Moonwalk Biosciences; and is a scientific advisor for Octant. M.J.F. reports speaker honoraria and consulting fees from Pfizer, Roche, Kerna Ventures and Moonwalk Biosciences. X.W. is a scientific cofounder and consultant of Stellaromics and Convergence Bio. All other authors declare no competing interests.
Nature thanks Maria Mittelbrunn, Marcel van den Brink and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Peer reviewer reports are available.
Publisher's note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
(A) Experimental overview for longitudinal profiling of peripheral and thymic T cells. Circulating T cells were isolated from peripheral blood of adult (6 weeks), middle-aged (36 weeks), and aged (72 weeks) mice and subjected to 10x Genomics 5′ single-cell RNA-sequencing. Thymuses were explanted for spatial transcriptomic profiling using Slide-seq v2. (B) Representative flow cytometry gating strategy for sorting peripheral blood CD3+ T cells for single-cell RNA-sequencing. (C) UMAP of CD8+ T cells (CD45+ CD3+ CD8+) across all age groups with cell-type annotations. Total of n = 56,967 CD8+ T cells. (D) Expression feature plots of canonical gene markers overlaid on UMAP from (C). (E) Proportional changes in CD8+ T cell subsets with age. Data shown as fold change relative to 4-week-old mice. Statistically significant changes highlighted in color (methods). (F) UMAP of CD4+ T cells (CD45+ CD3+ CD4+) across all age groups with cell-type annotations. Total of n = 39,716 CD4+ T cells. (G) Expression feature plots of canonical gene markers overlaid on UMAP from (F). (H) Proportional changes in CD4+ T cell subsets with age. Data shown as fold change relative to 4-week-old mice. Statistically significant changes highlighted in color (methods). (I) Heatmap showing expression of exhaustion-associated genes across circulating T cells stratified by age. Arrowhead denotes the average time point of overt thymic involution in C57BL/6 J mice.
(A) Dot plot of gene expression across annotated T cell subsets identified in single-cell RNA-seq data from peripheral CD45+ CD3+ T cells. (B) Left: UMAP of CD8+ T cells across all age groups annotated by subset. Right: same UMAP colored by mouse age. Total of n = 56,967 CD8+ T cells. (C) Left: UMAP of CD4+ T cells across all age groups annotated by subset. Right: same UMAP colored by mouse age. Total of n = 39,716 CD4+ T cells.
(A-B) Age-associated decline in spatial interaction strength between thymic cortical epithelial cells (cTEC) and thymocytes (A), and medullary epithelial cells (mTEC) and thymocytes (B). Interaction scores derived from ligand-receptor inference models. Pearson's correlation (R) and P values shown. Arrowheads indicate time of thymic involution. Violin plots display mean interaction scores before and after involution; significance assessed by two-tailed unpaired t-test. (C-D) Receptor-ligand interaction heatmaps showing cell-cell communication pathways that decrease (C) or increase (D) with age across thymic cell populations. Interactions grouped by signaling axis and stratified by age category: neonatal (n = 7 spatial arrays from 3 mice), adult (n = 15 from 7 mice), middle-aged (n = 13 from 6 mice), and aged (n = 10 from 4 mice). (E) Pathway-level enrichment of Notch, FLT3, and IL-7 signaling in peripheral T cells. Violin plots of average enrichment scores per mouse. Data from n = 96,683 peripheral blood T cells. (F) Differential expression of Notch, FLT3, and IL-7 target genes in circulating T cells of adult vs. aged mice. Shown as log2 fold change. Data from n = 96,683 peripheral blood T cells. (G) Absolute FLT3-L levels in explanted thymuses from mice across age (n = 3 animals per age group).
(A-B) Verification of DFI factor production by primary hepatocytes. (A) Confocal immunofluorescence of primary murine hepatocytes stained for DLL1 surface expression and β-catenin (membrane marker). Left panel: representative image following DFI transfection; right panel: mock-transfected control. Scale bar, 100 µm. (B) Extracellular concentrations of biologically active IL-7 and FLT3-L secreted by mRNA-transfected immortalized hepatocytes, as measured by IL-7 and FLT3-L ELISA. Data are mean ± s.e.m. n = 3 independent transfection experiments. Statistical significance was tested using two-tailed unpaired t-tests. (C) Supernatant cytokine levels of FLT3L and IL-7 from primary hepatocytes following DFI mRNA-LNP treatment, quantified by ELISA. (D) Representative RIBOmap deconvolved images of ribosome-bound transcripts in liver and spleen 6 h post-DFI injection. Note liver image (bottom) is repeated from Fig. 1f for ease of comparison. Representative image from three imaged DFI-treated animals. (E) Venn diagram showing overlap of hepatocytes expressing ribosome-bound transcripts for each of the three DFI mRNAs. n = 3 mice. (F) Representative immunofluorescence staining of liver tissue for DLL1 protein (yellow), F-actin (Phalloidin, magenta), and nuclei (DAPI, cyan) following DFI administration. See Fig. 1g for quantification. (G) Body weights of 72-week-old C57BL/6 J mice over 28 days of treatment with either Luc control or DFI mRNA–LNPs. n = 5 mice per group. (H) Serum liver function parameters including ALT, AST, ALP, and bilirubin measured in aged animals treated with vehicle (NaCl), DFI mRNA–LNPs, or recombinant IL-7/FLT3L protein. n = 10 (NaCl), n = 9 (DFI), n = 10 (recombinant cytokines). Data are presented as mean ± s.e.m. Statistical analysis was performed using one-way ANOVA followed by Tukey's multiple comparison test. (I-J) Representative hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) and Masson's trichrome stainings of liver sections from aged mice treated with NaCl (C) or DFI mRNA–LNPs (D). Representative images from one out of 12 imaged animals. (K) Histopathological scoring of liver lesions based on inflammation, hepatocellular degeneration, and fibrosis. Criteria followed INHAND nomenclature guidelines. n = 4 mice per group. (L) Cumulative pathology scores across all assessed features in aged NaCl-, Luc-, and DFI-treated mice. n = 4 mice per group.
(A) Representative flow cytometry gating strategy for the identification and quantification of CD45+ CD3+ T cells in spleens from adult (6 weeks) and aged (72 weeks) mice. (B) Quantification of total CD45+ CD3+ T cell frequency following 28 days of biweekly DFI or Luc mRNA-LNP treatment. n = 4 mice per group. Data are shown as mean ± s.e.m. Statistical significance was assessed using one-way ANOVA followed by Tukey's post hoc test. (C-E) Frequencies of naïve (CD44− CD62L+), central memory (CM; CD44+ CD62L+), and effector memory (EM; CD44+ CD62L−) T cells (C), CD8+ T cells (D), and CD4+ T cells (E). n = 4 mice per group. Data represent mean ± s.e.m. Statistical comparisons were performed by one-way ANOVA with Tukey's post hoc test.
(A) Weights of explanted thymuses from adult (6 weeks), aged + Luc mRNA, and aged + DFI mRNA-treated (72 weeks) mice. n = 5 mice per group. Statistical significance was determined by one-way ANOVA followed by Tukey's multiple-comparison post hoc test. (B) Representative H&E-stained thymic tissue sections from each group, highlighting cortical and medullary organization. (C) Quantification of thymic cellularity (×10³ cells/mm²) from explanted thymuses. n = 3 mice per group. One-way ANOVA with Tukey's post hoc test was used to assess statistical significance. (D) Representative flow cytometry gating strategy for quantification of thymocyte subsets from explanted thymuses. (E) Quantification of major thymocyte subsets: double-negative (DN), double-positive (DP), and single-positive (SP) CD4+ and CD8+ thymocytes. Absolute counts were normalized to thymus weight (mg). n = 5 mice per group. Data are shown as mean ± s.e.m., one-way ANOVA with Tukey's post hoc test. (F) Absolute counts of DN1-DN4 subsets. Normalized to thymus weight (mg). n = 5 mice per group. Data are shown as mean ± s.e.m., one-way ANOVA with Tukey's post hoc test.
(A) Overview of the Rag2-EGFP experiment. DFI was injected at 0 h. (B) Representative flow cytometry gating strategy to quantify Rag2 expression levels in double- negative (DN), double-positive (DP), single-positive CD4+ (SP CD4+) and single-positive CD8+ (SP CD8+) thymocytes. (C) Mean fluorescence intensity (MFI) of Rag2-EGFP at indicated timepoints. n = 3 mice per timepoint. n = 3 Rag2-EGFP−/− mice were used as negative control. Data are shown as mean ± s.e.m., repeated measures two-way ANOVA with Dunnett's post hoc test. (D) Overview of the Nur77-GFP experiment. DFI was injected at 0 h and 72 h. (E) Representative flow cytometry gating strategy to quantify Nur77 expression levels in CD4+ and CD8+ T cells in peripheral blood. (F) Mean fluorescence intensity (MFI) of Nur77-GFP at indicated timepoints in CD4+ (left) and CD8+ (right) T cells in peripheral blood. n = 3 mice per timepoint. n = 3 Nur77-GFP−/− mice were used as negative control. Data are shown as mean ± s.e.m., one-way ANOVA with Dunnett's post hoc test.
(A) Representative flow cytometry gating (left) and quantification (right) of total hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs; Lin− c-Kit+ Sca-1+ FLT3− CD34− CD150+), multipotent progenitor a (MPPa; Lin− c-Kit+ Sca-1+ FLT3− CD34+ CD150+), and multipotent progenitor b (MPPb; Lin− c-Kit+ Sca-1+ FLT3− CD34+ CD150−), as described previously17. (B) Gating (left) and quantification (right) of multipotent progenitor c (MPPc; Lin− c-Kit+ Sca-1+ FLT3+ CD34+ CD150−), as described previously17. (C) Gating (left) and quantification (right) of myeloid-biased HSCs (my-HSCs; Lin− c-Kit+ Sca-1+ FLT3− CD34− CD150high) and balanced HSCs (bal-HSCs; Lin− c-Kit+ Sca-1+ FLT3− CD34− CD150low). Gate to define my-HSC vs. bal-HSC was set as described previously17. (D) Ratio of my-HSCs to bal-HSCs across experimental groups. (E) Gating (left) and quantification (right) of common myeloid progenitors and granulocyte–macrophage progenitors (CMP/GMP; Lin− c-Kit+ Sca-1− CD34+ CD41−) (F) Gating (left) and quantification (right) of common lymphoid progenitors (CLPs; Lin− c-Kitint Sca-1int IL-7Rα+ FLT3+). (G) Schematic illustration of the hierarchical hematopoietic stem and progenitor cell (HSPC) lineage tree used for comparative analysis. (H) Fold changes in average frequencies of each HSPC subset in aged relative to adult bone marrow. (I) Fold changes in average frequencies of each HSPC subset in aged DFI-treated relative to aged Luc-treated bone marrow. For (A-F), quantifications were performed on n = 30 mice total (n = 10 adult, n = 10 aged + Luc, n = 10 aged + DFI). Data represent mean ± s.e.m. Statistical significance was assessed by one-way ANOVA followed by Tukey's multiple-comparison post hoc test.
(A) Representative flow cytometry gating strategy to identify circulating CLPs (Lin− IL-7Rα+ Sca-1+ c-Kit+) in peripheral blood. (B) Left: Weights of explanted thymuses from each group. Right: Frequencies of intrathymic CLPs. n = 5 mice per group. (C) Left: Representative histograms showing CCR9 surface expression on intrathymic CLPs. Right: Frequencies of CCR9+ CLPs in thymus. n = 5 per group. (D) Top: Mean fluorescence intensity (MFI) of CCR9 on CLPs from bone marrow and thymus. Bottom: Fold change in CCR9 expression (thymus:bone marrow). n = 5 mice per group. Data analyzed by repeated measures two-way ANOVA and Tukey's post hoc test. (E) Top: MFI of CCR7 on CLPs from bone marrow and thymus. Bottom: Fold change in CCR7 expression (thymus:bone marrow). n = 5 mice per group. Statistical analyses as in (D).
(A) Gating strategy for tetramer staining of KYNKANAFL-H-2d-specific CD8+ T cells in the peripheral blood of NOD mice. (B) Schematic of the experimental design for experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE) induction in adult and aged mice treated with DFI or Luc mRNA. Mice were immunized with MOG35–55 peptide and pertussis toxin, treated with mRNA–LNPs every 3 days until symptom onset, and monitored over 28 days. (C-D) Longitudinal EAE clinical scores in (C) adult and (D) aged mice. Mice were scored twice daily using a 0–5 scale: 0, no signs; 1, limp tail; 2, hindlimb weakness; 3, hindlimb paralysis; 4, forelimb paralysis; 5, moribund. (E-F) Frequencies of MOG38–49-I-Ab tetramer-binding CD4+ T cells in spleens. Control tetramer: CLIP87–101-I-Ab. n = 4 per group. (G) Representative spinal cord sections stained with H&E (top) and Luxol Fast Blue (bottom) to evaluate inflammatory infiltrates and demyelination. Arrows indicate areas of demyelination; arrowheads mark inflammatory foci. (H) Quantification of demyelination severity in spinal cords. n = 4 per group. P values calculated using one-way ANOVA with Tukey's multiple-comparison post hoc test.
This file contains Supplementary Figs. 1–6.
RIBOmap targets and probe sequences.
Raw values of serum cytokine measurements performed from peripheral blood of DFI mRNALNP, recombinant protein, or NaCl-treated animals.
Raw values of serum cytokine measurements performed from peripheral blood of DFI mRNA-LNP, Luc mRNA-LNP, single DFI factor mRNA LNP, or NaCl-treated animals.
STARmap targets and probe sequences.
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December 17, 2025
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Scientists Denounce Trump's Plan to Kill Crucial Atmospheric Science Center
The U.S. government is dismantling the National Center for Atmospheric Research, jettisoning key climate science projects in the process
By Andrea Thompson edited by Claire Cameron
Mesa Laboratory at The National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder.
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The Trump administration is dismantling the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), long considered the crown jewel in the U.S.'s earth science infrastructure. Scientists who study climate, weather and other earth sciences have decried the move, first reported by USA Today, as “taking a sledgehammer” to an “iconic” center dedicated to studying our planet.
“NCAR is quite literally our global mothership,” wrote Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University and chief scientist of the Nature Conservancy, on Bluesky. “Dismantling NCAR is like taking a sledgehammer to the keystone holding up our scientific understanding of the planet. Unbelievable.”
The center, based in Boulder, Colo., has become a target because of what Russ Vought, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, described as “climate alarmism” in a statement to USA Today. Weather modeling and supercomputing work also done at the center will be moved to other research hubs, Vought said.
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The work to dismantle NCAR, founded in 1960, will begin immediately, USA Today reported, and will involve fully closing the center's iconic Mesa Laboratory.
“NCAR is a unique & valuable asset—far more than a climate model, or observations, or technology, or training ground, or gathering space,” wrote climatologist Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, on Bluesky. “It covers weather, space weather, data, climate, paleo-climate, and everything in-between. [Its] building is an icon, but [its] iconic status goes far beyond that.”
The NCAR dismantling is just the latest target of a series of swings the Trump administration has taken to curtail climate change research and action, including massive cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and efforts to roll back Environmental Protection Agency rules to limit pollution.
NCAR employs about 830 people under the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), a nonprofit consortium of universities and colleges. The National Science Foundation contracts with UCAR to manage NCAR and provided about half of the center's operating budget for 2025, USA Today reported.
Editor's Note (12/17/25): This article was edited after posting to correct the name of the Nature Conservancy.
Andrea Thompson is senior desk editor for life science at Scientific American, covering the environment, energy and earth sciences. She has been covering these issues for nearly two decades. Prior to joining Scientific American, she was a senior writer covering climate science at Climate Central and a reporter and editor at Live Science, where she primarily covered earth science and the environment. She has moderated panels, including as part of the United Nations Sustainable Development Media Zone, and appeared in radio and television interviews on major networks. She holds a graduate degree in science, health and environmental reporting from New York University, as well as a B.S. and an M.S. in atmospheric chemistry from the Georgia Institute of Technology. Follow Thompson on Bluesky @andreatweather.bsky.social
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Researchers at the University of Virginia School of Medicine have confirmed the first known death caused by the condition commonly referred to as the meat allergy, which is transmitted by ticks.
The case involved a 47 year old man from New Jersey who was previously healthy and died suddenly about four hours after eating beef. For months, the cause of his death remained unclear. That changed when Thomas Platts Mills, MD, PhD, a UVA Health physician and internationally recognized allergy specialist, took a closer look. Platts Mills originally identified the condition years ago and continues to lead research into how it affects patients.
How Lone Star Tick Bites Trigger Alpha Gal Allergy
The allergy develops after a bite from the Lone Star tick. These bites can cause the immune system to become sensitive to alpha gal, a sugar naturally found in meat from mammals. Once sensitized, people may experience allergic symptoms after eating foods such as beef, pork, or lamb. Common reactions include skin rashes, nausea, and vomiting.
Scientists have long suspected that severe cases could escalate into life threatening anaphylaxis. Until now, however, no fatal cases had been officially confirmed.
"The important information for the public is: First, that severe abdominal pain occurring 3 to 5 hours after eating beef, pork or lamb should be investigated as a possible episode of anaphylaxis; and, second, that tick bites that itch for more than a week or larvae of ticks often called 'chiggers' can induce or increase sensitization to mammalian-derived meat," said Platts Mills, former chief of UVA Health's Division of Asthma, Allergy and Clinical Immunology. "On the other hand, most individuals who have mild to moderate episodes of hives can control symptoms with an appropriate diet."
What Happened Before the Man's Death
The man, whose name was not made public, had gone camping with his wife and children during the summer of 2024. One evening, the family ate a late steak dinner at 10 p.m. Around 2 a.m., the man woke up with intense stomach pain, diarrhea, and vomiting. Although he felt better by morning, he later told his son that the episode had felt life threatening.
About two weeks later, still unaware that he had developed the meat allergy, he attended a barbeque and ate a hamburger. He began feeling unwell shortly after 7 p.m. At 7:37 p.m., his son found him collapsed in the bathroom.
Autopsy Raises More Questions Than Answers
An autopsy did not reveal a clear explanation for his death. The official cause was listed as "sudden unexplained death."
His wife was not satisfied with that conclusion and asked another physician to review the findings. That doctor contacted Platts Mills and his team to explore whether alpha gal sensitivity could be involved.
Blood Tests Reveal Severe Allergic Reaction
Platts Mills obtained blood samples that had been collected after the man's death. Testing showed that he had indeed been sensitized to alpha gal. The results also pointed to an extreme immune response consistent with fatal anaphylaxis.
When asked about recent tick exposure, the man's wife said he had not noticed any tick bites in the past year. However, she recalled that he had suffered 12 or 13 itchy bites around his ankles earlier in the summer, which they believed were caused by chiggers. Platts Mills recognized that many bites thought to be from chiggers in the eastern United States are actually from Lone Star tick larvae.
Factors That May Have Worsened the Reaction
Platts Mills and his colleagues believe several conditions may have intensified the man's allergic response. These include drinking a beer with the hamburger, exposure to ragweed pollen, and physical exercise earlier that day. Family members also noted that he rarely ate red meat, which may have influenced how his immune system reacted.
Growing Tick Populations Increase Risk
Following the case, Platts Mills is urging doctors to stay alert for patients who may have developed this allergy or who face higher exposure risk. He pointed out that deer populations are rapidly increasing in many states, creating ideal conditions for the Lone Star tick to spread.
"It is important that both doctors and patients who live in an area of the country where Lone Star ticks are common should be aware of the risk of sensitization," Platts Mills said. "More specifically, if they have unexpected episodes of severe abdominal pain occurring several hours after eating mammalian meat, they should be investigated for possible sensitization to the oligosaccharide alpha-gal."
Case Findings Published in Medical Journal
Details of the case have been published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: In Practice. The article is open access, meaning it is available to read for free. The authors include Platts Mills, Lisa J. Workman, Nathan E. Richards, Jeffrey M. Wilson, and Erin M. McFeely.
The research team obtained consent from the man's widow before releasing the findings.
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A site in Switzerland contained evidence of an administrative center that was part of a bigger plan to build a urban center that never came to fruition.
Here's what you'll learn when you read this story:
Northern Switzerland, it turns out, was very close to having a major Roman urban center in the late first century C.E. Archaeologists discovered artifacts that show a site near the Limmat River in Gebenstorf was not only a hotbed of Roman trade, but was about to burst onto the scene as a major political administrative urban center.
But it never happened.
According to a translated statement from Kanton Aargau, archaeologists in Switzerland completed a 14-month excavation and found over 1,600 artifacts—including 137 coins, special weights, a stylus, and a folding ruler—all used for record-keeping and commerce during the late first century C.E.
Considering the presence of a Roman legion nearby in Vindonissa, the site along the river was likely planned as a major urban center. The excavations revealed three major buildings located on the riverbank, all with Roman-style architectural features. One structure featured a double-aisled portico with columned walkways, another had a hall that dipped underground (as was commonly found in Roman marketplaces, known as forums), and the easternmost structure included courtyards, corridors, entrances, and rooms (a stark contrast from the other two buildings nearby). The experts believe it was all built by the 11th Legion.
The archaeologists with the Cantonal Archaeology Department said that the configuration of the structures shows it was a multifunctional center meant to house a bevy of administrative functions that would have served a planned urban settlement. That settlement was never established, however. (They also created a documentary on the site.)
Along with discoveries highlighting the business nature of the site, the team also uncovered plenty of artifacts from daily life around the early iteration of the settlement, of which an intact amphora was one of the most unique. Excavations revealed thousands of shards of pottery, but only one complete vessel, sent for preservation to the University of Basel. Within the grey-white sediment filling the amphora, the Institute for Integrative Prehistoric and Natural Science Archaeology at the university located small fish bones and scales from the Atlantic sardine as part of a liquid fish sauce, a popular condiment during the Roman era.
This find marks the first discovery of sardines in Roman-era Switzerland. The archaeologist said that Romans were among the first societies to use fish resources extensively and establish large salt and preservation facilities for fish sauce production. In these sites, small fish were fermented, and the sauce was packed into amphorae for trade throughout the empire.
To learn more about where this sauce could have originated, the team turned toward investigating the clay of the amphora. They now believe it was likely produced on the coast of the Roman province of Baetica, present-day Andalusia (an area within Spain), but present-day Lyon, France, also remains a possible origin point. The team believes the amphora and its sauce were probably produced and moved between 25 and 50 C.E., during the height of the fish sauce trade in the western Mediterranean.
Any proper Roman urban center and administrative seat would have needed a proper storehouse for fish sauce. The Limmat River site was well on its way.
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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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Nature Neuroscience
(2025)Cite this article
Tau is a microtubule-associated cytoskeletal protein, which, when hyperphosphorylated and aggregated, can result in a myriad of different tauopathies, including Alzheimer's disease (AD). We previously showed that the principal component of senile plaques, amyloid beta (Aβ), is an antimicrobial peptide capable of binding and entrapping microbial pathogens. Here we show that tau is hyperphosphorylated in neurons in response to viral infection and can neutralize herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1) infectivity by directly binding to viral capsids. Our data suggest that the ‘pathogenic' characteristics of tau hyperphosphorylation, microtubule destabilization and aggregation are part of an antiviral response, in which tau serves as a host defense protein in the innate immune system of the brain. The combined antimicrobial activities of Aβ and phosphorylated tau resulting in Aβ plaques and neurofibrillary tangles, along with neuroinflammation, suggest that AD neuropathology may have evolved as an orchestrated innate immune host defense response to microbial infection in the brain.
Amyloid beta (Aβ) deposited in senile plaques and hyperphosphorylated tau in neurofibrillary tangles (NFTs) have long been considered to play pathological roles in the etiology and pathogenesis of AD1. The presence of abundant levels of amyloid plaques and NFTs are required for a confirmed diagnosis of AD. Tau is a microtubule-associated protein that promotes and coordinates tubulin polymerization into microtubules in neurons2. Microtubules are essential for axonal transport between the neuronal synapse and soma. Six different isoforms of tau exist in the human brain, generated by alternative splicing of the tau gene MAPT (microtubule-associated protein tau). These isoforms vary by containing three or four microtubule-binding domain repeats (3R or 4R, respectively) and zero to two N-terminal inserts (0N, 1N and 2N), with approximately equal representation of 3R and 4R tau isoforms in adult human brain3. Detachment of tau from microtubules, hyperphosphorylation and phosphorylated tau (p-tau) aggregation into NFTs are the defining pathological elements of tauopathies, including AD. Various types of tauopathy are differentiated by the isoform of tau that is prone to pathological aggregation and by the individual driving factors that cause tau to dissociate from microtubules—for example, genetic mutations, increased tau expression, decreased tau clearance and increased kinase activity4. Although these characteristics are primarily associated with the pathogenic nature of tau, they also share commonalities with antimicrobial peptides (AMPs)5,6,7.
The innate immune system is an evolutionarily conserved, broad-spectrum host defense system comprising epitope-recognizing receptors, small microbial-binding peptides called AMPs and phagocytic cells—for example, myeloid cells. AMPs are crucial in the innate immune system's initial response to an infection, in which AMPs directly bind to, entrap and neutralize invading pathogens and occasionally function as a modulator of inflammatory response8,9. We and others previously demonstrated that Aβ is an AMP capable of entrapping, killing or neutralizing bacterial, fungal and viral infections in both in vitro and in vivo model systems10,11,12,13. The antimicrobial protection hypothesis of AD is based on these results, stipulating that Aβ is not an errant catalytic by-product of the Aβ precursor protein (APP), but evolved as a physiologically relevant antimicrobial peptide as part of the innate immune system, particularly in the brain14.
Tau possesses many well-established characteristics and properties that mirror those of Aβ, raising the prospect that tau may also have a role as an AMP. Tau phosphorylation in AD is induced by Aβ amyloidosis, suggesting that it may play a tertiary role in microbial host defense, especially for pathogens that escape the AMP activity of Aβ15,16,17,18. This is most evident in the ability of Herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1) to bypass extracellular immune networks by retrograde axonal transport along the microtubules, which are stabilized by tau19,20. Aggregates of hyperphosphorylated tau derived from destabilized microtubules can form NFTs, which share aggregative properties with Aβ in AD pathogenesis. Previous studies identified multiple pathogenic infections that perpetuate total or p-tau increases in vitro21,22,23,24,25. Other recent studies demonstrated that the active binding sites of tau possess antibacterial capabilities26. Similar to our argument for a physiological role of Aβ, p-tau may, likewise, not simply be an errant form of tau but also play a physiological role akin to that of an AMP.
Here we report that tau phosphorylation increases in response to HSV-1 infection and that p-tau localizes to cellular regions of HSV-1 infection. Moreover, we demonstrate that tau binds to HSV-1 and neutralizes infectivity. These data support a role for tau as an antiviral AMP and suggest a physiological role for aggregation of p-tau. The AMP activities of Aβ and p-tau leading to Aβ plaques and NFTs, together with neuroinflammation, suggest the possibility that AD neuropathology evolved as a multilayered and orchestrated host defense response to microbial infection in the brain.
To test for potential antiviral properties of tau, we first pretreated human ReNcell VM neuronal cell cultures (neuronal cultures) with p-tau followed by infection with HSV-1 and assessed the response of the infection to tau. Mature differentiated two-dimensional (2D) neuronal cultures were preincubated for 24 hours with synthetic 2N4R GSK-3β p-tau (synthetic p-tau) prior to infection with an mRFP-tagged HSV-1. We then employed confocal microscopy to assay single-cell infection counts as well as viral plaque counts and growth (Fig. 1a and Extended Data Fig. 1).
2D ReNcell VM cultures were preincubated with dilutions of synthetic 2N3R tau, 2N4R tau or 2N4R GSK-3β p-tau followed by HSV-1 infection to assay the antimicrobial protective properties of tau. After HSV-1 infection, whole wells were imaged by confocal microscopy and analyzed for red fluorescence. a, Images comparing HSV-1 plaque formation in the absence or presence of 2N4R GSK-3β p-tau (1.25 µg ml−1). b−f, Whole-well images from the 2N4R GSK-3β p-tau (scale of 2.5 µg ml−1 to 0.625 µg ml−1) pretreated conditions were analyzed using Nikon Elements GA3 to compare the number of HSV-1 plaques (F3, 54 = 7.069, **P = 0.0015) (b), the number of HSV-1 single-cell infections (F3, 54 = 2.754, *P = 0.0291) (c), the ratio of plaques to single-cell infections (F3, 54 = 6.428, *P = 0.0169) (d), the size of individual HSV-1 plaques by area (*P = 0.0260) (e), and the average size of HSV-1 plaques by area distributed into quadrants (F3, 1,376 = 1.859, **P = 0.0022) (f). In addition, whole well images from the 2N3R and 2N4R tau conditions (1.25 µg ml−1) were analyzed using Nikon Elements General Analysis 3 (GA3) to compare the number of HSV-1 plaques (g) and the number of HSV-1 single-cell infections (h). Box plots are representative of ±s.e.m. (n = 11) depicting median and interquartile range, with whiskers denoting variability according to Tukey's method. Statistical mean comparisons were calculated by one-way ANOVA using Dunnett's multiple comparisons test (b−d), one-way ANOVA using Tukey's multiple comparisons test (g,h), two-tailed Kolmogorov−Smirnov test (e) for plaque size distribution and two-way ANOVA using Sidak's multiple comparisons test (f).
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Preincubation with p-tau significantly attenuated both HSV-1 single-cell infection (P < 0.05) and HSV-1 plaque counts (P < 0.01) compared to untreated controls (Fig. 1). P-tau protection against HSV-1 infection was concentration dependent, with statistical significance achieved at 1.25 μg ml−1 (Fig. 1b–f). Pretreatment with p-tau also significantly reduced HSV-1 plaque counts based on the numbers of plaques per single-cell infection (P < 0.05; Fig. 1d). In addition to HSV-1 plaque formation, p-tau inhibited plaque growth (P < 0.05; Fig. 1e). Specifically, at 1.25 μg ml−1 p-tau, the highest quartile of viral plaque sizes was significantly smaller than untreated controls (P < 0.01; Fig. 1f). Non-phosphorylated tau isoforms had no effect on HSV-1 single-cell infections or plaque counts (Fig. 1g,h and Extended Data Fig. 1b–g).
HSV-1 is an enveloped virus that merges its lipid bilayer with the host cell during infection, allowing the capsid to gain entry. We next tested the intracellular interaction of tau with the HSV-1 capsid. For this purpose, we assayed different isoforms of tau for binding efficacy to isolated HSV-1 capsid using a modified binding ELISA as described in the Methods. Although human tau exists in six isoforms, we focused on the two most prominent forms in the central nervous system: 2N4R and 2N3R. 2N4R is the wild-type or full-length form of tau and aggregates efficiently at near physiological conditions. Additionally, full-length tau (441 amino acids) preserves the most phosphorylation sites. In a healthy adult brain, equal quantities of 3R and 4R tau isoforms are present. We chose 2N3R to represent our 3R isoform for comparison to 4R, thereby preserving the same N-terminal repeat number to isolate the comparison between the microtubule-binding domain repeats. These microtubule-binding domain repeats were previously identified as containing potential antimicrobial sequences26,27.
We observed significantly increased binding affinity of p-tau with HSV-1 capsids compared to whole enveloped HSV-1 virions when normalized for available capsid binding targets using anticapsid antibodies VP21/VP22a (P < 0.0001; Fig. 2a and Extended Data Fig. 2). Similarly, we found increased tau capsid binding affinity over whole virion for all tested isoforms of tau once normalized for binding target availability, based on anticapsid antibody binding (P < 0.0001; Extended Data Fig. 2b). These findings suggest the possibility of intracellular binding of p-tau to HSV-1 capsid after entry of the virus into the cell.
Dilutions of synthetic tau isoforms were incubated with heat-immobilized HSV-1 capsid or whole virion in indirect and competitive ELISAs to measure tau−virus binding affinity. a, 2N4R GSK-3β p-tau binding between HSV-1 isolated capsid or whole virion was compared after normalization of available binding sites assessed using VP21/VP22a antibody (****P < 0.0001). b, Dilutions of 2N4R GSK-3β p-tau (scale of 5 µg ml−1 to 0.3125 µg ml−1) were incubated with immobilized HSV-1 capsids (F4, 55 = 43.18, ****P < 0.0001). c, The binding affinity of 2N4R GSK-3β p-tau to HSV-1 capsids was compared to 2N3R, 50/50 mix of 2N3R/2N4R and 2N4R tau (F3, 44 = 8.996, *P = 0.267 ((2N4R GSK-3β p-tau versus 2N3R tau, ***P = 0.0001), (2N4R GSK-3β p-tau versus 2N3R/2N4R tau, ***P = 0.0007)). d,e, Tau adhesion inhibition was assessed by preincubation of immobilized HSV-1 capsids with an anti-VP21/VP22a antibody (F8, 32 = 7.071, ****P < 0.0001) (d) or an anti-pUL48-VP16 antibody (F8, 32 = 3.978, ***P = 0.004, ****P < 0.0001) (e) before exposure to 2N4R GSK-3β p-tau. f, Tau adhesion inhibition was repeated with the anti-VP21/VP22a antibody using a mannose-incubated 2N4R GSK-3β p-tau. Box plots are representative of ±s.e.m. (n = 12) depicting median and interquartile range, with whiskers denoting variability according to Tukey's method. Statistical significance was calculated by two-tailed Mann−Whitney test (a) and one-way ANOVA using Tukey's multiple comparisons test (b−f).
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Next, we tested various isoforms of tau for concentration-dependent binding to HSV-1 capsid (P < 0.001, Fig. 2c; P < 0.0001, Extended Data Fig. 3). Previous studies showed that increased binding repeats and phosphorylation enhance tau aggregation28,29. 2N4R p-tau, which contains the most microtubule-binding domain repeats, exhibited the highest binding efficiency to HSV-1 compared to both unphosphorylated tau isoforms tested, 2N3R (P < 0.001), 2N3R/2N4R 50/50 mix (P < 0.001) and 2N4R (P < 0.05) (Fig. 2c). As a control, the scrambled version of the AMP LL-37 was tested versus p-tau and failed to significantly bind viral capsid (P < 0.05; Extended Data Fig. 3e). We next investigated potential binding sites for tau on HSV-1 capsids. Immobilized HSV-1 capsid was pretreated with antibodies targeting the viral capsid scaffolding protein (VP21/VP22a), tegument proteins (VP16 and ICP4) or capsid proteins (ICP5 and UL25) prior to treatment with tau. Anti-VP21/VP22a and VP16 antibodies significantly decreased tau binding (P < 0.0001; Fig. 2d,e), whereas ICP4 antibodies had reduced inhibition (P = 0.0056; Extended Data Fig. 4b), and ICP5 and UL25 antibodies failed to inhibit tau binding (Extended Data Fig. 4a,c). To assess the importance of glycosylation of the target binding site, we preincubated p-tau with the monosaccharide mannose; p-tau failed to bind effectively to HSV-1, suggesting a glycoprotein binding mechanism similar to that of Aβ (Fig. 2f). Collectively, these data support antiherpetic activities of tau, in which tau preferentially targets intracellular HSV-1 by binding to the viral capsid.
AMPs can form net-like structures trapping microbes and destabilizing membranes by targeting surface proteins and self-aggregation. We previously identified the ability of Aβ to bind surface glycoproteins on bacteria and viruses, subsequently stimulating the formation of amyloid fibrils30,31,32,33. Using synthetic 2N4R p-tau, we examined whether HSV-1 capsids are able to seed tau fibril formation. The interaction of HSV-1 capsid with synthetic tau was imaged by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) 24 hours after co-incubation. In a mixture consisting only of synthetic tau and purified HSV-1 capsids, we observed examples of both amorphous aggregated tau and fibril tau, serving to agglutinate multiple HSV-1 capsids together (Fig. 3a,b). Expanding on these results, we examined HSV-1-infected neuronal cultures by TEM analysis of ultramicrotomy slices. Tau was previously observed in the nucleus, nucleolus and pericentromeric heterochromatin34,35,36,37. Using the anti-p-tau antibody (PHF1) labeled with immunogold nanoparticles to identify phosphorylated tau, we observed the association of tau with the surface of HSV-1 capsids in cellular nuclei (Fig. 3c,d).
Co-incubated isolated HSV-1 capsids and 2N4R GSK-3β p-tau were analyzed by TEM. a,b, Co-incubated HSV-1 capsid (arrows) and 2N4R GSK-3β p-tau displayed amorphous tau aggregates (triangles) and fibrillar tau structures (*) emanating from viral capsid surfaces. c, 3D ReNcell VM cultures infected with HSV-1 were sliced and probed with anti-p-tau-Au nanoparticles. d, Inside the cell nucleus, HSV-1 capsids were identified with anti-p-tau-Au binding on their surface (arrows). Micrographs are representative of data from multiple discrete imaging fields (n = 3).
Source data
HSV-1 infection of murine neurons or human neuroblastoma cell cultures was previously reported to increase hyperphosphorylated tau, interpreted as an abnormal by-product of viral infection21,22. To examine the response of tau to HSV-1 infection in a neuronal environment, we infected 3D neuronal cultures and used PHF1 to assay for intraneuronal aggregation of p-tau in dystrophic neurites and cell bodies. We examined p-tau-stained cells 24 hours after infection using confocal microscopy. Consistent with HSV-1-driven aggregation of p-tau, we observed significant increases in p-tau-positive dystrophic neurites (P < 0.01) and neuronal soma (P < 0.001) compared to uninfected neuronal cultures (Fig. 4a–c). Co-localization of p-tau and the β-sheet staining dye, thioflavin S, confirmed the presence of aggregated p-tau during infection (Fig. 4d,e). In addition to p-tau aggregation, we observed increased anti-total tau fluorescent signal intensity and punctate distribution inside infected cells (Extended Data Fig. 5).
3D ReNcell VM cultures were infected with HSV-1 to characterize tau's change in cellular distribution and levels in response to viral infection. As shown in a, 3.5−4-week-old 3D ReNcell VM cultures were infected with a replication-deficient HSV-1 (deletion of UL28 protein) for 24 hours, immunoprobed with anti-p-tau (PHF1) and anti-HSV1 labeled with a fluorescent secondary antibody and analyzed for neurons (GFP), HSV-1 (568) and p-tau (647) fluorescence by confocal microscopy. b,c, Fluorescent image captures from 384 wells over four experiments were compared by GA3 software in Nikon Elements for p-tau fluorescent neurites (triangles) (***P = 0.0002) (b) and cell bodies (arrows) (*P = 0.0022) (c) between uninfected and infected wells. d, Confocal images showing 3D ReNcell VM cultures that were infected with HSV-1 for 24 hours, immunoprobed with anti-p-tau (PHF1) labeled with a fluorescent secondary antibody and immunostained with thioflavin S. e, Pearson's correlation coefficient (error bars represent 95% confidence interval) was derived from analyzing uninfected and infected wells for co-localization of thioflavin S (green), HSV-1 (RFP) and p-tau (647) fluorescence. f−k, 3.5−4-week-old 3D ReNcell VM cultures were infected with serial dilutions of HSV-1 for 24 hours, and cell lysates were separated into soluble and insoluble tau fractions for analysis by MSD Multi-Spot Phospho (Thr 231)/Total Tau Assay. f, Comparison of cellular soluble p-tau at different viral loads (F3, 96 = 129.6, **P = 0.0027, ****P < 0.0001). g, Comparison of cellular insoluble p-tau at different viral loads. h, Comparison of the ratio between cellular insoluble and soluble p-tau at different viral loads (F3,96 = 26.54, ****P < 0.0001). i, Comparison of cellular soluble total tau at different viral loads (F3, 96 = 9.251, **P = 0.0040, ***P = 0.0001, ****P < 0.0001). j, Comparison of cellular insoluble total tau at different viral loads (F3, 89 = 6.810, **P = 0.0049, ***P = 0.0002). k, Comparison of the ratio between cellular insoluble and soluble total tau at different viral loads (F3, 89 = 7.469, **P = 0.0057, ****P < 0.0001). Box plots are representative of ±s.e.m. ((f−h, n = 25), (i−k, n = 19)) depicting median and interquartile range, with whiskers denoting variability according to Tukey's method. Statistical mean comparisons were calculated by two-tailed unpaired t-tests (b,c) and one-way ANOVA using Dunnett's multiple comparisons test (f−k).
Source data
Next, we used ELISA using Meso Scale Discovery (MSD) to validate the aggregation of p-tau and total tau in neuronal cultures infected with HSV-1. We observed a significant dose-dependent increase in the insoluble-to-soluble p-tau ratio and total tau after HSV-1 infection (P < 0.0001; Fig. 4f–k). This increase in p-tau was consistent with our immunofluorescence analysis, suggesting that the aggregated p-tau observed in dystrophic neurites and cell bodies is insoluble p-tau. Variability in p-tau distribution was observed via immunofluorescence analysis between PHF1 and Thr231 (antibody used in MSD) (Extended Data Fig. 6). Compared to uninfected cells, we did not observe any cytotoxicity for cell death as assayed by lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) assay at any HSV-1 infection concentrations (Extended Data Fig. 7).
After HSV-1 infection, we observed a significant decrease in levels of intracellular soluble p-tau (−48.8%, P < 0.0001; Fig. 4f). In the absence of significant cell death (Extended Data Fig. 7), this decrease suggested a release or expulsion of p-tau after HSV-1 infection. To examine the movement of p-tau after HSV-1 infection, we measured and compared p-tau and total tau levels between culture media and cell lysates from infected and uninfected neuronal cultures. We observed significant increases in the p-tau to total tau ratios in the media (141.8%, P < 0.0001) (Fig. 5a–c), whereas there was a simultaneous, significant decrease in the soluble p-tau to total tau ratio in the cell lysates (−54.6%, P < 0.0001) (Fig. 5d). To examine whether increased extracellular p-tau influences surrounding cells as an AMP, we assessed neuronal cultures in a microfluidic device. These devices were constructed with microchannels connecting enclosed compartments on either side. This design allowed for the isolation of the initial location of HSV-1 infection and restricted the spread through microchannels to the adjacent compartments, thereby preventing uncontrolled infection of the culture. Immunofluorescent analysis of HSV-1 (mRFP) and p-tau (anti-p-tau tagged with fluorescent secondary) revealed a significant increase in p-tau fluorescence intensity inside uninfected cells in proximity to HSV-1-infected cells when compared to uninfected cells not in proximity to the infection (26.9%, P < 0.001; Fig. 5e,f). We also noted a strong correlation between p-tau intensity and the viral load in proximity to the uninfected cells (Fig. 5g). Interestingly, the uninfected cells in close proximity to infection revealed no changes in total tau levels (Extended Data Fig. 5a,b). When comparing viral load to total tau intensity in uninfected cells residing proximally to infected cells, unlike p-tau, there was no correlation with total tau levels. This finding further reinforces the observed response of p-tau specific to viral infection (Extended Data Fig. 5c). These results are consistent with the notion that preincubation with p-tau provided protection from HSV-1 infection and reduced viral plaque growth (Fig. 1). These data suggest that extracellular p-tau may stimulate the generation of p-tau in adjacent cells or promote endocytosis of p-tau released into the media, thereby providing increased protection from HSV-1 infection in close proximity38.
ReNcell VM cultures were infected with HSV-1 for 24 hours to characterize p-tau's extracellular release and changes in proximity to viral infection. a−d, 3.5−4-week-old 3D ReNcell VM cultures were infected with serial dilutions of HSV-1 for 24 hours, and cell media and cell lysates were analyzed by MSD Multi-Spot Phospho (Thr 231)/Total Tau Assay for soluble p-tau and total tau. a, Comparison of cell media soluble p-tau at different viral loads (F3, 54 = 7.521 ((uninfected versus 2.55, ***P = 0.0005), (uninfected versus 5.10, ***P = 0.0004)). b, Comparison of cell media soluble total tau at different viral loads (F3, 55 = 10.49, **P = 0.0011). c, Comparison of the ratio between cell media p-tau and total tau at different viral loads (F3, 54 = 19.94, ****P < 0.0001). d, Comparison of the ratio between cell lysate soluble p-tau and soluble total tau at different viral loads (F3, 96 = 202.5, ****P < 0.0001). e, 2D ReNcell VM cultures in microfluidic devices were infected in the left chamber with HSV-1 for 48 hours, immunoprobed with anti-p-tau (PHF1) labeled with a fluorescent secondary antibody and analyzed for neurons (GFP), HSV-1 (RFP) and p-tau (647) fluorescence by confocal microscopy. Fluorescence signals for ReNcell VM, HSV-1 and p-tau were imaged for infected and uninfected conditions. f, GA3 analysis of HSV-1-positive neurons compared intracellular p-tau fluorescence among infected neurons (triangles), uninfected neurons proximal to infected neurons (*) and uninfected neurons not proximal to infected neurons (arrows) (F2, 3,288 = 45.35, ****P < 0.0001). g, Individual neuronal p-tau fluorescence intensity was compared to total proximal HSV-1−RFP fluorescence intensity (R2 = 0.7912). Box plots are representative of ±s.e.m. ((a−c, n = 13), (d, n = 25)) depicting median and interquartile range, with whiskers denoting variability according to Tukey's method. Statistical mean comparisons were calculated by one-way ANOVA using Dunnett's multiple comparisons test (a−d), one-way ANOVA using Tukey's multiple comparisons test (f) and simple linear regression (g).
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The increased presence of p-tau in uninfected cells proximal to infection sites (Fig. 5e–g) along with the increase of soluble p-tau into the media (Fig. 5a–d) suggest that p-tau may be involved in cell-to-cell transfer as part of its antimicrobial action. To test this mechanism, we utilized a novel two-culture system wherein we seeded a ReNcell VM culture in a well insert with a 0.1-μm filter at the bottom and incubated it with azide-labeled amino acids. Once mature, we infected the culture with HSV-1 and subsequently transferred the insert to a well with mature uninfected 3D ReNcell VM cultures. The 0.1-μm pore size inhibited mature virus from transferring between cultures but allowed azide-labeled protein transfer. In this manner, we were able to interrogate protein migration in infected cell cultures.
We observed internalization of azide-positive peptides in the uninfected cultures after the addition of the well insert, but no transfer of HSV-1 or viral infection (Fig. 6a). These azide-positive peptides were confirmed to be p-tau based on significant co-localization with the p-tau antibody PHF1 (Fig. 6a–c). Consistent with our findings of increased p-tau in uninfected cells proximal to infection (Fig. 5), we also observed a significant increase in p-tau intensity in cells that were positive for exogenous p-tau (P < 0.0001; Fig. 6d).
ReNcell VM cultures were infected with HSV-1 to determine the degree of immune response. a, One-week-old 2D ReNcell VM uninfected and infected cultures were immunoprobed with L-azidohomoalanine (AHA) and anti-p-tau (PHF1) and then labeled with fluorescent secondary antibodies and analyzed for neurons (GFP), p-tau (594) and AHA (647) fluorescence by confocal microscopy. b, Distribution plot of individual AHA and p-tau pixel intensities after infection. c, Pearson's correlation coefficient (error bars represent 95% confidence interval) of images of internalized AHA and PHF1 in ReNcell VM cells. d, Fluorescent image captures from nine wells over three experiments were compared by GA3 software in Nikon Elements for p-tau fluorescence (****P < 0.0001) between azide-positive and azide-negative cells. e, One-week-old 2D ReNcell VM cultures were preincubated with dilutions of a GSK-3β inhibitor (scale of 50 nM to 25 nM) for 24 hours followed by a 24-hour HSV-1 infection and imaged by confocal microscopy for red fluorescence. Whole-well images were analyzed using Nikon Elements GA3 to compare the number of HSV-1 plaques between conditions (F3, 53 = 2.806, *P = 0.0268). f,h, Conditioned media collected from 1-week-old ReNcell VM uninfected (f) and 1-hour HSV-1 infected (h) (F2, 2 = 23.85, P** = 0.0025) cultures pretreated with 2N4R GSK-3β p-tau (1.25 µg ml−1) were run on a proinflammatory cytokine MSD. g, One-week-old 2D ReNcell VM cultures were preincubated with 2N4R GSK-3β p-tau (1.25 µg ml−1) and anti-IFNγ antibody (10 µg ml−1) for 24 hours followed by a 24-hour HSV-1 infection and imaged by confocal microscopy for red fluorescence. Whole-well images were analyzed using Nikon Elements GA3 to compare the number of HSV-1 plaques between conditions (F3, 56 = 4.863, *P = 0.0386). Box plots are representative of ±s.e.m. ((e, n = 11), (f, n = 6), (g, n = 15), (h, n = 3)) depicting median and interquartile range, with whiskers denoting variability according to Tukey's method. Statistical mean comparisons were calculated by two-tailed unpaired Welch's t-test (d), one-way ANOVA using Dunnett's multiple comparisons test (e), two-way ANOVA using Tukey's multiple comparisons test (f), one-way ANOVA using Tukey's multiple comparisons test (g) and two-tailed unpaired t-test (h).
Source data
Next, we examined potential pathways responsible for promoting the increase in p-tau levels. To assess whether tau phosphorylation is necessary for the observed antimicrobial action, we infected neuronal cultures in the presence of GSK-3β kinase inhibitors. As a result, we observed a significant dose-dependent increase in viral plaque counts, cellular infections and plaque sizes with increased inhibitor (Fig. 6e and Extended Data Fig. 8). Next, we tested whether inflammation via interferon-γ (IFNγ) signaling pathway drives increases in p-tau and associated antiviral protection against HSV-1 infection versus the addition of exogenous p-tau. Under non-infectious conditions, the addition of exogenous p-tau did not elicit an inflammatory reaction as assessed by the measurement of 10 different proinflammatory cytokine levels (Fig. 6f). Similarly, attenuation of IFNγ by anti-IFNγ antibodies after HSV-1 infection did not exacerbate HSV-1 infection (Fig. 6g,h and Extended Data Fig. 9). Interestingly, anti-IFNγ antibody treatment neutralized the protective effects of synthetic p-tau pretreatment, indicating that an IFNγ-mediated pathway is important for the antimicrobial action of p-tau (Fig. 6g). In conjunction with our findings of p-tau aggregation and spread in the presence of infection (Figs. 4 and 5), these data provide compelling evidence for the antiviral activity of p-tau by both protecting against and modulating an innate immune response to HSV-1.
Microglia are essential to the central nervous system (CNS) response to HSV-1 infection by identifying viral pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs), releasing inflammatory cytokines and clearing virus and damaged neurons. Interestingly, microglia were recently suggested to contribute to pathogenic tau spread due to endocytosis of tau aggregates and subsequent failure to fully digest the aggregates, followed by secretion of exosomes containing ‘tau seeds'39. To investigate the interaction among tau, HSV-1 and microglia, we seeded a neuronal/astrocytic 3D ReNcell VM culture with microglia derived from induced pluripotent stem cells and then infected the neural−glial tricultures with HSV-1. Twenty-four hours after infection, the cultures were fixed and prepared for immunocytochemistry (ICC) with anti-IBA1 and anti-p-tau (PHF1) antibodies. Co-localization of p-tau and HSV-1 was observed inside IBA1-positive microglial cells, which was not present in uninfected controls (Fig. 7). Although more experimentation is necessary to determine whether the p-tau/HSV-1 is being phagocytosed as an independent complex or as part of infected neurons, these results warrant more detailed studies addressing microglia internalizing p-tau/HSV-1 complexes.
Mature microglia were added to 3D ReNcell VM cultures prior to infection with HSV-1 to analyze the interaction among p-tau, HSV-1 and microglia. Uninfected and infected microglia−ReNcell VM cultures were immunoprobed with anti-p-tau (PHF1) and anti-IBA1 labeled with fluorescent secondary antibodies and analyzed for microglia (405), neurons (GFP), HSV-1 (RFP) and p-tau (647) fluorescence by confocal microscopy. Co-localization of HSV-1 (red) and p-tau (purple) inside of microglia (blue) was observed (arrows). Panels are representative of multiple image fields (n = 5).
Evidence for a microbial component to the etiology and pathogenesis of AD has continued to grow over the last decade. Although a consensus on particular pathogens has still not been reached, animal studies, retrospective cohort studies for infection and AD risk and microbiome screens have all identified the epidemiological prevalence of microbes in dementia and pathogen-driven shifts in locations such as the gut microbiota that may promote AD-related neuropathology40,41,42,43. Furthermore, these studies are supported by multiple comprehensive studies of particular microbes44,45,46,47,48. Previously, we reported antimicrobial properties of Aβ based on its ability to neutralize Salmonella, HSV-1 and human herpesvirus 6 (HHV-6) (refs. 10,11). These studies led to the Antimicrobial Protection Hypothesis of AD, postulating that Aβ has evolved to protect the brain against infection, with amyloid plaques serving as extracellular traps for microbes. As a corollary to this idea, the gene mutations that predispose to AD pathology, today, may have been conserved in evolution owing to their ability to enhance innate immunity in the brain14.
In the present study, we reveal a notable novel role for tau as an antiviral protein against HSV-1, based on affording increased protection from infection (Fig. 1) and highly effective binding to HSV-1 to neutralize the virus (Figs. 2 and 3). We also observed an infection-based response with the phosphorylation of tau and the resulting p-tau shifting to an insoluble form (Fig. 4) and increased p-tau presence in uninfected cells in proximity to the location of infection (Fig. 5). The sequestration of p-tau into insoluble forms enhances innate immunity by binding HSV-1 (Fig. 3), destabilizing microtubules, breaking down fast axonal transport and generating NFTs, all of which would serve to hamper neurotropic spread of virus across synapses from one neuron to another. These findings are consistent with the oligomerization of AMPs as an essential characteristic for their innate immune functions49,50.
Previous research on antimicrobial properties of tau by Kobayashi et al.26 reported that tau peptide fragments of the microtubule-binding site possessed strong antimicrobial activities against Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli. Although it was hypothesized that this binding activity was driven by negatively charged surfaces of Gram-negative bacteria, we observed preferential binding to viral capsid over viral envelope (Fig. 2a and Extended Data Fig. 2b), despite the strong negative charge of the envelope from post-translational additions of sialic acid to the glycoproteins on the envelope surface, suggesting a more specific targeting beyond peptide charge51. A subsequent study by Powell-Doherty et al.52 examined Aβ and p-tau as components of an anti-threat response to HSV-1, demonstrating viral-induced phosphorylation of tau and accumulation of Aβ oligomers. They propose that p-tau does not inhibit viral replication and may alternatively be a danger-associated molecular pattern (DAMP). By contrast, our data support the direct role of p-tau in viral inhibition and binding (Figs. 1–3).
Utilizing antibodies against different viral and capsid peptides for steric interference of p-tau binding, we observed targeted binding of p-tau to a region occupied by inner tegument proteins. Blocking major capsid protein ICP5 or capsid stabilizing protein UL25 failed to inhibit p-tau binding entirely (Extended Data Fig. 4a,c), whereas blocking tegument-associated protein ICP4 led to modest inhibition (Extended Data Fig. 4b). Conversely, antibodies against tegument proteins VP21/22a and VP16 led to significant dose-dependent inhibition of p-tau binding to viral capsid (Fig. 2d,e). Notably, inner tegument protein VP1/VP2 binds VP16, VP16 binds VP22 and all three of these viral proteins are essential for the bidirectional transport of HSV-1 capsids along microtubules53,54. These data suggest a dual-action antiviral effect in which hyperphosphorylation dissociates tau from microtubules, destabilizing them and interrupting viral capsid transportation, and p-tau simultaneously binds to capsid/tegument proteins essential for viral microtubule transport. Although our data supporting antimicrobial properties of tau and p-tau are novel, evidence of tau modifications in response to infections was previously reported. HSV-1 infection results in hyperphosphorylation of tau in both human and mouse models21,22,40,55,56. In adult hippocampal neurons, p-tau levels increased after active and latent HSV-1 infection. Additionally, gingipains, exotoxins from Porphyromonas gingivalis, were reported to cleave tau, and the resulting fragments displayed antimicrobial properties27.
Microtubules are essential for fast axonal transport in neurons but are also utilized by intracellular pathogens. Both viruses and bacteria utilize microtubule networks, and stabilization of the microtubules results in increased infection57,58. The protective effect of tau against HSV-1 infection (Fig. 1) and the increased ratio of insoluble versus soluble p-tau during infection (Fig. 4h,k) suggest that destabilization of microtubules by p-tau protects against microbial utilization of the cytoskeleton to spread. This is further supported by neuritic dystrophy observed where HSV-1 was isolated with p-tau (Extended Data Fig. 10a) and p-tau aggregation in neuronal somas around HSV-1 replication in the nucleus (Extended Data Fig. 10b), in effect preventing HSV-1 access to microtubule transport required for propagation.
We also observed increased viral binding with both increased R domain repeats and phosphorylation of tau, with the synthetic 2N4R p-tau being the most effective (Fig. 2). Once again, these findings suggest that the phosphorylation and increased aggregation of tau, classically observed as a pathological feature, can be alternatively viewed as a functional feature of tau designed to bind and neutralize microbial targets more effectively. Indeed, our data support the notion that the phosphorylation of tau is not just sufficient but necessary for antimicrobial activity. Non-phosphorylated tau isoforms failed to elicit any protection against HSV-1 infection (Fig. 1), and the presence of GSK-3β inhibitor during viral infection significantly increased the viral spread (Fig. 6).
Beyond AMPs, the innate immune system utilizes cytokines for essential communication and regulation of the immune response. One such key cytokine in response to HSV-1 is IFNγ, capable of inhibiting replication, impeding viral release and disrupting microtubule organization59,60,61. To differentiate the viral-driven p-tau antimicrobial response from a generalized viral immune response, we examined the role of cytokines in our model. Utilizing an anti-INFγ antibody to block the HSV-1-induced cytokine response, we observed that the removal of IFNγ during p-tau treatment negated the p-tau antiviral protection (Fig. 6g). By contrast, anti-IFNγ antibody treatment without the addition of p-tau had no effect on viral spread (Fig. 6g). MSD analysis of cytokines revealed that exogenous p-tau did not elicit any immune response (Fig. 6f), and the presence of synthetic p-tau lowered IFNγ levels released into the media (Fig. 6h). Collectively, these data suggest that IFNγ is critical for the antiviral activity of p-tau but not via inflammatory pathways. Future studies should consider the potential relationship between the induction of tight junction protein endocytosis by IFNγ combined with the effects of IFNγ on the antiviral properties of p-tau62.
Cell-to-cell transfer and propagation of p-tau is yet another property considered to be pathological. However, our findings suggest that this p-tau propagation may also be considered a physiological antimicrobial feature of tau. The departure of tau from the somatic space is well documented, with evidence of its traversal from cell to cell via excretion and exosomes and through synaptic clefts63,64,65,66,67. The discovery that ‘pathogenic' forms of tau can self-propagate and promote the aggregation of soluble tau led to the suggestion that seeding and propagation of neuropathological tau resembles prion diseases68. Interestingly, a recent publication by Liu et al.69 demonstrated that active human endogenous retrovirus infections accelerated the cell-to-cell spread of tau aggregates. Our data revealing elevated p-tau in uninfected neurons in close proximity to infected cells support and may, therefore, help explain this finding (Fig. 5). Additionally, we show that the ability of tau to protect against viral infection is enhanced by co-incubation of p-tau with neurons prior to HSV-1 infection (Fig. 1). During HSV-1 infection, we also observed a significant increase in soluble p-tau being released into the extracellular space (Fig. 5). These data suggest that ‘pathological' spreading of tau may actually have evolved as an antimicrobial feature, allowing tau to protect adjacent cells prior to the establishment of a spreading viral infection.
Microglia, the resident macrophage-like cells in the brain, are an essential component of brain health, playing roles in both development and protection against trauma and pathogenic invasion. Microglia can phagocytose extracellular pathogens such as HSV-1 and bacteria that make it past the blood−brain barrier as well as damaged or necrotic cells70,71. The ability of microglia to take up Aβ and tau, in addition to their release of proinflammatory cytokines and chemokines, have made them a prime therapeutic target in AD. We observed co-localization of p-tau and HSV-1 inside of microglia in viral-infected 3D human neuronal/astrocytic cultures co-incubated with microglia (neural−glial tricultures), suggesting that tau may also play a role in promoting microglial uptake of HSV-1 (Fig. 7).
It is important to acknowledge that tau does not fully comply with the attributes of typical AMPs, which are typically cationic, are below 100 amino acids, display broad extracellular antimicrobial efficacy, and often harbor α-helical or β-sheet secondary structures. Although most known AMPs fall within these guidelines, there are exceptions. Although more than four times the typical size of AMP, tau shares many of these commonalities, such as cationic charge and assembly into β-sheets. Other established AMPs share some of these atypical AMP-like characteristics of tau. LL-37 was found to interact with glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate dehydrogenase to immunomodulate macrophage activity72, demonstrating an AMP capable of acting intracellularly on a host cell for immunomodulation. NONO is a nuclear protein that binds to and detects HIV capsid in the nucleus to promote cGAS-mediated innate immune activation and is 471 amino acids long73. Combined with our data, these unique exceptions support the notion that, although tau may not be a prototypical AMP, its physical characteristics and antimicrobial properties warrant further research into its classification as an AMP.
The data presented here strongly suggest that tau serves as a second layer of defense against pathogens in the brain. Although Aβ serves as an extracellular AMP to trap viruses in Aβ deposits, the viruses that escape and infect neurons can then be stopped by p-tau and NFTs, induced by either the virus itself or by Aβ oligomers10. In this manner, Aβ and p-tau combine to provide what can be considered a dual AMP host defense mechanism against viral infection. Like Aβ, tau also presents as a highly phylogenetically conserved protein, sharing the microtubule-binding domain with mammals, reptiles, birds and fish74,75. Our findings continue to reinforce the notion that the three major hallmarks of AD pathology—Aβ, NFTs and neuroinflammation—evolved as a multilayered and highly orchestrated host defense system as part of the innate immune system of the brain.
GFP-expressing ReNcell VM neuronal cell line G10, previously described76, was seeded as a 3D culture in a 96-well plate (Greiner Bio-One, 655866) in ReN Differentiation Media (ReN Diff). ReN Diff changes were completed twice a week until the plate was 3.5−4 weeks old, at which the neuronal culture is considered mature, fully differentiated and ready for experimentation. The 3D human triculture system including neurons, astrocytes and microglia was previously described77. In brief, induced pluripotent stem cells are differentiated into mature microglia over 38 days. Once mature, the microglia were resuspended and added at a 6:1 ratio to the 3D ReNcell VM culture for 24 hours followed by a 24-hour HSV-1 infection. After infection, the wells were washed once with PBS and then fixed with 4% paraformaldehyde (PFA) for 2 hours at 4 °C. Then, the plate was washed three times with PBS and stored in PBS at 4 °C until ready for immunostaining. Plate was first blocked with Doo Block shaking at 4 °C overnight. The next day, primary antibodies anti-IBA1 (Abcam, ab283346) at 1:1,000 and anti-p-tau (PHF1, Albert Einstein College of Medicine) at 1:500 were added and incubated at 4 °C overnight shaking. The next day, the plate was washed five times at 5-minute intervals with TBS-Tween. Fluorescent secondaries anti-rat 405 (Invitrogen, A48268) and anti-mouse 647 (Invitrogen, A32787) were added at 1:500 for a 3-hour incubation at 4 °C shaking. Afterwards, the wells were washed five times for 5 minutes each with TBS-Tween and then stored in PBS. Plates were imaged by fluorescence confocal microscopy (Nikon, A1R-HD25) for microglia (405), neurons (GFP), HSV-1 (RFP) and p-tau (647).
Two-dimensional (2D) ReNcell VM cultures were seeded in a 24-well plate (Corning, 3526) precoated with 1:100 Matrigel (Corning, 354234) diluted in cold DMEM F-12 at 300,000 cells per well in ReN Expansion Media (ReN Exp) overnight. The next day, the media were replaced by ReN Diff. At 1 week old, the media were removed and replaced with ReN Diff containing 2N4R GSK-3β p-tau (Abcam, ab269024), 2N3R tau (Abcam, ab72462) or 2N4R tau (Abcam, ab84700) overnight at 37 °C at the following concentrations: 2.5 μg ml−1, 1.25 μg ml−1 and 0.625 μg ml−1. ReN Diff alone was used for the control wells. The next day, the media were removed, and ReN Diff containing HSV-1 (diluted to 50−200 plaque-forming units (PFU)) were added to each of the wells and centrifuged (Thermo Fisher Scientific, ST8R centrifuge) at 500g for 1 hour at room temperature. The HSV-1 media were removed, and ReN Diff containing 0.36% agarose were added to the wells for an overnight incubation at 37 °C. The next day, the plate was imaged by confocal microscopy (Nikon, A1R-HD25) for viral RFP fluorescent signal. Images were analyzed using Nikon Elements General Analysis 3 (GA3) for viral plaque counts, HSV-1-positive single cells and viral plaque size.
‘Tau HSV-1 plaque assay' methodology was adapted to be performed with combinations of a GSK-3β inhibitor (Tocris Bioscience, 4423) and an anti-INFγ antibody (Invivogen, HIFNG-MAB7-02) in place of the synthetic taus from start to finish including image analysis. GSK-3β inhibitor was used at the following concentrations: 50 μg ml−1, 25 μg ml−1 and 12.25 μg ml−1; and anti-INFγ antibody was used at 10 μg ml−1 for the overnight incubation. In addition, GSK-3β inhibitor was also mixed in with the agarose in its respective concentrations.
One-half percent Triton X-100 was added to 900 μl of TNE buffer and 100 μl of HSV-1 to create a virus mix stored at 4 °C for 5 minutes. TNE buffer with 35% sucrose was added to ultracentrifuge tubes (Beckman Coulter, 344059) before adding virus mix and then ultracentrifuged (Beckman Coulter, Optima XPN-100 Ultracentrifuge) at 37,000g for 45 minutes at 4 °C. After ultracentrifugation, supernatant was aspirated, and the capsid pellet was resuspended in 200 μl of TNE buffer. Capsid mix was added to TNE buffer with 35% sucrose and ultracentrifuged again at 37,000g for 45 minutes at 4 °C. The supernatant was aspirated, and capsid-isolated HSV-1 was resuspended in 200 μl of TNE buffer followed by storage at 4 °C for experimentation.
Capsid-isolated HSV-1 or whole virion HSV-1 (5 × 106 PFU per well) in distilled water (50 μl per well) was added to a black polypropylene plate (Greiner Bio-One, 655209) and heat-fixed at 95 °C for 2 hours. After heat-fixing, the plate underwent three TBS washes and then was blocked at room temperature for 1-hour shaking using 4% non-fat dry milk. After blocking, the plate was washed three times with TBS-Tween. Synthetic taus 2N4R GSK-3β p-tau (Abcam, ab269024), 2N3R tau (Abcam, ab72462), 2N4R tau (Abcam, ab84700) or 50/50 mix of 2N3R/2N4R taus were added to appropriate wells and incubated at 37 °C for 1 hour at the following concentrations: 5.0 μg ml−1, 2.5 μg ml−1, 1.25 μg ml−1, 0.625 μg ml−1 and 0.3125 μg ml−1. After tau incubation, the plate was washed three times with TBS-Tween and then blocked at room temperature for 1-hour shaking using 10% BSA. After blocking, the plate was washed three times with TBS-Tween followed by the addition of an anti-tau antibody (Agilent Technologies, A0024) at 1:10,000 in 10% BSA (100 μl per well) and incubated at 4 °C overnight shaking. The next day, the plate was washed three times with TBS-Tween followed by addition of an anti-rabbit HRP antibody (Cytiva, NA934-100UL) at 1:1,000 in 10% BSA (100 μl per well) and incubated at room temperature for 1-hour shaking. Afterwards, the plate was washed three times with TBS-Tween before adding SuperSignal ELISA Femto Substrate (Thermo Fisher Scientific, 37075). The plate was immediately read on a BioTek Synergy Neo2 Multi-Mode Reader for chemiluminescent signal.
‘Virus binding assay' methodology was adapted to be performed with anticapsid interference antibodies prior to synthetic tau addition. The initial steps up to 4% non-fat milk block and subsequent TBS-Tween washes remain the same. After the washes, anticapsid interference antibodies anti-VP21/VP22a (Thermo Fisher Scientific, MA5-16798), anti-ICP5 (Virusys Corporation, HA018-100), anti-pUL25 (University of Pittsburgh), anti-pUL48-VP16 (Novus Biologicals, NB206593) or anti-RS1-ICP4 (Abcam, ab6514) were added at stepwise dilutions (0.04, 0.2, 1.0 and 5.0 μg ml−1) to appropriate wells and incubated at 37 °C for 1 hour. The plate was then washed three times with TBS-Tween. 2N4R GSK-3β p-tau (Abcam, ab269024), control scrambled LL-37 or 2N4R GSK-3β p-tau incubated with mannose for 1 hour at room temperature was added to wells and incubated at 37 °C for 15 minutes. Then, the plate was washed three times with TBS-Tween followed by a 10% BSA block at room temperature for 1 hour. A subsequent three-times TBS-Tween wash was performed, and a 10% BSA of anti-tau antibody (Agilent Technologies, A0024) at 1:10,000 was added to each well (100 μl per well) for an overnight incubation at 4 °C shaking. The next day, the plate was washed three times with TBS-Tween, and an anti-rabbit HRP antibody (Cytiva, NA934-100UL) at 1:1,000 in 10% BSA (100 μl per well) was added to each well for a 1-hour room temperature incubation shaking. The plate was washed three times with TBS-Tween before adding SuperSignal ELISA Femto Substrate (Thermo Fisher Scientific, 37075). The plate was immediately read on a BioTek Synergy Neo2 Multi-Mode Reader for chemiluminescent signal.
Sample containing capsid-isolated HSV-1 (10 μl) and 2N4R GSK-3β p-tau (10 μl) was incubated for 2 hours at room temperature before being added (10 μl) onto Formvar/Carbon Support Square Grids (Electron Microscopy Sciences, FCF100-Cu) for 2 minutes. Sample was removed by gently touching the perimeter of the grid with filter paper. The grid was transferred to water droplets for 30 seconds three times. After washes, the grid was dyed by adding 10 μl of 1% uranyl acetate for 1 minute before removing the dye with filter paper and letting the grid sit at room temperature for 10 minutes to dry. Grids were imaged with a JEOL 1011 electron microscope (JEOL Institute).
3D ReNcell VM cultures were seeded in a six-well plate at 8 million cells per well in ReN Diff and were aged for 3.5 weeks. The cells were infected with HSV-1 (4.06 × 107 PFU per well) and centrifuged with minimal acceleration and deacceleration (Thermo Fisher Scientific, ST8R centrifuge) at 500g for 1 hour at room temperature and then incubated at 37 °C for 24 hours. The next day, the media were removed, and the cells were washed once with PBS followed by initial fixation in 4% PFA on a rotator for 30 minutes. Then, fresh 4% PFA was added, and the cells were incubated at 4 °C overnight. The next day, the cells were washed three times using PBS, scraped and spun at 2,200g for 15 minutes. The supernatant was removed, and the pellets were resuspended in PBS to be stored at 4 °C. Pellets were loaded onto grids and stained with anti-p-tau (PHF1) antibody incubated with immunogold particles in accordance with ‘Viral agglutination and TEM analysis' methodology.
Electron microscopy was performed in the Microscopy Core of the Center for Systems Biology/Program in Membrane Biology, which is partially supported by an Inflammatory Bowel Disease grant (DK043351) and a Boston Area Diabetes and Endocrinology Research Center (BADERC) award (DK057521).
3D ReNcell VM cultures were seeded in a 96-well plate (Greiner Bio-One, 655866) and aged for 3.5−4 weeks. At maturation, half the media was removed from the wells and replaced with ReN Diff containing HSV-1 (6.67 × 105 PFU per μl) at 0.5 µl, 0.25 µl or 0.1 µl per well for 24 hours at 37 °C. The next day, the plate was washed once with cold PBS, and cold Sarkosyl lysis buffer was then added to the wells for a 1-hour incubation at 4 °C rocking. The cells were then scraped and collected in a 96-well polymerase chain reaction (PCR) plate to be stored at −20 °C. The cell lysate was thawed and spun (Thermo Fisher Scientific, ST8R centrifuge) at 2,129g for 30 minutes to pellet cellular debris. The supernatant was collected and added to an ultracentrifuge tube (Beckman Coulter, 343778) and spun at 279,000g (Beckman Coulter, Optima MAX-XP Ultracentrifuge) for 1 hour to separate insoluble and soluble tau. After ultracentrifugation, the supernatant was collected as soluble tau. The remaining pellet was dissolved using guanine hydrochloride and collected as insoluble tau. Both soluble and insoluble tau were added to a 96-well MSD Multi-Spot Phospho (Thr 231)/Total Tau Assay plate (MSD, K15121D-2) and run according to the manufacturer's instructions. Plates were read on an MSD MESO QuickPlex SQ 120 mm, and the resulting raw data were analyzed using MSD Discovery Workbench.
Media for proinflammatory cytokine concentration determination were collected from 24-well plates preincubated with 1.25 µg ml−1 2N4R GSK-3β p-tau (Abcam, ab269024) for 24 hours with or without 1-hour HSV-1 infection the next day. Conditioned media were added to the 96-well V-PLEX Proinflammatory Panel 1 Human Kit (MSD, K15049D) and run according to the manufacturer's instructions. Plates were read on an MSD MESO QuickPlex SQ 120 mm, and the resulting raw data were analyzed using MSD Discovery Workbench.
3D ReNcell VM cultures were seeded in a 96-well plate (Greiner Bio-One, 655866) and aged for 3.5−4 weeks. At maturation, the plate was infected with 30 μl of replication-deficient HSV-1 virus (3.3 × 106 PFU per μl; Heming et al. 2013) mixed with 6 ml of ReN Diff or HSV-1−RFP fusion virus and incubated at 37 °C for 24 hours. The wells were then washed once with PBS and then fixed with 4% PFA at 4 °C for 2 hours. Afterwards, the plate was PBS washed three times followed by blocking with Doo Block at 4 °C shaking overnight. The next day, the following primary antibodies were added for an overnight 4 °C incubation shaking: anti-total tau (Agilent Technologies, A0024) at 1:1,000, anti-p-taus PHF1 (Albert Einstein College of Medicine, gift) or AT180 (Invitrogen, MN1040) at 1:500 and anti-HSV-1 (Invitrogen, PA5-115473) at 1:1,000 only if the replication-deficient HSV-1 was used. The next day, the plate was washed five times at 5-minute intervals using TBS-Tween, and the following secondary antibodies (1:500) were added for a 3-hour 4 °C incubation shaking: anti-rabbit 405 (Jackson ImmunoResearch, 711-475-152), anti-mouse 647 (Invitrogen, A32787) and anti-rabbit 568 (Invitrogen, A10042) if necessary. Afterwards, another five 5-minute TBS-Tween washes were repeated, and the plate was stored in PBS. Plates were imaged by fluorescence confocal microscopy (Nikon, A1R-HD25) and analyzed using Nikon Elements GA378.
Polydimethylsiloxane microfluidic devices were designed and produced at the Center for Engineering in Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), as described previously77. The devices were precoated for 3 hours with 1:100 Matrigel (Corning, 354234) diluted in cold DMEM F-12. 2D ReNcell VM cultures were seeded at 300,000 cells for the outside chambers and 150,000 cells for the middle chamber. The devices were aged for 3.5 weeks followed by a 48-hour 0.5 μl per well HSV-1 (6.67 × 105 PFU per μl) infection of the left chamber. After a PBS wash, the devices were fixed with 4% PFA for 2 hours at 4 °C. The devices followed the immunostaining ‘p-tau and total tau immunofluorescence labeling' methodology with a distinction in antibody use. Instead, the antibodies anti-p-tau at 1:500 (PHF1, Albert Einstein College of Medicine) and anti-total tau at 1:750 (GeneTex, GTX49353) fluorescently labeled with secondaries anti-chicken 405 at 1:2,000 (Jackson ImmunoResearch, 703-475-155) and anti-mouse 647 at 1:1,000 (Invitrogen, A32787) were used. Plates were imaged by fluorescence confocal microscopy (Nikon, A1R-HD25) and analyzed using Nikon Elements GA3.
2D ReNcell VM cultures were seeded in a 24-well plate containing 0.1-µm inserts (CELLTREAT, 230634) at approximately 75,000 cells per well. The culture was aged for 1 week in methionine-free media (Sigma-Aldrich, D9785-10L). The inserts were infected with HSV-1 (6.67 × 105 PFU per μl) at 1:250 for 24 hours. Six hours after infection, 50 µM L-azidohomoalanine was added. After infection, the inserts were removed, and the wells were fixed in 4% PFA for 1 hour at room temperature. After three washes of PBS, a permeabilizing solution of 0.5% Triton X-100 PBS was added for 15 minutes at room temperature. After three washes of PBS, a click reaction mix of 50 µM Alexa Fluor 647 Alkyne (Life Technologies, A32787), 100 mM copper sulfate and 1 M dithiothreitol in PBS were added to the wells for 1 hour at room temperature while being protected from light. The wells were then washed three times with PBS, and 5% BSA was added overnight. The next morning, three PBS washes were followed with anti-p-tau (PHF1, Albert Einstein College of Medicine) antibody at 1:500 shaking overnight at 4 °C. After three PBS washes, the plate was stained with secondary anti-mouse 594 (Invitrogen, A11032) at 1:1,000 in 5% BSA. Three more PBS washes were completed, and the wells were stored in PBS. Wells were imaged by confocal microscopy (Nikon, A1R-HD25) and analyzed by Nikon Elements GA3.
3D ReNcell VM cultures seeded in a 96-well plate (Greiner Bio-One, 655866) were aged to 3.5 weeks. At 3.5 weeks, the media were completely removed and replaced with media containing HSV-1 (2.465 × 107 PFU per well) and incubated for 24 hours at 37 °C. The wells were then washed once with PBS and then fixed with 4% PFA PBS at 4 °C for 2 hours. Afterwards, the plate was PBS washed three times followed by blocking with Doo Block at 4 °C shaking overnight. Then, anti-p-tau (PHF1, Albert Einstein College of Medicine) at 1:500 in Doo Block was added, and the plate was incubated at 4 °C shaking overnight. After overnight incubation, the plates were washed five times at 5- minute intervals using TBS-Tween. Fluorescent secondary anti-mouse 647 (Invitrogen, A32787) was added at 1:1,000 in Doo Block, and the plate was incubated on a shaker for 3 hours at 4 °C. Five 5-minute washes were repeated, and then 0.05% thioflavin S dissolved in 50% ethanol/water was added to the wells for 10 minutes. This was followed by three 80% ethanol/water washes and seven PBS washes for 10-minute intervals. After the final wash, the plates were stored in PBS at 4 °C. Plates were imaged by fluorescence confocal microscopy (Nikon, A1R-HD25), and images were analyzed using Nikon Elements GA3.
Three and one-half to four-week-old 3D ReNcell VM cultures were infected with serial dilutions of HSV-1 for 24 hours. Conditioned media were collected and stored at −20 °C in LDH storage buffer. The samples were later analyzed using an LDH-Glo Cytotoxicity Assay (Promega, J2381), and luminescence values were recorded from a plate reader (BioTek Synergy Neo2).
Statistical parameters, tests used, sample sizes and number of repeats are noted in the figure legends. No statistical methods were used to predetermine sample sizes; sample sizes were chosen based on previous similar studies10,11. Data collection was randomized. Data collection and analysis were performed blinded to the conditions of the experiments whenever possible—however, not for all experiments. Exclusion of data points was performed based on standard GraphPad Prism outlier analysis (ROUT method, Q = 1%). Images are representative of all experimental repeats. Statistical significance between two groups was determined using two-tailed Student's t-tests, or, in cases where assumptions of normal distribution or variance are violated, Mann−Whitney test or Welch's t-test was used, respectively. Statistical significance for more than two groups was determined with multiple comparison ANOVAs. In cases where normal distribution assumptions were violated, a normality test was performed, and the subsequent significance test was determined accordingly. Comparisons between treatment groups only to a single control group were corrected using Dunnett's correction. Comparisons between all groups were corrected using Tukey's correction. In several instances, multiple independent comparisons were corrected using Sidak's correction. Linear regression analyses were used to determine a rate of constancy between two quantitative variables. In several instances, Kolmogorov−Smirnov test was used to determine cumulative distribution function between two independent samples. All images from in vitro samples are representative of multiple image fields described in each figure legend from a minimum of three independent experiments. The threshold for determining statistical significance was P < 0.05. All statistical analyses were performed with GraphPad Prism 10.
Further information on research design is available in the Nature Portfolio Reporting Summary linked to this article.
Data underlying Figs. 1, 2 and 4–6 and Extended Data Figs. 1–9 are provided with the paper. Source data are provided with this paper.
Nikon NIS Elements General Analysis 3 workflows or ‘recipes' for image analysis are available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request.
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We would like to acknowledge the support given by the National Institute of Aging (RF1AG061035-01 to R.D.M.) and the Cure Alzheimer's Fund (W.A.E. and R.E.T.). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript. The authors thank D. Irimia and the BioMEMS Core at MGH for assistance with microfluidic device design and production. We also thank D. Capen and the MGH PMB Microscopy Core Facility for technical assistance with electron microscopy.
Genetics and Aging Research Unit, Henry and Allison McCance Center for Brain Health, MassGeneral Institute for Neurodegenerative Disease, Charlestown, MA, USA
William A. Eimer, Alex S. Rodriguez, Michael T. DeFao, Joseph Park, Deepak K. Vijaya Kumar, Nanda K. Navalpur Shanmugam, Robert D. Moir & Rudolph E. Tanzi
Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Charlestown, MA, USA
William A. Eimer, Alex S. Rodriguez, Michael T. DeFao, Joseph Park, Deepak K. Vijaya Kumar, Nanda K. Navalpur Shanmugam, Robert D. Moir & Rudolph E. Tanzi
Ulm University, Ulm, Germany
Simon Ehricke
Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA
Sanjana Singh
Wellesley College, Wellesley Hills, MA, USA
Tara Sawhney
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W.A.E., R.D.M. and R.E.T. conceived the hypothesis and strategies for this project. W.A.E. and R.E.T. supervised the project. W.A.E., D.K.K., N.K.S. and R.E.T. contributed to experimental design. W.A.E., A.S.R., M.T.D., S.E., S.S. and T.S. carried out experiments and data analysis. J.P. helped design and supervise the utilization of 3D neuronal cultures and microglial experiments. W.A.E. wrote the manuscript, with help from A.S.R. and M.T.D. All authors contributed to manuscript editing.
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William A. Eimer or Rudolph E. Tanzi.
The authors declare no competing interests.
Nature Neuroscience thanks the anonymous reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.
Publisher's note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
2D ReNcell VM cultures were pre-incubated with dilutions of synthetic 2N3R tau, 2N4R tau, or 2N4R GSK-3β phosphorylated tau (p-tau) followed by infection with HSV1 to assay tau's antimicrobial protective properties. After HSV1 infection, whole wells were imaged by confocal microscopy and analyzed for red fluorescence. (a) Whole well images comparing HSV1 plaque formation in the absence or presence of 2N4R GSK-3β p-tau (1.25 µg/mL). (b-g) Whole well images from the 2N3R or 2N4R tau pre-treated conditions (scale of 2.5 to 0.625 µg/mL) were analyzed using Nikon Elements GA3 Analysis to compare (b, e) the number of HSV1 plaques, (c, f) the number of HSV1 single cell infections, and (d, g) the ratio of plaques to single cell infections. Box plots are representative of ±SEM ([B-D, n=11], [E-G, n=12]) depicting median and IQR with whiskers denoting variability according to Tukey's method. Statistical mean comparisons were calculated by one-way ANOVA using Dunnett's multiple comparison test (b-f).
Source data
Anti-capsid antibodies and synthetic tau isoforms were incubated with heat-immobilized HSV1 capsid or whole virion in an indirect ELISA to measure tau-virus binding affinity differences between isolated viral capsids and whole virions with intact envelopes. (a) Anti-capsid antibodies VP21/22a and ICP5 viral binding were compared between isolated HSV1 capsids and whole virion (F(1, 20)=14.29, *P=0.0136, ****P<0.0001). (b) Synthetic tau isoforms 2N3R, 50/50 mix of 2N3R/2N4R, 2N4R, and synthetic 2N4R GSK-3β p-tau binding affinities were compared between isolated HSV1 capsids and whole virion normalized against VP21/22a antibody binding (F(3, 88)=4.957, ****P<0.0001). Box plots are representative of ±SEM ([A, n=6], [B, n=12]) depicting median and IQR with whiskers denoting variability according to Tukey's method. Statistical significance was calculated by two-way ANOVA using Šídák's multiple comparisons test (a, b).
Source data
Dilutions of synthetic tau isoforms were incubated with heat-immobilized HSV1 capsid or whole virion in an indirect ELISA to measure tau-virus binding affinity. (a) Dilutions of 2N3R tau (scale of 5 to 0.3125 μg/mL) are incubated with immobilized HSV1 capsids (F(4, 55)=33.42, *P=0.0232, ****P<0.0001). (b) Dilutions of a 50/50 mixture of 2N3R/2N4R tau (scale of 5 to 0.3125 μg/mL) are incubated with immobilized HSV1 capsids (F(4, 55)=30.21, **P=0.0071, ****P<0.0001). (c) Dilutions of 2N4R tau (scale of 5 to 0.3125 μg/mL) are incubated with immobilized HSV1 capsids (F(4, 55)=11.50, **P=0.0011, ****P<0.0001). (d) 2N4R GSK-3β p-tau binding to HSV1 was compared to 2N3R, 50/50 mix of 2N3R/2N4R, and 2N4R tau (F(3, 44)=6.913, *P=0.0211, [2N4R tau vs. 2N3R tau, **P=0.0025], [2N4R GSK-3β p-tau vs. 2N3R tau, **P=0.0012]) (e) 2N4R GSK-3β p-tau and scrambled-sequence LL-37 are incubated with immobilized HSV1 capsids (F(3, 16)=2.299, *P=0.0422, ***P=0.0002, ****P<0.0001). Box plots are representative of ±SEM (n=12) depicting median and IQR with whiskers denoting variability according to Tukey's method. Statistical significance was calculated by one-way ANOVA using Tukey's multiple comparisons test (a-d) and two-way ANOVA using Šídák's multiple comparisons test (e).
Source data
Synthetic 2N3R tau and 2N4R GSK-3β p-tau isoforms were incubated with heat-immobilized HSV1 capsid after pre-incubation with anti-capsid protein antibodies in an indirect ELISA to examine inhibition of tau-capsid binding. (a) 2N3R tau binding to HSV1 capsid was pretreated with anti-ICP5 antibody. (b) 2N4R GSK-3β p-tau binding to HSV1 capsid was pretreated with anti-RS1-ICP4 antibody (F(8, 32)=13.59, [0 vs. 1.0 μg/mL, **P=0.0064], [0 vs. 5.0 μg/mL, **P=0.0056]). (c) 2N4R GSK-3β p-tau binding to HSV1 capsid was pretreated with anti-pUL25 antibody. Box plots are representative of ±SEM (n=12) depicting median and IQR with whiskers denoting variability according to Tukey's method. Statistical significance was calculated by two-tailed Mann-Whitney test (a) and one-way ANOVA using Dunnett's multiple comparison test (b, c).
Source data
ReNcell VM cultures were infected with HSV1 for 24 hours to characterize total tau's distribution changes from infection and in proximity to viral infection. (a) 2D ReNcell VM cultures in microfluidic devices were infected in the left chamber with HSV1 for 48 hours, immunoprobed with anti-total tau labeled with a fluorescent secondary antibody, and analyzed for total tau (405), neurons (GFP), and HSV1 (RFP) fluorescence by confocal microscopy. Fluorescence signals were compared by General Analysis 3 (GA3). (b) GA3 of HSV1-positive neurons compared intracellular p-tau fluorescence between infected neurons, uninfected neurons proximal to infected neurons, and uninfected neurons not proximal to infected neurons (F(2, 3321)=166.3, ****P<0.0001). (c) Individual neuronal total tau fluorescent intensity was compared to total proximal HSV1-RFP fluorescent intensity (R²=1.350e-006). (d) Fluorescent image captures from 384 wells over 4 experiments were compared for total tau fluorescence in cell bodies (***P=0.0003) between uninfected and infected wells. Statistical mean comparisons were calculated by one-way ANOVA (b), simple linear regression (c), and two-tailed paired t-test (d). Images are representative of experiments repeated in triplicate.
Source data
3D ReNcell VM cultures were infected with HSV1 to characterize tau's change in cellular distribution and levels to viral infection. 96 well plates were immunoprobed with anti-p-tau antibodies AT180 and PHF-1 labeled with a fluorescent secondary antibody. Images were collected via confocal microscopy and immunofluorescent representative images show neurons (GFP), HSV1 (RFP), and p-tau (647). Images are representative of experiments repeated in triplicate.
Source data
Conditioned media from 24 hour HSV1 infected 3D ReNcell VM cultures were analyzed via a cytotoxicity assay to characterize culture cell death. Box plots are representative of ±SEM (n=30) depicting median and IQR with whiskers denoting variability according to Tukey's method. Statistical significance was calculated by one-way ANOVA using Dunnett's multiple comparison test.
Source data
1 week old 2D ReNcell VM cultures were pre-incubated with a GSK-3β inhibitor for 24 hours followed by a 24 hour HSV1 infection to assess reduced kinase activity on viral replication. Post-infection whole wells were imaged by confocal microscopy and analyzed for red fluorescence. Images were analyzed using Nikon Elements GA3 Analysis to compare (a) the number of HSV1 single cell infections (F(3, 53)=5.204, **P=0.0012), (b) the ratio of plaques to single cell infections (F(3, 53)=4.173, **P=0.0046), and (c) the size of individual HSV1 plaques by area (****P<0.0001). Bars represent the distribution of replicate wells (n=11), with whiskers denoting variability according to Tukey's method. Statistical mean comparisons were calculated by one-way ANOVA using Dunnett's multiple comparisons test (a, b) and two-tailed Kolmogorov-Smirnov test (c).
Source data
2D ReNcell VM cultures were pre-incubated with 2N4R GSK-3β p-tau or an IFNγ antibody followed by a short-term HSV1 infection to observe effects on extracellular IFNγ levels. (a) IFNγ concentrations in conditioned media were measured following a 24 hour pre-incubation of IFNγ antibody and again following HSV1 infection. (F(2, 2)=7.093, P***<0.0010). (b) IFNγ concentrations in conditioned media were measured following a 24 h pre-incubation of 2N4R GSK-3β p-tau and again following HSV1 infection. Box plots are representative of ±SEM ([A, n=3], [B, n=4]) depicting median and IQR with whiskers denoting variability according to Tukey's method. Statistical mean comparison was calculated by two-tailed unpaired t-test (a) and two-tailed Welch's t-test (b).
Source data
3D ReNcell VM cultures were infected with HSV1 to characterize tau's co-localization with HSV1. (a, b) 3D ReNcell VM cultures were infected with HSV1 for 24 h, immunoprobed with anti-p-tau (PHF-1) labeled with a fluorescent secondary antibody, and analyzed for neurons (GFP), HSV1 (RFP), and p-tau (647) fluorescence by confocal microscopy. (a) Dystrophic neurites, identified by punctate linear formations originating from a cell soma, contain p-tau and HSV1 fluorescence. (b) Increased punctate p-tau fluorescence observed in neuron soma adjacent to HSV1-positive cells and in cells with nuclear replication compartments (arrows). Panels are representative of data from multiple discrete imaging fields across experiments repeated in triplicate.
Materials used in the experiments.
Statistical source data for Figs. 1, 2 and 4–6.
Statistical source data for Extended Data Figs. 1–9.
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RNA is one of the key molecules responsible for controlling gene expression regulation, and visualizing individual RNA molecules in living cells offers unique insights into the dynamics of this process. Recently, the RNA-regulated destabilization domain was developed for live-cell imaging of single RNA. However, this method is limited to single-color RNA imaging and its long RNA tag induces destabilization of the tagged RNA. Here we describe two orthogonal RNA-regulated destabilization domains (mDeg and pDeg) that enable three-color messenger RNA (mRNA) imaging in living cells. We show that these destabilization domains can image mRNA tethered to the endoplasmic reticulum membrane, the inner surface of the plasma membrane and in the cytosol. In addition, we show that mDeg can detect mRNA more effectively than the previously reported tDeg system. Moreover, mDeg can be combined with a short RNA tag (9XMS2) for single-molecule RNA imaging without perturbation of RNA stability.
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The sequences of the plasmids used in this study have been deposited on GenBank with the following accession numbers: miniCMV-EYFP-mDeg (PX401316), U6 + 27-Tornado-F30-MS2 (PX401332), miniCMV-EYFP-pDeg (PX401317), U6 + 27-Tornado-F30-PP7 (PX401333), CMV-CyTERM-mTagBFP2-24XMS2 (PX401318), miniCMV-(AausFP1)2-mDeg (PX401319), CMV-CyTERM-mTagBFP2-24XPP7 (PX401320), miniCMV-(AausFP1)2-pDeg (PX401321), CMV-NanoLuc-24XMS2 (PX401322), miniCMV-(HaloTag)4-mDeg (PX401323), CMV-CDK6-24XPP7 (PX401324), miniCMV-tdTomato-pDeg (PX401325), CMV-mCherry-9XMS2 (PX401326), miniCMV-(mStayGold)8-mDeg (PX401327), CMV-NLS-mTagBFP2-24XMS2 (PX401328), miniCMV-Stargazin-tdTomato-mDeg (PX401329), CMV-NLS-mTagBFP2-24XPP7 (PX401330) and miniCMV-Stargazin-tdTomato-pDeg (PX401331). These plasmids are also available on Addgene according to the terms of the Uniform Biological Material Transfer Agreement. Data generated from this study are available through the corresponding author upon reasonable request. Source data are provided with this paper.
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This work was supported by the UMass startup funds and grant no. NIH R35GM160207 (T.G.P., O.A., J.H. and J.W.). I.S. was supported by grant no. NIH R35GM149348. We gratefully acknowledge the services and support of the University of Massachusetts Amherst Cell Culture Core Facility (grant no. RRID:SRC_023477), Flow Cytometry Core Facility, and Biophysical Characterization Core Facility (grant no. RRID:SCR_022357). The microscopy analysis was performed using computation supplied by the Light Microscopy Facility (grant no. RRID:SCR_021148) and Nikon Center of Excellence at the Institute for Applied Life Sciences, UMass Amherst, with support from the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center. We thank S. Eyles, C. Bobst, J. Chambers, A. Burnside and M. Daley at the University of Massachusetts Amherst for technical support. We thank G. Srimathveeravalli at the University of Massachusetts Amherst for providing access to the qPCR system. We also thank other members of the Wu laboratory, the You laboratory and the Martin laboratory for useful comments and suggestions.
Department of Chemistry, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, USA
Tien G. Pham, Omoyemi Ajayi, Jiaze He, Irina Sagarbarria, Jeanne A. Hardy & Jiahui Wu
Center for Bioactive Delivery in the Institute for Applied Life Sciences, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, USA
Jeanne A. Hardy & Jiahui Wu
Molecular and Cellular Biology Graduate Program, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, MA, USA
Jeanne A. Hardy & Jiahui Wu
Models to Medicine Center in the Institute for Applied Life Sciences, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, USA
Jeanne A. Hardy
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J.W. conceived and directed all aspects of the project. All authors designed experiments. T.G.P. performed imaging experiments. O.A. performed RT–qPCR experiments and generated stable cell lines. J.H. performed electrophoretic mobility shift assay. I.S. performed protein expression and purification experiments. All authors wrote the paper. J.A.H. supervised I.S. J.W. supervised the research of the entire project.
Correspondence to
Jiahui Wu.
The authors declare no competing interests.
Nature Methods thanks Gal Haimovich and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Peer reviewer reports are available. Primary Handling Editors: Rita Strack and Lei Tang, in collaboration with the Nature Methods team.
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Shown is the crystal structure of MS2-stdMCP (PDB: 2BU1) (a) and our initial designs for converting stdMCP to an MS2-regulated destabilization domain (b). (a) The MS2 RNA is depicted in orange and the stdMCP protein is depicted in grey with side chains of Arg49 and Arg83 highlighted in each MCP monomer. To engineer an MS2-regulated destabilization domain, we circularly permuted stdMCP at Arg49 and Arg83, respectively, and inserted “Arg-Arg-Gly” at the new C-terminus to generate the full “Arg-Arg-Arg-Gly” degron. We chose Arg49 and Arg83 for circular permutation because they are close to the MS2 binding site, and thus, binding of the MS2 RNA may block the Arg-Arg-Arg-Gly degron from recruitment of the proteasomal machinery needed for proteolysis. (b) Partial sequence of our designs for an MS2-regulated destabilization domain. Amino acid sequence of circularly permutated stdMCP is highlighted in grey, the “Arg-Arg-Arg-Gly” degron sequence is in red.
Shown is the crystal structure of PP7-stdPCP (PDB: 2QUX) (a) and our initial design for converting stdPCP to a PP7-regulated destabilization domain (b). (a) The PP7 RNA is depicted in tiffany green and the stdPCP protein is depicted in grey with side chains of Arg45 (equivalent to Arg49 in stdMCP) highlighted in each PCP monomer. Similar to the initial design of mDeg, we circularly permuted stdPCP at Arg45 and inserted “Arg-Arg-Gly” at the new C-terminus to generate the full “Arg-Arg-Arg-Gly” degron. We termed this stdPCP-CP45-RRRG, also known as pDeg variant0 in Extended Data Fig. 3. The idea is that the binding of the PP7 RNA to stdPCP-CP45-RRRG may block the Arg-Arg-Arg-Gly degron from recruitment of the proteasomal machinery needed for proteolysis. (b) Partial sequence of our design for a PP7-regulated destabilization domain. Amino acid sequence of circularly permutated stdPCP is highlighted in grey, the “Arg-Arg-Arg-Gly” degron sequence is in red.
To construct a PP7-regulated destabilization domain, we used a similar strategy used for developing mDeg. Specifically, we titrated linker length from one to six amino acids between stdPCP-CP45 and the Arg-Arg-Arg-Gly degron, resulting in seven pDeg variant (0-6) as shown in (a). To test whether PP7 can regulate the stability of these different pDeg variants (0-6), we coexpressed each EYFP-pDeg variant with and without circular 1XPP7 in HEK293T cells, respectively. We found that stdPCP-CP45-RRRG (pDeg variant0) showed limited degradation efficiency as it exhibited 76% of yellow fluorescence compared to EYFP. The addition of linkers between stdPCP-CP45 and the Arg-Arg-Arg-Gly degron led to decreases of yellow fluorescence in the absence of circular PP7. When PP7 was coexpressed, we found that pDeg variant2 containing a “Gly-Arg” linker showed the highest fold change in yellow fluorescence of 22-fold, as shown in (b) and (c). Shown are representative images from 3 independent cell cultures. All cells were stained with Hoechst. Scale bar, 100 μm. Normalized average cellular yellow fluorescence of individual cells is plotted in (c). (For each bar from left to right, n = 348, 377, 330, 400, 369, 376, 370, 386, 394, 339, 355, 395, 347, 376, 332, and 295 cells, respectively). Values are means ± s.d. ****Pvariant0 = 2.6 ×10−26; ****Pvariant1 = 2.4 ×10−41; ****Pvariant2 = 1.2 ×10−110; ****Pvariant3 = 3.6 ×10−110; ****Pvariant4 = 9.5 ×10−75; ****Pvariant5 = 8.0 ×10−66; ****Pvariant6 = 1.1 ×10−71 using unpaired, two-tailed, Student's t-test.
Source data
(a) Schematic of plasmids that encode protein of interest fused to pDeg, and circular 1XPP7 RNA, respectively. Proteins of interest include mEGFP, mScarlet-I3, and iRFP670. (b-d) PP7-pDeg can regulate the stability of various fluorescent proteins. To test whether the PP7 RNA stabilizes different proteins fused to pDeg, we imaged HEK293T cells expressing mEGFP (b), mScarlet-I3 (c), and iRFP670 (d) fused to pDeg with and without circular 1XPP7, respectively. In each case, there was a considerable increase in fluorescence. Shown are representative images from 3 independent cell cultures. All cells were stained with Hoechst. Scale bar, 100 μm. (e-g) Summary data of normalized fluorescence of pDeg-fused fluorescent proteins with and without circular PP7 as in (b-d). Normalized average cellular fluorescence of individual cells is plotted. For (e), n-PP7 = 298 cells, n+PP7 = 317 cells; for (f), n-PP7 = 308 cells, n+PP7 = 304 cells; for (g), n-PP7 = 369 cells, n+PP7 = 319 cells. Values are means ± s.d. ****PmEGFP-pDeg = 3.4 ×10−95; ****PmScarletI3-pDeg = 1.3 ×10−84; ****PiRFP670-pDeg = 1.2 ×10−79 using an unpaired, two-tailed, Student's t-test.
Source data
To test whether mDeg and pDeg can be used for detecting 24XMS2- and 24XPP7-tagged mRNAs that are stably expressed in mammalian cell lines, we generated U2OS cell lines stably expressing NLS-mTagBFP2-24XMS2 (a) and CyTERM-mCherry-24XPP7 (b), respectively. We then transiently transfected (AausFP1)2-mDeg and (AausFP1)2-pDeg to the cell line stably expressing the reporter mRNA with the cognate tag, respectively. In the U2OS cells stably expressing NLS-mTagBFP2-24XMS2, we observed mobile green-fluorescent puncta in the cytosol, reflecting the NLS-mTagBFP2-24XMS2 mRNA (a). Furthermore, in the U2OS cells stably expressing CyTERM-mCherry-24XPP7, we observed green-fluorescent puncta colocalized with the ER (b). These results suggest that fluorogenic proteins containing mDeg and pDeg can be used for imaging 24XMS2- and 24XPP7-tagged mRNA that are stably expressed in U2OS cells. Shown are representative images from 3 independent cell cultures. Scale bar, 20 μm. To test whether fluorogenic proteins containing mDeg and pDeg can be incorporated into stable cell lines for RNA imaging, we generated U2OS cell lines stably expressing (AausFP1)2-mDeg (c) and (AausFP1)2-pDeg (d), respectively. We then transiently transfected plasmids encoding CyTERM-mTagBFP2-24XMS2 (c) and CyTERM-mTagBFP2-24XPP7 (d) to the stable cell line expressing the cognate fluorogenic proteins, respectively. In both cases, we observed ER-localized green-fluorescent puncta colocalized to the ER. These results suggest that (AausFP1)2-mDeg and (AausFP1)2-pDeg can be incorporated into stable cell lines for RNA imaging. Shown are representative images from 3 independent cell cultures. Scale bar, 20 μm.
To test whether Stargazin can be combined with mDeg and pDeg for tethering RNA to the plasma membrane, we constructed plasmids expressing Stargazin-tdTomato-mDeg and Stargazin-tdTomato-pDeg, respectively (a). When each of these proteins was coexpressed with an NLS-mTagBFP2 mRNA reporter fused the cognate RNA tag, we observed red-fluorescent puncta (b) with limited mobility (D for MS2-mDeg and PP7-pDeg are 0.0064 ± 0.0001 µm2/s and 0.0042 ± 0.0001 µm2/s, respectively) (c), which is in agreement with previous measurements on mRNA tethered to the plasma membrane by the CAAX sequence36. These results suggest that mDeg and pDeg can be combined with Stargazin for tethering mRNA on the inner surface of the plasma membrane. Shown are representative images from 3 independent cell cultures. Scale bar, 20 μm. (n24XMS2 = 2144 puncta; n24XPP7 = 4526 puncta). Values are means ± s.e.m.
Source data
To design short tags with minimal perturbation to RNA stability, we performed RT-qPCR to quantify the levels of mCherry mRNA transcripts tagged with different repeat numbers (n = 3, 6, 9, 12, and 24, respectively) of MS2 (a) and PP7 (b), respectively, and compared these to the same mCherry mRNA transcript without any tag (n = 0) in HEK293T cells. Our results showed that 9XMS2 (a) and 6XPP7 (b) have minimal perturbation on the tagged mCherry mRNA stability in living cells. (n = 5 independent cell cultures for the MS2 tags; n = 3 independent cell cultures for the PP7 tags) Values are means ± s.d. **P0xMS2-12xMS2 = 1.2 ×10−3; ****P0xMS2-24xMS2 = 4.2 ×10−6; **P0xPP7-9xPP7 = 2.6 ×10−3; ****P0xPP7-12xPP7 = 1.2 ×10−5; ****P0xPP7-24xPP7 = 8.0 ×10−5 using one-way ANOVA.
Source data
To demonstrate the generality of the short tags, we constructed plasmids expressing reporter mRNAs containing different 3'UTRs (GAPDH, RPL13A, and RPL27) fused to different repeats of MS2 (a) and PP7 (b), respectively. We performed RT-qPCR to quantify the levels of reporter mRNA transcripts tagged with different repeat numbers of MS2 (a) and PP7 (b), respectively. Our results showed that 9XMS2 (a) and 6XPP7 (b) have minimal perturbation on the stability of the tagged reporter mRNAs, which is consistent with what we observed in Extended Data Fig. 7. However, reporter mRNAs tagged with 24XMS2 (a) or 24XPP7 (b) showed a considerable decrease in their RNA levels. Thus, these results suggest that 9XMS2 and 6XPP7 do not significantly destabilize the tagged mRNA containing different 3'UTRs. (n = 3 independent cell cultures) Values are means ± s.d. ****P0xMS2-24xMS2 GAPDH = 2.0 ×10−6; ****P0xMS2-24xMS2 RPL13A = 2.9 ×10−5; **P0xMS2-24xMS2 RPL27 = 4.7 ×10−3; ****P0xPP7-24xPP7 GAPDH = 3.8 ×10−7; ****P0xPP7-24xPP7 RPL13A = 4.5 ×10−6; ****P0xPP7-24xPP7 RPL27 = 1.6 ×10−5 using one-way ANOVA.
Source data
Supplementary Figs. 1–17, Table 1 and descriptions of Videos 1–12.
MS2-mDeg can track the dynamics of RNA in living U2OS cells. To image the dynamics of mRNA using MS2-mDeg, we coexpressed a CyTERM-mTagBFP2-24XMS2 reporter mRNA and (AausFP1)2-mDeg in U2OS cells. We observed green-fluorescent puncta with low mobility before HT treatment (−HT). Then 30 min after HT treatment (+HT), we observed a considerable increase in mobility of the green-fluorescent puncta. Scale bar, 20 μm.
PP7-pDeg can track the dynamics of RNA in living U2OS cells. To image the dynamics of mRNA using PP7-pDeg, we coexpressed a CyTERM-mTagBFP2-24XPP7 reporter mRNA and (AausFP1)2-pDeg in U2OS cells. We observed green-fluorescent puncta with low mobility before HT treatment (−HT). Then 30 min after HT treatment (+HT), we observed a considerable increase in mobility of the green-fluorescent puncta. Scale bar, 20 μm.
Pepper-tDeg can track the dynamics of RNA in living U2OS cells. To image the dynamics of mRNA using Pepper-tDeg, we coexpressed a CyTERM-mTagBFP2-(F30-2xPepper)10 reporter mRNA and (AausFP1)2-tDeg in U2OS cells. We observed green-fluorescent puncta with low mobility before HT treatment (−HT). Then 30 min after HT treatment HT (+HT), we observed a considerable increase in mobility of the green-fluorescent puncta. Scale bar, 20 m.
(AausFP1)2-mDeg can be transiently transfected to U2OS cells stably expressing a 24XMS2-tagged mRNA for RNA imaging. To test whether mDeg can be used for detecting 24XMS2-tagged mRNA that are stably expressed in U2OS cells, we generated a U2OS cell line stably expressing NLS-mTagBFP2-24XMS2, then transiently transfected (AausFP1)2-mDeg as the fluorogenic protein. We observed mobile green-fluorescent puncta in the cytosol, reflecting the NLS-mTagBFP2-24XMS2 mRNA. Scale bar, 20 μm.
(AausFP1)2-pDeg can be transiently transfected to U2OS cells stably expressing a 24XPP7-tagged mRNA for RNA imaging. To test whether pDeg can be used for detecting 24XPP7-tagged mRNA that are stably expressed in U2OS cells, we generated a U2OS cell line stably expressing CyTERM-mCherry-24XPP7, then transiently transfected (AausFP1)2-pDeg as the fluorogenic protein. We observed green-fluorescent puncta with limited mobility, reflecting the ER-tethered CyTERM-mCherry-24XPP7 reporter mRNA. Scale bar, 20 μm.
(AausFP1)2-mDeg can be incorporated into stable cell lines for RNA imaging. To test whether (AausFP1)2-mDeg can be incorporated into stable cell lines for RNA imaging, we generated a U2OS cell line stably expressing (AausFP1)2-mDeg. We then transiently transfected plasmids encoding CyTERM-mTagBFP2-24XMS2, and observed green-fluorescent puncta with limited mobility, reflecting the ER-tethered CyTERM-mTagBFP2-24XMS2 reporter mRNA. Scale bar, 20 μm.
(AausFP1)2-pDeg can be incorporated into stable cell lines for RNA imaging. To test whether (AausFP1)2-pDeg can be incorporated into stable cell lines for RNA imaging, we generated a U2OS cell line stably expressing (AausFP1)2-pDeg. We then transiently transfected plasmids encoding CyTERM-mTagBFP2-24XPP7, and observed green-fluorescent puncta with limited mobility, reflecting the ER-tethered CyTERM-mTagBFP2-24XPP7 reporter mRNA. Scale bar, 20 μm.
MS2-mDeg can be used for tethering RNA to the plasma membrane. To tether 24xMS2-tagged mRNAs to the inner surface of the plasma membrane, we coexpressed Stargazin-tdTomato-mDeg and an NLS-mTagBFP2-24XMS2 mRNA reporter in U2OS cells. We observed red-fluorescent puncta with limited mobility, suggesting that mDeg can be combined with Stargazin for tethering mRNA on the inner surface of the plasma membrane. Scale bar, 20 μm.
PP7-pDeg can be used for tethering RNA to the plasma membrane. To tether 24xPP7-tagged mRNAs to the inner surface of the plasma membrane, we coexpressed Stargazin-tdTomato-pDeg and an NLS-mTagBFP2-24XPP7 mRNA reporter in U2OS cells. We observed red-fluorescent puncta with limited mobility, suggesting that pDeg can be combined with Stargazin for tethering mRNA on the inner surface of the plasma membrane. Scale bar, 20 μm.
MS2-mDeg, PP7-pDeg and Pepper-tDeg enable three-color RNA imaging in living cells. To simultaneously image three different RNA species in U2OS cells, we coexpressed three mRNA reporters: NanoLuc-24XMS2, CDK6-24XPP7 and CyTERM-mTagBFP2-(F30-2xPepper)10 with three fluorogenic proteins: (HaloTag)4-mDeg (with the JF646 ligand) (cyan), tdTomato-pDeg (magenta) and (mNeonGreen)4-tDeg (green). We observed fluorescent puncta in the cytosol reflecting cellular mRNAs. Scale bar, 20 μm.
MS2-mDeg can be combined with photostable fluorogenic proteins for continuous RNA imaging for an extended period. To test whether mDeg can be combined with photostable fluorophores for continuous RNA imaging for an extended period of time. We coexpressed (HaloTag)4-mDeg (with the JF646 ligand) and a NanoLuc-24XMS2 mRNA in U2OS cells. We observed mobile far puncta with continuous image acquisition for 120 s with limited photobleaching. Scale bar, 20 μm.
9XMS2, a short RNA imaging tag with minimal perturbation of RNA stability, for single mRNA imaging. To image mRNA tagged with 9XMS2, we coexpressed an mCherry-9XMS2 mRNA reporter with (mStayGold)8-mDeg as the fluorogenic protein, in U2OS cells. We observed mobile green-fluorescent puncta in the cytosol of the U2OS cells, reflecting single mRNA molecules. Scale bar, 20 μm.
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In a new experiment, Meta is limiting the number of links users can post on Facebook, unless they have a paid Meta Verified subscription.
Over the last week, several users have spotted Meta's test, which impacts link posting. Social media strategist Matt Navvara noted that users part of the test can only post two links unless they pay for a Meta Verified subscription, which starts from $14.99 per month.
According to the screenshot posted by Navarra, users can still post affiliate links, comments, and links to Meta platform posts, including Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
The company confirmed the test to TechCrunch and said it impacts those people using professional mode and Facebook Pages. Professional mode lets you convert your personal profile into a creator profile while making your content eligible for discovery by a wider audience.
“This is a limited test to understand whether the ability to publish an increased volume of posts with links adds additional value for Meta Verified subscribers,” a Meta spokesperson told TechCrunch.
This would directly impact creators and brands posting links from their blogs or other platforms to reach a wider audience.
The company said it is trying to learn how it can add more value to Meta Verified subscribers, and this test is one such experiment to enhance that paid plan. The company added that, at the moment, publishers are not included in this test. It also said that users can still post links in comments, and they are not impacted by the limit.
In its transparency report for Q3, Meta said that more than 98% views on the feed in the U.S. come from the posts that don't have any links. It is not clear if this signal pushed the company to experiment with limits on link sharing, however. The company said that the majority of the 1.9% of views of posts with links came from a page they followed. Linked posts shared by friends and groups were minimal.
The same report noted that YouTube and TikTok, along with GoFundMe, were the top domains amid the links posted. With the new link posting limit test, creators and brands would be forced to post content from other Meta platforms if they reached their limit, or stop posting altogether if they didn't want to pay for a subscription.
As AI has taken over the internet, there is an ever-raging debate about the link-based web. AI summary and search have impacted the publishing industry negatively. In the past few years, social networks like X have toyed with demoting linked posts to encourage users to post content on the platforms natively.
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Ivan covers global consumer tech developments at TechCrunch. He is based out of India and has previously worked at publications including Huffington Post and The Next Web.
You can contact or verify outreach from Ivan by emailing im@ivanmehta.com or via encrypted message at ivan.42 on Signal.
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by Todd Bishop on Dec 17, 2025 at 9:29 amDecember 17, 2025 at 9:53 am
Rohit Prasad, the executive who has led Amazon's artificial intelligence initiatives and overseen the creation of its homegrown Nova AI models, is leaving the company at the end of the year.
In a memo Wednesday morning, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy named Peter DeSantis, a 27-year company veteran and top cloud infrastructure executive, to lead a new organization that combines the Nova and model research teams with its silicon and quantum computing groups.
AI researcher Pieter Abbeel, who joined the company last year when Amazon hired the founders of robotics startup Covariant, will lead the frontier model research team within Amazon's AGI organization, while continuing his work with the company's robotics team, according to Jassy's memo.
Prasad's departure comes two weeks after Amazon unveiled its Nova 2 models at its annual re:Invent conference, and as the company attempts to close the gap with AI rivals including OpenAI and Google in the race to develop increasingly capable AI systems.
He joined Amazon in 2013 during the early days of Alexa and was named senior vice president and head scientist for artificial general intelligence in mid-2023 as part of a broader effort to recharge the company's AI initiatives in the face of stiff competition.
In his memo, Jassy framed the reorganization as an effort to unify Amazon's most important AI bets at an “inflection point” for the technologies. The new organization will bring together Amazon's most expansive AI models, including Nova and AGI, with its custom silicon development group, which builds chips including Graviton, Trainium, and Nitro, as well as its quantum computing efforts.
DeSantis, who is part of Amazon's senior leadership team, will report directly to Jassy.
Prasad's departure was mentioned toward the end of Jassy's memo, with the Amazon CEO saying that he “has built a strong team, differentiated technology, growing customer momentum, and a culture of ambitious invention.”
The memo described the departure as Prasad's decision, with Jassy calling him “missionary, passionate, and selfless” and thanking him for “everything he's built here.”
It's not yet clear what Prasad will do next.
Amazon has positioned itself as a major player in enterprise AI through its Bedrock platform. Its Nova models are competitive on industry benchmarks. The Nova Forge service, launched at re:Invent, lets businesses and developers customize models using their own data.
The company also unveiled a series of “frontier agents” at re:Invent, aiming to get ahead of the industry's push toward autonomous AI systems for businesses.
But the company is still generally viewed as a fast follower in generative AI, trailing OpenAI, Google, and others in the perception of frontier model capabilities. Amazon has partnered closely with Claude maker Anthropic as a counterpunch to Microsoft's partnership with ChatGPT maker OpenAI.
Developing story, more to come.
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With Bitnami discontinuing their offer, we recently switched to other providers. For some we are using a helm chart and this new offer provides some helm charts but for some software just the image. I would be interested to give this a try but e.g. the python image only various '(dev)' images while the guide mentions the non-dev images. So this requires some planning.EDIT: Digging deeper, I notice it requires a PAT and a PAT is bound to a personal account. I guess you need the enterprise offering for organisation support. I am not going to waste my time to contact them for an enterprise offer for a small start-up. What is the use case for CVE hardened images that you cannot properly run in an CICD and only on your dev machine? Are there companies that need to follow compliance rules or need this security guarantee but don't have CICD in place?
EDIT: Digging deeper, I notice it requires a PAT and a PAT is bound to a personal account. I guess you need the enterprise offering for organisation support. I am not going to waste my time to contact them for an enterprise offer for a small start-up. What is the use case for CVE hardened images that you cannot properly run in an CICD and only on your dev machine? Are there companies that need to follow compliance rules or need this security guarantee but don't have CICD in place?
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Offering image hardening to custom images looks like a reasonable way for Docker to have a source of sustained income. Regulated industries like banks, insurers, or governmental agencies are likely interested.
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Bait and switch once the adoption happens has become way too common in the industry.
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> Is Docker sunsetting the Free Team plan?> No. Docker communicated its intent to sunset the Docker Free Team plan on March 14, 2023, but this decision was reversed on March 24, 2023.
> No. Docker communicated its intent to sunset the Docker Free Team plan on March 14, 2023, but this decision was reversed on March 24, 2023.
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https://www.docker.com/community/open-source/application/
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Not a problem for casual users but even a small team like mine, a dozen people with around a dozen public images, can hit the pull limit deploying a dozen landscapes a day. We just cache all the public images ourselves and avoid it.https://www.docker.com/blog/revisiting-docker-hub-policies-p...
https://www.docker.com/blog/revisiting-docker-hub-policies-p...
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There's an excellent reason: They're login gated, which is at best unnecessary friction. Took me straight from "oh, let me try it" to "nope, not gonna bother".
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But, we pay for support already.Nice from docker!
Nice from docker!
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There's a "Make a request" button, but it links to this 404-ing GitHub URL: https://github.com/docker-hardened-images/discussion/issuesoh well. hope its good stuff otherwise.
oh well. hope its good stuff otherwise.
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Chainguard still has better CVE response time and can better guarantee you zero active exploits found by your prod scanners.(No affiliation with either, but we use chainguard at work, and used to use bitnami too before I ripped it all out)
(No affiliation with either, but we use chainguard at work, and used to use bitnami too before I ripped it all out)
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I work at Chainguard. We don't guarantee zero active exploits, but we do have a contractual SLA we offer around CVE scan results (those aren't quite the same thing unfortunately).We do issue an advisory feed in a few versions that scanners integrate with. The traditional format we used (which is what most scanners supported at the time) didn't have a way to include pending information so we couldn't include it there.The basic flow was: scanner finds CVE and alerts, we issue statement showing when and where we fixed it, the scanner understands that and doesn't show it in versions after that.so there wasn't really a spot to put "this is present", that was the scanner's job. Not all scanners work that way though, and some just rely on our feed and don't do their own homework so it's hit or miss.We do have another feed now that uses the newer OSV format, in that feed we have all the info around when we detect it, when we patch it, etc.All this info is available publicly and shown in our console, many of them you can see here: https://github.com/wolfi-dev/advisoriesYou can take this example: https://github.com/wolfi-dev/advisories/blob/main/amass.advi... and see the timestamps for when we detected CVEs, in what version, and how long it took us to patch.
We do issue an advisory feed in a few versions that scanners integrate with. The traditional format we used (which is what most scanners supported at the time) didn't have a way to include pending information so we couldn't include it there.The basic flow was: scanner finds CVE and alerts, we issue statement showing when and where we fixed it, the scanner understands that and doesn't show it in versions after that.so there wasn't really a spot to put "this is present", that was the scanner's job. Not all scanners work that way though, and some just rely on our feed and don't do their own homework so it's hit or miss.We do have another feed now that uses the newer OSV format, in that feed we have all the info around when we detect it, when we patch it, etc.All this info is available publicly and shown in our console, many of them you can see here: https://github.com/wolfi-dev/advisoriesYou can take this example: https://github.com/wolfi-dev/advisories/blob/main/amass.advi... and see the timestamps for when we detected CVEs, in what version, and how long it took us to patch.
The basic flow was: scanner finds CVE and alerts, we issue statement showing when and where we fixed it, the scanner understands that and doesn't show it in versions after that.so there wasn't really a spot to put "this is present", that was the scanner's job. Not all scanners work that way though, and some just rely on our feed and don't do their own homework so it's hit or miss.We do have another feed now that uses the newer OSV format, in that feed we have all the info around when we detect it, when we patch it, etc.All this info is available publicly and shown in our console, many of them you can see here: https://github.com/wolfi-dev/advisoriesYou can take this example: https://github.com/wolfi-dev/advisories/blob/main/amass.advi... and see the timestamps for when we detected CVEs, in what version, and how long it took us to patch.
so there wasn't really a spot to put "this is present", that was the scanner's job. Not all scanners work that way though, and some just rely on our feed and don't do their own homework so it's hit or miss.We do have another feed now that uses the newer OSV format, in that feed we have all the info around when we detect it, when we patch it, etc.All this info is available publicly and shown in our console, many of them you can see here: https://github.com/wolfi-dev/advisoriesYou can take this example: https://github.com/wolfi-dev/advisories/blob/main/amass.advi... and see the timestamps for when we detected CVEs, in what version, and how long it took us to patch.
We do have another feed now that uses the newer OSV format, in that feed we have all the info around when we detect it, when we patch it, etc.All this info is available publicly and shown in our console, many of them you can see here: https://github.com/wolfi-dev/advisoriesYou can take this example: https://github.com/wolfi-dev/advisories/blob/main/amass.advi... and see the timestamps for when we detected CVEs, in what version, and how long it took us to patch.
All this info is available publicly and shown in our console, many of them you can see here: https://github.com/wolfi-dev/advisoriesYou can take this example: https://github.com/wolfi-dev/advisories/blob/main/amass.advi... and see the timestamps for when we detected CVEs, in what version, and how long it took us to patch.
You can take this example: https://github.com/wolfi-dev/advisories/blob/main/amass.advi... and see the timestamps for when we detected CVEs, in what version, and how long it took us to patch.
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Do with that knowledge what you may.
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Reading time 4 minutes
Over a decade ago, NASA's Cassini spacecraft found evidence of a vast ocean of liquid water beneath the frozen surface of Titan, Saturn's largest moon. A fresh analysis of that same data paints a completely different picture of Titan's interior.
The study, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, found that Titan does not, in fact, contain a subsurface ocean. Rather, its 6-mile-thick (10-kilometer-thick) crust of ice gives way to a layer of slush interspersed with pockets and channels of meltwater near the moon's rocky core. The shocking findings could completely change the way scientists search for signs of life inside this icy world.
“I was introduced to the planetary science world just a few years ago, and I had always taken for granted that Titan has an ocean,” lead author Flavio Petricca, a postdoctoral fellow at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told Gizmodo in an email.
“While working on this and elaborating these ideas, it happened very often that I woke up very early in the morning because I couldn't believe what I was seeing in the data, that Titan might not have an ocean,” he said.
NASA's Cassini spacecraft launched in October 1997, embarking on a seven-year journey through the solar system. The spacecraft had its first close encounter with Titan in October 2004, coming within 750 miles (1,200 kilometers) of the moon's icy surface to skim its hazy atmosphere.
In December of that year, Cassini deployed the Huygens probe, which touched down on the surface of Titan three weeks later. The spacecraft gathered data on the moon's atmosphere during its 27-minute descent, then survived another 72 minutes on the ground. The images it captured during that brief window revealed that Titan has Earth-like meteorology and geology.
Cassini went on to complete 124 flybys of Titan. The mountain of data it gathered included radar and gravity measurements that led scientists to believe the moon is hiding a huge ocean of liquid water and ammonia beneath its crust. Huygens also measured radio signals that corroborated this idea.
The discovery made waves throughout the scientific community, encouraging researchers to search for evidence of Titan's potential habitability. Over the past decade, the idea that Titan harbors a vast underground reservoir of liquid water became widely accepted, but there was always one nagging problem. When researchers modeled the moon with a subsurface ocean, the results didn't actually match the physical properties described by the Cassini data.
Now, Petricca and his colleagues have proposed an alternative explanation for Titan's unusual gravity field and geophysical measurements. Perhaps there isn't a liquid ocean beneath the moon's surface but rather a vast reservoir of slush.
As Titan orbits Saturn, the ringed planet's gravity tugs on the moon. These gravitational “tides” deform Titan's surface, creating bulges that point toward Saturn. If Titan were composed entirely of solid rock, Saturn's gravitational attraction would produce bulges only 3 feet (1 meter) high, but the Cassini data showed that they're actually much larger.
This suggested that Titan is not solid all the way through to its core, leading scientists to assume the moon has a subsurface ocean. “On the other hand, a layer of slushy ice with widespread melt pockets can also lead to strong deformations,” Petricca explained.
If Titan had a liquid ocean beneath its crust, the surface would respond immediately to Saturn's gravitational pull. “Imagine standing on the surface and Saturn passing above your head. The surface below your feet would rise, and that bulge would closely follow Saturn,” Petricca said.
If instead there is a layer of slush with pockets of meltwater, that would cause tidal dissipation in the interior, creating a delay between Saturn's gravitational influence and Titan's bulge response, according to Petricca. This delay had never been measured before, but his team reanalyzed the Cassini data with improved processing techniques and found a signature of a 15-hour delay in Titan's gravity field.
The finding shocked Petricca and his colleagues. “I've never seen someone doubting the result that much,” co-author Baptiste Journaux, an assistant professor of Earth and space sciences at the University of Washington, said of Petricca.
“He spent months and months and months staring at it, re-checking everything, getting critical feedback from some of the top researchers in the world to make sure that he was not making any mistakes,” Journaux told Gizmodo. But there was no error—the results strongly suggested that a layer of slushy, high-pressure ice sits between Titan's core and its frozen crust.
The findings offer a revelatory new view of Titan's structure and processes, and suggest that its potentially habitable environment may look very different than scientists previously thought.
“We went from looking for an open ocean type of ecosystem to something that's probably going to be much more like sea ice or aquifers,” Journaux said. “Because we don't have an open ocean, I think even just the signatures of life will be different.”
This basically changes everything about the way researchers will hunt for signs of life on Titan. The tools, strategies, regions of interest, and clues will all be different, according to Journaux. While this presents an enormous challenge, “I think that our new results make Titan more interesting,” Petricca said.
“Our models indicate that there should be pockets of liquid warm water, with temperatures up to [68 degrees Fahrenheit (20 degrees Celsius)], cycling nutrients from the moon's rocky core, through slushy layers of warm ice, to a solid icy shell at the surface,” he explained. “This might have strong implications for the habitability potential of Titan, but I should emphasize that our study did not look into these.”
Both Petricca and Journaux hope their findings will pave the way for habitability studies that are better suited to the moon's slushy subsurface environment. Nearly three decades after Cassini's launch, it appears a new era of Titan exploration is just beginning.
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This could be the end of the orbiter that studies the Red Planet's atmosphere and relays communications between NASA and its Mars rovers.
The ancient stellar death took place when the universe was a mere 730 million years old.
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What happens here matters everywhere
by Alan Boyle on Dec 17, 2025 at 8:00 amDecember 17, 2025 at 8:12 am
A fresh analysis of tidal perturbations on Titan challenges a long-held hypothesis: that the cloud-shrouded Saturnian moon harbors an ocean of liquid water beneath its surface ice. But the scientists behind the analysis don't rule out the possibility that smaller pockets of subsurface water could nevertheless provide a home for extraterrestrial life.
“The search for extraterrestrial environments is fundamentally a search for habitats where liquid water coexists with sustained sources of energy (chemical, sunlight, etc.) over geological time scales. Our new results do not preclude the existence of such environments within Titan, but rather, further support their plausibility,” University of Washington planetary scientist Baptiste Journaux, a co-author of the study published in Nature, told GeekWire in an email.
Journaux acknowledged that the results don't match up with conventional wisdom. He said they represent a “true paradigm shift” in how scientists think Titan is put together.
“When the first indications from the new data analysis suggested the absence of a global ocean within Titan, the result prompted extensive discussion, careful double- and triple-checking, and contacting colleagues outside the team for critical feedback, even before submission for anonymous peer review,” he said. “We were all surprised, to say the least.”
The hypothesis about Titan's hidden ocean goes back to NASA's Cassini mission, which gathered data about Saturn and its moons between 2004 and 2017. “The Cassini spacecraft's numerous gravity measurements of Titan revealed that the moon is hiding an underground ocean of liquid water,” according to the current version of NASA's webpage about Titan.
Journaux and his colleagues used improved, up-to-date techniques to put Cassini's radiometric measurements through a fresh round of analysis — and came to a different conclusion.
The earlier round of research proposed that there was a layer of liquid water potentially measuring hundreds of miles in thickness, sandwiched between Titan's outer shell of low-pressure ice and a denser layer of high-pressure ice. That hypothesis was based on the best information available at the time about how tidal stresses propagated through Titan's interior.
In contrast, the newly published research finds insufficient evidence for a liquid layer that large. Instead, it suggests that there's an upper layer of low-pressure ice, roughly 106 miles (170 kilometers) thick, which transitions into a 235-mile-thick (378-kilometer-thick) layer of high-pressure ice.
Pockets of slush and liquid water could exist within and between layers of ice, or between the deepest layer of ice and Titan's core. That gives Journaux cause for hope.
“Even a conservative melt fraction of 1% of the hydrosphere (to account for the observed tidal dissipation) would still correspond to total volumes of liquid water inside Titan comparable to that of the entire Atlantic Ocean, implying the presence of vast potential habitable spaces,” Journaux said.
Journaux pointed out that ice tends to exclude salts and other dissolved materials as it freezes, which means “these slushy, near-melting environments would be enriched in dissolved species and nutrients for life to feed on, as opposed to a dilute open ocean.”
“For these reasons, there is strong justification for continued optimism regarding the potential for extraterrestrial life on Titan,” he said.
Such life would probably be most similar to the types of organisms found in sea-ice ecosystems on Earth. “This realization helps constrain the range of plausible life forms and signatures to target, thereby sharpening and strengthening our search strategies,” Journaux said.
Titan's interior is by no means the Saturnian moon's only region of interest: Titan also has lakes of liquid ethane and methane, plus an atmosphere that's rich in hydrocarbons. If life exists on the surface, most astrobiologists say it would be nothing like life as we know it today.
NASA's Dragonfly mission, which is due to lift off from Earth in 2028 and touch down on Titan in 2034, could provide new insights about the moon's surface conditions and its interior structure.
Looking beyond Titan, there are several other icy moons in our solar system that are thought to harbor hidden reservoirs of water, including the Saturnian moon Enceladus and three of Jupiter's moons: Europa, Callisto and Ganymede. Those three Jovian worlds will get a close look from the European Space Agency's Juice spacecraft (launched in 2023) and NASA's Europa Clipper (launched in 2024).
Journaux hopes the results announced today will help other scientists get a better sense of what they should be looking for on all of these icy moons. “As our understanding of their interiors will become much more accurate and refined with upcoming missions … this result shows us how we can, with new measurements, place much stronger and more precise constraints on the types of habitable environments that may exist,” he said.
Flavio Petricca of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is the corresponding author of the study published in Nature, “Titan's Strong Tidal Dissipation Precludes a Subsurface Ocean.” In addition to Journaux, co-authors include Steven D. Vance, Marzia Parisi, Dustin Buccino, Gael Cascioli, Julie Castillo-Rogez, Brynna G. Downey, Francis Nimmo, Gabriel Tobie, Andrea Magnanini, Ula Jones, Mark Panning, Amirhossein Bagheri, Antonio Genova and Jonathan I. Lunine.
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Google today released its fast and cheap Gemini 3 Flash model, based on the Gemini 3 released last month, looking to steal OpenAI's thunder. The company is also making this the default model in the Gemini app and AI mode in search.
The new Flash model arrives six months after Google announced the Gemini 2.5 Flash model, offering significant improvements. On the benchmark, the Gemini 3 Flash model outperforms its predecessor by a significant margin and matches the performance of other frontier models, like Gemini 3 Pro and GPT 5.2, in some measures.
For instance, it scored 33.7% without tool use on Humanity's Last Exam benchmark, which is designed to test expertise across different domains. In comparison, Gemini 3 Pro scored 37.5%, Gemini 2.5 Flash scored 11%, and the newly released GPT-5.2 scored 34.5%.
On the multimodality and reasoning benchmark MMMU-Pro, the new model outscored all competitors with an 81.2% score.
Google is making Gemini 3 Flash the default model in the Gemini app globally, replacing Gemini 2.5 Flash. Users can still choose the Pro model from the model picker for math and coding questions.
The company says the new model is good at identifying multimodal content and giving you an answer based on that. For instance, you can upload your pickleball short video and ask for tips; you can try drawing a sketch and have the model guess what you are drawing; or you can upload an audio recording to get analysis or generate a quiz.
The company also said the model better understands the intent of users' queries and can generate more visual answers with elements like images and tables.
You can also use the new model to create app prototypes in the Gemini app using prompts.
The Gemini 3 Pro is now available to everyone in the U.S. for search and more people in the U.S. can access the Nano Banana Pro image model in search, as well.
Google noted that companies like JetBrains, Figma, Cursor, Harvey, and Latitude are already using the Gemini 3 Flash model, which is available through Vertex AI and Gemini Enterprise.
For developers, the company is making the model available in a preview model through the API and in Antigravity, Google's new coding tool released last month.
The company said the Gemini 3 Pro scores 78% on the SWE-bench verified coding benchmark, only outperformed by GPT-5.2. It added that the model is ideal for video analysis, data extraction, and visual Q&A, and because of its speed, it is suited for quick and repeatable workflows.
Model pricing is $0.50 per 1 million input tokens and $3.00 per 1 million output tokens. This is slightly more expensive than $0.30 per 1 million input tokens and $2.50 per 1 million output tokens of Gemini Flash 2.5. But Google claims that the new model outperforms the Gemini 2.5 Pro model while being three times faster. And, for thinking tasks, it uses 30% fewer tokens on average than 2.5 Pro. That means overall, you might save on the number of tokens for certain tasks.
“We really position flash as more of your workhorse model. So if you look at, for example, even the input and output prices at the top of this table, Flash is just a much cheaper offering from an input and output price perspective. And so it actually allows for, for many companies, bulk tasks,” Tulsee Doshi, senior director & head of Product for Gemini Models, told TechCrunch in a briefing
Since it released Gemini 3, Google has processed over 1 trillion tokens per day on its API, amid its fierce release and performance war with OpenAI.
Earlier this month, Sam Altman reportedly sent an internal “Code Red” memo to the OpenAI team after ChatGPT's traffic dipped as Google's market share in consumers rose. Post that, OpenAI has released GPT-5.2 and a new image generation model. OpenAI also boasted about its growing enterprise use and said the ChatGPT messages volume has grown 8x since November 2024.
While Google didn't directly address the competition with OpenAI, it said that the release of new models is challenging all companies to be active.
“Just about what's happening across the industry is like all of these models are continuing to be awesome, challenge each other, push the frontier. And I think what's also awesome is as companies are releasing these models,” Doshi said.
“We're also introducing new benchmarks and new ways of evaluating these models. And so that's also encouraging us.”
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Ivan covers global consumer tech developments at TechCrunch. He is based out of India and has previously worked at publications including Huffington Post and The Next Web.
You can contact or verify outreach from Ivan by emailing im@ivanmehta.com or via encrypted message at ivan.42 on Signal.
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Donald Trump's appearances on the podcasts of Joe Rogan and Theo Von, among others, were seen by many as a key part of securing his second term in office.
But while Trump was speculating about alien life on Mars with Rogan, he had a team of acolytes appearing on dozens, if not hundreds, of much smaller niche podcasts hosted by right-wing content creators who typically don't talk about politics.
This is how, just six days before the election, Kash Patel, the man now struggling to run the FBI, ended up appearing on the Deplorable Discussions livestream, a fringe, QAnon-infused show hosted on a platform called Pilled.
“The Deep State exists,” Patel told the audience. “It's a Democratic-Republican uniparty swamp monster machine.”
At the time, there was no hard evidence behind an idea the Trump campaign appeared to understand instinctively: Social media creators, especially those who do not typically speak about politics, have an extraordinary ability to sway their audiences.
Now we have that evidence.
A new report, shared exclusively with WIRED and published today by researchers from Columbia and Harvard, is a first-of-its-kind study designed to measure the impact influencers and online creators can have on their audiences.
The study was conducted with 4,716 Americans aged between 18 and 45, most of whom were randomly assigned a list of progressive content creators to follow. Over the course of five months, from August to December 2024, these creators produced nonpartisan content designed to educate followers rather than explicitly advocate for a specific political viewpoint.
The results showed that exposure to these progressive-minded creators not only increased general political knowledge, but also shifted followers' policy and partisan views to the left.
In contrast, a placebo group that was not assigned any creators to follow but was allowed to scroll social media as normal “showed significant rightward movement,” which researchers said was related to the right-leaning nature of social media networks.
For the study's authors, and experts who have reviewed the research, the findings confirm that not only are influencers now potentially more powerful than traditional media, but content creators who rarely share political content may be the most powerful of all.
“The research concretizes what a lot of people have been hypothesizing, which is that content creators are a powerful force in politics, and they are absolutely going to play a big role in the 2026 midterms, and they will play an even bigger role in the 2028 elections,” says Samuel Woolley, an associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh who studies digital propaganda and who reviewed the research.
As well as trying to prove that social media influencers can shape public opinion, the researchers also wanted to find out if those creators were more or less influential when their content is more overtly political.
To do this, the researchers randomly assigned the study's participants a list of creators to follow, with some being assigned creators who mainly post about political issues, while others were assigned creators who are predominantly apolitical in their output.
The researchers found that exposure to content from both types of creator “produced unusually large and durable effects.” But what was most striking about the results for the report's authors was that it was the apolitical influencers who had the largest impact on survey and behavioral outcomes of their audience—three times more persuasive than political influencers per video focusing on politics or policy.
The report concludes that the reason for this greater impact is likely down to the type of parasocial relationships that those influencers have built with their audiences, which are reliant on trust and authenticity.
“We find that individual [creators]—who cultivate parasocial connections but often lack expertise or formal authority—can shape political preferences by establishing trust,” the researchers write.
And looking back at the rival campaigns, it is clear to see that the Trump campaign appears to have understood that need for authenticity—or at least the appearance of it.
While Patel was waxing lyrical about the threats posed by the deep state to a bunch of QAnon believers, Democrats were blowing hundreds of millions of dollars courting A-list celebrities to endorse Kamala Harris. And the authors of the study agree that in general, the Trump campaign's engagement with creators was much better thought out.
“It's fairly clear at this point that Republicans have been much more invested in building these relationships over the couple of years preceding the 2024 election,” says John Marshall, an associate professor of political science at Columbia University and co-author of the new report. “The intuitions which seemed to be borne out by our study are ones which many people had—that these smaller scale influencers, who are more accessible, more relatable, more credible, really had quite a lot of influence. People didn't fully understand just quite how many people were on that part of the internet.”
While the non-partisan messages shared by creators in this study are not the types of messages that campaigns will be seeking to share ahead of next year's mid-terms, there are a lot of lessons that campaigns can learn from the study's findings, including the fact that building relationships with these creators does not happen overnight.
“If I was in a campaign I would say we should start earlier,” says Nathaniel Lubin, a fellow at the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard University and co-author of the report. “We should treat this more like an organizing problem, or how to work with creators, rather than an advertising problem where you sort of raise money and then dump it in at the last minute.”
But simply engaging with creators is not enough. The study found that equally as important was figuring out how to get those creators to get your message across, which is not always as straightforward as telling people who to vote for.
“What this research is telling us is that the people who are most compelling, most persuasive when you actually consume their content, are the people who are not constantly producing political stuff—and by implication, the people who are not really bashing you over the head with [messages] like you have to vote Democrat,” says Marshall. “It's telling this broader narrative. It's having something which makes you seem independent.”
Harnessing the influence of social media creators is clearly a tantalizing opportunity for campaigns on both sides of the aisle ahead of next year's midterms, but there are some concerns about how transparent and ethical these relationships will be.
“This is both exciting but also incredibly concerning, because influencers don't work to the same standards as professional journalists,” says Woolley. “In a lot of my research, what we found is that influencers tend to lack any unified, ethical standards, that they feel more compelled to note when they're paid to do a commercial activity because of standing US law than they do when they're paid to do political activity.”
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by Taylor Soper on Dec 17, 2025 at 7:54 amDecember 17, 2025 at 7:54 am
Welcome back to another Startup Radar, where we highlight up-and-coming early stage startups across the Seattle region.
This time we're spotlighting founders working on digitizing golf scorecards, automating port operations, developing protein sequencing hardware, and tackling e-commerce returns.
Read on for brief descriptions of each company — and a pitch assessment from GPT-powered “Mean VC,” which we prompt to offer both positive and critical feedback.
Check out past Startup Radar posts here, and email me at [email protected] to flag other companies and startup news.
Founded: 2025
The business: Sports tech startup aiming to digitize scorecards for golfers. The goal is to preserve the traditional experience on the course while giving golfers advanced analytics after their rounds. Barkie is developing social features within its app and is launching next month.
Leadership: CEO Dane Renkert was a sales leader at Docugami, Komiko, and Ben Kinney Companies. He's also a competitive golfer who placed 13th at the 2009 World Long Drive Championships. His former Docugami colleague Zubin Wadia is a technical advisor.
Mean VC: “There's something charming about modern tech wrapped in the polite culture of golf — your timing's smart, too, with golf booming post-COVID. But digitizing scorecards isn't exactly a deep moat, and Arccos, Hole19, and 18Birdies already live here. The social angle could be your wedge in, but it needs to be more than ‘Strava for golfers' if you want retention after the novelty fades.”
Founded: 2025
The business: Software to help ports track containers using automation and AI-powered computer vision technology. The company is initially targeting small and medium-sized ports that it says have historically been excluded from being able to automate port operations. Gatein is bootstrapped and recently began working on a site in Europe.
Leadership: CEO Bernando Mendez-Arista is a longtime product leader with stints at Amazon, Volley Automation, RRAI, and Yaskawa Motoman. Co-founder and CTO Michael Pivtoraiko also worked at Volley and previously started two logistics tech companies.
Mean VC: “Smart to go after small and mid-size ports — they're often overlooked, yet desperate for modernization. But port operators move slow, and convincing them to adopt computer vision and AI is more about trust and track record than flashy tech. If you can show real savings and keep integration friction low, you might quietly build a very sticky business.”
Founded: 2023
The business: Early stage biotech startup developing a protein sequencing device. The company is stealthy for now but its website describes the business as a “comprehensive proteomics platform” for multi-biomarker screening. Primary Bioscience graduated from the Creative Destruction Labs' Vancouver program earlier this year.
Leadership: CEO Stacy Anderson most recently spent three years at Roche as a protein engineering scientist. She earned a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Mean VC: “Proteomics is white-hot, and if your device can actually accelerate multi-biomarker screening, the upside is massive. But ‘comprehensive platform' is vague, and stealth mode works better when people already know you're dangerous. The science background is strong, but the key question is: are you a tool company, a data company, or a pharma play pretending to be a device?”
Founded: 2025
The business: A “reverse logistics” startup that helps online retailers process and restock customer returns. It uses computer vision and AI agents to authenticate, grade, and resell returned items. The startup recently opened its first warehouse in Indianapolis to process returns.
Leadership: Founder and CEO Mayank Sharma spent more than a decade at Amazon, where he led teams working on last mile logistics and returns. Co-founder Maria Pavlovskaia was an engineering leader at Amazon and Uber.
Mean VC: “Reverse logistics is messy, costly, and growing — which makes it exactly the kind of boring problem that could be a monster business. Having ex-Amazon leadership is helpful here, but you'll need to prove your tech handles real-world chaos, not just demo videos. The first warehouse is a good start; now show you can scale ops without your gross margins vanishing into the void.”
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Bluesky, the social network that competes with X and Threads, is introducing a friend-finding feature that they claim respects user privacy, the company announced on Wednesday. To work, the app matches you with friends from your saved contacts in your phone's address book — but only if both people have opted in.
“Contact import has always been the most effective way to find people you know on a social app, but it's also been poorly implemented or abused by platforms,” the company explained in its announcement. “Even with encryption, phone numbers have been leaked or brute-forced, sold to spammers, or used by platforms for dubious purposes. We weren't willing to accept that risk, so we developed a fundamentally more secure approach that protects your data.”
In addition, social apps in the past often used contact matching as a lead-generation tool. That is, if the app found you had friends who were not on its service, it would recommend you “add” them. This would then send the friend an invite via text. Typically, those on the receiving end would not appreciate this app spam, though.
Unfortunately, the method has long been effective, and it helped apps go viral, as at least some of the invited users would download and try the app out of curiosity. But despite the initial buzz this method can create, it's not a guaranteed way to lock in users for the long term. (Though it may help a social app find an exit, when the market is open to M&A!)
Bluesky states that it won't send automated invites to your contacts, even if you choose to upload your address book to its service.
Instead, it allows users to send an invite to a friend directly — but this is a deliberate, manual action a user must take. (Because these are personal messages from a friend, you can't opt out of receiving invites, however.)
To use the Find Friends feature, you'll first verify your phone number by entering the six-digit code sent to you via SMS before uploading your contacts. This prevents bad actors from uploading random numbers in order to fish for information about Bluesky users, the company notes.
Early adopters should note that contact matching may take some time, but more people will begin showing up in this screen as more Bluesky users upload their own contacts to be matched. You'll only be matched with friends if both you and your friend have each other in your respective address books.
If you'd rather not be found by those you know from work or your real life, you can simply choose not to use the feature.
Bluesky says it stores uploaded contact information in hashed pairs, where your number is combined with each contact's number. This makes the data harder to reverse engineer, the company claims. The data's encryption is tied to a hardware key that's stored separately from the Bluesky database, as well. If you later want to remove your data from Bluesky, you can delete your uploaded contacts and opt out. Details on the technology were already made available to the security community as an RFC, in order to solicit feedback ahead of the launch.
The feature is rolling out now to Bluesky users in Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, the U.K., and the United States.
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Consumer News Editor
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Google launched its deepest AI research agent yet — on the same day OpenAI dropped GPT-5.2
Disney hits Google with cease-and-desist claiming ‘massive' copyright infringement
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Bluesky, the social network that competes with X and Threads, is introducing a friend-finding feature that they claim respects user privacy, the company announced on Wednesday. To work, the app matches you with friends from your saved contacts in your phone's address book — but only if both people have opted in.
“Contact import has always been the most effective way to find people you know on a social app, but it's also been poorly implemented or abused by platforms,” the company explained in its announcement. “Even with encryption, phone numbers have been leaked or brute-forced, sold to spammers, or used by platforms for dubious purposes. We weren't willing to accept that risk, so we developed a fundamentally more secure approach that protects your data.”
In addition, social apps in the past often used contact matching as a lead-generation tool. That is, if the app found you had friends who were not on its service, it would recommend you “add” them. This would then send the friend an invite via text. Typically, those on the receiving end would not appreciate this app spam, though.
Unfortunately, the method has long been effective, and it helped apps go viral, as at least some of the invited users would download and try the app out of curiosity. But despite the initial buzz this method can create, it's not a guaranteed way to lock in users for the long term. (Though it may help a social app find an exit, when the market is open to M&A!)
Bluesky states that it won't send automated invites to your contacts, even if you choose to upload your address book to its service.
Instead, it allows users to send an invite to a friend directly — but this is a deliberate, manual action a user must take. (Because these are personal messages from a friend, you can't opt out of receiving invites, however.)
To use the Find Friends feature, you'll first verify your phone number by entering the six-digit code sent to you via SMS before uploading your contacts. This prevents bad actors from uploading random numbers in order to fish for information about Bluesky users, the company notes.
Early adopters should note that contact matching may take some time, but more people will begin showing up in this screen as more Bluesky users upload their own contacts to be matched. You'll only be matched with friends if both you and your friend have each other in your respective address books.
If you'd rather not be found by those you know from work or your real life, you can simply choose not to use the feature.
Bluesky says it stores uploaded contact information in hashed pairs, where your number is combined with each contact's number. This makes the data harder to reverse engineer, the company claims. The data's encryption is tied to a hardware key that's stored separately from the Bluesky database, as well. If you later want to remove your data from Bluesky, you can delete your uploaded contacts and opt out. Details on the technology were already made available to the security community as an RFC, in order to solicit feedback ahead of the launch.
The feature is rolling out now to Bluesky users in Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, the U.K., and the United States.
Topics
Consumer News Editor
Plan ahead for the 2026 StrictlyVC events. Hear straight-from-the-source candid insights in on-stage fireside sessions and meet the builders and backers shaping the industry. Join the waitlist to get first access to the lowest-priced tickets and important updates.
Google tests an email-based productivity assistant
DoorDash driver faces felony charges after allegedly spraying customers' food
With iOS 26.2, Apple lets you roll back Liquid Glass again — this time on the Lock Screen
Google launched its deepest AI research agent yet — on the same day OpenAI dropped GPT-5.2
Disney hits Google with cease-and-desist claiming ‘massive' copyright infringement
OpenAI fires back at Google with GPT-5.2 after ‘code red' memo
Google debuts ‘Disco,' a Gemini-powered tool for making web apps from browser tabs
© 2025 TechCrunch Media LLC.
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Posted:
Warner Bros. Discovery's (WBD) board of directors has rejected the $108 billion hostile takeover bid from David Ellison's Paramount Skydance, calling the offer “illusory,” and saying that Paramount had misled shareholders about its financing.
Saying it wants to honor its initial agreement to sell to Netflix, WBD's board wrote in a letter to shareholders that Paramount “has consistently misled WBD shareholders that its proposed transaction has a ‘full backstop' from the Ellison family.”
“It does not, and never has,” the letter reads.
WBD's board said Paramount's tender offer remains “inferior to the Netflix merger” and noted that Netflix's $27.75-per-share offer for Warner Bros' Hollywood studios and streaming business “is a binding agreement with enforceable commitments, with no need for any equity financing and robust debt commitments.”
Netflix welcomed the move. “The Warner Bros. Discovery board reinforced that Netflix's merger agreement is superior and that our acquisition is in the best interests of stockholders,” said Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos in a statement.
Paramount and Ellison's backers, including his father, tech billionaire Larry Ellison, will review WBD's rejection and determine whether to raise their offer, Variety reports.
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Wedding glass and PLP ahead of others?
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Rapidus, which positions itself as a vertically integrated chipmaker that offers both front-end semiconductor production and back-end packaging, plans to discuss its efforts in the field of panel-level packaging (PLP) on glass substrates at SEMICON Japan event this week, reports Nikkei. Panel-level packaging on glass substrates is among the most advanced chip packaging technologies that is set to emerge in the coming years.
The core of Rapidus's development is 600mm x 600mm glass panels that are used to make substrates for high-end multi-chiplet processors, such as those used for AI and HPC accelerators. This means that Rapidus plans to leap ahead of its rivals using both panel-level packaging and glass core substrates, which is a risky, but perhaps necessary move, as the company only plans to offer leading-edge process technologies and the most sophisticated packaging technologies for customers who need them. The company has been experimenting with glass panels since June, so its PLP and glass-related efforts are at the very early stages.
Today's advanced packaging technologies (such as TSMC's CoWoS) rely on silicon interposers with fine-pitch redistribution layers (RDLs) and through-silicon vias (TSVs) that electrically connect GPUs and HBM stacks. Such interposers are processed on 300-mm silicon wafers using front-end–like semiconductor manufacturing steps, but after they are ready, they are placed on organic package substrates.
Silicon is used because it supports very high wiring density, tight dimensional control, and thermal expansion behavior that is designed to match logic and memory dies. However, properties of organic substrates sometimes do not match those of silicon interposers (limited wiring density, warpage at large sizes, weaker thermal and mechanical stability, etc.), which is why established players like AMD, Intel, and Samsung are exploring glass-core substrates for their next-generation packaging flows.
Glass-based substrates offer clear advantages over traditional organic materials, including excellent flatness that enables exceptional dimensional control, which is a key requirement for dense interconnects in advanced system-in-packages (SiPs) built from multiple chiplets. In addition, glass delivers stronger thermal performance and mechanical rigidity, enabling it to tolerate higher operating temperatures and harsher conditions typical of data center–class SiPs. As a result, glass substrates are particularly well matched for AI and cloud processor designs that tend to rely on large, complex, and thermally demanding multi-die packages. Yet, glass substrates are currently in development and are not in mass production.
Panel-level packaging refers to processing chip packages on large rectangular panels rather than round wafers, and today it is used mainly in fan-out panel-level packaging (FOPLP) for some automotive, power, RF, and wearable solutions, though they are not yet common. PLP offers clear advantages over 300-mm wafers: they can offer more efficient manufacturing and a larger package. However, currently, there are no higher-end semiconductor packaging tools that can enable front-end-like processing on panels. As a result, PLP for AI and HPC packages is still in the development stage at Intel and Samsung. That said, the ongoing work on glass-based panels suggests PLP could become viable in the late 2020s at the earliest, initially as a way to replace very large organic substrates and potentially complement (but not fully replace) silicon interposers in advanced AI system-on-chips (SoCs).
Meanwhile, Rapidus seems to plan to wed PLP with glass substrates from the very start, though it is unclear when it intends to do so. Nonetheless, Rapidus's ambitions to be ahead of the industry clearly highlight the company's aggressive plans to become a leading chipmaker right from the very start.
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Underwater autonomous vessels and robots could play a substantial role in defense operations, but submersibles have historically had trouble communicating across large distances unless they rose to the surface. But coming up to transmit poses the very obvious risk of being exposed.
Skana Robotics thinks it's made a breakthrough with underwater communications using AI — but not the large language models the industry touts today.
Tel Aviv-based Skana has developed a new capability for its fleet management software system, SeaSphere, that allows groups of vessels to communicate with each other underwater across long distances using AI.
The system allows vessels to share data and react to what they hear from other robots. This, Skana says, gives individual units the ability to autonomously adapt to the information they receive and change their course or task while still working toward the same general mission as the fleet. The startup says its software can also be used to secure underwater infrastructure and supply chains.
“Communication between vessels is one of the main challenges during the deployment of multi-domain, multi-vessel operations,” Idan Levy, the co-founder and CEO of Skana Robotics, told TechCrunch. “The problem that we tackle is how you can deploy hundreds of unmanned vessels in an operation, share data, communicate on the surface level and under the water.”
Teddy Lazebnik, an AI scientist and professor at the University of Haifa in Israel, led the research to develop this new capability. Lazebnik told TechCrunch that to build this decision-making algorithm, they couldn't turn to the latest AI technology, but had to use AI algorithms that are a bit older and more mathematically driven.
“The new algorithms have two properties: they are more powerful, but as a result, are less predictable,” Lazebnik said. “Hypothetically, you're paying in the performance or the “wow effect” of the of this algorithm, but the older ones, you gain explainability, predictability and actually generality.”
Skana Robotics was founded in 2024 and exited stealth mode earlier this year. The company is currently focused on selling to governments and companies in Europe, as maritime threat levels increase due to the war between Russia and Ukraine.
Levy said the company is in talks for a sizable government contract that it hopes to close by the end of the year. In 2026, Skana hopes to release the commercial version of its product and start proving its tech out in the wild.
“We want to show we can use this in scale,” Lazebnik said. “We argue that our software can handle complex maneuvers, etc. We want to show it. We claim we know how to manage an operation. We want admirals from EU and in EU countries to actually check this argument and see by themselves that we actually get results.”
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2D materials are getting closer to manufacturability using industry-standard equipment.
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2D transistors based on 2D materials have been demonstrated in academia and research labs for more than a decade, but none of these demonstrations were compatible with high-volume semiconductor manufacturing, as they relied on small wafers, custom research tools, and fragile process steps. But this week, Intel Foundry and imec demonstrated a 300-millimeter–ready integration of critical process modules for 2D field-effect transistors (2DFETs), indicating that 2D materials and 2DFETs are moving closer to reality.
Modern leading-edge logic process technologies — such as Intel's 18A, Samsung SF3E, TSMC's N2 — rely on gate-all-around (GAA) devices, and all leading chipmakers are also developing complementary FETs (CFETs) to vertically stack transistors to extend density gains beyond what is possible with GAA. CFETs are considered the next step beyond gate-all-around transistors and are expected to emerge in the next decade. However, Intel and other chipmakers argue that continued scaling will eventually push silicon channels to their physical limits, where electrostatic control and carrier mobility degrade due to extremely small dimensions. To address this, the industry is increasingly evaluating 2D materials, which can form channels only a few atoms thick while maintaining strong current control.
Intel and Imec presented a paper at IDM that details their work on the family of transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDs). In the demonstrated structures, WS₂ and MoS₂ were used for n-type transistors, while WSe₂ served as the p-type channel material. Although these compounds have been studied for years, the main challenge has been integrating them into a 300-mm wafer fab flow without damaging the fragile channels or relying on processing steps that cannot be reliably performed in a high-volume manufacturing environment.
The core innovation presented by Intel and imec is a fab-compatible contact and gate-stack integration scheme. Intel grew high-quality 2D layers and capped them with a multilayer stack of AlOx, HfO₂, and SiO₂. Then a carefully controlled selective oxide etch — a process that is conceptually similar to traditional interconnect fabrication — enabled formation of damascene-style top contacts. This step preserved the integrity of the underlying 2D channels, which are highly sensitive to contamination and physical damage.
This damascene top-contact approach addresses one of the most difficult challenges in 2DFET development: forming low-resistance, scalable contacts using processes compatible with production tools. Alongside the contacts, Intel and imec also demonstrated manufacturable gate-stack modules, a major hurdle that has historically prevented 2D devices from achieving industrial integration.
The importance of this joint work by Intel and imec doesn't lie in immediate productization, as 2D transistors based on 2D materials belong to the long-term future, perhaps in the second half of the 2030s or even in the 2040s. The value of the work is more about de-risking the development and eventual production of chips that will rely on 2D materials. By validating contact and gate modules in a production-class environment, Intel Foundry enables customers and internal design teams to evaluate 2D channels using realistic, scalable process assumptions rather than idealized lab environments. This approach is intended to accelerate device benchmarking, compact modeling, and early design exploration.
For now, Intel's strategy is to treat 2D materials as a future option that can be assessed well before silicon reaches its ultimate limits. By co-developing processes with partners like imec and exposing them to fab-like constraints early, Intel hopes to solve the challenges associated with their manufacturing early, avoiding late-stage surprises when new materials are finally needed.
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For Intel Foundry, the announcement sends two important messages. Firstly, Intel Foundry continues to conduct long-term research on technologies that will be needed years, if not decades, away, meaning that it will have solutions for the semiconductor industry in the 2030s or 2040s, and, therefore, is a reliable manufacturing partner. Secondly, Intel shows that even at the research stage, new transistor concepts must be developed with manufacturability in mind.
Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News, or add us as a preferred source, to get our latest news, analysis, & reviews in your feeds.
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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I'm really into tech, science, and all that jazz. After all, tech introduced me to the wonderful world of fanfiction, and science created Ingenuity, my favorite Martian space helicopter (it also plays a big role in one of my go-to shows: The Big Bang Theory).
That being said, I also rarely gift tech- or science-related presents to my friends or loved ones. First of all, getting someone a tech gift is hard. There are boundless things you have to consider. For instance, how can you make sure they don't have it already without giving yourself away? Can you gift Android devices to an Apple cultist? What if they don't use it and just dump it in the typical basket or closet for unused gadgets?
There's also the price. Tech gifts can be expensive, and I am not looking to spend that kind of money on the office Secret Santa or on a gift for the cousin I see once a year. No offense.
Faced with this panorama, and as a tech enthusiast, I've often gifted the next best, tech-adjacent gifts: coffee mugs. They're the perfect small yet thoughtful gift that people can actually use. Every time I use one of my mugs—the most recent is a Jigglypuff-themed one I got in a white elephant exchange—I fondly remember the person that gave it to me, and then proceed to show it off.
Working late or early, or just want a better way to start off the day? Grab your favorite mug. You don't even have to be a coffee drinker. I fill them with tea, water, kombucha, and even beer (off the clock, of course).
Here are a few of the geeky, original coffee mugs that I'm coveting this year. If you're looking for a small gift that's fun and original, you can't go wrong with one of these. There are, naturally, lots of other options out there, so if anything, use this list as inspiration to get those mental wheels turning.
Snorlax coffee mug
I am not a morning person. In fact, I'm not even a person at all until I've chugged down some sweet caffeine. That's probably why I think Snorlax is one of my spirit Pokémon (who said you should limit yourself to one?) and why I don't mind being compared to a round, lazy, fictional creature that's always sleeping. I don't do that nearly often enough.
Lego mug
How I wish I were a Lego person. I've tried. I would really love to have some Lego flowers in my apartment, given that I can't have real flowers because of my cats. But I've long accepted that I'm an idiot when it comes to trying to build anything with Legos.
Now, a Lego-themed coffee mug? That I can get behind. Besides this model, there are also cups with a winking Lego girl, a Lego skeleton, and a silly Lego man sticking his tongue out.
Princess Peach mug
There were two reasons this rad Princess Peach mug caught my eye. First: Princess Peach, duh. Second: the color. Pink is cool! We need more pink in the world. This lovely Princess Peach mug will make you feel like a winner every time you take a sip of your coffee/tea/beverage of choice.
For the cherry on top, let out a casual, “Oh, did I win?” while you're using your mug.
Super Mario Bros. mug
If the person you're shopping for has a love for nostalgia and Super Mario Bros., fear not, our favorite red-hatted plumber has you covered. Besides being an homage to Nintendo's first Super Mario game in 1985, this great cup changes color depending on whether the beverage is hot or old. Who said you needed a screen to see cool special effects?
Stranger Things mug
It's taken almost a decade, but this month we'll finally learn just how things end for our favorite band of “kids” (*cough* adults *cough*) in Hawkins. Honestly, I'm not upset that it's taken Netflix forever to finish this show. I like it! I may not remember what happened in season four, but I like it.
One thing I do remember is my girl, Eleven, who will live on in my heart as an eternal badass no matter what happens at the end.
Star Trek mug
I may be a homebody, but even I would be willing to pack my suitcase if it meant getting to visit the USS Enterprise. Unfortunately, a ship like the Enterprise is unlikely to be built in my lifetime. That only leaves the next best option: living vicariously through merch.
This was the mindset I was in when I stumbled upon this ultra-cool USS Enterprise camper mug. It's just the reminder you need to boldly go where no man has gone before.
It's fine meme mug
Overall, I try to have a good and positive attitude, but even I have those days where everything seems to be on fire. In fact, I sometimes joke that I feel like the meme of exasperated Elmo in hell or the dog surrounded by flames. Of course, my first choice in this case was Elmo in hell (I just think his little arms look kind of funny in that meme), but I wasn't able to find a cool mug that did the meme justice. (Damn you, Sesame Street lawyers!)
I was able to find a mug with a dog surrounded by flames, though, and I'm already thinking about the beer I'll fill it up with at the end of a long day.
Star Wars mug
This wouldn't be a Gizmodo list if I didn't include a Star Wars mug, and I think I've managed to find just the one that makes the inexplicable Force in George Lucas' world easy to understand. Yeah, it's a bit corny, but given how much shit is going on in the world right now, we could all use a little help from the Force.
Legend of Zelda Hyrule Crest Earthenware mug
To my eternal shame, I got stuck on one of the puzzles at the beginning of Tears of the Kingdom and got so frustrated that I abandoned the game. Sigh. Playing video games isn't my strong suit, so I just stick to watching others. Luckily, it is within my capabilities to drink from this cool Legend of Zelda mug, which is an ideal gift for fans of the game.
Demon Slayer Nezuko mug
With the release of Infinity Castle, Demon Slayer proved once again that it's one of the greatest animes to come out in the past few years. And with great success comes a whole lot of merch. I am definitely digging it, but when there's this much hype, I prefer to go for merch that's a bit more unique.
That's how I found this delightful Nezuko mug, which connected right with my inner cat mom. Not many of my favorite things in life sit in places where they fit, but Nezuko and my cats do.
Howl's Moving Castle mug
Out of all of Studio Ghibli's magical characters, Calcifer from Howl's Moving Castle may be my favorite. I love how the sassy little fire makes room for everyone in their odd and misshapen moving castle, even though he does complain while he's doing it. And who can forget his infamous phrase? “May all your bacon burn.”
Now imagine that on a mug.
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Gadgets gifts are the best gifts to get friends and family.
These science-themed gifts mix brains and fun.
The smartest gifts are often the smartest books.
Nothing too crazy, just some humble and reasonable items that I've gotten a lot of value from.
'Tis the season to be jolly, and you can get into the geeky spirit with these must-have gifts and decorations for the festive nerd in your life.
Whether you're on Team iPhone or Android, like flat phones or foldables, we've found the best phones released this year.
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Deepfakes are a growing problem for any organization jacked into the internet. They can be especially dangerous when weaponized by nation-states and cybercriminals.
“When people think about deepfakes, they often picture fake videos or voice-cloned calls,” noted Arif Mamedov, CEO of Regula Forensics, a global developer of forensic devices and identity verification solutions. “In reality, the bigger risk runs much deeper. Deepfakes are dangerous because they attack identity itself, which is the foundation of digital trust.”
“Unlike traditional fraud, which relies on stolen or leaked data, deepfakes allow criminals to recreate existing or create entirely new people — complete with faces, voices, documents, and believable behavior,” he told TechNewsWorld. “These identities can look legitimate from the very first interaction.”
He explained that deepfakes create three significant risks. First, authentication breaks down when facial recognition, voice authentication, or document scanning relies on static or replayable signals. Second, fraud scales fast. AI enables the generation of thousands of fake identities simultaneously, turning fraud into an industrial process. And third, deepfakes create false confidence. They often pass existing controls, so organizations think they're protected while fraud quietly grows.
“Our 2025 research shows that deepfakes don't replace traditional fraud — they amplify it, exposing old weaknesses and making them far more expensive,” he added.
Mike Engle, chief strategy officer for 1Kosmos, a digital identity verification and passwordless authentication company headquartered in Iselin, N.J., explained that traditional security assumes that once someone is authenticated, they are legitimate. “Deepfakes break that assumption,” he told TechNewsWorld.
“AI can now convincingly impersonate executives, employees, job candidates, or customers using synthetic voices, faces, and documents, allowing attackers to bypass onboarding and help desk and approval workflows that were never designed to detect manufactured identities,” he said. “Once a fake identity is enrolled, every downstream control — MFA, VPNs, SSO — ends up protecting the attacker instead of the organization.”
Deepfakes don't break systems first — they break human judgment, maintained David Lee, CTO of Saviynt, an identity governance and access management company in El Segundo, Calif.
“When a voice or video sounds right, people move quickly, skip verification, and assume authority is legitimate,” he told TechNewsWorld. “That's what makes deepfakes so effective. A believable executive voice can authorize payments, override processes, or create urgency that short-circuits rational decision-making before security controls ever come into play.”
“As with any fraud or scam, a deepfake-driven scam puts any business at risk, but especially smaller or thin-margined businesses, where financial impacts can have a disproportionate affect on the health and viability of the entity,” added James E. Lee, president of the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC), a nonprofit organization devoted to minimizing risk and mitigating the impact of identity compromise and crime, in San Diego.
“Deepfakes can lead to data breaches; loss of control of processes, systems, and equipment; and ultimately financial impacts in the form of actual losses, as well as unbudgeted expenses,” he told TechNewsWorld.
The proliferation of AI appears to have increased adversary activity. “Cybersecurity reports and regulatory warnings all indicate an exponential rise,” observed Ruth Azar-Knupffer, co-founder of VerifyLabs, a developer of deepfake detection technology, in Bletchingley, England.
“Threat actors are increasingly leveraging accessible AI tools, such as open source deepfake generators, to create convincing fakes efficiently,” she told TechNewsWorld. “The proliferation of digital communication, such as video calls and social media, has expanded attack opportunities, making deepfakes a growing vector for scams and disinformation.”
Regula's Mamedov added that the reason deepfake use is accelerating is simple. “The tools are cheap or free, the models are widely available, and the quality of output now exceeds what many verification systems were built to handle,” he explained.
“What used to be an individual effort to craft a convincing deepfake is now a plug-and-play ecosystem,” he continued. “Fraudsters can buy complete ‘persona kits' on demand: synthetic faces, deepfake voices, digital backstories. This marks a shift from small-scale, manual fraud to industrial-scale identity fabrication.”
He cited Regula data showing that about one in three organizations has already experienced deepfake fraud. “That's the same frequency as long-standing threats such as document fraud or social engineering,” he said. “Identity spoofing, biometric fraud, and deepfakes now sit firmly in the mainstream fraud playbook.”
One way organizations are addressing the deepfake problem is through training. For example, KnowBe4, a well-known cybersecurity training company based in Clearwater, Fla., rolled out new training on Monday aimed at defending organizations from deepfakes.
KnowBe4 Chief Human Risk Management Strategist Perry Carpenter explained that the training focuses on employee interaction with deepfakes.
“The single best thing that anybody can do is if they feel like there's an emotion that's being pulled in some way, some emotional lever that's being touched, whether that is fear or urgency or authority or hope or anything else, that should actually be a signal for them to slow down, and start to analyze the story, the thing that's being asked of them, and ask does it raise any red flags?” he told TechNewsWorld.
“You'll notice, I'm not talking about looking at the deepfake to say, does the mouth look right or does the voice sound right?” he continued. “Those are all things that we can do, but those are things that will go away within the next six months to a year, as the technology gets better.”
“So, the last thing I want somebody to do is to believe that there will always be a visual or audio tell that they can figure out,” he said. “The best thing is always going to be, am I feeling manipulated in some way? Is this asking me to do something out of the ordinary? Is it touching on an emotion in some way? Then how can I verify this through another channel?”
“Deepfakes are just the newest tech tool in the attacker's toolbox,” he added. “The mode of deception and the narrative attack and the emotions are age-old.”
Rich Mogull, chief analyst with the Cloud Security Alliance, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to cloud best practices, agreed that employees shouldn't rely on visual or audio artifacts to identify deepfakes. “Instead of relying on looking for visual or auditory signs, I recommend looking for behavioral signs and having process controls to prevent the kinds of fraud they are used for,” he told TechNewsWorld.
He recommended requiring multiple checks before issuing a bank transfer and implementing internal controls that block attempts to circumvent them. He also suggested training employees to validate CEO calls via an out-of-band channel, such as Slack/Teams, and to look for social engineering signals, such as “we don't have time for that, just do it now.”
While acknowledging that employees can be trained to combat deepfakes, Saviynt's Lee argued that training alone isn't enough. “Awareness helps people pause, but it doesn't replace verification,” he said. “The real shift is teaching employees to stop asking ‘Is this real?' and start asking ‘What confirms this?' That means callback procedures, secondary approval paths, and removing voice or video as standalone trust signals.”
“If your control depends on someone recognizing a fake, you don't have control-you have a gamble,” he noted.
“Deepfakes aren't the core problem. They're a stress test,” Lee added. “They expose how many organizations still rely on recognition instead of verification.”
“The long-term solution isn't better human detection,” he continued. “It's treating identity as something that must be explicitly validated and continuously enforced by systems. When trust is no longer implicit, deepfakes lose their power.”
John P. Mello Jr. has been an ECT News Network reporter since 2003. His areas of focus include cybersecurity, IT issues, privacy, e-commerce, social media, artificial intelligence, big data and consumer electronics. He has written and edited for numerous publications, including the Boston Business Journal, the Boston Phoenix, Megapixel.Net and Government Security News. Email John.
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The P1 is the latest addition to Anycubic's Photon lineup.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here's how it works.
Anycubic recently announced its newest resin printer for the consumer marketplace, the Anycubic Photon P1. This printer supports dual-color and dual-material printing with an optional upgrade kit. This has long been awaited by many in the resin printing community, as no MSLA printer currently on the market can perform this task.
The Anycubic Photon P1 has a retail price of $799, but is currently available at a Super Early Bird sale price of $499 on Kickstarter.
Anycubic is known for offering high-quality machines and innovative tech upgrades on its printers. The Anycubic P1 will no doubt make a big splash in the resin printing world with its unique ability to use dual vats. This can deliver excellent value for those looking to print two parts in different resins simultaneously. For example, the user can design a rigid part with a flexible insert and print them together in a single run, without needing to swap vats or change settings.
Although the Anycubic P1 is geared toward the precision and industrial resin-printing market, that doesn't mean the everyday user can't use it for standard resin printing. We look forward to running the P1 through its paces and seeing what the P1 offers once our review unit arrives, so stay tuned.
The Anycubic P1 ships with an industrial-grade ball screw system for that smooth printing process. It also features an upgraded LightTurbo 4.0 system to ensure consistent exposure throughout the print. The Anycubic P1 even includes an intelligent, temperature-controlled resin tank for use in colder climates. This is a great feature to have because resin typically doesn't perform well at room temperatures below 68°F, so ensuring the resin temperature is consistent helps produce a successful print.
Notably, the Anycubic P1 uses a “Wave Release Technology.” This is a new feature we've seen in resin printers that reduces peel force by 60% by adding a wave-textured layer to the glass above the screen. This reduces strain on the FEP release film, ultimately helping your print succeed.
Having this kind of tech alone makes me think Anycubic is on the right track to make the user experience even easier for both new and experienced makers. It's encouraging to see a resin printer company listen to its customers and work to deliver the best user experience for everyone.
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Anycubic's Kickstarter for the Photon P1 has officially launched. If you plan to add this printer to your workspace, you may want to consider optional accessories to enhance your printing experience. Anycubic offers a dual-material print kit, a perforated build plate, Wash & Cure 3 Plus, Air Pure 2.0, elastic resin, 14K resin, and wear-resistant material resin when backing this project. Estimated ship dates start Q1 2026.
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About 10 Apple employees spent some of their valuable hours over recent months on a project that might seem unusual for the tech giant: customizing an open source AI tool for ImageTek, a small manufacturer in Springfield, Vermont whose lines of business include printing millions of labels for food packaging.
The Apple engineers developed a computer vision system to automatically identify color errors, and on one run it picked up bacon labels with a far-too-pinkish beige before they got shipped, according to Marji Smith, ImageTek's president. She says the timely catch helped ImageTek from losing a crucial customer. While not revolutionary, the technology requires finagling that comes easy with experience in AI—something that ImageTek lacks.
A photo booth developed with Apple's help to take pictures of a bacon label to measure for color accuracy using AI.
“We're not a gigantic company, and we don't have any AI or software team,” Smith says of the 31-year-old, 54-employee business. “What Apple is doing is positively impactful for us.”
ImageTek isn't an Apple supplier. Instead, the engineering assistance it's receiving is a previously unreported portion of the $600 billion investment in US manufacturing through 2028 that Apple announced this year. The iPhone maker committed to opening up a server factory in Houston, which it did recently. It also pledged to increase spending with domestic suppliers and educate “the next generation of US manufacturers.”
For a company with 166,000 employees and $112 billion in annual profit last fiscal year, the investment in education is small. In August, the company launched a training program, known as the Apple Manufacturing Academy. It's run in partnership with Michigan State University, which is receiving $2.5 million from Apple to partially reimburse for classrooms, marketing, and instructors as part of the first 12 months of a three-year deal, according to a contract obtained by WIRED through a public records request.
An attendee looks over one of the demos at a recent Apple Manufacturing Academy workshop.
The academy has held free monthly workshops in Detroit to share lessons with and provide networking opportunities for over 100 small-time manufacturers from around the country. What's significant is that ImageTek and two other participants revealed to WIRED that they are receiving an unexpected bonus in the form of site visits and deep technical support from Apple employees. “I haven't found any strings attached,” Smith says.
Jamie Herrera, a director of product operations at Apple who oversees the academy, says its goal is to make an impact. “It takes a little bit more than just what you can get out of a training session,” he says. “We're able to pair them up with engineers, experts … and go deeper into: How do we take that learning and start to turn it into application?”
Apple has just one factory, which assembles iMacs in Ireland, and is generally secretive about its manufacturing processes. But its staff have decades of knowledge from collaborating with partners such as Foxconn—mostly outside the US—that make parts or put them into iPhones and other Apple products. Academy participants believe they have been treated to unique candor, including about how Apple recovered from its 2014 Bendgate scandal, in which some iPhone 6 models warped in tight pockets.
The company has run a training program for manufacturers in South Korea for several years. By opening up in the US, Apple could show the Trump administration, which is focused on increasing domestic manufacturing, that the company is rolling up its sleeves. That could help it win favors on tariffs and other potentially costly policies. “It's goodwill,” says Harry Moser, founder of the industry-supported Reshoring Initiative, which tracks and encourages US manufacturing investments. “It's great they are doing it, and there's very few companies that have the money to do it.”
To a small extent, working with upstarts could provide Apple employees fun opportunities for experimentation that may even inform its own manufacturing.
Herrera says Apple is not seeking any direct benefit from what he described as the significant investment of labor. “What we're looking at is that rising sea for all ships,” he says. “The fact that we're able to help US manufacturers in any way we can to elevate and accelerate their progress, it's only going to be better for everyone.”
Jobs in US manufacturing have barely budged over the past decade, but trillions of dollars in projects are in the works by Moser's estimate. Ultimately, a more robust US manufacturing sector could help companies like Apple potentially lower their costs.
Smith, a longtime manufacturing executive, joined ImageTek last year and applied for Apple's academy at the first chance. “We see what's happening with the return of tech manufacturing to the US, and we want to be a part of that,” she says. “We're investing and growing a lot right now, and we're hungry for support.”
This year, three people from Apple traveled to the machinery manufacturing region in Vermont colloquially known as Precision Valley to visit ImageTek, which also assembles products including circuit boards, and as of recently, agricultural drones. Smith laid bare to the visitors ImageTek's challenges. When she mentioned how humidity, worker errors, and machine failures were affecting color quality in label printing, the Apple team suggested setting up a camera and an automated tool to compare an ideal sample to fresh prints.
“People on the internet have been known to argue about the color of stripes on a dress,” Smith says. “Having a data-based approach was something we needed.”
Beginning in September, a larger group from Apple has joined 30-minute calls nearly every week to coach ImageTek through the process and hand off code. Smith described the employees as mostly having over a decade of experience at Apple in manufacturing operations and quality.
The color comparison is currently done off to the side of the factory. The goal is to integrate the setup directly into the press and expand it to catch errors in other products. Smith says the Apple team has been eager to keep helping. No one has mentioned who owns the code and whether a bill will ever come due.
“We haven't talked about licensing or rights,” Smith says. But with customers such as the bacon maker renewing their contracts with ImageTek because of quality improvements, the company is in its best financial position ever and striving to grow enough to supply Apple someday.
Amtech Electrocircuits, a family-owned electronics manufacturer based in suburban Detroit, also applied to the manufacturing academy as soon as it could. CEO Jay Patel says he came to the realization that he needed outside expertise to compete with overseas manufacturers and grow the company his father had started. “I will not camp outside an Apple store to get an iPhone,” he says. “But I will camp outside the manufacturing academy to make sure we get in.”
Patel did get into the first workshop in August. Ever since, he and his team have been meeting over video with a couple of Apple process engineers for an hour every one or two weeks. They are helping Amtech introduce sensors and analytics tools to reduce downtime in the production of electronics used in agriculture, medicine, and other fields. “We need to mitigate the waste so we can be more competitive,” Patel says.
Overall, about 15 companies have received extensive consulting, Apple's Herrera says. An additional beneficiary has been Walkerton, Indiana-based Polygon, which began making fishing rods about 75 years ago before specializing in industrial products such as tubes that are snaked through the body to remove tumors. Apple isn't a customer.
Ben Fouch, chief financial officer for Polygon, says older machines give the company troubles; for example, a Haas mill that occasionally punches poorly-located holes in tubes and a centerless grinder that can't track its output. Workers have to manually inspect thousands of parts a day, limiting production, and holding Polygon back from its goal of doubling annual sales to north of $100 million.
Fouch knew automated sensors could help by, for example, identifying the environmental culprits of the hole-punching issues, but with so many potential options to try he didn't know where to start. “The worst thing you can do, in a smaller business especially, is muddle through pilot purgatory, hoping to find a viable product,” he says. “When someone else has done it before, they know the viable path, and they can save you the time and the expense.”
That's just what three directors and managers from Apple's engineering and operations teams offered when Fouch and Quinn Shanahan, who oversees Polygon's medical device production and special products, visited the manufacturing academy in October and November, respectively. Over what Fouch estimates was five hours, the Apple employees evaluated Polygon's challenges and applied the industrial engineering equation of Little's Law—which can identify capacity bottlenecks—to devise solutions.
The result was a detailed strategy mapping out sensors and software that could affordably track production and alert about anomalies. Polygon can now count the number of passes the tube makes through the grinder, and it will soon be able to understand whether an overheated motor or other factors could explain the botched hole punching, Shanahan says.
If all goes as planned, Polygon will have implemented a working system to address its most significant bottlenecks for no more than $50,000 compared to the $500,000 that an automation consultancy may have charged, according to Fouch. The Apple team is working on visiting Polygon to talk through other upgrades. “They have walked these paths before,” Fouch says. “Without their help, it's going to take us much longer.”
Apple's Herrera says giving small manufacturers a sense of the benefits of automation and other technologies could eventually lead them to work with consultants and invest in more expensive systems.
Two other academy participants tell WIRED that they have not received extensive assistance from Apple—Herrera says it comes down to which companies have prepared a “problem statement” that Apple can help with—but they are working to bring what they learned to their factories. Jack Kosloski, a project engineer at Blue Lake, a plastic-free packaging startup, says it was eye-opening for him to hear about the depth of Apple's product testing.
In one academy session, Apple employees described a robot that wears jeans and simulates bending over as part of stress testing to try to prevent a repeat of Bendgate, Kosloski recalls. “They go down into the specs of jeans, the materials, to make it the most accurate and reliable data they can have,” Kosloski says. “I had never seen something like that.”
Seth Greenberg, a senior account manager at Focus Integration—which is developing robots to load pallets—says technical drills and thought exercises led by Apple experts during his visit to the academy in September energized him so much that he happily returned this month.
Last week, Apple released online courses covering topics including quality control and computer vision to open the academy to a broader audience. Virtual participants are also promised extensive consulting from Apple.
As President Trump's tariffs force some companies to find US manufacturing partners, the recipients of Apple's help believe they are now better positioned to win some of the business.
ImageTek's Smith wants to invite Apple engineers back to Vermont to celebrate as its factory expands and off-color bacon labels become a relic. “We have been very glad they took an interest in us,” she says.
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In space, nobody can hear you scream as you sign the cheque.
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One of the latest points of "what if" discussions surrounding AI advancements and their need to absorb every watt of computing power revolves around putting datacenters in space for power and cooling benefits, and itvsounds like a grand idea on its face.
But going by the thoughts and online calculator of Andrew McCalip from Varda Space Industries, his personal opinion is that the economics of such a proposition are a proverbial kick in the teeth, and should make any sensible observer ask "why?". A technical deep-dive by Andrew Côté from Hyperstition Incorporated essentially concludes the same.
On the face of it, the idea has merit — solar power is plentiful when you don't have to deal with that annoying day/night cycle, and space is pretty darn chilly, minus some "minor" engineering challenges. Even with extremely optimistic projections, plus the hope that reusable rockets will continue to evolve, and ignoring many associated costs, McCalip's math puts a SpaceGPT installation at over three times the cost of its earthbound equivalent: a baseline $51.1 billion for space, compared to $15.9 billion on terra firma.
His online calculator is extremely detailed, letting one configure 15 parameter sliders to try and get a feel for how good (or bad) the idea is. Said parameters range from adjusting the launch cost to Low Earth Orbit (LEO), satellite size, GPU failure rates, as well as comparable earthbound figures.
It should be noted that McCalip's math only accounts for the bare logistical differences of a launch versus a standard build, with a lot of assumptions about engineering challenges, and he remarks as much. McCalip goes as far as calling the notion "FOMO and aesthetic futurism", and that "people are using back-of-the-envelope math, doing a terrible job of it, and only confirming whatever conclusion they already want."
That's a shot across the bow at the (literal) pie-in-the-sky ideas of using LEO satellites to host datacenters. It's also easy to understand the frustration of those who wish that datacenter buildouts would move faster. For terrestrial data centers, tons of time is spent navigating legal and literal ground, worrying about water supplies, ecological and carbon output concerns, and so on and so forth.
Solar power is always available, so its effective price can approach near zero, helping with lowering the operational cost. There's no regulation regarding land (or barely any regulation at all), and no need to worry about passing transmission lines either. Cooling looks easy on the surface level, with space radiators being extremely efficient. Plus, with the advancements coming from SpaceX et al are reportedly hovering around $1000 per kg to launch into LEO.
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Even though McCalip's analysis already puts the kibosh on the financial side, Andrew Côté's exceedingly deep dive into the engineering difficulties faced by such an enterprise delivers the killing blow. That's also an excellent read , as the list of things that can go wrong with setting up a datacenter in space can be reasonably summed up with "yes." Did you know, for example, that AI accelerators tend to up and die a lot when used at full tilt, and can't exactly be replaced in 5 minutes in space?
In these times where AI market valuations are climbing ever higher, it's arguably refreshing to see some down-to-earth thinking from those in know. Do check out McCalip's economic analysis and Côté's thoughts on the engineering challenges to be faced. Maybe one day the numbers will add up, but for now, it seems AI computing is best performed on good old terra firma.
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Bruno Ferreira is a contributing writer for Tom's Hardware. He has decades of experience with PC hardware and assorted sundries, alongside a career as a developer. He's obsessed with detail and has a tendency to ramble on the topics he loves. When not doing that, he's usually playing games, or at live music shows and festivals.
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Omar Yaghi thinks crystals with gaps that capture moisture could bring technology from “Dune” to the arid parts of Earth.
Omar Yaghi was a quiet child, diligent, unlikely to roughhouse with his nine siblings. So when he was old enough, his parents tasked him with one of the family's most vital chores: fetching water. Like most homes in his Palestinian neighborhood in Amman, Jordan, the Yaghis' had no electricity or running water. At least once every two weeks, the city switched on local taps for a few hours so residents could fill their tanks. Young Omar helped top up the family supply. Decades later, he says he can't remember once showing up late. The fear of leaving his parents, seven brothers, and two sisters parched kept him punctual.
Yaghi proved so dependable that his father put him in charge of monitoring how much the cattle destined for the family butcher shop ate and drank. The best-quality cuts came from well-fed, hydrated animals—a challenge given that they were raised in arid desert.
Specially designed materials called metal-organic frameworks can pull water from the air like a sponge—and then give it back.
But at 10 years old, Yaghi learned of a different occupation. Hoping to avoid a rambunctious crowd at recess, he found the library doors in his school unbolted and sneaked in. Thumbing through a chemistry textbook, he saw an image he didn't understand: little balls connected by sticks in fascinating shapes. Molecules. The building blocks of everything.
“I didn't know what they were, but it captivated my attention,” Yaghi says. “I kept trying to figure out what they might be.”
That's how he discovered chemistry—or maybe how chemistry discovered him. After coming to the United States and, eventually, a postdoctoral program at Harvard University, Yaghi devoted his career to finding ways to make entirely new and fascinating shapes for those little sticks and balls. In October 2025, he was one of three scientists who won a Nobel Prize in chemistry for identifying metal-organic frameworks, or MOFs—metal ions tethered to organic molecules that form repeating structural landscapes. Today that work is the basis for a new project that sounds like science fiction, or a miracle: conjuring water out of thin air.
When he first started working with MOFs, Yaghi thought they might be able to absorb climate-damaging carbon dioxide—or maybe hold hydrogen molecules, solving the thorny problem of storing that climate-friendly but hard-to-contain fuel. But then, in 2014, Yaghi's team of researchers at UC Berkeley had an epiphany. The tiny pores in MOFs could be designed so the material would pull water molecules from the air around them, like a sponge—and then, with just a little heat, give back that water as if squeezed dry. Just one gram of a water-absorbing MOF has an internal surface area of roughly 7,000 square meters.
Yaghi wasn't the first to try to pull potable water from the atmosphere. But his method could do it at lower levels of humidity than rivals—potentially shaking up a tiny, nascent industry that could be critical to humanity in the thirsty decades to come. Now the company he founded, called Atoco, is racing to demonstrate a pair of machines that Yaghi believes could produce clean, fresh, drinkable water virtually anywhere on Earth, without even hooking up to an energy supply.
That's the goal Yaghi has been working toward for more than a decade now, with the rigid determination that he learned while doing chores in his father's butcher shop.
“It was in that shop where I learned how to perfect things, how to have a work ethic,” he says. “I learned that a job is not done until it is well done. Don't start a job unless you can finish it.”
Most of Earth is covered in water, but just 3% of it is fresh, with no salt—the kind of water all terrestrial living things need. Today, desalination plants that take the salt out of seawater provide the bulk of potable water in technologically advanced desert nations like Israel and the United Arab Emirates, but at a high cost. Desalination facilities either heat water to distill out the drinkable stuff or filter it with membranes the salt doesn't pass through; both methods require a lot of energy and leave behind concentrated brine. Typically desal pumps send that brine back into the ocean, with devastating ecological effects.
I was talking to Atoco executives about carbon dioxide capture earlier this year when they mentioned the possibility of harvesting water from the atmosphere. Of course my mind immediately jumped to Star Wars, and Luke Skywalker working on his family's moisture farm, using “vaporators” to pull water from the atmosphere of the arid planet Tatooine. (Other sci-fi fans' minds might go to Dune, and the water-gathering technology of the Fremen.) Could this possibly be real?
It turns out people have been doing it for millennia. Archaeological evidence of water harvesting from fog dates back as far as 5000 BCE. The ancient Greeks harvested dew, and 500 years ago so did the Inca, using mesh nets and buckets under trees.
Today, harvesting water from the air is a business already worth billions of dollars, say industry analysts—and it's on track to be worth billions more in the next five years. In part that's because typical sources of fresh water are in crisis. Less snowfall in mountains during hotter winters means less meltwater in the spring, which means less water downstream. Droughts regularly break records. Rising seas seep into underground aquifers, already drained by farming and sprawling cities. Aging septic tanks leach bacteria into water, and cancer-causing “forever chemicals” are creating what the US Government Accountability Office last year said “may be the biggest water problem since lead.” That doesn't even get to the emerging catastrophe from microplastics.
So lots of places are turning to atmospheric water harvesting. Watergen, an Israel-based company working on the tech, initially planned on deploying in the arid, poorer parts of the world. Instead, buyers in Europe and the United States have approached the company as a way to ensure a clean supply of water. And one of Watergen's biggest markets is the wealthy United Arab Emirates. “When you say ‘water crisis,' it's not just the lack of water—it's access to good-quality water,” says Anna Chernyavsky, Watergen's vice president of marketing.
In other words, the technology “has evolved from lab prototypes to robust, field-deployable systems,” says Guihua Yu, a mechanical engineer at the University of Texas at Austin. “There is still room to improve productivity and energy efficiency in the whole-system level, but so much progress has been steady and encouraging.”
MOFs are just the latest approach to the idea. The first generation of commercial tech depended on compressors and refrigerant chemicals—large-scale versions of the machine that keeps food cold and fresh in your kitchen. Both use electricity and a clot of pipes and exchangers to make cold by phase-shifting a chemical from gas to liquid and back; refrigerators try to limit condensation, and water generators basically try to enhance it.
That's how Watergen's tech works: using a compressor and a heat exchanger to wring water from air at humidity levels as low as 20%—Death Valley in the spring. “We're talking about deserts,” Chernyavsky says. “Below 20%, you get nosebleeds.”
That still might not be good enough. “Refrigeration works pretty well when you are above a certain relative humidity,” says Sameer Rao, a mechanical engineer at the University of Utah who researches atmospheric water harvesting. “As the environment dries out, you go to lower relative humidities, and it becomes harder and harder. In some cases, it's impossible for refrigeration-based systems to really work.”
So a second wave of technology has found a market. Companies like Source Global use desiccants—substances that absorb moisture from the air, like the silica packets found in vitamin bottles—to pull in moisture and then release it when heated. In theory, the benefit of desiccant-based tech is that it could absorb water at lower humidity levels, and it uses less energy on the front end since it isn't running a condenser system. Source Global claims its off-grid, solar-powered system is deployed in dozens of countries.
But both technologies still require a lot of energy, either to run the heat exchangers or to generate sufficient heat to release water from the desiccants. MOFs, Yaghi hopes, do not. Now Atoco is trying to prove it. Instead of using heat exchangers to bring the air temperature to dew point or desiccants to attract water from the atmosphere, a system can rely on specially designed MOFs to attract water molecules. Atoco's prototype version uses an MOF that looks like baby powder, stuck to a surface like glass. The pores in the MOF naturally draw in water molecules but remain open, making it theoretically easy to discharge the water with no more heat than what comes from direct sunlight. Atoco's industrial-scale design uses electricity to speed up the process, but the company is working on a second design that can operate completely off grid, without any energy input.
Yaghi's Atoco isn't the only contender seeking to use MOFs for water harvesting. A competitor, AirJoule, has introduced MOF-based atmospheric water generators in Texas and the UAE and is working with researchers at Arizona State University, planning to deploy more units in the coming months. The company started out trying to build more efficient air-conditioning for electric buses operating on hot, humid city streets. But then founder Matt Jore heard about US government efforts to harvest water from air—and pivoted. The startup's stock price has been a bit of a roller-coaster, but Jore says the sheer size of the market should keep him in business. Take Maricopa County, encompassing Phoenix and its environs—it uses 1.2 billion gallons of water from its shrinking aquifer every day, and another 874 million gallons from surface sources like rivers.
“So, a couple of billion gallons a day, right?” Jore tells me. “You know how much influx is in the atmosphere every day? Twenty-five billion gallons.”
My eyebrows go up. “Globally?”
“Just the greater Phoenix area gets influx of about 25 billion gallons of water in the air,” he says. “If you can tap into it, that's your source. And it's not going away. It's all around the world. We view the atmosphere as the world's free pipeline.”
Besides AirJoule's head start on Atoco, the companies also differ on where they get their MOFs. AirJoule's system relies on an off-the-shelf version the company buys from the chemical giant BASF; Atoco aims to use Yaghi's skill with designing the novel material to create bespoke MOFs for different applications and locations.
“Given the fact that we have the inventor of the whole class of materials, and we leverage the stuff that comes out of his lab at Berkeley—everything else equal, we have a good starting point to engineer maybe the best materials in the world,” says Magnus Bach, Atoco's VP of business development.
Yaghi envisions a two-pronged product line. Industrial-scale water generators that run on electricity would be capable of producing thousands of liters per day on one end, while units that run on passive systems could operate in remote locations without power, just harnessing energy from the sun and ambient temperatures. In theory, these units could someday replace desalination and even entire municipal water supplies. The next round of field tests is scheduled for early 2026, in the Mojave Desert—one of the hottest, driest places on Earth.
“That's my dream,” Yaghi says. “To give people water independence, so they're not reliant on another party for their lives.”
Both Yaghi and Watergen's Chernyavsky say they're looking at more decentralized versions that could operate outside municipal utility systems. Home appliances, similar to rooftop solar panels and batteries, could allow households to generate their own water off grid.
That could be tricky, though, without economies of scale to bring down prices. “You have to produce, you have to cool, you have to filter—all in one place,” Chernyavsky says. “So to make it small is very, very challenging.”
Difficult as that may be, Yaghi's childhood gave him a particular appreciation for the freedom to go off grid, to liberate the basic necessity of water from the whims of systems that dictate when and how people can access it.
“That's really my dream,” he says. “To give people independence, water independence, so that they're not reliant on another party for their livelihood or lives.”
Toward the end of one of our conversations, I asked Yaghi what he would tell the younger version of himself if he could. “Jordan is one of the worst countries in terms of the impact of water stress,” he said. “I would say, ‘Continue to be diligent and observant. It doesn't really matter what you're pursuing, as long as you're passionate.'”
I pressed him for something more specific: “What do you think he'd say when you described this technology to him?”
Yaghi smiled: “I think young Omar would think you're putting him on, that this is all fictitious and you're trying to take something from him.” This reality, in other words, would be beyond young Omar's wildest dreams.
Alexander C. Kaufman is a reporter who has covered energy, climate change, pollution, business, and geopolitics for more than a decade.
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How AI and renewables are shifting the energy landscape.
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Scientists studying a Caribbean island cave have unearthed something unexpected: ancient bees very much unlike the hive-dwelling insects we're most familiar with.
For the first time ever, paleontologists have found fossil traces of burrowing bees nesting inside the buried bones of other animals. These fossils, thousands of years old, are the end result of a macabre life cycle that involved ancient rodents and giant barn owls. And they might also teach us a few lessons about bees today, the researchers say.
“I think the most important outcome is to show how diverse the nesting behavior of bees can be,” study researcher Lazaro Viñola Lopez told Gizmodo.
Viñola Lopez was working as a doctoral student for the Florida Museum of Natural History when he helped excavate the fossils from inside the cave on the island of Hispaniola (the cave is located on the eastern half of the island, owned by the Dominican Republic). But neither he nor his colleagues were planning to make such a find.
“The discovery was very fortuitous. We were looking for primates, rodents, lizards, and other vertebrates for our work on late Quaternary extinctions in the islands associated with humans and climatic changes,” he said. “We weren't looking for any insects because they usually don't preserve in that kind of environment.”
The cave, named Cueva de Mono, contained thousands of fossils belonging to hutia, rodents related to the guinea pig. This discovery was amazing enough, given how rare hutia fossils were to find in the area. But Viñola Lopez also noticed that one of the fossils, a specimen of hutia mandibles, had an unusual smoothness to it.
Viñola Lopez didn't immediately dig deeper into his potential finding, and there were some bumps along the way. Based on his earlier work with dinosaur fossils, he initially speculated the hutia remains were used by wasps to build their nests, but the features of such nests didn't quite match up with what he found.
Eventually though, he realized these remains were likely used by a different insect, an ancient species of burrowing bee, named Osnidum almontei, that lived thousands of years ago. Thanks to later trips inside the cave to recover more fossils, they also found evidence of these nests inside the vertebra of a hutia and the pulp cavity of a sloth tooth (sloths used to live in the Caribbean islands, but were largely wiped out by human activity).
The team's findings were published Tuesday in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences.
Though we most commonly think of bees as social insects that build elaborate nests in plain sight, Viñola Lopez notes that most bee species are solitary and use a wide range of structures and materials for nesting. But while these ancient bees seem to share a lot in common with modern counterparts, they also stand out in important and mysterious ways.
“The bees that created these traces are similar to other bees in that they nested in the ground, but differ from all other known species in that they regularly used chambers in buried bones (such as tooth sockets),” he said. Another key distinction is the cave setting of these fossils. There's only been one other documented instance of burrowing bees using a cave for their nests, according to the researchers, and that didn't involve the bees using another animal's fossil remains.
As best as they can tell, the cave was home to a population of ancient barn owls that also regularly used it as a dumping ground for the hutia they hunted. The owls might have taken the rodents back home for dinner or sometimes just pooped them out from a meal on-the-go; these remains then later proved to be an appealing site for the bees' nesting. And while much of the surrounding area is unsuitable for these insects, the cave and others like it might have contained enough built-up soil for the bees to rely on for their nests.
Aside from learning more about bees, the team's research has also taught them to be more cautious.
“It changed how we look at and prepare fossils from these cave deposits in the Dominican Republic. Now we take much more care before cleaning them to make sure we don't destroy any other interesting behavior of ancient insects hiding in the sediment inside the fossils,” he said.
The ancient cave bees aren't the only discovery the researchers are hoping to make. They're already working to describe the many other fossils recovered from the cave, which should include never-before-characterized species of mammals, reptiles, and birds.
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New research challenges the previous identification of a famous fossil dubbed "Little Foot."
“When birds are sick, they start doing weird things.”
New research shows anacondas have stayed the same massive size for 12 million years.
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You have to feel sorry for Jaguar. By any standards it's been a terrible year for the British carmaker.
First came dealing with the continued fallout of the December 2024 reveal of the Type 00 concept. The brand wanted the EV's radical design to be polarizing, but it seemed unprepared for what forms such polarized views might actually take. Elon Musk, of course, couldn't resist taking a pot shot at the now infamous ad campaign that didn't even show a car.
According to Jaguar's managing director, Rawdon Glover, the supposed “wokeness” of the ad campaign, which featured a multiracial cast, resulted in a barrage of online “hatred and intolerance” directed at both the brand and, deplorably, Jaguar staff.
Then, in August, following this controversial rebrand (and with spectacularly poor timing), the CEO of Jaguar Land Rover, Adrian Mardell, announced he was stepping down after just three years as chief executive. This was mere weeks before all hell broke loose at JLR when a cyberattack forced the company to stop all vehicle production completely. To make matters worse, amazingly, JLR was not insured against cyberattacks at the time, leaving the company to bear the significant financial losses directly. At an estimated £1.9bn (about $2.5 billion) with nearly £200 million in direct expenses to JLR, it has since been called the costliest cyberattack in UK history.
Just as this disaster was on the ebb, and only months after PB Balaji (previously chief financial officer of Tata Motors, Indian owner of JLR) was installed as the new chief executive, reports emerged that JLR had supposedly fired design boss Gerry McGovern, the very man behind the Type 00, bringing to an undignified end a 21-year career at both Land Rover and Jaguar. After initially declining to comment, it took Jaguar 10 days to deny it had fired McGovern.
The GT Jaguar—shown here camouflaged because it's still a prototype—benefits aesthetically from a slightly shorter front and second set of doors. But it's the performance that looks set to give the coming electric flagship EV its appeal.
And we're not finished yet. As Jaguar is finally ready to start showing off the capabilities of its flagship car, its big swing on a luxury EV future, the Western auto industry is retreating from electrification. On Monday, taking a $19.5 billion write-down, Ford killed its Lightning F-150 along with several other electric models. High-end EVs are not selling. And now—coinciding with Jaguar's embargo on this first-ride piece—the European Commission announces it's set to backtrack on EU plans to ban combustion cars from 2035, allowing sales of some non-electric vehicles following intense pressure from European auto brands.
No, sir. You wouldn't want Jaguar's luck.
Enough. Now to some much-needed good news for the storied British brand that's just turned 90 years old. Earlier this month, WIRED was invited to Jaguar's UK headquarters to get a short, “spirited” passenger experience over two private circuits on the company's grounds. It was a chance not only to feel what the coming flagship EV is like on the road and track, but also to see the final four-door GT design underneath the camouflage wrapping.
What is certainly possible to appreciate, even with the camo cover, is that the four-door GT version of the Type 00 works better visually than the pure concept that has been on a seeming nonstop global PR roadshow since it was revealed. The hood, though still very long, is slightly shorter, apparently, and this, combined with the addition of the second set of doors, makes more sense of this divisive design. It's a little more approachable, less polarizing. Jaguar has made such successful tweaks intentionally, I'd wager. After all, Rawdon Glover tells me they have been through 150 prototypes to date on this, but six months ago the hardware was fixed.
The original 2024 Type 00 concept split opinions while also dramatically moving the brand away from Jaguar's traditional audience.
Inside the EV, it doesn't look like a finalized design. It's very much a Heath Robinson affair with exposed wires and bolted on displays. But it does have one of the nicest steering wheels I have seen in a long while. Matt Becker, JLR's vehicle engineering director and general dynamics wizard, takes the driver's seat and starts to show off what the car can do, even in this unfinished state.
Becker claims that the development team went back through classic Jaguars and attempted to catalog what made each model work in terms of handling. The very definition of fun homework, one imagines. The overall idea was to imbue this new electric Jaguar with the best driving traits from the brand's back catalog. Now that tweaking EV handling is just as much a software issue and as hardware one, such a goal, one hopes, isn't beyond the reach of Becker and his team.
Indeed, much like BMW's new iX3, much attention has been paid to give this new GT the computing power to deliver instantaneous adjustments while driving. BMW has made much of how its “Heart of Joy” central computer controller for driving dynamics cuts conventional ECUs time lag of 10 to 20 milliseconds to just one millisecond, therefore delivering a genuinely analog feel to handling. Becker tells me the new Jag hits the same standard: one millisecond. It feels like it, too, seeming much lighter in agility than it has any right to be considering its size and weight.
Cornering is also mighty impressive. With the rear wheels contributing to turning as well, considering it's about 5 meters long and 2.5 meters wide, this EV GT goes around corners with a sharpness and accuracy that you simply don't expect from a car of these gargantuan proportions. Such is the digital trickery that can now be played when you pack autos with processing power to match the performance of more than 1,000 PS. (The PS stands for Pferdestärke, a measurement nearly equivalent to horsepower.)
Matt Becker, left, JLR's vehicle engineering director, has worked to make the electric 4-door GT drive much smaller than its gargantuan size. And he's succeeded.
On Jaguar's track, Becker tries to show me how they have got those classic driving traits into this new EV—things such as composure, and agility at speed. The most obvious achievement in the few laps I get to experience the car, however, is Jaguar's notion of having “power in reserve.”
The car seems to keep accelerating with ease way beyond the 100-mph mark. It's predictable, but that doesn't mean it isn't impressive. It's also thanks to more software, as such an effect comes about mainly through throttle mapping—training the car to respond in a certain way as you continue to depress the right pedal. A soundproofing side note: it's also easy to hold a normal conversation in this GT even when going way over 100.
This all bodes well for when we eventually get to drive the final production of the Type 00. But of course there's much that can still go wrong between now and then. And considering the company's form of late, you wouldn't bet against fate dealing Jaguar yet another bad hand.
Glover is clear all this was necessary, however, to ensure the survival of the brand. “Jaguar had to change. Jaguar was not commercially viable,” he says. “We think there's a space right at the top end of premium, but underneath the uber luxury of the Rolls Royce, the Lamborghinis, the Bentleys. There's a big gap between 140,000 euros and 300,000. There's not a lot going on there in terms of volume. Jaguar has been successful in that place in our past.”
Glover adds that this four-door GT is “not going to be the largest volume seller in the range of Jaguars that are to come—but the role of this car is to position us at this price point.” What's more, Glover confirms Jaguar is already way down the road developing the EV coming after this GT, which will land in the same price bracket.
“The next car is locked,” he says. “We know exactly what it's going to look like—inside and out. And it's going to follow pretty quickly.” Jaguar has already made the first battery prototype of this next car, and, unlike the GT, Glover says this “car 2” will be the volume seller, the EV to turn around the brand's financial fortunes.
However, considering the seismic shifts taking place this very week in automotive land, might Jaguar use this last opportunity to hedge its bets, take a leaf out of Ford's book and rethink to producing combustion versions of these relaunch electric vehicles?
Glover looks doubtful in the extreme: “Anything's possible, but it's not in our plan.”
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Frailty is a syndrome resulting from age-related decline across multiple organ systems. A new study, conducted at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, shows that slower reaction time and lower response accuracy in cognitive tasks are associated with higher levels of frailty. Notably, this association can already be detected in late midlife, among individuals aged 57 to 70 years.
Frailty has been linked to several adverse health outcomes, including increased risk of falls, greater need for hospitalization, and higher mortality."Our findings showed that slower reaction time in cognitive tasks was associated with higher levels of frailty in late midlife, among adults aged 57 to 70 years," says postdoctoral researcher Anna Tirkkonen from the Gerontology Research Center and the Faculty of Sport and Health Sciences at the University of Jyväskylä. "For response accuracy, the association was observed across all participants, and particularly among women."
"We also found that only response accuracy - but not reaction time - was associated with the development of frailty," Tirkkonen adds. "Moreover, the association depended on which specific domain of cognitive functioning was examined."
The findings complement earlier evidence and highlight the link between cognitive functioning and frailty in a younger age group than is typically studied.
Our results indicate that these associations are already visible in late midlife and that they vary according to sex as well as the particular cognitive domain and trait assessed."
Anna Tirkkonen, Gerontology Research Center and the Faculty of Sport and Health Sciences, University of Jyväskylä
The study was conducted in collaboration with the Universities of Jyväskylä and Tampere and the Folkhälsan Research Center. It utilized data from the Helsinki Birth Cohort Study.
University of Jyväskylä
Tirkkonen, A., et al. (2025). Cognitive performance in late midlife as a predictor of frailty from late midlife into old age: a longitudinal birth cohort study. Gerontology. DOI: 10.1159/000548683. https://karger.com/ger/article-abstract/71/12/1031/938284/Cognitive-Performance-in-Late-Midlife-as-a
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A review in Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology summarizes the multiple benefits of sport participation for people with cerebral palsy. The authors present a summary of available sports, as well as adaptations, to help clinicians discuss parasport participation with patients and families with cerebral palsy and related conditions.
The review provides a practical, evidence-informed resource that can help families, clinicians, and community leaders understand the wide-ranging value of parasports. By reframing engagement in sport as an essential part of development rather than as a luxury or afterthought, the authors promote its broader adoption for individuals with cerebral palsy and related disabilities.
"Rather than viewing parasport as an option for 'athletic' children, evidence supports treating it as an essential element of comprehensive care-uniquely combining therapeutic physical activity benefits with social inclusion, identity development, and community integration," the authors wrote.
Wiley
Hanes, J. E., et al. (2025). Parasports for cerebral palsy: Thinking and ‘prescribing' beyond the Paralympics. Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology. DOI: 10.1111/dmcn.70115. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/dmcn.70115
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Severe weather events have long-term health consequences for vulnerable older adults, according to a study in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society based on data following Hurricane Harvey.
When they analyzed Medicare claims data for nearly 1.8 million fee-for-service beneficiaries aged ≥65 years in Texas and Louisiana, investigators found that older adults who lived through high rainfall during Hurricane Harvey had a 3% elevated risk of dying within 1 year of the hurricane. Mortality risk was highest among those with chronic health conditions requiring regular care, including chronic kidney disease and Alzheimer's disease and related dementias. The largest number of attributed deaths was among the Alzheimer's disease and related dementias population: an estimated 1,245 deaths in the year following Hurricane Harvey.
Also, Black and Hispanic/Latino populations experienced 6% and 13% higher mortality risks, respectively, than other groups, highlighting disparities in vulnerability to disasters.
These findings add to the evidence that disasters don't just cause short-term disruptions. They expose and magnify the underlying fragilities in our health system. For older adults who rely on consistent care, even a temporary breakdown can have lasting consequences."
Sue Anne Bell, PhD, corresponding author, University of Michigan
Wiley
Bell, S. A., et al. (2025). Variation in One‐Year Mortality Following Severe Weather Exposure Among Older Americans by Chronic Health Condition and Sociodemographic Status. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. DOI: 10.1111/jgs.70237. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jgs.70237
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The US Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit (CDCTC), which helps offset a portion of child or dependent care expenses, requires that both parents in married households, or the primary caregiver in single-parent and divorced households, participate in paid employment. Research published in Health Economics reveals that early childhood exposure to the CDCTC may affect children's long-term health in complex ways.
The study is based on data from the Child Development Supplement of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, which was started in 1968 with a nationally representative sample of around 5,000 families in the United States and that surveys all family members of the respondents and their descendants to this day.Investigators found that children and adolescents of more-educated mothers had worse physical and mental health outcomes when they were exposed to more intensive CDCTC benefits in early life. In contrast, children and adolescents of less-educated mothers showed improvements in their mental health with such exposure.
The different findings may relate to varied effects of the CDCTC. An income effect arises because the CDCTC reduces childcare costs, effectively increasing the family's disposable income that could be used for nutritious food, better housing, and other benefits. A substitution effect occurs when the CDCTC pushes mothers into the labor market, leading children to spend additional hours in formal childcare, which can impact child health.
This study highlights the need for careful policy designs that consider the varying needs of families with different socio-economic status."
Yating Gong, PhD, corresponding author of Jinan University, China
Wiley
Averett, S., et al. (2025). Long‐Term Health Effects of Early Childhood Exposure to the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit. Health Economics. DOI: 10.1002/hec.70058. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/hec.70058
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In this interview, News Medical speaks with Guillaume Bentzinger, Project Manager at Novalix; Luis Carrillo, Managing Director at De Dietrich France; Philippe Robin CEO of Alysophil; and Alejandro Bara-Estaún, Solution Product Manager at Bruker about how flow chemistry, artificial intelligence (AI), and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) are being integrated to transform the production of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs).
Guillaume Bentzinger: I'm a Project Manager at Novalix in the Flow & Process department, with a background in medicinal chemistry.
My role in the PIPAc project is to develop and optimize the synthetic routes for producing APIs under continuous flow conditions with focus on fentanyl and propofol.
Guillaume Bentzinger: PIPAc stands for “Smart Production of APIs” in French. The initiative came about in response to the shortages highlighted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our goal was to develop autonomous, continuous-flow systems that could relocate essential API production towards France and Europe. We formed a consortium of four partners, including Novalix, Alysophil, Bruker, and De Dietrich. They each contributed specialized expertise, from synthesis to analytics and automation.
Watch the full webinar
Guillaume Bentzinger: For propofol, one major challenge was working with sulfuric acid in flow systems where we had to ensure compatibility with pumps and materials. Another challenge was the stability and solubility of starting materials in solution and in the reaction conditions. We also experimented with heterogeneous acid catalysis. The results were encouraging but the conversion and the selectivity towards propofol were not sufficient. For this reason, we decided to focus on the synthesis of fentanyl.
For fentanyl, we explored both conventional and novel synthesis routes. We obtained interesting results for both strategies but for time and industrial plan size reasons, we decided to focus only on the last step for the final industrial demonstrator. One constraint was working under regulatory constraints, which required us to build a restricted-area facility and initially explore non-regulated intermediates. Another was to find conditions avoiding precipitations in order to run the synthesis under flow conditions.
Image Credit: Novalix
Luis Carrillo: Our role was to translate lab-scale chemical processes into a working demonstration unit. This involved conventional process engineering steps:
The challenge was combining a regulated pharma environment, ATEX compliance, and new continuous flow chemistry processes, all within a 15-square-meter lab footprint.
Luis Carrillo: We partnered with FLONOAdditive to design and fabricate stainless steel reactors using metal additive manufacturing. The reactors were engineered via CFD and finite element simulations, ensuring accurate flow dynamics and heat transfer. The demonstrator includes two reactors that operate with a 50-minute residence time at 80 °C and 6 bar at optimal conditions. The reactor design allows easy cartridge swapping to adjust residence times.
Luis Carrillo: A key challenge was enabling seamless communication between systems from different partners – Bruker's synTQ platform, Alysophil's AI engine, and our control systems.
We implemented a market-standard OPC UA communication protocol. Siemens PCS 7 managed the control architecture, with WinCC for supervision. Our instrumentation streams real-time data, coming from advanced NMR analytics and AI use to adapt process parameters, fully automated workflows in line with Pharma 4.0 principles.
Philippe Robin: We use deep reinforcement learning to train AI agents that can interpret real-time data from the process, such as temperature, pressure, and NMR readings, and take corrective actions. These agents are trained using a digital twin of the system, simulating hundreds of runs. The selected agents are then deployed to control flow rates autonomously, react to deviations, and even anticipate future trends in yield or conversion.
Philippe Robin: Traditional control relies on fixed recipes and operator oversight. Our AI reacts to deviations and predicts them. For example, if there is a drop in temperature, conditions can be adjusted before there is any impact on yield. It continuously learns from new data and improves over time, making the process more robust, adaptive, and autonomous. This level of predictive correction is relatively new and very promising.
Philippe Robin: The future leans toward smarter, more autonomous production. AI combined with flow chemistry offers unmatched precision and scalability. With real-time analytics from NMR and automated control, we can enhance efficiency, minimize waste, and respond more quickly to supply chain disruptions. This is especially relevant for essential APIs, where global demand and reliability are critical.
Image Credit: Bruker BioSpin Group
Alejandro Bara-Estaún: In-line NMR plays a crucial role in making flow chemistry processes more robust, traceable, and controllable. With instruments like the Fourier 80 integrated into orchestration PAT softwares like synTQ, we can measure the concentration of products like fentanyl and also track conversion, yield, and concentration in real-time.
The advantage of NMR lies in its inherent quantitative nature, providing concentration information proportional to the peak area, and its multi-attribute capability. With a single experiment, we can quantify multiple analytes simultaneously, achieving excellent resolution without sample destruction. Combined with AI, this enables a self-regulating, predictive manufacturing environment where quality and performance are consistently maintained without the need for constant manual oversight.
As this technology matures, I believe we'll see in-line NMR becoming the cornerstone of Pharma 4.0 facilities.
Alejandro Bara-Estaún: One challenge was making sure the data from the NMR was effectively transmitted to both the control system and the AI. We addressed this by integrating the Fourier 80 NMR system directly into the PAT orchestration software, synTQ. Through synTQ, we were able to push quantitative NMR data directly to the AI layer, enabling real-time decision-making. We also had to ensure temperature control of the flow cell using heated capillaries, as stability in flow chemistry is vital. Collaborating closely with the other partners, especially De Dietrich and Alysophil, helped overcome these challenges and ensured smooth data and process communication across the entire architect.
Watch the full webinar
Guillaume Bentzinger is a Project Manager at Novalix, where he leads synthetic chemistry development in Process Chemistry. He holds a PhD in medicinal chemistry from the University of Amiens (Université de Picardie Jules Verne) and conducted postdoctoral research at Almac Discovery and Queen's University Belfast. His expertise spans both academic and industrial research, with a focus on continuous flow chemistry and scalable synthesis, mainly for pharmaceuticals.
Luis Carrillo is the Managing Director of De Dietrich Process Systems France. He holds a chemistry degree from the University of Barcelona and an executive MBA from IESE Business School. With over a decade of experience in chemical engineering and process systems, he specializes in designing and implementing industrial-scale solutions for regulated sectors like pharmaceuticals and fine chemicals.
Philippe Robin is the CEO and Co-Founder of Alysophil, a company that merges AI with chemical process control to enable autonomous manufacturing. A graduate of Chimie ParisTech (formerly ENSCP), he has more than ten years of experience in sustainable chemical production and innovation. At Alysophil, he has led multiple projects focused on real-time optimization of flow chemistry using artificial intelligence.
Alejandro Bara-Estaún is the Solution Product Manager for (bio)Process and Process Analytical Technology within Bruker BioSpin. He obtained his Ph.D. in Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Bath (UK) in collaboration with Bristol University and Evonik (Germany). He then undertook a two-year postdoctoral position at Bruker, leading the PIPAc project in collaboration with Alysohpil, Novalix, and De Dietrich.
The Bruker BioSpin Group designs, manufactures, and distributes advanced scientific instruments based on magnetic resonance and preclinical imaging technologies. These include our industry-leading NMR and EPR spectrometers, as well as imaging systems utilizing MRI, PET, SPECT, CT, Optical and MPI modalities. The Group also offers integrated software solutions and automation tools to support digital transformation across research and quality control environments.
Bruker BioSpin's customers in academic, government, industrial, and pharmaceutical sectors rely on these technologies to gain detailed insights into molecular structure, dynamics, and interactions. Our solutions play a key role in structural biology, drug discovery, disease research, metabolomics, and advanced materials analysis. Recent investments in lab automation, optical imaging, and contract research services further strengthen our ability to support evolving customer needs and enable scientific innovation.
Sponsored Content Policy: News-Medical.net publishes articles and related content that may be derived from sources where we have existing commercial relationships, provided such content adds value to the core editorial ethos of News-Medical.Net which is to educate and inform site visitors interested in medical research, science, medical devices and treatments.
Posted in: Insights from Industry
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Bruker BioSpin Group. (2025, December 17). Flow chemistry, AI, and NMR: A next-gen approach to scalable API production. News-Medical. Retrieved on December 17, 2025 from https://www.news-medical.net/news/20251217/Flow-chemistry-AI-and-NMR-A-next-gen-approach-to-scalable-API-production.aspx.
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Bruker BioSpin Group. "Flow chemistry, AI, and NMR: A next-gen approach to scalable API production". News-Medical. 17 December 2025.
RNAConnect, a life science company providing next generation tools to the RNA community, today announced the commercial availability of the UltraMarathonRT® Direct RNA‑Seq (uMRT DRS) Kit, a native‑RNA library preparation solution for Oxford Nanopore Technologies® direct RNA sequencing (SQK-RNA004). The kit enables the detection of more genes, more isoforms, and longer transcripts than existing protocols. It employs a gentle 30 °C reverse‑transcription (RT) stabilization step and ultra‑processive enzyme performance to preserve RNA integrity, expand long‑transcript representation, and maintain endogenous RNA modification signals in ONT direct workflow.
Direct RNA-Seq requires an initial reverse transcription step to smooth out secondary structures and stabilize the RNA which is then pulled directly through the nanopore and read. Directly reading the RNA strand in this way enables strand‑specific, isoform‑resolved measurements alongside base‑modification information. The UltraMarathonRT Direct RNA‑Seq Kit streamlines this workflow with optimized reagents for current ONT RNA004 chemistry and a low‑temperature RT step that ensures more of each RNA sample gets sequenced.
Compared to the existing recommended protocol, this kit's novel chemistry and lower RT temperature (30 °C) result in:
We took a hard look at existing direct RNA-seq protocols and saw places where our company's deep knowledge of RNA combined with the unique properties of UltraMarathonRT could boost the output of long RNA reads. RNAConnect is excited to unveil this easy-to-use kit and workflow to enable new discoveries from our vibrant RNA science community."
Dr. Jason Underwood, VP of Technology Development, RNAConnect
"Long-read sequencing technologies have the amazing ability to access the full span of transcripts that can be kilobases or more in length," added Dr. Paul Boutz, Assistant Professor at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, who was a beta-tester of the uMRT DRS Kit. "Unfortunately, most reverse transcriptases don't. This was really hampering our ability to see the full spectrum of alternative splicing happening in transcripts, so discovering UltraMarathonRT has been a game changer. The new uMRT DRS Kit seamlessly integrates into the ONT direct RNA sequencing protocol and gives us fantastic results. We will definitely use it for our direct RNA sequencing moving forward."
RNAConnect
Posted in: Device / Technology News
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RNAConnect. (2025, December 17). RNAConnect launches the UltraMarathonRT Direct RNA‑Seq Kit to advance nanopore-based native RNA sequencing. News-Medical. Retrieved on December 17, 2025 from https://www.news-medical.net/news/20251217/RNAConnect-launches-the-UltraMarathonRT-Direct-RNAe28091Seq-Kit-to-advance-nanopore-based-native-RNA-sequencing.aspx.
MLA
RNAConnect. "RNAConnect launches the UltraMarathonRT Direct RNA‑Seq Kit to advance nanopore-based native RNA sequencing". News-Medical. 17 December 2025.
Electronic medical records (EMRs) have been a tremendous benefit in exam rooms across the country, creating secure patient history databases that clinicians can easily access and update. Yet, they can also detract from the doctor-patient experience, as physicians must type notes into the system rather than devote their complete attention to patients.
To help put physicians back in front of their patients - and away from their keyboards - UC Davis Health has adopted an artificial intelligence (AI) scribe, which automatically records and transcribes conversations during medical visits. These systems preserve detailed medical notes so physicians can focus on their patients.
In preparation for the digital tool's rollout, UC Davis Health conducted a comprehensive survey to evaluate patient perceptions of the technology. The results, which informed how the scribe was implemented, were recently published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR) Medical Informatics.
"We weren't sure how patients would respond to these AI transcriptions," said Gary Leiserowitz, Obstetrics and Gynecology chair and lead author on the paper.
There was little information from other institutions, so we worked with our patient experience colleagues to understand how patients might feel about it."
Gary Leiserowitz, Obstetrics and Gynecology Chair, University of California - Davis Health
The survey was emailed to more than 9,000 patients and around 1,900 responded. While 73 % felt they were being heard during clinical visits, 23 % stated their doctors were more focused on notetaking than on them.
"A lot of people feel medical documentation is a necessary evil, but hate it when their doctors are sitting in front of the computer, trying to record everything they're talking about," Leiserowitz said. "They feel like that connection is lost."
In the survey, 48 % of respondents reported that an AI scribe would be a good solution, while 33 % were neutral and 19 % had concerns. Younger patients (18-30 years old) were more skeptical about the technology than older patients.
Patients were mostly worried about note accuracy (39 %), privacy and security (13 %) and the prospect of being recorded (13 %). Many of the associated comments expressed concerns that the recordings could be hacked. Around 10 % felt it would be bad for physicians and staff.
When patients were asked when was the best time during their care experience to be informed that a digital tool would be taking notes, they strongly favored early notifications: They wanted to know while making an appointment, arriving at their doctor's office or checking in at a clinic. Most (57 %) preferred to be notified face-to-face, while many (45 %) were OK with email.
Results of the survey provided UC Davis Health with valuable guidance on how to communicate the transition to AI scribe. The team incorporated multiple educational touchpoints to get buy-in, prioritizing face-to-face discussions with patients.
"One of our important takeaways from the survey was that we had to educate patients about what the AI scribe could and could not do," Leiserowitz said. "Security was a big deal so, when we were vetting vendors, we made sure they only use domestic servers. And while the AI notes go into the EMR, the recording itself disappears within 10 days."
In addition, to ensure complete accuracy, the clinician checks and edits the notes before they are placed into the EMR. Patients can also review and advise their clinicians on possible corrections. Ultimately, if a patient is not comfortable with the system, they can opt out.
At UC Davis Health, a dedicated analytics oversight committee reviews all advanced analytics models, including those powered by AI, that are used in clinical decision-making. The committee's goal is to develop a streamlined and innovative approach that ensures health AI is implemented responsibly, ethically and effectively - always with the best interests of patients and the community in mind
"This often comes down to the quality of the relationship between the doctor and the patient," Leiserowitz said. "If the patient trusts us and understands why we're using it, they tend to accept it. That's why education is such a critical factor. It helps patients get comfortable with the technology."
University of California - Davis Health
Leiserowitz, G., et al. (2025) Patient Attitudes Towards Ambient Voice Technology: A Pre-Implementation Patient Survey in an Academic Medical Center (Preprint). JMIR Medical Informatics. DOI:10.2196/77901. https://medinform.jmir.org/2025/1/e77901.
Posted in: Device / Technology News | Healthcare News
Cancel reply to comment
Guillaume Bentzinger, Luis Carrillo, Philippe Robin, and Alejandro Bara-Estaún
Discover how AI, flow chemistry, and NMR come together in the PiPAC project to revolutionize scalable and autonomous API production.
Dr. Raj Singh
Learn how digital connectivity and the PathoVerse are improving pathology workflows and accelerating access to expert diagnostics.
Yavuz Çelik
Discover how real-time cell density monitoring boosts yield, lowers media costs, and improves viability in bioprocessing.
News-Medical.Net provides this medical information service in accordance
with these terms and conditions.
Please note that medical information found
on this website is designed to support, not to replace the relationship
between patient and physician/doctor and the medical advice they may provide.
Last Updated: Wednesday 17 Dec 2025
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Sino Biological, Inc., a global leader in biological reagents and CRO services, recently announced that it has been honored with the “2025 Supplier Performance Recognition Award” by Scientist.com, the market-leading digital platform for outsourced R&D procurements. Trusted by the world's top biopharma companies and thousands of rigorously vetted suppliers, Scientist.com grants this award in recognition of Sino Biological's outstanding performance and significant contributions to advancing drug discovery research worldwide.
The award recognizes partners who demonstrate excellence across key performance metrics, including responsiveness, marketplace activity, and customer satisfaction. Sino Biological earned this distinction based on its high-quality service delivery, reliable technical support, and consistent ability to meet the evolving needs of the international research community.
Over the past year, Sino Biological has served numerous research institutions and enterprises worldwide through the Scientist.com platform, providing essential services in areas such as protein sciences, chemistry manufacturing & controls (CMC), antibodies, in vitro assays, and in vitro pharmacology. These capabilities have played a significant role in accelerating scientific discovery and enhancing research efficiency for clients.
We are honored to receive this recognition from Scientist.com. Our long-standing partnership has been highly productive, and we are immensely proud of our shared achievements. This award reflects our team's dedication to supporting the global scientific community with reliable, timely, and innovative solutions. We remain committed to empowering researchers and contributing to the advancement of life science research.”
Dr. Rob Burgess, Chief Business Officer of Sino Biological US Inc
Sino Biological
Posted in: Drug Discovery & Pharmaceuticals
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By linking gut barrier dysfunction, inflammation, and microbial metabolites to insulin resistance, this review examines whether Traditional Chinese Medicine could offer microbiome-targeted strategies for managing PCOS and why stronger clinical evidence remains urgently needed.
Dendrobium officinale. Image Credit: HiTecherZ / Shutterstock - Study: The role of traditional Chinese medicine in modulating gut microbiota to alleviating insulin resistance in polycystic ovary syndrome
In a recent review published in the journal Frontiers in Nutrition, a group of authors summarized how Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) may modulate the gut microbiota (GM) to alleviate insulin resistance (IR) in polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) and outlined potential, but as yet unvalidated, translational paths for clinical care.
PCOS affects 5–20% of women of childbearing age and is often associated with IR, weight gain, infrequent or absent menstrual cycles, and challenges with conceiving. Current pharmacological treatments can be limited by side effects, cost, and long-term safety concerns, alongside concerns about future risk of developing type 2 diabetes and heart disease based on these risk factors.
Recent research has shown a connection between our GM and the regulation of metabolism and hormones, as GM imbalance can affect intestinal permeability, trigger inflammation, and increase IR.
TCM is widely used as a complementary and alternative therapy and is incorporated as an adjunct approach in some regional clinical guidelines. Future studies are needed to elucidate mechanisms of action and to develop standardized, safe, and effective TCM protocols.
PCOS is a metabolic, reproductive disorder that involves hyperandrogenism (HA), anovulation, and IR. IR leads to hyperinsulinemia (HI), which causes the ovaries to produce increased levels of androgens, reduces sex hormone-binding globulin (SHBG) in the liver, and alters the neuroendocrine network toward increased production of gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) and luteinizing hormone (LH).
Additionally, the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis can increase adrenal androgen production via adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH). Collectively, these systems exacerbate metabolic and reproductive dysfunction associated with PCOS.
Emerging evidence suggests that GM may contribute by showing reduced diversity and fewer short-chain fatty acid (SCFA)-producing strains, alongside increased endotoxin-rich organisms, in women with both PCOS and IR.
The relationship of IR and HA (created with biorender.com). SHBG, sex hormone-binding globulin; IGF, insulin-like growth factor; GnRH, gonadotropin-releasing hormone; LH, luteinizing hormone; ACTH, adrenocorticotropic hormone.
A healthy intestinal barrier relies on tight junction proteins such as occludin and zonula occludens-1 (ZO-1) to prevent microbial products from entering the bloodstream. In dysbiosis, permeability increases, “leaky gut,” allowing lipopolysaccharide (LPS) to activate the Cluster of Differentiation 14 (CD14), toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) complex, triggering myeloid differentiation primary response 88 (MyD88) and nuclear factor kappa B (NF-κB). This drives tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α), interleukin 1 beta (IL-1β), and interleukin 6 (IL-6), which impair insulin receptor signaling via suppressor of cytokine signaling 3 (SOCS-3) and insulin receptor substrate 1 (IRS-1), worsening IR. SCFAs and secondary bile acids typically support glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) secretion and metabolic control, but are often reduced in PCOS.
TCM is proposed to promote gut-host interactions through five mechanisms rather than established clinical pathways. First, multi-herb formulas, in preclinical and small clinical studies, remodel GM, enhance gut barrier integrity, and inhibit LPS, TLR4, and NF-κB signaling, thereby promoting SCFA-producing bacteria, estrous cyclicity, and reduced inflammation.
Second, targeted phytochemicals and polysaccharides, including berberine, naringenin, Dendrobium officinale, Cordyceps, Astragalus spp., mangiferin, and curcumin, have been shown, primarily in animal and limited human studies, to decrease IR and increase occludin and ZO-1 expression.
Third, dietary therapy, for example, quinoa and flaxseed oil, has been reported in experimental models to promote populations of Lactobacillus, Bifidobacterium, and Faecalibacterium, suggesting potential benefits for women with PCOS.
Fourth, probiotics, prebiotics, and synbiotics may aid in regulating either LH or follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) ratios or inflammatory cytokine levels, with Bifidobacterium spp. linked to hormonal modulation and inulin associated with reductions in inflammation and IR.
Fifth, electroacupuncture has demonstrated improvements in visceral adiposity and glucose tolerance in animal models. Clinical trials suggest acupuncture combined with clomiphene may improve hormonal and metabolic outcomes compared with clomiphene alone. Acupuncture has also been reported to cause fewer gastrointestinal side effects than metformin in some studies.
Patients with PCOS require management strategies that are adaptable, long-term, and individualized. Microbiome-informed TCM approaches have been proposed to include increased dietary fiber intake, targeted prebiotics or synbiotics, and formula-based interventions under clinical supervision. Yet evidence quality remains uneven.
Many clinical trials are small or short in duration, formulations vary substantially, and long-term safety, standardization, batch-to-batch consistency, and identification of active constituents remain limited.
The next step is multicenter randomized trials with harmonized diagnostic criteria, validated microbial endpoints, and omics-guided mechanistic studies to identify who benefits, from which intervention, and at what dose.
This review illustrates that the GM may be an adjustable factor affecting IR and symptom severity in PCOS.
By repairing the intestinal barrier, reducing inflammation and LPS activity, restoring SCFA production, and engaging bile acid signaling pathways, TCM has shown potential to improve metabolic and reproductive outcomes through a combination of approaches, including herbal formulas, bioactive compounds, dietary therapies, prebiotics, synbiotics, probiotics, and acupuncture.
However, to move TCM toward practical application in clinical care, larger clinical studies, standardized herbal products, rigorous quality-control frameworks, robust dose-response assessments, and ongoing safety evaluations are required.
Accordingly, microbiome-based evidence for TCM must be strengthened and carefully translated into accessible, equitable, and reliable care for individuals diagnosed with PCOS.
Posted in: Medical Research News | Medical Condition News | Women's Health News
Written by
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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Kumar Malesu, Vijay. (2025, December 16). How Traditional Chinese Medicine may reshape the gut microbiome to ease insulin resistance in PCOS. News-Medical. Retrieved on December 17, 2025 from https://www.news-medical.net/news/20251216/How-Traditional-Chinese-Medicine-may-reshape-the-gut-microbiome-to-ease-insulin-resistance-in-PCOS.aspx.
MLA
Kumar Malesu, Vijay. "How Traditional Chinese Medicine may reshape the gut microbiome to ease insulin resistance in PCOS". News-Medical. 17 December 2025.
Children living in substandard housing in England miss 15 more school days and achieve worse test scores in English and maths than their peers living in better quality housing, suggests research published online in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health.
Improving their living conditions-specifically reducing overcrowding and damp, and upgrading heating systems-may not only benefit their health, but also their grades,conclude the researchers.
One in 7 families in England live in homes that fail to meet the official decent homes standard, point out the researchers. Housing is a key determinant of child health, yet relatively little is known about how its quality may affect educational outcomes, particularly the number of missed school days and exam grades, they add.
To explore this further, the researchers drew on data for 8992 children, born between 2000 and 2002 participating in the nationally representative Millennium Cohort Study.
Housing quality at the age of 7 was calculated from 6 key indicators: accommodation type; floor level; lack of access to a garden; presence of damp; inadequate/no heating; and overcrowding.
Housing quality was linked to the percentage of missed school days and standardised test results in maths and English at the ages of 7, 11, and 16 in the National Pupil Database.
On average, children missed 5% (86 days) of compulsory schooling (years 1–11). And approximately 16% of them lived in poor quality housing, defined as meeting at least 2 of the 6 indicators.
After accounting for potentially influential factors, including parental educational attainment and ethnicity, analysis of the data showed that children living in poor quality housing missed more school days and achieved worse grades than children living in better quality housing.
These children missed nearly 1.5 more school days, on average, for each of the 11 years of compulsory schooling than their peers living in higher quality housing (based on 7272 children). Damp, overcrowding, and living in a flat were most strongly associated with missed schooling.
Test scores in maths and English during primary and secondary school were between 0.07 and 0.13 points (2-5%) lower for children living in poorer quality housing (based on 6741 children), mainly driven by overcrowding, and to a lesser extent, lack of central heating.
This is an observational study, and as such, no firm conclusions can be drawn about cause and effect, added to which data on school absences or test results on at least one data collection point were missing for 10% of the participants.
Children exclusively in home schooling and attending private schools (7%) aren't captured in the National Pupils Database. And housing conditions were subjectively assessed by parents rather than being objectively measured.
Nevertheless there are plausible explanations for the observed associations, suggest the researchers, with living in damp housing increasing the risk of respiratory illness.
"While study participants were not asked directly about the presence of mould, damp conditions are a major determinant of fungal growth which can in turn release hazardous spores, fragments, and microbial volatile organic compounds into indoor air," they explain.
Overcrowding also creates an unfavourable environment for study, they add. "Crowded housing is linked to behavioural problems and to worse health in children…Living in crowded homes is linked to lower academic achievement due to noise, lack of study space, insufficient sleep, reduced concentration and added responsibilities (eg, childcare)."
They conclude: "Improving housing conditions, especially reducing damp and overcrowding, and updating heating systems and energy efficiency can have significant benefits.
"Given the magnitude of the problem in England, national and local public health and housing policies targeting these features of housing quality could improve children's health and school outcomes across the country and narrow the health inequality gaps."
The NHS could also save the £1.4 (€1.6, US$1.8) billion every year it spends on treatment associated with the effects of poor housing, they add.
BMJ Group
Baranyi, G., et al. (2025). Housing quality and school outcomes in England: a nationally representative linked cohort study. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. DOI: 10.1136/jech-2025-224495. https://jech.bmj.com/content/early/2025/12/08/jech-2025-224495
Posted in: Child Health News | Medical Research News | Healthcare News
Cancel reply to comment
Guillaume Bentzinger, Luis Carrillo, Philippe Robin, and Alejandro Bara-Estaún
Discover how AI, flow chemistry, and NMR come together in the PiPAC project to revolutionize scalable and autonomous API production.
Dr. Raj Singh
Learn how digital connectivity and the PathoVerse are improving pathology workflows and accelerating access to expert diagnostics.
Yavuz Çelik
Discover how real-time cell density monitoring boosts yield, lowers media costs, and improves viability in bioprocessing.
News-Medical.Net provides this medical information service in accordance
with these terms and conditions.
Please note that medical information found
on this website is designed to support, not to replace the relationship
between patient and physician/doctor and the medical advice they may provide.
Last Updated: Wednesday 17 Dec 2025
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Concurrent physical frailty and depression likely boost the risk of dementia in older people, with the interaction of these 2 factors alone contributing around 17% of the overall risk, suggest the findings of a large international study, published in the open access journal General Psychiatry.
Globally, some 57 million people are living with dementia-a figure that is expected to triple by 2050, note the researchers.
Previously published research has primarily focused on the individual associations between physical frailty or depression and dementia risk, despite the fact that both have physiological and pathological factors in common, they explain.
To explore the potential interaction between these two factors on dementia risk in older adults, the researchers tracked the diagnosis of any type of dementia in 220,947 participants (average age: 64; 53% women) from 3 large study groups.
These were the UK Biobank, the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA), and the Health and Retirement Study.
Physical frailty was assessed using modified versions of the Fried frailty criteria, in which a person is considered to be frail if they have 3 or more of the following indicators: unintentional weight loss; self-reported exhaustion; low physical activity; slow walking speed; and weak grip strength.
Depression was evaluated through responses to mental health questionnaires or combined with hospital admission records.
Compared with those in good physical health, frail participants across all 3 groups were older, more likely to be female, weigh more, have more long term conditions and lower educational attainment.
During an average tracking period of nearly 13 years, 9088 people (7605 in the UK Biobank, 1207 in the Health Retirement Study and 276 in the ELSA) were diagnosed with dementia of any type.
Analysis of the data revealed that compared with those in good physical health, those who were frail were more than 2.5 times as likely to be diagnosed with dementia, while depression was associated with a 59% heightened risk.
And participants who were both physically frail and depressed were more than 3 times as likely to be diagnosed with dementia as those in good physical and mental health.
What's more, a significant additional interaction between physical frailty and depression was observed, with around 17% of the overall dementia risk attributable to these two factors combined.
"These results underscore the complex relationship between frailty, depression, and cognitive function," write the researchers.
"Lower levels of frailty may allow the health system to partially offset the cognitive burden of depression and, similarly, lower levels of depression may enable the system to mitigate the burden of frailty," they suggest.
"However, once both factors exceed a certain threshold, this compensatory ability may be compromised, leading to a sharp increase in the risk of dementia," they add.
This is an observational study, and as such, no firm conclusions can be drawn about cause and effect. And the researchers sound a note of caution in the interpretation of the findings, primarily because the definitions of physical frailty, depression, and dementia varied across the three cohorts.
Nevertheless, the researchers conclude: "Given that physical frailty and depression are modifiable, concurrent interventions targeting these conditions could significantly reduce dementia risk."
BMJ Group
Ding, Y., et al. (2025) Associations of physical frailty, depression and their interaction with incident all-cause dementia among older adults: evidence from three prospective cohorts. General Psychiatry. DOI: 10.1136/gpsych-2025-102172. https://gpsych.bmj.com/content/38/6/e102172
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MANCHESTER, England (AP) — The winner of the 2026 World Cup will receive $50 million from a $655 million prize pool, FIFA said Wednesday in announcing record financial rewards for teams in a tournament with ticket prices that have sparked outcries.
The champion's figure is up from $42 million won by Argentina in 2022 and $38 million gained by France in 2018 but less than half of what Chelsea earned for winning the much less-hyped Club World Cup this year.
The total prize fund for the World Cup, staged in the United States, Canada and Mexico from June 11 to July 19, is up 48.9% from the $440 million for the 2022 tournament in Qatar.
The 2026 total will be nearly six times the $110 million in prize money for the 2023 Women's World Cup in Australia and New Zealand. FIFA president Gianni Infantino in 2023 set a target of equal prize money for men and women at their next World Cups — the next women's tournament is scheduled for 2027 in Brazil.
The Club World Cup, controversially expanded from seven teams to 32 and shoehorned into the soccer calendar last summer, had a total prize fund of $1 billion. Chelsea won the top prize of up to $125 million for a tournament that faced fierce resistance from players and leagues and drew sparse crowds for some matches.
FIFA has a different distribution model for the national team and club tournaments, with the disparity in prize money reflecting factors such as clubs with higher wage costs than national teams.
Beyond prize money, further funds are put toward development of soccer globally.
Infantino said the World Cup will be “groundbreaking in terms of its financial contribution to the global football community.”
World soccer's governing body approved the prize money at a meeting of its council in Doha. FIFA in March projected revenue for its current four-year cycle through 2026 at $13 billion, up from $7.5 billion for 2019-22.
Each of the 48 national federations at the expanded 2026 World Cup will receive $1.5 million for preparation costs and $9 million for participating in the group stage, the same as for the 2022 tournament.
Teams advancing to the new round of 32 get $11 million and those reaching the round of 16 receive $15 million. Nations reaching the quarterfinals are paid $19 million, the fourth-place team $27 million, the third-place team $29 million and the final loser $33 million.
Including participation fees, FIFA will distribute $727 million to the 48 federations.
Each federation decides what to pay its players. The French sports daily L'Equipe reported France players were in line for a bonus of $586,000 by their federation if they won the trophy in 2022. France was ultimately beaten by Argentina in the final.
The U.S. Soccer Federation's 2022 collective bargaining agreements with the unions for its men's and women's national teams call for prize money for men in 2026 and women in 2027 to be pooled together, and 80% of the money to be distributed among the players.
___
AP Sports Writer Ronald Blum in New York contributed to this report.
___
James Robson is at https://x.com/jamesalanrobson
___
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Updated on December 17, 2025
By Martina Alcheva
The global soccer spotlight turns once again to the Middle East as Ousmane Dembele and his teammates prepare to lead Paris Saint-Germain into another defining night on the international stage. For the Parisian club, this match carries symbolism that goes far beyond a single trophy, touching on prestige, legacy, and global recognition. The opponent is Flamengo, the pride of South American soccer, and the setting is Doha — a city that has already hosted some of the sport's most significant moments in recent years.
Yet the intrigue surrounding this final runs deeper than the teams involved. There is confusion, debate, and curiosity around what this match actually represents — and how PSG could still claim a form of global supremacy despite another club officially holding soccer's highest crown. That puzzle is at the heart of this encounter.
The FIFA Intercontinental Cup Qatar 2025 final brings together the reigning Champions League holder and the Copa Libertadores holder, continuing a tradition that stretches back decades under different formats and names. For the Ligue 1 champion, this is an opportunity to add yet another trophy to an already historic season. On the other hand, for Flamengo, it represents a chance to reclaim international glory and reaffirm South America's competitive relevance on the global stage.
Both clubs arrive motivated by unfinished business. PSG is still carrying the memory of a previous global final defeat, while the Brazilian side aims to emulate the legendary achievements of Brazilian clubs that once dominated world soccer.
The French side enters the final riding a wave of individual and collective recognition. Ousmane Dembele, fresh off being named FIFA's Best Men's Player, has been central to the club's transformation. His 35 goals and 16 assists last season, combined with PSG's first-ever Champions League triumph, have elevated the club into a new historical bracket.
Here lies the mystery that has puzzled many fans: how might the Parisians become world champions when Chelsea already holds that title? The answer lies in FIFA's restructuring of global club competitions.
In 2022, FIFA officially transformed the traditional annual Club World Cup into a new 32-team tournament held every four years. Chelsea won the first edition of this expanded event and is therefore the reigning FIFA Club World Cup champion.
A detailed view of the FIFA Club World Cup 2025 Final gold medal
However, FIFA simultaneously preserved the annual intercontinental competition, renaming it the FIFA Intercontinental Cup. According to FIFA regulations, this tournament is considered a continuation of the original Club World Cup lineage, maintaining the tradition of annual continental champions facing off.
FIFA's rulebook explicitly states: “Each participating club recognises that the competition is a continuation of the annual FIFA Club World Cup.” That distinction means PSG can still earn recognition as the world's best club at this moment, even while Chelsea retains the title from the expanded tournament.
Another key change lies in tournament structure. Due to European dominance — 17 wins in 21 finals since 2005 — FIFA granted the UEFA champion direct passage to the final, reducing fixture congestion and acknowledging competitive imbalance.
Kylian Mbappe of Real Madrid celebrates with the Intercontinental Cup
The other confederations battle through preliminary rounds, including the Derby of the Americas, before earning the right to challenge Europe's representative. This year, Flamengo navigated that path successfully, setting up the final clash in Qatar — a neutral venue that has now become synonymous with intercontinental finals.
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To address a major concern from the 2025 Club World Cup, FIFA will now be introducing a new rule change in the 2026 World Cup.
Cristiano Ronaldo and Gianni Infantino both stand at the center of a controversy that has shaken the foundations of soccer governance. What happened this summer for Lionel Messi at the 2025 Club World Cup has now re-emerged on a much bigger stage, placing FIFA under unprecedented scrutiny.
Real Madrid, after a subdued season start, have reportedly secured a decision on a promising young talent. His exceptional performance in the Club World Cup has garnered interest from several of Europe's elite teams.
When Argentina lifted the World Cup trophy in December 2022, the moment belonged to an entire country as much as it did to the players on the pitch.
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FILE - Portland Thorns FC forward Sophia Smith (9) controls the ball during the second half of the NWSL championship soccer match against the Kansas City Current, Saturday, Oct. 29, 2022, in Washington.
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Sophia Wilson is returning to the Portland Thorns for the 2026 season.
The 25-year-old U.S. national team star has exercised the player option of her contract for an additional year, the National Women's Soccer League team announced Wednesday. Terms of the deal were not revealed, but Sportico reported the option was worth $1 million.
Wilson did not play this season for the Thorns because she was on maternity leave for the birth of her daughter, Gianna. Formerly Sophia Smith, she married Arizona Cardinals wide receiver Michael Wilson in January.
"Bringing this new version of myself back to Portland is so special to me because Portland is where I started my professional career and it's where I've really grown up in a lot of ways,” Wilson said in a statement released by the team. “I'm excited for the city. I love living there. I love the people there. I'm excited to get back with everyone and play in Providence Park, to play in front of the Riveters. There's no place like it.”
In five seasons with the Thorns, she has scored 44 goals across all competitions. She was named the NWSL's most valuable player in 2022 after helping Portland win the league championship.
She was also on the Thorns team that won the 2021 NWSL Shield and the 2021 Challenge Cup. She won the Golden Boot in 2023, when she led the league with 11 goals.
A Colorado native, Wilson was the No. 1 pick in the 2020 NWSL draft out of Stanford, where she helped the Cardinal win the 2019 College Cup title. She scored three goals in the Cardinal's semifinal victory over UCLA and was named the College Cup's most valuable player.
"She is an exceptional global star that can change the game in an instant," Thorns general manager Jeff Agoos said. "Sophia will strengthen our roster's attack as we build on the success we saw in 2025, and we are happy that she will represent and fight for this incredible soccer community next season.”
Wilson was also on the national team that won the gold medal at the Paris Olympics. Fans dubbed the front line of Wilson, Trinity Rodman and Mallory Swanson “Triple Espresso.”
Wilson, who was also on the 2023 Women's World Cup squad, has played in 58 games with the national team, scoring 24 goals. She was named U.S. Soccer women's player of the year in 2022 and young player of the year in 2017.
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Ticket prices have increased astronomically on the resale market. FIFA will allow each country to decide how to allocate the cheaper tickets to “loyal” fans.
FIFA, global soccer's governing body, said Wednesday it would slash prices for a small portion of tickets to $60 for next year's World Cup, after soaring prices triggered public backlash and calls to halt ticket sales.
Ousmane Dembélé became the first Frenchman to win Best FIFA Men's Player since the global award was created in 2016, with a helping hand from the United States men's national team.
The Paris Saint-Germain forward finished top of the standings with 50 points, ahead of Lamine Yamal's 39 and Kylian Mbappé's 35, after all the votes from national team coaches, captains, media representatives, as well as the fan poll, had been counted.
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Every year, FIFA releases the detailed breakdown of who voted for whom, meaning that we know which direction USMNT manager Mauricio Pochettino and captain Tim Ream went in—they each had to name a top three that helped influence who won took home the prize. The U.S. media votes for the men's award were cast by FOX Sports soccer reporter Doug McIntyre.
Pochettino and Ream both gave Dembélé their first place vote. There may have been some PSG solidarity from Pochettino due to his attachment to the club as a player (2001–03) and manager (2021–22), although Dembélé's achievements last season stack up on their own anyway. His 51 goals and assists were pivotal to PSG winning a treble completed by Champions League glory.
Pochettino and Ream also voted the same way for second place: Mbappé. But they disagreed on their opinion for the third best player in the world over the past year.
The former opted for Harry Kane, whose rise he oversaw at Tottenham Hotspur a decade ago, while the latter chose PSG left back Nuno Mendes. On the surface it was a slightly strange choice, but 62 others also included Mendes somewhere in their top three.
McIntrye's top pick was Yamal, chosen by neither Pochettino, nor Ream. The reporter still opted for Dembélé, but only afforded the current Ballon d'Or holder second place. His third vote went to Barcelona attacker Raphinha, who was voted for 104 times in total but didn't feature in the separately decided Best FIFA Men's 11, much to the disdain of his wife. “Injustice!” she cried on social media.
Rank
Tim Ream (captain)
Mauricio Pochettino (manager)
Doug McIntrye (media)
1st
Ousmane Dembélé
Ousmane Dembélé
Lamine Yamal
2nd
Kylian Mbappé
Kylian Mbappé
Ousmane Dembélé
3rd
Nuno Mendes
Harry Kane
Raphinha
The U.S. trio also got votes in the best coach and goalkeeper categories as well, unanimously agreeing on Luis Enrique and Gianluigi Donnarumma respectively.
Rank
Tim Ream (captain)
Mauricio Pochettino (manager)
Doug McIntrye (media)
1st
Luis Enrique
Luis Enrique
Luis Enrique
2nd
Hansi Flick
Enzo Maresca
Arne Slot
3rd
Arne Slot
Arne Slot
Enzo Maresca
Rank
Tim Ream (captain)
Mauricio Pochettino (manager)
Doug McIntrye (media)
1st
Gianluigi Donnarumma
Gianluigi Donnarumma
Gianluigi Donnarumma
2nd
Thibaut Courtois
Thibaut Courtois
Wojciech Szczęsny
3rd
Emiliano Martínez
Emiliano Martínez
Alisson Becker
The process for The Best FIFA Women's Player is the same, with each country's manager, captain and designated media representatives asked to rank their top three female players of the year.
Barcelona and Spain's Aitana Bonmatí three-peated the award after previous wins in 2023 and 2024, but didn't get any support from USWNT manager Emma Hayes, or captain Lindsey Heaps.
In first place, Hayes and Heaps both picked Arsenal midfielder Mariona Caldentey, who finished second in the final standings. Hayes chose Alessia Russo second and Kansas City Current's Temwa Chawinga third, while Heaps put OL Lyonnes teammate Melchie Dumornay second and Russo third.
The media representative, ESPN writer Jeff Kassouf, did choose Bonmatí first, and gave his second and third votes to Chawinga and Caldentey respectively.
Rank
Lindsey Heaps (captain)
Emma Hayes (manager)
Jeff Kassouf (media)
1st
Mariona Caldentey
Mariona Caldentey
Aitana Bonmatí
2nd
Melchie Dumornay
Alessia Russo
Temwa Chawinga
3rd
Alessia Russo
Temwa Chawinga
Mariona Caldentey
In the coach stakes, all three ranked England manager Sarina Wiegman top of their list, as she claimed an astonishing fifth FIFA crown off the back of Euro 2025 last summer. For the goalkeeper award, where only first and second place was needed, Heaps and Hayes opted for Hannah Hampton top, but Kassouf chose Gotham FC stopper Ann-Katrin Berger instead.
Rank
Lindsey Heaps (captain)
Emma Hayes (manager)
Jeff Kassouf (media)
1st
Sarina Wiegman
Sarina Wiegman
Sarina Wiegman
2nd
Jonatan Giráldez
Renée Slegers
Renée Slegers
3rd
Renée Slegers
Seb Hines
Seb Hines
Rank
Lindsey Heaps (captain)
Emma Hayes (manager)
Jeff Kassouf (media)
1st
Hannah Hampton
Hannah Hampton
Ann-Katrin Berger
2nd
Christiane Endler
Cata Coll
Hannah Hampton
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Jamie Spencer is a freelance editor and writer for Sports Illustrated FC. Jamie fell in love with football in the mid-90s and specializes in the Premier League, Manchester United, the women's game and old school nostalgia.
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The winner of the 2026 World Cup will receive a record jackpot of $50 million, FIFA said Wednesday.
That figure is up from $42 million in 2022 and $38 million in 2018. But it is still less than half of what was on offer at the much less-hyped Club World Cup earlier this year.
World soccer's governing body said the total prize fund for the World Cup, staged in the United States, Canada and Mexico, was $655 million - a 50% increase on the previous edition in Qatar.
By comparison, the Club World Cup, which was controversially expanded from seven teams to 32 and shoehorned into the soccer calendar, had a total prize fund of $1 billion. The top prize for the winning team was worth up to $125 million for a tournament that faced fierce resistance from players and leagues and drew sparse crowds for some matches.
The Club World Cup, also staged in the U.S., was won by Chelsea.
FIFA has a different distribution model for the two tournaments, with the disparity in prize money reflecting factors such as clubs overseeing much higher costs through wages than national teams.
Beyond prize money, further funds are put toward development of soccer globally.
FIFA president Gianni Infantino said the World Cup would be "groundbreaking in terms of its financial contribution to the global football community."
World soccer's governing body approved the prize money for every stage of the World Cup at a meeting of its council in Doha.
The runner-up will receive $33 million, with $29 million and $27 million going to the third and fourth place teams respectively.
The lowest prize money will be $9 million and all 48 participating nations will get $1.5 million to cover what FIFA describes as "preparation costs."
FIFA said, in all, $727 million would be distributed to the soccer federations participating.
It is not known how each nation will distribute the money, but at the last World Cup, French sports daily L'Equipe reported France players were in line for a bonus of $586,000 by their federation if they won the trophy. France was ultimately beaten by Argentina in the final.
Reporting by The Associated Press.
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The U.S. men's national team has a new slogan, and Megan Rapinoe has some questions.
Earlier this month, U.S. Soccer unveiled "Never Chase Reality," the USMNT's official 2026 World Cup campaign.
In a 90-second video unveiling the campaign, "Saturday Night Live" cast member Marcello Hernandez explains what the slogan is meant to convey.
"Reality says the odds are stacked against us, to think our men can ever raise the world's biggest trophy. To be the first soccer team to beat them at football," Hernandez says.
"But here's the thing about us: Refusing to accept reality is kind of our thing. Reality told us to stay grounded. We built planes, we walked on the moon.
"Reality told us not to dream, but we stand united chasing the legacy. Being unrealistic, it's not a flaw — it's a force, it's a fuel.
"When the world says we won't, our fans say: 'I believe that we will win.'
"We haven't lifted every men's trophy yet, but we have carried this fight for decades with enough grit to make the doubters eat their words.
"And when we spill blood in the name of the crest, it's not blind belief, it's how we play — the U.S. way.
"So no, we're not realistic at all and we're proud of it. Because if you want to be great and make history, chase dreams, chase greatness, chase legacy. Never chase reality."
On her podcast "A Touch More," U.S. women's national team legend Rapinoe admitted that the message wasn't quite resonating with her.
“The team's slogan going into the World Cup, this was like their drop, and their slogan is ‘Never chase reality.' I was like, guys, I don't think it's saying what you think it's saying,” Rapinoe said. “I'm kinda like, why didn't we just stick with, ‘Dream big?'
“To me, it said like you already think you're not good. So, I didn't like that.”
While Rapinoe won the World Cup twice with the USWNT, the USMNT will be looking to achieve unprecedented success on home soil in 2026.
The USMNT has only won one World Cup knockout match in its history, which came against Mexico in 2002. Should the U.S. match that team's achievement of making the quarterfinal, it would have to win two knockout games next summer.
The U.S. men's national team has a new slogan, and Megan Rapinoe has some questions.
Earlier this month, U.S. Soccer unveiled "Never Chase Reality," the USMNT's official 2026 World Cup campaign.
In a 90-second video unveiling the campaign, "Saturday Night Live" cast member Marcello Hernandez explains what the slogan is meant to convey.
"Reality says the odds are stacked against us, to think our men can ever raise the world's biggest trophy. To be the first soccer team to beat them at football," Hernandez says.
"But here's the thing about us: Refusing to accept reality is kind of our thing. Reality told us to stay grounded. We built planes, we walked on the moon.
"Reality told us not to dream, but we stand united chasing the legacy. Being unrealistic, it's not a flaw — it's a force, it's a fuel.
"When the world says we won't, our fans say: 'I believe that we will win.'
"We haven't lifted every men's trophy yet, but we have carried this fight for decades with enough grit to make the doubters eat their words.
"And when we spill blood in the name of the crest, it's not blind belief, it's how we play — the U.S. way.
"So no, we're not realistic at all and we're proud of it. Because if you want to be great and make history, chase dreams, chase greatness, chase legacy. Never chase reality."
On her podcast "A Touch More," U.S. women's national team legend Rapinoe admitted that the message wasn't quite resonating with her.
“The team's slogan going into the World Cup, this was like their drop, and their slogan is ‘Never chase reality.' I was like, guys, I don't think it's saying what you think it's saying,” Rapinoe said. “I'm kinda like, why didn't we just stick with, ‘Dream big?'
“To me, it said like you already think you're not good. So, I didn't like that.”
While Rapinoe won the World Cup twice with the USWNT, the USMNT will be looking to achieve unprecedented success on home soil in 2026.
The USMNT has only won one World Cup knockout match in its history, which came against Mexico in 2002. Should the U.S. match that team's achievement of making the quarterfinal, it would have to win two knockout games next summer.
This summer, as the world gathers to celebrate the FIFA World Cup 2026, fans can play a newly reimagined FIFA football simulation game exclusively on Netflix Games. The game, developed and published by Delphi Interactive, allows Netflix members to experience the emotion and drama of the tournament in its purest, most joyful form — in a format that's fast to learn, thrilling to master, and built for anyone to jump in. Plus, you can play solo or with friends online: All you need is Netflix and your phone.
“The FIFA World Cup is going to be the cultural event of 2026, and now fans will be able to celebrate their fandom by bringing the game right into their living rooms,” said Alain Tascan, President of Games at Netflix. “We want to bring football back to its roots with something everyone can play with just the touch of a button.”
FIFA President Gianni Infantino said, “FIFA is very excited to team up with Netflix Games and Delphi Interactive ahead of the FIFA World Cup 2026. This major collaboration is a key milestone in FIFA's commitment to innovation in the football gaming space, which aspires to reach billions of football fans of all ages everywhere in the world and will be redefining the pure notion of simulation games. Our reimagined game truly marks the beginning of a new era of digital football. It will be available for free to Netflix members and is a great historic step for FIFA.”
“Football is the biggest thing in the world,” says Casper Daugaard, Founder & CEO of Delphi Interactive. “As lifelong FIFA fans, we're honored to help usher in the bold next generation and reimagine the future of the franchise. Our mission is simple: Make the FIFA game the most fun, approachable, and global football game ever created.” Andy Kleinman, President of Delphi Interactive, adds, “Together with FIFA and Netflix Games, Delphi is building a game worthy of the world's favorite sport — a game that anyone, anywhere, can pick up and instantly feel the magic of football.”
Millions of people already watch Netflix on their TVs, and now you can play games there too. The new FIFA game will join recently released titles as part of a suite of games that Netflix members can find on their TVs, right alongside their favorite shows and movies, using their phones as a controller.
Consider this the opening whistle — more details arrive in 2026.
This game will be available on select TVs in certain countries, with plans to roll out further over time. Read more here.
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Barcelona defender Ronald Araujo has set a date for his return to training after completing a spiritual pilgrimage to Israel. The Uruguayan international, who was granted indefinite leave to cope with significant mental health struggles following a traumatic period on the pitch, has informed the club he intends to report back for duty on December 29 with an eye on the Catalan derby.
The road to recovery for Ronald Araujo appears to have a destination in sight. After weeks of uncertainty surrounding his future and well-being, the 26-year-old has communicated his plans to head coach Hansi Flick and the Barcelona hierarchy. According to reports from Marcaand AS, Araujo feels ready to reintegrate into the squad after the Christmas break, having sought solace in the Holy Land to heal the psychological wounds inflicted by a relentless wave of criticism.
Araujo's absence was not due to a torn muscle or a broken bone, but a "broken" mental state. Following a high-profile error and red card against Chelsea in the Champions League - an incident that sparked a ferocious backlash from fans and media alike - the centre-back reportedly suffered from anxiety and panic attacks. Recognising that he could not perform, he requested, and was immediately granted, a leave of absence to prioritise his mental health.
In search of peace, the devout Christian embarked on a spiritual journey to Israel. Over the past week, Araujo has visited sacred sites in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, using the pilgrimage to "rediscover himself" and find the emotional balance that had deserted him.
The trip appears to have had the desired effect. Reports suggest the defender has returned feeling "progressively better" and mentally stronger, convinced that he is ready to face the pressures of elite football once again.
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With his pilgrimage complete, Araujo's focus has shifted to his professional return. He plans to travel to his native Uruguay to spend the upcoming Christmas holidays with his family, using the time to recharge fully before heading back to Catalonia.
He has circled December 29 on the calendar as his return date to the Ciutat Esportiva Joan Gamper. This will give him a handful of sessions to prove his fitness to Hansi Flick before Barcelona's first fixture of 2026.
Ambitiously, Araujo has reportedly set his sights on the Catalan derby against Espanyol on January 3 as his comeback match. While it remains to be seen if Flick will throw him straight back into the cauldron of a local derby, the player's desire to be available is a massive boost for a squad that has had to adapt without its defensive leader.
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Throughout the ordeal, Barcelona's stance has been one of unwavering support. President Joan Laporta and Hansi Flick have publicly defended their captain, emphasising that the human being comes before the footballer. The club had refused to put a timeline on his recovery, asserting he could take as long as necessary.
Araujo's decision to return so soon is a testament to his resilience, but the club will likely manage his reintegration with extreme care. For now, the news that their captain has found peace and is ready to fight for the badge again is the only Christmas present fans were asking for.
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Manchester City have offered an update on the club's 115 FFP charges amid talk a verdict could be returned imminently. The Cityzens are still yet to discover if they will face sanctions after being slapped with the charges for allegedly breaching financial rules during a nine year period between 2009 and 2018. A hearing concluded over a year ago but a verdict is still yet to be announced.
The hearing into Manchester City's alleged rule breaches began back in September 2024 and lasted for 10 weeks. The outcome of the hearing is yet to be made public and the length of time the process is taking has drawn plenty of criticism. Premier League chief executive officer Richard Master has told BBC Sport: "There is no happy alternative to enforcing the rules, it goes to the integrity of the competition - it goes ultimately to value - and that principle shouldn't be defrayed in any way by being too difficult, too complex, or too costly."
As the long wait for an outcome continues, speculation has raged about possible punishments that could be handed down to City if they are found guilty. There has been talk that the club could be stripped of their titles, handed a drastic points deduction, or even face expulsion from the league.
Manchester City have offered an update on the situation in their financial report released this week. The club said: "As at the date of publishing these statements, the independent commission is still in the process of reviewing the matter. Based on their evaluation of the Group's prospects and viability, the Directors confirm that they have a reasonable expectation that the Group will be able to continue in operation and meet its liabilities as they fall due within the 12 months following the approval of these financial statements. Consequently, the financial statements have been prepared on a going concern basis."
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A verdict on Manchester City's FFP charges feels overdue for many football fans who have following the saga with interest. City boss Pep Guardiola said back in February he was expecting a "verdict and a sentence" within a month, while recent speculation had suggested an update may have been provided in November's international break. Those dates are now long gone, with former Manchester City financial advisor Stefan Borson now claiming a verdict could be announced before Christmas. He said on talkSPORT alongside fellow pundit and ex-Crystal Palace chairman Simon Jordan: "I think Simon [Jordan] thinks it's going to come out next year, I think it still could come out before Christmas. The decision has been imminent for quite some time, there's not a lot that they can do. It doesn't take that long."
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Although a verdict in the saga will be welcomed by all after such a lengthy wait, it will not mean the end of the matter. Manchester City are expected to appeal any unfavourable outcome and could also claim damages if they win, two scenarios which will only create further litigation and cause further delays. Meanwhile, other clubs may also seek compensation and turn to the law if City are sanctioned. Barrister Yasin Patel told BBC Sport what to expect: "Whatever comes out of it, I'm afraid that's not the end of the title race for both parties here. This is a two-horse race that's going to carry on. Whatever verdict comes out, I wouldn't think that's the end of it. I would appeal, whether I was on one side or the other."
President Trump has signed a proclamation widening his administration's ongoing travel restrictions to include the 2026 World Cup participants Cote d'Ivoire and Senegal. Football fans from the two African nations may now face strict checks arriving into the United States of America for next summer's tournament.
The US travel ban list now totals 39 countries as a result, with a White House statement clarifying Cote D'Ivoire and Senegal are subject to "partial restrictions and entry limitations," which is currently the least restrictive category.
This can be compared to two other World Cup participants on the travel ban list, Haiti and Iran, who are subject to the most stringent restrictions possible.
The White House added that the decision to impose the bans has been taken due to visa overstay rates. For B1 or B2 visitor visas - which travelling fans would need to enter the US for the World Cup - the overstay rates are around 4% for Senegal and 8% for Cote d'Ivoire, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
Trump's proclamation has also cited athletes from the two countries, as well as diplomats and "individuals whose entry serves US national interests", as a group who will be exempt from travel restrictions.
The 2026 World Cup is to be co-hosted across the United States, Canada and Mexico between June 11 and July 19, 2026.
Two of Cote d'Ivoire's three Group E matches against Ecuador and Curacao are scheduled to take place in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with the third against Germany booked in for Toronto, Canada.
Similarly, Senegal have two group stage fixtures against France and Norway which will be hosted in New Jersey, whilst their third against an undetermined play-off winner will be Toronto. They are also set to be one of the US Mens National Team's final warm-up opponents in a friendly agreed to take place in Charlotte, North Carolina, next May.
Earlier in December, the Trump administration's World Cup taskforce, chaired by Andrew Giuliani, unveiled a fast-track visa system for visitors attending the World Cup.
The scheduling system is designed to push match ticket-holders to the front of the line for visa interviews, though it remains unknown how that system will handle requests from the countries affected by the travel ban.
Huge scrutiny has also been placed on the tournament several months before its start date due to the exorbitant ticket prices FIFA are charging for games in their dynamic pricing model.
Following backlash football's governing body have released a new set of cut-price World Cup at a fixed cost of £45.
These will be allocated to the participating member associations - including the English FA - to then sell to members.
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Cristiano Ronaldo's "incredible leadership" has been lauded by his Al-Nassr teammate Mohamed Simakan after their "impossible" link-up in Saudi Arabia. The 40-year-old may be approaching the closing chapters of a glittering career, but his influence inside the dressing room remains as powerful as ever. That impact has now been underlined by Simakan, who has spoken openly about the transformational effect of sharing a pitch with the five-time Ballon d'Or winner.
With 11 goals and two assists in just 12 appearances this season, Ronaldo remains the focal point of Al-Nassr's attack and driving force behind their domestic and continental ambitions. For Simakan, the journey to Al-Nassr has been surreal. The French defender arrived in 2024 from RB Leipzig on a season-long loan, before making the move permanent over the summer. While adapting to a new league and culture was challenging enough, the most striking aspect of the move was far more personal.
"If someone had told me at the start of my career: 'You'll play with Cristiano Ronaldo'? I would have said: 'That's impossible! We're not the same age.' When I started, he was at the end of his career," Simakan admitted, as shared by @_TheNassrZone on X.
Simakan has now featured in 54 matches for Al-Nassr, with 45 of those outings coming alongside Ronaldo. In that time, he has contributed three goals and three assists, but more importantly, he has absorbed lessons from one of football's most obsessive competitors.
Simakan was candid about the learnings he continues to receive from the Portuguese icon. Ronaldo's influence, he explained, goes far beyond what happens on matchday.
"I won't lie to you, what he brings me in terms of discipline, work, and leadership is incredible. Cristiano gives me so much advice," Simakan revealed.
Those qualities have become central to Al-Nassr's identity. Ronaldo's presence has elevated expectations, with younger and less-experienced players compelled to match his commitment. Even at this stage of his career, the forward's hunger remains unparalleled. His contract in Saudi Arabia runs until the summer of 2027, but there is growing speculation that his career may stretch even further. With the symbolic milestone of 1,000 career goals still in view and the long-term ambition of potentially playing alongside his eldest son, Cristiano Jr, the possibility of Ronaldo featuring into his mid-40s no longer feels fanciful.
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What is certain is that the next World Cup will be his last. Ronaldo has already confirmed that the World Cup 2026 will represent a final bow on the biggest international stage.
He told CNN: "Definitely, yes, because I will be 41 years old. I feel very good in this moment. I score goals, I still feel quick and sharp, I'm enjoying my game in the national team. Let's be honest, when I mean soon I mean probably one, two years. I'm enjoying the moment. But when I mean soon, it's really soon, because I give everything for football. I'm in the game for the last 25 years, I did everything. I have many records. I'm really proud. So let's enjoy the moment, live the moment."
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Ronaldo picked up a red card in his last appearance for Portugal against Ireland, which resulted in a three-match ban, though two of those games were deferred under a one-year probation period. The ruling has attracted criticism, yet it leaves Ronaldo eligible to feature in Portugal's World Cup group matches if selected. Portugal are set to face Uzbekistan, Colombia and the winner of an inter-confederation play-off involving New Caledonia, Jamaica and DR Congo.
Ronaldo remains central to Portugal's plans, and yet head coach Roberto Martínez has been careful to strike a balance between respect for Ronaldo's stature and the practical demands of international football.
He recently told reporters: "We are better with Ronaldo, Nuno Mendes and Pedro Neto. The most important thing is that football is a game of mistakes, of difficulties, of resilience, and when some players aren't there, we have to find a way to win. I think the important thing is to have all the important players, but also to have confidence and a clear idea that we can win when certain players aren't in the starting XI."
The message was clear, that although Ronaldo remains a decisive figure, Portugal are building depth around him rather than depending on him alone.
Barcelona are preparing to open fresh contract talks with Hansi Flick just months after his last renewal, as club president Joan Laporta looks to lock down the German tactician for the long term following a strong start to the campaign.
The mood in Catalonia this December is a world away from the uncertainty and financial gloom that has clouded recent winters. Under the stewardship of Flick, Barcelona have not only rediscovered their winning touch but have done so with a brand of high-intensity, physically dominant football that has taken La Liga by storm. With the team flying high in the league and looking like genuine contenders on the European stage, the club's hierarchy has decided to act decisively to ensure the architect of this resurgence goes nowhere.
According to a new report from German publication Bild, the Barcelona board is plotting a major surprise for their head coach. While contract discussions are typically reserved for the summer months or the final weeks of a campaign, president Laporta and sporting director Deco are eager to break with tradition. They are reportedly preparing a concrete offer to extend Flick's stay well beyond his current deal, a move designed to lock down the 60-year-old as the face of the club's sporting project for years to come.
According to the report, Laporta and sporting director Deco have drafted a proposal designed to ward off any potential interest from rival European powerhouses or national federations ahead of the 2026 World Cup. The offer, described internally as a "surprise" due to its timing, is a direct response to the team's imperious form.
Since securing the domestic treble last season, Flick's side has shown no signs of a hangover. They currently sit atop La Liga and are on track to qualify for the Champions League knockout play-off, though a top eight finish to guarantee a place in the last-16 remains possible with two games left. Laporta, who views Flick as the cornerstone of his second presidency, is reportedly keen to ensure there is zero speculation regarding the coach's future as the season enters its critical phase.
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The desire to extend Flick's contract is about more than just rewarding results; it is about stability. For years, the Barcelona dugout was a seat of volatility. In Flick, the board believes they have found a figure capable of building a dynasty similar to the long-term tenures seen in the Premier League. Flick and the board are said to be in complete harmony with the club sure that Flick is the right man to oversee the integration of the next generation of La Masia talent.
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While the club are eager to rush the paperwork, Flick himself has historically preferred shorter commitments to maintain competitive tension. However, his adaptation to life in Catalonia has been seamless. He has frequently spoken of his "love" for the city and the unique passion of those at the club. If he accepts the offer, it would signal a definitive commitment to making Barcelona his long-term home, effectively ending any whispers of a future return to the Bundesliga or the international stage.
For now, the focus remains on the pitch, but in the offices of the Camp Nou, the priority is clear: make sure Hansi Flick goes nowhere for a very long time.
Barcelona striker Robert Lewandowski is reportedly 'open' to joining MLS side the Chicago Fire on a free transfer at the end of the season. The 37-year-old has held positive talks with the club about a potential move after his contract with Hansi Flick's side expires. Lionel Messi's Inter Miami have also been credited with interest in Lewandowski but may now miss out on the goalscoring great.
Lewandowski could become the latest big name to head to MLS on a free transfer after holding talks with the Chicago Fire. According to BBC Sport, the veteran striker is open to a move and his wages will not be a problem for the MLS club. The Fire are said to have the striker on their 'discovery list', which means no other MLS teams can sign him without paying them a fee. There has been speculation recently that Lewandowski could be tempted to join Lionel Messi at Inter Miami and that the club have even begun searching for his new house, but it now seems that the Fire are in pole position to sign the Poland international.
Lewandowski looks increasingly likely to say goodbye to Barcelona after three years with the Catalan giants. The striker joined from Bayern Munich in 2022 and has gone on to win La Liga, Copa del Rey and Spanish Super Cup titles with the club. He also picked up the Pichichi award in 2022-23, handed out to La Liga's top scorer, and has proven an excellent signing for the Catalan giants. However, at the grand old age of 37 he is no longer a guaranteed starter at Barcelona and a series of muscle injuries have also seen him sidelined on several occasions so far this season. Lewandowski has still managed eight goals in all competitions for Flick's side, but his reduced role means it would be no surprise if the Catalan giants did not offer a contract extension in the summer.
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The departure of Lewandowski could well see Barcelona dip into the transfer market for a replacement if finances allow. Harry Kane, Erling Haaland and Julian Alvarez are just three players that have been linked with moves to Camp Nou, although the trio are likely to be out of the club's financial reach. Galatasaray striker Victor Osimhen, Borussia Dortmund's Serhou Guirassy and Etta Eyong are also reportedly on the club's radar as they ponder their next move. Barcelona president Joan Laporta told the Foros de Vanguardia event that the club do have money to spend if necessary, as reported by Mundo Deportivo.
"We're capable of making a significant investment, but we won't go crazy with signings. There are financial options available to Barça. If we think we need to sign a specific player to fix the team, we can certainly do it, but it's not necessary," he said. "We're a team with a very strong, defined core. Many players don't work out, and there are examples; we all think the same. Barça can handle any investment if we deem it necessary. We don't need to break the bank."
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Lewandowski will see out the season with Barcelona and will hope he can add more titles to his collection in 2025-26. Barcelona play their final fixture of the calendar year on Sunday against Villarreal as they aim to make it eight straight wins on the bounce in La Liga. The 37-year-old will then have several months to ponder his next move. It's also been suggested he could retire if a new contract is not offered at Barcelona, while AC Milan and clubs in Saudi Arabia are also believed to be willing to try and tempt him in the summer. Lewandowski will also be hoping to play at World Cup 2026 next summer. Poland are into the play-offs and will take on Albania in a semi-final in March. The winners will progress to a final against Ukraine or Sweden.
Former US women's soccer star Megan Rapinoe mocked the US men's national soccer team World Cup campaign in a recent podcast episode last week.
The US team unveiled “Never Chase Reality” as its campaign heading into the 2026 World Cup.
The 90-second film featured narration by Marcello Hernandez. The squad said in a release that “'Never Chase Reality' reflects the journey to 26 for the Men's National Team.”
Rapinoe touched on it during the latest episode of “A Touch More” with her partner Sue Bird and sportscaster Katie Nolan.
“The team's slogan going into the World Cup, this was like their drop, and their slogan is ‘Never chase reality.' I was like, guys, I don't think it's saying what you think it's saying,” Rapinoe said. “I'm kinda like, why didn't we just stick with, ‘Dream big?'
“To me, it said like you already think you're not good. So, I didn't like that.”
Hernandez lays out what the campaign means to him.
“This campaign isn't just about soccer; it's about the American dream. Never chasing reality means ignoring the odds and daring to dream,” he said in the release. “I played soccer since I was four years old until college and have been a fan of the Men's and Women's U.S. National Team since I was a kid, so it's an honor to bring my passion and enthusiasm for the game to U.S. soccer.”
The reality is the US men's soccer team has not had very much success on the world stage despite the squad being considered the “golden generation.”
The US made it to the knockout stage in 2022, even tying with England in group play, but lost to the Netherlands. The US made it to the quarterfinals in 2002.
Come June, the US will be vying for a spot in the knockout stage with Paraguay and Australia and whichever squad makes it through the UEFA playoff path.
Advertisement
Former US women's soccer star Megan Rapinoe mocked the US men's national soccer team World Cup campaign in a recent podcast episode last week.
The US team unveiled “Never Chase Reality” as its campaign heading into the 2026 World Cup.
Advertisement
The 90-second film featured narration by Marcello Hernandez. The squad said in a release that “'Never Chase Reality' reflects the journey to 26 for the Men's National Team.”
Rapinoe touched on it during the latest episode of “A Touch More” with her partner Sue Bird and sportscaster Katie Nolan.
“The team's slogan going into the World Cup, this was like their drop, and their slogan is ‘Never chase reality.' I was like, guys, I don't think it's saying what you think it's saying,” Rapinoe said. “I'm kinda like, why didn't we just stick with, ‘Dream big?'
“To me, it said like you already think you're not good. So, I didn't like that.”
Advertisement
Hernandez lays out what the campaign means to him.
“This campaign isn't just about soccer; it's about the American dream. Never chasing reality means ignoring the odds and daring to dream,” he said in the release. “I played soccer since I was four years old until college and have been a fan of the Men's and Women's U.S. National Team since I was a kid, so it's an honor to bring my passion and enthusiasm for the game to U.S. soccer.”
The reality is the US men's soccer team has not had very much success on the world stage despite the squad being considered the “golden generation.”
Advertisement
The US made it to the knockout stage in 2022, even tying with England in group play, but lost to the Netherlands. The US made it to the quarterfinals in 2002.
Come June, the US will be vying for a spot in the knockout stage with Paraguay and Australia and whichever squad makes it through the UEFA playoff path.
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The world No. 1 ends a six-year partnership with Ferrero, during which he won six Grand Slam titles.ByDavid KanePublished Dec 17, 2025 copy_link
Published Dec 17, 2025
World No. 1 Carlos Alcaraz shocked the tennis world on Wednesday when he announced he had parted ways with coach Juan Carlos Ferrero on social media.Himself a former world No. 1, Ferrero, who won the ATP's 2025 Coach of the Year Award alongside Samuel López, led Alcaraz to the top of men's tennis during their six-year partnership, during which time Alcaraz won six Grand Slam titles—including two in 2025.
Himself a former world No. 1, Ferrero, who won the ATP's 2025 Coach of the Year Award alongside Samuel López, led Alcaraz to the top of men's tennis during their six-year partnership, during which time Alcaraz won six Grand Slam titles—including two in 2025.
“Thank you for making my childhood dreams come true,” Alcaraz wrote in a statement (translated from Spanish). “We started this journey when I was just a kid, and throughout this time you have accompanied me on an incredible journey, both on and off the court. And I have thoroughly enjoyed every step of the way with you.“We have made it to the top, and I feel that if our sporting paths had to part, it should be from up there. From the place we always worked for and always aspired to reach…You have made me grow as an athlete, but above all as a person. And something I value greatly: I have enjoyed the process. I will remember that, the journey we have taken together.”The announcement comes days after Alcaraz kicked off his 50th week atop the ATP rankings, and just weeks before he is scheduled to return to action in 2026—where he will bid to become the youngest man to complete the Career Grand Slam at the Australian Open.In Ferrero's statement, the 2003 Roland Garros champion suggested the split wasn't entirely mutual.
“We have made it to the top, and I feel that if our sporting paths had to part, it should be from up there. From the place we always worked for and always aspired to reach…You have made me grow as an athlete, but above all as a person. And something I value greatly: I have enjoyed the process. I will remember that, the journey we have taken together.”The announcement comes days after Alcaraz kicked off his 50th week atop the ATP rankings, and just weeks before he is scheduled to return to action in 2026—where he will bid to become the youngest man to complete the Career Grand Slam at the Australian Open.In Ferrero's statement, the 2003 Roland Garros champion suggested the split wasn't entirely mutual.
The announcement comes days after Alcaraz kicked off his 50th week atop the ATP rankings, and just weeks before he is scheduled to return to action in 2026—where he will bid to become the youngest man to complete the Career Grand Slam at the Australian Open.In Ferrero's statement, the 2003 Roland Garros champion suggested the split wasn't entirely mutual.
In Ferrero's statement, the 2003 Roland Garros champion suggested the split wasn't entirely mutual.
“I wish I could have continued,” Ferrero wrote on his own social media page. “I am convinced that good memories and good people always find a way to cross paths again.”Alcaraz, 22, has not announced a replacement coach, though his statement referenced “new adventures and new projects.”“I wish you the best in everything that comes your way. I am left with the peace of mind of knowing that we have given our all, that we have made everything available to each other.“Thank you for everything, Juanki.”
Alcaraz, 22, has not announced a replacement coach, though his statement referenced “new adventures and new projects.”“I wish you the best in everything that comes your way. I am left with the peace of mind of knowing that we have given our all, that we have made everything available to each other.“Thank you for everything, Juanki.”
“I wish you the best in everything that comes your way. I am left with the peace of mind of knowing that we have given our all, that we have made everything available to each other.“Thank you for everything, Juanki.”
“Thank you for everything, Juanki.”
Carlos Alcaraz has split with coach Juan Carlos Ferrero after seven years and 24 tour-level titles. The No. 1 player in the PIF ATP Rankings announced the news on Wednesday via social media.
"It is very difficult for me to write this post," Alcaraz wrote in Spanish. "After over seven years together, Juanki and I have decided to end our time together as coach and player. Thank you for making my childhood dreams a reality. We started on this road when I was just a boy and for all this time you have been with me on an incredible journey, on and off the court. I have enjoyed every step with you so much.
"We have reached the top, and I think that if our sporting paths have to separate it should be from there, from the place we always worked for and aspired to reach. I have so many memories that it would be unfair to choose just one. You made me grow as an athlete, but more importantly as a person. The thing I value the most is that I enjoyed the process. I will never forget the journey we went on together.
"Now is a time of change for both of us, new adventures, new projects. But I am sure that we will approach them in the correct way, giving our best, as we always have. Always moving forward. With all my heart, I wish you the best for what is to come. I am happy I can say we always gave our all, that we gave each other everything."
View this post on Instagram A post shared by Carlos Alcaraz Garfia (@carlitosalcarazz)
Alcaraz began working with Ferrero seven years ago and won all six of his major titles under the guidance of the Spanish coach. Ferrero also helped Alcaraz, then 19, become the youngest player to claim ATP Year-End No. 1 presented by PIF honours in history in 2022, the same year in which he won his maiden major at the US Open.
Alcaraz captured 24 tour-level titles during his partnership with Ferrero, including eight ATP Masters 1000 crowns. The Spaniard, who will continue to work with Samuel Lopez, also won the 2021 Next Gen ATP Finals presented by PIF title with Ferrero by his side.
"Today is a difficult day," Ferrero wrote on social media. "One of those when it's hard to find the right words. Saying goodbye is never easy, especially when there are so many shared experiences behind it. We have worked hard, grown together, and shared unforgettable moments. I want to thank you for the time, the trust, the learning, and above all, for the people who have surrounded me throughout this journey.
"I take with me laughter, challenges overcome, conversations, support during difficult moments, and the satisfaction of having been part of something truly unique. Today, a very important chapter of my life comes to an end. I close it with nostalgia, but also with pride and excitement for what may come next. I know that everything I have lived has prepared me to be better.
"Thank you, Carlos, for the trust, the effort, and for making your way of competing make me feel so special. I wish you all the best, both professionally and personally. I would also like to thank the entire team for making my work easier throughout all these years. With you, I have learned that work is not just about tasks or results, but about the people who walk alongside you. Each and every one of you has left a mark on me that I will never forget.
"We have been an incredible team despite the difficulties, and I am sure you will continue to achieve great success. I wish I could have continued. I am convinced that good memories and good people always find a way to cross paths again. Thank you from the bottom of my heart."
View this post on Instagram A post shared by Juan Carlos Ferrero (@juankiferri)
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A post shared by Carlos Alcaraz Garfia (@carlitosalcarazz)
Alcaraz began working with Ferrero seven years ago and won all six of his major titles under the guidance of the Spanish coach. Ferrero also helped Alcaraz, then 19, become the youngest player to claim ATP Year-End No. 1 presented by PIF honours in history in 2022, the same year in which he won his maiden major at the US Open.
Alcaraz captured 24 tour-level titles during his partnership with Ferrero, including eight ATP Masters 1000 crowns. The Spaniard, who will continue to work with Samuel Lopez, also won the 2021 Next Gen ATP Finals presented by PIF title with Ferrero by his side.
"Today is a difficult day," Ferrero wrote on social media. "One of those when it's hard to find the right words. Saying goodbye is never easy, especially when there are so many shared experiences behind it. We have worked hard, grown together, and shared unforgettable moments. I want to thank you for the time, the trust, the learning, and above all, for the people who have surrounded me throughout this journey.
"I take with me laughter, challenges overcome, conversations, support during difficult moments, and the satisfaction of having been part of something truly unique. Today, a very important chapter of my life comes to an end. I close it with nostalgia, but also with pride and excitement for what may come next. I know that everything I have lived has prepared me to be better.
"Thank you, Carlos, for the trust, the effort, and for making your way of competing make me feel so special. I wish you all the best, both professionally and personally. I would also like to thank the entire team for making my work easier throughout all these years. With you, I have learned that work is not just about tasks or results, but about the people who walk alongside you. Each and every one of you has left a mark on me that I will never forget.
"We have been an incredible team despite the difficulties, and I am sure you will continue to achieve great success. I wish I could have continued. I am convinced that good memories and good people always find a way to cross paths again. Thank you from the bottom of my heart."
View this post on Instagram A post shared by Juan Carlos Ferrero (@juankiferri)
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© Copyright 1994 - 2024 ATP Tour, Inc. All Rights Reserved. No part of this site may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any way or by any means (including photocopying, recording or storing it in any medium by electronic means), without the written permission of ATP Tour, Inc.. Terms & Conditions | Privacy | Community Social Media Policy | Modern Slavery Statement | Feedback | Cookies | Your Privacy Choices
If junior Grand Slam titles were entry tickets, the Next Gen ATP Finals presented by PIF would have a very selective door policy.
Five of the six debutants in this year's field arrive in Jeddah as former boys' major champions, a contrast to the two returners, Americans Learner Tien and Nishesh Basavareddy, who are proving there's more than one route to the top.
Different paths, same destination, and a lineup that underscores just how deep — and stacked — the next wave of men's tennis is. For 6'4” Belgian Alexander Blockx, that journey began in Melbourne, where he won the 2023 Australian Open boys' title.
“It gave me a lot of confidence on the court that showed me that I can really keep up with the guys and play in those big moments,” Blockx told ATPTour.com, reflecting on his title run in Melbourne. “It definitely helped me in my career, and now I feel like every year I am progressing little by little. I hope it keeps going that way.”
Alexander Blockx wins the 2023 Australian Open boys' title. Photo: Manan Vatsyayana/AFP via Getty Images.
Two players Blockx defeated en route to the title — last year's Jeddah finalists Joao Fonseca and Tien — have since risen inside the world's Top 30 in 2025, reinforcing the sense that his own breakthrough is arriving fast.
The future, however, isn't just knocking, it already has silverware. For Martin Landaluce, the pressure arrived early. The Spaniard won the 2022 US Open boys' title at just 16, instantly putting a spotlight on his career before it had truly begun.
“It was a great moment. I think I'm glad to have lived this because I have had to manage pressure since I was 16 years old,” Landaluce said. “It was tough at that moment, but now I'm feeling much more confident, and it's not the first time I'm having people watching me and people saying that I'm going to be near the top…
“It's nice to have been preparing myself for this kind of pressure, and now I'm able to live it in a good way.”
Martin Landaluce takes a selfie with the Jeddah field on Media Day. Photo: Corinne Dubreuil/ATP Tour.
Now 19, calmer and armed with the tools he's developed at the Rafa Nadal Academy — including a heavy focus on breathing and mental work — Landaluce feels far better equipped for the attention that follows him. This week in Jeddah, he is sharing that attention with countryman and close friend Rafael Jodar, who etched his name into the same US Open trophy two years later in 2024.
Jodar has backed that title up with a rapid rise, surging more than 700 spots in the PIF ATP Rankings to World No. 168 in 2025 and winning three ATP Challenger Tour titles in the final three months of the season to secure his Next Gen spot. Yet he's careful not to blur the lines between junior success and professional progress.
“I could say that it was probably one of the best weeks, but I couldn't say that it's why I've done these things this year,” Jodar said of his US Open run last year. “I think they are two worlds. When you play in juniors, you have to face the best juniors, but when you play on the Challenger Tour, you play against other players that are older than you and who have more experience.”
That jump has proven both a reality check and a learning curve, but one that Jodar has handled smoothly. The only player in Jeddah with more Challenger titles in 2025, however, is Nicolai Budkov Kjaer.
The 2025 Next Gen ATP Finals presented by PIF field. Photo: Corinne Dubreuil/ATP Tour.
The 19-year-old Norwegian won the 2024 Wimbledon boys' singles title and then followed it with a career-best 2025 season, claiming a Tour-leading four Challenger trophies to earn his spot at the Next Gen ATP Finals presented by PIF for the first time.
“Winning a junior title is a big milestone as a player,” Budkov Kjaer said when asked about his run at the All England Club. “It's a week I will remember forever, and it's nice to have it in the baggage of trophies.”
Still, he knows trophies alone don't guarantee anything on Tour: “I think all the juniors play quite grown-up tennis right now. I think it's a higher level than ever, but you need to adjust your acceptance… To accept that everybody can play very good tennis and that you can beat and get beaten by everybody.”
Dino Prizmic rounded out his own junior career exactly how he wanted, winning the 2023 Roland Garros boys' title before stepping full-time into the professional ranks.
“It was a big moment for me because I wanted to finish juniors with one title, especially a Grand Slam title, and I did it, so I'm very proud of that,” Prizmic said.
What followed was a fast introduction to the realities of the ATP Tour, including taking a set from Novak Djokovic at the 2024 Australian Open and battling some injuries along the way. In 2025, the Croatian surged again, claiming two ATP Challenger Tour titles and reaching his maiden tour-level quarter-final in Umag to secure his place in Jeddah.
Five junior Grand Slam champions, five distinct journeys, but none of them identical to the routes taken by Tien or Basavareddy. In Jeddah, the message is clear: Junior titles can open doors, but it's what comes after that earns you a seat at the table.
© Copyright 1994 - 2024 ATP Tour, Inc. All Rights Reserved. No part of this site may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any way or by any means (including photocopying, recording or storing it in any medium by electronic means), without the written permission of ATP Tour, Inc.. Terms & Conditions | Privacy | Community Social Media Policy | Modern Slavery Statement | Feedback | Cookies | Your Privacy Choices
Fans eager to stay ahead of the curve and identify the next wave of #NextGenATP talents should keep a close eye on ATP Challenger results. The eight players competing at this year's Next Gen ATP Finals presented by PIF have all tasted ATP Challenger success to get where they are today.
ATPTour.com highlights each Jeddah competitor and the Challenger milestones they've achieved in their young careers.
Nicolai Budkov Kjaer
Of the six players who shared a season-leading four titles, the Norwegian was the youngest to achieve that feat. The 19-year-old won his maiden Challenger title in Glasgow in February and returned to the winner's circle in July with back-to-back triumphs in Tampere and Astana, becoming the youngest Norwegian to claim multiple Challenger titles. The 2024 Wimbledon boys' singles champion won the Mouilleron le Captif Challenger in October for his fourth triumph of the year.
After winning his first Challenger title in February, Budkov Kjaer said: “In a way, yes, [I am surprised] that it came. Because everybody at Challengers is so ridiculously good. But in a way, no, because I've always had the belief that I'm a good player. You always want to believe you have the level to beat the guys at the top and I always had the belief that I'm a very dangerous opponent.”
Justin Engel
The German became the youngest Challenger champion of 2025 with a memorable victory on home soil. Facing fellow 18-year-old Federico Cina in the Hamburg final, it marked the youngest Challenger championship match at that level since 2003, when Mario Ancic beat Rafael Nadal, coincidentally, also in Hamburg. At 18 years and 25 days, Engel became the fifth-youngest German winner in Challenger history and the first player born in 2007 to win a title at that level.
“Every title is a big one, especially my first Challenger,” Engel said after winning in Hamburg. “This win makes it even better and I'm really happy.”
Rafael Jodar
Nearly a year removed from his US Open junior triumph, where he edged Budkov Kjaer in a 10-point tie-break at 6-6 in the third set, the teenager captured his maiden ATP Challenger crown in Hersonissos, Greece in September. Jodar entered the week as World No. 540 in the PIF ATP Rankings and was in the main draw as an alternate, yet in just his ninth Challenger appearance, he went all the way. Jodar did not stop there.
Jodar won the Lincoln and Charlottesville Challengers across a three-week span in October, the latter taking place at the University of Virginia, where the 19-year-old is a sophomore. The Madrid native earned ITA All-American honours during his first season at the University of Virginia and qualified for the ATP Next Gen Accelerator, a programme that aims to increase the development pathway for top players in the American collegiate system to earn direct entry into select Challenger events.You May Also Like: Rafael Jodar's Journey: From idolising Nadal to forging his own path
Dino Prizmic
Prizmic is proudly waving the flag as Croatia's next promising talent. Having started his tennis journey at Tenis Klub Split, the same club that produced Goran Ivanisevic and Mario Ancic, Prizmic is aiming to follow in their lofty footsteps. With his triumph at the Bratislava Challenger in June, Prizmic, then 19 years old, became the second Croatian — alongside Ancic — to win three Challenger titles as a teenager.
The #NextGenATP star finished the Challenger season with a 27-9 season record, highlighted by two title runs and three additional final appearances. “It's a good feeling, but I think it's something that in the beginning it's what I have to pass to be a good player,” Prizmic said in July. “It's a good start to try and become a top player and also to try to play against very good players.”
Martin Landaluce
The Spaniard made a late-season surge to boost his Jeddah chances. Landaluce won the Orleans Challenger in September, claiming 125 PIF ATP Ranking points and later building on that with a semi-final run in Olbia, where last year he won the title.
When Landaluce won Olbia last season, he became the fifth Spaniard since 2000 to win a Challenger title at age 18 or younger. Jodar has since added his name to that list. The first four players all ascended to the Top 10 of the PIF ATP Rankings: Carlos Alcaraz, Rafael Nadal, Tommy Robredo and Nicolas Almagro.A champ and his trophy 🏆 #ATPChallenger | @RFETenis pic.twitter.com/D5WSmhZ1sf— ATP Challenger Tour (@ATPChallenger) September 28, 2025
Alexander Blockx
The Belgian bookended his ATP Challenger season with titles, winning his first event of the year (Oeiras) and triumphing again in his final Challenger outing (Bratislava). The same week that Jodar won in Charlottesville, Blockx won the Slovak Open. Now, the 20-year-old will look to close out the year by building on that triumph and claim his biggest career title in Jeddah, where he is seeded second.
When Blockx won the hard-court Oeiras Challenger, he became the youngest Belgian to earn multiple trophies at that level.
Nishesh Basavareddy
Back in Jeddah for a second consecutive year, Basavareddy competed in just seven Challenger tournaments this year, including three quarter-final appearances. He had more than paid his Challenger dues in the 2024 season, during which he reached six finals (two titles) and posted a 41-13 match record.
The American transitioned to the ATP Tour and scored his best result at the ATP 250 in Auckland, where he reached the semi-finals.
Learner Tien
When Tien competed in Jeddah last year, he was No. 122 in the PIF ATP Rankings, a stark contrast from where he is today as World No. 28. Now seeking to go one step further than last year's runner-up finish to Joao Fonseca, the lefty mostly competed on the ATP Tour this season, with just one Challenger appearance.
But Tien's success on the ATP Challenger circuit served as a springboard for him to compete on the sport's biggest stages. Last season, Tien boasted a 35-9 Challenger-match record, including three title runs.
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Justin Engel
The German became the youngest Challenger champion of 2025 with a memorable victory on home soil. Facing fellow 18-year-old Federico Cina in the Hamburg final, it marked the youngest Challenger championship match at that level since 2003, when Mario Ancic beat Rafael Nadal, coincidentally, also in Hamburg. At 18 years and 25 days, Engel became the fifth-youngest German winner in Challenger history and the first player born in 2007 to win a title at that level.
“Every title is a big one, especially my first Challenger,” Engel said after winning in Hamburg. “This win makes it even better and I'm really happy.”
Rafael Jodar
Nearly a year removed from his US Open junior triumph, where he edged Budkov Kjaer in a 10-point tie-break at 6-6 in the third set, the teenager captured his maiden ATP Challenger crown in Hersonissos, Greece in September. Jodar entered the week as World No. 540 in the PIF ATP Rankings and was in the main draw as an alternate, yet in just his ninth Challenger appearance, he went all the way. Jodar did not stop there.
Jodar won the Lincoln and Charlottesville Challengers across a three-week span in October, the latter taking place at the University of Virginia, where the 19-year-old is a sophomore. The Madrid native earned ITA All-American honours during his first season at the University of Virginia and qualified for the ATP Next Gen Accelerator, a programme that aims to increase the development pathway for top players in the American collegiate system to earn direct entry into select Challenger events.
You May Also Like: Rafael Jodar's Journey: From idolising Nadal to forging his own path
Dino Prizmic
Prizmic is proudly waving the flag as Croatia's next promising talent. Having started his tennis journey at Tenis Klub Split, the same club that produced Goran Ivanisevic and Mario Ancic, Prizmic is aiming to follow in their lofty footsteps. With his triumph at the Bratislava Challenger in June, Prizmic, then 19 years old, became the second Croatian — alongside Ancic — to win three Challenger titles as a teenager.
The #NextGenATP star finished the Challenger season with a 27-9 season record, highlighted by two title runs and three additional final appearances. “It's a good feeling, but I think it's something that in the beginning it's what I have to pass to be a good player,” Prizmic said in July. “It's a good start to try and become a top player and also to try to play against very good players.”
Martin Landaluce
The Spaniard made a late-season surge to boost his Jeddah chances. Landaluce won the Orleans Challenger in September, claiming 125 PIF ATP Ranking points and later building on that with a semi-final run in Olbia, where last year he won the title.
When Landaluce won Olbia last season, he became the fifth Spaniard since 2000 to win a Challenger title at age 18 or younger. Jodar has since added his name to that list. The first four players all ascended to the Top 10 of the PIF ATP Rankings: Carlos Alcaraz, Rafael Nadal, Tommy Robredo and Nicolas Almagro.A champ and his trophy 🏆 #ATPChallenger | @RFETenis pic.twitter.com/D5WSmhZ1sf— ATP Challenger Tour (@ATPChallenger) September 28, 2025
Alexander Blockx
The Belgian bookended his ATP Challenger season with titles, winning his first event of the year (Oeiras) and triumphing again in his final Challenger outing (Bratislava). The same week that Jodar won in Charlottesville, Blockx won the Slovak Open. Now, the 20-year-old will look to close out the year by building on that triumph and claim his biggest career title in Jeddah, where he is seeded second.
When Blockx won the hard-court Oeiras Challenger, he became the youngest Belgian to earn multiple trophies at that level.
Nishesh Basavareddy
Back in Jeddah for a second consecutive year, Basavareddy competed in just seven Challenger tournaments this year, including three quarter-final appearances. He had more than paid his Challenger dues in the 2024 season, during which he reached six finals (two titles) and posted a 41-13 match record.
The American transitioned to the ATP Tour and scored his best result at the ATP 250 in Auckland, where he reached the semi-finals.
Learner Tien
When Tien competed in Jeddah last year, he was No. 122 in the PIF ATP Rankings, a stark contrast from where he is today as World No. 28. Now seeking to go one step further than last year's runner-up finish to Joao Fonseca, the lefty mostly competed on the ATP Tour this season, with just one Challenger appearance.
But Tien's success on the ATP Challenger circuit served as a springboard for him to compete on the sport's biggest stages. Last season, Tien boasted a 35-9 Challenger-match record, including three title runs.
Read More News
View All News
View Related Videos
View All Videos
Dino Prizmic
Prizmic is proudly waving the flag as Croatia's next promising talent. Having started his tennis journey at Tenis Klub Split, the same club that produced Goran Ivanisevic and Mario Ancic, Prizmic is aiming to follow in their lofty footsteps. With his triumph at the Bratislava Challenger in June, Prizmic, then 19 years old, became the second Croatian — alongside Ancic — to win three Challenger titles as a teenager.
The #NextGenATP star finished the Challenger season with a 27-9 season record, highlighted by two title runs and three additional final appearances. “It's a good feeling, but I think it's something that in the beginning it's what I have to pass to be a good player,” Prizmic said in July. “It's a good start to try and become a top player and also to try to play against very good players.”
Martin Landaluce
The Spaniard made a late-season surge to boost his Jeddah chances. Landaluce won the Orleans Challenger in September, claiming 125 PIF ATP Ranking points and later building on that with a semi-final run in Olbia, where last year he won the title.
When Landaluce won Olbia last season, he became the fifth Spaniard since 2000 to win a Challenger title at age 18 or younger. Jodar has since added his name to that list. The first four players all ascended to the Top 10 of the PIF ATP Rankings: Carlos Alcaraz, Rafael Nadal, Tommy Robredo and Nicolas Almagro.
A champ and his trophy 🏆 #ATPChallenger | @RFETenis pic.twitter.com/D5WSmhZ1sf
Alexander Blockx
The Belgian bookended his ATP Challenger season with titles, winning his first event of the year (Oeiras) and triumphing again in his final Challenger outing (Bratislava). The same week that Jodar won in Charlottesville, Blockx won the Slovak Open. Now, the 20-year-old will look to close out the year by building on that triumph and claim his biggest career title in Jeddah, where he is seeded second.
When Blockx won the hard-court Oeiras Challenger, he became the youngest Belgian to earn multiple trophies at that level.
Nishesh Basavareddy
Back in Jeddah for a second consecutive year, Basavareddy competed in just seven Challenger tournaments this year, including three quarter-final appearances. He had more than paid his Challenger dues in the 2024 season, during which he reached six finals (two titles) and posted a 41-13 match record.
The American transitioned to the ATP Tour and scored his best result at the ATP 250 in Auckland, where he reached the semi-finals.
Learner Tien
When Tien competed in Jeddah last year, he was No. 122 in the PIF ATP Rankings, a stark contrast from where he is today as World No. 28. Now seeking to go one step further than last year's runner-up finish to Joao Fonseca, the lefty mostly competed on the ATP Tour this season, with just one Challenger appearance.
But Tien's success on the ATP Challenger circuit served as a springboard for him to compete on the sport's biggest stages. Last season, Tien boasted a 35-9 Challenger-match record, including three title runs.
Read More News
View All News
View Related Videos
View All Videos
Nishesh Basavareddy
Back in Jeddah for a second consecutive year, Basavareddy competed in just seven Challenger tournaments this year, including three quarter-final appearances. He had more than paid his Challenger dues in the 2024 season, during which he reached six finals (two titles) and posted a 41-13 match record.
The American transitioned to the ATP Tour and scored his best result at the ATP 250 in Auckland, where he reached the semi-finals.
Learner Tien
When Tien competed in Jeddah last year, he was No. 122 in the PIF ATP Rankings, a stark contrast from where he is today as World No. 28. Now seeking to go one step further than last year's runner-up finish to Joao Fonseca, the lefty mostly competed on the ATP Tour this season, with just one Challenger appearance.
But Tien's success on the ATP Challenger circuit served as a springboard for him to compete on the sport's biggest stages. Last season, Tien boasted a 35-9 Challenger-match record, including three title runs.
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Gil Gerard, best known for starring in “Buck Rogers in the 25th Century,” has died at 82 after battling cancer. The actor is remembered for his legacy and candor. Gerard, the actor best known for bringing the wisecracking space hero to life on “Buck Rogers in the 25th Century,” has died.
He was 82. Gerard died Tuesday in Georgia after battling “a rare and viciously aggressive form of cancer,” his wife, Janet, announced in a Facebook post.
The Arkansas-born actor became a familiar face on television through sci-fi and drama, and in an unusually candid later chapter of his life.
Gerard rose to fame as Capt. William Anthony “Buck” Rogers, a NASA and U.S. Air Force pilot accidentally frozen in space and awakened centuries later, in NBC's “Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.” The lighthearted sci-fi series ran from 1979 to 1981 and was preceded by a feature-length television movie that became an unexpected hit.
The role nearly passed him by. Gerard later admitted he was hesitant to take it on.
“I saw what it did to Adam West's career with Batman, and this was another cartoon character. I didn't want to do this campy stuff,” he said in a 2018 interview.
Ultimately, he agreed to star in the project, and the “Buck Rogers” movie finished among the top 25 domestic box office releases of 1979.
The film was later retooled into the show's two-hour pilot episode. The series ran for two seasons, producing 32 episodes, and ended in April 1981.
In later years, Gerard reflected on what made the character resonate with audiences.
“I thought the character had a sense of reality about him,” he said in 2017. “The sense of humor, I liked very much, and his humanity, I liked. I thought it was kind of cool. He wasn't a stiff kind of guy. He was a guy who could solve problems on his feet, and he wasn't a superhero.”
Born Gilbert Cyril Gerard on January 23, 1943, in Little Rock, Arkansas, he was the youngest of three boys. His father worked as a knife salesman, and his mother was a teacher.
After graduating from Little Rock Catholic High, Gerard studied at Arkansas State Teacher College before moving to New York in 1969. He trained at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy and supported himself by driving a cab.
One passenger helped him land an audition for “Love Story.” Though his scene was cut, Gerard worked on the film for weeks and soon found steady work in commercials, appearing in more than 400 ads by his own count, as confirmed by The Hollywood Reporter.
Gerard later spoke candidly about lifelong struggles with weight and health. He became the focus of the 2007 Discovery Health Channel documentary “Action Hero Makeover,” which followed his decision to undergo gastric bypass surgery after his weight reached 350 pounds.
In a 1990 interview with People, Gerard estimated that overeating had cost him nearly $1 million in lost work opportunities over the years.
Gerard was married four times, including a high-profile marriage to actress Connie Sellecca from 1979 to 1987. He is survived by Janet, his wife of 18 years, and his son, Gib.
In a final message shared on his Facebook account, Gerard reflected on his life with gratitude and perspective.
“My life has been an amazing journey. The opportunities I've had, the people I've met and the love I have given and received have made my 82 years on the planet deeply satisfying. … Don't waste your time on anything that doesn't thrill you or bring you love. See you out somewhere in the cosmos.”
For fans of classic television and science fiction, Gil Gerard leaves behind a legacy rooted in humor, honesty, and a hero who felt unmistakably human.
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There are many, many wonderful films to get excited about seeing next year, but tucked in safe alongside the big budget event films and off-kilter superhero offerings, there's one bonkers indie gem to get really hyped for.
It's Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol's “Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie,” the next step in their two-decade-long odyssey/multimedia project/very silly undertaking, a film so nuts that, when it premiered at SXSW earlier this year, we wondered how in the world anyone would even be able to release it. Our own Christian Zilko called it “a glorious copyright nightmare” in his review, which is about as high of praise as we get around these parts.
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Enter Neon, who picked up the film in March, and then (very wisely) took it to the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival, where it played to a very pleased hometown crowd. For a film that hinges on landmarks like the CN Tower and the SkyDome, it's no surprise the local Canadians flipped for it, but we're betting Johnson and McCarrol will earn a whole raft of newly minted fans when the film arrives in theaters next February.
Popular on IndieWire
So, what's it about? Hard to say without spoiling some of its best twists and turns, though we advise keen viewers to make note of the flip-flopping logo at the end of the film's first teaser, which quite obviously (and colorfully!) pays homage to a beloved classic film. What have they got in common? You'll just have to wait and see.
Earlier this year, McCarrol and Johnson reflected on the wild path their project has taken over the years with IndieWire. “I think one of the whole reasons that it's endured is ironically because we were just making it for ourselves. And that forbid us to think that anybody else would ever appreciate it the same way that we did. So there was no delusions whatsoever,” Johnson said. “I remember the stupidest we got was when VICE picked it up and we were going to finally make it as a real TV show. I would say that was the most hopeful we were, that people would be like, ‘Wow, people are really finally going to see this show. And they're really going to like it!' And VICE was out of business in a year and a half.”
Neon will release “Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie” in theaters on February 13, 2026. Check out the film's first teaser below.
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In today's batch of “let's all learn more about mergers and acquisitions best practices together” news, the Warner Bros. Discovery Board of Directors has “unanimously determined that the tender offer launched by Paramount Skydance on December 8, 2025, is not in the best interests of WBD and its shareholders and does not meet the criteria of a ‘Superior Proposal' under the terms of WBD's merger agreement with Netflix announced on December 5, 2025.”
In short: They don't like it! And, as such, they have advised WBD's shareholders to reject the Paramount offer, while also giving their full support of Netflix's own offer. “Following a careful evaluation of Paramount's recently launched tender offer, the Board concluded that the offer's value is inadequate, with significant risks and costs imposed on our shareholders,” said Samuel A. Di Piazza, Jr., chair of the Warner Bros. Discovery board of directors, in an official statement. “This offer once again fails to address key concerns that we have consistently communicated to Paramount throughout our extensive engagement and review of their six previous proposals. We are confident that our merger with Netflix represents superior, more certain value for our shareholders, and we look forward to delivering on the compelling benefits of our combination.”
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On December 5, Netflix and WBD announced “a fully negotiated and financed definitive agreement” under which Netflix will acquire Warner Bros., including its film and television studios, HBO Max, and HBO. On December 8, Paramount made a hostile takeover bid for WBD directly to shareholders.
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In its own statement, Netflix shared that the company “welcomed the recommendation from the Warner Bros. Discovery Board of Directors for stockholders to reject the unsolicited offer from Paramount Skydance Corporation, launched on December 8, 2025,” which is certainly an easy way to align the two companies as they attempt to move forward with a massive deal.
“The Warner Bros. Discovery Board reinforced that Netflix's merger agreement is superior and that our acquisition is in the best interest of stockholders,” said Ted Sarandos, Netflix co-CEO, in a statement. “This was a competitive process that delivered the best outcome for consumers, creators, stockholders, and the broader entertainment industry. Netflix and Warner Bros. complement each other, and we're excited to combine our strengths with their theatrical film division, world-class television studio, and the iconic HBO brand, which will continue to focus on prestige television. We're also fully committed to releasing Warner Bros. films in theaters, with a traditional window, so audiences everywhere can enjoy them on the big screen.”
Added Netflix, “Netflix has a long history of investing in creativity and partnering with top talent, and we're committed to honoring and growing Warner Bros.' incredible brands and franchises. By joining forces to combine our strengths and our passion for great storytelling, we'll strengthen the entertainment industry.”
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By Dominic Patten
Executive Editor, Legal, Labor & Politics
Hollywood has cut back dramatically on diversity programs this year under MAGA pressure, but there's a little bit of something for almost everyone in the latest round of California tax incentives for the big screen.
Among the 28 projects announced Wednesday, there's a Snoop Dogg biopic via Universal, a Gina Rodriguez-directed feature, a Glen Powell-produced film, and multiple Oscar winner Ang Lee‘s much anticipated return with Gold Mountain. (The Fifth Season-produced Lee film was previously called Old Gold Mountain but is referred to as simply Gold Mountain on the incentive info from the state today).
In total, $116.2 million was awarded in the latest film round, with state bean counters estimating the investment in the home of Hollywood will spawn $562 million in what is termed “economic activity” across California. Today's 28 projects are the second feature awards round since Gavin Newsom made official the Film and TV program's mega-expansion to $750 million annually earlier this year.
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“Big love to the California Film Commission and Gov. Newsom for holdin' it down with that tax credit,” Snoop Dogg said in a statement this morning as the feature film allocations were made public. “Y'all making it possible for us to tell my story right here where it all began. California raised me, inspired me, and now helpin' bring this biopic to life in 2026. Much respect – that's real teamwork, ya dig…”
In many ways, the Snoop flick, which will star Outer Banks‘ Jonathan Davis and be directed by Craig Brewer, is a no-brainer for the CFC-run program — the hip hop icon is literally a California success story from top to blunt to bottom, if you know what I mean? Which may be why the Universal Pictures entry topped this allocation round with a just over $17 million incentive award.
Here's the full list, with incentive awards and more:
Among other awarded projects, the untitled Sony movie from Powell ($9.9 million in credits), the Rodriguez-helmed Guerrero ($4.4 million in credits) and Lee's Gold Mountain ($7.6 million in credits) display the scope of independent and distinctly “non-independent” films that make up the mix of this round.
Put together, the more than two dozen projects in the jobs-centric program are anticipated to employ “4,837 cast and crew, along with 22,614 background performers (measured in days worked),” according to the CFC. On the ground, that adds up to 831 shooting days across the Golden State, with many like Gold Mountain filming outside the hub of L.A. (which pumps up the base tax credit of 35% even more).
“California's film and television industry isn't just an economic engine — it's part of who we are,” noted Newsom in full pitch mode this morning.
“For more than a century, the world's most iconic stories have been imagined, produced, and shared from right here, powered by unmatched talent, creativity, and innovation,” the governor and potential 2028 POTUS candidate added. “This latest round of tax credit awards builds on that legacy while delivering real results across the state: good-paying jobs, stronger local economies, and thriving small businesses. It's a clear signal that California remains the global home of storytelling — yesterday, today, and for generations to come.”
Speaking of to come, the next application period for TV projects seeking California credits will begin January 26, 2026. As always, the process is all online, with a notification turnaround of six weeks to two months in most cases. Or as Snoopy once kinda said, keep your mind on your money and your potential taxpayers' money on your mind.
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California “should” have the best initiative in the world… but, alas, we have what we have.
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By Dade Hayes
Business Editor
Paramount is standing by its current proposal to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, warning shareholders that embracing Netflix‘s offer would saddle them with a “heavily indebted, sub-scale linear business.”
The David Ellison-led media company conveyed its position in a press release Wednesday, soon after WBD‘s board of directors recommended against the Paramount option. Neither party has changed its deal terms, though it is widely expected that Wednesday's crossing of swords could usher in a new round of competitive bidding, nudging the ultimate acquisition price even higher.
Paramount made a hostile bid last week to buy all of WBD worth $108 billion including debt. Netflix has an accepted offer to take over only the Warner studio and streaming division in a transaction worth nearly $83 billion.
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The Netflix deal accounts for the planned split of Discovery Global Networks next year from the rest of WBD. Paramount, meanwhile, is willing to take on the troubled cable network side of the business. How to value the networks has been a key point of difference between the bids.
In Wednesday's press release, Paramount said its bid should carry the day because it provides “the certainty of 100% cash and no exposure to equity market fluctuations.” (Netflix's proposal includes some stock, and already the worth of Netflix shares has slipped below the “collar” set out in the merger proposal.)
Paramount said it is “highly confident” in securing “timely” regulatory approval. The company explained that its deal “would enhance competition in the creative industries rather than entrench a dominant streaming monopoly that the Netflix transaction envisions.”
Countering criticism by WBD that its bid is “illusory” and lacks full commitment from the Ellison family, Paramount said it has “lined up all necessary financing to deliver its offer to WBD shareholders, and it is not subject to any financing conditions.” The company said its offer will be financed by $41 billion of new equity, “backstopped by the Ellison family and RedBird Capital and $54 billion of debt commitments from Bank of America, Citi and Apollo.”
The Paramount stakeholders “remain committed to bringing together two iconic Hollywood studios to create a unique global entertainment leader,” Ellison said. “Our proposal clearly offers WBD shareholders superior value and certainty, a clear path to close, and does not leave them with a heavily indebted sub-scale linear business. I have been encouraged by the feedback we have received from WBD shareholders who clearly understand the benefits of our offer. We will continue to move forward to deliver this transaction, which is in the best interest of WBD shareholders, consumers, and the creative industries.”
Addressing the WBD SEC filing earlier Wednesday, Paramount said WBD's “own narrative of the actions that led to its inferior transaction with Netflix reveals a process which was not run to secure the best offer for WBD shareholders. Most notably, the absence of any engagement by WBD with Paramount in the face of a superior all-cash $30 per share offer speaks for itself.”
Paramount shares fell 5% in early trading Wednesday.
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By Anthony D'Alessandro, Nancy Tartaglione
Here it is, the final finale pretty much of the box office year with 20th Century Studios' James Cameron threequel Avatar: Fire and Ash. It is expected to be the king of the world this frame with a worldwide first weekend of $340 million to $380 million, which would be behind the global start of 2022's Avatar: The Way of Water which in like-for-likes did $444M.
At Fire and Ash‘s current global level, that will land it as the year's second best opening for an MPA title after Disney's Zootopia 2, which debuted to $560.3M last month, and ahead of the studio's Lilo & Stitch which bowed to $341M.
The overseas launch estimate for Fire and Ash is in the $250M-$275M range. Avatar: The Way of Water debuted to $310M in like-for-like markets at today's rates.
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Don't fret: Realize that Way of Water had nine days of runtime before Christmas, while Fire and Ash has five, meaning audiences are bound to wait for the best seats and screens to see this 3-hour and 17-minute sci-fi epic. Also, the lower global opening compared to Way of Water, stems from the 13 years of distance between the original film and the sequel.
Currently, domestic presales for Fire and Ash are pacing 30% behind that of Way of Water, which opened to $134.1M compared with the 2009 original's $77M. So, don't be shocked if Fire and Ash opens to $90M+. In addition, there's more counterprogramming competition, at least in North America, than there was during Way of Water‘s go-round, and all of it is expected to be buoyant among Angel Studios' animated faith-based film David ($20M-$25M), Lionsgate's The Housemaid ($20M+) and Paramount's SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants ($15M-$20M).
As always with any Avatar movie at the end of the year, it's about the end game, not necessarily the first weekend. Heck, that's the situation with all these films; it's all about the crazy 6x-8x year-end multiple. Way of Water arrived in a Christmas marketplace after Spider-Man: No Way Home made box office history a year prior with the second biggest domestic opening of all time at $260M and third highest global at $600.5M. Tracking made the mistake of comping Way of Water to a Marvel movie (which always has the rush-out, FOMO factor), hence forecasts on that second Cameron film were lofty at $180M+ U.S. In the end, the sequel did fantastic with a 5.1x stateside ($688.5M) and a $2.34 billion global take, the third highest-grossing movie of all time.
RELATED: The Movies That Have Made More Than $1 Billion At The Global Box Office
In the U.S., Fire and Ash is booked at 3,800 theaters comprised of 430 Imax 3D auditoriums, 1,050 premium large format screens (approx. 80% 3D and including 175 Dolby screens), 380 D-Box/4D motion auditoriums and 120 ScreenX locations. Previews begin at 2 p.m.. Currently, Fire and Ash‘s critical score is at 71% on Rotten Tomatoes, the lowest in the trilogy next to Avatar (81%) and Avatar: Way of Water (76%).
Fire and Ash begins its overseas rollout today including majors France, Germany, Italy and Korea. On Thursday, Australia, Brazil and Mexico join, among others. Friday brings on China, UK, Japan, Spain, India and more. It total, the threequel will be playing in all international box office markets this weekend save Hong Kong, which is now going on January 8.There are 17 days of holiday breaks in a lot of international countries, and even more in some, so look for a slow burn on the threequel. Among the top offshore starts for Fire and Ash this debut session, it's likely to be a mix of China, Germany, France, Korea, UK, Mexico and India; that is, if history repeats.In China, where the previous two Avatar movies excelled, Fire and Ash is leading presales through Sunday and into the beginning of next week. Through Sunday, however, they are far lower than Way of Water, currently sitting at about 53.5M RMB ($7.6M). Limited sneaks begin Wednesday in the Cinity format, with PLFs starting sneaks on Thursday. Friday goes all-in. Cameron is beloved in China, where the first Avatar did over $200M in 2010 — before the market opened up and screens grew at a breakneck pace. Across Avatar's three local releases its gross rises to $262M. Avatar: The Way of Water then finaled at $247M (again, at historical rates) after being released amid China ceasing its zero-Covid policy in 2022 and concerns from the public about venturing out. Way of Water opened to $56.4M in China, with the multiple along the lines of how these movies go — playing out incredibly well. As for global promos, Cameron and his stars attended a premiere in Sanya, China in early December with star-studded carpets also being held in Paris, Milan, Madrid, Tokyo, London, Wellington, Mexico City and Los Angeles.
Don't deny the success of David — at least this weekend. The Angel Studios movie, booked at 3,100 theaters, has $14M in presales already, journeying toward a $20M-$25M start, ahead of Paramount's fourth SpongeBob feature. While that figure is fueled by Angel Studios subscriptions and fanship ticket sales, the notion from distribution sources is that SpongeBob will have the last laugh and leg out by the end of the holiday stretch which typically caps off with MLK weekend in mid-January. Previews start at noon Thursday for the Phil Cunningham- and Brent Dawes-directed movie that follows David's path from humble shepherd to anointed king, down to his clash with Goliath.
And there could be a big flux of women to multiplexes as Lionsgate's Paul Feig-directed thriller Housemaid starring Amanda Seyfried, Sydney Sweeney and Brandon Sklenar is bound for a $20M+ opening at 3,000 theaters. Even if the movie comes in under in the teens, there's hope that this movie based on the first novel in the Freida McFadden trilogy will leg out to bigger numbers, ala Sweeney's 2023 rom-com Anyone But You, which opened to $6M in the pre-Christmas frame and did a crazy 14.7x multiple for a final $88.3M domestic. Rotten Tomatoes critical score is at 78% fresh off 55 reviews. Pic was made for net mid-$30M.
RELATED: ‘The Housemaid' Review: Amanda Seyfried And Sydney Sweeney Go For It In Paul Feig's Psychotic Screen Version Of Trashy Popular Novel
Housemaid follows a wealthy woman (Seyfried), married to a hunky guy (Sklenar) who works in tech, who hires a young woman (Sweeney) living on the fringe as her live-in housemaid. Ya gotta see the movie to find out what happens. Previews start at 2 p.m. Thursday.
SpongeBob is in play at 3,500 theaters, with previews Thursday at 4 p.m. Today in North America, there's an early-access 3D event at more than 1,000 sites where fans will get to see the film first two days early at 5 p.m. local time presented in 3D and RealD 3D at participating theaters. Ticketholders will also get their hands on a bunch of special bonus content, i.e., limited-edition gifts including a laptop/tablet sticker pack and an exclusive collector's print, while supplies last.
The last SpongeBob movie, 2020's SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run, became collateral damage of Covid with a Paramount+ release and a limited theatrical debut in Canada ($4.8M). The first SpongeBob Squarepants Movie was in 2004 and opened to $32M domestic, finaled at $85.4M and grossed $141M worldwide. The second movie, Sponge Out of Water, did much better in 2015, with a franchise opening record of $55.3M, a domestic final of $163M and a global of $325.1M.
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I am watching Avatar in 2 hours just for the trailers.
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By
Jon Blistein
Gracie Abrams said she is “lighting a candle for everybody who is hurting” in an emotional message shared on Instagram yesterday.
In the now-vanished message, shared after Hanukkah got underway, Abrams expressed her dismay at all the cruelty, violence, and suffering happening in the world. She began with the two recent mass shootings in Australia and Rhode Island. She said she was “heartbroken” for the people killed at a Hanukkah celebration in Bondi Beach, and “devastated for their families during the holiday, a time meant for gathering and for light.” And she said she was “sick inside” for the victims and community at Brown University after two students were killed.
Abrams went on to mention the ongoing humanitarian crisis and “earthshattering pain” in Gaza as displaced Palestinians live under tarps that are “being whipped by the wind and the rain through the mud. Total desecration.”
And she condemned President Donald Trump for his comments mocking Rob Reiner, and after the director and his wife were killed, allegedly by their son. “Within 24 hours of the most unimaginable tragedy a family can endure, we see the President yet again reveal the most poisonous and vile narcissism maybe in the history of humanity,” she wrote. “Indefensible.”
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Abrams ended her note by acknowledging the difficulty of living amidst so much anguish, while still trying to find some flickers of hope. “Over and over and over this happens. It is getting harder to find the words to describe the pain in the world. I am lighting a candle for everybody who is hurting.”
Abrams spent most of this year on the road in support of her 2024 album, The Secret of Us. In October, she took part in Rolling Stones' annual Musicians on Musicians event alongside Cyndi Lauper, while she also dropped a new concert special, Apple Music Live: Gracie Abrams, featuring a performance at the famed Red Rocks Amphitheater.
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Based on the beloved Nickelodeon cartoons created by Stephen Hillenburg, “The SpongeBob Movie: Search for Squarepants” looks and feels like imitation seafood. Still, director Derek Drymon does better than you'd expect with Paramount's spooky new feature film — expanding the swash-buckling legend of the Flying Dutchman (Mark Hamill) into a funny, vibrant hellscape sure to lure in kids and millennials alike.
The new movie follows SpongeBob (Tom Kenny) and Patrick (Bill Fagerbakke) as they attempt to prove their toughness, bravery, and “intestinal fortitude” as wannabe pirates battling a ghostly obstacle course in the Dutchman's terrifying underworld. Drymon produces a colorful, witty wasteland that's distinguished by the director's impressive history and unique comedic flare as a storyboard artist. Think giant monsters abruptly ending a fight with a make-out session — or a three-headed seagull seemingly ripped from the hypothetical pages of a bizarro “X-Men”/“Little Mermaid” crossover universe.
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The glossy aesthetic that's plagued the “SpongeBob” movies since the first film introduced CGI to Bikini Bottom in 2004 continues here (funny to think that was once meant to be the IP's “finale”), and that style only gets marginally easier to ignore the deeper into the action you get. That's tough with rich visual storytelling overwhelming a narrative that's thin by comparison. The film clocks in at just 1 hour and 36 minutes, handwaving an ocean of lore that doesn't make sense with serious speed. Oddly removed from his bachelor beginnings, everyone's favorite fry cook — who, again, is old enough to be a homeowner — gets implicitly aged down for a kid-friendly plot that starts with him finally growing tall enough to ride the scariest roller coaster in town.
That juvenile setup makes the TV show's “Weenie Hut Jr.” episode look like a serious psychological drama, and it really wouldn't work if it weren't for the help of the original voice cast, together again. They keep the world emotionally cohesive and bring essential soul to the script's sometimes strained sense of humor. Co-writers Pam Brady and Matt Lieberman are burdened by an intense affinity for wordplay that can't hold a candle to the timeless absurdism the late Hillenborough brought to his treasured pineapple under the sea; although, the series had lost its creator's sensibility long before he passed away in 2018.
“Search for SquarePants” wisely steers the satirical conversation away from assessing the franchise's varied legacy from over the years. Instead, Drymon's stand-alone misadventure with the Flying Dutchman delivers acceptable approximations of the core “SpongeBob” personalities we already know and love — rendering them through soft-hearted fan service that's comforting, nostalgic, and decidedly good enough coming from such a seasoned profit engine. The comedy isn't as dark or as smart as the animated series' golden age (seasons 1, 2, and 3), but it casts a wide tonal net and catches a balanced effect that's both familiar and fresh with an appealing that could work for any one of SpongeBob's ages.
When he and Patrick reach the front of the theme park line (managed by the voice of… Ice Spice? Sure!), the porous and yellow thrill-seeker suddenly finds he's too scared to get on the roller coaster. Soon, SpongeBob asks the salty and macho Mr. Krabs (Clancy Brown) for his help becoming a real “big guy,” who can take on intimidating challenges. The frugal restaurant owner is quick as ever to dismiss his most exploitable employee, but Krabs accidentally kicks off SpongeBob's journey anyway when he and Patrick find a haunted relic from Mr. Krab's nautical past in the Krusty Krab basement.
A magical “horn pipe” summons the Flying Dutchman and his right-hand scallywag, Barb (Regina Hall, a bright addition to the cast), and it's not long before a vortex sucks the adorably soft duo into another realm where their swash-buckling trials begin. SpongeBob and Patrick think the gaseous green pirates are helping them face their fears, but they're totally unaware of an insidious scheme the Dutchman has lurking beneath his ship's friendly exterior. The path (or, as the friends debate, is it a road?) ahead of the crew resembles a winding Monopoly board inspired by waterproof nightmares, but Drymon keeps the inferno circles spinning at a merciful, steady clip using explosive montages that never feel tedious.
Leading Squidward (Rodger Bumpass) and Gary on a mission to save the boys, Krabs' gruff energy helps balance out the bubbly optimism and introduces its own gritty texture through their competing storyline. The trio's scenes will generally work better for older fans because they're more cynical and sharp, and a pack of vicious angel fish torturing Squidward stands out among the more deranged vignettes this film's surprising and gutsy spirit does proud. The last act eventually forces the two stories together, resulting in a “Spy Kids”-meets-“Barbie” live-action hybrid sequence for Krabs, SpongeBob, and the Flying Dutchman that will feel like a blast from the past to some… and a prosthetic fever dream to more.
This wide release successfully dips back into the lucrative lagoon of Viacom's most enduring animated IP, putting SpongeBob and his friend back on the big screen for the fourth time since TV show debuted in 1999. The new “Search for Squarepants” (which, in the end, doesn't involve SpongeBob searching for pants at all, really) marks the franchise's sixth movie to date. It's a solid if not exactly bold creative swing following a pair of “SpongeBob” spin-offs that went straight to streaming this year and last at Netflix, and proof its square star is a cross-generational icon who's still enjoyable with his edges sanded down.
From Paramount, “The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants” will be released in theaters on Friday, December 19.
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The move, while widely expected, will likely result in David Ellison launching another, higher bid for WBD.
By
Alex Weprin
Senior Editor
The board of Warner Bros. Discovery officially rejected David Ellison‘s $30 per share hostile bid for the company, telling shareholders that it remains “inferior” to the Netflix deal, and carries “numerous significant risks and costs on WBD.”
With the rejection official, Paramount will need to persuade WBD shareholders to tender their shares at that price, or to submit a higher bid than its $108 billion offer that would shift the outcome of the dealmaking.
“Following a careful evaluation of Paramount's recently launched tender offer, the Board concluded that the offer's value is inadequate, with significant risks and costs imposed on our shareholders,” said Samuel A. Di Piazza, Jr., chair of the Warner Bros. Discovery board of directors, in a statement. “This offer once again fails to address key concerns that we have consistently communicated to Paramount throughout our extensive engagement and review of their six previous proposals. We are confident that our merger with Netflix represents superior, more certain value for our shareholders and we look forward to delivering on the compelling benefits of our combination.”
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“Doing a deal is great, closing a deal is better,” Di Piazza said on CNBC Wednesday morning after the WBD decision was released.
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The move had been expected, as the offer was effectively the same one that Paramount had submitted to WBD on Dec. 4, before it accepted Netflix's offer. WBD had concerns around the foreign financing for the deal, as well as whether Oracle founder Ellison would fully backstop the deal, and Wednesday's filing underscored those concerns.
WBD said that the backstop from Larry Ellison's revocable trust is not sufficient, because the assets and liabilities aren't disclosed, and because the assets within the trust can be moved or changed. The WBD board, in its filing, also suggested that the Middle East sovereign funds would carry risks, with Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund contributing $10 billion, Abu Dhabi contributing $7 billion, and Qatar Investment Authority contributing $7 billion.
“He guaranteed it through an irrevocable trust at the last minute, and frankly, that wasn't as good as an investment grade company that purported strong value, great response to our concerns of what it took to operate,” Di Piazza said on CNBC. “I have enormous respect, as does the board, for the Ellison family and for the Paramount company, they just didn't measure up on these bids.”
Concerns over $1 billion to be contributed by Tencent forced Paramount to remove the Chinese tech company from its last bid (Jared Kushner's Affinity Partners had contributed $200 million, though that fund has backed out of the consortium).
WBD also said that it does not believe there is a material difference from a regulatory standpoint between the Netflix and Paramount deals.
The board also cited the Dec. 3 letter from Paramount attorneys at Quinn Emanuel, writing that the letter “suggests a highly litigious posture rather than a constructive attempt to achieve a negotiated agreement in the best interests of WBD stockholders. Indeed, representatives of PSKY's legal and financial advisors reached out separately to WBD's legal and financial advisors on December 3 and 4, 2025 to indicate that, in their respective views, the December 3 Quinn Emanuel Letter should not have been sent, and was ‘not helpful' and a ‘mistake.'”
So what happens now? Sources say that Ellison and the Paramount team were waiting to see WBD's response before deciding their next move. If Paramount comes back with a higher bid, Netflix will have the chance to match it, or respond with their own counter, effectively kicking off a new bidding war.
In a latter to shareholders of its own Wednesday, Netflix argued that its agreement “is the right deal, with the right partner, at the right time.”
“The Warner Bros. Discovery Board reinforced that Netflix's merger agreement is superior and that our acquisition is in the best interest of stockholders,” said Ted Sarandos, Netflix's co-CEO. “This was a competitive process that delivered the best outcome for consumers, creators, stockholders and the broader entertainment industry. Netflix and Warner Bros. complement each other, and we're excited to combine our strengths with their theatrical film division, world-class television studio, and the iconic HBO brand, which will continue to focus on prestige television. We're also fully committed to releasing Warner Bros. films in theaters, with a traditional window, so audiences everywhere can enjoy them on the big screen.”
Ellison already made it clear that he was willing to go higher than $30 per share in a text message to WBD CEO David Zaslav just a few hours before the Netflix deal was sealed.
“Please note importantly we did not include ‘best and final' in our bid,” Ellison wrote.
On Wednesday, however, Paramount released a statement reaffirming its $30 per share tender offer.
“We remain committed to bringing together two iconic Hollywood studios to create a unique global entertainment leader,” Ellison said in a statement. “Our proposal clearly offers WBD shareholders superior value and certainty, a clear path to close, and does not leave them with a heavily indebted sub-scale linear business. I have been encouraged by the feedback we have received from WBD shareholders who clearly understand the benefits of our offer. We will continue to move forward to deliver this transaction, which is in the best interest of WBD shareholders, consumers, and the creative industries.”
That text message and regulatory confidence were likely top of mind for investors, with Ellison and some of his top deputies pitching Wall Street shareholders on the company's prospects last week during a UBS conference in New York.
One attendee of those meetings told The Hollywood Reporter that they were left with the impression that Ellison is prepared to go higher, and wondered whether Netflix had the stomach to match given the trajectory of its stock price this week since the $83 billion deal was announced.
Indeed, the all-cash bid from Paramount is appealing to some significant shareholders, so if the offer gets raised, there is a chance that Wall Street pressure could rise on WBD to reconsider.
You don't have to go back far to see where this leads: Disney's acquisition of Fox saw a similar battle, with Comcast outbidding Disney, only for Disney to ultimately prevail after months of counters.
Ellison is likely to respond with his higher bid, but will Netflix keep the fight up? Or will it pull back and resign itself to being king of the streaming heap, with an extra $2.8 billion to help it along?
“I don't want to speculate on what's going to happen from here,” Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters told CNBC Wednesday. “We are pretty happy that we've presented a pretty strong deal. And I think the Warner Bros. Discovery Board sent a pretty clear message that they believe that this is the best value. It's the most certain path forward. Our deal structure is clean, it's certain.”
Or as WBD CEO David Zaslav told staff in an email Wednesday:”You may be asking: where does that leave us? We continue to have a signed transaction agreement with Netflix and we are working together to close the transaction, subject to regulatory approvals and other closing conditions.
The exec added, “That regulatory review process has already begun.”
Though Peters told CNBC that, should the price for WBD go up, the company will be “dispassionate” when it comes to determining what to do next.
“Let's see what happens,” he said.
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The outspoken Oscar-winner gets candid about the make-or-break fate of ‘Fire and Ash,' his future projects (including a secret Terminator script), the threat of AI, and all the things that still get him riled up.
By
James Hibberd
Writer-at-Large
James Cameron was in trouble.
The filmmaker was in a Russian submersible exploring the wreck of the Titanic when he found himself trapped 12,500 feet below the ocean's surface. “We had been caught in a vortex on the downwind side of the wreck that kept driving us back to the bottom,” Cameron recalls.
The director and his pilot's attempts to break the sub free had exhausted their battery. So they powered down — and waited. Cameron sat in freezing darkness for about a half-hour in the haunting shadow of the iconic wreck, not knowing if the sub would have enough juice to resurface. It's a nightmarish scenario eerily similar to what the world initially feared had happened to OceanGate's doomed Titan submersible in 2023.
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“It was,” Cameron admits, “a little spooky for a little while.”
During those tense moments, Cameron did what he always does, literally every day, sometimes for hours at a stretch: “I worked the problem.” The filmmaker has many abilities — as a designer, storyteller, engineer and project leader. But his greatest talent is his ability to problem-solve. He does this for fun.
“No, seriously,” Cameron says. “I can't just loop endlessly over the problem on a project I'm working on. My way of stress relief is to think about hard engineering problems on other projects.” He doesn't even like to rely on GPS while driving. “I'm a paper-map guy — I know that sounds crazy,” he says. “But I have a good sense of direction and a good memory. I think it comes from wreck diving. I can always find my way back.”
Throughout his career, Cameron has essentially asked himself: What's the toughest, most artistically fulfilling problem I can solve that will appeal to a mass audience? Would it be a Terminator sequel hinging on unproven CGI technology for its shape-shifting villain? An action-thriller shot underwater for months? Staging the sinking of the RMS Titanic on a 775-foot replica? Or an adventure on an alien planet that requires pioneering performance-capture and banks on a 3D revolution?
You know his results: a string of hits and three of the biggest films of all time (the first two Avatar titles collectively grossed $5.2 billion globally — more than Disney paid to acquire Star Wars). But Cameron feels many fail to appreciate the level of artistry and real-world effort that go into making the Avatar films, in particular, and he's not wrong (when I tell a friend I'm writing about Fire and Ash, she says, “It feels like everything is made with AI now” — a comment that would surely drive Cameron up a wall).
“We've somehow been lumped in with the issue of AI replacing actors,” he says. “Anybody who has seen our process is shocked by how performance-centric it is.”
Cameron has been emphasizing this on his press tour, and with good reason: Across an 18-month shoot, Cameron would sometimes work with actors for hours before a scene, then his technology translated their every micro-expression into his Na'vi characters. Sigourney Weaver, who plays Kiri in the film, calls the process “the most liberating way of working; it's absolutely not what people think.”
“On a live-action set, you're laying track in front of a moving train,” Cameron says. “On a performance-capture set, we take as long as we need to. There's no worrying about the camera, about the lighting; I'm not coming in with a shot list. For me, it's about getting to the emotional core of the scene. They say it's not ‘real acting' — that's the most bullshit thing in history, [as if] ‘real acting' is stage acting where you're whispering loud enough to be heard 30 rows back.”
The new film has Marine turned Na'vi revolutionary Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), his fierce wife, Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña), and their children on the run from the brutal Col. Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), who finds an ally in franchise newcomer Varang (a scene-stealing Oona Chaplin), the frightening, seductive leader of the Ash People.
The Ash clan was inspired by one of Cameron's globe-trotting explorations, when he met with the Baining people in Papua New Guinea. Cameron witnessed their fire ceremony and toured the remains of a town destroyed by a volcanic eruption.
“They were in this trance state, dancing for seven hours on end in actual fire,” he recalls. “Then I was seeing these kids go into this ash field, joyfully playing in this almost postnuclear devastation. I wasn't thinking, ‘I can use this for Avatar,' but it was one of those things that informs my dream landscape.”
Once again, Cameron has depicted an alien world stuffed with diverse beauty, wild creatures and epic action-adventure set pieces while largely filming in a single room in Manhattan Beach Studios in Southern California. There's a scene in Fire and Ash where the Sully kids swim in a raging, dirty river that's so photorealistic, it's almost dizzying (the reality: a water tank, a surging current and tons of brown sugar).
The film's first assembly cut approached four hours. Viewers at an early test screening were enthusiastic (when asked if they would see the film again, Cameron says the entire audience raised their hands). But some griped about the film's length. How Cameron handles a preview screening says a lot about his process.
“I read every card [from audience members], and I do my own data-driven analysis,” he says. “There are things that I'll [keep in the film] that are important to me, and there are things where I'm like, ‘OK, that's not a hill I'm going to die on.' I like to please the audience. I'm not somebody that likes the audience to come out of the theater going, ‘What the fuck was that?'”
Cameron trimmed Fire and Ash to three hours and 15 minutes. He admits some at Disney would have preferred a shorter cut (“There's always pressure — ‘Do we need all this stuff with Quaritch? He's the bad guy'”).
“There's a wisdom that's a carryover from decades ago that if we can have more [screenings per day], we'll make more money,” he says. “But if you engage people, the word will spread. We proved it with Titanic, which is exactly the same length as Fire and Ash.”
Cameron considers. “This doesn't mean Fire and Ash will make as much money as Titanic.”
Exactly how much money Fire and Ash will make is a crucial question for the fate of the franchise. Cameron says his original plan of concluding the saga with two more films (some of which already has been shot) depends on the success of Fire and Ash. Weaver says what Cameron has planned for the fourth and fifth movies “is so amazing” that it would be a tragedy for the franchise to halt. “All of them are part of one big story,” she says.
Adds Cameron: “This can be the last one. There's only one [unanswered question] in the story. We may find that the release of Avatar 3 proves how diminished the cinematic experience is these days, or we may find it proves the case that it's as strong as it ever was — but only for certain types of films. It's a coin toss right now. We won't know until the middle of January.”
I ask something that might sound odd: What do you want to happen? But Cameron gets the implication.
“That's an interesting question,” he says. “I feel I'm at a bit of a crossroads. Do I want it to be a wild success — which almost compels me to continue and make two more Avatar movies? Or do I want it to fail just enough that I can justify doing something else?”
A few weeks back, a headline was trending on Reddit: “Anyone else feel like it's an unfortunate waste of talent that James Cameron will [spend] 35+ years on Avatar?” This debate has been recurring on fan forums for at least a decade.
“I'm feeling fulfilled as an artist, and when [those critical fans] become filmmakers, they can make those types of decisions for themselves — or just stay the fuck out of it,” Cameron says. “It's my decision, not yours. It's like saying, ‘Gee, I wish she wasn't married to the same guy for so long.' It's none of your business.”
That said, for the first time in years, Cameron is ready to move beyond Avatar. “I've got other stories to tell, and I've got other stories to tell within Avatar,” he says. “What won't happen is, I won't go down the rabbit hole of exclusively making only Avatar for multiple years. I'm going to figure out another way that involves more collaboration. I'm not saying I'm going to step away as a director, but I'm going to pull back from being as hands-on with every tiny aspect of the process.”
Cameron has gradually expanded the role of his second units and is confident they could shoulder a heavy load if another film is greenlit. Whether Disney would want another Avatar without Cameron at the helm is unclear. So is whether Cameron would allow himself to relinquish so much control of his franchise's day-to-day filming. The meticulous director treasures his Avatar playground.
“You're not waiting 20 minutes for the perfect sunset,” Cameron likes to say, and adds: “They say, ‘practical [filmmaking] is always better.' Practical is better in one way: It might be cheaper. But I could do the best car chase you ever saw and never put a real car on the road and you wouldn't know.”
And yet, when asked his favorite shot in his filmography, Cameron doesn't pick a scene from Avatar. He points to the sunset kiss from Titanic — where his cast and crew literally had to wait for a sunset. He retells that story with relish: The sky was murky. Nobody thought they would get the shot. Then the clouds parted, revealing a deep blooming red; a cinematic portent of romance and ruin. With only a few minutes of light to spare, Kate Winslet rushed up a ladder to the ship's bow and screamed: “Shoooooot!” The resulting shot — just slightly out of focus — became one of the most iconic in cinema history.
Cameron smiles at the memory. “I've never heard an actor yell at me and say, ‘Shoooooot.' ”
But, Jim: Would that sunset have been better … if you could have made it anything you wanted?
“That's a question I've asked myself,” he admits, then pivots to explain how adding imperfection has become part of his process when making Avatar. “We strive for perfect imperfection. ‘Let's overexpose that [shot]; let's blow it out as if I was in a hurry.' We build imperfections into the film.”
This is one way digital filmmaking like on Avatar and making movies with AI actually do overlap: They both give filmmakers so much control that they avoid the headaches and limitations that come with traditional moviemaking. But they also miss the opportunities and inspirations that come from being out in the real world.
Cameron has been vocal about artificial intelligence. He's warned about the technology's destructive potential on a global level (you know, Skynet) and its danger to Hollywood jobs. He recently judged a New Zealand university's short-film pitch session and grew increasingly frustrated when one young filmmaker after another failed to mention their cast. He couldn't resist chiding them. “They were like, ‘Jim Cameron's mad at us,' ” he says. “And I was. I'm worried there's going to be a generation that thinks they could make a movie without an actor.”
Yet the director also sees a business opportunity within the AI space: launching a company, or tool, that helps VFX houses become more efficient — not to replace artists or offer a “magic wand solution that can create a finished image,” but one that allows professional artists to more easily manipulate imagery. Such an innovation could dramatically lower the cost of moviemaking. (Cameron has done something like this before — co-founding Digital Domain in 1993 to improve CGI.)
“People are not creating tools to help us in the VFX realm, they're making them for the average person,” Cameron says. “So I'm going to roll up my sleeves and investigate some development in that area. My other projects I want to do all require VFX. There's a certain imaginative type of filmmaking I'm drawn to that is either out of this world or out of this time and place. Contemporary stuff that can just be shot on location, or on conventional sets, is not interesting to me.”
The threat of AI — along with the dangers posed by nuclear weapons and environmental destruction — has been a running theme in the director's work that goes all the way back to high school, when he wrote a save-the-planet play titled The Extinction Syndrome. Releasing Fire and Ash during a presidential administration that's unraveled environmental protections, one wonders whether Cameron is frustrated that his eco-promoting franchise hasn't had a greater impact on issues like climate change.
“I'm not frustrated that Avatar isn't solving it,” says Cameron — who calls President Trump the “most narcissistic asshole in history since fucking Nero,” and adds, “Yeah, you can quote that” — “I'm frustrated because the human race seems to be delusional about what they think is going to happen next. We are going backwards. But who's to say we wouldn't be going backwards even faster if it wasn't for these films? There isn't an alternative Earth without Avatar we can point to and say, ‘It made this measurable difference.' What we can say is the Avatar films are on the right side of history.”
There are, perhaps, more drama-filled stories surrounding Cameron than any other living filmmaker. Do you have a favorite?
Maybe it's the time on The Abyss when he ran out of oxygen, a safety diver grabbed him and shoved a broken regulator full of water into his mouth, and the director punched him to escape? Or when a disgruntled caterer on Titanic spiked the production's chowder with a pound of PCP and — in the resulting mass psychosis that followed — a crewmember reportedly stabbed Cameron in the face with a pen? Or maybe it's some little-known factoid, like how Cameron secretly wrote his ex-wife Kathryn Bigelow's 1991 action classic Point Break? (The script is credited to W. Peter Iliff.) “I wrote Point Break,” Cameron says. “I flat out got stiffed by the Writers Guild on that. It was bullshit.”
My favorite (like several of these, chronicled in Rebecca Keegan's excellent Cameron biography The Futurist) is one you've likely never heard.
On The Abyss, a rat used to demonstrate the film's oxygenated water technology drowned during filming. Faced with the prospect of a dead rat — and losing the production's “No Animals Were Harmed” certification — Cameron performed CPR on the rodent. The rat sprang back to life, and Cameron adopted “Beanie” as his pet.
One can understand why a do-anything-for-the-job director like Cameron would go to extremes to protect his film's reputation. But why did a man running one of the most tortuous shoots in Hollywood history, who was reportedly saying things to crewmembers like, “Firing [you] is too merciful” … Why did that guy open his home to a mere rat?
“Beanie and I bonded over the whole thing,” he says. “I saved his life. We were brothers. He used to sit on my desk while I was writing Terminator 2, and he lived to a ripe old age. He didn't seem particularly traumatized, though I know the film is outlawed in the U.K. because of ‘animal cruelty.' “
Tales of “James Cameron, the softie” are, admittedly, less exciting than tales of “James Cameron, the asshole.” But it's an underreported side of the filmmaker. Says Weaver: “He has always been such a sweetheart to me; I have never actually seen [his harsh side]. He's very playful, and more playful every time I work with him.”
You also see this side of Cameron when he talks about his late producing partner, Jon Landau, who died last year. Cameron and Landau used to connect 20 times a day. A week after the funeral, Cameron caught himself cc'ing Landau on an email. Then he realized …
“It's like when my parents died,” Cameron says. “It's like I've got nobody left to be proud of me, or to judge me if I fuck up. There's an absence there, and there's no way to fill it. We weren't friends outside of work in the sense of always hanging out and going bowling together. He had his life, and I had mine, but we met in the work, and it was sublime.”
Cameron thinks back. “He believed in Avatar more than I did. I thought, ‘We're doomed. This is all a giant pile of shit. I'm never going to work again.' And he believed in it. We used to scream at each other — well, he didn't scream. I did the screaming, but that was a long time ago. …”
The filmmaker resets himself. “Ironically, Fire and Ash itself is about loss and grief and picking up and going on and how you find hope and how you find the bonds that keep you moving forward in life. It's all in the movie.” The film is dedicated to Landau.
Cameron's sentimental side has been critical to his success. His dialogue is often called cheesy, but a better description might be sincere. With a few comic-relief exceptions (and much of True Lies), Cameron's characters tend to be achingly earnest (critics roll their eyes at Leonardo DiCaprio shouting, “I'm the king of the world!” as James Horner's score swells, but millions of fans felt otherwise). Cameron says he doesn't do “smart-alecky” dialogue, noting it's unrealistic — people in life-and-death situations aren't flinging around wisecracks.
One moment from the 2014 documentary Deepsea Challenge captures the filmmaker in a particularly vulnerable moment. Cameron was setting a record for the first solo dive to the bottom of the Mariana Trench — an incredible 6.6 miles deep — in a craft he helped design. He spoke over the sub's radio to his wife, Titanic actress Suzy Amis, and said, “I love you, baby” — an echo of Ed Harris' character in The Abyss messaging, “I love you, wife …” while at the bottom of a similar trench. Cameron then added, “… all the way from the heart of the ocean,” referencing the Titanic‘s coveted diamond. It was the director's blockbuster art merging with his marriage and real-life adventures in a crazily surreal way.
In a rare interview about her husband, Amis recalls feeling “beyond nervous I would never see him again” during that dive, but also loving that Cameron was, “just so excited; like a little kid. He'd been working on it for years and you can't hold that back from somebody.” Amis is a recreational pilot (“my risks are in the air; his are underwater”) and describes their home life in New Zealand with their three shared children as the picture of cozy domesticity. “It's us walking around the house in socks, being voracious readers, building fires, and hanging out — after 30 years, there's never a moment we don't have something to talk about.”When Cameron is back at work, however, the Angry Director of Hollywood lore still occasionally rises back to the surface.
Minutes after drafting the above paragraphs about the director's warm and fuzzy side, we had a Zoom call for some follow-up questions. The director had just landed in Paris after days of press junkets and looked exhausted. Then I asked a non-Avatar question.
“All I want to talk about is Fire and Ash,” Cameron snaps. “If we go beyond that, this [interview] is going to get real short, real quick. The Way of Water and Fire and Ash were 10 years of my life. Why would I want to talk about anything else? That's dumb. Do you honestly believe you've heard even more than one-tenth of one percent of what could be said about this project?”
When I explained this story is a broad look at the director, Cameron fires back: “Is this a profile you're writing? I hate fucking profiles.”
Cameron won't reveal his next project — and he might even be unsure himself — but will give intriguing hints.
In addition to co-directing Billie Eilish's upcoming 3D concert documentary, Hit Me Hard and Soft, Cameron has another globe-trotting documentary adventure in the works, the details of which are under wraps.
His next narrative film probably won't be Ghosts of Hiroshima, which has generated considerable press after Cameron acquired the rights to Charles Pellegrino's book chronicling the true story of Tsutomu Yamaguchi, who in 1945 survived the nuclear blasts at both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Cameron promised Yamaguchi on his deathbed in 2010 that he'd make the film.
“The postapocalypse is not going to be the fun that it is in science fiction,” he says. “It's not going to have mutants and monsters and all sorts of cool stuff. It's hell.”
Cameron says “a lot of people” in the industry have stepped forward wanting to help make Ghosts, but there's no script yet. I point out that even if Cameron employs an army of Japanese talent to ensure the film is authentic — which is his plan — he'll likely still get some backlash for being a white filmmaker telling that story.
“Fuck 'em, I don't care,” Cameron says. “I'm going to tell this story — because why? Because nobody else is doing it. If you want to haul off and make the film, I'll hand you the book. But nobody's putting their hand up to do this. It'll probably be the least-attended movie I ever make. It's not a pretty sight what a nuclear bomb does to human beings.”
Cameron first portrayed the apocalypse in his 1984 debut, The Terminator, a franchise he's quietly working on revisiting. “Once the dust clears on Avatar in a couple of months, I'm going to really plunge into that,” he says. “There are a lot of narrative problems to solve. The biggest is how do I stay enough ahead of what's really happening to make it science fiction?”
Asked whether he's cracked the premise, Cameron replies, “I'm working on it,” but his sly smile suggests that he has. The result will be the first Terminator film Cameron has been involved in that won't star Arnold Schwarzenegger.
“I can safely say he won't be [in it],” Cameron says. “It's time for a new generation of characters. I insisted Arnold had to be involved in [2019's] Terminator: Dark Fate, and it was a great finish to him playing the T-800. There needs to be a broader interpretation of Terminator and the idea of a time war and super intelligence. I want to do new stuff that people aren't imagining.”
When I mention Noah Hawley's AI-themed reinvention of the Alien franchise with Alien: Earth, Cameron praises the FX drama as “great; a lot of fun,” but notes it leaned on the first two Alien films, and that doing fan-friendly callbacks is “what I'm not going to do” with Terminator. “I'm not criticizing it, but I was there for Aliens, what, 41 years ago? Something like that wouldn't be of interest to me.”
“The things that scare you the most are exactly the things you should be doing,” Cameron declares. “Nobody should be operating artistically from a comfort zone.”
And that, right there, is perhaps Cameron's best reason for expanding beyond Avatar. There are all sorts of grueling new problems just waiting to be solved, and the 71-year-old has no shortage of energy — partly crediting his vegan diet, which he adopted for sustainability reasons: “I'm eating the way the rest of the human race is going to have to eat in 50 years or we don't survive.
“I stay active, I kickbox two or three times per week,” he continues. “I look at other people my age, and it's like they're just punching a clock, waiting to go. I have ideas more than I could ever act on in a lifetime. I got shit to do.”
This story appeared in the Dec. 17 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
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By Ted Johnson
Political Editor
The trailer for Melania, an upcoming documentary about Melania Trump, debuted on Wednesday, with the first lady posting it on her X account.
“MELANIA, the film, exclusively in theaters worldwide on January 30th, 2026,” the first lady wrote.
“Everyone wants to know, so here it is,” the first lady is heard saying in the trailer.
Then there is the sound of a phone ringing. Trump picks it up and says, “Hi, Mr. President, congratulations.”
“Did you watch it?” her husband is heard saying.
“I did not. I will see it on the news,” she says.
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“Witness history in the making. 20 days to become the first lady of the United States of America,” the text on the trailer reads, as the project tracks the lead up to the presidential inauguration in January.
Amazon Prime bought rights to the documentary at a reported cost of $40 million. The company's founder, Jeff Bezos, was among the tech titans who attended Trump's inauguration. Brett Ratner directed.
Fox News debuted the trailer Wednesday morning.
MELANIA, the film, exclusively in theaters worldwide on January 30th, 2026. pic.twitter.com/n2kloQ4JwW
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I'd rather watch paint dry.
End of January is traditionally exhibition's dead zone, where cinema tax write-offs go to die.
A “film” by Brett (Regret) Ratner. Looks like an ad for the next season of Real Housewives.
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I, Con
Would definitely buy a ticket for “Melanoma-the Mockumentary”.
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By Dade Hayes
Business Editor
Warner Bros. Discovery today urged shareholders to reject Paramount's hostile $108 billion takeover proposal, saying Netflix‘s previously accepted offer remains superior.
In a three-page letter, WBD laid out its concerns about a number of aspects of Paramount‘s offer. One of its primary issues is the repeated insistence by Paramount that its offer is backstopped by the Ellison family fortune. Larry Ellison, the father of Paramount CEO David Ellison, is a financial backer of the transaction and, as co-founder of tech giant Oracle, one of the Earth's richest men. RedBird Capital, Apollo and three Middle East sovereign wealth funds are among the other investors in the deal.
“PSKY's most recent proposal includes a $40.65 billion equity commitment, for which there is no Ellison family commitment of any kind,” the letter says, referring to Paramount by its ticker symbol. “Instead, they propose that you rely on an unknown and opaque revocable trust for the certainty of this crucial deal funding. Despite having been told repeatedly by WBD how important a full and unconditional financing commitment from the Ellison family was – and despite their own ample resources, as well as multiple assurances by PSKY during our strategic review process that such a commitment was forthcoming – the Ellison family has chosen not to backstop the PSKY offer.”
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Documents provided by Paramount related to the revocable trust, the letter added, “contain gaps, loopholes and limitations that put you, our shareholders, and our company at risk.”
Before the battle for WBD heated up earlier this year, WBD had decided to split itself into two companies, one focused on studio and streaming operations and the other on declining cable networks. Plans call for the split to occur by the third quarter of 2026. If Netflix outdoes Paramount, Discovery Global Networks will spin off and Netflix will acquire Warner Bros.
Along with the rebuff of Paramount, which had been expected, WBD also divulged new details about its M&A quest in a separate SEC filing. That document includes an extensive chronology of the dealings between key stakeholders, revealing interest in the WBD assets, including Warner Bros., HBO and CNN, from two previously undisclosed suitors. Neither is identified beyond descriptions of them as “a private holding company and global investment firm” and “an American media company.”
The “American media company's” founder called in October to express intertest in acquiring Discovery Global Networks and 20% of Studios and Streaming (including HBO Max) for $25 billion in cash, according to the filing. The private holding company, meanwhile, proposed combining WBD's studios and streaming division with some of its “related businesses” after the split of WBD. That cash-and-stock deal would have seen WBD shareholders owning 48% of the merged entity.
While reports of other suitors, including Amazon and Apple, surfaced in recent months, the main horserace had publicly come down to Netflix, Paramount and Comcast. After Netflix's offer was accepted, Comcast withdrew.
Along with the Ellison backstop worries, the WBD board also flagged a few other issues with Paramount's current proposal. For one thing, the difference in the competing offers clearing regulatory hurdles is “not material,” at least in the view of the board. Another concern is Paramount's goal of attaining $9 billion in synergies from the merger with Skydance last August and the proposed WBD takeover. The target is “both ambitious from an operational perspective and would make Hollywood weaker, not stronger,” the board said.
The shareholder letter also labeled Paramount's offer “illusory” because it guarantees “the right to amend the offer in any respect (including amending the offer price).” With global regulatory approvals likely to require 12 to 18 months to be completed, “nothing in this structure offers WBD any deal certainty,” the letter asserts. Paramount's offer, it concludes, “provides an untenable degree of risk and potential downside for WBD shareholders.”
“Following a careful evaluation of Paramount's recently launched tender offer, the Board concluded thatthe offer's value is inadequate, with significant risks and costs imposed on our shareholders,” saidSamuel A. Di Piazza, Jr., Chair of the WBD Board of Directors. “This offer once again fails to address key concerns that we have consistently communicated to Paramount throughout our extensive engagement and review of their six previous proposals. We are confident that our merger with Netflix represents superior, more certain value for our shareholders and we look forward to delivering on the compelling benefits of our combination.”
Netflix Co-CEOs Greg Peters and Ted Sarandos sent their own letter to WBD shareholders Wednesday, reaffirming the merit of their $82.7 billion offer. “This was a competitive process that delivered the best outcome for consumers, creators, stockholders and the broader entertainment industry,” Sarandos said in a statement. “Netflix and Warner Bros. complement each other, and we're excited to combine our strengths with their theatrical film division, world-class television studio, and the iconic HBO brand, which will continue to focus on prestige television. We're also fully committed to releasing Warner Bros. films in theaters, with a traditional window, so audiences everywhere can enjoy them on the big screen.”
Warner's response to Paramount's offer, which was received on December 8, is merely the latest step in an incremental process. Paramount is widely expected to raise its offer and Netflix could do likewise.
Regardless of who prevails in the battle for Warner Bros., the deal will go down as one of the priciest media mergers in history and will alter the entertainment landscape. For an industry already reeling from thousands of job losses over the past year at major studios and networks – with even the once-invincible Amazon cutting jobs due to AI – there is a deeply skeptical outlook for the future Warner portfolio. These are assets, don't forget, that will have been owned by four different companies over the past decade.
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Netflix is a better buyer, if, and this is a big if… Netflix truly sees the value in theatrical to make their features actually premium films. As is, their feature model doesn't work well. However, if they embrace a real theatrical release for at least 20+ of their movies, their business model could take a major step forward as a global brand.
Netflix deal is better for WB and they will get the money
It is obvious they will say this, it is a hostile takeover after all.
Do NOT allow the dictator/ paramount control WBD. It will be the end of the industry. Cannot deal with maga movies about alphas in flannels birthing sheep in storm, forcing women to bake hotdish and make babies.
Just think, if the telecommunications act of 1996 wasn't passed and signed into law, this wouldn't be a issue. That law set the wheels in motion for what we have today with all of these mergers and acquisitions where you have six major corporations running most of the media outlets, thus limiting choices and killing the free market. As George Carlin said: We have 32 flavors to give us the ILLUSION of choice.
This is a raw deal for the movie theaters and a win for streaming.
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Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Sigourney Weaver and Kate Winslet head back to the future to continue the Pandoran struggle against genocidal colonists from Earth.
By
David Rooney
Chief Film Critic
If the title One Battle After Another weren't already taken, it might be a tidy fit for the third installment of James Cameron's sprawling “Blue Man Group” sci-fi adventure, Avatar: Fire and Ash. Yes, the movie offers gargantuan-scale spectacle, imposing technological wizardry and virtually nonstop action involving over-qualified and mostly unrecognizable actors in motion-capture suits. But it's easily the most repetitious entry in the big-screen series, with a been-there, bought-the-T-shirt fatigue that's hard to ignore.
That leaves way too much time over the movie's ass-numbing three-and-a-quarter hours to wince at the risible dialogue coming from the mouths of Na'vi folk on the distant moon, Pandora. Or to stew in envy over their absence of body fat.
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Avatar: Fire and Ash
The Bottom Line
Enough with the Modigliani Smurfs already.
Release date: Friday, Dec. 19Cast: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Oona Chaplin, Kate Winslet, Cliff Curtis, Joel David Moore, CCH Pounder, Edie Falco, David Thewlis, Jemaine Clement, Giovanni Ribisi, Britain Dalton, Jamie Flatters, Trinity Jo-Li Bliss, Jack Champion, Brendan Cowell, Bailey Bass, Filip Geljo, Duane Evans Jr.Director: James CameronScreenwriters: James Cameron, Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver; story by Cameron, Jaffa, Silver, Josh Friedman, Shane Salerno
Rated PG-13,
3 hours 17 minutes
The 13-year gap between Avatar and its first sequel, Avatar: The Way of Water, allowed time for a renewed sense of awe at the scope of Cameron's bio-diverse worldbuilding, enhanced by the introduction of a new clan, new creatures and a distinctive new environment. The third movie arrives just three years after its immediate predecessor — and in narrative terms, a few weeks after the events of that film — with the novelty now wearing thin.
Firstly, it's not a great idea in a film with such an epic run time to have a character urgently shouting, “I've gotta take a leak!” To be fair, it's understandable given that the full bladder belongs to human dude Spider (Jack Champion), revealed in The Way of Water to be the son of vicious Colonel Quaritch (Stephen Lang), sired before the latter was killed and transformed into a new breed of hybrid human/Na'vi soldier. To my knowledge, Spider never does get to pee, unless he just goes in the Metkayina Clan's bioluminescent aquatic ecosystem, like some filthy kid at the pool.
I suppose given his ex-Marine, pre-avatar origins, we can even buy Quaritch's nemesis Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) greeting his wife Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) when she ignores instructions to stay home and watch the kids during a skirmish, instead leaping into the fray with her killer archery skills: “Baby, I don't know whether to kiss you or yell at you!” But that doesn't make it sound any less silly, especially with Worthington's Australian accent.
And would a young Na'vi really be checking in after a fiery clash by asking his comrade in arms, “Bro, you good?” Surely this biologically and spiritually advanced civilization should have evolved beyond skateboarder vernacular?
All due respect to a groundbreaking franchise that has thus far raked in over $5.2 billion in theatrical grosses and remains the gold standard for the large-format 3D viewing experience, but Fire and Ash is sound and fury signifying nothing. Or at least nothing excitingly new. (Now might be a good time to clarify that I enjoyed the first two movies.) In the absence of fresh narrative inspiration, Cameron and co-writers Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver simply pile on the lore and multiply the clashes, to numbing rather than invigorating effect.
Even the Darth Vader/Luke factor of honorary Na'vi Spider's conflicted feelings for his hard-ass father on the side of the Military Industrial Complex oppressor — known as the RDA, or Resources Development Administration, led by Edie Falco's stiff-limbed and humorless General Frances Ardmore — goes to few places not already explored in The Way of Water.
Having been forced by the human invaders to flee the lush green forest home of the Omaticaya people, Jake, Neytiri and their family continue to live among the reefs and islands of the Metkayina clan, headed by tribal chief Tonowari (Cliff Curtis) and his pregnant wife Ronal (Kate Winslet). But the loss of Jake and Neytiri's first-born son Neteyam (Jamie Flatters) remains an open wound for the family, especially for his impulsive brother Lo'ak (Britain Dalton), who blames himself.
When Quaritch resurfaces with a personal vendetta, Jake refuses to take a knife to a gun fight, instead loading up on military weapons salvaged from the last “Sky People” assault, which goes against the traditional Na'vi way. The women argue that the divine entity Eywa will provide, blathering on about having faith in “the Great Mother's plan.” But they haven't seen Edie Falco crab-walking in an industrial-grade exoskeleton suit.
Jake, for one, is not buying the Eywa assurance; he has too much at stake protecting his wife, their surviving children Lo'ak and tween sister Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss), as well as adopted daughter Kiri (Sigourney Weaver), the offspring of scientist Grace Augustine's avatar body, who develops a direct line to Eywa, even if she can't yet control it. How much you invest in all that will depend on how much you care about moon dwellers plugging their braids into nature's light sockets.
When the nomadic Wind Traders led by Peylak (David Thewlis) drop by in their monster jellyfish-powered airships with Amazon packages, Jake decides Spider needs to be sent back with them to the science research facility to live with his fellow humans. His best pal Kiri is devastated but Neytiri, whose hatred of humans has intensified since Neteyam's killing, insists Spider will never be one of them so has to go.
Before the Sully family can get him back to the base, a savage air attack rains down on Metkayina territory. Only this time it's not humans but the barbarian Mangkwan Clan, firebombing the Wind Traders' vessels and laying siege to the peaceful community below. Their leader is bad-bitch warrior Varang (Oona Chaplin), who ululates in triumph every time she “scalps” another Na'vi — which means hacking off the ponytails that are their power source, like Ariana Grande's topknot.
The Mangkwan, aka Ash People, are a bunch of godless warmongers who basically turned on Eywa when a volcano reduced their homeland to barren ash. Varang is their evil queen. She wears a black and red feathered headdress, a micro-kini and stripes of red war paint over what looks like full-body Kiehl's Mud Mask, while swooping around on a scary dragon called a Nightwraith.
When she starts demanding to be taught how to “make thunder,” she's not talking about rumbling flatulence, even if that might describe much of the action. Instead, she means advanced military firepower. Varang teams up with Quaritch and gets a whole arsenal of weaponry at her disposal, which is bad news for the Sullys, the Metkayina and the highly intelligent whale-like Tulkun that inhabit the oceans, especially as their annual shallow-water “calf communion” approaches.
Varang is the most interesting new addition here, and Chaplin plays her as a bloodthirsty sorceress, her yellow eyes aflame with rage as she shrieks about ripping out hearts. But the writers give her no complexity beyond being a relentless WMD. She and Neytiri hiss at each other like territorial cats whenever they get close. But the promised Na'vi-on-Na'vi chick action gets sidelined when the injured Ronal goes into labor, with poor Winslet forced to utter the lament of mothers since the dawn of time: “I am dying, but first I will push out this baby.” You got this, girl!
The escalating chaos is so littered with talk of Na'vi arcana, exotic Pandoran creatures and military jargon, that keeping up with the over-mythologized videogame plotting becomes more of a chore than a challenge. Not that narrative deficiencies are likely to hurt the movie's box office or keep the geek faithful away. The battles may become routinely episodic, but there are plenty of them, which might be all many audiences care about seeing through their 3D glasses.
In the first two films, the sincerity, respect and sheer wonderment with which Cameron captured the Avatar world — and the faith that Indigenous traditions and the purity, spirituality and balance of nature could prevail over rampaging human destruction and military technology — was transporting enough to overcome the dumb dialogue. Here, it all starts to sound like empty bluster, retreading the same ground with just one new face that makes an impression. There's certainly nothing in the story to justify the bloated run time.
The knowledge that Cameron has at least two more of these in the works might be great for the New Zealand economy — not so much for anyone who cares about original movies. Great Mother, save us.
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“The Voice” is reinventing itself in a big way for season 29. Officially titled “The Voice: Battle of Champions,” the upcoming season introduces a bold new format designed to raise the stakes for both Coaches and Artists.
With a three-Coach showdown, competitive twists in every round, and the return of familiar faces from earlier seasons, the long-running NBC competition is entering one of its most ambitious eras yet.
From premiere details to major format changes, here's everything viewers need to know about “The Voice” season 29.
Season 29 of “The Voice: Battle of Champions” premieres Monday, February 23, at 9/8c on NBC.
The season will launch with three extended episodes during its first week:
Beginning March 2, following a March 5 broadcast, new episodes of “The Voice” will air in their standard Monday night 9 p.m. ET time slot. New episodes of “Brilliant Minds” will follow at 10 p.m. ET. Fans can currently watch season 28, airing Monday nights on NBC.
NBC announced in July 2025 that season 29 would introduce a special “Battle of the Champions” format, bringing back three of the show's most recognizable Coaches: Kelly Clarkson, Adam Levine, and John Legend.
Clarkson returns to the red chair after stepping away from the series in 2023. Levine, one of the original Coaches, previously led teams from seasons 1 through 16 and returned again in season 27, earning three wins during his tenure. Legend also returns after coaching multiple seasons, including seasons 16 through 21, 24, 25, and 27, with his first-season victory alongside Maelyn Jarmon standing out as a fan favorite.
Unlike most seasons, “The Voice” season 29 will feature three Coaches instead of four, a change that aligns with the revamped competitive format.
CeeLo Green will return to “The Voice” in a special role during the Knockouts round. The original Coach will judge the In-Season All-Star Competition, where returning Artist alums compete in head-to-head sing-offs.
Green's decisions will directly impact the finale, as his selections determine which Coach is guaranteed two Artists in the Final round.
Reflecting on the show's early days, Levine previously told NBC Insider, “It used to just be kind of crazy. We were like the [Rolling] Stones or something. It was chaos. CeeLo had a bird. We were like a punk rock band.”
Green served as a Coach during the show's first three seasons and returned again in season 5, later appearing as an Advisor in multiple seasons.
Season 29 will feature four main rounds: Blind Auditions, Battles, Knockouts, and the Semi-Finals/Finale. Each Coach will begin with 10 Artists.
During the Blind Auditions, Coaches compete in the Triple Turn Competition, aiming to secure the most three-chair turns for a strategic advantage. In the Battles, the winning Coach earns a Super Steal that overrides another Coach's attempt.
The Knockouts allow Coaches to bring back two fan-favorite Artists from past seasons for sing-offs. The Coach with the most wins earns a second finalist in the Finale.
For the first time in the show's history, the Finals will include a real-time voting block made up of super fans and former “Voice” Artists voting live in the studio.
Not happy about Adam returning, he's so full of himself, will have to skip this season for sure
I love Adam! But I'll miss 4 Coaches. Niall has definitely proved himself! Wish he was on this new Season! Will miss Snoop, too!
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All good things have to come to an end, which is what is happening this week on “The Voice” 2025. We have Night 1 of the Voice Finale, as we are one night away from the winner of “The Voice” season 28 being announced. Viewers will get a chance to vote for their favorite artists on “The Voice” 2025. Who will you be voting for on “The Voice” tonight? Watch with us during our “The Voice” season 28 live recap below, and watch the finale performances with us.
It's time for Night 1 of the live finale on “The Voice” season 28. Tonight, we get to see the Top 6 artists take the stage. They will be fighting for your votes in hopes of being named the winner of season 28. After the performances are done, it goes to America to vote. Watch with us to see who you will be voting for tonight. Find out with us during our Live Recap below!
WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD: THIS LIVE RECAP WILL BE UPDATED THROUGHOUT THE EPISODE, SO DO NOT KEEP READING IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO READ SPOILERS.
KEEP REFRESHING THE PAGE FOR THE LATEST “THE VOICE” LIVE RECAP UPDATES.
We start with a moment of silence for all the tragic events that have recently taken place. Then the coaches takes their place.
Now it's time to find out the wild card finalists rounding out the Top 6 on “The Voice” season 28:
Niall said there is no way they couldn't have been in this finale. They also won the Mic Drop, so big things are ahead for DEK of Hearts. For this performance, they are singing “Fishin' in the Dark” by Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.
This was a great song choice for them. It's fun and upbeat, and their harmonies are always on point. They were having fun up there, and I am a fan of this group.
Coaches' Feedback: Reba said that sounded terrific, and they knocked it out of the ballpark. Niall said consistency is king, and they have never done a thing wrong. He is so proud of them.
The artists have written letters to music, which Max reads. A very emotional moment, for sure. For his first performance, he is singing “Your Way's Better” by Forrest Frank, who happens to be a good friend of Michael's.
This is a fun song choice, a little upbeat, but old school at the same time. His voice is so solid, and it always amazes me that he is just 14 years old. He had some fun up there tonight, so that is nice to see.
Coaches' Feedback: Michael said bold. It's bold to be open about his faith. That was amazing, and he crushed it.
She was a one-chair turn during the Blind Auditions. Reba then went on to save her in the Battles. Now, the one-chair turn is here in the finale. For this first performance, she is singing”‘Til You Can't” by Cody Johnson.
It's another performance and another good song choice. I think she sounded good on this one and was having fun up there. It's a good country song, and Aubrey made it work for her voice.
Coaches' Feedback: Snoop said she deserves to be here, and she gets better every time she takes the stage. Reba said she is so proud of her. She is beautiful inside and out.
Jazz said she was going back and forth between him and Snoop during the Blind Auditions, but then Reba blocked Snoop, and that saved him. He said he brought out the Irish jig dancers to win her over, so they bring them out again to end their journey together. For this performance, she is singing “Against All Odds” by Phil Collins.
Michael said she has a way of making songs her own, putting her own twist on them. She did that with this performance. Besides her voice being so solid and strong, this was an amazing performance. This is a classic song, but she put some church into it. All of the backup singers hitting that stage was a magical moment on “The Voice” season 28, and it didn't drown her out.
Coaches' Feedback: Michael said she is the light. I love her, and she is perfect.
In his letter to music, he talks about how he always thought he was supposed to be an engineer. But this has helped him realize how much music meant to him. He said music has helped him get through the tough days. For his performance, he is singing “Golden Hour” by JVKE.
This was a great performance for Aiden, even though I did struggle to hear his vocals at times because of the music. This was one of the songs Jessica Sanchez performed on her way to winning “America's Got Talent” earlier this year, so maybe it will work out the same for Aiden?
Coaches' Feedback: Niall said this guy is beyond talented. He is so proud of him, that song was amazing for him.
He tried out for the show 11 times before making it on his 12th time. Snoop said he takes others' songs and makes them his own. He loves the growl in his voice. For this performance, he is singing “I Want to Know What Love Is” by Foreigner. Snoop said he needs to be Oscar-worthy during this performance.
To be honest, I felt like this was Ralph's to lose tonight. However, this performance didn't do it for me. I felt his vocals were lacking on this one. I think the whole performance was amazing, and they were putting on a show up there. However, I didn't get it from his vocals on this one.
Coaches' Feedback: Snoop just wrote a note, which he had Nial read. The note said, “And the winner is…” Snoop then said never give up.
In her letter, she said music has always been a part of her life. She said music has been her dearest friend. For this performance, she is singing “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia” by her coach, Reba McEntire.
She comes out in a red dress, feeling like that is a tribute to Reba. Aubrey has been singing Reba for years, so fitting that she sings one of her songs for the finale. She is confident in this performance and hits some big notes along the way.
Coaches' Feedback: Reba said congratulations girl, you knocked it out of the park.
They read their letters, and it is amazing that they all just came to Nashville and found each other. They said it still doesn't seem real. For this performance, the trio will be singing “Let It Go” by James Bay.
There were some technical difficulties before this one, as they almost threw it back to Carson Daly. However, they get it figured out. This was a slow one, but their voices, per usual, sounded good on it. It started slow, but it got faster, and their harmonies sounded great again.
Coaches' Feedback: Niall said they did a great job recovering from that. Yes, that was live and three voices together.
She said the soundtrack of her life was her mom's voice. Jazz said Michael reminded her that music isn't about perfection, but about connection. She then got a special message from her mom, which brought out the emotions. For this performance, she sings “drivers license” by Olivia Rodrigo.
To take a song that is so popular, but then rearrange it and make it your own. Like, I was sitting here, wondering what this song was. It's crazy, but they did a beautiful job rearranging it to fit Jazz's voice.
Coaches' Feedback: Snoop, who was in tears, said she touched his heart, and she is amazing. Michael said he loves her, and her mom is right, she was meant to be a star.
Michael said this is exactly how he thought it would go down, and America would do the right thing. He said going from this back to school, and school is boring. For this performance, he is singing “One Moment in Time” by Whitney Houston. Michael said he reminds him of Shawn Mendes. Since his blind audition to now, Max has grown: he went from 5'4″ to 5'9″, which is a big growth spurt.
I think Michael failed him on this one. Whitney? That is an untouchable voice, and I don't think it's a good match for his vocals. Max is great, but this song was lacking for me.
Coaches' Feedback: Michael said he feels so blessed, and all of America, to be at the beginning of this kid's ride.
In his letter, he said he has gotten five yeses since coming on “The Voice” season 28. Now, he is ready to perform his last song this season. For this one, he sings “Locked Out of Heaven” by Bruno Mars.
It's so wild, again, but I feel it's another bad song choice for Ralph. He killed his other performances, but this one wasn't doing it for me. He did break out into almost a rap in the middle, which I thought was very good and grabbed my attention.
Coaches' Feedback: Snoop said the complete package right there. America, make the vote.
Time for the final performance of the Voice Finale. He said he was an engineering student before this, and applied for the show on a whim. Now he's riding the flame. Niall said his big talent is his ability to sell a song. For this performance, he will be singing “The Winner Takes It All” by ABBA. They said this is very dramatic and it's an epic arrangement.
Now, this is what I am talking about. When I think of a performance for the finale of a show, I think of this. Great song choice, fitting for the show, and fitting for the final performance of the night. This was so good for his vocal range, and his control was great. Aiden definitely makes you feel the lyrics, and this was epic.
Coaches' Feedback: Niall said he is so proud of him, and that was absolutely incredible.
The performances are done for Night 1 on “The Voice” season 28. Who was your favorite? And who are you voting for tonight?
Find out the Season 28 winner with us during our Finale Night 2 Live Recap right here!
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A group of Rob Reiner‘s closest friends has released a joint statement following the actor's tragic passing.
Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner were found dead at their Brentwood home in California by their daughter, Romy Reiner, on December 14. Their son Nick Reiner was set to be charged with double homicide in their deaths, Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan J. Hochman announced on Tuesday, December 16.
A joint statement was released by Billy and Janice Crystal, Albert and Kimberly Brooks, Martin Short, Alan and Robin Zweibel, Larry David and Ashley Underwood, Marc Shaiman and Lou Mirabal, Barry and Diana Levinson and Ambassador James Costos and Michael Smith on Rob and Michele Reiner's passing
“Going to the movies in a dark theater filled with strangers having a common experience, laughing, crying, screaming in fear, or watching an intense drama unfold is still an unforgettable thrill. Tell us a story audiences demand of us. Absorbing all he had learned from his father Carl and his mentor Norman Lear, Rob Reiner not only was a great comic actor, he became a master story teller. There is no other director who has his range. From comedy to drama to ‘mockumentary' to documentary he was always at the top of his game. He charmed audiences. They trusted him. They lined up to see his films,” they wrote in a statement to the Associated Press.
“His comedic touch was beyond compare, his love of getting the music of the dialogue just right, and his sharpening of the edge of a drama was simply elegant. For the actors, he loved them. For the writers he made them better. His greatest gift was freedom. If you had an idea, he listened, he brought you into the process. They always felt they were working as a team. To be in his hands as a film maker was a privilege but that is only part of his legacy.”
“Rob was also a passionate, brave citizen, who not only cared for this country he loved, he did everything he could to make it better and with his loving wife Michele, he had the perfect partner. Strong and determined, Michele and Rob Reiner devoted a great deal of their lives for the betterment of our fellow citizens… They were a special force together — dynamic, unselfish and inspiring,” the statement added. “We were their friends, and we will miss them forever,” it said, before concluding with a quote from one of Reiner's favorite films, the Christmastime classic “It's a Wonderful Life.”
“‘Each man's life touches so many other lives, and when he isn't around, he leaves an awful hole, doesn't he?' You have no idea,” they concluded.
Legendary actors Billy Crystal and Larry David were spotted at Reiner's house on the night of the actor's passing, ABC 7 Los Angeles reported, adding that they “stayed briefly before departing,” with Crystal being described by a neighbor as looking “like he was about to cry.”
TMZ added that Crystal saw the bodies of Reiner and his wife after they were killed.
“Sources with direct knowledge tell TMZ Rob and Michele's daughter Romy called Crystal and his wife not long after she called police to report finding her parents brutally murdered inside their Brentwood home Sunday,” the outlet wrote. “Sources with direct knowledge tell us Billy and his wife raced over to the house — and were there so quickly, one source tells us — the couple actually saw their slain friends … and wanted to say their goodbyes.”
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The pair got along like old barfly buddies at The Ripple Room in New York City.
By
Lars Brandle
There were no espressos, but the short ‘n' sweet drinks were flowing as Seth Meyers and Sabrina Carpenter caught up for some day drinking and mischief, all of it taped for NBC's Late Night.
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With the holiday season upon us, and Sabrina enjoying an extraordinary two years in her career, there was every reason for the pop star to kick back and hit the diesel.
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The pair got along like old barfly buddies at The Ripple Room in New York City, as Meyers enticed his guest to play several rounds of drinking games.
The day got away not with espresso martinis, but half-pints of beer. Followed by long drags from a punch bowl of Long Island iced tea, and a game of truth or drink.
Who did Carpenter write “Manchild” about? Drink.
What was the most unhinged thing she's done to impress a crush? “I don't think I've tried to impress anyone,” Carpenter responded. “That's such a boring answer.” Yes it is.
Meyers then flipped the question. Someone stole an article of clothing from Carpenter's house, we learned, to get her attention. Did it work? Sure did.
Carpenter turned the tables and had Meyers sing the “The Star-Spangled Banner,” wearing a serious face. Those high notes, however, were best left behind the bar.
Meyers came prepared. Coffee was (finally) brought into the action, as Carpenter stared down the barrel of the camera and read a tongue-twisting barista order. She hit it again with an Italian accent, acing it.
The good times flowed, as the pair donned red-light therapy masks, played a round of “pet sounds” (no, not the classic Beach Boys album), opened boozy presents while wearing oven mitts, and Sabrina decorated the funnyman like a Christmas tree.
No way is this a regular gig, Carpenter explained in one of the quotes of the day: “I'm usually sober when I'm working.”
“Day Drinking” is one of the most popular recurring segments on Late Night, with guests that have included Rihanna, Dua Lipa, Bowen Yang & Matt Rogers, Kristen Stewart and Paul Rudd.
Late Night with Seth Meyers airs 12:35am ET/PT on NBC and next day on Peacock.
Watch Sabrina Carpenter's day drinking session below.
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Billboard is a part of Penske Media Corporation. © 2025 Billboard Media, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
By
Charisma Madarang
Close friends of Rob and Michele Reiner are remembering the remarkable couple following news of their tragic deaths.
Billy and Janice Crystal, Albert and Kimberly Brooks, Martin Short, Alan and Robin Zweibel, Larry David and Ashley Underwood, Marc Shaiman and Lou Mirabal, Barry and Diana Levinson, and Ambassador James Costos and Michael Smith signed the letter shared with the Associated Press. In the tribute, the late couple's friends praised the beloved filmmaker and his wife for having “devoted a great deal of their lives for the betterment of our fellow citizens.”
“Going to the movies in a dark theater filled with strangers having a common experience, laughing, crying, screaming in fear, or watching an intense drama unfold is still an unforgettable thrill,” began the tribute. “Tell us a story audiences demand of us. Absorbing all he had learned from his father Carl and his mentor Norman Lear, Rob Reiner not only was a great comic actor, he became a master story teller. There is no other director who has his range. From comedy to drama to ‘mockumentary' to documentary he was always at the top of his game. He charmed audiences. They trusted him. They lined up to see his films.”
Many of those who signed the letter worked with Reiner during his prolific career. Billy Crystal starred in his 1989 transcendent rom-com, When Harry Met Sally …, and Reiner directed Albert Brooks: Defending My Life, a 2023 documentary about the comedian — with whom Reiner had been friends with since high school.
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“His greatest gift was freedom,” the letter continued. “If you had an idea, he listened, he brought you into the process. They always felt they were working as a team. To be in his hands as a film maker was a privilege but that is only part of his legacy.”
Along with Reiner's work across film, he was also remembered as “a passionate, brave citizen, who not only cared for this country he loved.” He had found the “perfect partner” in Michele, and together they “devoted a great deal of their lives for the betterment of our fellow citizens … They were a special force together — dynamic, unselfish and inspiring. We were their friends, and we will miss them forever.”
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Before concluding, the statement quoted a line from one of Reiner's favorite films, It's a Wonderful Life: “‘Each man's life touches so many other lives, and when he isn't around, he leaves an awful hole, doesn't he?' You have no idea.”
Rob and Michele were found dead in their California home on Sunday afternoon. According to police, their son, Nick Reiner, was arrested and booked on suspicion of murder and “remains in custody with no bail.”
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Hallmark star Barbara Niven recently teased fans about a gig she landed that is a departure from her usual fare. The “Hannah Swensen Mysteries” and “Chesapeake Shores” star will appear on the December 16 episode of “NCIS,” and it sounds like it'll be a fun one.
On December 11, Niven shared the news about her latest gig via her social media pages. “I'm excited to share that I will be guest starring on #NCIS this coming Tuesday night, Dec. 16, on CBS,” she wrote.
She added, “Thank you to the producers, cast and crew for making me feel like family!”
The episode of “NCIS” that includes Niven is titled “Heaven and Nature.” The synopsis for the December 16 episode teases, “McGee and Torres hunt a stolen truck of Christmas toys meant for Navy families.”
In addition, “Parker's mother's story comes to light, and Knight begins her first NCIS: Elite assignment.”
Niven's role in this episode of “NCIS” seems to have been kept under wraps, so it isn't clear at this point where her character fits into the upcoming episode's storyline.
In the caption of her post, Niven also noted, “This is actually my second time on NCIS – the first was 20 years ago in Season 3. They're now shooting Season 23. Wow.”
According to IMDb, Niven's previous “NCIS” gig was playing Dr. Elaine Burns in season 3, episode 4. That episode, which aired in 2005, was titled “Silver War.”
In reflecting on the impressive run that “NCIS” has had over the past 23 seasons, Niven wrote, “They deserve their longevity, they are great people who still love making magic together.” She continued, “What an honor to get to do it again.”
Niven noted she hoped everybody likes the episode and encouraged fans to let her know what they think of it after watching it.
Several of Niven's fans noted that they remembered and loved the Hallmark star's previous “NCIS” appearance.
“That episode where you flirt with Ducky and end up being the bad guy is a fav of mine. We've watched it many times,” one fan commented on Facebook.
That fan continued, “Since you were killed off before, can't wait to see if you are good or bad this time. P.S. Loved the hair you did then. Very sassy for the part!”
In response to another comment, Niven confirmed that she was returning to “NCIS” to play a different character this time, given that her previous character had died.
An “NCIS” executive producer, Scott Williams, left a comment on Niven's Facebook page. He wrote, “Thank you for gracing our stages, Barbara! You made our show infinitely better!”
Someone else commented, “Great!! Wish I could see you in more movies. You are such a great actress. You seem to have a sweet spirit also.”
In late November, Niven teased fans about another project. She revealed she had spent several weeks filming in Canada and was about to return home.
Unfortunately, Niven was unable to reveal exactly what the project she had been filming was. She did include tags suggesting it was a Hallmark movie, though, and promised she would share more soon.
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Charisma Madarang
Twelve years after her decision to undergo a preventative double mastectomy in 2013, Angelina Jolie is publicly showing her scars from the operation in order to raise awareness about breast health and breast cancer prevention.
During an interview with Time France, Jolie was asked why she chose to reveal the results of her procedure. “I share these scars with many women I love,” the Oscar winner told the publication, which shared a preview of its feature — with the full interview set to release on Dec. 18. “And I'm always moved when I see other women share theirs. I wanted to join them, knowing that TIME France would be sharing information about breast health, prevention, and knowledge about breast cancer.”
In an op-ed piece for The New York Times in 2013, titled “My Medical Choice,” Jolie shared that she carries a “faulty” gene, BRCA1, which doctors estimated put her at an 87 percent risk of breast cancer and a 50 percent risk of ovarian cancer. Jolie — whose mother, actress Marcheline Bertrand, died in 2007 at 56 after being diagnosed with cancer — completed procedures for the mastectomies on April 27 that year.
“I wanted to write this to tell other women that the decision to have a mastectomy was not easy,” wrote Jolie at the time. “But it is one I am very happy that I made. My chances of developing breast cancer have dropped from 87 percent to under 5 percent. I can tell my children that they don't need to fear they will lose me to breast cancer.”
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In March 2015, Jolie said that as a preventive step against developing ovarian cancer, she also had her ovaries and fallopian tubes removed.
Jolie stars in Alice Winocour's upcoming movie Couture, in which she plays an American filmmaker who discovers she has breast cancer in the middle of Paris Fashion Week. “My mother was ill for years. One evening, when she was being asked about her chemotherapy, she became very emotional and told me she would have preferred to talk about something else; she felt as though the illness was becoming her entire identity,” Jolie told Time France. “I love this film because it tells a story that goes far beyond the journey of a sick person: it shows life. It was this luminous perspective that touched me and made me want to play this role.”
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Billy Crystal and his wife, Janice Crystal, along with a suite of fellow Hollywood elites, released a statement on the death of their friends Rob Reiner and wife Michele Singer Reiner, calling the late filmmaker “a great comic actor” and “a master story teller.”
In a lengthy statement provided to the Associated Press on Tuesday, the Crystals signed the heartfelt tribute, along with Albert and Kimberly Brooks, Martin Short, Alan and Robin Zweibel, Larry David and Ashley Underwood, Marc Shaiman and Lou Mirabal, Barry and Diana Levinson and Ambassador James Costos and Michael Smith.
“Going to the movies in a dark theater filled with strangers having a common experience, laughing, crying, screaming in fear, or watching an intense drama unfold is still an unforgettable thrill. Tell us a story audiences demand of us,” the statement began.
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“Absorbing all he had learned from his father Carl and his mentor Norman Lear, Rob Reiner not only was a great comic actor, he became a master story teller. There is no other director who has his range. From comedy to drama to ‘mockumentary' to documentary he was always at the top of his game. He charmed audiences. They trusted him. They lined up to see his films.”
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“His comedic touch was beyond compare, his love of getting the music of the dialogue just right, and his sharpening of the edge of a drama was simply elegant,” the statement continued. “For the actors, he loved them. For the writers he made them better. His greatest gift was freedom. If you had an idea, he listened, he brought you into the process. They always felt they were working as a team. To be in his hands as a film maker was a privilege but that is only part of his legacy.”
“Rob was also a passionate, brave citizen, who not only cared for this country he loved, he did everything he could to make it better and with his loving wife Michele, he had the perfect partner. Strong and determined, Michele and Rob Reiner devoted a great deal of their lives for the betterment of our fellow citizens… They were a special force together-dynamic, unselfish and inspiring. We were their friends, and we will miss them forever.”
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The statement concluded: “There is a line from one of Rob's favorite films, ‘It's a Wonderful Life,' ‘Each man's life touches so many other lives, and when he isn't around, he leaves an awful hole, doesn't he?' You have no idea.”
Crystal starred in the 1989 film “When Harry Met Sally,” which was directed by Reiner.
As Page Six previously reported, the Hollywood icon and his wife were found stabbed to death in their Brentwood, Calif., home on Dec. 14. Rob was 78 and Michele was 70.
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“It is with profound sorrow that we announce the tragic passing of Michele and Rob Reiner,” the family told Variety in a statement. “We are heartbroken by this sudden loss, and we ask for privacy during this unbelievably difficult time.”
Rob and Michele were found with their throats slit open, sources told The Post.
Their son Nick, 32, was arrested on charges of murder in his parents' deaths and has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder as of Tuesday afternoon.
The thing you need to understand about the end of the world is that nothing really ended. Humanity survived, because that's what humanity does. The plan to wipe out the whole, big, messy problem of Us vs. Them in one fell nuclear swoop was a bust, not because the middle-management types masterminding it didn't do a pretty good job of killing people—they did, with piled-up skeletons in the billions!—but because there's always more Them out there. Humanity generates division as a byproduct of existing. And human nature, like war, never changes. But what if it could? What if some big, brilliant business brain could find a way to “fix” the bug in our collective firmware? What if it was just “Us”—or maybe just “him”— forever?
Welcome back to Fallout, which returns to us in season two with a funny, scary, lively, and slightly disconnected premiere that catches us up on (most of) our main cast, while also introducing a few key new characters and themes that will likely weigh heavily on this latest sojourn through the Wastes. We waste no time—give or take a mammoth, six-minute “previously on” recap— in introducing one of these major movers-and-shakers, either, as Fallout tosses up one of its rare title cards to introduce us to the guy with his finger on the doomsday button: “The Man Who Knew,” Robert Edwin House.* (*I'll get into the weirdness surrounding this character's casting, and the show's odd reluctance to name him, down in the sStrays; for now, I'm just going to go ahead and treat the character Justin Theroux is playing in these opening scenes as though he's House.)
Introduced smugly smoking in the back of a bar full of tough men striking against his own company, Theroux's House is presented as a sort of Transatlantic Tony Stark, sneering about the triumphs of capitalism, while insulting men much bigger and stronger than himself on the nature of their “obsolescence.” The effect is simultaneously queasy and charismatic: We're trained, as audiences, to gravitate to the smartest, most confident guy in the room, and House qualifies on both counts. But he's also, under the calm veneer, an obvious preening tech-bro monster, attempting to bribe one of the blue-collar workers into letting him jam some kind of mind-control implant into his neck and, when that fails, just sneakily doing the job himself. The façade of confidence slips, for just a moment, when his new cyberzombie seems like he's about to rebel, having already brutally beaten his friends at House's command. But it's only a temporary blip in the glorious road toward progress, as House cranks the settings on the device and produces our first (but not last) head explosion of the season. Cue credits!
When we return, it's to what I can't help but think of as Fallout's version of The Good Stuff: the tentative and friction-filled partnership, formed in the last minutes of last year's finale, between Lucy MacLean and the man who used to be called Cooper Howard but is now, forevermore, The Ghoul. Walton Goggins and Ella Purnell's double act was one of the highlights of the show's first season, and it's only gotten better now that the two are forced to rely on and navigate the Wastes together. Purnell, especially, remains a revelation: It would be easy for Lucy, as written, to come off as stupid or naive. But Purnell's ability to make her character's optimism and kindness feel like a deliberate choice, one she makes despite knowing that it's all probably going to end in “a lot of violence,” allows one of TV's most surface-cynical shows to function with a surprisingly bright light at its center. It worked last season, and it continues to pay dividends here.
Fallout is still able to generate a crowd-pleaser of an action scene like the one that breaks out in the tiny settlement of Novac, where local “matching jacket” crew the Khans have seemingly captured The Ghoul with the intention of paying him back for two centuries of picking them off like flies. A standard bounty hunter double-cross goes awry when Lucy can't help but stand up and ask whether these drug-addicted psychopaths might opt for a non-violent solution. They, uh, don't. (“Whoever kills the girl gets to eat the dog!”) And so we're plunged into some pure video-game nerd fan service, as Lucy is forced to fire flesh wounds from her sniper spot in the mouth of a big concrete dinosaur, while The Ghoul starts killing everybody to the tune of Marty Robbins' ballad “Big Iron.” And while my own personal geek brain might quibble a bit at a gunslinger needle drop accompanying an action sequence in which our cowboy zombie killer never actually uses a revolver, the ensuring violence is still satisfying enough—and Robbins' song is such an obvious “Fuck yes!” trigger, especially for fans of 2010's Fallout: New Vegas—then I can't leave the sequence feeling anything but pumped.
From there, it's a trip back to flashback land, as The Ghoul reveals that he knew, or at least knew of, House back in his pre-war, pre-nose-loss days. There's an argument to be made here that, given how incredibly spread out in time and space this episode will end up being—we're basically following six different groups of characters who never interact—you could maybe stand to lose at least one of Cooper Howard's flashbacks here in the interest of pacing. (The first one is at least part retread, as we once again see the scene where his wife Barb—now with a shadowy Theroux looking on—reveals Vault-Tec intends to start the war that will not, in fact, end all wars.) But the honest truth is that a show that can go as broad as Fallout frequently does need these moments and the humanity of Cooper trying to figure out where he can take his daughter in a world where the apocalypse is not only coming but has been aggressively branded with his cheerfully complicit face. Later on, he'll meet with our old pal Moldaver, who suggests that Cooper use Barb's connections to get close to House—supposedly the guy who'll actually launch the missiles when Judgment Day comes—and kill him. She seems to read his reluctance to contemplate the deed as a fit of moral compunctions, but Goggins plays the moment closer to bone-deep weariness: We're watching the formation of The Ghoul in real time at this point, including when he returns home and, with lies and heartbreak hiding in his eyes, reconciles with Barb.
Elsewhere (and, yeah, there's going to be a lot of “elsewhere” here), we catch up with Norm MacLean in his makeshift tomb in Vault 31, where he's been locked in by former management guy/current brain in a jar Bud, who insists he's only got two “rational” ways out of his current predicament: climb into one of the cryo pods that Bud's been using to periodically decant old Vault-Tec staff—including Norm's dad Hank—to come run vaults 32 and 33, or die. These sequences walk a nice line between comedy and menace, with Michael Esper doing a fine job of making the Bud-bot both ridiculous and chilling—and, ultimately, ineffectual. In the end, Norm chooses a non-rational option, by releasing all the drones from their cryopods on the theory that a brief burst of chaos might be more productive than a long, slow slide into death.
Elsewhere, we also check in on the other residents of 32 and 33, and it's here where, had I my druthers, Fallout would be trimming some fat. The show's first season got some decent laughs out of showing how hapless and insulated the non-management Vault dwellers have become after a few centuries of isolation, and we certainly get more of that here, as we follow hapless idiot Reg around on a pretty typical day of trying to feel like anything he does matters. (Since he has a “PhD in party planning,” he probably won't be pitching in on the Vault's current water-chip crisis.) There are decent jokes and character beats lodged in here—the show got a laugh out of me when it revealed that Reg was hosting a “products of inbreeding support group,” and Annabel O'Hagan is having fun as brusquely chipper new Vault 32 manager Steph—but, hoo boy, does it feel like a distraction. Fallout has always struggled to give the impression that it's telling a cohesive story when it has such a struggle getting more than two of its characters in the same room together for anything more than a scene. And it's never been harder to buy it than when we're watching a bunch of characters we barely know make a series of extremely broad incest jokes. As far as first impressions for a season premiere go, it's especially dire: Any urgency we might have been carrying into this thing after last season's big climax gets poured down the drain as we watch Rodrigo Luzzi idly putter about like the comic relief sidekick in a '60s sci-fi flick.
Luckily, we also have more Lucy and The Ghoul to check in on, as the pair end the episode by tracking Hank to yet another Vault, 24. (That's after a brief digression for some far more effective Wasteland comedy, when the duo meet a “flea soup” vendor who's grimly happy to supply her own fleas.) Down in 24, they quickly realize Hank waltzed in, stole something, and quickly left—but not before leaving his little “Sugar Bomb” a message, in the form of a guy who's been rigged up with one of those neck devices from back in the episode's first scene. It's here (and in the epilogue that follows) where Fallout makes it clear that it still has firm grasp of its ability to blend uncomfortable humor with the horrors of a technologically advanced world, as The Ghoul and Lucy both watch, terrified, as the poor guinea pig mumbles out the message Hank has left implanted in his brain—and then explodes. Even if we didn't get the episode's last big showpiece, it'd be a chilling demonstration of where Hank's head is at these days: The creatures living on the surface are tools, not people, and he'll cheerfully use them as meat to advance whatever twisted agenda is kicking around in his brain.
Speaking of—which is to say, [deep breath] elsewhere—we end tonight by checking in on Hank himself, as Fallout reveals one of the very specific legs up it's probably going to have on the show's first season: a Kyle MacLachlan unleashed. We only really got MacLachlan's Hank in two episodes of the show's initial run, and he was obscured from us for most of that, trapped in a cheerful sitcom-dad shell. Here, though, we get to watch the actor channel his inexhaustible boyishness to far darker ends, as he takes up residence in an old Vault-Tec research facility, suits himself up in some dapper duds, and leaves an ominous message for an unnamed “sir”—presumably House—who he tells he intends to complete the “brain-computer” interface. As he speaks, MacLachlan lets the madness slowly bleed through Hank's veneer of middle-management cheer, until we're watching the light go out of his eyes as he promises that “When this is all over, you will be begging me to help you.” It's chilling, effective stuff and the chance to see more of it is one of the things I'm most excited for in Fallout's second season.
So it's very much a table-setting premiere, walking through where all of our characters (minus Maximus, who never appears) are at. Which has the unfortunate effect of leaving Fallout at the mercy of the quality of any individual given scene, with no overall sense of momentum and cohesion to impart energy to the whole. When the show is cooking—when we're with Purnell, MacLachlan, or either version of Goggins—it's easy to be reminded of what was worth missing about this series in the year-plus since we last got new episodes. That push and pull of cynicism and idealism remains bracing, just as the similar war between the show's comedic and horrific impulses keeps either side from dominating. When we don't have those anchors, though, it's easy to feel the show veering off the rails: This series can't function successfully for very long in either pure comedy or pure action/sci-fi/horror mode, and when it tries, the quickness with which it begins to wobble can be alarming. This is a pretty good collection of scenes, all told, and my grade for the episode reflects that overall quality. As a single episode of TV, though, it's hard to perceive it as much of anything at all.
William Hughes is a staff writer at The A.V. Club.
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Bill Hader was seen stepping out for the first time since an alleged tense exchange with Nick Reiner ahead of the deaths of Rob and Michele Reiner.
The “Saturday Night Live” alum was pictured looking strained while having an intense phone conversation in Los Angeles.
The comedian chatted on his cell phone and walked back and forth during the conversation — he wore a black hoodie and matching sweats with slide sandals.
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A rep for Hader did not immediately return Page Six's request for comment.
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Prior to Nick's arrest in connection with the murders, Nick allegedly had a tense encounter with Hader after interrupting a conversation at Conan O'Brien's annual Christmas party on Saturday, according to NBC News — where he also allegedly had a confrontation with his parents prior to their deaths.
According to an insider for the news outlet, Hader explained to Nick, 32, that he was having a private conversation. Nick allegedly stood motionless and stared at Hader before “storming off.”
Insiders told The Post on Monday that Nick allegedly “freaked out” during an argument with the “When Harry Met Sally” director at O'Brien's annual star-studded soirée.
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“They had had an argument at Conan's holiday party, and Rob had been telling people that they're scared for Nick and scared that his mental state was deteriorating,” a family friend of the Reiners' shared with The Post.
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The insider further alleged that Nick was “badly addicted to a combo of opiates and heroin.”
The screenwriter is said to have had a years long history of drug use and violent behavior — once trashing his parents' guest house during an admitted drug-fueled outburst.
Rob and Michele were discovered stabbed to death in their Brentwood, Los Angeles, mansion on Sunday afternoon.
The director was 78 and his wife was 70 when their daughter Romy, 27, found them at home with their throats split open, per sources for The Post.
Romy allegedly told officers that a “dangerous” relative “should be a suspect.” Nick was subsequently arrested on Sunday evening at a Metro station in downtown Los Angeles, with dramatic video footage of the moment being released on Tuesday.
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Nick is being held without bail after being transferred from Parker Center Jail to Twin Towers correctional facility. According to sources for TMZ, he is on suicide watch.
Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman and Police Chief Jim McDonnell held a press conference on Tuesday announcing that Nick will be charged with two counts of first-degree murder.
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“Today I'm here to announce that our office will be filing charges against Nick Reiner, who is accused of killing his parents,” Hochman explained to reporters.
“These charges will be two counts of first-degree murder with a special circumstance of multiple murders. He also faces a special allegation that he personally used a dangerous and deadly weapon, that being a knife,” he continued.
Nick is undergoing the process of medical clearance and will be brought to court to be arraigned, and could face life in prison without the possibility of parole.
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Hochman also shared that “no decision” has been made on a potential death penalty, but the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office will take the “thoughts and desires of the family into consideration” when deciding Nick's fate.
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Rob and Michele married in 1989 after meeting on the set of “When Harry Met Sally.”
In addition to Nick and Romy, the couple shares son Jack Reiner, 34. Rob also adopted daughter Tracey Reiner, 61, from his previous marriage to Penny Marshall, who died in 2018.
Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried turned heads at the premiere of their film “The Housemaid” in Hollywood on Tuesday night. But Sweeney ended the evening by cozying up with music mogul beau Scooter Braun at a Tao after-party.
Sweeney channeled her inner Marilyn Monroe in a white gown with a plunging neckline, which she paired with a red lip. Meanwhile, Seyfried rocked a copper gown and soft, elegant waves.
The pair were inseparable the entire night, locking arms and giggling during the pre-screening speeches from chair of Lionsgate's motion picture group Adam Fogelson and director Paul Feig.
Both Fogelson and Feig took a moment to acknowledge the shocking murder of famed director Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele, at the event.
“On the heels of a dark, tragic, ugly weekend, I can't tell you how much we appreciate you all coming out tonight to celebrate the extraordinary team of filmmakers, cast and crew that made this film possible,” Fogelson said.
Feig, who's behind hits like “Bridesmaids” and “A Simple Favor,” dedicated the night's screening to his wife, and to his “good friends Rob and Michele Reiner.”
“The Housemaid” follows Sweeney as a struggling young woman named Millie who seeks a fresh start when accepts a new job as the live-in maid for an affluent couple, played by Seyfried and “It Ends With Us” star Brandon Sklenar. But dark secrets lurk within their seemingly perfect home.
“365 Days” alum Michele Morrone and “Big” actress Elizabeth Perkins also star in the film, which hits theaters on Dec. 19.
After the movie, Lionsgate hosted a splashy afterparty at Hollywood nightclub Tao, attended by famous faces like “iCarly” star Miranda Cosgrove, “Crazy Rich Asians” actress Awkwafina and “Teen Wolf” alum Tyler Posey.
Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried pose for photos together at “The Housemaid” premiere after party in LA. pic.twitter.com/7XKGDovQvB
Sweeney and Seyfried continued their love fest at the club, with Sweeney ditching her own VIP section to hang out with Seyfried in hers instead.
Sweeney's boyfriend, music mogul Scooter Braun, was also in attendance, cozying up with Sweeney as they snapped photos with attendees.
Sydney Sweeney and Scooter Braun cozy up at “The Housemaid” premiere after party in LA. pic.twitter.com/Xpcy4tlOZY
Sweeney and Seyfried have both earned awards buzz for their other films out this year: “Christy,” in which Sweeney plays boxer Christy Martin, and “The Testament of Ann Lee,” which sees Seyfried star as the spiritual leader behind the Shaker religious sect.
“The Housemaid” is based on the bestselling 2022 novel of the same name by thriller author Freida McFadden, whose other popular books include “Never Lie” and “Ward D.”
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Beyond her twisty tales on the page, McFadden has some secrets of her own: She's basically a real-life Hannah Montana.
She's a practicing doctor specializing in brain disorders by day, and has never revealed her actual name (she adopted McFadden as a pen name when she began publishing).
“Some people go into writing hoping to quit their day job, but I didn't,” McFadden told Jenna Bush Hager on a recent episode of the “Open Book” podcast. “I kept clinging to being a doctor because, first, I worked very hard to get there and I find it really rewarding. I love seeing patients and helping people. And the idea of not doing that anymore, I just couldn't imagine it. It's become such a big part of my identity.”
Dick Van Dyke's wife, Arlene Silver, emotionally revealed that they “didn't sleep” the night their pals Rob Reiner and Michele Singer Reiner were found dead in their Los Angeles home on Sunday.
The makeup artist broke down in tears while recalling how the “Mary Poppins” star was keeping up with the news to find out what had happened, she shared via an Instagram video Monday.
“We talked to Rob two weeks ago on the phone,” she said, explaining that Rob, 78, and Michele, 70, had also called Van Dyke for his 100th birthday on Saturday.
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“I have so many messages from Dick's birthday, it's going to take me weeks to get over all of them, and Michele and Rob's are in those messages,” Silver, 54, added.
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The makeup artist explained that Van Dyke and Rob had known each other for decades. Rob's late father, Carl Reiner, was the creator of “The Dick Van Dyke Show” in the early 1960s.
“Dick has known Rob since he was a teenager,” Silver continued. “Rob and Carl were the first people I ever met with Dick.”
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“Rob and Michele were always together, like Dick and I,” she said. ” And I always felt part of the Reiner family. They always treated me like part of their family.
“And this is just unbelievable … we feel terrible for his family. His wonderful family.”
Silver shared that she couldn't imagine how it would be if Carl, who died in June 2020, had been alive to witness the death of his son.
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Commenting on how Rob and Michele's son Nick Reiner, 32, was arrested on suspicion of murdering his parents, she added, “It's terrible, and you know they did everything for that kid, too.”
“I've never met him, but I've met his other kids. And they love their kids,” Silver continued, referring to Rob and Michele's children Romy Reiner, 28, and Jake Reiner, 34.
Silver explained she wanted to continue celebrating her husband's milestone birthday, but needed to “acknowledge this horrible thing.”
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Rob and Michele were last publicly seen at Conan O'Brien's Christmas party on Saturday night.
At the bash, sources told the Post that Nick, 32, who has a history of drug use, allegedly had a loud argument with Rob and “freaked out.”
The following day, Rob and Michele's bodies were allegedly discovered by their daughter, and Nick was arrested and charged with their murders.
Two models claim their photos were used on billboards for Megan's Hot Girl Summer brand without consent.
By
Rachel Scharf
Two models who posed for Megan Thee Stallion's Hot Girl Summer swimwear brand are suing Roc Nation for putting the photos on billboards without their permission.
New York-based models Janelle Delacruz and Tonoia Wade filed separate but nearly identical lawsuits on Tuesday (Dec. 16) against Roc Nation, the Jay-Z-founded music juggernaut that manages Megan. Delacruz and Wade allege Roc hired them for a photoshoot in April promoting the rapper's swimwear line, which she launched in May.
Delacruz and Wade were allegedly paid $5,000 and $8,700, respectively, for the photoshoots, plus fees to their modeling agencies. They say these contracts only permitted the models' images to be used in social media advertisements for the Hot Girl Summer swimwear.
According to the lawsuits, however, these photos have since cropped up on billboards in Los Angeles and three other U.S. cities.
“Roc Nation had a limited license to use plaintiff's likeness from the April 30, 2025, photoshoot,” reads identical language in both lawsuits. “Defendant knew that it did not have plaintiff's consent and did not make any attempt to notify plaintiff that plaintiff's likeness would be used without plaintiff's consent.”
Delacruz and Wade say Roc Nation has been “unjustly enriched” by using their images beyond what was agreed to in the modeling contracts. They now want the company to pay up, and they're seeking an unspecified amount of financial damages for breach of contract, misappropriation of likeness and false advertising.
Megan herself is not named as a defendant in the lawsuits or accused of any wrongdoing.
A lawyer for the models, Bassil Hamideh, told Billboard on Tuesday that he and his team “look forward to vindicating our clients' rights and trying these cases.”
“We take models' rights very seriously,” added Hamideh. “We consider Roc Nation's unlawful conduct against our clients to be egregious.”
A Roc Nation rep did not immediately return a request for comment.
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The 21-year-old daughter of the Oscar winner has had her eye on her mother's wardrobe for some time: “Sometimes we just play dress up and she'll put on my Oscar dresses and stuff like that.”
By
Chris Gardner
Like mother, like daughter — nearly 30 years apart.
Apple Martin stepped out Tuesday night in New York to support her famous mother, Gwyneth Paltrow, at the premiere of her new A24 film Marty Supreme by slipping into one of her classic looks. Martin, 21, hit the red carpet in a form-fitting black Calvin Klein Collection dress that Paltrow first wore to the 1996 premiere of Emma, a Jane Austen-inspired period piece from director Douglas McGrath. Paltrow, also in a black dress, welcomed both of her children, Apple and Moses Martin, to the starry screening tonight.
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Paltrow must've been stoked to see her daughter wear something she had previously stepped out in as she recently gushed to The Hollywood Reporter that Apple is “so freaking cool.” But it also wasn't a surprise. The pair recently teamed up for a Gap Studio campaign, and for an interview to promote the collaboration, Paltrow told Vogue that Apple has been sifting through her vast fashion archive.
“She pulls all kinds of stuff. She's very into all my '90s Calvin, of which there's a lot — and the '90s Prada, of which there's a lot,” Paltrow told Vogue. “Sometimes we just play dress up and she'll put on my Oscar dresses and stuff like that. We have fun down there.”
Martin also praised her mom's style: “She's such a badass when it comes to fashion and has just done what she wants and doesn't really care. I feel like I'm finally getting to the place where I don't really care what people think. She influenced me.”
Marty Supreme, directed by Josh Safdie, opens in New York and Los Angeles on Friday with a wide debut on Christmas Day. Paltrow stars opposite Timothée Chalamet and Odessa A'zion in the story of Marty Mauser, a born hustler and talented ping-pong player who will stop at nothing to become a phenomenon.
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He's been thrown off cages, had his head bashed in by the biggest movie star in the world, and forced to kiss Vince McMahon's ass, but former WWE World Champion Mick Foley has finally had enough with WWE. At least while President Trump remains in office. Following Trump's comments on the tragic murder of Rob and Michele Reiner, in which Trump found the grace to blame their killing on “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” Foley has announced he will no longer work with the world's largest wrestling promotion while Trump is president. In an Instagram post that begins, “Parting Ways With WWE,” Foley, a longtime critic of Trump, announced that Trump's “incredibly cruel comments” about Reiner were the “final straw.”
“While I have been concerned about WWE's close relationship with Donald Trump for several months — especially in light of his administration's ongoing cruel and inhumane treatment of immigrants (and pretty much anyone who ‘looks like an immigrant')—reading the President's incredibly cruel comments in the wake of Rob Reiner's death is the final straw for me,” Foley wrote. “I no longer wish to represent a company that coddles a man so seemingly void of compassion as he marches our country towards autocracy. Last night, I informed @WWE talent relations that I would not be making any appearances for the company as long as this man remains in office.”
Foley also announced that he would not be signing a new WWE Legends deal with the company after his current agreement expires in June.
WWE has long had a relationship with Donald Trump, a WWE Hall of Famer and semi-regular presence on WWE programming before taking office. While Trump has not appeared on WWE TV during either of his presidential terms, the organization is very closely linked to the White House. In addition to Trump's long-running friendship with disgraced WWE co-founder Vince McMahon, former WWE President and Vince's estranged wife, Linda McMahon, is currently dismantling the Department of Education. During Trump's first term, she also held a cabinet position, serving as administrator of the Small Business Administration. Since Trump's return to office, her son-in-law, Paul “HHH” Levesque, has increased his presence within the administration, appearing in pro-wrestling-style videos to promote the presidential fitness test.
“I am deeply appreciative for all the opportunities they afforded me,” Foley continued. “But, in the words of Popeye the sailor, ‘I stands all I can stands, and I can't stands no more.'”
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The judge was not swayed by arguments that Ashley Walters delayed suing because she suppressed memories of traumatic abuse.
By
Bill Donahue
A Los Angeles judge has dismissed a sexual assault lawsuit filed against Marilyn Manson by his former assistant, Ashley Walters, ruling that she waited too long to bring her case.
Two years after an appeals court revived the case against Manson (Brian Warner) by ruling that Walters might have delayed suing due to “trauma-induced memory suppression,” a trial judge on Tuesday (Dec. 16) once again tossed the case out, canceling a trial that had been set to start next month.
Walters claims Manson subjected her to brutal treatment, also including sexual harassment and discrimination, during the year that she worked for him from 2010 to 2011. But such claims are typically subject to a strict two-year statute of limitations.
“There is no triable issue of material fact,” Judge Steve Cochran wrote in a written ruling, obtained by Billboard. “Plaintiff's claims are time barred.”
In a statement to Billboard, Manson's attorney Howard King said the ruling was “gratifying” and showed that Manson had been “wrongfully accused” by Walters: “Justice delayed is still justice and is much appreciated even though it came with great personal cost. Now Brian can move on.”
Attorneys for Walters did not immediately return a request for comment from Billboard.
Walters was one of several women who accused Manson of sexual abuse in 2021. His former fiancé, Evan Rachel Wood, accused him of grooming and sexual abuse on Twitter in February 2021, and then others, including Game of Thrones actress Esmé Bianco and model Ashley Morgan Smithline, filed lawsuits against him.
Manson has denied all of the allegations, and prosecutors said in January that he would not face criminal charges from Los Angeles prosecutors following a four-year investigation. Manson settled with Bianco in early 2023; Smithline's case was dismissed months later.
Manson sued Wood for defamation over her accusations, claiming she had encouraged other women to falsely accuse him. But a judge dismissed much of the case in 2023, and Manson eventually dropped it and agreed to pay Wood $327,000 in legal fees.
In her own 2021 lawsuit, Walters claimed that Manson subjected her to “sexual exploitation, manipulation and psychological abuse” while she worked for him as a personal assistant more than a decade earlier. The alleged abuse included whipping her and throwing her against a wall in a “a drug-induced rage”; forcing her to stay awake for 48 hours by feeding her cocaine; and having “offered” her sexually to friends and associates.
In June 2022, Judge Cochran dismissed Walters' case for being filed years past the statute of limitations. But in December 2023, a California appeals court said her lawsuit might be fair game under the so-called delayed discovery rule, as she claims the trauma of the incidents caused her to suppress the memories until 2020.
That ruling sent the case back to Judge Cochran for more litigation into the actual evidence for such suppression claims. But after two more years of discovery, Manson's lawyers said the case suffered from the same fatal flaw, writing: “Plaintiff's argument that she ‘repressed' certain memories shortly after the conduct occurred does not impact her comprehension of the wrongness of the events at the time.”
On Tuesday, Judge Cochran sided with those arguments, ruling that Walters had no way to avoid the expiration of the statute of limitations: “We have a situation where the complaint was not filed until about 10 years after the operative events,” the judge said at the hearing, as reported by Rolling Stone. “I'm not able to find that the delayed discovery rule is applicable.”
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I read a story Spielberg recounted about looking up to the stars one night in the desert, laying on the hood of his car or something, and feeling like he was telepathically contacted by NHI. I had a very similar experience, but I haven't been able to find his story at all lately. does anyone have a link, or know what I'm talking about? Thanks so much.
When it comes to the most convincing UFO sightings ever recorded, opinions vary widely among enthusiasts and skeptics alike. However, several cases are frequently cited for their credibility, multiple witnesses, and corroborating evidence. Here are some of the most notable and convincing UFO sightings:
Location: Ruwa, Zimbabwe
Description: Over 60 schoolchildren witnessed a craft landing in the schoolyard and several beings emerging from it. The children's testimonies and drawings, made immediately after the event, showed remarkable similarities.
Credibility: The incident was investigated by a well-known psychologist, and the children's trauma and consistent accounts add significant weight to the case. "The Ariel school incident in Africa is my favourite. Surprised it hasn't been mentioned. 60 plus children apparently witnessed a craft landing in the schoolyard and a few beings came out."
Location: Over Alaska
Description: The pilot and co-pilot of a JAL cargo flight observed a massive UFO, which was also tracked by ground radar. The pilot was later disciplined for speaking about the incident.
Credibility: The radar confirmation and the professional standing of the pilot, who risked his career to report the sighting, make this case highly credible. "JAL Flight 1628. This imo was just incredible. What the pilot and co-pilot saw that day was also being tracked by ground radar as well."
Location: Suffolk, England
Description: U.S. military personnel stationed at RAF Bentwaters and RAF Woodbridge reported multiple UFO sightings over several nights in Rendlesham Forest. They described a craft with strange lights and symbols.
Credibility: The involvement of military personnel, their detailed accounts, and corroborating evidence like audio recordings make this case highly persuasive. "Rendelsham Forest or Shag Harbour. When it comes to Rendelsham, I am confident in thinking a crew of military men as they were would not have mistaken a light house for a UFO."
Location: Phoenix, Arizona
Description: Thousands of witnesses, including the then-Governor of Arizona, reported seeing a massive V-shaped formation of lights moving silently across the night sky.
Credibility: The sheer number of witnesses and the consistent descriptions of the object make this one of the most compelling mass sightings. "I live in AZ, and saw the Phoenix Lights with my own eyes, (which actually happened twice). It was never given a reasonable explanation, and even our Governor at the time admits he was told to dismiss the story and make fun of it."
Location: Tehran, Iran
Description: Iranian military pilots attempted to intercept a UFO that was tracked on radar. Their aircraft experienced instrumentation and communication failures when approaching the object.
Credibility: The radar confirmation, military involvement, and the detailed account of the pilot, who later became a general, add significant credibility. "The radar signature of the UFO resembled that of a Boeing 707 aircraft. Failure of instrumentation and communications as the F-4 approached the UFO. Regained after moving away."
Location: Off the coast of San Diego, California
Description: U.S. Navy pilots from the USS Nimitz carrier strike group encountered a highly advanced, tic-tac-shaped object performing impossible maneuvers.
Credibility: The incident was captured on FLIR footage, and multiple trained military pilots provided consistent testimonies under oath. "I think the Nimitz/tic tac sighting in 2004 is likely to have the most credence to a skeptic given the pilot testimony and FLIR footage."
Location: Weyauwega, Wisconsin
Description: A woman and her son witnessed and photographed a disc-shaped craft with a triangular pattern of lights. The object moved silently and disappeared into the distance.
Credibility: The photographs were analyzed and found to be authentic, showing expected artifacts from early 2000s digital cameras. "The images showed expected JPEG compression artifacts from early 2000s digital cameras."
Location: Shag Harbour, Nova Scotia, Canada
Description: Multiple witnesses saw a large, illuminated object crash into the water. A search and rescue operation found no debris but reported strange lights underwater.
Credibility: The incident involved numerous independent witnesses and a official investigation by the Canadian government. "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shag_Harbour_UFO_incident"
Location: Pascagoula, Mississippi
Description: Two fishermen claimed they were abducted by crab-clawed robots from an oval UFO. They were traumatized and their accounts remained consistent under scrutiny.
Credibility: A secret recording of the men discussing the event showed their genuine trauma and consistent storytelling. "They went to the local sheriff where the police thought they were lying so they were interviewed, but then left alone with a secret recording device and they carried on talking about everything that happened between them and were clearly traumatised by whatever had happened to them."
Location: Roswell, New Mexico
Description: A supposed crash of a "flying disc" was initially reported by a local newspaper, then retracted by the military, which claimed it was a weather balloon.
Credibility: Numerous eyewitnesses claimed to see alien bodies and a massive military cover-up, which has led to ongoing debate and skepticism about the official explanation. "We know an event took place. The military response proves that. There were scores of eyewitnesses who claimed to see alien bodies, none of which match the description of the supposed 'crash test dummies' the government later claimed they were."
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U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse voiced frustration with "all the conspiracy theories" and "creepy, weird plot ideas" spreading about the Brown University shooting, telling online commentators to "please just knock it off."
"Speculation, particularly out on the internet, by people who have no idea what they are talking about, who have no clue about what is happening, is not helpful to the investigation," Whitehouse said during a meeting of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, Dec. 17. " It gets people agitated and revved up and causes a lot of stupidity to cascade into tip lines that then law enforcement officials have to try to work through."
Before being elected to the Senate, Whitehouse served as Rhode Island Attorney General and, before that, U.S. Attorney for the District of Rhode Island.
"There is simply no need, from an investigative point of view, for people who have no idea what they're talking about to offer their stupid and ill-informed views about what happened all over the internet," he said. "So I would please, just from a law enforcement perspective, ask anyone who sees this to just shut up until we know who did it and why. We will find out. Give it some time."
Whitehouse noted that parents who were looking forward to their children coming home for the holidays "are now having to prepare funerals. They probably had already bought presents for their children. This has to come as perhaps the most savage blow that a parent can face."
Similarly, the parents of injured students may be spending the holidays at the hospital, he added.
"Ill-informed and unnecessary speculation about what went on does those families no good at all," Whitehouse said. "So, whether it is to protect the law enforcement investigation from a lot of unnecessary and ill-informed noise cluttering up the ability of the many agencies working on this to do their jobs, or whether it is out of simple courtesy and sympathy to the families that are going through this awful moment, just please shut up with the speculation."
This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: RI senator warns against Brown shooting 'conspiracy theories'
When it comes to the most convincing UFO sightings ever recorded, opinions vary widely among enthusiasts and skeptics alike. However, several cases are frequently cited for their credibility, multiple witnesses, and corroborating evidence. Here are some of the most notable and convincing UFO sightings:
Location: Ruwa, Zimbabwe
Description: Over 60 schoolchildren witnessed a craft landing in the schoolyard and several beings emerging from it. The children's testimonies and drawings, made immediately after the event, showed remarkable similarities.
Credibility: The incident was investigated by a well-known psychologist, and the children's trauma and consistent accounts add significant weight to the case. "The Ariel school incident in Africa is my favourite. Surprised it hasn't been mentioned. 60 plus children apparently witnessed a craft landing in the schoolyard and a few beings came out."
Location: Over Alaska
Description: The pilot and co-pilot of a JAL cargo flight observed a massive UFO, which was also tracked by ground radar. The pilot was later disciplined for speaking about the incident.
Credibility: The radar confirmation and the professional standing of the pilot, who risked his career to report the sighting, make this case highly credible. "JAL Flight 1628. This imo was just incredible. What the pilot and co-pilot saw that day was also being tracked by ground radar as well."
Location: Suffolk, England
Description: U.S. military personnel stationed at RAF Bentwaters and RAF Woodbridge reported multiple UFO sightings over several nights in Rendlesham Forest. They described a craft with strange lights and symbols.
Credibility: The involvement of military personnel, their detailed accounts, and corroborating evidence like audio recordings make this case highly persuasive. "Rendelsham Forest or Shag Harbour. When it comes to Rendelsham, I am confident in thinking a crew of military men as they were would not have mistaken a light house for a UFO."
Location: Phoenix, Arizona
Description: Thousands of witnesses, including the then-Governor of Arizona, reported seeing a massive V-shaped formation of lights moving silently across the night sky.
Credibility: The sheer number of witnesses and the consistent descriptions of the object make this one of the most compelling mass sightings. "I live in AZ, and saw the Phoenix Lights with my own eyes, (which actually happened twice). It was never given a reasonable explanation, and even our Governor at the time admits he was told to dismiss the story and make fun of it."
Location: Tehran, Iran
Description: Iranian military pilots attempted to intercept a UFO that was tracked on radar. Their aircraft experienced instrumentation and communication failures when approaching the object.
Credibility: The radar confirmation, military involvement, and the detailed account of the pilot, who later became a general, add significant credibility. "The radar signature of the UFO resembled that of a Boeing 707 aircraft. Failure of instrumentation and communications as the F-4 approached the UFO. Regained after moving away."
Location: Off the coast of San Diego, California
Description: U.S. Navy pilots from the USS Nimitz carrier strike group encountered a highly advanced, tic-tac-shaped object performing impossible maneuvers.
Credibility: The incident was captured on FLIR footage, and multiple trained military pilots provided consistent testimonies under oath. "I think the Nimitz/tic tac sighting in 2004 is likely to have the most credence to a skeptic given the pilot testimony and FLIR footage."
Location: Weyauwega, Wisconsin
Description: A woman and her son witnessed and photographed a disc-shaped craft with a triangular pattern of lights. The object moved silently and disappeared into the distance.
Credibility: The photographs were analyzed and found to be authentic, showing expected artifacts from early 2000s digital cameras. "The images showed expected JPEG compression artifacts from early 2000s digital cameras."
Location: Shag Harbour, Nova Scotia, Canada
Description: Multiple witnesses saw a large, illuminated object crash into the water. A search and rescue operation found no debris but reported strange lights underwater.
Credibility: The incident involved numerous independent witnesses and a official investigation by the Canadian government. "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shag_Harbour_UFO_incident"
Location: Pascagoula, Mississippi
Description: Two fishermen claimed they were abducted by crab-clawed robots from an oval UFO. They were traumatized and their accounts remained consistent under scrutiny.
Credibility: A secret recording of the men discussing the event showed their genuine trauma and consistent storytelling. "They went to the local sheriff where the police thought they were lying so they were interviewed, but then left alone with a secret recording device and they carried on talking about everything that happened between them and were clearly traumatised by whatever had happened to them."
Location: Roswell, New Mexico
Description: A supposed crash of a "flying disc" was initially reported by a local newspaper, then retracted by the military, which claimed it was a weather balloon.
Credibility: Numerous eyewitnesses claimed to see alien bodies and a massive military cover-up, which has led to ongoing debate and skepticism about the official explanation. "We know an event took place. The military response proves that. There were scores of eyewitnesses who claimed to see alien bodies, none of which match the description of the supposed 'crash test dummies' the government later claimed they were."
r/UFOs
r/aliens
r/AskReddit
These subreddits are great places to ask more questions and get answers from a community of people interested in UFOs and extraterrestrial life.
(LEONIA, NJ) -- The Players Guild of Leonia will hold auditions for The Psychic by Sam Bobrick on three days from January 4-11, 2026. This play is a laugh-out-loud mystery full of twists, turns, and unexpected revelations. The production will be directed by Terri Caust.
"This play is a tongue-in-cheek Noir mystery," explained Caust. "The characters are more self-aware than most, and know that they're playing a type, but they do it with earnestness and truth. Please make strong choices. If I want something else, I'll give you the opportunity to adjust. I may include improv in the audition process."
Auditions will take place Sunday, January 4 from 4:00pm to 6:00pm; Tuesday, January 6 from 7:00pm to 9:00pm; and Sunday, January 11 from 4:00pm to 6:00pm. All auditions take place at the Players Guild of Leonia (130 Grand Avenue) in Leonia, New Jersey. Callbacks will take place on Tuesday, January 13 from 7:00pm to 9:00pm.
** Please note: All performers cast in the production are required to become members of the Players Guild of Leonia.
Performances of The Psychic will take place weekends from March 13-29, 2026.
Character Descriptions:
Adam Webster: 30's A mystery writer with an innovative approach to writer's block and overdue rent. Nerd overtones
Laura Benson: 30's An attractive woman with doubts about her husband
Roy Benson: 30's- 40's Laura's husband, who wants a wife, her fortune, and a piece on the side.
Rita Malone: 20's Roy's sexy piece on the side.
Johnny Bubbles: 30's-40's A low level gangster type.
Norris Coslow: 40's-50's A world-weary but excellent NYPD detective. Male or female.
For scripts, sides and other questions, contact Terri Caust at [email protected]
The Players Guild of Leonia is committed to a diverse and inclusive theatre experience. PGL will cast any actor in any role when appropriate, without regard to race or ethnicity.
To narrow results by date range, categories, or region of New Jerseyclick here for our advanced search.
George Street Playhouse presents Ebenezer Scrooge's Big Jersey Christmas Show
Wednesday, December 17, 2025 @ 7:30pmNew Brunswick Performing Arts Center (NBPAC)11 Livingston Avenue, New Brunswick, NJ 08901category: theatre
It's a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play
Wednesday, December 17, 2025 @ 7:30pmShakespeare Theatre Of NJ - F.M. Kirby Shakespeare Theatre36 Madison Avenue, Madison, NJ 07940category: theatre
It's a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play
Wednesday, December 17, 2025 @ 2:00pmShakespeare Theatre Of NJ - F.M. Kirby Shakespeare Theatre36 Madison Avenue, Madison, NJ 07940category: theatre
A Christmas Carol
Wednesday, December 17, 2025 @ 7:30pmMcCarter Theatre Center (Matthews Theatre)91 University Place, Princeton, NJ 08540category: theatre
George Street Playhouse presents Ebenezer Scrooge's Big Jersey Christmas Show
Thursday, December 18, 2025 @ 2:00pmNew Brunswick Performing Arts Center (NBPAC)11 Livingston Avenue, New Brunswick, NJ 08901category: theatre
To narrow results by date range, categories, or region of New Jerseyclick here for our advanced search.
EVENT PREVIEWS
Kean Stage presents L'Chaim - A Toast to the Jewish Legacy of BroadwayDecember 20, 2025
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Middlesex County's Plays-in-the-Park presents "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" at State TheatreDecember 27-28, 2025
Count Basie Center for the Arts presents Langston Hughes' "Black Nativity" on December 28thDecember 28, 2025
The Ma'ayanot H.S. Drama Society & Black Box Studios presents "Fiddler On The Roof"December 27-30, 2025
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Westfield Community Players presents "Time Stands Still" by Donald MarguliesJanuary 10-24, 2026
Shakespeare 70 presents "Arms and the Man" at Kelsey TheatreJanuary 16-25, 2026
Manhattan Theatre Club presents "Bug" by Tracy LettsDecember 17 to January 31, 2026
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To narrow results by date range, categories, or region of New Jerseyclick here for our advanced search.
EVENT PREVIEWS
Kean Stage presents L'Chaim - A Toast to the Jewish Legacy of BroadwayDecember 20, 2025
Gateway Playhouse Adds An Extra Sunday Matinee Performance of 'Scrooge The Musical' on December 21stDecember 21, 2025
Middlesex County's Plays-in-the-Park presents "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" at State TheatreDecember 27-28, 2025
Count Basie Center for the Arts presents Langston Hughes' "Black Nativity" on December 28thDecember 28, 2025
The Ma'ayanot H.S. Drama Society & Black Box Studios presents "Fiddler On The Roof"December 27-30, 2025
Night Stories: 4 Tales of Reanimation by the Greatest Poet of the Holocaust - Avrom Sutzkever - Comes to Life Off- BroadwayDecember 17 to January 11, 2026
Ruth Stage presents "At Home at the Zoo"January 15-17, 2026
Westfield Community Players presents "Time Stands Still" by Donald MarguliesJanuary 10-24, 2026
Shakespeare 70 presents "Arms and the Man" at Kelsey TheatreJanuary 16-25, 2026
Manhattan Theatre Club presents "Bug" by Tracy LettsDecember 17 to January 31, 2026
More event previews
New Jersey Stage
© 2025 by Wine Time Media, LLC
PO Box 811, Belmar, NJ 07719 [email protected]
Nobody covers the Artsthroughout the Garden State like New Jersey Stage!
Images used on this site have been sent to us from publicists, artists, and PR firms. If there is a problem with the rights to any image, please contact us and we will look into the matter.
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Decades ago, a spacecraft suggested Saturn's largest moon, Titan, had an ocean. New observations suggest that the liquid may look more like slush.
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Saturn's largest moon, Titan, may be hiding a habitable world of slushy sea ice, new research hints.
Back in 2008, NASA's Cassini spacecraft gathered data on Titan that suggested an open ocean might lurk beneath the moon's frozen crust. But the new analysis hints that what lies underneath is instead "slushy tunnels and pockets of meltwater," according to the investigators.
The results, published Wednesday (Dec. 17) in the journal Nature, have large implications for our understanding of how common water is on other worlds. If confirmed, the work may also influence our search for life on other worlds, as water is a key ingredient for life.
"Instead of an open ocean like we have here on Earth, we're probably looking at something more like Arctic sea ice or aquifers, which has implications for what type of life we might find, [and] also the availability of nutrients, energy and so on," study co-author Baptiste Journaux, an assistant professor of Earth and space sciences at the University of Washington, said in a statement.
The story begins with Cassini, a spacecraft that launched in 1997 and spent much of its 20 years observing Saturn and its moons. Cassini spotted the shape of Titan "stretching and smushing" as it circled Saturn, according to the authors of the new study. Back then, the researchers proposed that if Titan possessed a deep ocean, that would let the crust flex under the pull of Saturn's gravity.
Now, the new study takes into account the timing of Titan's flexes. The team found that the shape of Titan begins to change only about 15 hours after Saturn exerts its strongest gravitational pull in Titan's orbit. The scientists then estimated the energy it would take for Titan's shape to alter, which, in turn, showed more about the mysterious moon's interior.
"Nobody was expecting very strong energy dissipation inside Titan," lead study author Flavio Petricca, a postdoctoral fellow at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in the statement. "That was the smoking gun indicating that Titan's interior is different from what was inferred from previous analyses."
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Historically, Titan has always been hard to observe. The planet is shrouded in a thick, orange atmosphere that's rich in chemical compounds that may be precursors to life. Looking at the surface requires radar (which Cassini possessed, whereas predecessor flyby missions Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 did not). Cassini's observations revealed a bizarre surface where methane falls as rain, seas constantly shift, and temperatures stand around minus 297 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 183 degrees Celsius).
So what is going on in Titan's interior? The new study says below the frozen exterior, the moon's innards appear to have ice, meltwater pockets and overall, a slushier environment than believed in 2008. The slush is thick and likely accounts for the observed lag in Titan's shape shifts. While water is believed to be in the slush, it wouldn't be as liquid as an open ocean, the team found.
Aside from recycling the old Cassini radio-wave observations, the researchers used new thermodynamic models developed by Journaux's lab to study how water, minerals and other components behave on worlds like Titan.
"The watery layer on Titan is so thick, the pressure is so immense, that the physics of water changes," Journaux said. "Water and ice behave in a different way than sea water here on Earth."
—Mysterious 'magic' islands that come and go on Saturn's moon Titan finally have an explanation
—Largest sea on Titan could be more than 1,000 feet deep
—Saturn's moon Titan may have a 6-mile-thick crust of methane ice — could life be under there?
While at first this lack of a full ocean sounds like a blow to the search for life, the research team emphasized that instead, "It expands the range of environments we might consider habitable," Jones said.
Scientists also found that “pockets of fresh water” may exist within Titan at life-friendly temperatures of 68 degrees Fahrenheit (20 degrees Celsius). Moreover, nutrients would be concentrated in small pools of this water, perhaps allowing for more rich conditions for life than a less-concentrated ocean would.
Upcoming observations may aid our understanding of Titan. NASA's Dragonfly mission is set to launch as soon as 2028, and it should arrive at Titan in 2034. It will be the second flying vehicle on another world besides Earth, after Ingenuity, a helicopter on Mars. It is hoped that Dragonfly's surface observations of Titan will reveal more about where life may be lurking and how much water might be available for organisms.
Elizabeth Howell was staff reporter at Space.com between 2022 and 2024 and a regular contributor to Live Science and Space.com between 2012 and 2022. Elizabeth's reporting includes multiple exclusives with the White House, speaking several times with the International Space Station, witnessing five human spaceflight launches on two continents, flying parabolic, working inside a spacesuit, and participating in a simulated Mars mission. Her latest book, "Why Am I Taller?" (ECW Press, 2022) is co-written with astronaut Dave Williams.
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08:34 EST 17 Dec 2025, updated
10:26 EST 17 Dec 2025
By
STACY LIBERATORE, US SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY EDITOR
Legendary director Steven Spielberg, the visionary behind 'E.T.' and 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind,' has returned to the big screen with his latest project, 'Disclosure Day.'
The first trailer offers a tantalizing glimpse into a story that promises to shake the world with revelations about alien life, while keeping much of the plot shrouded in mystery.
The star-studded cast includes Emily Blunt, Josh O'Connor, Colin Firth, Colman Domingo, Eve Hewson and Wyatt Russell.
Clocking in at two minutes and seven seconds, the teaser opens with a haunting question: 'If you found out we weren't alone, if someone showed you, proved it to you, would that frighten you?'
Viewers are then thrust into Blunt's world, as she portrays a meteorologist abruptly seized by a mysterious extraterrestrial force during a live broadcast.
O'Connor plays a determined man on a mission to reveal the truth about alien life to the world.
The trailer is packed with cryptic crop circles, high-speed chases, eerie creatures and chilling hints that humanity may not be alone in the universe.
Adding to the buzz, cryptic billboards appeared in Times Square and Los Angeles on December 10, bearing the message: 'All will be disclosed — Spielberg 06.12.26.'
This is a developing story... More updates to come
Spielberg's fascination with UFOs and outer space began in childhood, when his father woke him one night to watch the Perseid meteor shower from a field near their home in Haddon Heights, New Jersey.
That early wonder inspired his first amateur film project at just 17, a 1964 feature, length sci-fi movie called 'Firelight', which he screened at a local Phoenix theater for family and friends, charging $1 per ticket.'
That film seemed to set the director on path about the unknown, as hist 1977 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' was released, followed by 'E.T' in 1982.
Both films were blockbuster hits, with ET becoming the highest-grossing film of all time for over a decade, surpassing Star Wars.
More recently, in 2005, Spielberg revamped the timeless 'War of the Worlds' that was one of that year's top films.
He has returned to his roots with 'Disclosure Day,' which was based on an his original story, but penned by r David Koepp, who helped write 'Jurassic Park,' 'Jurassic Park: The Lost World,' and 'War of the Worlds.'
'Just watched this chilling clip from Steven Spielberg's new UFO film Disclosure Day (trailer dropped [Tuesday])—Emily Blunt's weather forecast turns into straight-up ALIEN NOISES live on air, a UFO enthusiast posted on X.
'These eerie clicks and guttural sounds are TERRIFYING.'
Another fan shared online: 'For a half-century, every new Steven Spielberg release has always felt like a must-see event.
'Already looking forward to seeing 'Disclosure Day' next year -- and I love that Emily Blunt is playing a Kansas City TV meteorologist. Midwest meteorologists are the best!'
Mysterious movie posters for the film recently appeared under the bright lights of New York's Times Square, showing an eerie eye peering through the silhouette of a bird.
While the image sparked many questions, the trailer appears to answer at least one.
In the newly released clip, there is a shot of bizarrely behaving robins that flying into an apartment where Blunt and O'Connor are sitting.
One social media users posted on X about the billboard, saying: 'This billboard in Times Square is not just promoting another movie.
'It is signaling the return of the filmmaker who reshaped the medium itself. Spielberg, the most influential director in the history of cinema, the man whose last name is a synonym for Hollywood, is about to debut his first original sci-fi story in years.'
ByMichael Ashley,
Contributor.
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” wrote science fiction visionary Arthur C. Clarke. Few observations have proven truer. Look around the world today, then picture what someone from the Middle Ages might think to learn we now possess:
These innovations represent the “sizzle” of technology—the flashy, futuristic gadgets that feel ripped from Black Mirror or Severance. Mind-boggling, they get us talking, fired up about an unbounded future.
The less flashy “steak” yang to this ying tends to “get no respect”, to channel Rodney Dangerfield. More spellbound by the far-out gizmos, we tend to overlook more infrastructural innovations as staid. Even boring.
But what if the real “magic” in technology today occurs in the most pedestrian of places: the wiring in your walls or the harness between a trailer and a truck? Even the power grid lines?
When I spoke with Zeev Collin, CEO of Semitech Semiconductor, he opened my eyes to that hidden layer of technological magic. His fabless semiconductor company enables “no new wires” communication for industrial Internet of Things (IoT) and automotive applications. His firm facilitates the sometimes-unglamorous backbone work enabling machines to talk to each other.
To grasp the scope of the IoT revolution, it's useful to revisit an ancient philosophical concept: Hylozoism. According to Encyclopedia Britanica, it involves “any system that views all matter as alive, either in itself or by participation in the operation of a world soul or some similar principle.” In other words, it suggests all matter, even the feeder lines in your power grid are sentient to some degree.
When we stop to consider the work Semitech does from a different perspective, again, like someone from the Middle Ages, it might appear magical. Consider its PLC4TRUCKS technology, which allows vehicles to exchange data over the same electrical harness that powers their lights and brakes.
Suddenly, trucks and trailers, even from different manufacturers, can communicate in real-time. Not just that. Fleets can monitor ABS health, tire pressure, and more from miles away through something as sophisticated as aggregating sensor data over power lines and sending it to the cloud wirelessly.
When it comes to trailers, Power-Line Communication (PLC) transforms existing power cables into something more akin to data highways. In this way, tractor and trailer vehicles benefit from real-time monitoring of critical systems, including braking, load status and temperature control. Likewise, trains utilize data transmission to support control of real-time diagnostics and passenger information services.
Another way to understand the transformation enabled via PLC and other sophisticated communications technologies is via the leap from “dumb” to “smart” devices. A basic light switch circa 1960 is an example of the former. It operates in a binary fashion. Flip it on or off and you can light the room.
The smart version of this same device enjoys qualities absent in its counterpart. It can sense its environment and connect to a network such as your phone or the cloud. It can even interpret context. Enter your home bleary-eyed after a long day of staring at your workstation screen and it can dimly illuminate your foyer so as not to irritate tired eyes.
PLC comes into play here too, enabling the coordination of decentralized services in a smart grid, enabling it to monitor what's happening and react in real-time quickly. But it goes further. Consider the vehicle-to-grid (V2G) component. Today's electric vehicles aren't limited to consuming power in a dumb fashion. Instead, they can convert electrical networks into one more data conduit. This way, EVs can return unneeded power, enabling a smart ecosystem not unlike nature itself whereby intelligent systems can manage large-scale electrification and support environmentally friendly energy usage.
Again, such a profound upgrade in technology might seem supernatural to someone from the Middle Ages, before the Scientific Revolution. It's indicative of what's called ambient intelligence, “… a concept where AI, sensors, and connected devices create responsive environments that adapt to people's presence, preferences, and behavior,” according to TechnologicInnovation.com.
Ambiently intelligent thermostats that shut off when no one's in the room, optimizing for energy use and costs, are akin to the behind-the-scenes work Semitech and other related companies perform. Unseen, unacknowledged, such responsive devices silently power our world. But ask the typical person to describe how they seamlessly connect and communicate with each other, and they would be hard-pressed to give you an accurate answer.
They'd be more likely to shrug and confess, “Dunno. It's magic.”
Beyond such smart processes we've come to rely upon as part of daily life, including traffic lights that flicker on or off when our cars pull up, there is another aspect to this topic worth exploring. The growing strain on our power grids, driven by data centers powering what some call an “AI arms race”, is becoming mission-critical. As more electricity is required to sustain applications like ChatGPT as the new form of search, our devices will need to more intricately coordinate with each other.
“You can think of such decentralized communication not as a single omniscient mind straight out of sci-fi books like The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but instead as various neurons within a brain or even ants in a colony,” said Collin. “All those many small, autonomous micro-intelligences are constantly speaking to each other to manage the systems we depend upon.”
We began this discussion attempting to imagine how someone hundreds of years ago would interpret the technological marvels we often view as commonplace. The scale of capabilities would probably exceed their comprehension, so much so that life in the 21st century would appear magical.
Even so, it's important to recognize even we in 2025 are not living at the apotheosis of technological progress. If anything, things are just ramping up, especially as companies like OpenAI go all-in on achieving the goal of artificial general intelligence (AGI) or artificial superintelligence (ASI.)
Some experts, including Ray Kurzweil, believe that if we do ever achieve such awe-inspiring breakthroughs, we will reach the Singularity, that promised land where AI becomes so intelligent, its abilities exceed our abilities to predict or control our destiny. In other words, technological progress would stop advancing incrementally but instead leapfrog to a vertical curve beyond our wildest ambitions.
"As above, so below” is a Hermetic axiom suggesting patterns repeat at every scale of existence. Following such esoteric logic, if we do ever achieve the Singularity and one day look back upon life in the year 2025, it's possible that bright future will seem just as magical and miraculous to people living today.
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With age comes social media mania.
Older generations are driving political polarization and conspiracy theories on top internet platforms, while Zoomers tend to be more issue-focused rather than on partisan warfare, a sweeping new study found.
Socialprofiler, an artificial intelligence platform, combed through the top social media sites and analyzed some 756 million profiles to conclude that older generations are more outspoken about partisan politics online than younger ones.
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“I would say a lot of the findings are very unconventional,” Socialprofiler CEO Tony Noskov admitted to The Post. “Political discussion is not really popular among younger generations. It's mostly about activism, nonpolitical activism.”
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The study assessed posts that users of different age groups interact with the most on X, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok to help reach its conclusions.
While Gen Z frequently engages with left-leaning political content and progressive social issues, it was the Millennials and Gen Xers who were more slanted toward traditional partisan content, the study found.
“This suggests that the loudest political debates occur not among the youth themselves, but among their parents and older siblings, who use social media platforms as spaces for ideological expression and partisan discourse,” the study explained.
The findings from Socialprofiler's first-of-its-kind social media study track with other anecdotal findings that older Americans can be too online and go down rabbit holes of social media conspiracies.
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A Talker Research survey of 2,000 American adults age 50 and older, commissioned by Centrum Silver in September, found that the average older American spent a collective 22 hours per week in front of some type of screen, including scrolling through social media.
Another study out University of Colorado Boulder found adults age 55 and older are significantly more likely to share political misinformation than younger social media users. As Americans age, they become more partisan and those beliefs can muddy their online judgment, the November 2025 study found.
With age came an increase in political polarization and conspiracy theories about UFOs, aliens, the Illuminati, the Earth being flat, alternative knowledge and more, the new Socialprofiler study found.
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Meanwhile, Zoomers tend to be more issue-focused and dabble in esoteric content like tarot reading, witchcraft, hypnosis and spiritism.
“This suggests that different forms of escapism and alternative worldviews appeal to different age cohorts, rather than representing a simple replacement of traditional faith with scientific rationalism,” the study said.
When asked why the gap between younger and older generations on conspiracy theories exists, Noskov admitted that “We don't exactly know,” but teased that his company is planning to conduct additional research on that in the future.
Republicans generally drew much more robust engagement on the top social media platforms overall, but Democrats unsurprisingly fared better among younger cohorts.
Zoomers appeared specifically focused on issues like LGBTQ+ rights and climate change.
One specific example examined was the Black Lives Matter movement, which the study found lost engagement with its younger audience to non-political content.
“Even among movements that initially attracted younger, politically engaged users, there may be a natural lifecycle or shift toward depoliticization,” the study noted.
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Although polls have generally shown a decline in religion among younger Americans, Socialprofiler found that some religious movements, such as Islam, are making inroads with the youth.
Socialprofiler theorized that religion is slowly being replaced “by other forms of metaphysical explanation of the world.”
The study also concluded that X is the top platform for politics, news, and science, while Instagram dominated in lifestyle and aspirational culture content, and TikTok was home to the youth and identity expression.
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Socialprofiler's “2025 State of U.S. Social Media” study is its inaugural report, based on two years of building up its analytic database of social media platforms.
Accounts that are private were not assessed, though Socialprofiler was able to learn from people's interactions with content on other social media platforms.
“We look across platforms, everything from LinkedIn to Twitter to Facebook to Instagram, and we looked across all the platforms,” Socialprofiler COO David Marohnic explained. “So usually most people will have at least one of those public.”
The company estimates that roughly 65% of social media profiles are public, while 35% are private, though that varies by platform.
New findings indicate that the first interaction between humans and extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) may not align with the peaceful, friendly encounters frequently portrayed in films.
David Kipping, who leads the Cool Worlds Lab at Columbia University, has introduced the Eschatian Hypothesis, a theory suggesting that the initial signals we receive from extraterrestrial civilisations are expected to be extremely loud.
'The first confirmed detection of an extraterrestrial technological civilisation is most likely to be an atypical example, one that is unusually 'loud',' Kipping explained in his recent paper published on arXiv, which is owned and operated by Cornell University.
These signals could indicate a civilisation facing crisis—unstable, fleeting, or potentially approaching its end.
The hypothesis, also explained through a YouTube video released by Cool Worlds, highlights similarities with findings in astronomy. Initial discoveries of exoplanets, particularly those surrounding pulsars, did not accurately reflect the wider array of these celestial bodies. They were simply the most accessible to detect.
Kipping suggests that a similar principle holds true for ETIs. We are more inclined to detect civilisations that emit the strongest techno-signatures, rather than those that are more common or flourishing in silence, according to him.
Examples of these 'loud' signals include the accidental discharge of significant energy or radiation, as well as intentional efforts to communicate urgent messages throughout the universe. The famous 'Wow!' signal from 1977, which momentarily baffled astronomers, is referenced as a possible instance of a plea for assistance from a civilisation approaching its own end times.
Hollywood has consistently depicted extraterrestrial beings as either kind-hearted guides for humanity or aggressive invaders aiming to take over our planet. However, Kipping and fellow researchers advise caution when it comes to anticipating such cinematic occurrences.
The initial event is expected to be an impersonal, observational occurrence—potentially a brief surge of electromagnetic radiation or a peculiar cosmic phenomenon—rather than a direct interaction. 'The history of astronomical discovery shows that many of the most detectable phenomena ... are rare, extreme cases with disproportionately large observational signatures,' Kipping said in the paper.
Simply put, the Eschatian Hypothesis suggests that instead of the gentle and benevolent ET portrayed in films, we might witness signs of a civilisation on the brink of collapse, sending out extreme signals detectable from light-years away.
The “Wow!” signal, one of the biggest mysteries in our universe #space #astronomy #universe #mystery #fyp
The term 'Eschatian' is derived from eschatology, a field in theology concerned with death, judgement, and the end times. In this context, it suggests that our first encounter with extraterrestrial life could originate from a civilisation nearing its own conclusion. A civilisation like this might be producing signals that can be detected, either as a result of its decline or as a frantic cry for help.
Kipping advocates for a focus on extensive, high-frequency surveys in the quest for these signals, aiming to capture rare cosmic occurrences. According to Universe Today, institutions such as the Vera Rubin Observatory and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey are advancing towards a strategy of ongoing monitoring, enhancing the likelihood of identifying unusual signals before they disappear from sight.
For researchers, the Eschatian Hypothesis reshapes the quest for life beyond our planet. Instead of focusing on specific, narrowly defined techno-signatures, research initiatives might gain from a broader approach. This could be observing for anomalies in flux, spectrum, or apparent motion that remain unexplained by established astrophysical phenomena.
© Copyright IBTimes 2025. All rights reserved.
Talented actor Aadi Saikumar is gearing up for the release of his biggest film, Shambhala: A Mystical World. The mystery thriller, directed by Ugandhar Muni, is set to hit the big screens on December 25. Produced by Rajasekhar Annabhimoju and Mahidhar Reddy under the Shining Pictures banner, the film has been mounted on a lavish scale to deliver a truly immersive cinematic experience.
Archana Iyer, Lubber Pandhu fame Swasika, Ravi Varma, Madhunandan, and Siva Karthik play key roles. Every promotional asset has struck the right chord, increasing the buzz around this supernatural thriller. The teaser, trailer, and making video have been trending on social media, and the film is carrying excellent reports in trade circles. As a result, both theatrical and non-theatrical rights fetched solid revenues for the makers.
Top distribution houses are presenting the film in different regions. In the Nizam territory, Mythri Distributors LLP will release this Aadi Saikumar starrer, while Usha Pictures will distribute it in Andhra Pradesh and the Ceded regions. Moon Shine Cinemas is handling distribution in offshore markets, and in Karnataka, Kumar Bengaluru Films will oversee the release. With leading distributors coming on board, Shambhala is expected to get a strong showcasing.
On the digital front, the leading Telugu OTT platform, Aha, has acquired the post-theatrical streaming rights. Several platforms showed interest, and Aha ended up bagging the digital rights. Zee Network has bought the satellite rights, and even before its release, the producers of Shambhala have earned table profits. Sri Charan Pakala's background score and Praveen K Bangarri's cinematography are said to be the other major highlights of the film.
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Germany's far-right AfD, was represented at the gala by about 20 lawmakers, prompting a Democratic congressman to denounce it as 'rolling out the red carpet for leaders of Germany's Nazi-cosplaying party.' During the event, a protester wearing a Nazi armband was removed after reportedly shouting, 'I guess we're all Nazis!'
The guest list at the New York Young Republican Club's annual gala on Saturday included white nationalists, antisemitic conspiracy theorists and a Jewish city councilwoman, who ultimately decided not to attend.
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India, Dec 17 : Steven Spielberg's highly anticipated UFO film, Disclosure Day, teases a thought-provoking journey in its first trailer, asking: “What if we are not alone, and the truth is bigger than fear?”
Unlike typical alien invasion movies, the teaser is quiet, introspective, and deeply human. It presents a world on the brink of discovery, where people must grapple with the implications of extraterrestrial life. Elizabeth Marvel's character muses, “Why would he make such a vast universe yet save it only for us?” Josh O'Connor adds that the truth belongs to everyone, not just those in power, signaling the film's emotional and philosophical depth.
The star-studded cast includes Emily Blunt, Josh O'Connor, Colin Firth, Colman Domingo, Eve Hewson, and Wyatt Russell, each portraying characters confronting profound questions about humanity and the unknown. O'Connor describes the movie as “old-school Spielberg,” signaling a return to emotional storytelling over spectacle.
This marks Spielberg's first film since 2022's The Fabelmans, continuing his legacy of sci-fi classics such as E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and War of the Worlds, which explored fear, hope, and belief through alien encounters.
Writer David Koepp, known for Jurassic Park, called the film “deeply emotional,” while Colman Domingo revealed he cried after reading the script, praising its humanity-focused narrative.
The teaser arrives amid heightened global interest in UFOs and extraterrestrial life, highlighted by the viral success of the documentary The Age of Disclosure. Promotion for Disclosure Day includes Times Square billboards and a teaser screening before the latest Avatar movie. The film is slated for a summer 2026 release, coinciding with blockbusters like Toy Story 5, Minions 3, and Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey.
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There are many serious questions about the origin of COVID-19, the government response, the safety of the vaccines developed, and more. In this section you can find an abundance of reliable, verifiable information presenting strong evidence that the official government story is filled with holes, suppression, and coercion.
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Is the US's Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System broken?The BMJ (Formerly British Medical Journal)Vaccinated people now make up a majority of covid deathsWashington PostWe're being censored, claim victims of AstraZeneca Covid vaccineThe Telegraph (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)CDC Covered Up COVID Vaccine MyocarditisPublic on Substack
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See all COVID news
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We can't shift the chaos we're in until we name it. When we can recognize what's pushing us — in our personal lives and as a society — we already have a degree of freedom from it. Challenging information can paradoxically remind us of the greater good. It is the courage of the people and the love for the common good that brings these injustices to light—fueling open dialogue and constructive action.
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Martin Luther King Jr. Assassination
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MKUltra CIA Program: The Creation of Unsuspected Assassinations
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Jeffrey Epstein: Child Sex Trafficking and Political Blackmail
U.S. Government Child Abuse Scandals
60 Minutes Exposes Top Politicians as Pedophiles
Discovery Channel Documentary: Major Child Sex Abuse Ring Among Washington's Political Elite
Imperium Documentary: Major Child Sex Trafficking Rings Involving High Levels of Government Around the World
Over the years, we've compiled revealing 2-page and 10-page summaries with concise, powerful information on many of the vital topics covered by WantToKnow.info. Links are provided to explore our comprehensive information centers and online lessons.
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We dive into the long history of mind control experiments in highly secret, US government-sponsored operations. Declassified CIA documents prove the existence of secret government programs involving hypnosis, drugs, electric shock, mind control, and more. Some of these programs were designed to create super spies, terrorists, and assassins.
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MKULTRA Program
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A Nation Betrayed, MKUltra Survivor's Story
Mind Controllers Summary
The Secrets of Mind Control
Brief History of Humans Used as Guinea Pigs by U.S. Government and Military
CIA's Operation Midnight Climax: Deadly LSD & Sex Escapades
Manchurian Candidate: The Secret Government Project
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We integrate the best of the media landscape with our own original investigations, written articles and videos. Our organization was founded by White House whistleblower Fred Burks in 2003, after he discovered significant levels of global deception and manipulation in his work as a language interpreter for presidents and top government officials around the world.
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Our newsletters are carefully curated, drawing from the best of the corporate and independent media landscape. Each week, we research and summarize over a dozen key media articles that challenge mainstream narratives on important issues shaping society. Once every two weeks, we also send out an inspiring story or news to a separate email list as a balance to the challenging material on cover-ups and corruption.
Our database stands as one of the most comprehensive collections of conspiracy and corruption news, featuring over 13,000+ news article summaries from reliable and credible media sources and many categories for in-depth exploration. We also have over 3,000 news article summaries and 18 subcategories focused on inspirational news and solutions. Our archive has been used by journalists, educators, serious researchers, and everyday truth seekers since our founding.
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Click below for a table providing links to the many information-packed 2-page and 10-page summaries we've put together. These summaries present concise, powerful information on many of the vital topics covered by WantToKnow.info, always with links for verification.
Links are also provided to our many excellent information centers and online lessons covering these vital issues.
A concise essay explores the core reasons there is so much corruption and manipulation in our world and gives inspiring ideas on what we can do to create a brighter future.
This thought-provoking piece examines how the primary means for manipulating are through promoting fear, secrecy, and polarization, and through distracting people from their deeper purpose in life. It also provides concrete ways we can turn all of this around.
Don't lose hope. This inspiring essay reminds us in a most eloquent way that we were made for these times. Here's one paragraph of this poetic writing.
"Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely. It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom, will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good."
Verifiable information and news on high-level corruption and cover-ups,
and the powerful forces creating positive change and transformation.
The World Health Organization's cancer research agency has classified atrazine – the second most widely used herbicide in the United States – as “probably carcinogenic to humans,” adding to growing concerns about toxic exposures in the nation's farm belt. The evaluation means the first and second most widely used herbicides in the U.S. – glyphosate and atrazine – are now both considered probable human carcinogens by the world's leading independent cancer-hazard authority. Atrazine is banned in the European Union and other countries due to health and environmental concerns, but remains widely used in the U.S., where it is a common contaminant in drinking water, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Despite these concerns, U.S. regulators allow its continued use. The new assessment by the WHO's cancer agency comes 10 years after the agency's landmark finding that glyphosate, the world's most heavily used herbicide, is also “probably carcinogenic to humans.” Both atrazine and glyphosate are also endocrine disruptors, meaning they can disrupt key hormone systems that regulate growth, development and metabolism. Both herbicides are also largely produced by companies outside the United States. Syngenta, owned by ChemChina, produces most of the atrazine used in the U.S., while Bayer, based in Germany, is the dominant producer of glyphosate. The cancer designation for atrazine comes amid reports of rising cancer rates across the U.S. Corn Belt.
Note: It's recently come out that the popular pesticide paraquat probably causes Parkinson's disease. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on health and toxic chemicals.