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President Donald Trump's winding, antagonistic speech to business moguls and government officials in the Swiss Alps on Wednesday was hardly a salve to concerns the Western Alliance is at its breaking point.
Trump complained relentlessly about the United States being taken advantage of by Europe, and wondered incredulously why his attempt to take control of Greenland was being met with resistance.
He castigated European leaders for making their continent unrecognizable through what he cast as uncontrolled migration and radical economic policies.
And he speculated aloud about NATO's willingness to come to the defense of the United States, without mentioning that the one time the alliance invoked its collective defense treaty was at the request of the Americans after the September 11, 2001, attacks.
Still, for European officials listening closely for a roadmap of how the rupture might unfold, there was one glimmer of conciliation. And that, at a crisis moment for transatlantic ties, was something.
Here are five takeaways from Trump's speech to Davos.
For European leaders listening anxiously to the president's remarks on Greenland, there were four words in a speech of otherwise fiery rhetoric that mattered: “I won't use force.”
It was the clearest statement yet from Trump that he would not attempt to seize Greenland using military might. Until Wednesday, the president had refused to rule it out, and the White House had said military options remained in play.
Taking it off the table will be a relief to officials who had been preparing for tense diplomatic confrontations with Trump to try and stave off a potential war. Markets responded positively, too, turning upward after a day of losses on Tuesday.
Trump just backed off on using military force to take Greenland. What does it mean?
That's not to suggest everything will be easy sailing going forward. Trump remained insistent that he would accept nothing less than full ownership Greenland — a semiautonomous territory of Denmark.
“This enormous unsecured island is actually part of North America,” Trump said. “That's our territory.”
And he promised to remember those who opposed him.
“You can say no and we will remember,” he warned.
In reiterating his demand for control of Greenland — which he mistakenly called Iceland four times — Trump argued in Davos that “no nation or group of nations is in any position to be able to secure Greenland, other than the United States.”
“Every NATO ally has an obligation to be able to defend their own territory,” he said. “We're a great power, much greater than people even understand.”
Trump went on to slam Denmark as “ungrateful” for refusing to relinquish control of Greenland, contending that the nation owed the US for defending it during World War II.
“Denmark fell to Germany after just six hours of fighting, and was totally unable to defend either itself or Greenland. So the United States was then compelled, and we did it,” he said, lamenting the US' decision at the time to allow Denmark to retain Greenland as a territory.
“How stupid were we to do that?” he said. “But we did it, but we gave it back. But how ungrateful are they now?”
Trump also took aim at a range of other targets both old and new, at one point even belittling host country Switzerland as “only good because of us.” He recounted a past exchange with a Swiss leader over tariffs, boasting that he decided to increase his levy on the country after she “rubbed me the wrong way.”
“We have many places like that where they're making a fortune because of the United States,” Trump said to the largely European crowd, which sat in shocked silence. “Without the United States, they wouldn't be making anything.”
Fact check: Trump's barrage of false claims in Davos about Greenland and NATO
Switzerland was far from the only foreign nation to take hits from Trump. The president mocked Emmanuel Macron's “beautiful sunglasses” after the French president wore aviators indoors due to a minor eye condition, asking the crowd: “What the hell happened?”
As for Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, Trump opted to issue an ominous threat.
“Canada gets a lot of freebies from us, by the way. They should be grateful, but they're not,” Trump said, taking issue with Carney's earlier remarks at the conference. “Canada lives because of the United States. Remember that, Mark, the next time you make your statements.”
Trump used his speech to renew a pair of longstanding domestic grudges as well, attacking Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar.
“She comes from a country that's not a country, and she's telling us how to run America,” Trump said of Omar amid an extended diatribe against the nation of Somalia, adding that she's “not going to get away with it much longer.” And he invoked alleged fraud in the state she represents, Minnesota, to make a thinly veiled xenophobic argument for the Western values that he said need to be protected and strengthened.
“The situation in Minnesota reminds us that the West cannot mass import foreign cultures, which have failed to ever build a successful society of their own,” Trump said, claiming that Western prosperity stemmed from “our very special culture.”
“This is the precious inheritance that America and Europe have in common,” Trump added. “We have to defend that culture and rediscover the spirit that lifted the West from the depths of the Dark Ages to the pinnacle of human achievement.”
For a while during Trump's speech, the standing room-only crowd took the president's personal jabs and off-topic asides in stride. The president, who appeared more subdued following a lengthy flight into Switzerland, garnered laughs for calling out “so many friends, a few enemies” in the audience and claiming that after his first year back in office, “people are doing very well. They're very happy with me.”
Yet the attendees who stampeded into the room for a glimpse of Trump — crushing against each other to get in the door and nearly overwhelming the security staff — grew more restless and uncomfortable as the speech wound on, sitting largely in silence and offering only tepid applause at the end of the marathon remarks.
Trump's extended argument for ownership of Greenland particularly alarmed some in the audience, who shook their heads and chuckled in disbelief as he described the territory as a necessary acquisition and slammed Denmark as “ungrateful.”
Another digression — and extended tirade against windmills — startled the room into nervous laughter as he inaccurately praised China for not having windfarms and called nations that rely on wind energy “stupid people.”
As Trump's speech hit the hour mark and went into a section on his deployment of the National Guard to Washington, DC, and other US cities, some of the international crowd had clearly lost interest — with a few even getting up to leave early.
Trump himself even seemed to feel urgency to wrap up by the end, finishing out his remarks on a casual note: “I'll see you around.”
If there was an underpinning to Trump's hourlong speech — and it meandered in many directions — it was an abiding belief that Europe and its leaders had veered drastically off course.
While Trump claimed to love the continent's nations — declaring himself “100%” Scottish and German — he had only disdain for how officials had managed immigration, security and economics over the past decades.
“Certain places in Europe are not even recognizable, frankly, anymore. They're not recognizable. And we can argue about it, but there's no argument,” Trump said minutes into his speech.
Recalling wars over the past century that required American intervention, Trump seemed intent on humiliating Europeans into granting him what he really wanted from them: Greenland.
“Without us right now, you'd all be speaking German and a little Japanese,” he said.
And he insisted the world was reliant on the United States, and ungrateful in return.
“Without us, most of the countries don't even work,” he bemoaned.
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As Netanyahu announced his participation, Israeli airstrikes and tank fire killed 11 people across Gaza.
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Wednesday that he is accepting an invitation from President Donald Trump to join the U.S.-led “Board of Peace” — the colonial body set to have control over and supposedly enforce “peace” in Gaza as Israel bombs Palestinians and freezes babies to death in its ongoing genocide.
The prime minister's office announced his acceptance in a post on social media. Several countries in the Middle East have accepted the invitation to join the board, including Egypt, which has been key in ceasefire negotiations throughout the genocide.
Netanyahu will sit on the board to envision supposed “peace” for Gaza in spite of his role in destroying Gaza; killing tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of Palestinians there; being wanted for crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court for his Gaza campaign; and his vision for a “Greater Israel” that would involve even further ethnic cleansing in Gaza, the occupied West Bank, and beyond.
Netanyahu's participation is an indication of the board's goals — not for “peace,” but rather for a continuation of Israel's slaughter and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, now institutionalized by a multinational board of world leaders.
Several powerful European countries are opting out of the board. On Tuesday, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said that French officials “wholeheartedly support” the U.S.'s “peace plan,” but that France is saying “no to creating an organization as it has been presented, which would replace the United Nations.”
Norway and Sweden have also reportedly declined to join the board, with their respective leaders saying that they won't participate in the signing ceremony in Davos, Switzerland, amid the conference there this week.
The “Board of Peace” and accompanying “International Stabilization Force” have been widely panned by critics as a “colonial abomination,” a horrific plan to continue violent control over Gaza on the heels of Israel's genocide, which has killed over 70,000 Palestinians in Gaza so far, with likely far more deaths currently uncounted.
Under the structure of the board, Palestinians are not given a seat on the board, but are relegated to the “national committee for the administration of Gaza,” at the bottom of the board's hierarchy.
The U.S. announced last week that it is moving on to the second phase of the “ceasefire” in Gaza, under which the Trump-led “Board of Peace” will convene to decide upon next steps for Gaza, including disarmament of the enclave and reconstruction, potentially guided by Trump's dystopic fantasy of turning the Gaza Strip into a playground for the rich.
The advancement of the plan comes despite the fact that, as many Palestinians and human rights advocates have noted, the ceasefire never materialized. Israel has continued to demolish and raid residential areas in Gaza, waging attacks nearly every single day since the agreement began on October 10. Gaza officials have recorded 1,300 Israeli ceasefire violations, with the attacks having killed at least 477 Palestinians, including over 100 children.
Just as Netanyahu announced his participation in the board Wednesday, Israeli airstrikes and tank shellings killed 11 Palestinians across the enclave. The slaughter included two young boys, killed by tank fire in central and southern Gaza, and three journalists who were on an assignment by the Egyptian government's aid committee to film tent encampments provided by the country.Meanwhile, on Saturday, a newborn baby froze to death in Gaza — one of at least eight children to die of exposure to the cold this winter under Israel's severe blockade of aid materials like shelter.
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Sharon Zhang is a news writer at Truthout covering politics, climate and labor. Before coming to Truthout, Sharon had written stories for Pacific Standard, The New Republic, and more. She has a master's degree in environmental studies. She can be found on Twitter and Bluesky.
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Magali Lafourcade says the two envoys were convinced the far-right leader's corruption trial had been political
Europe live – latest updates
A French magistrate has said two Trump administration emissaries approached her seeking to lobby against an election ban on the French far-right leader Marine Le Pen.
Magali Lafourcade, the secretary general of France's human rights commission (CNCDH), an independent body that advises the government, told Agence France-Presse (AFP) she had reported the content of the meeting to the French foreign ministry immediately, fearing a potential “manipulation of the public debate in France”.
Confirming comments she made to France 5 TV, Lafourcade said she had been very surprised by the tenor of her discussion with the US advisers in Paris last May, when they steered the conversation on to French judges' sentencing of Le Pen in 2025 after she was found guilty of the embezzlement of European parliament funds.
After a nine-week trial in Paris, judges ruled last March that Le Pen had been at the heart of an extensive and long-running fake jobs scam at the European parliament, and banned her from running for public office for five years with immediate effect.
Le Pen, 57, who leads the anti-immigration National Rally (RN), had been considered a lead contender for next year's presidential election until her sentence. She also received a four-year prison term, with two years suspended and two to be served outside jail with an electronic bracelet. She was ordered to pay a €100,000 (£87,000) fine.
Le Pen appealed alongside 10 of the 24 party members who were convicted last year. She denied wrongdoing and is appearing in court in Paris on a fresh trial as she seeks to overturn her conviction and sentence. She told the court on Wednesday that she had always acted in good faith.
Lafourcade told AFP she had met Samuel D Samson and Christopher J Anderson last May. They are advisers for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL), which is part of the Department of State. She said they had been seeking “elements to support a theory that could have, perhaps, served to support a disinformation or manipulation of the public debate in France”.
Lafourcade said she had tried to explain the French judicial process, but that the two men “were convinced it was a political trial that aimed to remove [Le Pen] from the presidential race or to place a ban on her for purely political reasons”.
She said they felt Le Pen had been unfairly treated and was victim of a “political conviction”, and that they had sought elements to support that view.
Lafourcade, who is not involved in the Le Pen case, said she was troubled because this was not the type of conversation that “should happen with allies”.
She said she had sensed that it could be seen as a form of interference, so immediately reported the conversation to the foreign ministry, “which is something I never do, as we are an independent institution and don't report the exchanges we have with diplomats”.
She said the foreign ministry, which has not commented, had told her it would take her report very seriously.
The state department did not respond to questions identifying Samson and Anderson as the US officials who met with Lafourcade.
In a statement, it said the “trip in question occurred nearly eight months ago and we discussed these false rumors publicly at the time. This is old news.”
“[DRL] officials routinely hold productive meetings across Europe with a wide range of government officials and civil society representatives to address concerns regarding censorship, democratic backsliding and other human rights issues,” the statement added.
Samson, a recent college graduate appointed as senior adviser under the new Trump administration, had recommended last year that his bureau's leadership use funds earmarked by Congress for foreign assistance to support projects including the resettlement of Afrikaners to the US and Le Pen's legal defence. It is not clear whether the DRL's leadership adopted his recommendations.
Samson, one of a number of young conservatives to rise under the Trump administration, reflects the White House's changing priorities for foreign assistance. He wrote a controversial post on the Department of State's Substack page titled The Need for Civilizational Allies in Europe, in which he also criticised the labelling of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland as an extremist organisation, saying this “environment also restricts Europe's elections”.
Le Pen's sentence prompted anger among political figures on the international populist right. Trump called it a “witch-hunt” by “European leftists”.
Le Pen had attacked what she called a “tyranny of judges” who she said wanted to stop her running in a presidential race she said she could otherwise win.
She told La Tribune Dimanche this month that whatever the outcome, her party would dominate and its “ideas will survive”. If she is unable to run for the presidency for a fourth time next year, she will be replaced by her young protege and party president, Jordan Bardella.
The German magazine Der Spiegel has reported that Trump officials held internal discussions about sanctioning French prosecutors and judges involved in last year's trial and sentencing of Le Pen. The Department of State said it was a “fake story”.
The president of the Paris judicial court, Peimane Ghaleh-Marzban, said this month that any move against a French judge would “constitute an unacceptable and intolerable interference in the internal affairs of our country”.
The French government spokesperson, Maud Bregeon, said this month that there was no proof of any international interference, but that the government would remain vigilant.
We must look past the headlines and evaluate the Trump administration's trajectory against the historical markers.
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“For the last decade, there's been a debate among people who don't like Donald Trump about whether he's a fascist,” writes Michelle Goldberg in a January 2026 New York Times article. This rhetoric, which began during his first term, reached a fever pitch during the 2024 campaign when Hillary Clinton compared his Madison Square Garden rally to the infamous Nazi gathering held there in the 1930s. In 2024, Vice President Kamala Harris and half of the American public, according to ABC News/Ipsos polling, embraced the label for Trump, while many others dismissed it as hyperbolic. A year into Trump's second term, Goldberg suggests that those who sounded the alarms are being vindicated.
The debate over fascism has become more pervasive following the killing of Renee Good by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent Jonathan Ross in Minnesota. The video of Good's death was seen by 80% of Americans, and polls from Data for Progress, Quinnipiac, CNN, and YouGov/Economist reveal that the majority of Americans do not think the killing was justified.
Nonetheless, the Trump Administration has ramped up the assault in Minnesota. The internet is flooded with viral videos of ICE agents violently detaining a U.S. citizen child at a Target and warning peaceful bystanders that they will end up like Good. Other footage shows agents punching citizens for legally recording them, assaulting a woman whose disability prevented her from exiting her car, and using flash bangs and pepper-spraying peaceful protesters. As they were driving, a Minneapolis couple and their six children were reportedly caught in a chaotic clash between federal agents and protesters. According to the parents, officers deployed flash-bang munitions and tear gas that filled their vehicle, causing their 6-month-old baby to stop breathing and lose consciousness before emergency responders arrived.
These violent acts are not just limited to Minnesota. Since 2025, ICE has been responsible for nine fatal shootings and about 40 deaths in custody, including one ruled a homicide. The agency has also detained nearly 200 U.S. citizens, including Native Americans.
It is no wonder that the concept of abolishing ICE is more popular than ever. Social media is increasingly filled with videos of everyday citizens who emphasize that they are not overtly political and rarely, if ever, protest, yet feel compelled to speak out because they believe the President's version of events is demonstrably false.
Even traditionally sympathetic voices like Tim Dillon and Joe Rogan have raised concerns, specifically comparing the administration's use of federal agents to the “Gestapo”: the secret police of Nazi Germany known for their brutal suppression of dissent and lack of judicial oversight. Rogan further leaned into this comparison by arguing that forcing residents to prove their citizenship status on the street is tantamount to the infamous Nazi practice of demanding “your papers,” to identify and disappear undesirables. Relatedly, in the understatement of the year, former ICE Director Sarah Saldana recently warned on CNN that the situation has reached a breaking point, noting that it is “way past time for de-escalation.”
As his first year comes to a close, much of what has occurred in Minnesota and elsewhere has led critics to label Trump a fascist. They point to the fact that he lied to the public about Good's death. After the incident, Trump immediately made the false claim that Good “viciously ran over” an agent, forcing the officer to be hospitalized. In reality, Good's car did not run over anyone, and Ross walked away from the scene unassisted. New York Times reporting casts doubt on the idea that Ross even visited a hospital after Good's death.
Critics argue that Trump warrants the fascist label due to his efforts to direct the U.S. military against American citizens. Trump and his Administration have threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act in Minnesota, which, unlike in Trump's National Guard deployments would allow armed forces to carry out law enforcement functions, such as making arrests and conducting searches. According to military intelligence sources, the Minnesota crackdown serves as more than an immigration initiative; it is allegedly part of a broader campaign targeting “anti-American' elements,” such as Antifa and the radical left. Reports indicate that 1,500 Alaska-based troops are prepared to deploy to Minnesota at Trump's command. This escalation coincides with a federal court ruling this week that significantly restricted the tactics ICE may employ against peaceful protesters. Meanwhile, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz mobilized the state's National Guard this weekend to maintain order. The deployment occurs against the backdrop of a criminal probe by the Justice Department into both Walz and Mayor Jacob Frey for allegedly impeding federal immigration operations.
Critics contend that the Trump administration has effectively weaponized ICE, transforming it into a tool of executive power rather than a public service agency. They cite a convergence of aggressive incentives and diminished oversight as evidence of this shift. In mid-2025, the administration introduced substantial financial inducements, including $50,000 signing bonuses and $60,000 in debt forgiveness, to attract recruits whose primary motivations may be economic rather than civic. This, coupled with policies allowing agents to remain masked, withhold identification, and conduct stops based on subjective criteria like “accents,” has largely insulated the agency from accountability. Moreover, the imposition of strict arrest quotas to meet a target of 11 million deportations has escalated routine daily activities into high-stakes confrontations for many residents.
Despite claims that professional standards prevent abuse, an undercover report from Slate describes ICE training as “sloppy” and lacking substantive background checks. Trainees reportedly expressed more interest in physical assault and making arrests than in mastering the legal requirements of the job.
As the line between law enforcement and political weaponry continues to blur, the American public is left to determine whether these actions represent a temporary crisis or a permanent systemic shift toward something like fascism. To navigate this uncertainty, one must look past the headlines and evaluate the administration's trajectory against the historical markers.
Fascism has always had supporters in the U.S. In 1939, 26% of Americans preferred fascism, in October 2024, it was 17%. However, some such as Tyler Cowen, a Professor of economics at George Mason University wrote in 2018 that “American fascism cannot happen anymore because the American government is so large and unwieldy.” Four years later, Political scientist Anthony DiMaggio disagreed, arguing that it was already happening in the U.S.
Before the U.S. entered World War II, scholars not only believed the emergence of fascism was possible in the U.S., they predicted the exact mechanics of how it would occur. In 1935, the scholar and former U.S. Marine Arthur H. Steiner warned that American fascism would materialize once six specific components were realized: the rejection of democracy, adoption of dictatorial techniques, repression of individual freedoms, suppression of organized labor, stoking of intense nationalism, and mobilization of a popular reactionary perspective.
Steiner's academic warnings were grounded in the volatile political climate of the 1930s, most notably the “Business Plot,” which involved a fellow Marine and two-time Medal of Honor recipient, Major General Smedley Butler. The conspirators, a group of financial elites, believed they could leverage Butler's immense influence over veterans to lead a military coup against President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. However, Butler remained loyal to the Constitution; he exposed the plot and forced a Congressional investigation that effectively quelled the coup. This historical episode, recently dramatized in the 2022 film Amsterdam, served as the catalyst for Butler to document the corrupt intersection of corporate interests and military power in his seminal pamphlet, War is a Racket.
While scholars were still debating whether fascism could ever take root in the United States, poet Langston Hughes argued that Black Americans were already living through its domestic equivalent. Addressing the Second International Writers' Congress in 1937, Hughes contended that the traits now labeled as “fascist” were the founding realities of the Jim Crow South. “We Negroes in America do not have to be told what Fascism is in action. We know,” Hughes declared, noting that “theories of Nordic supremacy and economic suppression” had long been a lived reality.
After World War II, Americans largely viewed fascism as an “Old World” relic, a theme explored in the new film Nuremberg. The film rightly tells the story of how psychologist Dr. Douglas Kelley was dismissed by American audiences for suggesting that his work with Nazis revealed that fascism could take root in the U.S. Still, in the decades ahead, scholars like Theodor W. Adorno as well as artists such as Pier Paolo Pasolini warned that nations like the U.S. that privileged capitalist consumerism had the potential to resuscitate fascism.
“It's striking how much the arguments that Trump is not a fascist have suffered in just the first few days of this year,” Goldberg noted. This observation highlights a deepening divide: while some commentators dismiss the fascist label as mere partisan hyperbole, others contend it accurately captures the current trajectory of the United States. To understand this debate, one must look at the origin and evolution of the term itself.
The term “Fascism” was coined in 1919 in reference to Benito Mussolini's regime in Italy, and later used to describe the regimes of Germany and Spain. In the decades following World War II, scholars agreed that fascist regimes dominated Europe during the 1920s and 1930s, but they found little consensus on a generic definition of the term. Ernst Nolte, a premier scholar on the subject, rejected efforts at defining fascism because he believed the political ideologies of the researchers made the practice futile.
In the post-World War II U.S., efforts at defining fascism were overshadowed by the Cold War (1945-1991). While Marxists and conservatives debated whether capitalism was responsible for the rise of fascism, liberals continued to blame “totalitarianism.” Marxists rejected this as a politically charged attempt to marginalize progressives by conflating fascism with the leftist, Communist Soviet Union. Nonetheless, by the late 1970s, the lack of a unified concept led many to believe that fascism was a unique set of historical circumstances that would not recur. Still, for those who want a dictionary definition, the Merriam-Webster definition is:
“Fascism: a populist political philosophy, movement, or regime that exalts nation and often race above the individual, that is associated with a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, and that is characterized by severe economic and social regimentation and by forcible suppression of opposition.”
Rather than focusing on a dry dictionary definition, the debate concerning the appropriateness of the fascist label centers on the specific behaviors and attitudes of the Trump presidency. Goldberg noted that those who contend Trump is a fascist point to his territorial aggrandizement in Greenland and Venezuela, the utilization of state violence via ICE, his appeals to nationalism, and an emphasis on hyper-masculinity. They further cite his pardoning of January 6th participants and a “fetish for technology” as evidence of this shift. Meanwhile, other commentators highlight Trump's strategic alliance with corporate power and his systematic dismantling of institutional independence, including efforts to curb autonomy in higher education, co-opting legal processes, and intimidating the press.
To provide a framework for these observations, scholars have sought to categorize the underlying traits that allow such movements to take root. In 1995, Umberto Eco introduced a framework for ‘eternal' fascism. He posited that fascism functions as a ‘coagulation' of contradictory elements rather than a single, cohesive system, categorized by fourteen primary characteristics:
1. The cult of tradition. “One has only to look at the syllabus of every fascist movement to find the major traditionalist thinkers. The Nazi gnosis was nourished by traditionalist, syncretistic, occult elements.”
2. The rejection of modernism. “The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.”
3. The cult of action for action's sake. “Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation.”
4. Disagreement is treason. “The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge.”
5. Fear of difference. “The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.”
6. Appeal to social frustration. “One of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups.”
7. The obsession with a plot. “The followers must feel besieged. The easiest way to solve the plot is the appeal to xenophobia.”
8. The enemy is both strong and weak. “By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.”
9. Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. “For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.”
10. Contempt for the weak. “Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology.”
11. Everybody is educated to become a hero. “In Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death.”
12. Machismo and weaponry. “Machismo implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality.”
13. Selective populism. “There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.”
14. Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak. “All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.”
He famously noted that “it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it.” Eco's framework shifted the focus from specific government structures to a set of psychological and rhetorical traits.
Eco's list was later emulated by Lawrence Britt in 2003, who identified fourteen characteristics of fascist regimes:
1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism
2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights
3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause
4. Supremacy of the Military
5. Rampant Sexism
6. Controlled Mass Media
7. Obsession with National Security
8. Religion and Government are Intertwined
9. Corporate Power is Protected
10. Labor Power is Suppressed
11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts
12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment
13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption
14. Fraudulent Elections
The examination of features of fascism accompanied the research on how fascism was not a European phenomenon because these features are universal. As a result, in the late 20th century, scholars moved the research beyond Europe, arguing that fascist regimes operated across the globe in Argentina, Chile, and Japan. However, as the digital age and globalized economy reshape the ways power is seized and maintained, many wonder if these classic markers are being updated for a new era.
While the classic markers of the 1930s provide a baseline, many experts argue that modern movements require a new vocabulary. In November 2025, Stefanie Prezioso warned that traditional fascism analogies may not be entirely helpful today because Trump's actions, “while echoing the darkest chapters of the twentieth century, remain in many ways radically new.” Prezioso cites historian Eric Hobsbawm, who observed, “When people face what nothing in their past has prepared them for, they grope for words to name the unknown, even when they can neither define nor understand it.” Indeed, when fascism first emerged in the early 20th century, thinkers like Antonio Gramsci drew upon history to name the phenomenon, initially referring to it as “Caesarism.” This 19th-century concept described autocrats who, like Julius Caesar or Napoleon III, claimed to embody the “popular will” while systematically dismantling the institutions that protected it.
Still, scholars have sought to bridge the gap between 20th-century history and today's political shifts through the term “neofascism.” Galadriel Ravelli and Anna Cento Bull define neofascism as a revival of activism by groups striving to keep fascist ideals alive in the post-war international context.
Jason Stanley argues in How Fascism Works (2018), that 21st-century fascists share tactics with their 1930s predecessors: the construction of a mythic past, reliance on propaganda over reason, and the exploitation of sexual anxiety. However, crucial differences remain. Modern neofascism is fueled by globalization rather than total war, and its rhetoric has shifted from old-world antisemitism toward xenophobia aimed at immigrants.
Neofascism's appeal is rooted in its ability to reframe political contests. Where the Marxist left struggled to build intersectional coalitions, the radical right has succeeded in reframing the struggle of good versus evil. They pit a deindustrialized working class against a collection of bad actors: immigrants, racial minorities, religious minorities, sexual minorities, feminists, leftists, journalists, and the intelligentsia. In this framework, the good people are defined as anti-feminist, uneducated, xenophobic nationalists who aggressively oppose the emancipatory promise of the Enlightenment in favor of a world governed by hierarchy and hyper-masculine violence.
The contemporary debate over Trump is less about his personality and more about the specific timeline of American decline. Analysts like Monika Bauerlein of Mother Jones contend that the transition to fascism is “not over” because citizens still possess rights worth using. Similarly, contributors to The Nation argue that a window remains to prevent total consolidation, provided the public aggressively defends those currently targeted by state violence. Goldberg describes the United States as being trapped in a liminal space: “the space between the liberal democracy most Americans grew up in and the dark, belligerent authoritarian state that our government seeks to impose.”
This belief that the U.S. is “transitioning” suggests that fascism is a process rather than a single event. Researchers such as historian and philosopher Hannah Arendt argue that fascism emerges from specific societal conditions. It often begins with what Arendt calls the “politics of inevitability,” the naïve belief that democracy is guaranteed to endure, leaving citizens unreflective and vulnerable to creeping authoritarianism.
This complacency often coincides with a deadlocked democracy, where traditional liberal and conservative parties become unable to govern effectively or solve national crises. This leads to a “paralysis” of the state that a fascist movement exploits by stoking a sense of overwhelming victimhood and a need for “purity” to prevent national decline. In these moments, when the future seems bleak, leaders point toward a mythical, “pure” past, a “Golden Age,” and frame the present as a constant cycle where “innocent” people are under attack by outsiders.
Fascism also gains momentum when there is no viable left-wing alternative to champion the needs of poor and working people. As Professor of Economics at The New School for Social Research, Clara Mattei notes, fascists rarely seize power in a vacuum; instead, conservative elites often decide to invite fascists into power specifically to help crush the Left. Mattei argues that austerity, which refers to policies like wage cuts and social service reductions, is a deliberate tool used by elites to break the power of the working class. When the status quo fails and the left is marginalized, the public often turns toward fascist rhetoric out of desperation.
When democracy fails to solve a national crisis, elites may view fascism as a technocratic solution that can enforce economic discipline by force where democratic processes have failed. Fascism thus emerges to “tame” the public and ensure that the logic of profit remains unquestioned, often presenting brutal economic choices as scientific necessity. This transition is made easier by the death of truth. As University of Toronto's Timothy Snyder emphasizes, fascism begins with the abandonment of facts; if nothing is true, no one can criticize power, and citizens eventually trade their freedom for the “sensual experience” of belonging to a tribe or following a leader.
Once a movement emerges, it follows a trajectory that Robert Paxton delineated in his 2004 seminal work, The Anatomy of Fascism. Paxton contends that fascist regimes evolve through five distinct stages:
While Paxton observes that several movements have emerged throughout history, only Italy and Germany reached the third stage of achieving power, and only Germany successfully expanded through its full exercise. He contends that fascist regimes carry the seeds of their own “inherent self-destruction” because they are built on fundamental contradictions. They position themselves as movements for the people while simultaneously legitimizing the deep inequalities of modern capitalism. Ultimately, fascism is a self-terminating system, yet it collapses only after a period of profound violence, suffering, and systemic instability.
Leading global voices in the study of fascism, such as Jason Stanley, Marci Shore, and Timothy Snyder, recently left their positions at Yale University for academic appointments in other nations. They characterized this move not as a mere career transition, but as a calculated survival strategy. Drawing on their own research, they suggested that the safest course of action is to exit a country at the earliest stage, before a fascist regime fully consolidates its power and closes its borders.
The escalating violence in Minnesota and the administration's shift toward military intervention have transformed the debate over fascism from a theoretical academic exercise into an urgent national crisis. While critics point to the crackdown as proof that the country has entered the later stages of authoritarian consolidation, others maintain that these actions are necessary measures to maintain order within a polarized democracy. This divide suggests that the “fascist” label remains as contested as it is consequential, leaving the public to reconcile the disturbing events in the streets with the historical frameworks provided by scholars. While the debate persists, the nation waits to see if its institutions will bend or break under the current pressure.
Progressive nonprofits are the latest target caught in Trump's crosshairs. With the aim of eliminating political opposition, Trump and his sycophants are working to curb government funding, constrain private foundations, and even cut tax-exempt status from organizations he dislikes.
We're concerned, because Truthout is not immune to such bad-faith attacks.
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Dr. Nolan Higdon is an author and lecturer of history and media studies at California State University, East Bay. Higdon sits on the boards of the Action Coalition for Media Education and Northwest Alliance for Alternative Media and Education. His most recent publication is United States of Distraction with Mickey Huff. He is co-host of the “Along the Line” podcast, and a longtime contributor to Project Censored's annual book, Censored. In addition, he has been a guest commentator for The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle and numerous television news outlets.
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An economic blackout on January 23 could be the first general strike in Minnesota since in nearly 100 years.
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There is a general strike on the horizon in Minneapolis. More than 50 Minnesota labor unions, nonprofits, and other community organizations have signed onto a January 23 Day of Action, which calls for a complete “economic blackout” in the state. “No work. No school. No shopping,” its posters declare.
Some of Minnesota's largest labor unions are leading the way, including the Minneapolis Federation of Educators, SEIU 26, and UNITE HERE Local 17. This has led some to label the upcoming Day of Action a general strike, with others referring to it as an economic blackout. This would be the first general strike in Minnesota since 1934, when the Teamsters set off a months-long work stoppage in the state.
Simon Elliott, an organizer for the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), one of the organizations that has signed on to the call, said, “This is the clearest and most powerful way that we can send a message, both to the Trump administration and to immigrant members of our community.” A list of businesses that have pledged to close down for the day is circulating online, with more joining by the hour.
There are currently roughly 3,000 federal immigration agents reportedly in Minnesota. Renee Nicole Good's killing by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer Jonathan Ross on January 7 set off a wave of protests, not only in the state but across the country, as Americans grow increasingly frustrated by ICE operations in their cities. Just a week after Good's killing, ICE officers shot a Venezuelan man in Minneapolis, who they claimed attempted to assault an officer with a shovel. Recent polling from YouGov suggests that 46 percent of Americans support the abolition of ICE, the highest ever recorded
On January 19, ICE officers entered the home of a Hmong-American man in St. Paul with guns drawn and forced him out onto the street wearing only a bathrobe and underwear. Images of the arrest circulated online, eliciting condemnation from St. Paul's mayor, who called him a family friend, and other officials. Residents have stepped up to counter ICE's tactics with their own community organizing and mutual aid. Driving through the streets of Minneapolis, residents stand on many intersections with whistles around their necks, waiting to alert their neighbors to the presence of federal immigration authorities. Temperatures dipped well into the negatives over the weekend, and still, residents were out on the streets.
All of this has turned the Day of Action from a call by a loose collective of immigration organizations like Unidos MN and faith leaders pushing for a “Day of Truth and Freedom” into a mass mobilization against ICE's presence in the state.
Lucho Gomez, the director of campaign strategies at Centro De Trabajadores Unidos En La Lucha (CTUL), has his eyes on the horizon. “This is an opportunity to assess where we need to pivot to ramp up the pressure to get ICE out of Minnesota,” he told Truthout. For Gomez and others, the Day of Action is not the end goal of their organizing, but rather a stop on the way to achieving their demands — which include, most obviously, ICE leaving the state and ending Operation Metro Surge, but also Congress putting a stop to additional ICE funding.
“This is an opportunity to assess where we need to pivot to ramp up the pressure to get ICE out of Minnesota.”
CTUL has been involved in labor organizing in the Twin Cities since 2007. They focus their efforts on immigrant workers who have historically been left out of the labor movement. According to Gomez, this has allowed him and his colleagues to leverage their preexisting contacts to build out mutual aid and community support networks during the ICE operation.
Organized labor has coalesced behind the demand for a general work stoppage in the state. The Minneapolis Federation of Educators is just one of the unions that have signed onto the call for a general strike. Schools have been the target of numerous ICE raids since the start of Operation Metro Surge. Natasha Dockter, Vice President of the MFE, said, “In the last few weeks, federal immigration enforcement agents have created hazardous and dangerous conditions in our community that threaten the very right of children to receive an education.” The sheer scale of the operation has led to a wide array of groups, both traditional unions and advocacy organizations, to band together behind the message of “ICE Out of MN.”
Kat Rohn, who heads the LGBTQ+ advocacy organization OutFront MN, told Truthout that this is the first time the organization has collaborated with many of the other groups, not due to political differences, but because there has not been the political impetus. ICE, however, was that catalyst. “It is formal organizations working with informal neighborhood groups and supporting one another to better respond to the moment and give folks effective actions they can take, to look out for their neighbors, to protect one another,” Rohn said.
“When our volunteers walk in with the flyers … people are so excited. Business owners say, ‘Great, I'll put up four.'”
It was Minneapolis Council Member Soren Stevenson's third day in office when Good was killed. During the 2020 George Floyd Uprising, a Minneapolis Police officer shot Stevenson in the eye with a rubber bullet during a demonstration, permanently blinding him. He was later awarded a multi-million dollar settlement. The Democratic Socialists of America-backed councilor told Truthout, “The goal of the Day of Action is to expand the coalition, get more and more people and organizations involved so that we can be more powerful the day after.” Stevenson emphasized the importance of community-led rapid response networks and drew attention to the ongoing occupation.
Frustration with the state and city governments is growing at the grassroots level. “Words coming from, whether it's our mayor or the governor right now, are ringing hollow to what's happening in the communities in the streets,” Gomez stressed. Economic disruption is the only option, according to organizers who spoke with Truthout. Elliott, who has been going door to door on Minneapolis's Southside, organizing businesses around the upcoming Day of Action for PSL, said, “When our volunteers walk in with the flyers that say, ‘ICE out of Minnesota, January 23, statewide shutdown,' people are so excited. Business owners say, ‘Great, I'll put up four.'”
On the Lake Street Corridor in South Minneapolis, a hub for Somali and Latino-owned businesses in the city, the streets are noticeably quiet, with some businesses shuttered altogether. Many of those that are still open keep their doors locked in an effort to keep ICE agents out. Luis Argueta, the director of communications at Unidos MN, one of the organizations spearheading the Day of Action, told Truthout, “Foot traffic is down everywhere. It doesn't matter what industry, but it's because of the fear, and because of the number of agents. We have a lot of businesses that have closed.”
Critics of the Day of Action have pointed to the “economic blackout” as having the potential to hurt immigrant-owned businesses, already struggling seven weeks into Operation Metro Surge. Stevenson said of the criticism, “What's going to help our community economically is getting ICE out as soon as possible.” Argueta also added, “This isn't meant to stop small businesses, but this really is about accountability for the larger Minnesota companies that are staying silent when they have the power to effect change here.”
The January 23 Day of Action will be an opportunity for Minnesota residents to show off their collective labor and purchasing power as they demand that corporations with headquarters in Minnesota, including UnitedHealth Group, Target, and Best Buy, use their influence to put an end to ICE's occupation of the Twin Cities. Organizers are also demanding that Target and Home Depot, which have been documented being used as staging grounds and parking lots for ICE agents, become “4th Amendment businesses” and refuse to allow federal immigration authorities to use their properties to prepare for or conduct operations.
“We're gonna win because there are thousands and thousands of us who are united against this, and there are only so many federal agents,” Stevenson concluded.
Progressive nonprofits are the latest target caught in Trump's crosshairs. With the aim of eliminating political opposition, Trump and his sycophants are working to curb government funding, constrain private foundations, and even cut tax-exempt status from organizations he dislikes.
We're concerned, because Truthout is not immune to such bad-faith attacks.
We can only resist Trump's attacks by cultivating a strong base of support. The right-wing mediasphere is funded comfortably by billionaire owners and venture capitalist philanthropists. At Truthout, we have you.
Truthout has launched a fundraiser to raise $45,000 in the next 8 days. Please take a meaningful action in the fight against authoritarianism: make a one-time or monthly donation to Truthout. If you have the means, please dig deep.
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:
Theia Chatelle is a conflict correspondent based between Ramallah and New Haven. She has written for The Intercept, The Nation, The New Arab, etc. She is an alumnus of the International Women's Media Foundation and the Rory Peck Trust.
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From the ‘big bazooka' to a world cup boycott, Europe has powerful weapons beyond dialogue. An emergency EU summit could be a turning point
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“I do not understand what you are doing on Greenland,” wrote Emmanuel Macron in a private message to Donald Trump this week. Trump posted the text on his Truth Social platform on Tuesday, seemingly to humiliate the French president. But Macron might have been speaking for millions of bewildered European citizens.
As Russia's war physically tears into Ukraine, Trump's phoney war on Europe over Greenland risks breaking apart the western defence alliance Nato.
By Trump's unhinged logic – which includes him linking his actions over Greenland to having been snubbed for the Nobel peace prize – Europe has no right to prevent him from acquiring Greenland from Denmark. In a rambling speech at Davos on Wednesday, Trump stepped up his claim to the territory although he ruled out military force to seize it, saying he was seeking “immediate negotiations” instead. But he again insisted that only the US was capable of securing Greenland.
And if the US is even theoretically prepared to use coercion against a Nato ally, supposedly to keep the Arctic safe from Russia and China (the Guardian's maps show what melting Arctic ice is doing to the region), then the mutual defence clause underpinning Nato ceases to have much meaning.
The Belgian prime minister, Bart De Wever, was not overstating the surreal nature of the crisis when he earlier said: “A Nato country is threatening another Nato country with military invasion.”
Trump has meanwhile upped the ante over Greenland with a volley of trade threats: punitive new tariffs on the eight European countries that briefly deployed troops to the Arctic to reassure the US that they could boost lax security around Greenland. For their trouble, they now face 10% tariffs from 1 February, rising to 25% from 1 June, if Trump does not get Greenland.
Diplomats hoped a confrontation between Trump and his one-time European allies could be averted in Davos if the president was truly committed to the compromise that he insisted would make Nato and the US “very happy”.
Either way, Trump's intimidation and blackmail tactics could backfire, amid signs that Europe may finally be ready to abandon appeasement as a tactic. A crisis summit of 27 EU leaders on Thursday is being billed as a possible turning point, where Europe pushes back after a year of cajoling and flattery.
What can Europe do?
Retaliatory tariffs on €93bn of imports of US goods such as soya and bourbon have been primed in Brussels, ready to launch in response to any new US tariffs on 1 February. MEPs have also agreed to suspend ratification of the EU-US trade deal sealed in July. This would have seemed too radical a step until recently.
Macron wants to go further and roll out the EU's most powerful trade weapon, the anti-coercion instrument (ACI), its so-called “ bazooka”. The instrument came into force in 2023, mainly to protect the EU from China, but has never yet been deployed. It would allow the EU such steps as blocking aggressor country companies from operating in the single market.
With some governments still calling for dialogue, is the EU united enough on the Trump threat to do so? The Guardian's Brussels correspondent Jennifer Rankin says that, so far, the bloc is united rhetorically, but the coming days and weeks will reveal whether it is united in practice. “The club of 27 is still a long way from firing the big bazooka. A crisis meeting of EU ambassadors on Sunday showed there was no majority for this step.”
“The EU is more likely first to turn to the €93bn package of countermeasures. Punitive tariffs on US goods could snap into place on 7 February, barring any agreement otherwise.” Divisions may yet emerge between France and Germany, however. “I'm struck by differences in tone,” Jennifer says. “Macron typically is taking a much more assertive stance, although has not yet formally asked to trigger the ACI, while the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, and the Italian PM, Giorgia Meloni, are putting the emphasis on dialogue.”
‘Boycott the World Cup'
At Europe's “moment of truth”, as Gordon Brown described the crisis, the chance of European leaders chickening out of using the toughest economic weapons they have remains high.
“The EU wants to de-escalate with Trump over Greenland but still show that it has the capacity to exert leverage over him. That is mission impossible,” Alberto Alemanno, professor of EU law at the business school HEC Paris, said. “The instinct is still to go for a proportionate, calibrated trade response, but that would be a major mistake.”
Alemanno called for deployment of the “big bazooka” – along with “a coordinated boycott of the forthcoming football World Cup in the US”.
There would be real costs for Europe with this approach, he admitted, adding: “But the cost of not acting is worse: permanent subordination to an increasingly adversarial power. Ultimately, the goal for Europe isn't to punish America, it's to make Europe immune to American blackmail.”
Georg Riekeles, of the European Policy Centre thinktank agrees, arguing that the EU should use the bazooka to hit a range of US services including US digital platforms operating in Europe.
“The US has leverage over Europe, but the reverse is also true. And for Europe, the stakes are existential.”
“Despite persistent myths, the anti-coercion instrument need not take long at all. With [US] coercion as blatant and public as now, the legal case is clearcut. The instrument could be mobilised rapidly, giving Brussels a powerful retaliatory set of tools.”
Tariffs on US goods should be reactivated and the Turnberry trade deal, struck by Trump with Ursula von der Leyen last summer, “should be declared null and void”, Riekeles said, since the premise it was based on has been “shredded”.
The German MEP Damian Boeselager said that both the use of bazooka and the freezing of the EU/US trade deal were necessary. “You do not fire a bazooka lightly. Simply making its use a credible option changes the balance of power – and that is the only language Trump understands. The good news is that Europe is not defenceless. We are an economic superpower.”
Nathalie Tocci, professor of practice at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, Europe, has argued for months that the cost of appeasing Trump is bigger than the cost of going it alone, even in the defence of Ukraine.
On Wednesday, Von der Leyen urged European governments to reach for their own” levers of power” and in a “lawless world”, abandon their “traditional caution”. But Tocci is not convinced that EU leaders will do what it takes.
“We've bent the knee for far too long. And whereas a year ago it was still an open question whether the tactic of appeasement worked or not, it seems clear by now that it does not. My guess is that EU leaders will leave their economic options open and move to retaliatory tariffs only if Trump proceeds with his tariffs on 1 February. Even then, the EU would not trigger the bazooka – at least not yet.”
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California Gov. Gavin Newsom, long one of President Donald Trump's chief trolls, took the routine this week to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland – and got a globally televised rise out of the president.
Newsom was in the crowd Wednesday when Trump called him out during a speech in which he again demanded Denmark cede control of Greenland to the US but also moved through a range of domestic and international issues.
“We're going to help the people in California,” Trump said. “We want to have no crime. I know Gavin was here. I used to get along so great with Gavin when I was president. Gavin is a good guy.”
A camera found Newsom in the room, smiling and appearing to chuckle.
Trump added, “I would say this, if I were a Democrat governor, or whatever, I would call up Trump, I'd say, ‘Come on in. Make us look good.'”
The moment was quickly clipped online, becoming more fodder for Trump and Newsom's social media teams and further highlighting Newsom's presidential ambitions.
Speaking to CNN's Kaitlan Collins afterward, Newsom said Trump's address was “remarkably boring” and “remarkably insignificant.”
“There wasn't anything new about that speech for the American audience,” the governor added. He also dismissed the president's demands for the US to acquire Greenland, including threats of military action before Trump backed off the aggressive stance in his speech Wednesday.
Trump “was never going to invade Greenland,” he said.
“I don't think the military force was ever real in the first place, but I think the tone reflected deep anxiety” among business leaders present at the forum, Newsom said.
The California governor's insults in Davos weren't reserved for the president. Talking to reporters on Tuesday before Trump's arrival, he accused attendees of “rolling over” for Trump, remarking that “I should have brought a bunch of kneepads for all the world leaders.”
“I mean, handing out crowns, handing out – this is pathetic. Nobel Prizes that are being given away. I mean, it's just pathetic. And I hope that people understand how pathetic they look on the world stage. I mean at least from an American perspective, it's embarrassing,” he said.
Newsom's social media team has mimicked Trump's tone on social media, complete with all-caps sentences and “Thank you for your attention to this matter” signoffs, along with memes and AI-generated images that sometimes include personal attacks on critics.
In an interview on “The Late Show” on CBS last year, the California governor explained his approach to Trump.
“Everything we were trying to do to break through wasn't working, so we decided to try something novel, called humor,” Newsom said. “We put a mirror up to Trump, and the absurdity of what's going on in this country, the absurdity of Donald Trump.”
Newsom wasn't the only potential 2028 candidate at Davos. Michigan's Gretchen Whitmer and Kentucky's Andy Beshear, participated in a forum on Wednesday.
Beshear spoke to CNN's Collins after Newsom.
“The speech was dangerous, it was disrespectful, and it was unhinged,” Beshear said. “You saw him make fun of world leaders in the room, who we call friends. You saw him ramble on, in stories, and even try to do voices. This is really concerning and for the United States, frankly, embarrassing.”
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Here are six areas that you can dig into to understand possible points of leverage against a corporate enabler of ICE.
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In response to the terrifying intensification of ICE over the past year, both in their expanded presence and violence in cities like Minneapolis, Chicago, Portland and Los Angeles, communities are mobilizing to protect each other, publicly denounce ICE, and form campaigns to peel away corporate support of ICE to weaken the various sources of ICE's financial, political, and reputational power. At the end of 2025, Spotify confirmed that it stopped running recruitment ads for ICE after months of public protests and major artists withdrawing their music from the media platform. Groups are starting campaigns against global hotel chain, Hilton, for Hilton's retribution against one of their Minneapolis hotels who refused service to ICE agents.
In early January, budget airline Avelo announced that it was ending their deportation charter flights. Avelo dropping their contract with ICE was a huge movement win due to an incredible, year-long pressure campaign led by numerous, decentralized groups across the country, including Siembra NC, New Haven Immigrants Coalition, Mijente and the National Coalition to Stop Avelo, among others.
As the organizers describe in Truthout, their campaign relied on a “mosquito strategy” — a broad range of tactics and sustained actions to strategically weaken Avelo's pillars of support, including targeting Avelo's government subsidies, investors, and corporate partnerships and bringing Avelo from relative obscurity into public awareness. Weakening Avelo in turn weakens ICE as the administration is then forced to contend with disruptions along their chain of operations. As Eric Blanc describes, “[b]reaking companies from ICE is a winnable struggle that can put serious pressure on the administration by raising the political cost of mass deportations and damaging ICE's ability to function.”
We had the privilege of supporting the Stop Avelo campaign with research on Avelo's pillars of support. With new campaigns rapidly emerging to pressure and boycott other corporations collaborating with ICE and profiting from its detention and deportation machine, it's essential to know how to uncover information about these corporations to refine your strategy and tactics.
So, here are six areas that you can dig into to understand possible points of leverage against a corporate enabler of ICE:
1. Corporate Leadership
Start with the corporation's own website. Who are the key executives and board members that govern the corporation? If they have biographies, note any ties these individuals have to other notable corporations, foundations, academic institutions and local governments. Sometimes these institutions can be pressurable “secondary” focal points.
Publicly traded corporations — any corporation traded on a stock exchange — must file various reports with the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC). These reports contain lots of helpful information including staff and board biographies, in addition to corporate financials, executive compensation. Find these reports by searching for the corporation on the SEC's EDGAR database or the “Investor” section of the corporation's website. The Annual Report (also known as the 10-K filing) and the Proxy Statement (DEF 14A filing) are great places to start.
For privately owned corporations, targeted web searches can be a great way to bring up news articles, announcements of executives joining external boards and the like. Putting the name of the executive or board member in quotes will help limit search results to only those that contain that exact name. Add the word “board” in quotes to your search (e.g., “Andrew Levy” “board”) to dig up articles about the external board appointments of key leadership.
Larger non-profits and other tax exempt organizations are required to file tax returns (known as Form 990s), which are made available to the public and contain information about key staff, board members, executive compensation, financials, endowments, investments, grants to other organizations, among much else. Search for the non-profit on ProPublica's Non-Profit Explorer to find their most recent tax return. (Want a deeper dive? Check out our Research Tools for Organizers trainings on researching corporations and non-profits.)
2. Government Subsidies
Whether it be airlines, data centers, real estate developers, or fossil fuel companies, many corporations take advantage of government assistance in the form of subsidies and tax breaks to finance their operations. As was the case in the Stop Avelo campaign, you can push your elected officials to pass legislation to end these corporate handouts.
Start by searching for the corporation on Subsidy Tracker, a database maintained by Good Jobs First, that tracks a whole range of corporate subsidies and incentives across various industries, cities and states.
Next, see if any additional news coverage or pieces of legislation come up in the results of a targeted keyword search (e.g., “Avelo” “subsidy”).
For subsidies passed at the state level, you can also search the databases compiled by the National Conference of State Legislatures and your state legislature's website. At the local level, cities and towns usually have a website for their legislative body where they publish a record of bills.
3. Contracts With DHS and ICE
Government contracts can be difficult to find and understand, but there are a few tips that can point you in the right direction. You can start by searching the USASpending.gov website which is the official listing of federal awards.
Under the Recipient dropdown, enter in the name of the corporation. This part may be tricky — a corporation may have several different LLCs, variations of their name, and/or subsidiaries that may be named in contract awards. Corporations may have a name that is similar to the name of another corporation. Spend some time verifying that the company listed as an award recipient is indeed the corporation you would like to research.
Next, under the Agency dropdown, enter “Department of Homeland Security” or “Immigration and Customs Enforcement” as the Awarding Agency. (Later, when you view the award, you'll want to make note of whether the corporation has a contract solely with DHS, or also directly with ICE.)
Next, under Award Type, select “Contracts” to limit your results to direct contracting relationships rather than grants, loans or other forms of assistance. Just keep in mind that while you can confirm direct contracts on USASpending.gov, it can be hard to discern subcontracting relationships. In the example of Avelo, they did not have a contract directly with ICE even though they were functionally running deportation flights for ICE. Instead, they had an arrangement with CSI Aviation, a third party contractor who had direct contracts with ICE.
You may want to also apply filters to limit results to awards given in the last year, for example. You can also limit results by location — either where the contractor is operating or where the contractor is headquartered. This is a great way to determine which businesses in your city or county may be partnering directly with ICE.
Also try searching the web for any news coverage or announcements of partnerships between a given corporation and DHS/ICE. Here it can be helpful to use the filetype operator in the hopes of finding a PDF of a contract (e.g. “Avelo” “DHS” filetype:PDF). (Want a deeper dive? Register for our upcoming training on how to research ICE contracts.)
4. Corporate Partnerships and Philanthropic Giving
Corporations often maintain power by creating partnerships with academic institutions, non-profits, civic organizations, and local governments. These are usually small sums of money relative to their overall revenue that function in building a rosy public image of the corporation, while at the same time buffering the corporation from accountability when confronted about any harmful business practices.
But these partnerships can also be sites of intervention for campaigners, who can highlight the contradictions between a corporation's “friendly neighbor” image and their actual operations and then pressure local institutions to drop these relationships. In the case of Avelo, the airline had partnerships with Athletics departments at a number of universities, who in turn offered Avelo brand placement and promotional opportunities at games and local events. Avelo also sponsored various local community events and even had a raffle with United Way of Delaware to offer free flights.
You can develop a list of these types of relationships by starting first with the corporation's website. Many corporations have a section of their website dedicated to partnerships as well as charitable activities, where they often proudly list the programs they support. For corporations that also have a foundation, you can often find information about their philanthropic activities in their tax return (Form 990-PF) on ProPublica's Non-Profit Explorer.
As always, don't forget to search the web for announcements of partnerships, sponsorships and charitable giving as well.
5. Donations to Politicians
Corporations often rely on politicians as a significant pillar of support. Elected officials can pass legislation friendly to their bottom line and snuff out legislation that is not. This support also comes in the form of appointing members of the corporate class to powerful positions on working groups and task forces, and generally being available for lobbying, networking and promotional events sponsored by industry groups.
Political donations can be a clue as to how a corporation is trying to influence local, state and federal policy agendas. Campaigners can call into question why a given politician accepted this money, in an attempt to peel away the politician's support from the corporation.
You can research donations to members of the US House and Senate by using OpenSecrets.org or the Federal Election Commission (FEC). Corporations usually give to federal Members of Congress through a corporate Political Action Committee (PAC) or employees will contribute directly to a politician. You can look up donations made by key executives and board members by entering in their name in the Donor Search. Be sure to confirm that the donor contributions you find are actually associated with the executive or board member in question and not someone else with a similar name. If you need help understanding some of the jargon associated with campaign finance, check out this glossary of terms.
For state level donations, use your state's campaign finance database, which can usually be found by searching the web for the name of your state and the terms “campaign finance search” or “ethics department.” Many state-level databases allow you to search by donor name or by candidate name.
For municipal level donations, use your city or county's campaign finance database. It's important to note that different cities and states have different campaign finance disclosure requirements, so some of these databases might have lots of information and be user-friendly to navigate, while others might not. Sometimes, you may even have to travel in person to the office of the relevant department to request to look at the campaign finance records. (Want a deeper dive? Check out our past training on how to research money in politics.)
6. Investors
Information on investors to a given corporation can be tough to find, especially for privately held corporations, but there are a few tools that we often check.
For publicly traded companies, you can often find information on investors in their SEC filings, available on EDGAR as described above. A corporation's Proxy Statement (DEF14 A filing) names those “beneficial owners” who own 5% or more of the company's shares. It also includes the number of shares controlled by each director and each member of top management. Also, a corporation's Annual Report (10-K filing) may list any credit agreements they have with banks.
You can also search Yahoo! Finance and WhaleWisdom.com to see who are the top owners of shares in a given corporation.
For privately held corporations, Pitchbook can be helpful. Pitchbook is a database on private capital markets, and often includes information on investors and funds, debt and lenders, as well as deals and limited partners. However, Pitchbook is a costly proprietary database. You may be able to gain access if you're affiliated with a local university, which may have an institutional account with Pitchbook.
If you can't access Pitchbook, web searching can once again serve you well. Try to find financing announcements by searching the company's name and terms such as “investment,” “fund,” “shareholder” or “funding round.”
These six steps should allow you to cover a lot of ground in compiling a list of possible points of leverage against a corporation. As always, research is best when it's done with others! Hold research-a-thons to split up the work and bring more people into movement spaces, share what you learn with other folks in your campaign, and find creative ways to use the information you found in your strategy.
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Lauren is a senior researcher in the Climate Program at LittleSis. They have over 12 years of research experience, with many of those years working closely with organizers, activists and community members to advance campaigns for housing, environmental and education justice. Prior to their role at LittleSis, Lauren supported ambitious local programs and policies designed to protect renters facing eviction, and structured data-driven analyses for federal environmental policy.
They received master's degrees in City Planning and Urban Spatial Analytics from the University of Pennsylvania, and a BS in Geology from the College of William and Mary.
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Ukraine, not Greenland, should be the main priority for NATO, Mark Rutte, secretary general of the military alliance, said on Jan. 21 at a panel session at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos.
President Donald Trump has pressed Danish and Greenlandic authorities to sell the strategically important island to the U.S., not ruling out the use of military force and threatening tariffs on eight European countries opposing the move. The pressure has led to a major crisis in U.S.-European relations.
"On Greenland, we have to make sure that that issue gets solved in an amicable way," Rutte said. "But the main issue is not Greenland. Now, the main issue is Ukraine."
He said he was "worried that we might drop the ball focusing so much on these other issues."
"Focus on Ukraine should be our number one priority, and then we can discuss all the issues, including Greenland," Rutte said. "But it should be Ukraine first, because it is crucial for our European and U.S. security."
He also said that he is working "behind the scenes" to diffuse disagreements between the European Union and the U.S. over Greenland. Rutte believes that public disputes could hinder diplomatic efforts.
Meanwhile, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said at the Davos forum on Jan. 20 that his country stands "firmly with Greenland and Denmark" and fully supports "their unique right to determine Greenland's future."
He also said that Canada is working with "NATO allies (including the Nordic Baltic 8) to further secure the alliance's northern and western flanks, including through Canada's unprecedented investments in over-the-horizon radar, submarines, aircraft, and boots on the ground."
Carney argued that Canada is "rapidly diversifying abroad," including through a comprehensive strategic partnership with the European Union."
"On Ukraine, we are a core member of the Coalition of the Willing and one of the largest per-capita contributors to its defense and security," he added.
Carney also said that there is a "rupture in the world order, the end of a nice story, and the beginning of a brutal reality where geopolitics among the great powers is not subject to any constraints."
Reporter
Oleg Sukhov is a reporter at the Kyiv Independent. He is a former editor and reporter at the Moscow Times. He has a master's degree in history from the Moscow State University. He moved to Ukraine in 2014 due to the crackdown on independent media in Russia and covered war, corruption, reforms and law enforcement for the Kyiv Post.
"I'm seeking immediate negotiations to once again discuss the acquisition of Greenland by the United States," U.S. President Donald Trump said.
"Focus in Ukraine should be our number one priority, and then we can discuss on all the issues, including Greenland," Rutte said. "But it should be Ukraine first, because it is crucial for our European and U.S. security."
Top Ukrainian energy worker Oleksii Brekht was killed while on the job, after reportedly being electrocuted at a substation.
The Kyiv Independent's Tim Zadorozhnyy speaks with U.S. Representative Don Bacon (R) about U.S. President Donald Trump's approach to ending Russia's war against Ukraine, arguing that appeasing Russia would only invite further aggression and calling on tougher sanctions on Moscow.
Shurma's brother Oleh, who co-owns KD Energy and Renewable Energy of Zaporizhzhia, was also charged, according to the NABU.
The Amber Dragon Ukraine Infrastructure Fund is the first dedicated to modernizing and rebuilding Ukraine's infrastructure.
"The Russians have invited us to come, and that's a significant statement from them," Witkoff said in an interview with Bloomberg TV in Davos on Jan. 21, amid a Washington-led push to broker peace between Kyiv and Moscow.
Klitschko's press service told the Kyiv Independent that the 600,000 number was calculated from mobile phone billing data.
Greenland must start preparing for the possibility of a military invasion, even though the scenario remains unlikely, the island's prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, said.
Eleven people were injured in an overnight attack in Russia's Republic of Adygea, while a separate drone strike sparked a fire at an oil refinery in neighboring Krasnodar Krai, local authorities and media reported Jan. 21.
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Jan. 20 that he has been unable to end Russia's war against Ukraine, claiming that neither side is consistently willing to agree to a deal at the same time.
U.S. President Donald Trump's envoys met with Russian President Vladimir Putin's envoy Kirill Dmitriev in Davos on Jan. 20 to discuss Washington's peace plan for Ukraine, with both sides describing the talks as constructive.
Prominent Ukrainian writer and translator Andriy Lyubka announced he has decided to mobilize and join the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
President Donald Trump's Wednesday speech at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland was filled with inaccurate claims – notably including false and misleading statements about NATO and Greenland, the self-governing Danish territory he is pushing for the US to acquire.
Trump also repeated numerous long-debunked false claims about foreign affairs, the economy and other issues. Here is a fact check of some of his remarks.
US benefits from NATO: Trump claimed: “So what we have gotten out of NATO is nothing, except to protect Europe from the Soviet Union and now Russia. I mean, we've helped them for so many years. We've never gotten anything.”
This is simply not true – even leaving aside arguments that the US has reaped important military, economic and political benefits from the existence of the alliance. NATO came to the defense of the US after the al Qaeda terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
The alliance invoked Article 5, its collective defense provision, for the only time in its history, and member countries formed a coalition to fight a war in Afghanistan alongside US forces. Member countries fought there for years, and many of them suffered casualties. Denmark, for example, lost more than 40 soldiers, one of the alliance's highest per-capita death rates.
NATO members' defense spending: Trump also claimed that, “until I came along,” the US “was paying for virtually 100% of NATO,” adding, “We paid for, in my opinion, 100% of NATO.” Trump's “opinion” is factually inaccurate. NATO figures show that, in 2024, US defense spending made up about 63% of total NATO defense spending; in 2016, the year before Trump took office the first time, it was about 72%. Both figures are big, of course, but nowhere near the 100% figure he has used for years.
And the US contributes a smaller percentage to NATO's own organizational budget. Under an agreed formula, the US provided about 16% of that budget at the time Trump returned to office in 2025. When he took office in 2017, the US was contributing about 22% of the budget.
Trump also said that, despite a NATO target of each member spending 2% of gross domestic product on defense, “most of the countries weren't paying anything” until he came along. In fact, every NATO member was spending something on its own defense when Trump wasn't president; total defense spending by non-US members was $292 billion in 2016 and an estimated $482 billion in 2024, NATO figures show. While it's true that many members were slow to hit the 2% target, a majority of them were meeting it in 2024, NATO figures show, with 18 of the 31 members subject to the target at or above 2%.
In 2016, four NATO members were hitting the target; in 2020, the last year of Trump's first term, it was eight members.
How NATO spending works: Trump repeated a claim he made on numerous occasions during his first presidency – that, before he became president, NATO countries “weren't paying their bills.” While it's possible to use the phrase “paying their bills” figuratively, it's worth noting that NATO's 2% target applied to countries' own domestic spending; it did not create “bills” or mean countries owed money to the US, as Trump also claimed during his first term.
The NATO target was raised in 2025 to 3.5% of GDP on the “core” defense spending that was covered by the previous 2% target and an additional 1.5% on a broader range of security-related spending.
Trump repeatedly referred to Greenland as “Iceland,” as he also did in remarks the day prior. But that wasn't his only inaccuracy on the subject of Greenland.
He repeatedly referred to Greenland as “a piece of ice,” saying at one point, “What I'm asking for is a piece of ice, cold and poorly located, that can play a vital role in world peace and world protection.” He also said, “It's hard to call it land.” While Greenland is icy, it is no mere piece of ice; it is a vast land mass where more than 56,000 people live. Trump made no mention of the local population, which is overwhelmingly opposed to a US takeover.
Trump correctly noted that the US built military facilities in Greenland during World War II when Denmark was occupied by Nazi Germany and unable to protect Greenland, but he then complained, “After the war, we gave Greenland back to Denmark. How stupid were we to do that? But we did it. But we gave it back. But how ungrateful are they now?”
Greenland was never a US possession to give “back.” The 1941 agreement that allowed the US military to operate in Greenland explicitly said that Denmark retained sovereignty over the territory. The agreement said, “The Government of the United States of America reiterates its recognition of and respect for the sovereignty of the Kingdom of Denmark over Greenland.”
It also said, “The Kingdom of Denmark retains sovereignty over the defense areas mentioned in the preceding articles.” And its preamble noted, “Although the sovereignty of Denmark over Greenland is fully recognized, the present circumstances for the time being prevent the Government in Denmark from exercising its powers in respect of Greenland.”
Trump did claim later in the speech that the US had Greenland “as a trustee” during the war, but he did not clearly explain that it was operating in a territory it explicitly said belonged to Denmark.
At another point in the speech, Trump said “there's no sign of Denmark there.” The Danish military presence in Greenland has long been small, but it existed long before Trump's push to take over the territory – and Denmark has stepped up that presence in recent weeks.
Here are some quick fact checks of other claims Trump made in the speech.
The 2020 election: Trump, as usual, referred to the 2020 election as a “rigged election.” He lost fair and square to Joe Biden.
Investment in the US: Trump spoke of the “$18 trillion” in investment he claims he secured in his first year back in office. This figure is fictional; the White House's own website uses a “$9.6 trillion” figure for “major investment announcements,” and even that figure is wildly inflated.
Tax on Social Security: Trump again claimed that he achieved “no tax on Social Security for our great seniors.” The big domestic policy bill Trump signed in 2025 did create an additional, temporary tax deduction for seniors, but the White House itself has implicitly acknowledged that millions of Social Security recipients will continue to pay taxes on their benefits.
Inflation under Trump: Trump said at one point that the US has “virtually no inflation,” then said later in the speech that there is “no inflation.” The US has inflation; in December 2025, prices were up 2.7% from the previous December (and 0.3% from November 2025).
Inflation under Biden, part 1: Trump claimed he is “driving inflation way down from the record highs of the Biden administration,” adding, “Every month they went up and up and up.” But inflation steadily fell month after month during the latter part of Biden's presidency after rising to a 40-year high of 9.1% in June 2022 — declining to a 3.0% year-over-year rate in January 2025, the month Trump returned to office.
Inflation under Biden, part 2: Trump said Biden “gave us perhaps the worst inflation in American history,” adding that others say it was the worst in “48 years” but “I say forever” and that “I think 48 years is the equivalent to forever.” The 9.1% rate in June 2022 was a 40-year high that was nowhere close to the all-time high of 23.7%, which was set in 1920.
Gas prices: Trump claimed gas prices are “$2.30 a gallon in most states,” then added, “And we'll soon be averaging less than $2 a gallon. In many places it's already down even lower — $1.95 a gallon. Numerous states are at $1.99.” But no state had an average gas price on Wednesday below about $2.34 per gallon, in Oklahoma, according to AAA; only 10 states had an average below $2.50 per gallon. While there are some individual gas stations selling gas for below $2 per gallon, they are scarce; Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis for the firm GasBuddy, told CNN on Tuesday that the firm found fewer than 100 stations across the country below $2 (aside from special discounts) out of the roughly 150,000 stations the firm tracks.
Prescription drug prices: Trump claimed he is reducing prescription drug prices “by up to 90%,” then said, “depending on the way you calculate – you could also say 5-, 6-, 7-, 800%. There are two ways of figuring that.” While Trump has secured some deals with drugmakers for price reductions, covering a small fraction of drugs sold in the US, there is no valid way to calculate savings of 500% to 800%; if the president magically got drug companies to reduce the prices of all of their drugs to $0, that would be a 100% cut, while a decline of more than 100 percent would mean that Americans would get paid to acquire their medications.
AI and power: Trump repeated his false claim that “I came up with the idea” that power-hungry facilities related to artificial intelligence can build their own power plants. There is simply no basis for the notion that this idea was Trump's own; some AI companies began experimenting with on-site power generation during the Biden administration.
Safety in Washington, DC: Trump repeated his false claim that, after his federal takeover of law enforcement in Washington, DC, the capital is “the safest place now in the United States.” Crime has fallen, but experts on crime data say the city remains nowhere near the safest place in the country.
Trump and wars: Trump repeated his regular false claim that “I settled eight wars.” Among other issues, his list of eight includes a diplomatic dispute between Egypt and Ethiopia that wasn't a war, some sort of dispute between Serbia and Kosovo that also wasn't a war, and a war in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo that never ended.
China and wind power: Trump said, “China makes almost all of the windmills, and yet I haven't been able to find any wind farms in China.” He added that China supposedly builds wind farms just for good optics but doesn't “use them,” instead merely selling wind equipment to “stupid people.” In reality, China is by far the world's leading user of wind power, with massive and numerous wind farms that are in active operation, and it is rapidly installing additional capacity.
Foreign countries and mental health facilities: Trump repeated his regular claim that unspecified foreign countries “emptied their mental institutions into the United States.” Trump has never provided any evidence for this claim, and his campaign and White House teams have been unable to corroborate it.
This article has been updated with additional reporting.
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As artificial intelligence (AI) threatens to upends job markets in countries around the world, Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) brushed off longer term concerns and made the case that skilled vocational workers are seeing increasing demand now.
Plumbers, electricians and construction workers are going to be able to command “six-figure salaries,” thanks to demand to build data centers that run and train AI, he said in an interview with BlackRock Inc CEO Larry Fink at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland yesterday. The technology will require one of the biggest infrastructure buildouts in history, with trillions of dollars in new investment, Huang said.
“We're seeing quite a significant boom in this area. Salaries have gone up nearly double,” Huang said. “Everybody should be able to make a great living. You don't need to have a PhD in computer science to do so.”
Photo: Fabrice Coffrini, AFP
Huang's comments echo remarks made at Davos on Tuesday by Palantir Technologies Inc CEO Alex Karp, who praised workers with “vocational training” and said AI would create more local jobs and largely eliminate the need for mass immigration. Coreweave Inc's Michael Intrator also touched on the “physicality” of the AI boom at a panel later yesterday, with the data center firm's CEO describing the need for growing numbers of plumbers, electricians and carpenters.
Nvidia, the leading maker of chips that help power and run the latest AI models, has benefited from the huge rush to build data centers. The company is on track to generate almost US$200 billion in data center chip sales for last year, according to an average analyst estimate compiled by Bloomberg. To date, the bulk of its revenue comes from the biggest data center builders — Microsoft Corp, Meta Platforms Inc, Amazon.com Inc and Alphabet Inc — but it's striking deals with a growing number of smaller data center operators. Tech firms have committed to spend a combined US$500 billion in data center leases in the coming years.
AI's impact on the job market is already being felt. Anthropic PBC CEO Dario Amodei has warned about a “white-collar bloodbath” that could wipe out 50 percent of entry-level jobs. The company's Claude AI is gaining attention for its coding abilities, a feature that could displace more junior programmers.
“We're entering a world where the junior-level software engineers — maybe many of the tasks of the more senior-level software engineers — are starting to be done most of the way by AI systems. Now that's going to go further,” Amodei said in an interview at Bloomberg House in Davos on Tuesday. While he believes the good from the technology will outweigh the bad, high unemployment and underemployment are a risk that needs to be mitigated.
“There's going to be unfortunately a whole class of people who are, across a lot of industries, going to have a hard time coping,” he said.
Fink yesterday noticeably avoided probing Huang on sensitive topics, most notably China. Nvidia's sales to the country are controversial, and the company is waiting to hear whether it will be able to sell its chips to the country and in what quantities. Just yesterday, Amodei called shipping Nvidia chips into China similar to selling nuclear weapons to North Korea.
Huang is expected to visit China at the end of this month as he works to reopen a crucial market for the company's AI chips. It's a pivotal time for the business, after the US moved to ease limits on chip exports to China it's had in place since 2022. Nvidia is still blocked from shipping the top-of-the-line chips to the country, stymying Beijing's ability to innovate beyond the cutting-edge of AI, but will be able to ship older-generation H200 AI chips.
Meanwhile, a key Republican lawmaker scheduled a committee vote yesterday for a bill that would give Congress power over AI chip exports, despite pushback from White House AI czar David Sacks, among others.
Representative Brian Mast of Florida, chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, introduced the "AI Overwatch Act" last month after US President Donald Trump greenlighted shipments of Nvidia's powerful H200 AI chips to China.
The legislation would give the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Senate Banking Committee 30 days to review and potentially block licenses issued to export advanced AI chips to China and other adversaries. One source said the act's odds of passage increased after a coordinated media campaign last week against the bill.
The legislation would ensure "our cutting-edge AI chips cannot be used by the Chinese military," Mast said at a hearing last week titled, "Winning the AI Arms Race against the Chinese Communist Party."If the bill moves out of committee, it must pass in both the full Senate and the House, and then must be signed by the US president.
Additional reporting by Reuters
Vincent Wei led fellow Singaporean farmers around an empty Malaysian plot, laying out plans for a greenhouse and rows of leafy vegetables. What he pitched was not just space for crops, but a lifeline for growers struggling to make ends meet in a city-state with high prices and little vacant land.
The future agriculture hub is part of a joint special economic zone launched last year by the two neighbors, expected to cost US$123 million and produce 10,000 tonnes of fresh produce annually. It is attracting Singaporean farmers with promises of cheaper land, labor and energy just over the border.
US actor Matthew McConaughey has filed recordings of his image and voice with US patent authorities to protect them from unauthorized usage by artificial intelligence (AI) platforms, a representative said earlier this week.
Several video clips and audio recordings were registered by the commercial arm of the Just Keep Livin' Foundation, a non-profit created by the Oscar-winning actor and his wife, Camila, according to the US Patent and Trademark Office database.
Many artists are increasingly concerned about the uncontrolled use of their image via generative AI since the rollout of ChatGPT and other AI-powered tools.
Several US states have adopted
KEEPING UP:
The acquisition of a cleanroom in Taiwan would enable Micron to increase production in a market where demand continues to outpace supply, a Micron official said Micron Technology Inc has signed a letter of intent to buy a fabrication site in Taiwan from Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (力積電) for US$1.8 billion to expand its production of memory chips.
Micron would take control of the P5 site in Miaoli County's Tongluo Township (銅鑼) and plans to ramp up DRAM production in phases after the transaction closes in the second quarter, the company said in a statement on Saturday.
The acquisition includes an existing 12 inch fab cleanroom of 27,871m2 and would further position Micron to address growing global demand for memory solutions, the company said.
Micron expects the transaction to
A proposed billionaires' tax in California has ignited a political uproar in Silicon Valley, with tech titans threatening to leave the state while California Governor Gavin Newsom of the Democratic Party maneuvers to defeat a levy that he fears would lead to an exodus of wealth.
A technology mecca, California has more billionaires than any other US state — a few hundred, by some estimates. About half its personal income tax revenue, a financial backbone in the nearly US$350 billion budget, comes from the top 1 percent of earners.
A large healthcare union is attempting to place a proposal before
Trump administration acknowledges that Elon Musk's cost-cutting operation accessed Americans' sensitive data
After months of denials, the Trump administration has acknowledged in a federal court filing that employees working for Elon Musk's supposed cost-cutting operation accessed and improperly shared Americans' sensitive social security data.
The justice department court filing, submitted on Friday in an ongoing lawsuit, reveals that a member of the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) signed a secret data-sharing agreement with an unidentified political advocacy group whose stated aim was to find evidence of voter fraud and overturn election results in certain states.
The Social Security Administration (SSA) told the court it had no prior knowledge of the March agreement and only discovered it during an unrelated review in November. The agency has referred two potential violations of the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal employees from engaging in political activity, to the Office of Special Counsel for investigation.
“Based on its review of records obtained during or after October 2025,” the filing said, “SSA identified communications, use of data, and other actions by the then-SSA DOGE Team that were potentially outside of SSA policy and/or noncompliant with the District Court's March 20, 2025, temporary restraining order.”
The court filing added that Doge members shared data with each other using Cloudflare, an unauthorized third-party server, and that the agency had been unable to determine what information was transmitted or whether it still exists on the server.
In one instance, a Doge staffer sent an encrypted, password-protected file to Steve Davis, described as a senior adviser to the Doge operation, that the agency believes contained names and addresses of approximately 1,000 people derived from social security systems. Officials have been unable to access the file to confirm its contents.
The revelations are an about-face for social security officials, who have long insisted there was no evidence Doge had potentially compromised personal data. In August, after former chief data officer Charles Borges warned Congress that Doge was storing Americans' data in an unsafe environment. An SSA spokesperson, Nick Perrine, said the agency was “not aware of any compromise to this environment”.
The disclosures come in response to a lawsuit filed in February by unions and an advocacy group attempting to block Doge from accessing social security data. A federal judge had temporarily barred the operation from accessing sensitive information, stating that Doge “essentially engaged in a fishing expedition at SSA, in search of a fraud epidemic, based on little more than suspicion”. The supreme court later lifted that restriction.
In response to the latest filing, the Democratic representatives John Larson of Connecticut and Richard Neal of Massachusetts, the ranking members on the House social security subcommittee and ways and means committee, have called for prosecutions.
“The DOGE appointees engaged in this scheme – who were never brought before Congress for approval or even publicly identified – must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law for these abhorrent violations of the public trust,” they said in a joint statement.
The lawmakers added: “Today, we learned alarming news that proves the brave whistleblower who came forward in August was right.”
According to the court filing, one Doge team member conducted searches of personally identifiable information on the morning of 24 March, even after the agency believed it had revoked all such access in compliance with the court's temporary restraining order. The final search occurred at about 9.30am, with full access terminated by noon that day.
Additionally, the filing disclosed that Doge members had been granted access to several systems beyond what the agency had previously reported to the court, including employee records, personnel access information and shared workspaces that would have allowed team members to exchange data.
Last April, more than two dozen federal employees across multiple agencies told the Guardian and What a Day that Doge operatives had been secretly recording meetings, monitoring computer activity and using AI tools to scan for disloyalty, creating an environment that one housing and urban development employee described as “being in a horror film where you know something out there [wants] to kill you but you never know when or how or who it is”.
Doge, launched by Musk at the start of the Trump administration with promises to root out alleged massive social security fraud, did not ultimately identify any widespread waste, fraud or abuse within the retirement and disability programs the agency administers, according to the filings.
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Prince Harry struggled to hold back his emotions as he wrapped up his evidence at a London court on Wednesday, as part of his lawsuit against the publisher of the Daily Mail over allegations of unlawful information gathering, saying “they have made my wife's life an absolute misery.”
The Duke of Sussex, 41, told London's High Court he “wouldn't have been able to complain” about the tabloid stories that are central to his claim at the time of publication “because of the institution I was in.”
Prince Harry returned from the United States to provide testimony for the civil case, which started on Monday, and is expected to last nine weeks.
He is one of seven high profile figures in the United Kingdom - including Elton John, David Furness and Elizabeth Hurley - accusing Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL) of allegedly gathering information through unlawful practices such as tasking private investigators to engage in voicemail interception, phone tapping and “blagging” of sensitive private records through deception.
The tabloid publisher has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, insisting that its journalists reported their stories using legitimate sources. It also asserts that the group of plaintiffs brought the claims too late.
The duke arrived at the Royal Courts of Justice around 11 a.m. (6 a.m. ET) on Wednesday, smiling and waving to crowds that had gathered outside. He has attended proceedings over the past two days, sitting behind his legal team along with several other claimants, before becoming the first to testify – his second such court appearance in three years.
In a separate lawsuit in 2023, he became the first senior British royal to give evidence on a witness stand in more than 130 years.
The duke's specific claim is based on 14 articles authored between 2001 and 2013, primarily written by two journalists, which caused him “great distress” and had “no meritorious public interest,” according to written submissions from his legal team. The duke alleges that those stories contained information that was gathered through nefarious tactics.
In his witness statement, Harry said he has “always had an uneasy relationship” with the press but “there was no alternative; I was conditioned to accept it.”
He said that the stories he has complained about are “part of an endless pursuit, a campaign, an obsession of having every aspect of my life under surveillance so they could get the run on their competitors and drive me paranoid beyond belief, isolating me, and probably wanting to drive me to drugs and drinking to sell more of their papers.”
The duke also said that he brought the case because he was “determined to hold Associated accountable, for everyone's sake” and that he believed his claim was “in the public's interest.”
Under cross-examination, Harry at times engaged in tense exchanges with ANL's lawyer Antony White, such as when he asked about whether some of the journalists who wrote stories might have been spending time with his social circle, which the barrister described as “leaky.”
White suggested that the reporters were attending the same events he was, and as a result, might have been able to obtain information for stories through those avenues, which the duke disputed.
“Having lived within this system my entire life… the kind of information that ends up in these articles is not the kind of thing that I would have been talking about,” Harry said from the witness box.
“I'm not friends with any of these journalists. I never have been,” he added.
White also suggested that Harry could have complained about these stories at the time of their publication but chose not to. Harry responded by saying he “wasn't allowed to complain,” citing the royal family's adage: “Never complain, never explain.”
As the duke concluded his evidence on Wednesday afternoon, he was visibly emotional as he spoke about the toll of pursuing the case against ANL, describing it as “a recurring traumatic experience.”
He said that he thought it was “fundamentally wrong to put all of us through this again when all we were asking for was an apology and some accountability.”
He continued, “It's a horrible experience and the worst of it is that by taking a stand and talking about it here…they have made my wife's life an absolute misery.”
Following the hearing, Prince Harry said in a statement: “Today we reminded the Mail Group who is on trial and why.”
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the duke said, “Today's cross-examination was revealing in its weakness: assertive in tone, but collapsing immediately under scrutiny from Prince Harry.
“Associated couldn't wait to get him off the stand, questioning him for just 2 hours and avoiding 10 of his 14 articles entirely.”
Prince Harry vs. the Daily Mail: Royal takes on tabloid publisher over unlawful information gathering
In court on Tuesday, White said the group's claims against the company were “threadbare” and argued that journalists working for ANL provide a “compelling account of a pattern of legitimate sourcing.”
He also said that journalists' payments to private investigators, which were cited by the duke's legal team, were “examples of clutching at straws in the wind and seeking to bind them together in a way that has no proper analytical foundation.”
The duke has long railed against Britain's tabloid media and the tactics it has used to cover his life, engaging in a yearslong battle with a number of publishers. In previous showdowns against the tabloid press, Harry successfully launched legal challenges against Rupert Murdoch's News Group Newspapers (NGN) and Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN), after which he received apologies, admission of wrongdoing and damages.
CNN's Max Foster contributed reporting.
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U.S. President Donald Trump said on Jan. 21 that Washington is seeking "immediate negotiations" to acquire Greenland, delivering the remarks at the World Economic Forum in Davos as tensions between the United States and its European allies continue to rise.
"It's the United States alone that can protect this giant mass of land, develop it and improve it, and make it so that it's good for Europe and safe for Europe and good for us," Trump said.
"That's the reason I'm seeking immediate negotiations to once again discuss the acquisition of Greenland by the United States... People thought I would use force. I don't have to use force."
Trump's appearance in Davos came as European leaders had planned to press the U.S. president on security guarantees for Ukraine, only for Greenland to unexpectedly dominate the agenda.
Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark and home to about 56,000 people, has grown in strategic importance as Arctic ice melts, opening new shipping routes and access to mineral resources.
Trump framed U.S. interest in Greenland as a protective measure rather than coercion, echoing arguments he has used to justify American claims over Venezuela's oil sector.
"This enormous unsecured island is actually part of North America, on the northern frontier of the Western Hemisphere. That's our territory," Trump said. "After the war, we gave Greenland back to Denmark. How stupid were we to do that? … How ungrateful are they now."
In what seems like a shift in stance, Trump said he would not try to acquire Greenland by force, adding that the "military is not on the table," though he had previously left that option open.
The U.S. president also made clear that he views the war in Ukraine primarily as a European responsibility, criticizing U.S. involvement and financial support.
"What does the U.S. get out of all of this work, all of this money, other than death, destruction, and massive amounts of cash going to people who don't appreciate what we do," he said, adding that Europe "has to work on Ukraine," while the U.S. is separated by "a big, beautiful ocean."
Trump also said he plans to meet President Volodymyr Zelensky in Davos, but Zelensky has said he will not attend, opting to remain in Ukraine amid Russia's strikes on energy infrastructure.
The transatlantic dispute intensified after Trump renewed calls for the United States to acquire Greenland, earlier hinting he could use military force. During his Davos speech, he also criticized Europe more broadly, saying it was "not heading in the right direction."
Trump said on Jan. 17 that the United States would impose 10% tariffs on NATO allies — France, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Germany, the U.K., the Netherlands, and Finland — until Washington secures a deal to buy Greenland, with the tariffs set to rise to 25% later this year.
The tariff threat followed the arrival of European troops from France, Germany, and other countries in Greenland for military exercises, fueling concerns in European capitals that Trump's rhetoric is expanding into economic pressure.
EU officials have since concluded that a coordinated response is necessary, with several options expected to be debated by leaders this week. European leaders, who had previously avoided direct confrontation with Trump over Greenland, have begun using firmer language as the dispute escalates.
EU leaders plan to address the crisis on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum, where they are seeking meetings with U.S. officials in an effort to de-escalate. Trump is expected to hold talks with several European leaders during the forum.
Reporter
Tim Zadorozhnyy is the reporter for the Kyiv Independent, specializing in foreign policy, U.S.-Ukraine relations, and political developments across Europe and Russia. Based in Warsaw, he is pursuing studies in International Relations and the European Studies program at Lazarski University, offered in partnership with Coventry University. Tim began his career at a local television channel in Odesa in 2022. After relocating to Warsaw, he spent a year and a half with the Belarusian independent media outlet NEXTA, initially as a news anchor and later as managing editor. Tim is fluent in English, Ukrainian, and Russian.
"I'm seeking immediate negotiations to once again discuss the acquisition of Greenland by the United States," U.S. President Donald Trump said.
"Focus in Ukraine should be our number one priority, and then we can discuss on all the issues, including Greenland," Rutte said. "But it should be Ukraine first, because it is crucial for our European and U.S. security."
Top Ukrainian energy worker Oleksii Brekht was killed while on the job, after reportedly being electrocuted at a substation.
The Kyiv Independent's Tim Zadorozhnyy speaks with U.S. Representative Don Bacon (R) about U.S. President Donald Trump's approach to ending Russia's war against Ukraine, arguing that appeasing Russia would only invite further aggression and calling on tougher sanctions on Moscow.
Shurma's brother Oleh, who co-owns KD Energy and Renewable Energy of Zaporizhzhia, was also charged, according to the NABU.
The Amber Dragon Ukraine Infrastructure Fund is the first dedicated to modernizing and rebuilding Ukraine's infrastructure.
"The Russians have invited us to come, and that's a significant statement from them," Witkoff said in an interview with Bloomberg TV in Davos on Jan. 21, amid a Washington-led push to broker peace between Kyiv and Moscow.
Klitschko's press service told the Kyiv Independent that the 600,000 number was calculated from mobile phone billing data.
Greenland must start preparing for the possibility of a military invasion, even though the scenario remains unlikely, the island's prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, said.
Eleven people were injured in an overnight attack in Russia's Republic of Adygea, while a separate drone strike sparked a fire at an oil refinery in neighboring Krasnodar Krai, local authorities and media reported Jan. 21.
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Jan. 20 that he has been unable to end Russia's war against Ukraine, claiming that neither side is consistently willing to agree to a deal at the same time.
U.S. President Donald Trump's envoys met with Russian President Vladimir Putin's envoy Kirill Dmitriev in Davos on Jan. 20 to discuss Washington's peace plan for Ukraine, with both sides describing the talks as constructive.
Prominent Ukrainian writer and translator Andriy Lyubka announced he has decided to mobilize and join the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Jan. 21 that Washington is seeking "immediate negotiations" to acquire Greenland, delivering the remarks at the World Economic Forum in Davos as tensions between the United States and its European allies continue to rise.
"It's the United States alone that can protect this giant mass of land, develop it and improve it, and make it so that it's good for Europe and safe for Europe and good for us," Trump said.
"That's the reason I'm seeking immediate negotiations to once again discuss the acquisition of Greenland by the United States... People thought I would use force. I don't have to use force."
Trump's appearance in Davos came as European leaders had planned to press the U.S. president on security guarantees for Ukraine, only for Greenland to unexpectedly dominate the agenda.
Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark and home to about 56,000 people, has grown in strategic importance as Arctic ice melts, opening new shipping routes and access to mineral resources.
Trump framed U.S. interest in Greenland as a protective measure rather than coercion, echoing arguments he has used to justify American claims over Venezuela's oil sector.
"This enormous unsecured island is actually part of North America, on the northern frontier of the Western Hemisphere. That's our territory," Trump said. "After the war, we gave Greenland back to Denmark. How stupid were we to do that? … How ungrateful are they now."
In what seems like a shift in stance, Trump said he would not try to acquire Greenland by force, adding that the "military is not on the table," though he had previously left that option open.
The U.S. president also made clear that he views the war in Ukraine primarily as a European responsibility, criticizing U.S. involvement and financial support.
"What does the U.S. get out of all of this work, all of this money, other than death, destruction, and massive amounts of cash going to people who don't appreciate what we do," he said, adding that Europe "has to work on Ukraine," while the U.S. is separated by "a big, beautiful ocean."
Trump also said he plans to meet President Volodymyr Zelensky in Davos, but Zelensky has said he will not attend, opting to remain in Ukraine amid Russia's strikes on energy infrastructure.
The transatlantic dispute intensified after Trump renewed calls for the United States to acquire Greenland, earlier hinting he could use military force. During his Davos speech, he also criticized Europe more broadly, saying it was "not heading in the right direction."
Trump said on Jan. 17 that the United States would impose 10% tariffs on NATO allies — France, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Germany, the U.K., the Netherlands, and Finland — until Washington secures a deal to buy Greenland, with the tariffs set to rise to 25% later this year.
The tariff threat followed the arrival of European troops from France, Germany, and other countries in Greenland for military exercises, fueling concerns in European capitals that Trump's rhetoric is expanding into economic pressure.
EU officials have since concluded that a coordinated response is necessary, with several options expected to be debated by leaders this week. European leaders, who had previously avoided direct confrontation with Trump over Greenland, have begun using firmer language as the dispute escalates.
EU leaders plan to address the crisis on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum, where they are seeking meetings with U.S. officials in an effort to de-escalate. Trump is expected to hold talks with several European leaders during the forum.
Reporter
Tim Zadorozhnyy is the reporter for the Kyiv Independent, specializing in foreign policy, U.S.-Ukraine relations, and political developments across Europe and Russia. Based in Warsaw, he is pursuing studies in International Relations and the European Studies program at Lazarski University, offered in partnership with Coventry University. Tim began his career at a local television channel in Odesa in 2022. After relocating to Warsaw, he spent a year and a half with the Belarusian independent media outlet NEXTA, initially as a news anchor and later as managing editor. Tim is fluent in English, Ukrainian, and Russian.
"I'm seeking immediate negotiations to once again discuss the acquisition of Greenland by the United States," U.S. President Donald Trump said.
"Focus in Ukraine should be our number one priority, and then we can discuss on all the issues, including Greenland," Rutte said. "But it should be Ukraine first, because it is crucial for our European and U.S. security."
Top Ukrainian energy worker Oleksii Brekht was killed while on the job, after reportedly being electrocuted at a substation.
The Kyiv Independent's Tim Zadorozhnyy speaks with U.S. Representative Don Bacon (R) about U.S. President Donald Trump's approach to ending Russia's war against Ukraine, arguing that appeasing Russia would only invite further aggression and calling on tougher sanctions on Moscow.
Shurma's brother Oleh, who co-owns KD Energy and Renewable Energy of Zaporizhzhia, was also charged, according to the NABU.
The Amber Dragon Ukraine Infrastructure Fund is the first dedicated to modernizing and rebuilding Ukraine's infrastructure.
"The Russians have invited us to come, and that's a significant statement from them," Witkoff said in an interview with Bloomberg TV in Davos on Jan. 21, amid a Washington-led push to broker peace between Kyiv and Moscow.
Klitschko's press service told the Kyiv Independent that the 600,000 number was calculated from mobile phone billing data.
Greenland must start preparing for the possibility of a military invasion, even though the scenario remains unlikely, the island's prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, said.
Eleven people were injured in an overnight attack in Russia's Republic of Adygea, while a separate drone strike sparked a fire at an oil refinery in neighboring Krasnodar Krai, local authorities and media reported Jan. 21.
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Jan. 20 that he has been unable to end Russia's war against Ukraine, claiming that neither side is consistently willing to agree to a deal at the same time.
U.S. President Donald Trump's envoys met with Russian President Vladimir Putin's envoy Kirill Dmitriev in Davos on Jan. 20 to discuss Washington's peace plan for Ukraine, with both sides describing the talks as constructive.
Prominent Ukrainian writer and translator Andriy Lyubka announced he has decided to mobilize and join the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
To tie ourselves to the worst excesses of the Trump regime would be an act of national sabotage
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Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orbán, Donald Trump.
Australia's accession to the US president's self-titled “board of peace”, always unlikely, appears now an impossibility, analysts argue.
Australia could not, in any conscience, acquiesce to joining a group that could include the names above, autocrats and despots convinced that might is right, that violence is legitimate, and that they exist beyond the reach of the law.
There is no benefit to Australia to joining, there is no influence it could seriously hope to hold. There is only risk in being, rightly, held accountable for whatever misadventure and chaos the “Greatest and Most Prestigious Board ever assembled” unleashes on the world.
Trump has extended an invitation to join his board of peace to a Russian president actively waging war on a neighbouring country. Even as he panhandles for peace board members, Trump is threatening to invade a Nato ally to seize Greenland, and telling Norway that, because he didn't win the Nobel, he no longer feels an obligation “to think purely of Peace”.
The inclusion of property developers, and no representative from Gaza itself, speaks volumes about the board's disposition and intent. This is no board of peace, rather a cartel of self-interest.
Few voices in Australia have rushed to extol the board's merits. But few too, perhaps cautious of Trump's growing bellicosity, have condemned it out of hand.
Most elected representatives have been circumspect in their language.
The deputy prime minister, Richard Marles, said Australia “welcomes” the invitation, which is under active consideration by the government: “we will talk that through with America to understand what this means and what is involved”. The opposition wants to know more “about the objectives, structure, membership and implications” before making any commitment.
But the Greens' defence spokesperson, David Shoebridge, accused Trump of “trying to sell Palestinian sovereignty for US$1bn per seat while Palestinians are still being bombed and starved under the so-called ‘ceasefire'”.
The retired, too, have been more unconstrained. Former senator and Labor powerbroker Doug Cameron argued on X that Trump's proposal should be rejected.
“We should work with and support the UN, not … autocrats and Trump sycophants. Big test for our sovereignty, leadership, and dignity. Time to show some backbone.”
Diplomatic sources in Australia, speaking anonymously, say officials have been speaking with counterparts in like-minded liberal democracies about how best to respond to Trump's proposal.
One told the Guardian it was “inconceivable” Australia would join the board of peace, while others argued coordinating a polite declination with other nations – without giving the appearance of collusion – was vital to ensure Australia was not isolated in the view of the US president.
Ben Saul, the Challis Chair of International Law at the University of Sydney, said, “it's shaping up to be the kind of body or the kind of company that Australia would absolutely not wish to keep”.
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“I think it would be a serious mistake for Australia to join an organisation like this, which doesn't have the kinds of safeguards for international law and which would frankly not be in Australia's national interest.
“I think it's unfortunate that Australia has been very weak on pushing back against US violations of international law under Trump over the last year. We've been absolutely in appeasement mode, trying to keep the security alliance afloat, trying to dodge punitive economic penalties, such as tariffs. All of which is understandable, but at the same time, around us, the international order is collapsing.”
Nations are free to choose to sign up to unchecked US domination, Saul said, but the true nature of Trump's board of peace should not be misunderstood.
“It's not genuine multilateralism, it's the US trying to legitimise the exercise of US superpower and trying to get others on board.”
Australia has tied itself to US adventurism before, with catastrophic results. That Tony Blair, a key architect of the calamitous war in Iraq launched on specious intelligence, has accepted a position on the board of peace executive board, further underlines its absurdity.
The price of peace, it appears, has been set at US$1bn, for a permanent seat on Trump's board, but always under his dominion and total control.
The board of peace was formally authorised to oversee Gaza's postwar transition by a UN security council resolution in November. But its charter, now public, makes no mention of Gaza at all, instead granting the board a broad, nebulous remit of seeking “enduring peace in areas affected or threatened by conflict”.
Australia, as a middle-sized, trade-dependent, island continent, has benefited enormously from the so-called international rules-based order of the post-second world war world (imperfect and malleable though that order has always been).
The peace and prosperity of the last seven decades have been underpinned by an espoused commitment to rules.
To acquiesce to the board of peace would be to abandon the predictability and balance of a rules-based order for a realist fistfight: where powerful countries would bully, coerce, threaten and, if necessary, extinguish, those weaker. Australia would suffer.
By joining the board, Australia would be committing itself to the very worst excesses of the Trump regime: ours would be the invasion of other countries, the plundering of foreign resources, the extortion of allies.
For Australia to tie itself to the board of peace would be a disastrous act of national sabotage, the last semblance of an independent foreign policy abandoned for the hope of a fleeting nod of approval from a vain, volatile ersatz emperor.
Kissinger's aphorism is often misunderstood. But it has, perhaps, never have felt more accurate.
Kissinger meant to make the opposite point, to argue that America should act in a way that showed it could be trusted. But he revealed much when he said feared an inconsistent America would be seen as capricious and feckless ally, that the world might come to believe: “it may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal”.
NEW YORK, January 21. /TASS/. US Presidential Special Envoy Steve Witkoff said in an interview with CNBC that he hopes to meet with Russian leader Vladimir Putin on January 22. Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed to TASS that the event is on the president's schedule.
TASS has compiled the main information available at this point.
- Witkoff, in an interview with Bloomberg TV from Davos, said that he will travel to Moscow on Thursday evening with entrepreneur Jared Kushner.
- The US special presidential envoy said in an interview with CNBC that he hopes to meet with Putin on January 22.
- Peskov confirmed the meeting is on Putin's schedule.
- US representatives plan to meet with the Ukrainian delegation on Wednesday evening, Witkoff said.
- Great progress has been made recently to resolve the situation in Ukraine, Witkoff said.
Passive investors in U.S. benchmarks, including index funds and ETFs, are expected to acquire between 10 and 15 per cent of GLF's public float, or 35 to 50 million of the company's shares, according to a source.Cole Burston/The Globe and Mail
Waste disposal giant GFL Environmental Inc. GFL-T is moving its head office from a suburb of Toronto to Miami Beach to win a greater following from index funds, the latest Canadian company relocating to the United States to build its investor following.
Vaughan, Ont.-based GFL has announced it will shift its headquarters to Florida but remain incorporated in Ontario. The move has minimal implications for the company's operations, with approximately a dozen employees shifting their base to Miami.
The decision means GFL continues to qualify for membership in domestic stock benchmarks, such as the S&P/TSX Composite Index, while gaining eligibility for widely-followed American standards such as the Russell index family.
Passive investors in U.S. benchmarks, including index funds and exchange traded funds (ETFs), are expected to acquire between 10 and 15 per cent of GFL's public float, or 35 to 50 million of the company's shares, as the company joins U.S. stock benchmarks, according to sources familiar with the relocation strategy.
The most oversold and overbought stocks on the TSX
The Globe and Mail is not naming the sources because they are not permitted to speak for the company.
“The relocation of our executive headquarters broadens our eligibility for participation in U.S. equity indices while preserving our eligibility for inclusion in Canadian equity indices,” GFL founder and chief executive officer Patrick Dovigi said in a news release.
Mr. Dovigi has a residence in Miami, along with a home in Toronto.
GFL's CEO said a U.S. head office will also help the company recruit and win more business from American clients, including municipal governments.
“The United States has grown to represent over two thirds of our revenue, more than half of which is generated in the fast-growing southeastern region,” Mr. Dovigi said.
“The relocation aligns with our expanding presence in this attractive market and is expected to improve our ability to attract highly-skilled talent,” he said.
GFL is North America's fourth-largest waste disposal company, with 15,000 employees across Canada and 18 states. The company has grown through a series of acquisitions and has a $21-billion market capitalization.
GFL is larger than several companies in the S&P/TSX 60 Index, which is Canada's benchmark for large-cap stocks. New York-based S&P Dow Jones Indices, which runs the S&P/TSX indexes, has left GFL out of the S&P/TSX 60.
In Tuesday's news release, GFL said: “Relocation will not impact GFL's eligibility for inclusion in Canadian indices, including the TSX 60.”
Rival Waste Connections Inc., based in Woodbridge, Ont., is a member of the S&P/TSX 60. The company has a $59-billion market capitalization.
Toronto Stock Exchange-listed Brookfield Asset Management Ltd. and RB Global Inc. (formerly known as Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers) have made similar moves, in part to attract a larger investor following. Brookfield moved its headquarters to New York while RB Global executives are based in Chicago.
Last March, New York-based S&P Dow Jones Indices, which runs the S&P/TSX indexes, loosened the rules around inclusion to allow domestic companies to remain in the Canadian benchmark after moving their head office to another country.
Institutional investors in Vancouver-based Teck Resources Ltd. and suitor Anglo American PLC are putting pressure on S&P Dow Jones to keep the new mining company in Canadian equity indexes when their merger closes. The combined company will have its head office in British Columbia, but will be incorporated in England. Teck's merger with Anglo is expected to close later this year.
S&P Dow Jones Indices' methodology is opaque on selecting companies for benchmarks such as the S&P/TSX 60. Membership in Russell indexes, which are owned by London Stock Exchange Group PLC, is based on publicly disclosed criteria.
GFL has two significant shareholders, London-based private equity fund BC Partners and the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, which acquired stakes in the company in 2018 as part of a recapitalization.
Expanding GFL's American shareholder base to include more passive and active investors will make it easier for BC Partners and Ontario Teachers' to sell their holdings.
Tech founders leaving Canada at accelerating rate, survey finds
GFL's large shareholders also include U.S. funds such as those run by Boston-based Fidelity Investments, Los Angeles-based Capital Group and Philadelphia-based Vanguard Group, all of which would support a larger American investor following at the company.
Mr. Dovigi, a native of Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., who was drafted as a goalie by the Edmonton Oilers, founded GFL in 2007. The company has moved from picking up garbage with a fleet of bright green trucks into recycling, soil remediation and other environmental services.
In September, 2024, the company faced a campaign of violence that included shots fired at Mr. Dovigi's home – he was away at the time – and arson at GFL facilities.
Last January, GFL sold a majority stake in its environmental services division to private equity funds Apollo Global Management and BC Partners for $6.2-billion.
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In a speech on Tuesday, Prime Minister Mark Carney told the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, 'The old order is not coming back.'Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
Prime Minister Mark Carney is heading home Wednesday from a global gathering of political and business elites in Switzerland without meeting Donald Trump after delivering a major speech that blamed the U.S. President, without naming him, for rupturing the rules-based international order.
His office, speaking at 5:30 a.m. ET, said that at that time there were no plans for Mr. Carney to speak to Mr. Trump on Wednesday.
Mr. Carney left Davos for Zurich at approximately 8 a.m. ET, his office said – about the same time Mr. Trump arrived. The U.S. President delivered his own address to the gathering at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Live: Trump delivers speech at Davos amid global uproar over U.S. threats to annex Greenland
Mr. Carney is getting ready for a cabinet retreat in Quebec City rather than remaining at the World Economic Forum in the wake of his much-celebrated Tuesday speech, which called for middle powers to stop pretending the rules-based international order is still functioning, and instead build coalitions to survive in a new era where great powers prey on smaller countries to take what they want.
Mr. Carney urged countries to start publicly condemning economic coercion, even when practised by an ally, in another clear reference to the United States.
“The old order is not coming back,” he said.
Prime Minister Mark Carney gave a speech at the World Economic Forum that blamed U.S. President Donald Trump, without naming him, for what Carney described as a rupture in global relations.
The Prime Minister's speech on Tuesday, for which he received a standing ovation, came days after an extraordinary threat by Mr. Trump to impose tariffs on European allies and Britain until Washington is allowed to acquire Greenland for strategic purposes.
Mr. Trump, in his Davos speech Wednesday, described Mr. Carney's speech as ungrateful toward the United States.
“Canada gets a lot of freebies from us, by the way. They should be grateful. But they're not,” Mr. Trump said. “I watched your Prime Minister yesterday, he wasn't so grateful. They should be grateful.”
He said Canada only exists because of the United States.
“Canada lives because of the United States. Remember that, Mark, the next time you make your statements.”
Trump repeated demands for control over Greenland in a speech at Davos, which also included a swipe at Prime Minister Mark Carney and the comment that, 'Canada lives because of the United States.'
International Trade Minister Maninder Sidhu, talking to reporters, defended the Canadian delegation's decision to head home without any plans to meet Mr. Trump.
“Parliament's resuming on Monday. We have our cabinet retreat, and there's things that we've got to take care of for Canadians,” Mr. Sidhu said. “I think what we wanted to do here in Davos, we accomplished that.”
Mr. Carney met with Apple CEO Tim Cook, executives from Indian holding company Tata Sons, drug company Roche Holding's vice-chairman André Hoffmann, Norway's Equinor energy company, and Swedish banker and industrialist Marcus Wallenberg, among others.
Opinion: Carney calls for resistance in a world of ravenous powers
The Prime Minister is a veteran of the World Economic Forum. His office said he has attended about 30 times.
Asked why Mr. Carney would not remain in Davos to have a chat with Mr. Trump, Mr. Sidhu said the focus right now is trade diversification to a multitude of markets. More than 75 per cent of Canadian exports traditionally flow to the U.S.
Ottawa and Washington are preparing for a review of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement that is expected to lead to U.S. demands for renegotiation of some chapters. Numerous hefty U.S. tariffs are still hurting Canadian industries, from steel to autos.
After resetting damaged relations with China last week, Mr. Carney is soon headed to India to repair ties that ruptured in 2023 after former prime minister Justin Trudeau accused New Delhi of being behind the slaying of a Canadian Sikh activist, Hardeep Singh Nijjar.
Mr. Sidhu said negotiations for a trade deal with India will launch in February. “India's year-over-year growth is about 7 per cent, so they need food; they need energy. We have that,” he said.
Robyn Urback: On our sovereignty, Canada must assume Trump will pursue the riskiest, dumbest path possible
“When you talk about the Americans, they'll always remain important to Canada. Our geography is not going to change,” he said. “But you look at who else we want to deal with: China is our second-largest trading partner. India is going to be the third-largest economy,” Mr. Sidhu said. “We're looking across the world for areas of opportunity.”
After Mr. Nijjar's murder, Canada-India relations were further fractured in October, 2024, when the RCMP announced they had clear evidence that Indian government agents had been linked to homicides, extortions and other violent criminal activities in Canada. Ottawa followed up by expelling India's high commissioner and five other diplomats.
Canadian authorities continue to investigate alleged transnational repression targeting Sikh activists domestically, with four Indian nationals now facing charges in the Nijjar case.
Asked why Canada is warming up to India despite the alleged wrongdoings, Mr. Sidhu repeated Mr. Carney's recent rationale. “The Prime Minister has been clear: We want to see the world as it is, not as we wish it to be,” he said. “At the end of the day, we need to find opportunities for Canadians.”
Several European countries have sent troops to Greenland in recent days, saying they are there for Arctic security training, but U.S. President Donald Trump downplayed that development. 'They sent a few people and they say they sent them not for me, but for me to guard against Russia,' he told reporters.
The Associated Press
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Advances in hypersonic missile technology have left a glaring gap in the West's defences, and nobody but the US can fill it
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Europe and the US are in a full on dogfight over Greenland. Donald Trump's late-night Truth Social posts, lambasting America's European allies for their stance on the issue, prompted Emmanuel Macron to hit back against Washington in pointed terms: “We do prefer respect to bullies”. The US president's earlier threats to impose tariffs to force the purchase of the semi-autonomous island received a similarly frosty reaction, including a rebuke from Jens-Frederik Nielsen, Greenland's prime minister. Even Britain's Sir Keir Starmer, careful with his words, condemned the tactic.
It remains to be seen whether the EU will follow through with its threat to retaliate using a trade “bazooka” – a €93bn (£81bn) tariff package against the US and to curb American companies' access to the European markets. But Danish officials are believed to be boycotting the 2026 Davos summit, where Trump is speaking on Wednesday. And Greenland's dog sled federation disinvited Trump's envoy from attending its annual race, after the president ridiculed Denmark for relying on “two dog sleds” to defend the Arctic island.
Amid the fire and fury, few seem to be asking whether Trump's rationale for acquiring Greenland stacks up. It is easier to dismiss him as a megalomaniac driven by imperial ambitions. But there is, in fact, a strong case for his approach, one driven by rapid advances in military technology. His push to acquire the world's biggest island is indeed motivated primarily by security – America's, Europe's and Greenland's. Here's why.
Few would disagree that Greenland's geographic reality makes it indispensable for the defence of Europe and the US. While Greenland is already incorporated in the US and Europe's security strategy, however, the emergence of novel technologies, such as hypersonic weapons, has exposed glaring gaps in the United States' early warning security architecture, making the country vulnerable to attacks from third powers, such as Russia and China. Trump wants to close these strategic vulnerabilities but believes it can only be done if the US has full control of Greenland.
Eighty per cent of Greenland lies north of the Arctic Circle, 700-740 kilometres from the North Pole, which serves as the most direct and fastest route for a missile attack on the US from Eurasia, home to the top three US adversaries – Russia, China, and North Korea. An attack over the North Pole is believed to have been part of Russia's war planning since the late 1940s, as it provides the shortest flight path for nuclear bombers and intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) to key targets in the US. This is partly why, since the Second World War, the US has operated a military base in Greenland, monitoring anything that could be flying from Russia.
But the ageing North Early Warning System is inadequate to the task of detecting and warning against adversaries' force posture changes in the Arctic. Designed to alert US military commanders to incoming nuclear strikes, it is likely to be insufficient for detecting advanced weapons, such as hypersonic missiles, and warheads flying at low altitudes, such as Hypersonic Glide Vehicles and drones.
Any missile flying over the North Pole already presents a greater than normal threat due to the shorter distance it has to cover to reach its target, leaving less time for the US to react. Russia's deployment of hypersonic missiles, the Oreshnik and the Kinzhal, both of which have been used in Ukraine, makes the level of threat unacceptably high.
Flying at hypersonic speeds of up to Mach 11 (11 times the speed of sound), many times faster than ordinary ballistic missiles and cruise missiles, there are concerns that the Oreshnik is nearly impossible to defend against. Detecting the missile, characterising it, and tracking it – all prerequisites for shooting one down – may also be difficult. Besides, even if such a missile were to be intercepted, Greenland is right in the firing line.
In an ICBM attack scenario, a US president normally has five to eight minutes to react, which includes receiving a briefing, reviewing the response options, and making a decision on how to react. In a hypersonic scenario, he may have considerably less time than that, which may well explain Trump's sense of urgency about taking possession of the island.
Trump is not the first US president to attempt to incorporate Greenland into the US defence strategy. But he is the first one who has done so in this new context. He also has an actual strategy, which he is methodically implementing.
During his first term, Trump established a new branch of the US military, the US space force, for which he was mocked by many. The space force is now operating at the Pituffik base in Greenland. Trump did this because he understood that space is the next frontier of any future armed conflict, and that both Russia and China are gearing up for space warfare. Russia established its Space Troops in 2001, almost 19 years before the US did. Preserving American space superiority is essential to safeguarding US national security.
Every aspect of US war-fighting doctrine is reliant on space – command and control, target acquisition, communications among the troops, synchronising operations – so Russia and China plan to disrupt or destroy our satellites in wartime or in the run-up to a conflict. Both have expanded their military presence in the Arctic, with Russia already having more military bases in the Arctic than the US and Nato combined.
To deter Moscow and Beijing from disabling or disrupting our war-fighters' “kill chain” – which if they succeed would prevent our weapons from reaching their targets – Trump gave a greenlight for space force to engage in previously unauthorised offensive counterspace operations. The US is believed to be significantly increasing its inventory of defensive and offensive counter-space weapon systems. Some of these assets could target Moscow's and Beijing's spacecraft.
Many space force operations, aimed at safeguarding US and Europe's security, are conducted out of Greenland. At Pituffik, the 12th space warning squadron operates a massive “upgraded early warning radar”. It continuously scans the horizon and the sky and monitors outer space, tracking satellites and spacecraft in orbit around the Earth. The radar provides 24/7 coverage, every day of the year, at ranges exceeding 4,000 kilometres, feeding data to the North American aerospace defence command centre in Colorado Springs, for threat assessment and response coordination. It is why, last June, Trump shifted military responsibility for Greenland from the US European command (EUCOM) to the US northern command (NORTHCOM), which is responsible for protecting North America from missile strikes.
A 23 space operations squadron detachment, located a few miles south of the Pituffik base, operates a remote tracking station, as part of the satellite control network. Several 14- and 12-metre dishes make contact with polar-orbiting satellites 10 to 12 times a day. All of these operations are highly sensitive, requiring a special military unit, the 821st security forces squadron, dubbed the “Arctic wolves”, to provide Pituffik's internal security and perimeter defence. However, these units are likely to be optimised for ground defence against terrorists and special forces. These strategic assets may well be exposed to attacks by hypersonic missiles.
Trump appears to want to have control over Greenland so he doesn't have to depend on Danish or local authorities when improving the security of US strategic assets on the island and mitigating the gaps in early warning systems. This is likely to require the broadening of Pituffik's mission and the potential expansion of the US military presence in Greenland. Some argue that this is unnecessary, because Denmark is already supposedly willing to allow the US to increase its military presence on the island. But Trump seems to have judged that it is unacceptable to leave such critical capabilities subject to the whim of another country, even a close Nato ally.
Moreover, the US will be unable to discuss the details of the space force's operations and intelligence on certain countries' space activities because they are highly classified. During my service at the US defence intelligence agency, I briefed multiple heads of US combatant commands and some threat briefings could not be attended even by their deputies because they were not authorised to receive the intelligence.
The best course of action for Europe now would be to trust Trump's geostrategic and geopolitical instincts, and make a deal. Given that Greenland's GDP is only $3.3bn (£2.4bn) and a figure of $700bn (£521bn) for any purchase has been mooted, rejecting Trump's offer may not just be financially foolish. As the Russia-China threat looms in the Arctic, it could prove suicidal.
Rebekah Koffler is a strategic military intelligence analyst, formerly with the US defence intelligence agency. She is the author of ‘Putin's playbook: Russia's secret plan to defeat America', Regnery 2021, in which she predicted Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Her ‘Daily intelligence brief' is running on her podcast Censored but not silenced and is available on most social media platforms @Rebekah0132
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WASHINGTON, January 21. /TASS/. A plane carrying US President Donald Trump has departed for Zurich after landing at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington, the AFP news agency reported.
According to the White House press pool, the US leader transferred to a smaller aircraft. The decision to return to Andrews Air Force Base was made after malfunctions were identified in the onboard electrical systems.
Trump is set to participate in the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Trump's plane forced to turn around mid-air ‘out of an abundance of caution' while en route to Swiss conference
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Donald Trump will arrive in Davos three hours later than planned after he was forced to return to Washington because of electrical issues on Air Force One.
The US president, who was on his way to the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, turned around shortly after departure “out of an abundance of caution”, according to Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary.
Lights in the cabin were flickering on and off, according to reporters on board the plane, which performed a sharp about-turn over the Atlantic Ocean near Montauk, New York.
No explanation was given for what caused the “minor electrical issue”.
Mr Trump landed safely back at Joint Base Andrews in Washington and switched to a Boeing C-32A, which is primarily used to transport JD Vance, the vice-president.
He took off again just after midnight local time (5am GMT).
Mr Trump is en route to Switzerland, where he will meet world leaders amid strained relations with European allies.
His plane will arrive in Zurich, and he will then travel by helicopter to Davos.
He is scheduled to give an address at 1.30pm GMT but this is likely to be delayed following the electrical issue.
Scott Bessent, the US treasury secretary, said he expected the president to be around three hours late.
On board the flight were senior members of the Trump administration, including Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, Susie Wiles, the chief of staff, Stephen Miller, a senior adviser, Stephen Chung, the communications director, Monica Crowley, the chief of protocol, and Ms Leavitt.
Speaking to journalists on board, Ms Leavitt referred to Mr Trump's controversial agreement to accept a luxury jet from Qatar to serve as Air Force One, remarking that the new aircraft sounded “much better” in light of the electrical problem.
Technical problems with the jet are infrequent because it is meticulously maintained.
However, during a visit to the UK in September, Mr Trump and his wife, Melania, were forced to board a support helicopter after the one they were flying in suffered a hydraulic fault and was forced to land at a local airfield.
This delayed the couple arriving at Stansted airport before they boarded Air Force One to return to the US at the end of their visit.
Mr Trump's visit to Davos comes amid escalating tensions with European allies over the president's plan to take control of Greenland.
On Saturday, he revealed plans to impose a 10 per cent tax on all goods imported to the US from the UK, starting on Feb 1.
The levy, which will also be imposed on seven other European countries, will rise to 25 per cent on June 1 unless they agree to let him take over Greenland, a self-governing territory of Denmark.
Asked during a press conference on Tuesday how far he was willing to go to secure Greenland, Mr Trump told reporters: “You'll find out.”
Asked whether the potential breakup of Nato was a price he was prepared to pay for the territory, the US president replied: “Something's going to happen that's going to be very good for everybody”.
Greenland and Denmark have insisted the territory is not for sale.
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TOKYO, January 21. /TASS/. Japan's Nara District Court found Tetsuya Yamagami guilty of killing ex-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe with a homemade gun in July 2022 and sentenced him to life in prison.
Yamagami's defense has requested a 20-year prison sentence for the man, who pleaded guilty to premeditated murder and violating gun control laws.
His lawyers insisted that he committed the murder under stress from his family situation, caused by his mother allegiance to a religious group widely known as the Unification Church.
In July 2022, Tetsuya Yamagami shot former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in the back as he spoke at an election rally on a street in the city of Nara, southwest of Japan's main island of Honshu. The shooter was captured and arrested by the murdered politician's guards at the scene.
The gunman explained that he had targeted the ex-prime minister because he was certain about his ties with the Unification Church, a religious group that the man blamed for his family's troubles. Yamagami's mother poured all her assets into this religious organization, which resulted in the family's bankruptcy.
Subsequent investigation showed that many politicians, including members of Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party and opposition groups, had ties with this religious institution. In spring 2025, the Tokyo District Court ordered the church to be dissolved.
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Jan. 20 that he has been unable to end Russia's war against Ukraine, claiming that neither side is consistently willing to agree to a deal at the same time.
He said he is trying to end what he described as the “last conflict,” but has not yet succeeded.
"I'm trying to resolve the issue of Russia and Ukraine. And when Russia is ready - Ukraine is not ready. When Ukraine is ready - Russia is not ready,” he said at the White House.
"But on average, they lose 25,000 people a month. And I'm trying to bring this matter to an end," he added.
Just last week, Trump claimed that Russia was "ready to make a deal," while asserting that "Ukraine is less ready to make a deal." However, contrary to those statements, Kyiv has agreed to several U.S.-backed peace proposals and has been open to major concessions, including holding off on NATO membership in exchange for strong security guarantees.
Meanwhile, Russia has not agreed to any peace plans and continues to wage the war it launched nearly four years ago while pursuing its maximalist demands.
Trump also argued that he has already ended eight wars during his presidency, saying he did so because “it comes easy” to him and not in pursuit of a Nobel Peace Prize.
His latest comments come days after Venezuelan opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Corina Machado presented Trump with her Nobel Peace Prize medal during a White House meeting on Jan. 16—a largely symbolic gesture, as the Nobel committee does not allow the award to be officially transferred or shared.
North American news editor
Sonya Bandouil is a North American news editor for The Kyiv Independent. She previously worked in the fields of cybersecurity and translating, and she also edited for various journals in NYC.
Sonya has a Master's degree in Global Affairs from New York University, and a Bachelor's degree in Music from the University of Houston, in Texas.
"I'm seeking immediate negotiations to once again discuss the acquisition of Greenland by the United States," U.S. President Donald Trump said.
"Focus in Ukraine should be our number one priority, and then we can discuss on all the issues, including Greenland," Rutte said. "But it should be Ukraine first, because it is crucial for our European and U.S. security."
Top Ukrainian energy worker Oleksii Brekht was killed while on the job, after reportedly being electrocuted at a substation.
The Kyiv Independent's Tim Zadorozhnyy speaks with U.S. Representative Don Bacon (R) about U.S. President Donald Trump's approach to ending Russia's war against Ukraine, arguing that appeasing Russia would only invite further aggression and calling on tougher sanctions on Moscow.
Shurma's brother Oleh, who co-owns KD Energy and Renewable Energy of Zaporizhzhia, was also charged, according to the NABU.
The Amber Dragon Ukraine Infrastructure Fund is the first dedicated to modernizing and rebuilding Ukraine's infrastructure.
"The Russians have invited us to come, and that's a significant statement from them," Witkoff said in an interview with Bloomberg TV in Davos on Jan. 21, amid a Washington-led push to broker peace between Kyiv and Moscow.
Klitschko's press service told the Kyiv Independent that the 600,000 number was calculated from mobile phone billing data.
Greenland must start preparing for the possibility of a military invasion, even though the scenario remains unlikely, the island's prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, said.
Eleven people were injured in an overnight attack in Russia's Republic of Adygea, while a separate drone strike sparked a fire at an oil refinery in neighboring Krasnodar Krai, local authorities and media reported Jan. 21.
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Jan. 20 that he has been unable to end Russia's war against Ukraine, claiming that neither side is consistently willing to agree to a deal at the same time.
U.S. President Donald Trump's envoys met with Russian President Vladimir Putin's envoy Kirill Dmitriev in Davos on Jan. 20 to discuss Washington's peace plan for Ukraine, with both sides describing the talks as constructive.
Prominent Ukrainian writer and translator Andriy Lyubka announced he has decided to mobilize and join the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
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Trump's attempt to bully the Federal Reserve got an icy reception from the justices.
The Supreme Court's Republican majority ordinarily believe that President Donald Trump is allowed to fire virtually anyone who works for a federal agency. Last July, for example, they permitted the Trump administration to fire nearly half of the Department of Education's employees.
In May, however, the Court also signaled that the Federal Reserve is special. In Trump v. Wilcox (2025), the Court indicated that Trump may not fire the Fed's leaders because that agency is a “uniquely structured, quasi-private entity that follows in the distinct historical tradition of the First and Second Banks of the United States.”
Get the latest developments on the US Supreme Court from senior correspondent Ian Millhiser.
It is not at all clear what this cryptic sentence means, but at Wednesday morning's oral argument in Trump v. Cook, most of the justices signaled that they will adhere to the view that they laid out in Wilcox. Six justices — the three Democrats plus Chief Justice Roberts, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and Justice Amy Coney Barrett — appeared very likely to reject Trump's attempt to seize control of the Federal Reserve. Meanwhile, even Justice Samuel Alito, who is ordinarily a kneejerk Republican partisan, asked some skeptical questions of Trump's lawyer.
The Federal Reserve is supposed to make technocratic decisions about where to set interest rates. If they set those rates too high, it will be too expensive for businesses to borrow money and investment and hiring will stagnate. At the same time, if they set rates too low, the economy will take off in the short term, but will experience much more damaging inflation in the long term.
The Fed, in other words, has the power to inject cocaine into the economy — giving it a temporary high at the price of much greater economic pain down the road.
For this reason, Congress shields the Fed's governors from presidential control, only permitting the president to fire them “for cause.” This is to prevent the president from pressuring them to lower interest rates in an election year, when the president's party would benefit from a temporary economic high.
The Cook case, meanwhile, appears to involve Trump's attempt to bypass this law by making up a fake reason to fire a Fed governor. And, if Trump prevails in Cook, his administration has already signaled that it will bring similarly dubious allegations against Fed chair Jerome Powell.
Last August, Trump attempted to fire Lisa Cook, a Biden appointee to the Fed's Board of Governors, claiming that she falsely claimed on a mortgage application that “both a property in Michigan and a property in Georgia would simultaneously serve as her principal residence.” But Trump has yet to provide any meaningful evidence that supports this allegation, and he never gave Cook a hearing where she could explain this alleged falsehood.
According to a Reuters report from last September, moreover, these allegations appear to be fabricated. While Cook does appear to have signed a document indicating that she would use the Atlanta property as a primary residence, that document states that the bank may agree in writing that the property may be used for something else. And, in a separate document, Cook told the lender that the property would be used as a “vacation home.”
Cook's lawyer, Paul Clement, told the justices on Wednesday that, “at most,” any discrepancies in Cook's mortgage documents are inadvertent.
Right out of the gate, several key justices appeared skeptical that a minor discrepancy on mortgage documents could justify Trump's decision to fire Cook. As anyone who has ever obtained a mortgage can testify, the process requires the borrower to sign a huge pile of documents, many of which are drafted by the government, with little time to review them or to ask for them to be changed — even if such a change can be made.
Thus Chief Justice John Roberts told solicitor general John Sauer early in the argument that “we can debate…how significant it is that, in a stack of papers you have to fill out when you're buying real estate,” one of those papers contains an inaccurate representation. Roberts also expressed skepticism of Sauer's claim that Cook engaged in “deceit,” asking whether it is really fair to apply this word to “an inadvertent mistake contradicted by other documents in the record.”
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, meanwhile, warned Sauer that, if the president can fire a Fed governor because they discover what is at most a minor paperwork error, then that will destroy the Federal Reserve's independence. In such a world, presidents will engage in a “search and destroy” operation, combing through the records of every Fed governor they disagree with in order to find a pretext to justify firing them.
Meanwhile, Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked an even more basic question: “Why are you afraid of a hearing?” If Trump is so confident that Cook actually did something wrong, why wouldn't he give her notice of the allegations against her and an opportunity to defend herself before he tries to fire her?
Of all the justices, only Gorsuch seemed to offer a coherent reason to rule in favor of Trump — Gorsuch suggested that Cook may only challenge Trump's decision to fire her by seeking a rarely used court order known as a “writ of mandamus.” It is nearly impossible to win a mandamus case, and Sauer argued that mandamus may never be used against the president. So Gorsuch's approach would likely amount to a total victory for Trump.
Though most of the justices appeared skeptical of Trump's arguments in Cook, many of them also were frustrated by several difficult issues lurking within this case. If Cook is entitled to a hearing, what should that hearing look like? What exactly does it mean to fire someone “for cause?” And should courts look to other federal statutes, to legislative history, to the English common law, or to some combination of the three to find the answers to these questions?
Indeed, these questions are so vexing that some of the justices, including Barrett and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, suggested that the Court might avoid deciding them until the lower courts have more time to consider this case.
Although the Court decided to hold an oral argument in Cook, the case technically arose on the Court's “shadow docket,” a mix of emergency motions and other matters that the justices typically decide without oral argument or even without explaining their decision. After a lower court ruled that Trump may not fire Cook, Trump asked the Supreme Court to issue a temporary emergency order removing her from office.
But when a party seeks such an order, the Supreme Court said in Nken v. Holder (2009), they must do more than show that they are likely to prevail in the case. Among other things, they must also show that they will be “irreparably injured” if the Supreme Court does not intervene right away. They also must show that an immediate order would not harm the “public interest.”
Although the Court's Republicans appear to have exempted Trump from having to comply with Nken in the past, Barrett, a Republican appointed by Trump, asked Sauer about an amicus brief filed by economists who argued that allowing Trump to fire Cook would trigger a recession. A recession, as Barrett suggested, would not be in the public interest. She also asked Clement to provide his best argument that Trump will not experience irreparable harm if Cook gets to remain on the Fed's board while this case is fully litigated in lower courts.
Barrett, in other words, appeared to be looking for a way to reject Trump's emergency request without having to decide any of the harder questions this case presents.
Not all of the justices, however, appeared to believe that such a narrow decision would be desirable. Roberts, in particular, expressed doubt that there would be any point to giving Cook an additional hearing, because there aren't really many factual disagreements to be explored here. Cook will simply claim in such a hearing that she, at most, made an inadvertent mistake.
So Roberts seemed to believe that the Court should just decide, as a legal matter, whether such a mistake is sufficient grounds to fire her.
Other justices appeared exasperated that they were being asked to decide this case so quickly and with so little evidence in the record. Alito, for example, complained that this case came up to the Supreme Court in such a “hurried manner” that Cook's mortgage applications aren't even part of the official record before his Court.
All of which is a long way of saying that it is far from clear what the Cook opinion will say, or even if it will say anything more than “we'll decide this case at some point in the future.”
But even such a narrow order would be good news for Cook in the short term, because a lower court order keeping her in office remains in effect. A Supreme Court ruling against Trump might also dissuade Trump from continuing to target Powell. And it does appear that, whenever they get around to deciding Cook, most of the justices do not think that Trump should be able to order Fed governors to lower interest rates or else they will be fired.
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Video shows what may be footage of an individual breaking into a case in the world-famous Louvre Museum in Paris, France. Thieves stole several valuable items during the brazen daylight heist. (Credit: BFMTV)
A crown jewel of Paris, the Louvre Museum, shut its doors to tourists visiting from all over the world on Monday.
The closure came amid a prolonged employee strike that has been going on since last summer, with a major heist in October further exacerbating the situation.
"Dear visitors, due to a social movement, the Louvre Museum is exceptionally closed today," the museum posted on its site.
LOUVRE HEIST IN BROAD DAYLIGHT AMID APPARENT SECURITY LAPSES PUTS GLOBAL MUSEUMS ON ALERT
"Visitors who have booked tickets for today will be automatically refunded — no action required on your part. We thank you for your understanding," the notice added.
Employees have gone on strike several times since the beginning of this year over pay and working conditions, according to local reports.
The Louvre closed its doors on Monday due to an employee strike. (Martin Lelievre/AFP via Getty Images)
There were 8.7 million visitors in 2024, with 77% of them international tourists, according to Louvre data.
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One of the biggest draws in the museum is Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa," situated in the Louvre's largest room, the Salle des États.
Employees have gone on strike several times since the beginning of this year over pay and working conditions. (Martin Lelievre/AFP via Getty Images)
The painting attracts roughly 20,000 people per day.
On Jan. 14, foreigners from outside the European Union began paying $12 more than a typical ticket, The Associated Press reported.
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Tickets rose from $25 to $37 for non-EU citizens.
The price increase comes as the Louvre looks to leverage the costs of new security policies and technology.
There were 8.7 million visitors in 2024 to the Louvre — with 77% of them international tourists. (Magali Cohen/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images; Ashley J. DiMella/Fox News Digital)
On Oct. 19, a four-person team broke into the Apollo Gallery in broad daylight.
The thieves stole eight jewels valued collectively at 88 million euros ($102 million).
Officials recently announced that about 100 cameras will be installed by the end of 2026.
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The new measures are part of more than 20 emergency measures the museum is taking, including the establishment of the role of "security coordinator."
The Associated Press contributed reporting.
Ashley J. DiMella is a lifestyle reporter with Fox News Digital.
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The Supreme Court heard oral arguments over President Trump's effort to fire Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook, based on allegations she committed mortgage fraud, which she denies. No president has fired a sitting governor in the Fed's 112-year history.
The U.S. Supreme Court is hearing arguments over President Donald Trump's effort to remove Federal Reserve Gov. Lisa Cook, a politically charged case that could test the independence of the nation's central bank. Some House members are reacting. (AP Video: Nathan Ellgren)
Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook and attorney Abbe Lowell, arrive at the Supreme Court in Washington, Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook and attorney Abbe Lowell, arrive at the Supreme Court in Washington, Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook and attorney Abbe Lowell, arrive at the Supreme Court in Washington, Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook and attorney Abbe Lowell, arrive at the Supreme Court in Washington, Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Wednesday seemed inclined to keep Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook in her job, casting doubt on President Donald Trump's bid to wrest control of the nation's central bank.
The justices heard arguments over Trump's effort to fire Cook based on allegations she committed mortgage fraud, which she denies. No president has fired a sitting governor in the 112-year history of the Fed, which was structured to be independent of day-to-day politics.
Allowing Cook's firing to go forward “would weaken, if not shatter, the independence of the Federal Reserve,” said Justice Brett Kavanaugh, one of three Trump appointees on the nation's highest court.
At least five other justices on the nine-member court also sounded skeptical about the effort to remove her from office.
Both Cook and Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell sat through nearly two hours of arguments in the packed courtroom.
“For as long as I serve at the Federal Reserve, I will uphold the principle of political independence in service to the American people,” Cook said in a statement issued after the arguments.
The true motivation for trying to fire Cook, Trump's critics say, is the Republican president's desire to exert control over U.S. interest rate policy. If Trump succeeds in removing Cook, the first Black woman Federal Reserve governor, he could replace her with his own appointee and gain a majority on the Fed's board. The case is being closely watched by Wall Street investors and could have broad impacts on the financial markets and U.S. economy.
Trump has been dismissive of worries that cutting rates too quickly could trigger higher inflation. He wants dramatic reductions so the government can borrow more cheaply and Americans can pay lower borrowing costs for new homes, cars or other large purchases, as worries about high costs have soured some voters on his economic management.
During a speech earlier Wednesday in Davos, Switzerland, Trump reiterated his call for the Fed to sharply lower rates, arguing that the United States should pay “the lowest interest rate of any country in the world.”
The board cut a key interest rate three times in a row in the last four months of 2025, but that's more slowly than Trump wants. The Fed also suggested it may leave rates unchanged in coming months over inflation worries.
The issue before the court is whether Cook can stay on the job while her challenge to the firing plays out in court. Judges on lower courts have allowed her to remain in her post as one of seven central bank governors. The justices could simply deny the emergency appeal Trump is seeking and allow the case to continue playing out in lower courts.
Chief Justice John Roberts, who also seemed skeptical of Trump's actions, suggested it may be pointless to return the case to lower courts rather than issue a more enduring ruling. With Cook's case under review at the high court, Trump dramatically escalated his confrontation with the Fed. The Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation of Powell and has served the central bank with subpoenas.
Powell himself took the rare step of responding to Trump, calling the threat of criminal charges “pretexts” that mask the real reason, Trump's frustration over interest rates. The Justice Department has said the dispute is ostensibly about Powell's testimony to Congress in June over the cost of a massive renovation of Fed buildings.
In Trump's first year in office, the justices generally, but not always, went along with Trump's pleas for emergency action to counteract lower-court rulings against him, including allowing the firings of the heads of other governmental agencies at the president's discretion, with no claim that they did anything wrong.
But the court has sent signals that it is approaching the independence of the nation's central bank more cautiously, calling the Fed “a uniquely structured, quasi-private entity.”
In Cook's case, Trump is not asserting that he can fire Fed governors at will, Solicitor General D. John Sauer said. Cook is one of several people, along with Democratic New York Attorney General Letitia James and Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff of California, who have been accused of mortgage fraud by federal housing official Bill Pulte. They have denied the allegations against them.
The case against Cook stems from allegations she claimed two properties, in Michigan and Georgia, as “primary residences” in June and July 2021, before she joined the Fed board. Such claims can lead to a lower mortgage rate and smaller down payment than if one of them was declared as a rental property or second home.
Those applications, Sauer said, are evidence of “gross negligence at best” and give Trump reason to fire her. In any event, he argued, courts shouldn't be reviewing his decision and Cook has no right to a hearing.
Cook has denied any wrongdoing and has not been charged with a crime. “There is no fraud, no intent to deceive, nothing whatsoever criminal or remotely a basis to allege mortgage fraud,” a Cook lawyer, Abbe Lowell, wrote to Attorney General Pam Bondi in November.
Cook specified that her Atlanta condo would be a “vacation home,” according to a loan estimate she obtained in May 2021. In a form seeking a security clearance, she described it as a “2nd home.” Lowell wrote that the case against her largely rests on “one stray reference” in a 2021 mortgage document that was “plainly innocuous in light of the several other truthful and more specific disclosures” about the homes she has purchased.
___
Associated Press writers Fatima Hussein, Christopher Rugaber and Lindsay Whitehurst contributed to this report.
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Palestinian women receive donated food at a community kitchen in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Young Palestinians play volleyball at a tent camp sheltering displaced families in Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2026. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Palestinian women line up to receive donated food at a community kitchen in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
JERUSALEM (AP) — Several countries have said they will join U.S. President Donald Trump's Board of Peace, while a few European nations have declined their invitations. Many have not yet responded to Trump's invites.
Chaired by Trump, the board was originally envisioned as a small group of world leaders overseeing the Gaza ceasefire plan. But the Trump administration's ambitions have since expanded, with Trump extending invitations to dozens of nations and hinting at the board's future role as conflict mediator.
A White House official has said about 30 countries were expected to join the board, without providing details, while about 50 had been invited.
Here is a tally by The Associated Press on what countries are joining, which are not and which are undecided.
— Argentina
— Armenia
— Azerbaijan
— Bahrain
— Belarus
— Egypt
— Hungary
— Indonesia
— Jordan
— Kazakhstan
— Kosovo
— Morocco
— Pakistan
— Qatar
— Saudi Arabia
— Turkey
— United Arab Emirates
— Uzbekistan
— Vietnam
— France
— Norway
— Slovenia
— Sweden
— Britain
— China
— Croatia
— Germany
— Italy
— European Union's executive arm
— Paraguay
— Russia
— Singapore
— Ukraine
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Live Updates
• Officials subpoenaed: Leaders in Minnesota and the Twin Cities have criticized the Justice Department for subpoenaing them as part of an investigation into whether local officials obstructed federal immigration enforcement efforts that have drawn strong backlash.
• Church protest investigated: Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said there would be arrests made related to the protests that disrupted a service at a St. Paul church where an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent reportedly serves as a pastor. The Justice Department's Civil Rights Division is investigating. The church said it welcomes “respectful dialogue,” and is evaluating “next steps with our legal counsel.”
• Immigration tensions: Minnesota is the latest epicenter of the Trump administration's turbocharged, coast-to-coast immigration enforcement crackdown.
Legislative leaders from across the state gathered in St. Paul this morning to support the upcoming “ICE Out of Minnesota” protest in response to the federal immigration enforcement surge in Minnesota.
“President Trump, Vice President Vance's campaign of retribution against the people of Minnesota is not a Minneapolis thing, a St. Paul thing, an urban thing versus suburban thing, a red district or a blue district kind of thing,” state Rep. Brad Tabke said. “This is a campaign against Minnesotans.”
Organizers describe “ICE Out of Minnesota” as a statewide protest Friday.
“Faith leaders, business owners, workers, and concerned Minnesotans have called for a statewide day of public mourning and pause through ‘No Work, No School and No Shopping' and a massive, peaceful march in downtown Minneapolis that afternoon,” organizers wrote in a news release.
Newly released court documents describe federal agents' account of events leading up to the recent shooting of a Venezuelan man in Minneapolis.
Two ICE agents, driving in an unmarked vehicle last week, ran the license plate of a nearby vehicle and found it was registered to someone living in the United States illegally, an FBI agent described in a court affidavit.
Then they began pursuing the vehicle for 15 to 20 minutes, with the vehicle zig-zagging through traffic, the affidavit states. Eventually the vehicle they were pursuing hit a light pole and the driver left the car, with an ICE agent following him on foot.
The driver, Alfredo Alejandro Aljorna, an undocumented immigrant from Venezuela ran up to a nearby apartment building, where Julio Sosa-Celis, another undocumented Venezuelan man, was standing, the affidavit states.
The affidavit alleges that both Aljorna and Sosa-Celis used a broomstick to hit the agent in the ensuing struggle – in which he believed a third, unidentified person struck him with a snow shovel – before the agent fired his gun, striking Sosa-Celis in his upper thigh.
At the time, the agent was “uncertain if his shot struck any of them,” the document said.
The two men were taken into custody after the agents used tear gas to force Aljorna and Sosa-Celis to surrender, the affidavit states.
The account differs from the Department of Homeland Security's initial statement after the shooting, which said the agents were conducting a “targeted traffic stop,” in which Sosa-Celis resisted arrest and assaulted one of the officers, before two people came out of a nearby apartment and attacked the officer.
The affidavit also states Aljorna was not the person the agents originally identified as the car's registration holder.
Both men stand accused of assaulting an ICE agent and are due in federal court today.
READ MORE about the incident here.
The mayors of St. Paul and Minneapolis said their subpoenas from the Department of Justice as part of a probe into whether local leaders obstructed federal immigration enforcement efforts are a sign of political retribution.
“There's nothing that brings two mayors together like a bullshit federal investigation,” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said at an event hosted by St. Thomas University in St. Paul.
“The fact that this is happening to leaders should make everybody, Republican and Democrat, livid, furious. This is about the underpinnings of our Constitution and the endurance of our republic,” Frey said.
“And if we allow this kind of political retribution to take place, it's just going to continue happening.”
Frey pushed back on the idea that his rhetoric has inflamed the situation in Minneapolis, saying that he's channeling what residents in his city are feeling.
But St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her said “it doesn't matter what language he uses” because “I haven't dropped any F-bombs … and I received the same subpoena as he did.”
“We are a target, and we're going to continue to be a target,” she said. “And let's not forget that the aggressor is our federal government, not us.”
In the words of the Trump administration, Renee Good, the woman killed by an ICE agent while protesting enforcement actions in Minnesota was part of a “mob of agitators.” Likewise, a bystander who could be heard in a video of the interaction yelling “shame, shame” and other residents protesting since then have been called “paid” or “professional” agitators.
But exactly who is instigating public unrest or stirring up public feeling is a matter of interpretation.
“Agitator” is a Latin word meaning driver or charioteer, from the verb agitāre, meaning to put into motion, to rouse up or to disturb.
Throughout US history, the label “agitator” has largely been deployed in one direction — “by the powerful to delegitimate real grievances of the marginalized and oppressed seeking change,” Aldon Morris, a professor emeritus of sociology at Northwestern University, wrote in an email to CNN.
The “agitator trope” was used by enslavers to describe abolitionists, labor union organizers and to smear Black civil rights activists, Morris said. Martin Luther King Jr. is one of the most well-known figures ever to be deemed an “agitator.”
Still, “agitator” didn't always have a negative connotation. Before it was first used as a synonym for “instigator” around the 1700s, the term meant an “agent,” or a person who acts on behalf of others.
The now-obsolete meaning of “agitator” as someone acting on behalf of others might apply to Good. Her wife, Becca Good, said in a statement last week the couple had “stopped to support our neighbors.” She added, “We had whistles. They had guns.”
Read more about what “agitator” means and how it has been used here.
Minneapolis remains on edge two weeks after an ICE agent shot and killed Renee Nicole Good. As the Justice Department opens criminal investigations into state and local officials and vows to charge protesters who disrupted a church service Sunday, some activists wonder if it's safe to keep speaking out.
Hear from one of them – and get a lesson on the legal issues that could also be relevant in other cities:
Religious leaders from across the country say they will present Congress with a letter Wednesday signed by more than 2,000 faith leaders that calls for the ICE agent who killed Renee Good to be charged and for the federal government to stop all ICE operations in Minnesota and across the county.
The letter calls for Congress to investigate what led up to the fatal shooting. It also implores the FBI to make information available to Minnesota law enforcement after the Justice Department blocked state investigators from joining in a federal probe.
Before delivering the letter Wednesday, “Faith leaders will gather to mourn the loss of life, offer prayer, and call for moral accountability from the Trump Administration and urgent action to address the ongoing abuse of power at the hands of ICE,” a press release from the national organization Faith in Action and the Minnesota-based group ISAIAH said.
ISAIAH said it will host a strike Friday, calling for “No Work. No School. No Shopping.” The group will also hold a march in downtown Minneapolis Friday afternoon.
Amid mounting reports of ICE agents targeting some law enforcement officers, the Department of Homeland Security says it has no record of such interactions.
“DHS is able to find no record of ICE or Border Patrol stopping and questioning a police officer. Without a name, we cannot verify these claims. We will continue to look into these claims,” a DHS spokesperson told CNN on Wednesday.
Police leaders in the Twin Cities area say they've received “endless reports” about ICE agents violating civil rights – particularly in the past two weeks. And reports from their own officers paint a similar story, local police chiefs said at a news conference Tuesday.
Brooklyn Park Police Chief Mark Bruley alleged some of his off- duty officers — all people of color — have been targeted by ICE agents in recent weeks, without quantifying how many.
In one instance, a female off-duty officer was pulled over during a traffic stop and boxed in by ICE agents, who demanded to see her paperwork, Bruley said. The officer was held at gunpoint, her cellphone was knocked out of her hand, and she wasn't allowed to record the interaction, Bruley said.
To de-escalate the situation, the officer identified herself as a police officer, and that's when agents “immediately left after hearing this, making no other comments,” Bruley said.
Bruley was joined at the press conference by St. Paul Police Chief Axel Henry and Hennepin County Sheriff Dawanna Witt in calling for better supervision and accountability from federal agents.
Two Venezuelan nationals accused of assaulting an ICE agent a week ago in Minnesota are scheduled to appear in federal district court today in St. Paul, Minnesota, court records show.
Federal agents were conducting a “targeted traffic stop” when an undocumented Venezuelan national, Julio Sosa-Celis, resisted arrest and started to “violently assault” an agent, the Department of Homeland Security has said. During the struggle, two people came out of a nearby apartment and attacked the agent using a snow shovel and a broom handle, DHS said.
In self-defense, the ICE agent targeted, chased, then shot Sosa-Celis as the agent was being “ambushed” by three people, DHS said last week in a statement. ICE also detained another undocumented Venezuelan national, Alfredo Alejandro Aljorna, during the encounter.
Videos from Sosa-Celis' family and outside their home, however, appear to contradict what DHS has said about the identity of the person federal agents chased and the details of the shooting.
Sosa-Celis and Aljorna are due in court this morning.
READ MORE about the incident here.
For context: The encounter marked the second time in a week an immigration agent shot someone while on the job, sparking street protests and prompting President Donald Trump to threaten to use the Insurrection Act in Minnesota.
Opening statements are set to begin today in the trial of a man accused of offering a $10,000 bounty for the life of Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino in Chicago last year.
Juan Espinoza Martinez, 37, faces one count of murder-for-hire, according to the Associated Press. He has pleaded not guilty. A jury was selected yesterday.
Federal prosecutors allege Espinoza Martinez sent a Snapchat message in October to other gang members that read, in part: “10k if u take him down,” along with a picture of Bovino. The suspect allegedly offered $2,000 for information about the commander.
A criminal complaint cites an anonymous source who accused Espinoza Martinez of being a “ranking member of the Latin Kings.”
But his family and attorneys say he's not in a gang. The father of three worked as a carpenter, according to the AP.
Born in Mexico, Espinoza Martinez has lived in the US for more than 30 years. He does not have legal permission to stay in the United States.
If convicted, Espinoza Martinez faces up to 10 years in prison.
Federal agents' tactics have been scrutinized after operations in Los Angeles, Chicago, New Orleans, and currently in the Twin Cities of Minnesota. Arrests by armed and masked agents have led to protests and intense standoffs in each region.
FBI Director Kash Patel defended subpoenas sent to several Democratic officials in Minnesota – including Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey – as part of a probe into whether they obstructed federal immigration enforcement efforts.
Asked about the probe Tuesday night on Fox News, Patel said he “can't comment on ongoing investigations.”
“But generally speaking, when you have subpoenas out, it's not rocket science. Investigations are done by acquiring records. Investigations are then furthered by putting witnesses to the grand jury,” he told Fox's Sean Hannity.
“No one – elected official, private citizen or otherwise – gets to impede and obstruct a law enforcement investigation,” Patel said.
A crowd of anti-ICE protesters in St. Paul confronted several ICE agents' cars on Tuesday.
Some protesters argued with one agent, who can be seen wearing a mask, about whether race is a factor in recent arrests.
Watch the moment unfold here:
Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty, whose county was subpoenaed in the DOJ's inquiry into several Minnesota government offices, condemns federal officers' actions in the state.
Federal officials are amping up pressure on opposition to the Trump administration's immigration crackdown in the Twin Cities, with several local and state leaders subpoenaed by the Justice Department and the threat of arrest and federal charges looming over some protesters.
The subpoenaed officials, including Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz have, been vocal critics of the administration's growing operation.
The subpoenas came as the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division is investigating demonstrators who interrupted a church service in St. Paul Sunday, accusing them of “desecrating a house of worship and interfering with Christian worshippers.”
Here is the latest:
As the Justice Department investigates anti-ICE protesters who disrupted a church service in St. Paul, Minnesota, Sunday, it is leaning on two federal laws – one more than 100 years old – to justify potential federal charges.
“Everyone in the protest community needs to know that the fullest force of the federal government is going to come down and prevent this from happening and put people away for a long time,” Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, said on The Benny Show, a podcast by conservative influencer Benny Johnson.
Here's what we know about the federal statutes Dhillon has cited in reference to the protest investigation:
• The FACE Act: The Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act was enacted in 1994 and prohibits the use of force or physical obstruction to intentionally interfere with anyone lawfully exercising their First Amendment right of religious freedom. The statute also protects facilities that provide reproductive health services.
• The Ku Klux Klan Act: First enacted in 1871, the seldom-used KKK Act made it a federal crime to deny any group or person “any of the rights, privileges, or immunities, or protection, named in the Constitution,” according to the Office of the Historian at the US House of Representatives.
Read more about the laws and why context matters in this case here.
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A Wordle game is seen on a mobile phone, July 15, 2022, in Boston. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer, File)
For subscribers to The New York Times who are as interested in solving Wordle or filling in the crossword puzzle as in reading the latest political or business news, Wednesday is a big day.
The Times' popular Games unit is debuting Crossplay, a Scrabble-like electronic feature that represents its first designed multiplayer game. It becomes the website's 11th game, joining a lineup of puzzles that were collectively played over 11.2 billion times in 2025.
Ancillary products like Games, a cooking app and the Wirecutter product recommendations have fueled remarkable digital growth at The Times over the past decade.
“It has been a huge boon to the journalism,” said Dan Kennedy, a Northeastern University professor. The Times says it has about 3,000 journalists on staff, its most ever and more than twice what it had a decade ago. It is thriving at a troubled time for the industry: More than 350,000 journalists worked at U.S. newspapers in 2005, and that number was down to 91,550 last year, according to Northwestern University.
Kennedy tries the crossword puzzle — on its easiest day. His Scrabble-loving daughter is likely to be excited about Crossplay. He loves Wirecutter, which on Tuesday touted cat beds and a vibrator that doubled as a necklace. His wife regularly uses the Cooking app, where thousands of recipes for all occasions are available.
“As remarkable as it's been, I kind of scratch my head at the other news organizations that have tried to replicate it,” Kennedy said. “It just seems like they were so thoroughly beaten to this idea that it's hard for them to compete.”
The Times likens itself to a solar system. The newspaper is the sun, with the other products the planets revolving around it.
Some have jokingly referred to it as a game company that happens to have news. The research company YipitData reported in 2023 that subscribers spent more time in Games than they did with the digital newspaper (the company didn't respond to questions about whether it had more current data).
The Times reported 12.33 million subscribers by the end of last September, up 9% from 2024 and all but about a half million of them digital. Subscription revenue for digital-only products increased by 14%. About half of Times subscribers buy a $30 monthly package that bundles all of its products, the rest buy portions of what it offers a la carte. Last year saw a decrease in people subscribing to just the news.
“I now get out of bed in the morning knowing that the work I do is advancing the mission that we have as a company — seek the truth, understand the world, keep the journalists independent and well-funded,” said Jonathan Knight, the company's head of games. “If I can play a role in that, that's incredibly rewarding.”
Puzzles, contests and games aren't novel for newspapers; The Times introduced its crossword puzzle in 1942 and it went digital in 2009. It was late last decade when its spelling bee game proved popular, particularly among people intimidated by the crossword.
Times executives realized the potential and rebranded its app in 2020. But the game-changer came in 2022.
Developed by a Brooklyn software engineer named Josh Wardle, the addictive puzzle known as Wordle requires players to guess a five-letter word by eliminating potential letters. The fewer turns it takes, the better. Knight learned about it from colleagues who saw it online; he moved fast and bought the game from Wardle within weeks after first playing it.
Last year Wordle was played 4.2 billion times. Morning social feeds brim with people posting their results and bragging about — or lamenting — their performance that day.
“I knew we could get to this scale,” Knight said of his site. “I didn't think we could get to it in this amount of time.”
The Wordle rhythm — one word a day — is something Knight's team keeps in mind. They're always trying new games, but keep standards high, and have generally added one new game a year. He doesn't want a site with 30 or so games, some of them low-quality. “We want to make sure that everything we do is human-crafted,” he said.
“We're respectful of your time,” Knight said. “We're not trying to get you in the app all day. We're not nagging you to come back in. We don't want 24/7 engagement. We want a very healthy daily habit where you feel good about what you've done.”
One popular addition has been Connections, where people need to group different things that relate to one another. But not every game works. Digits, a logic puzzle with numbers, failed despite two tries. The conclusion, Knight says: “We have been cautious about math and numbers games ever since.”
Staff members at Games stay in touch with users through a newsletter and forums devoted to specific puzzles. “They are fanatical,” Knight said. “They care deeply. They're very passionate. They're also very kind and joyful people, and we really value engaging with the community all the time.”
The enduring popularity of the board game Scrabble points to Crossplay's potential, and improving on the ad-choked Scrabble Go app would seem a low bar to surmount. The games are similar, though there are some small differences in how Crossplay is played — how the game board is designed and some letter values, for example.
People can invite friends to play or compete against a computer, keep track of records and engage with the Cross Bot feature, which gives a postgame analysis and tells players about moves they could have made to score more points. Unlike some of the other individual Times games, people can download a specific Crossplay app.
Game on — for users and, it's clear as well, for the Times.
___
David Bauder writes about the intersection of media and entertainment for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social.
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The body wasn't even cold before the Buffalo Bills decided to let go of Sean McDermott.
The Bills fired McDermott on Monday after the team's heartbreaking playoff loss to the Denver Broncos in the AFC divisional round.
That loss, team owner Terry Pegula said, single-handedly cost McDermott his job.
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Head coach Sean McDermott and owner Terry Pegula of the Buffalo Bills before the Buccaneers game at Raymond James Stadium on Dec. 12, 2021, in Tampa, Florida. (Julio Aguilar/Getty Images)
"My decision to bring in a new coach was based on the results of our game in Denver," Pegula, alongside general manager Brandon Beane, told reporters on Wednesday.
"I looked around, first thing I noticed was our quarterback with his head down crying. I looked at all the other players, I looked at their faces and our coaches, I walked over to Josh [Allen], he didn't even acknowledge I was there. First thing I said to him was ‘That was a catch.' We all know what I'm talking about. He didn't acknowledge me. He just sat there sobbing. He was listless. He had given everything he had to try to win that game. And looking around, so did all the other players on the team."
"I did not fire a coach based on a bad officiating decision. If I can take you into that locker room, I felt like we hit the proverbial playoff wall year after year," Pegula added.
The owner also made sure to note that Allen "didn't have any input at all" in the decision.
"I didn't talk to Josh about this. I talked to him afterwards, but that conversation will stay private," Pegula said.
Buffalo Bills owner Terry Pegula before the AFC divisional playoff game against the Baltimore Ravens at Highmark Stadium on Jan. 19, 2025, in Orchard Park, New York. (Timothy T Ludwig/Getty Images)
BILLS HEAD COACH SEAN MCDERMOTT CHIDES OFFICIALS FOR CONTROVERSIAL INTERCEPTION CALL: 'NOT EVEN CLOSE'
Beane was asked about the lack of wide receiver success, namely in Keon Coleman, but Pegula jumped in and placed blame on "coaching" on the first pick of the second round in 2024. Ladd McConkey was the next selection.
"The coaching staff pushed to draft Keon," Pegula said. "I'm not saying Brandon wouldn't have drafted him, but he wasn't his next choice. That was Brandon being a team player and taking advice from his coaching staff who felt strongly about the player. He's taken, for some reason, heat over it and not saying a word about it. But I'm here to tell you the true story."
The defeat marked another crushing blow to McDermott's tenure as the Bills' head coach. McDermott took the job before the start of the 2017 season, and Buffalo finished under .500 only once since then. He helped guide the Bills to the playoffs in eight of his nine seasons. The team made the conference title game twice but never got back to the Super Bowl.
Buffalo Bills head coach Sean McDermott speaks at a news conference after the Lions game, Dec. 15, 2024, in Detroit. (AP Photo/Rey Del Rio)
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Many thought the Bills were a team of destiny this year, considering Patrick Mahomes, Joe Burrow and Lamar Jackson all did not make the playoffs.
Alas, Jarrett Stidham and the Broncos will go against Drake Maye and the New England Patriots for a trip to the Super Bowl.
Fox News' Ryan Gaydos contributed to this report.
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Europe should be happy President Donald Trump was elected — despite his threats to take Greenland — because without him, it would never have stepped up for its own defense, according to NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte.
"I'm not popular with you now because I'm defending Donald Trump, but I really believe you can be happy that he is there because he has forced us in Europe to step up, to face the consequences that we have to take care of more of our own defense," Rutte said Wednesday in remarks at Davos, Switzerland.
"No way, without Donald Trump, this would never have happened. They're all on 2% now," he went on during a panel at the World Economic Forum.
US TRADE REP SHRUGS OFF WORLD LEADERS' SWIPES AT TRUMP AMID DAVOS BACKLASH
In 2014, NATO allies agreed to spend 2% of GDP on defense, but many fell short until recent years. With the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Trump's threats not to defend NATO countries, most allies are meeting or exceeding the benchmark.
They've now agreed to spend 5% GDP on defense and national security infrastructure.
"I'm absolutely convinced without Donald Trump you would not have taken those decisions, and they are crucial, particularly for the European and the Canadian side of NATO to really grow up in the post-Cold War world."
NATO chief Mark Rutte says Europe never would have stepped up its defense spending without Trump. (Denis Balibouse/Reuters)
U.S. lawmakers previously criticized Rutte for his own country's underspending on defense. Rutte was prime minister of the Netherlands from 2010 to 2024.
Rutte argued the U.S. is still committed to Europe's defense, and the nuclear umbrella is the ultimate defense guarantee.
"The Americans still have over 80,000 soldiers in Europe ... including in Poland and Germany, and so they are still heavily invested in European defense. And yes, they have to pivot more towards Asia. So it is only logical for them to expect us, Europe, to step up over time," he said.
He also added Greenland is not the "main issue" and Europe should not let it distract from Ukraine's defense.
"The risk here is that we focus, of course, on Greenland, because we have to make sure that issue gets solved in an amicable way," he said. "But the main issue is not Greenland. Now, the main issue is Ukraine. I'm also a little bit worried that we might drop the ball focusing so much on these other issues."
"This focus on Ukraine should be our top priority," he said. "Ukraine has to come first because it is crucial to our European and American security."
Rutte repeatedly has praised Trump, in June calling him "daddy" of the NATO alliance.
Rutte has repeatedly praised Trump, in June calling him "daddy" of the NATO alliance. (Ludovic Marin/Pool via Reuters)
"Daddy has to sometimes use strong language to get them to stop," he said in reference to fighting between Israel and Iran.
TOP EU OFFICIAL WARNS TRUMP'S TARIFF THREAT OVER GREENLAND PUSHBACK IS 'A MISTAKE'
Other European leaders have expressed more concern about Trump's Greenland ambitions. On Wednesday Trump, for the first time, ruled out taking Greenland by force.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has said a U.S. takeover of Greenland would mean the "end of NATO," the nearly 80-year-old defense alliance.
Trump spoke at the Davos, Switzerland, conference Wednesday after threatening Europe with tariffs over the Greenland dispute.
President Donald Trump said from Davos, Switzerland, Jan. 21 that the U.S. is the only nation that is able to control and secure Greenland. (Mads Claus Rasmussen / Ritzau Scanpix / AFP via Getty Images)
This week the president told Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre in a text message he "no longer thinks purely of peace" in his desire to own Greenland.
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Trump wrote: "Dear Jonas: Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America."
"I have done more for NATO than any other person since its founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United States," Trump wrote. "The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland."
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Former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton listen during the state funeral for former President Jimmy Carter at Washington National Cathedral in Washington, Jan. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., speaks during a House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform markup business meeting about finding former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in contempt of Congress, Wednesday Jan. 21, 2026, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
Ranking member Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., listens during a House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform markup business meeting about finding former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in contempt of Congress, Wednesday Jan. 21, 2026, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republicans started a push Wednesday to hold former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in contempt of Congress over the Jeffrey Epstein investigation, opening the prospect of the House using one of its most powerful punishments against a former president for the first time.
The contempt proceedings are an initial step toward a criminal prosecution by the Department of Justice that, if successful, could send the Clintons to prison in a dispute over compelling them to testify before the House Oversight Committee.
Rep. James Comer, the chairman, said at the start of the committee's hearing that Clintons had responded not with “cooperation but defiance.”
“Subpoenas are not mere suggestions, they carry the force of law and require compliance,” said Comer, R-Ky.
The Clintons argue that the subpoenas are invalid. Bill Clinton, President Donald Trump and many others connected to Epstein have not been accused of wrongdoing. Yet lawmakers are wrestling over who receives the most scrutiny.
Nonetheless, there were signs of a potential thaw as the Clintons, both Democrats, appeared to be searching for an off-ramp to testify. In addition, passage of contempt charges through the full House was far from guaranteed, requiring a majority vote — something Republicans increasingly struggle to achieve.
The repercussions of contempt charges loomed large, given the possibility of a substantial fine and even incarceration.
While the charges have historically been used only as a last resort, lawmakers in recent years have been more willing to reach for the option. Comer initiated the contempt proceedings after the Clintons refused for months to fulfill a committee subpoena for their testimony in its Epstein investigation.
The clash was the latest turn in the Epstein saga as Congress investigates how he was able to sexually abuse dozens of teenage girls for years. Epstein killed himself in 2019 in a New York jail cell while awaiting trial. The public release of case files has shown details of the connections between Epstein and both Bill Clinton and Trump, among many other high-powered men.
Comer rejected an offer Tuesday from a lawyer for the Clintons to have Comer and the top Democrat on the committee, Rep. Robert Garcia of California, interview Bill Clinton in New York, along with staff.
The Clintons released a letter last week criticizing Comer for seeking their testimony at a time when the Justice Department is running a month behind a congressionally mandated deadline to release its complete case files on Epstein.
Behind the scenes, however, longtime Clinton lawyer David Kendall has tried to negotiate an agreement. Kendall raised the prospect of having the Clintons testify on Christmas and Christmas Eve, according to the committee's account of the negotiations.
The Clintons, who contend the subpoenas are invalid because they do not serve any legislative purpose, also say they did not know about Epstein's abuse. They have offered the committee written declarations about their interactions with Epstein.
“We have tried to give you the little information we have. We've done so because Mr. Epstein's crimes were horrific,” the Clintons wrote Comer last week.
Contempt of Congress proceedings are rare, used when lawmakers are trying to force testimony for high-profile investigations, such as the infamous inquiry during the 1940s into alleged Communist sympathizers in Hollywood or the impeachment proceedings of President Richard Nixon.
Most recently, Trump's advisers Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon were convicted of contempt charges for defying subpoenas from a House panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, riot by a mob of the Republican president's supporters at the Capitol. Both Navarro and Bannon spent months in prison.
The Jan. 6 committee also subpoenaed Trump in its inquiry. Trump's lawyers resisted the subpoena, citing decades of legal precedent they said shielded ex-presidents from being ordered to appear before Congress. The committee ultimately withdrew its subpoena.
No former president has ever been successfully forced to appear before Congress, although some have voluntarily appeared.
Democrats have largely been focused on advancing the investigation into Epstein rather than mounting an all-out defense of the Clintons, who led their party for decades. They have said Bill Clinton should inform the committee if he has any pertinent information about Epstein's abuses.
A wealthy financier, Epstein donated to Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign and Hillary Clinton's joint fundraising committee ahead of her 2000 Senate campaign in New York.
“No president or former president is above the law,” Garcia said at the committee hearing.
Democrats spent the hearing criticizing Comer for focusing on the Clintons when the Justice Department is behind schedule on releasing the Epstein files. Comer has also allowed several former attorneys general to provide the committee with written statements attesting to their limited knowledge of the case.
The committee had also subpoenaed Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's longtime confidant who is serving a lengthy prison sentence for a conviction on sex trafficking charges.
“It's interesting that it's this subpoena only that Republicans and the chairman have been obsessed about putting all their energy behind,” Garcia said.
Comer said the committee will interview Maxwell next month. Attorney General Pam Bondi will also appear before the House Judiciary Committee in February.
Democrats embraced the call for full transparency on Epstein after Trump's return to the White House, particularly after Bondi stumbled on her promise to release the entirety of the unredacted Epstein files to the public. The backlash scrambled traditional ideological lines, leading Republicans to side with Democrats demanding further investigation.
The pressure eventually resulted in a bipartisan subpoena from the committee that ordered the Justice Department and Epstein estate to release files related to Epstein. Republicans quickly moved to include the Clintons in the subpoena.
Comer has indicated that he will insist that the subpoena be fulfilled by nothing less than a transcribed deposition of Bill Clinton.
“You have to have a transcript in an investigation,” he said. “So no transcript, no deal.”
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Joel Klatt and Colin Cowherd discuss the importance of Indiana winning the National Championship, and whether or not Miami can rebound following their loss.
Miami Hurricanes quarterback Carson Beck gave it a valiant effort, but his team came up just short in the college football national championship against the Indiana Hoosiers.
Most of the criticism against Beck was for how he handled the loss in the immediate aftermath rather than his play on the field. Beck was seen running off the field without meeting his opponents for a postgame handshake.
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Miami quarterback Carson Beck is sacked by Indiana linebacker Aiden Fisher during the first half of the College Football Playoff national championship game, Monday, Jan. 19, 2026, in Miami Gardens, Florida. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
Beck didn't address why he just ran off the field. But he appeared to be shaken up during Miami's final drive of the game. He was hit hard by an Indiana defender after he threw a pass, which garnered a roughing the passer call on the Hoosiers.
ESPN's Pete Thamel suggested that Beck may have been hurt on the play.
"The other factor in that play was Carson Beck took a late hit from the Indiana defensive tackle, what was it, two or three plays before that?" he said on the "College GameDay Podcast." "And he did not look right. He didn't look right just in the locker room. So I walked by him and I said, ‘Hey Carson, how are you feeling after that hit.' And he said, ‘My ears are still ringing,' and there was a few accentuators that you wouldn't hear Rece Davis say in sentences, but you'd probably hear Dan (Wetzel) and I say pretty much every day there.
DETAILS EMERGE AFTER MIAMI STAR SEEN THROWING PUNCH AT INDIANA PLAYER FOLLOWING NATIONAL TITLE LOSS
Miami quarterback Carson Beck passes against Indiana during the first half of the College Football Playoff national championship game, Monday, Jan. 19, 2026, in Miami Gardens, Florida. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
"And he clearly was like, his bell was rung, he was in pain. Obviously emotional in the wake of the loss. But you have to think that that hit had something to do with that performance. You get smashed like that illegally, you know. Now he did not get hit in the head, but he clearly, it was like upper chest."
He was 19-of-32 with 232 passing yards, a touchdown pass and the game-sealing interception.
Beck later reflected on his lone season with the Hurricanes, calling it the best year of his life.
"And not because we made the national championship, not because won a bunch of football games or we made great plays or things of that sort. Man, for me, my whole entire life changed," he said.
Miami quarterback Carson Beck warms up before the College Football Playoff national championship game between Miami and Indiana, Monday, Jan. 19, 2026, in Miami Gardens, Florida. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)
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"You know, 365 days ago, I was in just a really dark place, and I was trying to see the light at the end of the tunnel. It was a really difficult thing. There was just a lot going on, mentally, physically, emotionally, to be able to battle and fight through the roller-coaster that life is."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Ryan Gaydos is a senior editor for Fox News Digital.
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NBC Sports reporter Michele Tafoya is seen before an NFL football game between the New Orleans Saints and the Buffalo Bills, Thursday, Nov. 25, 2021, in New Orleans. (AP Photo/Tyler Kaufman, File)
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Former NFL sideline reporter Michele Tafoya launched her campaign for the U.S. Senate on Wednesday, hoping to win the Republican nomination for the Minnesota seat being vacated by retiring Democratic Sen. Tina Smith.
“For years, I covered the biggest football games in America,” Tafoya said in a video posted on social media, in which she stands on a snowy football field. “I walked the sidelines when the pressure was mounting and the stakes were the highest. That job taught me about more than football. It taught me about how leadership really works. When leaders are prepared and accountable, teams succeed. When they aren't, people pay the price.”
Tafoya alluded to the turmoil over the ongoing immigration crackdown in Minnesota, making clear that she stands with federal law enforcement. The video includes brief clips of federal officers clashing with protesters.
“As Minnesota's senator, I will clean up the system, fighting corruption, ending the fraud and protecting your tax dollars,” she said. “I will protect what's fair and safe, standing with our law enforcement officers, deporting dangerous criminals, and keeping female sports for female athletes.”
The video also takes shots at Democratic Gov. Tim Walz for the fraud cases that have dogged his administration and includes clips of Democratic U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, a frequent target of the ire of President Donald Trump.
Tafoya, who's long been active in Minnesota Republican politics, is best known for her work from 2011-2022 as a sideline reporter for NBC's Sunday Night Football. She currently hosts a frequently political podcast. Other Republicans in the race include former NBA player Royce White, who lost to U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar in 2024, military veterans Adam Schwarze and Tom Weiler, and former Minnesota GOP Chair David Hann.
Top Republicans had long urged Tafoya to run. U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, of South Carolina, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, quickly endorsed her, posting on social media: “Change is coming, and Michele Tafoya will lead the way.”
But she also faces potential hurdles among some Republican voters. She supported then-Sen. Marco Rubio, of Florida, for president in 2016 and in 2022 urged Trump not to run again. She has also supported abortion rights, with some exceptions.
On the Democratic side, U.S. Rep. Angie Craig and Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan are competing for their party's nomination to succeed Smith, who announced last February that she wouldn't seek another term.
“Trump's hand-picked candidate just jumped in the race for US Senate,” Craig said in a social media post. “Minnesota needs a Senator who will stand up and fight for our state — and we know it won't be MAGA Michele.”
Tafoya is hoping to break a long losing streak for Republicans at the top of Minnesota's ballot. No GOP candidate was won statewide office in Minnesota since 2006, and the last Republican to win a Minnesota U.S. Senate seat was Norm Coleman, who was elected to a single term in 2002.
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President Donald Trump declared from Davos, Switzerland, that the U.S. is the only nation that is in the position to secure Greenland.
President Donald Trump declared from Davos, Switzerland, Wednesday that the U.S. is the only nation that is in the position to control and secure Greenland.
"All the United States is asking for is a place called Greenland," Trump said Wednesday from his speech at the World Economic Forum. "Where we've already had it as a trustee, but respectfully returned it back to Denmark not long ago after we defeated the Germans, the Japanese, the Italians and others in World War II, we gave it back to them."
Trump added that he does not want to use force as he pressures NATO allies on Greenland.
"We never asked for anything," Trump said of the U.S. working with NATO. "And we never got anything. We probably won't get anything unless I decide to use excessive strength and force where we would be, frankly, unstoppable. But I won't do that. Okay, now everyone say, ‘oh good.' That's probably the biggest statement I made because people thought I would use force. I don't have to use force. I don't want to use force. I won't use force."
DAVOS BRACES FOR TRUMP AMID TENSIONS OVER NATO, GREENLAND AND GLOBAL DEFENSE
President Donald Trump delivers a special address during the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos Jan. 21, 2026. (Mandel Mgan/AFP Getty Images)
Greenland — the world's largest island — sits in the Arctic and governs its own domestic affairs while remaining within the Kingdom of Denmark.
The president said he has "tremendous respect for both the people of Greenland and the people of Denmark," but that the U.S. must control the island from a national security standpoint.
"And the fact is, no nation or group of nations is in any position to be able to secure Greenland other than the United States, with a great power much greater than people even understand," he said.
The White House has reiterated that Trump views Greenland as a national security priority, and officials have not ruled out the use of the U.S. military as the administration weighs options for acquiring the territory.
Trump was asked Tuesday, the one-year anniversary of his inauguration, how far he would go to Greenland, responding with a terse "you'll find out" response.
President Donald Trump delivers a special address during the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2026. (Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images)
The president described Greenland as a vast, almost entirely uninhabited and undeveloped territory that's sitting undefended in a key strategic location between the United States, Russia and China. He pushed back that the U.S. is not seeking to acquire Greenland for its rare earths, but due to its location from a national security standpoint.
"This enormous unsecured island is actually part of North America on the northern frontier of the Western Hemisphere," he said. "That's our territory. It is, therefore, a core national security interest of the United States of America."
Trump said securing Greenland would only strengthen NATO.
"This would not be a threat to NATO," he said. "This would greatly enhance the security of the entire alliance. The NATO alliance. The United States is treated very unfairly by NATO. I want to tell you that. And when you think about it, nobody can dispute it. We give so much, and we get so little in return. And I've been a critic of NATO for many years, and yet I've done more to help NATO than any other president by far, than any other person. You wouldn't have NATO if I didn't get involved."
NEWSOM WARNS ‘PATHETIC' FOREIGN LEADERS TO GROW A BACKBONE IN BIZARRE TAKEDOWN LIKENING TRUMP TO A T.REX
The president argued that U.S. control of Greenland would strengthen security for both the United States and Europe, framing the territory as a strategic necessity rather than a real-estate acquisition. "The European Union needs us to have it, and they know that," he said, before pivoting to other topics.
Greenland has long carried outsized military importance in the Arctic. During the Cold War, the island sat along the shortest air and missile routes between North America and the Soviet Union. The U.S. expanded operations at the air base now known as Pituffik Space Base, using the site for early-warning radar and surveillance designed to detect incoming bombers and missiles.
"Now our country and the world face much greater risks than it did ever before. Because of missiles, because of nuclear, because of weapons, of warfare that I can't even talk about," Trump continued of Greenland.
Residents in Greenland, the largest island in the world, have expressed concern about President Donald Trump's renewed interest in seizing the territory. (Julia Wäschenbach/picture alliance/Getty Images)
In more recent years, renewed U.S. interest has been tied to intensifying great-power competition in the Arctic. Officials and analysts have pointed to China's effort to widen its regional footprint.
Trump underscored that the U.S. is "stronger" than ever and is in the position to finalize a Greenland deal following "two centuries" of previous presidents reportedly trying to do the same.
"For two centuries they've been trying to do it. They should have kept it after World War II, but they had a different president. That's all right. People think differently. Much more necessary now than it was at that time. However, in 2019, Denmark said that they would spend over $200 million to strengthen Greenland's defenses. But as you know, they spent less than 1% of that amount. 1% is no sign of Denmark there," the president continued.
FORMER REP. MTG DUMPS COLD WATER ON TRUMP'S GREENLAND ACQUISITION AMBITIONS: 'WE'VE HEARD THAT ONE BEFORE'
Trump first publicly raised the idea of acquiring Greenland in 2019. The Arctic's geography makes it a key corridor for long-range threats from major adversaries, elevating Greenland's value as a location for sensors and tracking systems intended to protect North America.
Trump put European allies on notice to reach a deal on the island by Feb. 1 or face consequences. Goods from Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom will face a 10% tariff if no deal is reached by February, with the taxes increasing to 25% by June 1 if there is no deal.
President Donald Trump and NATO leaders join King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima of the Netherlands to pose for a family photo as they participate in the 2025 NATO summit on June 24, 2025 in The Hague, Netherlands. (Haiyun Jiang-Pool/Getty Images)
European leaders at Davos largely treated Trump's Greenland-linked tariff threats as economic coercion. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, for example, said Greenland is "non-negotiable" and that the EU would show "full solidarity" with Greenland.
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"In politics as in business: a deal is a deal. And when friends shake hands, it must mean something," von der Leyen added, referring to a trade deal the U.S. inked with the EU over the summer.
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Fox News senior medical analyst Dr. Marc Siegel comments on the updated food pyramid and elaborates on the downside of sugar and over-processed foods on 'Fox Report.'
A fermented staple found in the refrigerated section of many Asian grocery stores is drawing new scientific interest for its potential effects on immune-related processes.
Kimchi, a crunchy, tangy side dish consisting of fermented cabbage and gochugaru, or Korean chili powder, has been eaten for centuries in Korea.
Kimchi is lacto-fermented and was developed long before modern refrigeration, though it still needs to be kept cold today.
HEALTHIEST RED MEATS TO EAT — AND HOW A CARDIOLOGIST SAYS TO PREPARE THEM
Its garlicky, spicy taste has made it a palate cleanser in Korean cuisine. But beyond its culinary appeal, researchers are beginning to examine how kimchi may influence certain immune-related biological pathways.
A recent study, published in the journal npj Science of Food in November, reported single-cell changes in immune signaling associated with kimchi powder consumption.
Some Americans are exploring fermented foods like kimchi as an exceptionally tough flu season pushes interest in immune-related nutrition. (iStock)
Immunomodulation is the process that finetunes how the immune system responds to threats.
In a small, 12-week study of 13 overweight adults who consumed daily kimchi powder capsules, researchers observed measurable changes in immune cell signaling.
The powder was "equivalent to 30 grams of fresh kimchi," according to the study.
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Specifically, researchers observed increased activity in certain antigen-presenting immune cells, helping the immune system recognize threats.
The study also noted changes in CD4 T cells, or "helper" cells, though the researchers did not assess clinical immune outcomes.
Kimchi's tangy and spicy flavor has made it a versatile addition to American fusion dishes and snacks. (iStock)
Dr. Zaid Fadul, an Arizona-based physician and CEO of Bespoke Concierge MD, told Fox News Digital that, while the study is promising, experts "need to be careful about making too many promises."
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"The researchers only measured changes in the blood cells and gene activity, not whether people actually got sick less often," he said.
Fadul, who was not affiliated with the study, cautioned that, while the research points to changes in immune cell signaling, he would not recommend people eat kimchi specifically for immune support, noting its more established benefits for gut health and cholesterol.
Researchers studied the effects of daily kimchi powder consumption on immune cell signaling in overweight adults over a 12-week period. (iStock)
A major drawback to kimchi, Fadul said, is that it's "made with a lot of salt."
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"One serving of kimchi, about half a cup, can contain 500 to 1,000 milligrams of sodium," he said.
"If you're eating kimchi multiple times a day, you could easily consume a whole day's worth of sodium from kimchi alone."
Kimchi is made with garlic, chili powder and cabbage. It contains naturally occurring probiotics that have been studied for various health-related effects. (iStock)
Above all, Fadul stressed that "moderation and variety are key."
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"You can enjoy kimchi as part of a balanced diet by treating it as a condiment or side dish rather than a main course," he said.
"Start with small amounts if you're new to it."
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 chief political anchor Bret Baier reads between the lines of President Donald Trump's White House press briefing on ‘The Story.'
As President Donald Trump escalates his efforts to acquire Greenland from Denmark, the latest national polls reveal that most Americans oppose taking over the massive and crucially strategic island that lies between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans.
Trump is holding crucial talks Wednesday on Greenland with NATO allies during a quick stop in Davos, Switzerland.
On the eve of his trip, the president said there is "no going back" on his efforts to take over Greenland. Asked at a White House news conference how far he'd go to acquire the semi-autonomous Danish territory, Trump said: "You'll find out." The president has also threatened tariffs against NATO members.
In his speech at Davos, the president said: "I'm seeking immediate negotiations to once again discuss the acquisition of Greenland by the United States." But Trump added, "I don't want to use force."
WHY TRUMP ZEROED IN ON GREENLAND AND WHY IT MATTERS IN 3 MAPS
Military vessel HDMS Ejnar Mikkelsen of the Royal Danish Navy patrols near Nuuk, Greenland, Wednesday, March 5, 2025. (Evgeniy Maloletka/AP Photo)
But Trump's moves are facing opposition from Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill, and the most recent surveys suggest there's little appetite among Americans to take over the island.
Eighty-six percent of voters nationwide questioned in a Quinnipiac University poll released last week said they would oppose military action to take over Greenland.
That includes 95% of Democrats, 94% of Independents and even more than two-thirds (68%) of Republicans surveyed by Quinnipiac Jan. 8-12.
DENMARK IN TRUMP'S CROSSHAIRS AS US MAKES AMBITIOUS APPEAL TO GREENLAND
Three-quarters of Americans questioned in a CNN poll conducted at the same time said they opposed a U.S. takeover of Greenland. Ninety-four percent of Democrats and eight in 10 Independents said they would oppose such a move, with Republicans split 50%-50%.
Separately, only 14% surveyed in a CBS News poll conducted Jan. 14–16 said they would approve the use of military force to take the island.
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Meanwhile, by a 55%-37% margin, voters questioned in the Quinnipiac survey said they opposed any U.S. effort to try and buy Greenland.
But there's a stark political divide on this question, with the vast majority of Democrats and nearly six in 10 Independents opposed to buying Greenland, and more than two-thirds of Republicans supporting such efforts.
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Trump has said in social media posts that "The United States needs Greenland for the purpose of national security," and that "anything less" than U.S. control of the island is "unacceptable."
But the president's push for the U.S. to acquire Greenland is causing massive tensions with Denmark and other NATO nations.
Paul Steinhauser is a politics reporter based in the swing state of New Hampshire. He covers the campaign trail from coast to coast."
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From Chicago to Minneapolis, federal immigration agents deployed on Trump administration crackdowns have relied on an unlikely tool in the heat of tense operations — cellphone cameras.
That practice came under national scrutiny this month when the agent who fatally shot Renee Good recorded the encounter, including during the shooting, on his phone.
What's been less clear, though, is exactly what the agents are doing with these devices in scenarios when many experts say law enforcement officers are better served having both hands free and their attention undivided.
A CNN review of dozens of videos provides the clearest picture yet of federal immigration agents' at-times unconventional use of personal and government-issued phones and cameras in the field, which agents are widely using to deploy facial recognition software and to capture video – either for social media content or to document their actions.
In particular, the videos provide new insight into how the agents are using Mobile Fortify, a recently developed Department of Homeland Security app that allows officers to scan faces and retrieve detailed personal information. The app was intended to help quickly process immigrants targeted by operations – though it's also now being used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in street encounters with protesters and civilians alike.
US Customs and Border Protection agents are using cellphones in a similar way during operations, videos show.
404 Media, an independent news outlet, first reported on the existence of Mobile Fortify.
The agents' use of cameras on phones and other devices diverge from the practices of many police agencies, which employ hands-free body cameras primarily to hold officers to account or to justify their actions in court.
Federal agencies like ICE, by contrast, aren't required to wear body cameras, thanks to a 2025 executive order by President Donald Trump rescinding a Biden-era policy. When agents are using personal phones in the field, there's no definitive ICE policy about recording interactions or incidents, current and former officials said, though the expectation is that government business be handled on government-issued phones.
It's unclear whether DHS has any overarching policy governing how agents use facial recognition software. The department removed from its website a Biden-era plan for using the technology at some point since February, according to the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. That plan read, in part, “U.S. citizens are afforded the right to opt out of face recognition for non-law enforcement uses unless otherwise authorized or required.”
The agents' varied use of cameras on duty raises a potential legal quagmire on how to preserve or share footage of encounters – and even raises the possibility of agents manipulating footage, experts said.
“There's no retention requirement if it wasn't department-issued,” said Lauren Bonds, executive director of the National Police Accountability Project, adding that “It can really be used in a way that will misrepresent the situation.”
The practice of agents simultaneously filming and conducting operations is also a new phenomenon – driven in part by demands from the White House for more content for social media showing Trump's crackdown in action, according to a former DHS official. For years the agency would send designated videographers on assignments; now, many agents record video at once – even amid potentially dangerous operations.
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement that “the Administration is using all the tools in our toolbox to share the truth with the American people.”
“Thank goodness for the ample videos of our immigration enforcement operations which dispel the fake news narratives and show how we are arresting the worst of the worst,” she added.
In a statement, a DHS spokesperson described Mobile Fortify as “a lawful law-enforcement tool” that is used under strict guidelines.
“Its use is governed by established legal authorities and formal privacy oversight, which set strict limits on data access, use, and retention,” the statement said. “Mobile Fortify has not been blocked, restricted, or curtailed by the courts or by legal guidance. It is lawfully used nationwide in accordance with all applicable legal authorities.”
DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told CNN on Friday that the agency plans to use money from Trump's major policy bill, which includes $75 billion for ICE, to expand body-camera access for agents – but did not address whether new policies would require their use.
In a statement to CNN, McLaughlin said that “providing our ICE law enforcement officers with body cameras is a priority for DHS,” citing an increase in assaults against agents in the field. She added that “all ICE candidates are subject to months of rigorous training and selection at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.”
As part of the wave of reforms after the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, a 2022 executive order by then-President Joe Biden ordered federal agencies to start wearing body cameras. Then-Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas argued the move would “further build public trust and confidence” in the agency.
DHS moved more slowly than other agencies to comply, in part due to resistance from the Customs and Border Protection agency, an official who formerly had oversight over the DHS program told CNN.
That delay became moot when Trump took office last year, as he quickly revoked Biden's order. Under the new rules, agents could continue wearing cameras in some places. In other offices – including ICE's Minneapolis office – body camera policies weren't adopted.
FBI agents have continued using body cameras – a practice that has caused friction when they join DHS agents on crackdowns. Some DHS agents have objected to FBI agents wearing body cameras in joint operations, according to current and former law enforcement officials. In a few instances, FBI agents have been dropped from specific operations as a result, those officials said.
But even as many DHS agents have taken to the field without body cameras, they've begun filming Trump's crackdowns in unprecedented ways, video analyzed by CNN found.
In numerous incidents reviewed by CNN on recent sweeps across the country, agents pulled out cellphones and snapped photos of civilians' faces, using a unique app interface with large white circles.
In one video, in which immigration agents question someone who tells them he is 16 and doesn't have identification with him, one agent asks the other: “Can we do facials?” before another officer enters the frame to take the teen's photo.
A DHS source who reviewed a screengrab of another video confirmed the app visible in the shot is Mobile Fortify, the facial recognition app.
Mobile Fortify's development is the outcome of an ongoing effort at DHS, including under the previous administration, to modernize processing of immigrant arrests – a sluggish process that relied on mobile fingerprinting or bringing people into local field offices, according to current and former officials.
The new app instead allows agents to scan someone's face and instantly pull their information from any CBP immigration database, the DHS said in its statement. Agents can run photos, fingerprints and identifying information. Multiple officials who spoke to CNN described the app as “efficient.”
Mobile Fortify, which is allowed only on government-issued phones, was first rolled out last year. A DHS document obtained by 404 Media describes how the app can be used to amass biographical information of “individuals regardless of citizenship or immigration status,” and describes how CBP will “retain all photographs,” including those of US citizens.
In the videos reviewed by CNN, agents are rarely seen asking permission before holding their phones up to scan faces – and in some videos, after ignoring requests from individuals to stop.
The app uses similar technology to the Transportation Security Administration's screeners at the airport. However, while signs typically inform travelers that they can decline facial recognition, ICE does not give civilians the option.
“ICE does not provide the opportunity for individuals to decline or consent to the collection and use of biometric data/photograph collection,” the DHS document reads.
For those who feel their privacy has been violated, there's little legal recourse: there are few laws that govern facial recognition software.
That's led to outcry from some lawmakers and privacy advocates.
A group of senators has called for ICE to stop using Mobile Fortify, and in a letter to acting ICE Director Todd Lyons, asked what tests the agency conducted, if any, before deploying the app. Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Ed Markey, who led the inquiry, said he hasn't received a response from ICE.
“It's draconian, dangerous, and deceptive,” Markey said in a statement to CNN. “Our faces are not barcodes for ICE to scan and track.”
A lawsuit filed against DHS earlier this month by the state of Illinois also alleges that an “indiscriminate use” of Mobile Fortify has violated residents' rights. McLaughlin in a statement to CNN has disputed the lawsuit's claims and said that federal agents' actions are constitutional.
Munira Mohamed, a policy associate for the American Civil Liberties Union in Minnesota, said the lack of consent leaves citizens and noncitizens alike vulnerable.
“The surveillance structure and network that's being created affects us all, whether you care about immigration enforcement or not, whether you're a US citizen or not,” Mohamed said.
In its statement, DHS said concerns about privacy intrusions are unwarranted.
“Claims that Mobile Fortify violates the Fourth Amendment or compromises privacy are false,” said a DHS spokesperson. “The application does not access open-source material, scrape social media, or rely on publicly available data.”
In the minutes before fatally shooting 37-year-old Good, ICE officer Jonathan Ross recorded his encounter with her and her wife on his cellphone – a common practice for agents in the field, CNN found in its review of videos.
It's still unclear why Ross was recording. One senior official at DHS told CNN that Ross recorded because the couple had been harassing ICE officers that morning, adding that ICE officers often start documenting incidents if protesters or others become hostile to create a record of the incident.
Good's wife, Becca Good, said in a statement that the couple had “stopped to support our neighbors” before the shooting.
Others said the shooting emphasized the dangers of allowing or encouraging agents to record video amid their duties.
“It was incredibly irresponsible and unprofessional and it doesn't comport to any law enforcement standards that I was ever a part of,” said the former DHS official. “When officers are in an operation you are always tactically aware, checking around, making sure that the person in the vehicle has their hands on the wheel. … officers weren't using their iPhones, because they were doing the law enforcement mission they were trained to do.”
In addition to using facial recognition tools, there are two other primary reasons that agents are pulling out phones or strapping video cameras to their heads during operations, CNN found: to document their actions or to contribute to demands from DHS for online content.
The latter has become a driving force in the last year amid White House pressure, the former DHS official said.
“The videos that are going out now are a jumble. It could come from anyone. It's in this zeal to get this dynamic footage out to social media as quickly as possible,” the official said.
In some incidents, agents appear to be recording during confrontations with civilians. In one, which was released by a US attorney's office in North Carolina, an immigration agent recorded as officers chased a vehicle. The fleeing man was charged with assault for allegedly ramming agents' cars.
But video appeared to show the driver trying to avoid the agents, and recorded one agent saying: “Take him out, you gotta smash your car up on this.” The judge later dismissed the charge against the driver.
The use of cellphones or personal cameras by agents on duty raises numerous potential conflicts, experts said. Some told CNN that Ross' judgment and actions may have been impacted by the use of his phone – including his decision to walk in front of Good's car during the encounter just before he shot her.
The presence of cameras during raids could have an impact on agent behavior, said William Most, a civil rights attorney.
“This does raise concerns that federal agents are seeking to perform or create a spectacle rather than enforce and comply with the law,” Most said.
While ICE doesn't have a definitive policy on recording interactions or incidents on cellphones, the agency's Office of Professional Responsibility can review a government device upon request. A warrant or subpoena is generally required to access the officers' personal phone.
There are also concerns about ICE and CBP's filming of protesters. FBI agents are restricted from recording protesters or using surveillance tools to monitor First Amendment activity without having probable cause as part of an investigation. Some of those restrictions are a result of a history of abuses by the FBI during the Civil Rights era.
DHS is required to follow some of the same guidelines around civil liberties and other protections in criminal investigations. But in practice, during the second Trump administration the rules appear to be loosened.
“They seem to have purposely removed some of the guardrails on these agents,” a law enforcement official said, pointing to social media videos that show agents appearing to use personal or government devices to record protesters or people who are acting as so-called observers to document immigration operations.
Tom Homan, Trump's border czar, suggested on Thursday that the administration could even create a “database” to publicly out protesters.
“One thing I'm pushing for right now … we're going to create a database where those people that are arrested for interference, impeding and assault, we're going to make them famous,” he told Fox News. “We're going to put their face on TV. We're going to let their employers, in their neighborhoods, in their schools, know who these people are.”
CNN's Holmes Lybrand contributed to this report.
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Australia is doing absolutely everything to protect its most iconic ecosystem — except, perhaps, the one thing that really matters.
Photography by Harriet Spark for Vox
CAIRNS, Australia — “I just got a whiff,” said Peter Harrison, a marine scientist, as he leaned over the edge of the boat and pointed his flashlight into the dark water. “It's really coming through now.”
It was shortly after 10 pm on a cloudy December night, and Harrison, a coral researcher at Australia's Southern Cross University, was about 25 miles off the coast of northern Queensland. He was with a group of scientists, tourism operators, and Indigenous Australians who had spent the last few nights above the Great Barrier Reef — the largest living structure on the planet — looking for coral spawn.
And apparently, it has a smell.
Over a few nights in the Australian summer, shortly after the full moon, millions of corals across the Great Barrier Reef start bubbling out pearly bundles of sperm and eggs, known as spawn. It's as if the reef is snowing upside down. Those bundles float to the surface and break apart. If all goes to plan, the eggs of one coral will encounter the sperm of another and grow into free-swimming coral larvae. Those larvae make their way to the reef, where they find a spot to “settle,” like a seed taking root, and then morph into what we know of as coral.
Spawning on the Great Barrier Reef has been called the largest reproductive event on Earth, and, in more colorful terms, “the world's largest orgasm.” Coral spawn can be so abundant in some areas above the reef that it forms large, veiny slicks — as if there had been a chemical spill.
This was what the team was looking for out on the reef, and sniffing is one of the only ways to find it, said Harrison, who was among a small group of scientists who first documented the phenomenon of mass coral spawning in the 1980s. Some people say coral spawn smells like watermelon or fresh cow's milk. To me it was just vaguely fishy.
“Here we go,” said Mark Gibbs, another scientist onboard and an engineer at the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS), a government agency. All of a sudden the water around us was full of little orbs, as if hundreds of Beanie Babies had been ripped open. “Nets in the water!” Gibbs said to the crew. A few people onboard began skimming the water's surface with modified pool nets for spawn and then dumping the contents into a large plastic bin.
That night, the team collected hundreds of thousands of coral eggs as part of a Herculean effort to try to keep the Great Barrier Reef alive. Rising global temperatures, together with a raft of other challenges, threaten to destroy this iconic ecosystem — the gem of Australia, a World Heritage site, and one of the main engines of the country's massive tourism industry. In response to these existential threats, the government launched a project called the Reef Restoration and Adaptation Program (RRAP). The goal is nothing less than to help the world's greatest coral reef survive climate change. And with nearly $300 million in funding and hundreds of people involved, RRAP is the largest collective effort on Earth ever mounted to protect a reef.
The project involves robots, one of the world's largest research aquariums, and droves of world-renowned scientists. The scale is unlike anything I've ever seen.
But even then, will it be enough?
The first thing to know about the Great Barrier Reef is that it's utterly enormous. It covers about 133,000 square miles, making it significantly larger than the entire country of Italy. And despite the name, it's not really one reef but a collection of 3,000 or so individual ones that form a reef archipelago.
Another important detail is that the reef is still spectacular.
Over three days in December, I scuba dived offshore from Port Douglas and Cairns, coastal cities in Queensland that largely run on reef tourism, a whopping $5.3 billion annual industry. Descending onto the reef was like sinking into an alien city. Coral colonies twice my height rose from the seafloor, forming shapes mostly foreign to the terrestrial world. Life burst from every surface.
What really struck me was the color. Two decades of scuba diving had led me to believe that you can only find vivid blues, reds, oranges, and pinks in an artist's imaginings of coral reefs, like in the scenes of Finding Nemo. But coral colonies on the reefs I saw here were just as vibrant. Some of the colonies of the antler-like staghorn coral were so blue it was as if they had been dipped in paint.
It's easy to see how the reef — built from the bodies of some 450 species of hard coral — provides a foundation for life in the ocean. While cruising around large colonies of branching coral, I would see groups of young fish hiding out among their nubby calciferous fingers. The Great Barrier Reef is home to more than 1,600 fish species, many of which are a source of food for Indigenous Australians and part of a $200 million commercial fishing industry.
“The reef is part of our life,” said Cindel Keyes, an Indigenous Australian of the Gunggandji peoples, near Cairns, who was part of the crew collecting coral spawn with Harrison. RRAP partners with First Nations peoples, many of whom have relied on the reef for thousands of years and are eager to help sustain it. “It's there to provide for us, too,” Keyes, who comes from a family of fishers, told me.
The Great Barrier Reef is not dead, as many visitors assume from headlines. But in a matter of decades — by the time the children of today grow old — it very well could be.
The world's coral reefs face all kinds of problems, from big storms to runoff from commercial farmland, but only one is proving truly existential: marine heat. Each piece of coral is not one animal but a colony of animals, known as polyps, and polyps are sensitive to heat. They get most of their food from a specific type of algae that lives within their tiny bodies. But when ocean temperatures climb too high, polyps eject or otherwise lose those algae, turn bleach-white, and begin to starve. If a coral colony is “bleached” for too long, it will die.
The global prognosis is bleak. The world has already lost about half of its coverage of coral reefs since the 1950s, not including steep losses over the last two decades. And should wealthy countries continue burning fossil fuels — pushing global temperatures more than 2 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial baseline — it will likely lose the rest of it.
Projections for the Great Barrier Reef are just as grim. A recent study published in the prestigious journal Nature Communications projected that coral cover across the reef would decline, on average, by more than 50 percent over the next 15 years, under all emissions scenarios — including the most optimistic. The reef would only later recover to anything close to what it looks like today, the authors wrote, if there are immediate, near-impossibly steep emissions cuts. (The study was funded by RRAP.)
The reef has already had a taste of this future: In the last decade alone, there have been six mass bleaching events. One of the worst years was 2016, when coral cover across the entire reef declined by an estimated 30 percent. Yet recent years have also been alarming. Surveys by AIMS found that bleaching last year affected a greater portion of the reef than any other year on record, contributing to record annual declines of hard coral in the northern and southern stretches of the reef.
One hopeful, and rather confusing, detail reported by the Australian Institute of Marine Science is that the portion of reef covered by hard coral is still above the long-term average in the northern and southern parts of the reef. This points to coral's propensity to grow back and recover from past bleaching. Souring what might otherwise seem like good news is that much of the coral that's regrown is considered “weedy” — species that quickly take over and dominate the reef after a die-off. These species also tend to be most sensitive to heat stress, cyclones, and a coral-eating pest called the crown-of-thorn starfish. So as they become more common, the reef is likely to become prone to a boom and bust cycle.
“We've got immense volatility in coral cover at any given reef,” said Morgan Pratchett, a marine ecologist at James Cook University. “We have reduced the biodiversity on those reefs, and it's just being driven by weedy species. Now we're in an era where the existing choral assemblage is so vulnerable to any given disturbance. We've undermined the resilience.”
“I've been suffering,” said Harrison, who's been diving on the Great Barrier Reef for more than 40 years. “I've got chronic ecological grief. Sometimes it's overwhelming, like when you see another mass bleaching. It can be quite crushing.”
The problem isn't just bleaching but that these events are becoming so frequent that coral doesn't have time to recover, said Mia Hoogenboom, a coral reef ecologist at Australia's James Cook University, who's also involved in RRAP.
“The hopeful part is if we can take action now to help the system adapt to the changing environment, then we've got a good chance of keeping the resilience in the system,” Hoogenboom said. “But the longer we wait, the less chance we have to maintain the Great Barrier Reef as a functioning ecosystem.”
That night in December, after filling two large plastic bins onboard with coral spawn, the crew motored to a nearby spot on the reef where several inflatable pools were floating on the ocean's surface. The boat slowly approached one of the pools — which looked a bit like a life raft — and two guys onboard dumped spawn into it.
The government established RRAP in 2018 with an ambitious goal: to identify tools that might help the reef cope with warming, refine them through research and testing, and then scale them up so they can help the reef at large. It is a massive undertaking. RRAP involves more than 300 scientists, engineers, and other experts across 20-plus institutions, including AIMS, which operates one of the world's largest research aquariums called the National Sea Simulator. And it has a lot of money. The government committed roughly $135 million to the project, and it has another $154 million from private sources, including companies and foundations. It's operating on the scale of decades, not years, said Cedric Robillot, RRAP's executive director.
Scientists at RRAP have now honed in on several approaches that they think will work, and a key one is assisted reproduction — essentially, helping corals on the reef have babies. That's what scientists were doing on the water after dark in December.
Normally, when corals spawn, only a fraction of their eggs get fertilized and grow into baby corals. They might get eaten by fish, for example, or swept out to sea, away from the reef, where the larvae can't settle. That's simply nature at work in normal conditions. But as the reef loses more and more of its coral, the eggs of one individual have a harder time meeting the sperm of another, leading to a fertility crisis.
RRAP is trying to improve those odds through what some have called coral IVF.
At sea, scientists skim spawn from the surface and then load them into those protected pools, which are anchored to the reef. Suspended inside the pools are thousands of palm-sized ceramic structures for the larval coral to settle on, like empty pots in a plant nursery. After a week or so, scientists will use those structures — which at that point should be growing baby corals — to reseed damaged parts of the reef.
With this approach, scientists can collect spawn from regions that appear more tolerant to warming and reseed areas where the corals have been killed off by heat. Heat tolerance is, to an extent, rooted in a coral's DNA and passed down from parent to offspring. So those babies may be less likely to bleach and die. While baby corals are growing in those pools, scientists can also introduce specific kinds of algae — the ones that live symbiotically within polyps — that are more adapted to heat. That may make the coral itself more resistant to warming.
But what's even more impressive is that scientists are also breeding corals on land, at the National Sea Simulator, to repopulate the reef. SeaSim, located a few hours south of Cairns on the outskirts of Townsville, is essentially a baby factory for coral.
I drove to SeaSim one evening in December with Robillot, a technophile with silver hair and a French accent. He first walked me through a warehouse-like room filled with several deep, rectangular tanks lit by blue light. The light caused bits of coral growing inside them to fluoresce. Other than the sound of running water, it was quiet.
The main event — one of the year's biggest, for coral nerds anyway — was just outside.
SeaSim has several open-air tanks designed to breed corals with little human intervention. Those tanks, known as autospawners, mimic the conditions on the wild reef, including water temperature and light. So when scientists put adult corals inside them, the colonies will spawn naturally, as they would in the wild. The tanks collect their spawn automatically and mix it together in another container that creates the optimal density of coral sperm for fertilization.
Observing spawning isn't easy. It typically happens just once a year for each species, and the timing can be unpredictable. But I got lucky: Colonies of a kind of branching coral known as Acropora kenti were set to spawn later that evening. Through glass panels on the side of the autospawners, I saw their orangish branches, bunched together like the base of a broom. They were covered in pink, acne-like bumps — the bundles of spawn they were getting ready to release — which was a clear sign it would happen soon.
As it grew dark, the dozen or so people around the tanks flipped on red headlamps to take a closer look. (White light can disrupt spawning.) Around 7:30 pm, the show started. One colony after another popped out cream-colored balls. They hung for a moment just above the coral branches before floating to the surface and getting sucked into a pipe. It was a reminder that corals, which usually look as inert as rocks, really are alive. “It's such a beautiful little phenomenon,” Robillot said, as we watched together. “It's a sign that we still have vitality in the system.”
After spawning at SeaSim, scientists move the embryos into larger, indoor tanks, where they develop into larvae. Those larvae then get transferred to yet other tanks, settling on small tabs of concrete. Scientists then insert those tabs into slots on small ceramic structures — those same structures as the ones suspended in the floating pools at sea — which they'll use to reseed the reef. One clear advantage of spawning corals in a lab is that scientists can breed individual corals that appear, through testing, to be more resistant to heat. Ideally, their babies will then be a bit more resistant, too.
During spawning late last year, SeaSim produced roughly 19 million coral embryos across three species.
“People often don't understand the scale that we're talking about,” said Carly Randall, a biologist at AIMS who works with RRAP. “We have massive numbers of autospawning systems lined up. We have automated image analysis to track survival and growth. It is like an industrial production facility.”
Including the spawn collection at sea, RRAP produced more than 35 million coral embryos last year that are now growing across tens of thousands of ceramic structures that will be dropped onto the reef. The goal RRAP is working toward, Robillot says, is to be able to stock the reef with 100 million corals every year that survive until they're at least 1 year old. (Under the right conditions, each ceramic structure can produce one coral that lives until 1 year old in the ocean, Robillot told me. That means RRAP would need to release at least a million of those structures on the reef every year.)
On that scale, the project could help maintain at least some coral cover across the reef, even in the face of more than 2 degrees C of warming, Robillot said, citing unpublished research. One study, published in 2021 and partially funded by RRAP, suggests that a combination of interventions, including adding heat-tolerant corals, can delay the reef's decline by several years.
“We are not replacing reefs,” Robillot said. “It's just too big. We're talking about starting to change the makeup of the population by adapting them to warmer temperatures and helping their recovery. If you systematically introduce corals that are more heat-tolerant over a period of 10 to 20 to 30 years, then over a hundred years, you significantly change the outlook for your population.”
The obvious deficiency of RRAP, and many other reef conservation projects, is that it doesn't tackle the root problem: rising greenhouse gas emissions. While restoration might help maintain some version of coral reefs in the near term, those gains will only be temporary if the world doesn't immediately rein in carbon emissions. “It all relies on the premise that the world will get its act together on emissions reductions,” Robillot said. “If we don't do that, then there's no point, because it's a runaway train.”
Many groups involved in reef conservation have failed to reckon with this reality, even though they're often on the front lines of climate change. During my trip, I would be on dive boats listening to biologists talk about restoration, while we burned diesel fuel and were served red meat — one of the most emissions-intensive foods. A lot of tour operators, some of whom work with RRAP, don't talk about climate change much at all. Two of the guides who took me out on the reef even downplayed the threat of climate change to me.
Yolanda Waters, founder and CEO of Divers for Climate, a nonprofit network of scuba divers who care about climate change, said this isn't surprising. “At the industry level, climate change is still very hush-hush,” said Waters, who previously worked in the reef tourism industry. “In most of those boats, climate messaging is just nonexistent.”
This makes some sense. Tourism companies don't want people to think the reef is dying. “When international headlines describe the Reef as ‘dying' or ‘lost,' it can create the impression that the visitor experience is no longer worthwhile, even though large parts of the Reef remain vibrant, actively managed, and accessible,” Gareth Phillips, CEO of the Association of Marine Park Tourism Operators, a trade group, told me by email. (I asked around, but no one could point me to data that clearly linked negative media stories to a drop in visitors to the Great Barrier Reef.)
Yet by failing to talk about the urgent threat of climate change, the tourism industry — a powerful force in Australia, that influences people from all over the world — is squandering an opportunity to educate the public about what is ultimately the only way to save the reef, said Tanya Murphy, a campaigner at the Australian Marine Conservation Society, a nonprofit advocacy group. Tourists are ending their vacation with the memory of, say, a shark or manta ray, not a new urge to fight against climate change, Waters said. So the status quo persists: People don't connect reducing emissions with saving the reef, even though that's “the only reef conservation action that can really be taken from anywhere,” she added.
(Not everyone in the tourism industry is so quiet. Eric Fisher, who works for a large Australian tourism company called Experience Co Limited, says he tells tourists that climate change is the biggest threat to the Great Barrier Reef. “It's what we tell people every day,” Fisher told me. “So as they fall in love with it, they're more likely to leave with an understanding of that connection.”)
Keeping mum on climate change, while speaking loudly about restoration and other conservation efforts, including RRAP, can also take pressure off big polluters to address their carbon footprints, Waters and Murphy said. Polluters who fund reef conservation, including the government and energy companies, are given social license to operate without stricter emissions cuts, because the public thinks they're doing enough, they said.
In reality, the Australian government continues to permit fossil fuel projects. Last year, for example, the Albanese administration, which is politically left of center, approved an extension of a gas project in Western Australia that Murphy and other advocates call “a big carbon bomb.” The extension of the project, known as the North West Shelf, will produce carbon emissions equivalent to about 20 percent of Australia's current yearly carbon footprint, according to The Guardian.
A spokesperson for the Albanese government acknowledged in a statement to Vox that climate change is the biggest threat to coral reefs globally. “It underlines the need for Australia and the world to take urgent action, including reaching net zero emissions,” the statement, sent by Sarah Anderson, said. “The Albanese Government remains committed to action on climate change and our net zero targets.”
Anderson highlighted a government policy called the Safeguard Mechanism, which sets emissions limits for the country's largest polluters, including the North West Shelf Facility. Yet the policy only applies to Scope 1 emissions. That means it doesn't limit emissions tied to gas that the North West Shelf project exports — the bulk of the project's carbon footprint.
Although Australia has far fewer emissions compared to large economies like the US and China, the country is among the dirtiest on a per-capita basis. If any country can reduce its emissions, it should be Australia, Waters said. “We're such a wealthy, privileged country,” Waters said. “We've got the biggest reef in the world. If we can do better, why wouldn't we?”
On a stormy morning, near the end of my trip, we returned to the reef — this time, visiting another set of floating pools, offshore from Port Douglas. They had been filled with spawn several days earlier. Small corals were now growing on the ceramic structures, and they were ready to be deployed on the reef.
After a nauseating two-hour ride out to sea, a group of scientists and tourism operators jumped into small tenders and collected the structures from inside the pools. Then they motored around an area of the reef that had previously been damaged by a cyclone and started dropping coral babies off the side of the boat, one by one.
As it started to pour, and I noticed water flooding into the front of the tender, I couldn't help but think about how absurd all of this was. Custom-made pools and ceramics. Hours and hours on the reef, floating in small boats in a vast ocean. Sniffing out spawn.
“You sort of think about the level of effort, that we're going to try and rescue something that's been on our planet for so many millions of years,” Harrison told me on the boat a few nights earlier. “It seems a bit ironic that humans now have to intervene to try and rescue corals.”
RRAP is making this process far more efficient, Robillot says — machines, not people, will eventually be dropping the ceramic structures off the boats, for example. But still, why not invest the money instead in climate advocacy or clean energy? Isn't that an easier, perhaps better, way to help?
It can't be either or, Robillot said. And it's not, he contends. Many donors who fund the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, a core RRAP partner and Robillot's employer, are putting more of their money into climate action relative to reef conservation, he said. The government of Australia, meanwhile, says it's spending billions on clean energy and green-lit a record number of renewable energy projects in 2025. Plus, while the scale of resources behind RRAP is certainly huge for coral reefs, it's tiny compared to the cost of fixing the climate crisis. “We need trillions,” Robillot said.
Investing that roughly $300 million into fighting climate change could have a small impact on reefs decades from now. Putting it into projects like RRAP helps reefs today. It's only a waste of money — worse than a waste of money — if that investment undermines climate action. And Robillot doesn't think it does.
The Great Barrier Reef Foundation has been criticized for its ties to mining and energy companies, including Peabody Energy and BHP. The Reef Foundation currently receives money from mining giant Rio Tinto and BHP Foundation (which is funded by BHP) for projects unrelated to RRAP, the organization told Vox. “It is a bit concerning,” Murphy told me. “It's really important that we get polluters to pay for the damage they're causing. But that should be done as an obligatory tax and they should not be getting any marketing benefits from that.”
Robillot argues that these companies have not influenced RRAP's work, or restricted what its staff can say about climate change. “If we can still scream that climate change is the main driver of loss of coral reefs, I don't have an issue,” he said. “I don't think it's realistic to only take money from people who do not have any impact on climate change. I don't know anyone.”
Yet if there's one argument that I find most convincing for RRAP — for any project trying to help wildlife suffering from climate change — it's that even if the world stops burning fossil fuels, these ecosystems will still decline. They will still need our support, our help to recover. The planet is currently crossing the 1.5-degree threshold, at which point the majority of coral reefs worldwide are expected to die off. “If you stop emissions today, they will still suffer,” Robillot said of reefs. “And we're not going to stop emissions today.”
So much of reef conservation is absurd. We shouldn't need to collect coral spunk from the open ocean in the middle of the night or breed these animals in tanks on land. Then again, these sorts of efforts are what scientists, Indigenous Australians, and the most thoughtful divers can do — what they are doing — to help the reef today.
“There's so much work happening on the ground,” Waters, of Divers for Climate, told me. “All of those scientists, all of those [tourism] operators, are genuinely doing everything they can. It would be great for the Australian government to go, ‘Well, this is what we can do for reefs, too,' pick up their game on climate, and show that we're actually in it together.”
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Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
President Donald Trump called for “immediate negotiations” for the U.S. to acquire Greenland from Denmark during his speech Wednesday at the World Economic Forum in Davos. But the president vowed he “won't use force” to take over the island.
President Donald Trump insisted he wants to “get Greenland, including right, title and ownership,” but he said he wouldn't employ force to achieve that — using his speech Wednesday at the World Economic Forum to repeatedly deride European allies and vow that NATO shouldn't stand in the way of U.S. expansionism.
He urged NATO to allow the U.S. to take Greenland from Denmark and added an extraordinary warning, saying alliance members can say yes, “and we'll be very appreciative. Or you can say, ‘No,' and we will remember.”
“This enormous unsecured island is actually part of North America,” Trump said. “That's our territory.”
Trump also said that the U.S. is booming but Europe is “not heading in the right direction.” His ambitions to wrest control of Greenland from NATO ally Denmark threaten to tear apart relations with many of Washington's closest allies.
Key points from Trump's Davos speech:
Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson said Trump's tariffs policies have been working, bringing trillions of dollars into the U.S. during the president's first year.
“I have no intention of getting in the way of President Trump and his administration, and how they've been using this very effectively,” Johnson said at the Capitol.
But a top Democrat, Rep. Ted Lieu of California, said the costs of tariffs are being passed on to American households.
“This is how ludicrous Donald Trump's idea is,” Lieu said at a press Capitol conference. “He's saying ‘If I don't get my way on Greenland, I'm going to punish the American people even more.'”
“How dumb is that?” Lieu said. “We're asking the president: Focus on America, not on Venezuela or Greenland.”
U.S. Sen. Lindsay Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, said Trump made a strong case Wednesday for acquiring Greenland legally.
“Taking Greenland by force is off the table, it was never a good idea,” Graham said, adding, “He's convinced me.”
He emphasized that any deal involving Greenland must be approved by the Senate, which would not support using force.
Graham expressed his willingness to support a legal purchase of Greenland and said he aims to be “Trump's biggest champion” in bringing Greenland under American control, which he argued would be for the benefit of NATO.
Following Trump explicitly saying in his Davos remarks that he wasn't considering military action to take Greenland, a Danish government official said Copenhagen remains ready to discuss how to go about addressing U.S. security concerns in the Arctic.
But the official, who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity, underscored the government's position that “red lines” — namely Denmark's sovereignty — must be respected.
French President Emmanuel Macron speaks during the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2026. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
President Emmanuel Macron's office is disputing Trump's assertion in Davos that he successfully pressured the French leader to increase prescription drug prices.
“It's being claimed that President @EmmanuelMacron increased the price of medicines. He does not set their prices. They are regulated by the social security system and have, in fact, remained stable,” Macron's office said in a post on X. “Anyone who has set foot in a French pharmacy knows this.”
It included a GIF of Trump speaking overlaid with the words, “FAKE NEWS!”
The president said while in a meeting with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi that there will be “a lot” of countries represented on his Board of Peace.
“Some need parliamentary approval but for the most part, everybody wants to be on,” he said.
Gavin Newsom, Governor of California, talks to the media after the speech of President Donald Trump during the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
“And there was boorish parts of it, but those were not even that consequential, including name-checking people he likes and people he didn't like,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said. “Honestly, I was just a little disappointed.”
The Democratic governor, a frequent critic of Trump who's eying a 2028 presidential run, has made himself available repeatedly to media this week in Davos.
“For a European audience, that may have been a new speech. My God, there wasn't anything new about that speech for the American audience,” he said.
Referring to Trump's comment that he won't use military force to wrest Greenland for the United States: “I don't think military force was ever real.”
Trump's top adviser on artificial intelligence, David Sacks, told a Davos crowd that “child safety has to be part of a larger regulatory framework” for AI but he warned against overregulating the technology.
Sacks acknowledged “horror stories” of AI chatbots that he says contributed to children harming themselves. But he also said billions of people, including many teenagers, are using AI without problems and it is “less addictive, more a utility,” when compared to social media.
“There's been a little bit of a transference of the concerns that people have about social media onto AI and some of that transference is justified and some of it may not be,” Sacks said in a conversation with Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff.
Sacks called efforts across the 50 U.S. state governments to regulate AI a “little bit of a knee-jerk reaction” and one of the “great threats to innovation in the United States right now.”
The CEOs of Visa, Cisco, Salesforce, JPMorgan Chase and Amazon are among the high-profile figures gathering outside Trump's upcoming Davos event with global business leaders.
Sports will also be represented there, with Baltimore Orioles owner David Rubenstein and FIFA president Gianni Infantino spotted among the expanding group.
While the spotlight is on Trump, some of the world's most pressing issues are also being debated at Davos, including the war in Sudan, now approaching its third year.
During a panel discussion Wednesday, humanitarian groups pushed for stronger international engagement to end the fighting as well as more aid to civilians.
International Rescue Committee President and CEO David Miliband called the crisis in Sudan an “avatar for the world disorder.” He said the conflict has been internationalized — several outside powers reportedly arm and finance the warring sides — and said civilian deaths outnumber fighters killed.
Hanin Ahmed, head of the local aid initiative Emergency Response Rooms of Sudan, said the humanitarian situation is deteriorating across the country, including in areas not controlled by the Rapid Support Forces, citing food insecurity, lack of income due to prolonged job losses, and disease outbreaks.
Specialist Meric Greenbaum works at his post on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, as a television shows President Donald Trump speaking at the World Economic Forum, Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
The U.S. stock market is bouncing back from its worst day since October, although some signs of fear remain on Wall Street about Trump's desire to take Greenland.
The S&P 500 climbed 0.7% on Wednesday after Trump said in his speech that he would not use force to take “the piece of ice.” The potential de-escalation in rhetoric around Greenland helped the index recover some of its 2.1% drop from the day before and pull closer to its all-time high set earlier this month.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 353 points, or 0.7%, as of 10:15 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.7% higher.
Treasury yields also held steadier in the bond market, a day after jumping in a potential signal of worries about higher inflation in the long term. They got help from a calming of government bond yields in Japan. The value of the U.S. dollar was also mixed against the euro, Swiss franc and other currencies after sliding the day before.
But some nerves seemed to remain in the market, and the price of gold rose another 2.1% and topped $4,800 per ounce for the first time.
▶ Read more about Wall Street's reaction to Trump's speech
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said after those individual meetings, which was expected to occur behind closed doors, the president will address business leaders. He will then meet with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte.
Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen was in a meeting on Ukraine and didn't hear Trump's speech, but says he has been briefed on it.
He said in Copenhagen that it's clear Trump's intentions toward Greenland remain “intact,” Danish public broadcaster DR reported.
Of Trump's statement that he won't use force to acquire the island, Løkke Rasmussen said: “That is positive in isolation, but it doesn't make the problem go away.”
Trump told Swiss President Guy Parmelin that his country was “great” and “beautiful.”
“You do make great watches, too,” he said during a brief part of the meeting that was open to the media.
Trump also clarified that he's meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Thursday, not Wednesday, as he said during his address.
Zelenskyy was in Kyiv on Wednesday, his communications adviser Dmytro Lytvyn said.
Trump returned to the White House a year ago. He marked Tuesday's anniversary by presiding over a meandering, nearly two-hour-long press briefing to recount his accomplishments, repeating many false claims he made throughout 2025.
▶ Read the AP's latest Fact Focus
The president did not make any major news in the discussion, which lasted about 20 minutes. Trump then left the stage.
Asked about U.S. debt climbing toward $40 trillion — more than the size of the annual U.S. economy — Trump insisted that he can solve the problem with economic growth and eliminating fraud and excessive spending.
“I think we're going to be paying off debt,” he boasted.
Trump made similar promises when he first ran for president in 2016 and again in 2024. He has added more to U.S. debt totals than any president.
He repeated claims about fraud in Minnesota, mentioning the figure $19 billion — a miniscule fraction of annual federal spending that is measured in trillions. Trump also said the U.S. is cutting spending, although he has exaggerated the effects of his government efficiency efforts.
He gave them until Jan. 20 to comply with his demand.
It was unclear how Trump could unilaterally cap credit card interest rates. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said previously that the president has “an expectation” that credit card companies will accede to his demand that they cap interest rates on credit cards at 10%.
There are a handful of bills introduced by Republicans and Democrats to cap credit card interest rates, but House Speaker Mike Johnson has been cold to the idea.
Banks are highly resistant to the idea of capping credit card rates. In an interview at Davos, JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon said “it would be a disaster to the U.S. economy” to cap credit card rates, saying banks would close millions of credit card accounts in response.
It's the first time he's asked Congress to act on an issue that he demanded banks comply with only a couple weeks ago.
“Whatever happened to usury?” Trump said in his speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Usury refers to the biblical prohibition to charge unreasonable interest on loans, and many states and countries had usury laws on the books up until the first half of the 20th Century.
President Donald Trump addresses the audience during the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Leaving vague exactly what kind of “culture” that he meant, Trump said the West has prospered because of a shared and “very special” one.
“This is the precious inheritance that America and Europe have in common,” Trump said. “We share it. But we have to keep it strong.”
Trump added that he wanted to “defend that culture” and “rediscover the spirit that lifted the West from the depths of the dark ages to the pinnacle of human achievement.”
Many Americans descend from Europeans, including settlers who came to the North American continent hundreds of years ago. But the Trump administration also has faced criticism at times for focusing on that side of U.S. culture when the country's population is far more diverse.
“But equally importantly, we're cracking down on more than $19 billion in fraud that was stolen by Somalian bandits,” Trump said, referring to ongoing fraud investigations in Minnesota that have focused on members of the diaspora. “Can you believe that — Somalia? They turned out to be higher IQ than we thought.”
It's not the first time Trump has gone after the community in racist terms.
Last month, Trump said he did not want Somali immigrants in the U.S., saying residents of the war-ravaged eastern African country are too reliant on the U.S. social safety net and add little to the United States.
Somalis have been coming to Minnesota and other states, often as refugees, since the 1990s. The president made no distinction between citizens and noncitizens.
The president finished his speech by congratulating the people in the room for all their successes and declared that the U.S. is “back, bigger, stronger, better than ever before.”
“I'll see you around,” he said.
He then sat down on a chair on stage for a question-and-answer session with World Economic Forum CEO Borge Brende, who was seated throughout Trump's remarks.
He's taken digs at French President Emmanuel Macron over Europe for selling pharmaceuticals to the U.S. at a premium. He ripped Denmark for a lack of appreciation for the U.S. protection of Greenland during World War II. And he's blasted NATO for being too dependent on the United States.
“The United States is keeping the whole world afloat,” he said.
While speaking in Switzerland, Trump told a story about the country that he said “rubbed me the wrong way.”
He said Switzerland makes beautiful Rolex watches, but “were paying nothing to the United States” to export them. So, he set a tariff, which he said caused representatives from the country and the company to call and visit him and urge him to reverse it.
He brought down the tariff, but said he felt the country was “taking advantage” of the U.S.“A majority of the money they make is because of us, because we never charge them anything,” he said.
Talking about the U.S. market, Trump threw a curveball, saying essentially that he didn't want to simply expand housing supply because it could lower values for people who already own homes.
“If I want to really crush the housing market, I could do that so fast,” he said. But, “I don't want to do anything to hurt” people who have built wealth through their home equity.
“I don't want to do anything to hurt” existing homeowners, Trump said. He instead emphasized his desire to see lower interest rates, though that is a policy that, over time, would drive home prices up because it fuels demand.
In recent weeks, Trump has repeatedly told a story about how he supposedly got Macron to close the gap on drug pricing disparities between the two countries.This time, he did it before a European audience.
In Trump's telling, Macron was obstinate about not wanting to hike French drug prices until Trump threatened to raise tariffs, including on French wines and champagnes. At that point, Trump said, Macron agreed
French President Emmanuel Macron touches his brow during the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2026. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
Trump mocked French President Emmanuel Macron's sunglasses to audience's laughter.
“I watched him yesterday with those beautiful sunglasses. What the hell happened?” Trump said to the loudest laughter so far.
The French president has worn sunglasses indoors in recent days as he's joked about a “completely harmless” eye condition.
—Read more about Macron
Trump says he's meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday.
The meeting was not on Trump's publicly released calendar and it was not clear if he meant a virtual or in-person meeting.
Zelenskyy is not believed to be in Davos.
The Danish navy's inspection ship HDMS Vaedderen sails off Nuuk, Greenland, on Sunday, Jan. 18, 2026. (Mads Claus Rasmussen/Ritzau Scanpix via AP)
At least four times in his remarks at Davos so far, Trump has referred to Greenland as “Iceland.”
“They're not there for us on Iceland that I can tell you,” Trump said of NATO partners. “I mean, our stock market took the first dip yesterday because of Iceland, so Iceland's already cost us a lot of money.”
He also did that a day earlier during a marathon news conference at the White House.
“We want a piece of ice for world protection, and they won't give it,” Trump said in Davos speech.
“You can say yes and we will be very appreciative. Or you can say no and we will remember.”
An Aurora Borealis is seen in the sky above Nuuk, Greenland, on Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Trump asserted that Denmark promised to spend “over $200 million to strengthen Greenland's defenses” and then insisted it has “spent less than 1% of that.”
He was referring to a 2019 commitment from the Danish government, made during Trump's first presidency, when he first floated the idea of the U.S. taking control of the semiautonomous territory of Denmark.
Copenhagen has not disputed that the implementation of that commitment has been slow.
In recent weeks, with Trump pushing the U.S. takeover again, Denmark's Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen unveiled an expanded defense plan with a $2 billion budget that includes three new ships, long-range drones and more satellite capacity.
Trump did not mention that latest commitment.
Trump needled his northern neighbor after Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said Tuesday that the current phase of global diplomacy was a “rupture” and called for “middle powers” to “act together.”
Trump said Canada gets many “freebies” from the U.S. and “should be grateful.”
He said Carney's Davos speech showed he “wasn't so grateful.”
“Canada lives because of the United States,” Trump said. “Remember that, Mark, the next time you make your statements.”
Before the audience in Davos, Trump repeated a claim he's said before that the Russian war on Ukraine “wouldn't have started” if the 2020 U.S. presidential election “weren't rigged.”
One thing is for certain: The 2020 election was not stolen. Biden earned 306 electoral votes to Trump's 232. Trump's allegations of massive voting fraud have been broadly refuted.
Trump, who has long been calling for prosecutions related to the 2020 election, added that “people will soon be prosecuted for what they did.” It wasn't immediately clear what he meant.
Trump reiterated that he's getting cooperation from Venezuelan officials following the ouster of Nicolás Maduro and predicted good times for the South American country's economy.
“Every major oil company is coming in with us,” Trump said. ‘It's amazing.”
Earlier this month, at a White House meeting, Exxon Mobil CEO Darren Woods said the Venezuelan market is “un-investable” in its current state.
It is the first time Trump has ruled out using force, having previously been vague about how far he is willing to go in his push.
The president said the U.S. “probably won't get anything” unless he decided to “use excessive strength and force” that he said would make the U.S. “frankly unstoppable.”“But I won't do that. Okay?” Trump said.
He added a minute later: “I don't have to use force. I don't want to use force. I won't use force.”
President Donald Trump speaks during the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
Trump called for “immediate negotiations” for the U.S. to acquire Greenland from Denmark during his speech at Davos.
The president also lashed out at Denmark for being “ungrateful” for the U.S. protection of the Arctic island during World War II and continued to make his case that the U.S. needs to control the island for the sake of national security.
“This enormous unsecured island is actually part of North America,” Trump said. “That's our territory.”
People march during a pro- Greenlanders demonstration, in Copenhagen, Denmark, Saturday, Jan. 17, 2026. (Emil Helms/Ritzau Scanpix via AP)
The president cited the difficulty of mining on the Arctic island.
“You got to go through hundreds of feet of ice,” he said. That's not the reason we need it.”
Instead, he said the U.S. needs it for “strategic national security and international security.”
Windmills are “all over Europe” and are “losers” bought by “stupid people,” the U.S. president said.He made it clear that it was European nations that were the “stupid people” buying windmills from China.
It's part of his broad claims about energy. Trump is promoting oil and coal, traditional fossil fuels, and nuclear energy, while blasting newer, cleaner energy sources.
Calling windmills “those damn things,” he renewed his critiques that they “kill the birds” and “ruin the landscapes.”
Trump mused that China owns the international windmill market but doesn't use them within its borders.
Within 20 minutes of starting his speech, Trump had already criticized Europe several times.He said he was European in heritage and wants to see it do well, but argued European countries are “destroying themselves.”
On windmills, immigration and trade, he tore into the continent, while many of its leaders were in his presence at the conference.“Certain places in Europe are not even recognizable,” he said. “Here in Europe, we've seen the fate that the radical left tried to impose upon America.”
The president referenced a recent push by his administration to get tech companies to bid on contracts to build new power plants, so that data center operators, not regular consumers, pay for their own power needs.
“They're building their own power plants, which when added up is more than any country anywhere in the world is doing,” Trump said.
President Donald Trump speaks during the 56th annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, Jan. 21, 2026. (Laurent Gillieron/Keystone via AP)
The audience largely rewarded Trump's one-liners with laughter.
“People are doing very well,” the U.S. president said to laughs inside the Congress Hall. They're very happy with me.”
The overflow room also produced chuckles and giggles as attendees watched the speech on screens.
Distant protesters made their voices, though not their words, heard from the steps outside the Congress Center as Trump addressed the gathering of elites.
Their words were too faint to be discernible, but they clearly expressed angry opposition to Trump.
In the first part of his Davos speech, Trump touted America's finances and living standards, which he said he achieved against expectations.
“Virtually all of the so-called experts predicted my plans to end this failed model would trigger a global recession and runaway inflation,” he said. “But we have proven them wrong.”
Trump said he wanted to spend the day discussing “how we have achieved this economic miracle” and suggested, as he did from the White House yesterday, that other countries in attendance could learn from his success.
Trump touted economic growth in the U.S., using many of his characteristic superlatives that exaggerate circumstances on the ground.
“The USA is the economic engine on the planet,” Trump said. “You all follow us down, and you follow us up.”
Trump credited his tariff policies, which allies have harshly criticized ahead of his arrival at Davos. The president has also repeated his false claims that he inherited record inflation and has completely eliminated it.
His economic framing is similar to how he reviewed his first year back in power in a lengthy White House press briefing Tuesday before he traveled to Europe.
The president echoed criticisms he had made of Europe in his United Nations address last year and his administration's latest national security statements.
“I love Europe and I want to see Europe go good, but it's not heading in the right direction,” he said.
The president opened his remarks by saying it was “great to be back in beautiful Davos Switzerland and to address so many respected business leaders, so many friends, a few enemies.”
His last line drew laughs.
President Donald Trump speaks during the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
Trump's speech at Davos will coincide with arguments at the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington over the American president's effort to oust Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook.
It's a politically charged case with the independence of the nation's central bank at stake.
—▶ Follow live updates of the hearing
It's standing room only inside Congress Hall as Davos awaits Trump's highly anticipated speech.
Attendees can use headsets to listen to the speech in six languages besides English.
The president's motorcade arrived at the World Economic Forum event venue after a short drive along a road lined with people and skiers.
A few of the bystanders offered less than a welcoming greeting by extending their middle fingers. At least one person held a piece of paper with an expletive.
Davos attendees wait to watch President Donald Trump's speech on screens inside an overflow room. (AP Photo/Kostya Manenkov)
Davos officials invited some attendees to watch Trump's speech on screens inside an overflow room instead of Congress Hall, but it barely seemed to lessen the crowd.
Hundreds of people, including several tech titans, sought a coveted seat inside the hall.
The press, including the White House pool, is consigned to the back of the venue.
JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon said the United States is now “less reliable” as a global geopolitical and economic partner under Trump.
Still, the Wall Street titan was noticeably reluctant to more forcefully criticize Trump as a person or his administration, prompting pushback during an interview at Davos with Zanny Minton Beddoes, editor-in-chief of The Economist.
“I am struck, I'm genuinely struck by the unwillingness of CEOs in America to say anything critical,” said Beddoes. “There is a climate of fear in your country. Would you agree with that? And what should be done about it?”
Dimon demurred on that question as well.“What the hell else do you want me to say?” Dimon said, noting he's generally pushed back on Trump's tariff and immigration policies.
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Sunday church services were underway at Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, when protesters entered and began shouting “Justice for Renee Good” and “ICE out,” a video from the incident shows.
“Shame on you!” a person at the church podium shouts.
The demonstrators were at the church to protest David Easterwood, who is listed on the church website as one of the pastors and also appears to be the same person who is a top ICE official in the Twin Cities. He was recently named a defendant in a case brought by protesters who allege immigration agents violated their First and Fourth Amendment rights.
President Donald Trump called the demonstrators at the church “agitators and insurrectionists” and said they are “troublemakers who should be thrown in jail, or thrown out of the Country.”
Now, the protesters could be facing prosecution. Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, said the protesters were “desecrating a house of worship and interfering with Christian worshipers.”
The Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, she said, is now looking into charges against the protesters using two federal statutes: the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act and the Ku Klux Klan Act.
“Everyone in the protest community needs to know that the fullest force of the federal government is going to come down and prevent this from happening and put people away for a long time,” Dhillon said on The Benny Show, a podcast by conservative influencer Benny Johnson.
Here's what you should know about both laws and how they could be applied.
The FACE Act, enacted in 1994, is a federal law that prohibits “the use of force or threat of force or physical obstruction to intentionally injure, intimidate, or interfere with or attempt to injure, intimidate, or interfere with any person lawfully exercising or seeking to exercise the First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship.”
The statute also protects facilities that provide reproductive health services.
Punishment varies from a fine to imprisonment or both, according to the FBI.
As of 2024, the Department of Justice has filed more than 15 FACE Act actions in at least a dozen states, with ongoing investigations in others, according to a DOJ news release.
In one 2024 instance, the DOJ filed a lawsuit against demonstrators who “targeted” a synagogue in New Jersey during a protest that turned violent.
The demonstrators “intended to interfere with the synagogue community's right to freely exercise their religion, including gathering for a religious ceremony to honor the life of a deceased rabbi,” according to the complaint.
The Civil War-era KKK Act passed in 1871 to further protect the rights listed in the Fourteenth Amendment, which had been ratified three years earlier.
Congress passed a series of Enforcement Acts and the KKK Act “was designed to empower the federal government to protect the civil and political rights of individuals,” according to the Office of the Historian at the US House of Representatives.
The act made it a federal crime to deny any group or person “any of the rights, privileges, or immunities, or protection, named in the Constitution.”
At the time, vigilante groups such as the Ku Klux Klan threatened recently freed Black people and their White allies in the South and undermined the Republican Party's plan for Reconstruction.
While the statute is seldom used, it has been cited in two recent lawsuits against the Trump administration and in other complaints in 2020.
The federal statute was cited in a 2021 lawsuit against Trump by the Democratic chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi. It accused Trump, his attorney Rudy Giuliani, the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers of violating the KKK Act by inciting the January 6 Capitol riot to prevent the certification of the 2020 presidential election.
Joseph Sellers, an attorney representing Thompson and the NAACP in the lawsuit, called Trump, Giuliani and the two groups the “principal architects” of the insurrection and said the historic law should be used to protect Congress members who were impacted that day.
At the time, Trump was already facing a lawsuit that alleged he violated the KKK Act when he attempted to overturn the election results of major cities in 2020.
That same year, the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation filed a federal lawsuit against right-wing political operatives Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl, saying they violated the KKK Act when they “conspired to intimidate and threaten many thousands of eligible voters.”
The men were accused of targeting Black voters in 85,000 robocalls that spread false information about voting by mail.
The statute was also cited in a 2020 lawsuit filed by St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kimberly M. Gardner that claimed a police union used a racially motivated conspiracy against her.
Gardner, a Black woman, said the police union harassed and intimidated her and city officials attempted to silence her and remove her from office. The lawsuit, which was ultimately dismissed, alleged these were attempts to block her reform efforts.
The protesters who disrupted Sunday services at the Minneapolis church might have violated the two federal laws, CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig said Tuesday, but context matters.
The First Amendment protects freedom of speech and the ability to voice beliefs, views and ideas, but it's not an unlimited right and doesn't apply everywhere, according to the Freedom Forum. The right does not necessarily extend to private places like churches, for example, the Freedom Forum said.
“In fact, the First Amendment protects private people and companies' right to make their own decisions about speech in their spaces.”
With the church protest, “the conduct that we see here on its face seems to meet the requirements of those laws,” he said.
Honig noted the contrast between the Justice Department's probe into a non-violent church protest – using the “full force of federal law” – and how it is not currently investigating a fatal shooting of Renee Good by an ICE officer.
“Regardless of what one might think the ultimate conclusion should be,” Honig said, “the approach of the DOJ and (Deputy Attorney General) Todd Blanche has been: We're not even going to look. We're not even going to do an investigation.”
CNN's Nicquel Terry Ellis, Holly Yan, Andy Rose and Elise Hammond contributed to this report.
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Dean Acheson, the revered US diplomat, described his role as an architect of the post-World War II world in a blockbuster memoir called “Present at the Creation.”
President Donald Trump's audience in the Swiss alpine town of Davos on Wednesday may wonder if they are present at the destruction.
Never before has a president crossed the Atlantic after threatening to seize a chunk of European sovereign territory over the wishes of its people. Trump's Greenland power grab may already have damaged NATO, the world's most successful military alliance, beyond repair. His antipathy for values the US used to share with Europe — like international law — risks another fracture. And US leaders rarely warm up for such trips by blasting a British prime minister for “an act of great stupidity” or dissing a French president as a lame duck.
It's not good manners either for a guest to mock Europe as weak, as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent did over the weekend. Or for a White House to write national security strategies that advocate replacing sitting governments with far-right extremist parties.
But Trump and his subordinates have done all this and more, in a streak of aggression fueled by their sense of unrestrained personal and national power. America's shift has bewildered many in Europe who regarded the United States as a liberator, protector and partner. The question they now ask is not whether the United States is still a friend, but whether it's becoming an enemy.
No wonder Trump deadpanned before leaving for the annual World Economic Forum on Tuesday, “I'm sure I'm very happily awaited.”
Of course, the possibility that Trump might not be welcomed in Davos — the glitzy haunt of corporate barons, liberal European leaders, commentators and think-tankers — is the reason it made political sense for him to go.
Once again, Trump the populist outsider is braving the globalists' mountaintop lair. Better still, he's lectured them on the US being “the hottest nation” on Earth. If his new national security strategy is a guide, he'll rebuke the continent for courting “civilizational erasure” with nonwhite immigration. The Wall Street titans and hoity-toity Euro elites who spurned Trump when he was a vulgar real estate shark never saw this day coming.
For a man who craves applause and dominance as much as Trump, it will be a sweet moment. It might temporarily slake his resentment, displayed in a rambling White House news conference Tuesday, over voters' lack of appreciation for his second term.
Still, Trump's image as the champion of the American worker is a little tarnished since his first storming of globalization's Super Bowl as president in 2018. These days he spends time hobnobbing with the new elites — AI tech bros and crypto pioneers. On his rare forays out to meet the people, he points out that he's ignoring his scriptwriter's prepared remarks on high consumer prices.
But he's losing the economic argument to Democrats in a midterm election year. This may explain why he's traveled to one of the least affordable places on Earth to talk about “affordability.” The president is expected to tell reluctant bankers to cap credit card interest rates at 10% in a probably doomed pre-midterm election talking point and to unveil plans to make housing more affordable.
Trump's triumphant return to the White House and his assault on progressive values, legal immigration, international law and institutions left many on the eastern side of the Atlantic bewildered.
They were warned. Trump made clear in the 2024 campaign that his second term would be so disruptive that riding it out and hoping for the return of a more benevolent America was not an option. He gave notice in his second inaugural address a year ago that he preferred the protectionism and territorial acquisition of the late 19th century to the multinationalism of the 21st. “President (William) McKinley made our country very rich through tariffs and through talent — he was a natural businessman,” Trump said.
NATO, the United Nations and the global economic system are examples of institutions that many of Trump's supporters believed have failed them, and that he's spent his political career undermining.
Nicholas Burns, a former US ambassador to NATO and to China, lamented America's abdication of its modern global role in an interview with CNN's Erin Burnett. “One of our core values since the second World War is that we don't want to live by the law of the jungle, Manifest Destiny of the 19th century. We're not an imperial power, and that's what Truman believed. And Eisenhower and JFK and Ronald Reagan,” Burns said. “Suddenly, we have a president who disregards the United Nations charter that borders are inviolable, and he's threatening to attack one of our closest allies.”
Still, while American allies might detest what Trump stands for, they'd be wise to listen to him. One quality of this president is that he raises burning questions that many more timid or politically correct politicians don't dare touch — whatever one might think of his proposed solutions.
No modern presidential candidate until Trump built a campaign around the dispossession of working Americans whose jobs and industries disappeared abroad because of free trade policies adopted by their government.
Trump's immigration policies are often draconian and racist. But he raised the issue of mass migration that is straining Western societies when other, often liberal politicians didn't. Now, every government in Europe is wrestling with the problem, fueling a wave of Trump-style populists.
One critical geopolitical question Trump asked is about the transatlantic alliance. Europe's failure, 80 years after World War II, to equip itself for its own defense gave him the opening. Previous US presidents and European leaders would often meet and lionize the World War II generation without planning for the inevitable consequences once the heroes and living memory of their deeds faded away.
Bonds forged fighting communism have loosened 30 years later. The American president doesn't even see the Kremlin as a common enemy.
Creative diplomacy could end the Greenland crisis, especially if Trump is adopting a characteristic maximalist position as a negotiating tactic. Perhaps stock markets tanked by European threats of tariff retaliation will concentrate his mind.
But the EU thought it had conceded a beneficial trade deal to Trump last year. His threat to raise tariffs to coerce the handover of Greenland shows that under this president, a deal is never a deal, and the next crisis is always over the horizon.
Trump could turn out to be a blip, and a future president of either party might revive internationalism. But he was elected twice, suggesting that political conditions inside the US have shifted in a lasting way. And a Democratic Party that seems to share many of Trump's populist economic instincts might also balk at financing Europe's defense. One of the party's potential 2028 candidates, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, was in Davos on Tuesday, and said he should have brought “knee pads” for European leaders, who he accused of “rolling over” for Trump with previous rounds of flattery.
Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank, told CNN's Richard Quest on Tuesday that Europe must be ready for the old world not to come back.
“This is a wake-up call, a bigger one than we ever had. And I think that Europe is going to look at its strength, look at its weaknesses,” Lagarde said in Davos. She said the bloc must “decide what do we need to do to be strong by ourselves, to be more independent, to rely on the internal trade that we do with each other so that we can just — not ignore, but at least be prepared and have a plan B just in case the normal relationship is not restored.”
French President Emmanuel Macron rejected Trumpism in Davos on Tuesday, bemoaning a “shift towards a world without rules, where international law is trampled underfoot and the only rule that seems to matter is the rule of the strongest.”
Europe's shift in tone is notable. But skeptics will wait to see whether fragile leaders can convince grumpy electorates that cuts in social services must pay for rearmament.
Still, a shift away from the United States has clearly begun. Canada spent last year reeling from Trump's demands that it become the 51st state. Prime Minister Mark Carney just traveled to China to thaw relations as a hedge against US hostility and warned in Davos that the world was experiencing a “rupture, not a transition.”
“Every day we are reminded that we live in an era of great power rivalry,” Carney said. “That the rules-based order is fading. That the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.” He concluded: “Our view is the middle powers must act together because if we're not at the table, we're on the menu.”
Some of those Western Hemisphere middle powers are spreading their bets. Four Mercosur nations, Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, last week signed a trade deal with the EU that will cover 700 million people — after a quarter-century of tough negotiations.
Such efforts represent attempts to make sense of a world descending into disorder accelerated by Trump's disruption.
In “Present at the Creation,” Acheson, a former US secretary of state, referenced the work described in the Book of Genesis to create a world out of chaos. “Ours .. (was) to create half a world, a free half, out of the same material without blowing the whole to pieces in the process,” he wrote.
Trump's withdrawal of America means its allies now face a similar challenge.
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Air Force One, carrying President Donald Trump, turned back shortly after taking off for the World Economic Forum summit in Davos, Switzerland.
The White House pool reported that the plane's crew identified a “minor electrical issue” and was returning to Joint Base Andrews out of an abundance of caution.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt quipped that the Qatari jet offered to Trump sounded “much better” at the moment.
Trump and his team will board a different plane to take to Davos. He's expected back at Joint Base Andrews at 11 p.m., with the delay pushing his arrival at Davos by an unknown period of time.
A government motorcade was filmed speeding to Joint Base Andrews shortly after the plane turned around.
MACRON SWIPES AT ‘IMPERIAL AMBITIONS' WITHOUT MENTIONING TRUMP IN DAVOS SPEECH
Trump is scheduled to speak at Davos on Wednesday amid unprecedented tensions between the United States and Europe over the former's desire for Greenland.
“America will be well represented in Davos — by me. GOD BLESS YOU ALL!” the president said in a Truth Social post shortly before taking off.
Russ Buettner, investigative reporter for the New York Times, explains how President Trump and his family has profited off the presidency in his second term.
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President Donald Trump on Wednesday said he and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte have "formed the framework of a future deal with respect to Greenland."
Trump said that as a result of that negotiation, he would no longer impose punitive tariffs on a slew of European countries that were set to begin Feb. 1.
Read Trump's entire announcement, which he posted on Truth Social:
Based upon a very productive meeting that I have had with the Secretary General of NATO, Mark Rutte, we have formed the framework of a future deal with respect to Greenland and, in fact, the entire Arctic Region. This solution, if consummated, will be a great one for the United States of America, and all NATO Nations. Based upon this understanding, I will not be imposing the Tariffs that were scheduled to go into effect on February 1st. Additional discussions are being held concerning The Golden Dome as it pertains to Greenland. Further information will be made available as discussions progress. Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, and various others, as needed, will be responsible for the negotiations — They will report directly to me. Thank you for your attention to this matter!
Stocks shot up immediately after Trump posted the update.
Details about the framework agreement were unclear. The White House did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for additional information.
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It was all eyes on President Donald Trump at Davos on Wednesday as he gave a much-hyped "special address" to the conference.
Business Insider was in the room as he spoke. We're sharing real-time updates and reactions to his speech from World Economic Forum attendees, along with other news and insights from the Swiss Alps.
In a 70-minute-long speech, Trump covered huge amounts of ground, touting achievements from his first year in office, saying he won't use "excessive force" to acquire Greenland, and that he expects the stock market to double in the coming years.
Follow along here for real-time updates, reaction, and on-the-ground commentary from Business Insider's staff in Davos.
During a brief address to business leaders on Wednesday, President Donald Trump told the crowd that many in the room were making a lot of money during his second term — even ones that he doesn't like.
"A couple of people in the room, I can't stand them, and they've become very rich," Trump said. "There's nothing I can do about it. I would screw them if I could, but I can't do it."
During a panel on AI regulation, Meta's chief global affairs officer, Joel Kaplan, argued that large language models need access to data locked behind subscription paywalls — a point he made while sitting opposite the CEO of The Atlantic, a publication that charges consumers $80 a year for access.
"I'm sure this isn't popular at The Atlantic," Kaplan said, referring to CEO Nicholas Thompson, who moderated the discussion. "We have to have laws around copyright that ensure access to the training data."
During a panel on AI regulation, Meta's chief global affairs officer, Joel Kaplan, argued that large language models need access to data locked behind subscription paywalls — a point he made while sitting opposite the CEO of The Atlantic, a publication that charges consumers $80 a year for access.
"I'm sure this isn't popular at The Atlantic," Kaplan said, referring to CEO Nicholas Thompson, who moderated the discussion. "We have to have laws around copyright that ensure access to the training data."
Without broad access to data, Kaplan said, AI models risk missing critical information — a failure he framed as an economic and national security threat as China rapidly expands its AI capabilities.
President Donald Trump used a moment in his address to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, to plug his bullish outlook on the US stock market.
After he took the stage on Wednesday, Trump predicted that the market will double in the coming year, and dismissed Tuesday's stock drop—which was the worst for the S&P 500 since October— as "peanuts" compared to the amount it has rallied in his term so far.
Read full story
In public, CEOs often go out of their way to insist that AI isn't displacing jobs. Not Garrett Lord, CEO and cofounder of Handshake. Lord says that AI has already made both his engineering and customer support departments measurably more productive, and as a result, he's hiring fewer people as his business grows.
Lord says he'll keep expanding his engineering team, but not the customer support team, which he expects to downsize.
In public, CEOs often go out of their way to insist that AI isn't displacing jobs. Not Garrett Lord, CEO and cofounder of Handshake. Lord says that AI has already made both his engineering and customer support departments measurably more productive, and as a result, he's hiring fewer people as his business grows.
Lord says he'll keep expanding his engineering team, but not the customer support team, which he expects to downsize.
"A year from now, I hope we don't need more than two people running customer support," he told me, adding that the department currently employs 40 to 50 people. "I believe the job of frontline support associate should not exist in 2026."
"I would love to shift those heads to more customer education," he added. "I'd love to shift those heads more to community and phone support where customers can have a more delightful experience."
I asked him if he expects to be able to transition all those displaced employees into other roles within his company. "No," he replied.
After making his case to acquire Greenland, President Donald Trump celebrated his own achievements and elaborated on his plans to address the high cost of housing in the US during his hourlong speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday.
"Homeownership has always been a symbol of health and vigor of American society, but that goal fell out of reach for millions and millions of people in the Biden era because interest rates went up so high," Trump said. "Today, I'm taking action to bring back this bedrock of the American dream."
Read full story
AI Czar David Sacks said he's concerned that overzealous federal or state regulations of AI will harm the US's standing in the global technology race.
"Where I kind of worry is that if in the AI race in a fit of pessimism, we do something like what Bernie Sanders wants, which is he wants to stop building all data centers or if we have 1,200 different AI laws in the states, you know, clamping down on the innovation, I worry we could lose the AI race because of a self-inflicted injury," Sacks told Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff during a fireside chat Wednesday at Davos.
AI Czar David Sacks said he's concerned that overzealous federal or state regulations of AI will harm the US's standing in the global technology race.
"Where I kind of worry is that if in the AI race in a fit of pessimism, we do something like what Bernie Sanders wants, which is he wants to stop building all data centers or if we have 1,200 different AI laws in the states, you know, clamping down on the innovation, I worry we could lose the AI race because of a self-inflicted injury," Sacks told Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff during a fireside chat Wednesday at Davos.
Sacks said he hopes Americans and others in the West become "a little bit more optimistic about the industry as more and more miraculous products come out."
The Trump administration has stood resolutely behind its push for federal preemption of state AI laws, even as the policy divides some in the Republican Party. The GOP-led Congress was unable to pass such a policy into law. President Donald Trump issued an executive order in December that champions a federal framework for AI policy.
Business leaders such as Ken Griffin and Matthew Prince have already weighed in on President Donald Trump's highly anticipated speech in Davos.
Speaking on CNBC's Squawk Box on Wednesday, Citadel CEO and founder Griffin said Trump had an "important message to deliver to a European audience that, bluntly, needs to do better. Europe's economic growth lags far behind America."
Read full story
"I thought it was a home run..." Sen. Lindsey Graham said of Trump's speech.
"Greenland's strategically important. We need the title, but not through force. We need to find a way to transfer the title to the United States. If we do, he goes all in for Greenland...The biggest loser of that speech might be Putin."
"Were you surprised that there was no applause throughout the whole speech?" — I asked California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a longtime Trump adversary whom the president took aim at in his speech.
"No. That was as predictable as the rest of the speech," he replied.
"Why would there be? He's insulted half the room. Why would you applaud someone that talks down to you and past you, who belittles you, who mocks you, who thinks you're weak and pathetic?"
"I was surprised there was as much applause as there was. Had there not been cell phones, I think a few people would have passed out from boredom. Thank God that cell phones were allowed in.
"90% of the room was on them after 10 minutes. It was deeply boring, often boorish, even by Trump standards."
Read full story
In a panel not long before Trump took the stage, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said that, if enacted, the president's 10% cap on credit card interest rates could cause an "economic disaster."
He said that the move could strip credit from 80% of Americans, but that his bank would "deal with" whatever policy the government ends up enacting.
Read full story
There had been a lot of noise in the lead-up to President Donald Trump's address at the World Economic Forum, but inside the crowded auditorium, it was eerily silent for most of the hour-plus speech.
I was sitting among the 1,000 or so people in the Davos hall, some of whom were standing in packed aisles.
If Trump wanted a raucous applause for his laundry list of accomplishments that he sees as crowning achievements over his first year, he didn't get it.
Read full story
Following his Q&A with Brende, Trump briefly took questions in a media scrum outside the Congress Hall, where it was hard to discern individual questions from reporters.
Later, he is slated to give an interview to CNBC, which will air between 1 and 2 p.m. ET.
"We make the greatest weapons in the world, but now we're going to make them faster," Trump said during his address, before turning to his plans to cap compensation for defense execs.
"I put a cap on the salaries. Then I put no buybacks, no stock buybacks, no various other things that they were doing."
"We make the greatest weapons in the world, but now we're going to make them faster," Trump said during his address, before turning to his plans to cap compensation for defense execs.
"I put a cap on the salaries. Then I put no buybacks, no stock buybacks, no various other things that they were doing."
"If they're going to make those big salaries, they're going to have to produce a lot faster. The good news is we have the greatest equipment in the world. Now we're going to start making it a lot faster."
During his 70-minute-long speech, Trump once again backed a ban on institutional investors buying single-family homes.
"I'm taking action to bring back this bedrock of the American dream," he said. "Homes are built for people, not corporations."
"The United States is back, bigger, stronger, and better than ever before," Trump says.
"I'll see you all around," he concludes to muted applause.
"The United States is back, bigger, stronger, and better than ever before," Trump says.
"I'll see you all around," he concludes to muted applause.
He'll now take part in a discussion with WEF President Børge Brende.
His speech lasted roughly an hour and 10 minutes.
"Maybe I'll give you a quick story," Trump says, turning to tariffs placed on watches made in Davos' host country, Switzerland.
"They make beautiful watches, great watches, Rolex, all of them," he says.
"Maybe I'll give you a quick story," Trump says, turning to tariffs placed on watches made in Davos' host country, Switzerland.
"They make beautiful watches, great watches, Rolex, all of them," he says.
"They were paying nothing to the United States when they sent their product. And we had a $41 billion deficit with this beautiful place.
"So I said, let's put a 30% tariff on them. So that we get back some of it," he adds.
"All hell broke loose."
Trump says he had talks with Swiss political leaders, during which he realised that "the United States is keeping the whole world afloat."
"We have an unbelievable future in that the stock market is going to be doubled. We're going to hit 50,000, and that stock market's going to double in a relatively short period of time because of everything that's happening," he says.
Trump tells the audience he is close to appointing a new Federal Reserve chairman, saying it is "somebody that's very respected."
"The problem is they change when they get the job," he adds.
Trump tells the audience he is close to appointing a new Federal Reserve chairman, saying it is "somebody that's very respected."
"The problem is they change when they get the job," he adds.
Kevin Hassett and Kevin Warsh are considered the frontrunners to succeed current Fed chair Jerome Powell, whom Trump called "terrible" and nicknamed "Jerome 'Too late' Powell."
Trump elicits laughter from the Davos crowd by mentioning French President Emmanuel Macron's much-discussed aviator sunglasses.
"Those beautiful sunglasses. What the hell happened?"
Trump elicits laughter from the Davos crowd by mentioning French President Emmanuel Macron's much-discussed aviator sunglasses.
"Those beautiful sunglasses. What the hell happened?"
Macron has worn sunglasses in public in recent days due to an eye problem.
Trump goes on to say he likes Macron, which he says is probably surprising to many people, before discussing tariffs on French wine and Champagne.
Earlier in the speech, Trump attacked what he called the "green new scam," taking particular aim at wind turbines, which he has long criticized.
"Because of my landslide election victory, the United States avoided the catastrophic energy collapse, which befell every European nation that pursued the green new scam, perhaps the greatest hoax in history," he said.
Earlier in the speech, Trump attacked what he called the "green new scam," taking particular aim at wind turbines, which he has long criticized.
"Because of my landslide election victory, the United States avoided the catastrophic energy collapse, which befell every European nation that pursued the green new scam, perhaps the greatest hoax in history," he said.
"The green new scam, windmills all over the place, destroy your land."
"China makes almost all of the windmills, and yet I haven't been able to find any wind farms in China. Did you ever think of that?
"That's a good way of looking at it. They're smart. China's very smart. They make them, they sell them for a fortune. They sell them to the stupid people who buy them, but they don't use them themselves."
Trump says he wants "right, title, and ownership" of Greenland, but rules out using force to get it.
"We probably won't get anything unless I decide to use excessive strength and force, where we would be, frankly, unstoppable. I won't do that."
Trump says he wants "right, title, and ownership" of Greenland, but rules out using force to get it.
"We probably won't get anything unless I decide to use excessive strength and force, where we would be, frankly, unstoppable. I won't do that."
"That's probably the biggest statement I made because people thought I would use force.
"I don't have to use force, I don't want to use force, I won't use force. All the United States is asking for is a place called Greenland."
Trump has moved on to the topic that everyone has been waiting for: Greenland.
He opens by joking that he didn't plan to discuss Greenland, but expected bad "reviews" if he ignored the elephant in the room.
Trump has moved on to the topic that everyone has been waiting for: Greenland.
He opens by joking that he didn't plan to discuss Greenland, but expected bad "reviews" if he ignored the elephant in the room.
"I have tremendous respect for both the people of Greenland and the people of Denmark," he says, calling it a "big beautiful piece of ice."
"The United States alone can defend this giant piece of ice," he adds, calling it a "core national security interest," and saying the US has been trying to acquire Greenland for "two centuries."
He calls for "immediate negotiations" about the US taking control of Greenland.
"We need it for strategic, national security, and international security."
As he took the stage, Trump first touted the policy achievements of the first year of his second term.
On DOGE and government cuts: "In 12 months, we have removed over 270,000 bureaucrats from the federal payrolls. The largest single-year reduction in government employment since the end of World War II."
As he took the stage, Trump first touted the policy achievements of the first year of his second term.
On DOGE and government cuts: "In 12 months, we have removed over 270,000 bureaucrats from the federal payrolls. The largest single-year reduction in government employment since the end of World War II."
"We've cut federal spending by $100 billion and slashed the federal budget deficit by 27% in the single year. "
On tariffs: "With tariffs, we've radically reduced our ballooning trade deficit, which was the largest in world history. We were losing more than $1 trillion every single year, and it was just wasted. It was going to waste. But in one year, I slashed our monthly trade deficit by a staggering 77% and all of this with no inflation, something everyone said could not be done."
On domestic manufacturing: "Domestic steel production is up by 300,000 tonnes a month, and it's doubling over the next four months. It's doubling and tripling. And we have steel plants being built all over the country."
"Factory construction is up by 41%, and that number is really going to skyrocket right now because that's during a process that they're putting in to get their approvals, and we've given very, very quick approvals. In the process, we've made historic trade deals with partners covering 40% of all US trade."
"Venezuela has been an amazing place for so many years, but then they went bad with their policies. We're helping them," he tells the Davos crowd.
"Venezuela is going to make more money in the next six months than they've made for years."
People stood in a long line to get through a pretty intense security check to get in.
"I love Europe, I want to see it do good, but it's not going in the right direction," Trump says, criticizing the continent's leadership.
Trump opens by thanking Fink, and telling the assembled viewers that he is surrounded by friends and "a few enemies."
He calls the US "the economic engine of the entire planet."
Trump opens by thanking Fink, and telling the assembled viewers that he is surrounded by friends and "a few enemies."
He calls the US "the economic engine of the entire planet."
"When America booms, the entire world booms. It's been the history. When it goes bad, it goes bad. Y'all follow us down, and you follow us up."
Fink, the cochair of the World Economic Forum and the CEO of BlackRock, is making introductory remarks before the main show begins.
Cook is among scores of big figures from the business world in the audience waiting for Trump.
It's now 2:30 p.m. in Davos, and President Donald Trump's much-anticipated speech is due to start any time now. Still no sign of the president.
Ahead of Trump's speech, I've been walking around the Promenade trying to figure out a good spot to post up. I thought it'd be fun to watch from the Belgium House, which is serving Stella on tap. Belgium is one of a number of European countries threatened with fresh tariffs over its opposition to US control of Greenland.
I walked in and asked if they were planning to broadcast the address. The gentleman at the front desk gave a terse response. "No, we have so many sessions," he told me. "We have no time for that."
Congress Hall, which seats about 1,000 people, is quickly filling up before Trump addresses the World Economic Forum.
Outside the hall, CEOs, including Salesforce's Marc Benioff and Coinbase's Brian Armstrong, jockeyed alongside world leaders to get in. There was a quick bag check even though we had all been screened with metal detectors before entering the Congress Center.
Congress Hall, which seats about 1,000 people, is quickly filling up before Trump addresses the World Economic Forum.
Outside the hall, CEOs, including Salesforce's Marc Benioff and Coinbase's Brian Armstrong, jockeyed alongside world leaders to get in. There was a quick bag check even though we had all been screened with metal detectors before entering the Congress Center.
Getting here required the highest level badge access, and the auditorium is segmented into different sections for trustees and VIPs. Given that, the audience might be more friendly than you might expect at Davos.
President Donald Trump has arrived in Davos. A red carpet was rolled out for him as Marine One touched down at the Davos heliport at 2:02 p.m. local time.
It traveled in a convoy of five helicopters in a roughly 40-minute journey from Zurich Airport. Trump's hugely anticipated speech is scheduled in under 30 minutes, so it could be a close call to start on time.
President Donald Trump has arrived in Davos. A red carpet was rolled out for him as Marine One touched down at the Davos heliport at 2:02 p.m. local time.
It traveled in a convoy of five helicopters in a roughly 40-minute journey from Zurich Airport. Trump's hugely anticipated speech is scheduled in under 30 minutes, so it could be a close call to start on time.
Trump is running about three hours late after Air Force One turned around, and he had to take a different plane instead.
Trump is due to speak in 30 minutes. We still haven't had official word on any potential delay to the speech.
Earlier today, Bill Gates said he wants to rate AI companies based on how much they help address global health issues.
"We fund a group that rates the various pharmaceutical companies in terms of their generosity to help out with global health issues," Gates said on a panel. "We'll probably do that for the AI companies at some point, so the ones that are doing a great job get the credit they deserve."
Earlier today, Bill Gates said he wants to rate AI companies based on how much they help address global health issues.
"We fund a group that rates the various pharmaceutical companies in terms of their generosity to help out with global health issues," Gates said on a panel. "We'll probably do that for the AI companies at some point, so the ones that are doing a great job get the credit they deserve."
This comes as the Gates Foundation partnered with OpenAI on Wednesday for a $50 million pilot healthcare initiative called Horizon1000.
Gates said tech giants "do want to devote some of their resources to helping the world at large to show what AI can do."
Benioff was one of the few people being let in early.
"As a member of the WEF Board of Trustees, Marc was escorted to his saved seat for the Trump address today — just as he is for any major address," a Salesforce spokesperson told Business Insider.
Benioff was one of the few people being let in early.
"As a member of the WEF Board of Trustees, Marc was escorted to his saved seat for the Trump address today — just as he is for any major address," a Salesforce spokesperson told Business Insider.
Update, 4:55 p.m. CET: This has been updated to include comment from a Salesforce representative about Benioff being escorted to a saved seat.
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong was among the luminaries spotted waiting to get into Trump's speech.
President Donald Trump departed from Zurich Airport for Davos by helicopter, 44 minutes after his plane landed.
TV images showed Marine One took off at 1:19 p.m. local time, accompanied by four other helicopters.
President Donald Trump departed from Zurich Airport for Davos by helicopter, 44 minutes after his plane landed.
TV images showed Marine One took off at 1:19 p.m. local time, accompanied by four other helicopters.
The 75-mile journey to Davos should take roughly 30 minutes. Trump is due to speak at 2:30 p.m.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Chief of Staff Susie Wiles were also pictured boarding the presidential helicopter. A convoy of black SUVs was also seen driving onto the tarmac, apparently to transport other passengers from the plane.
AI is changing what tech companies look for in new hires, and China's tech startup scene is no exception.
Yutong Zhang, president of the Chinese AI startup Moonshot AI, said she increasingly prioritizes learning ability, as she said knowledge and skills become outdated more quickly in an AI-driven economy.
AI is changing what tech companies look for in new hires, and China's tech startup scene is no exception.
Yutong Zhang, president of the Chinese AI startup Moonshot AI, said she increasingly prioritizes learning ability, as she said knowledge and skills become outdated more quickly in an AI-driven economy.
"Every day we're feeling that the learning ability is [more] very important than the past experience because past experience and past knowledge may get expired sooner than before," Zhang told a Davos panel.
As AI tools can now generate expertise on demand, she said the value of narrow specialization is declining.
She said the education system should prioritize "general thinking" and "general knowledge," and build "learning abilities" and "AI proficiency," as her startup struggles to find "the right fit" among job candidates.
President Donald Trump has always had a showman's flair for conjuring attention and anticipation, and his Davos address is no different. No less than the future of NATO is at stake.
Outside the auditorium where Trump will speak this afternoon, attendees told me they had no idea what he would say, so they came here to find out, especially what he says about Greenland.
President Donald Trump has always had a showman's flair for conjuring attention and anticipation, and his Davos address is no different. No less than the future of NATO is at stake.
Outside the auditorium where Trump will speak this afternoon, attendees told me they had no idea what he would say, so they came here to find out, especially what he says about Greenland.
Several also mentioned they had never seen Trump speak in person since he appeared via video last year.
"I'm very curious," said one attendee.
"At least it will be entertaining," said another.
"I just want to see where his mind goes," said someone else.
Trump had to switch airplanes due to electrical issues, so part of the mystery is what time he will take the stage. Security guards cleared Congress Hall after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and BlackRock CEO Larry Fink wrapped up around noon.
While waiting to go back in to hear Trump, attendees, including financier Anthony Scaramucci and University of California chief investment officer, Jagdeep Singh Bachher, could be seen sipping coffee and eating saffron risotto Milanese.
A French journalist approached me to ask whether Trump's threats were real. I told her I didn't know.
Away from hype about Trump's arrival, Davos is still carrying on as normal.
On a panel this morning, Nvidia chief Jensen Huang described AI as the biggest infrastructure buildout in human history — and one he sees creating a jobs boom for those with the right skillset.
"It's wonderful that the jobs are related to tradecraft and we're going to have plumbers and electricians and construction and steelworkers," he said in a conversation with BlackRock CEO Larry Fink.
Huang said the US was seeing a "significant boom" in this area, with salaries nearly doubling in some cases. "So we're talking about six-figure salaries for people who are building chip factories or computer factories or AI factories, and we have a great shortage in that," added Huang.
"Everybody should be able to make a great living. You don't need to have a Ph.D. in computer science to do so."
Read full story
Trump touched down in Zurich at 12:35 p.m. local time after an eventful journey.
President Donald Trump's original airplane departed about 10 hours ago, but it turned around due to a "minor electrical issue." He has instead flown to Switzerland on a Boeing C-32A, which is typically used for the Vice President's Air Force Two.
Trump touched down in Zurich at 12:35 p.m. local time after an eventful journey.
President Donald Trump's original airplane departed about 10 hours ago, but it turned around due to a "minor electrical issue." He has instead flown to Switzerland on a Boeing C-32A, which is typically used for the Vice President's Air Force Two.
His journey has taken over three hours longer than first expected. Now, there's another 75 miles to reach Davos, most likely by helicopter.
Congress Hall is now being cleared ahead of President Donald Trump's speech.
One security guard told me the speech would be on time despite the electrical problems on AF1, but we still haven't heard official word from WEF.
As Trump seeks Greenland, insisting that it's key for protection against Russia and China, his allies don't actually disagree with his security concerns. His methods are causing great tension among his allies, but they agree that the Arctic is an area of risk.
"I think President Trump is right. Other leaders in NATO are right. We need to defend the Arctic," as China and Russia increase their presence there, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said in a Wednesday morning appearance at Davos.
As Trump seeks Greenland, insisting that it's key for protection against Russia and China, his allies don't actually disagree with his security concerns. His methods are causing great tension among his allies, but they agree that the Arctic is an area of risk.
"I think President Trump is right. Other leaders in NATO are right. We need to defend the Arctic," as China and Russia increase their presence there, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said in a Wednesday morning appearance at Davos.
"For the United States to stay safe, you need a safe Arctic, a safe Atlantic, and a safe Europe."
He described that as a process that's underway: "We are working on that, making sure that collectively we will defend the Arctic region."
Finland, one of the NATO member states in the Arctic, agreed, and President Alexander Stubb framed it as a chance to strengthen Arctic security within the alliance. He expects tensions with the US to de-escalate, "I think at the end of the day, we'll find an off-ramp on this."
After an electrical issue on Air Force One delayed the president overnight, a replacement plane, a Boeing C-32A, was scrambled into action to bring him to Europe.
As of around midday Swiss time, the jet, a modified Boeing 757 often used as Air Force Two, was still in the air, flying close to Paris and heading for Zurich airport, where it looks likely to land within the next hour.
If, like many high-profile World Economic Forum attendees, Trump travels by helicopter from Zurich airport, it would take about another 30 to 40 minutes to reach Davos.
That could put him in the Swiss Alps just before 1.30 p.m. CET, and he is scheduled to speak at 2:30 p.m. CET.
However, there will likely be further added time due to security and other preparations.
Read full story
In short, we don't exactly know.
No clear indication has been given of what the president plans to discuss in his special address to the Davos crowd. It seems highly likely, however, that his desire to make Greenland part of the USA, the diplomatic furore it has ignited, and new tariffs on Western allies, will be front and center.
In short, we don't exactly know.
No clear indication has been given of what the president plans to discuss in his special address to the Davos crowd. It seems highly likely, however, that his desire to make Greenland part of the USA, the diplomatic furore it has ignited, and new tariffs on Western allies, will be front and center.
Other topics he could touch on include his first year in office, the affordability crisis, and the rising deficit in the US.
Tuesday will go down as the day global financial markets finally started paying attention to Trump's Greenland threats. As Business Insider's Jennifer Sor noted yesterday, stocks tumbled in one of the worst days for the US market since April 2025. Both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq dropped more than 2%, while the Dow wasn't far behind, losing 1.8%.
Things are looking much calmer so far on Wednesday, with investors seemingly in a classic holding pattern ahead of the president's speech later. Futures for all three major US indexes are pointing to a slightly higher open, with expected gains of around 0.2%. In Europe, where markets are open, major indexes in the UK, France, and Germany are marginally lower, but little moved.
Tuesday will go down as the day global financial markets finally started paying attention to Trump's Greenland threats. As Business Insider's Jennifer Sor noted yesterday, stocks tumbled in one of the worst days for the US market since April 2025. Both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq dropped more than 2%, while the Dow wasn't far behind, losing 1.8%.
Things are looking much calmer so far on Wednesday, with investors seemingly in a classic holding pattern ahead of the president's speech later. Futures for all three major US indexes are pointing to a slightly higher open, with expected gains of around 0.2%. In Europe, where markets are open, major indexes in the UK, France, and Germany are marginally lower, but little moved.
Futures for the S&P 500 VIX, a widely-watched measure of market volatility, are down around 2%.
President Donald Trump's hugely anticipated speech this afternoon is dominating the conversation at Davos, but due to an electrical issue with Air Force One overnight, the president is many hours behind schedule.
Trump was due to speak at 2:30 p.m. local time (8:30 a.m. ET), but according to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, he's likely to be around three hours behind.
President Donald Trump's hugely anticipated speech this afternoon is dominating the conversation at Davos, but due to an electrical issue with Air Force One overnight, the president is many hours behind schedule.
Trump was due to speak at 2:30 p.m. local time (8:30 a.m. ET), but according to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, he's likely to be around three hours behind.
While we don't yet have any confirmation of a change in schedule, Bessent's timings would put Trump's speech at 5:30 p.m. local time (11:30 a.m. ET).
In a statement to Business Insider, the World Economic Forum said it is "in close contact with the US delegation and will provide an update should there be any changes to the President's schedule or related programme arrangements."
Business Insider is tracking the US military jet carrying Trump over the Atlantic closely, and we'll keep you updated on his progress.
Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, told the European Parliament that there has now been a "seismic" and "permanent" shift in the international order.
"And the sheer speed of change far outstrips anything we have seen in decades. We now live in a world defined by raw power — whether economic or military, technological or geopolitical," von der Leyen said in Strasbourg, France, hours before Trump's big Davos speech.
Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, told the European Parliament that there has now been a "seismic" and "permanent" shift in the international order.
"And the sheer speed of change far outstrips anything we have seen in decades. We now live in a world defined by raw power — whether economic or military, technological or geopolitical," von der Leyen said in Strasbourg, France, hours before Trump's big Davos speech.
"And while many of us may not like it, we must deal with the world as it is now," she said.
BlackRock CEO Larry Fink is the latest to push back on the idea that the AI boom is destined to pop like past manias.
"I think there will be big failures, but I don't think we are in a bubble," Fink said on a panel on Wednesday morning.
Fink's comments came amid a broader debate about whether massive investments in AI are sending the stock markets into a bubble.
Read full story
Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, said Russia's economy has started to "flash red." He cited agreement among many economists that it "will have resources to continue for at least 12 months or more."
It's not that Russia doesn't have the resources to continue its war after that point. However, it will have much harder decisions to make, "painful choices" like cutting spending on infrastructure and healthcare.
Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, said Russia's economy has started to "flash red." He cited agreement among many economists that it "will have resources to continue for at least 12 months or more."
It's not that Russia doesn't have the resources to continue its war after that point. However, it will have much harder decisions to make, "painful choices" like cutting spending on infrastructure and healthcare.
"It's clear that this era of maintaining stability and funding a very costly war is over," Gabuev said.
Moldovan Prime Minister Alexandru Munteanu said at the same panel that the Russian economy's "expansionist model" is unsustainable in the long term."It's not the question whether it's going to collapse, it's the question when it's going to happen," Munteanu said.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had something to say about Denmark ahead of Trump's arrival.
"Denmark's investment in US Treasury bonds, like Denmark itself, is irrelevant," Bessent told reporters at a morning press conference.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had something to say about Denmark ahead of Trump's arrival.
"Denmark's investment in US Treasury bonds, like Denmark itself, is irrelevant," Bessent told reporters at a morning press conference.
He was responding to a Tuesday announcement from the Danish pension fund AkademikerPension that it would sell $100 million in US Treasurys.
"They've been selling Treasurys for years, I'm not concerned at all," Bessent said.
Newsom has been swinging around Davos, almost as a Democratic counterweight to Trump.
"He is here hobnobbing with the global elite while his California citizens are still homeless. Shame on him. He is too smug, too self-absorbed, and too economically illiterate to know anything," Bessent said of Newsom.
Newsom has been swinging around Davos, almost as a Democratic counterweight to Trump.
"He is here hobnobbing with the global elite while his California citizens are still homeless. Shame on him. He is too smug, too self-absorbed, and too economically illiterate to know anything," Bessent said of Newsom.
Newsom on Tuesday evening had made an X post calling Bessent a "smug man" who's "out of touch."
BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said at a panel on Wednesday morning that he thinks "we need to spend more money to make sure that we're competing properly against China."
There are two big factors at play here, Fink said. The first: Can the West grow economies fast enough to overcome deficits?
BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said at a panel on Wednesday morning that he thinks "we need to spend more money to make sure that we're competing properly against China."
There are two big factors at play here, Fink said. The first: Can the West grow economies fast enough to overcome deficits?
"That can be one big issue, especially with the rising deficits of the US," Fink said.
Secondly, another limiting factor is whether Western economies can make a J-curve of demand happen for AI and other technologies.
"The key to that is making sure that the demand only comes if technology is diffused for more applications, more utilizations," Fink said. "If technology is just the domain of the six hyperscalers, we will fail."
Tax us — that's the message from nearly 400 wealthy people, who've signed an open letter addressed to the leaders gathering at Davos.
The letter's co-signees called out a "handful of global oligarchs with extreme wealth," accusing them of harming society as a whole across governance, tech, innovation, and the environment.
The solution, per the letter, comes down to one thing — taxing the superrich.
Signatories include the actor Mark Ruffalo, film producer and activist Abigail Disney, and musician Brian Eno.
Read full story
"I believe President Trump is going to be about 3 hours late," US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said at a morning presser. "I haven't seen the updated schedule."
ICYMI: Trump had to switch planes after an electrical fault was detected on board Air Force One.
David Steinbach, Hines' global chief investment officer, didn't mince words when describing the overall real-estate environment.
"It's been a really bad few years, honestly," Steinbach told me. "Really beginning in 2022."
David Steinbach, Hines' global chief investment officer, didn't mince words when describing the overall real-estate environment.
"It's been a really bad few years, honestly," Steinbach told me. "Really beginning in 2022."
Rising geopolitical tensions and the siloing of regions can make the environment even trickier. Especially for a company with over $90 billion of assets across 30 countries. Still, Steinbach told me that Hines raised about 50% more discretionary capital year over year in 2025.
"There's a risk and opportunity, right? The risk is it's now different. And that's probably not changing anytime soon," Steinbach said. "The opportunity is a lot needs to be built now, because you've got supply chains that need to get re-looked. You got very directive investments in-country."
"That's creating a lot of demand as well," Steinbach added.
On the schedule for Wednesday: Citadel CEO Ken Griffin, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates, Nvidia chief Jensen Huang, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, White House AI and crypto czar David Sacks, and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff.
Trump ran into some travel trouble en route to Davos late Tuesday. He was forced to switch from Air Force One to a backup plane after an electrical fault was detected on board. Flight maps show Air Force One making a U-turn over the waters off Long Island, then landing back in Washington, D.C.
The president is now back on the road and on his way to Switzerland.
Read full story
The police in Zurich deployed a water cannon after anti-Trump protests got chaotic, according to multiple reports from local media outlets.
Videos from the scene showed protesters holding up banners, including one that read: "TRUMP NOT WELCOME."
The police in Zurich deployed a water cannon after anti-Trump protests got chaotic, according to multiple reports from local media outlets.
Videos from the scene showed protesters holding up banners, including one that read: "TRUMP NOT WELCOME."
Zurich is a two-hour drive from Davos. It's likely that the president will face much less resistance at the ski resort, where executives are clamoring to meet him.
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This week in Davos has been about many things: AI, geopolitics and markets. But President Donald Trump has been firmly at the front of everyone's mind.
His much-anticipated address at the World Economic Forum drew thousands, with attendees queuing for hours to get into the Congress Hall.
I was one of them. I stood in line for more than an hour and a half. Even Blackstone Group CEO Steve Schwarzman had to wait in line with the rest of us. I finally cleared security and found a seat — lucky, given that many were refused entry to the hall.
As the crowd packed in, the atmosphere began to resemble something closer to a star- studded concert than a policy forum. The audience included Apple CEO Tim Cook, European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde, World Bank President Ajay Banga, as well as senior political and business figures such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.
There were some lighter moments before the speech began; Cook greeting Banga with a tight hug, Lagarde exchanging warm hellos with European officials — small, human interactions before the room shifted into anticipation.
Trump was met with loud applause as he took the stage for what many billed as the most closely watched speech of this year's Davos.
He opened by saying it was good to see so many friends and "some enemies," drawing laughter from the crowd. From there, he leaned heavily into self-assessment, describing himself as the most successful president and pointing to what he said were his major achievements accomplished in just one year.
"People are doing very well and are happy with me," Trump said, prompting a mix of laughter and applause.
The tone oscillated between humor and provocation. Trump took aim at several figures, including a swipe at French President Emmanuel Macron's sunglasses, asking: "What the hell was that?"
He also directed a number of comments at Carney. A CEO seated nearby told me, on condition of anonymity, that Carney took it in good humor, smiling and nodding along.
After more than an hour, Trump turned to the topic many in the room had been bracing for. "Would you like me to talk about Greenland?" he asked, drawing a loud "yeah!" from the audience. Around me, some attendees shook their heads. One person seated behind me, who said they were Danish, muttered: "This is ridiculous."
"I am seeking immediate negotiations to once again discuss the acquisition of Greenland by the United States," Trump said.
The room fell noticeably quieter. "This is scary," one attendee in front of me said, exchanging uneasy glances with others.
"So they have a choice. You can say yes, and we will be very appreciative. Or you can say no and we will remember," Trump said on Greenland, although he did, for the first time, say he would not use force — resulting in a collective sigh of relief.
Trump also kept referring to Greenland as a "piece of ice" and appeared to confuse it with Iceland — another European country altogether.
The president also criticized Europe more broadly, saying parts of the continent had become "unrecognizable," and described former Swiss President Karin Keller-Sutter as "difficult."
"She kept saying the same thing over and over. She rubbed me the wrong way," he said.
The address was followed by a fireside chat with WEF President Børge Brende, but by then — after well over an hour — some of the audience had begun to drift out.
As I left, I asked a few attendees what they thought. One tech CEO summed it up succinctly: he wasn't sure whether to laugh or feel nervous, a sentiment echoed by several others.
"Yes, we laughed," one politician told me. "But it's also frightening to think he might actually try to execute some of this."
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On NATO's front line, Finland's president says his country is ready for a Russian attack, regardless of whether it has US support.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday, Alexander Stubb said in response to a question of whether the Finnish military can effectively defend itself against a Russian attack: "Yes, we can."
He pointed to Finland's mandatory conscription, which sets it apart from many other NATO members, and said that the country can mobilize 280,000 soldiers in a matter of weeks.
"We have the biggest artillery in Europe together with Poland. We have long-range missiles, land, sea, and air," he added. He joked that Finland did not procure these because it was worried about allies like neighboring Sweden: "We don't have this because we're worried about Stockholm."
For Finland, a relatively new NATO ally, the key security concern has long been Russia, with which it shares a roughly 800-mile border. The two fought bitter wars during World War II, though they have not engaged in armed conflict for decades.
Stubb also highlighted Finland's air power, including its 62 F-18s and its recent purchase of 64 F-35s. Those are US-made aircraft, manufactured by Boeing and Lockheed Martin, respectively. To keep the aircraft operational, a certain degree of US support is needed. The Finnish president said he was confident that it would continue.
Speaking with the moderator at his Davos panel, he said: "Your next question is going to be, do they fly without Americans? No, they don't. But do we trust that they will continue to fly because it's in the interest of America to do so? Yes."
Stubbs also said that Finland has the "biggest Arctic force in the alliance."
Finland is one of NATO's newest allies. It joined in response to Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and it is one of many European countries warning that Russia could ignite a wider war in Europe. These concerns have been strongest among front-line allies, with the Baltic nations regularly calling for greater efforts to strengthen defenses.
Finland's military was built with Russia as a threat in mind, giving it an edge that some other allies don't have. It remains on guard. For instance, Stubb said Finland's power also comes from its focus on civilian preparations.
"I think we also have to understand that you fight wars on the battlefield, but you win them at home."
"That's why we have civilian shelters for 4.4 million Fins. That's why we have a security of supply where we don't get into any kind of trouble with food shortages, energy shortages, or electricity grids." He described this as a "capability that a lot of European states need to do."
Still, he was bullish on European capabilities. "Can Europe defend itself? My answer is unequivocally, yes," he said.
He was also optimistic about NATO relations despite new tensions over the US pursuit of the Danish territory of Greenland.
Asked if Europe needs the potential to defend itself against the US, he responded: "No. I mean, come on, let's not push the hypotheticals here. Let's get back to the reality of the situation and let's put it back into perspective."
He also rejected the idea that NATO could dissolve over these tensions, saying, "I think actually we're in the process of creating a stronger NATO than we have seen since the end of the Cold War."
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European lawmakers on Wednesday suspended the approval of the trade deal that the EU and U.S. agreed in July.
In a statement on Wednesday, European Parliament member Bernd Lange, and INTA chair on EU-US trade relations, said the recent plans by President Donald Trump to impose tariffs of between 10% to 25% on European nations go against the terms of the trade pact.
Referring to Trump's address at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday, Lange said: "I guess he didn't revise his position. He wants to have Greenland as part of the United States as quick as possible."
In his speech, the president called for "immediate negotiations" on the acquisition of the Arctic territory.
Trump ruled out the use of military force in his speech, a commitment Lange described as a "small positive element."
However, Lange said the proposed 10% to 25% tariffs remain on the table, adding that, until the threat of them is over, "there will be no possibility of compromise."
"We will hold on the procedure... until there is clarity regarding Greenland and the threats," he said.
"There was a breaking of the Scotland deal by President Trump," Lange said, referring to the trade pact agreed by the EU and the U.S. at Trump's Turnberry golf resort last year.
Lange said Trump is "using tariffs as an instrument of political pressure" as a way to buy Greenland, and described the move as "an attack against the economic and territorial sovereignty of the European Union."
He added that the Committee on International Trade would on Monday discuss the use of the EU's Anti-Coercion Instrument (ACI) — a far-reaching measure variously described as a "trade bazooka" — which would allow the EU to substantially restrict U.S. companies' access to its single market, block them from tenders, reduce the flow of goods and capital, and curb foreign direct investment in the bloc.
"This was created exactly for such a case when a foreign country [uses] tariffs and investment for political and coercive pressure," Lange said of the ACI.
Earlier in the day, Bundesbank president Joachim Nagel told CNBC that he hoped Trump would reverse his stance, calling the transatlantic tensions a "very problematic situation."
Nagel, a governing council member of the European Central Bank, acknowledged that the tariff threat will likely have "some spillover" to monetary policy in the region.
Speaking to CNBC's Karen Tso at the World Economic Forum gathering in Davos Wednesday, Nagel said the tariff dispute could "maybe" be a game changer for monetary policy in the eurozone, which he said was still on "a good path."
"I still have the hope that we can find a solution, a joint understanding," Nagel added.
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If President Donald Trump gets his way on credit cards, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon predicts chaos — but more on the streets of American towns than in the walls of his own bank.
"It would be an economic disaster," Dimon said when asked about President Donald Trump's proposed one-year 10% cap on credit card interest rates. "And I'm not making that up because of our business, we would survive it, by the way. In the worst case, you would have to have a drastic reduction of the credit card business."
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Dimon predicted that, if enacted, the cap could strip credit from 80% of Americans. Dimon proposed that the government test the proposal by forcing all the banks in Vermont and Massachusetts to comply, "and then see what happens," causing a ripple of laughter through the audience.
"The people crying most won't be the credit card companies," he said, adding that those hurt will include restaurants, retailers, travel companies, and municipalities, "because people will miss their water payments."
Whatever the president and Congress decide, JPMorgan will "deal with it," Dimon said. He promised that the bank would provide more extensive analysis of the potential effects, and said that he, too, wants greater affordability.
Dimon struck a largely conciliatory tone when asked about some of Trump's geopolitical moves — immigration and NATO, for example — which he called "more qualitative, how it's going to work, what are the pieces, what's their intent." But he said he understands the card issue deeply and has a responsibility, of sorts, to speak up.
Dimon, like many other big-bank CEOs and business leaders, has previously said that reducing card interest rates could harm customers with lower credit scores. JPMorgan's CFO warned during the bank's fourth-quarter earnings call last week that enacting price controls could "make it no longer a good business."
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There's far more to Davos fashion than the iconic blue beanie and a sea of suits.
Business Insider is on the ground at the annual World Economic Forum this week, and we'll be keeping an eye on the status symbols we spot among the mountain fashion.
From designer parkas to the iconic Goyard bag, here's what attendees are wearing to stay warm and stylish.
Linda Yaccarino, the CEO of eMed Population Health, was spotted at the event wearing a satin suit from Gabriela Hearst. The three-piece set, in its winter-white shade, featured a delicate floral print.
She wore the ensemble with ballet flats and chunky black glasses.
Iuliia Bazhan, a model and the founder of Evoautism, attended in a full Chanel getup.
She wore a jacket and miniskirt from the fashion house's Coco Neige collection, a floor-length coat, and white boots with thick chain detailing.
One attendee, photographed by Business Insider, accessorized his navy jacket with a multicolored scarf, sunglasses with orange-tinted lenses, and blue leather gloves.
He also wore a thick gold ring and a giant watch.
One attendee was spotted walking around Davos in a fuzzy black coat, a colorful scarf, and what appears to be a Celine hat.
She also carried her luggage, which included a Marc Jacobs tote bag.
One woman was seen in Davos wearing a bright-pink suit with a white mock-neck top. On its own, the outfit was chic and feminine — especially when paired with her Louis Vuitton tote bag.
However, she didn't accessorize with heels or jewelry. Instead, she wore tan snow boots and brown leather gloves.
Malachi Ajayi, the cofounder at Telos House, said he's a big fan of double-breasted suits and jackets. The suit is Paul Smith, and his leather gloves were handmade in Nigeria. (He also wanted us to note there was some freshly spilled coffee on his jacket in case anyone noticed.)
Ajayi's style took the long way to get to Davos. He drove from London as part of a caravan, picking up folks along the way. It took 14 hours, which is still faster than Business Insider's Dan Defrancesco took to get here by plane.
Of course, they're doing so fashionably. One person wore dark-wash jeans with white socks, red sneakers, and a puffy coat that combined both colors with others across its statement print.
They also wore a thick red scarf and a lilac beanie.
Sarah Backhouse, an executive director at executive networking company World Fifty Group, matched the fur collar of her Frankie Shop coat with a cozy fur hat.
She accessorized the ensemble with Saint Laurent sunglasses and a Maison Goyard bag.
Wealth manager Andrew Gan gave his suit a Davos upgrade with a fur-lined coat and sunglasses as he headed to the Philippines House to moderate.
Nidhi Sinja, the head of marketing and communications for BCG North America, opted to carry a notebook in her quilted weatherproof Tory Burch bag.
She coordinated the look with a North Face coat and L.L. Bean boots, both in cream hues that matched her white purse.
Wendy Diamond is the founder and CEO of Women's Entrepreneurship Day Organization. She's also an investor and board advisor for numerous companies.
She wore a green satin suit, a statement charm necklace, and thick black boots. She told Business Insider that green is her "happy color," and that she likes to wear bright colors when "the world is so dark."
When the CEO of Philip Morris International US travels, even for long trips, she takes a carry-on. Her trick: Pick a color for the week and coordinate outfits around that, with travel-well fabrics. For Davos this week, the color is black.
Jonathan Nowak Delgado, a senior advisor at nonprofit ViaTalenta Foundation, per his business card, has a strategy to stand out at Davos: wear a mix of bold colors.
His outfit included a statement orange scarf, which his mother made for him.
One attendee photographed by Business Insider was seen wearing a tweed suit beneath a gray fuzzy coat and a thin, floral scarf.
In addition to the fabric layers, she wore black platform boots, white sunglasses, Chanel earrings, and a pink Prada handbag.
Jolie Hunt, the CEO of communications agency Hunt & Gather, has worn some of the event's most statement-making looks.
On Monday, she donned a printed minidress from Balmain with sheer tights, paired it with Larroudé x Libertine pumps adorned with lips, and carried an Hermès Birkin bag.
One attendee wore statement sunglasses in white and a fur-trimmed hat.
The accessories complemented her red suit, which featured a unique jacket with pleats at the waist.
Jump to
Since 2019, Nicola Peltz Beckham and her now-husband, Brooklyn Beckham, have been "inseparable," she said in a 2022 interview.
Now, the couple is publicly united amid an apparent rift with Beckham's parents, world-renowned soccer player David Beckham and designer Victoria Beckham. On Monday, Brooklyn Beckham wrote on Instagram that his parents "have been trying endlessly to ruin my relationship."
Neither couple has responded to Business Insider's request for comment.
Here's a look inside the life of the 31-year-old heiress, actor, and director — one of billionaire Nelson Peltz's 10 children — who's been vocal about her commitment to her family, her love for her husband, and her career.
The founder of investment firm Trian Fund Management, 83-year-old Nelson Peltz is worth $1.6 billion, according to Forbes.
Trian Fund Management manages $8.5 billion worth of assets. In 2017, Nelson Peltz was ranked the 22nd highest-earning hedge fund manager, Forbes reported.
He has contributed millions of dollars to politically conservative causes. During the 2020 election cycle, he donated $200,000 to the Republican National Committee, CNBC reported. In 2018, he donated $650,000 to Citizens for a Strong America, a political organization supporting conservative candidates.
Nicola Peltz Beckham has nine siblings through her father.
He has two children with his first wife, Cynthia Abrams, whom he married in 1964. They divorced in 1981.
In 1985, he married model Claudia Heffner Peltz, and they have eight children, including Nicola, who was born in 1995. She grew up in Westchester County in New York.
Peltz Beckham's first acting role was in 2006, in the film "Deck the Halls." She has also appeared in "Bates Motel," "The Last Airbender," "Transformers: The Age of Extinction," and "Holidate."
In 2014, she was nominated for a Teen Choice Award for breakout star for her role in "Transformers: Age of Extinction," and a Young Hollywood Award for breakthrough actress. That same year, she won a rising star CinemaCon Award.
Peltz Beckham has also acted in music videos. Most notably, she was featured in Miley Cyrus's "7 Things" music video, which has been viewed over 290 million times on YouTube since its 2008 premiere. In 2016, she was featured in Zayn Malik's music video for his song "iT's YoU."
Peltz Beckham acted alongside Kumail Nanjiani and Murray Bartlett in Hulu's "Welcome to Chippendales," which was released in 2022.
In a 2023 interview with Elle, she told the magazine about one of her favorite memories from the show.
"Finding Dorothy's look for the first time ... like, putting it all together — the makeup, the wig, the costume," she said. "When I got into the costume I really felt changed," she continued.
The show picked up five Emmy nominations in 2023.
In a 2024 interview with Women's Wear Daily, Peltz Beckham said she wrote "Lola" when she was 23 years old. It focuses on the life of a teenage girl named Lola who works at a drugstore and strip club to save enough money to move herself and her brother away from their toxic mother.
"I did not sleep for three days. I have screenshots of 4:50 a.m., just me writing. When I started putting my thoughts down, they just wouldn't stop," she said.
"I wanted to write a flawed character, but also someone where their heart's in the right place. I just think that's life, and imperfection in life will always inspire me," Peltz Beckham added.
Although the film was released in February 2024, it garnered attention in April 2024 due to negative reviews from critics, with The Guardian's Kady Ruth Ashcraft describing the film as a "vanity project."
"In film, that means the exploitation of the conditions of poverty for entertainment and artistic recognition," she wrote.
In her interview with WWD, Peltz Beckham acknowledged that she didn't grow up like Lola at all and was prepared for the criticism.
"I wanted to write a story from a person's perspective and another point of view that was not my personal view and not my upbringing. I am an actress and my dream is to get to look at the world from different perspectives," she said.
The thriller, which drops on FX and Hulu on January 21, has a star-studded cast including Ashton Kutcher, Rebecca Hall, Anthony Ramos, Bella Hadid, Isabella Rossellini, Meghan Trainor, and Peter Gallagher, among others.
Peltz Beckham also plays the lead in the upcoming "Prima" which is in production, Deadline reported.
In addition to having played Luke Kasten in "Euphoria," Will Peltz is known for his role in "Unfriended," a 2014 horror film.
In 2024, he appeared in "Lola" as a member of a Narcotics Anonymous group, and in "Off the Record" and "Somnium."
The siblings have almost-matching tattoos that pay homage to their family's Eastern European Jewish roots. Their tattoos are written in Yiddish. Nicola's tattoo means "family first" while Will's reads "family."
"I love big families, I love being around my family and all my siblings, it's like, my happy place for me," Peltz Beckham told Elle in 2023.
Coachella is known to be stacked with celebrities, so it's no wonder the couple met at the annual California music festival. But they didn't have an instant connection, according to Peltz Beckham.
"We didn't get along, we just didn't click … I had a boyfriend, he had a girlfriend," she told Tatler in 2022.
It took Beckham — a former model, photographer, chef, and the oldest child of David and Victoria Beckham — and Peltz years to finally get together. They reunited at Leonardo DiCaprio's Halloween party in 2019, Glamour reported, and they were later spotted having a late-night dinner together after the event.
"I can't tell you what happened [at the party] but from then on we were inseparable," Peltz Beckham told Tatler.
Beckham, now 26, and Peltz announced their engagement via Instagram in July 2020. "Two weeks ago I asked my soulmate to marry me and she said yes," he wrote in his caption.
"I am the luckiest man in the world. I promise to be the best husband and the best daddy one day," he continued.
In January 2021, Beckham debuted a tattoo dedicated to his fiancée — a transcript of a love letter Peltz had written. She signed the letter as "your future wifey."
In April 2022, the couple got married at the Peltz's family estate in Palm Beach, Florida. At their wedding, they took photos exclusively on flip phones, according to the couple. Elle reported the wedding cost almost $4 million.
British Vogue shared photos on Instagram of the bride and groom in their wedding attire. Nicola Peltz Beckham wore a custom Valentino gown for the occasion. She initially hoped to wear a design by her mother-in-law, Victoria Beckham, but ultimately the designer's "atelier couldn't do it," Peltz Beckham told Variety in 2022.
Their 500-strong guest list included celebrities such as Serena Williams, Eva Longoria, and Gordon Ramsay, People reported.
In an interview with Elle, Peltz Beckham described newlywed life as "amazing" and described Brooklyn as her "best friend."
"Being able to live life by his side has been amazing, because I feel like even if I'm going through something bad, I have him by my side," she said.
The couple chose to take each other's last names after their wedding, becoming Nicola and Brooklyn Peltz Beckham.
The couple reportedly lives in Los Angeles.
Peltz Beckham's father officiated the ceremony in August 2025.
"this day meant so much to us," she wrote on Instagram.
As part of his January 2026 Instagram post about his relationship with his parents, Brooklyn Beckham wrote, "We wanted to renew our vows so we could create new memories of our wedding day that bring us joy and happiness, not anxiety and embarrassment."
"Brooklyn wants a lot of kids," she said, adding, "Yeah, I would love a big family, really."
Peltz Beckham attended her mother-in-law, Victoria Beckham's, Paris Fashion Week show in March 2024. She attended with Brooklyn Beckham, David Beckham, and two of Brooklyn's siblings, Cruz and Harper.
"congratulations on another beautiful collection @victoriabeckham [red heart emoji] i love watching your vision come to life! love you so much," Peltz Beckham wrote on Instagram following the event.
The family also previously attended the October 2023 premiere of David Beckham's Netflix documentary and the February 2024 premiere of "Lola."
In a lengthy post on Instagram Stories on January 19, Brooklyn Beckham spoke out amid reports of a rift with his parents, which surfaced after he did not attend his father's 50th birthday in London last year.
While Brooklyn Beckham said he has "made every effort to keep these matters private," he said his parents "and their team have continued to go to the press, leaving me with no choice but to speak for myself."
In his post, he wrote, "My parents have been trying endlessly to ruin my relationship since before my wedding, and it hasn't stopped."
He said his mother backed out of making Peltz Beckham's wedding dress at the last minute. (Vogue reported in 2022 that the dress Peltz Beckham wore on her wedding day was the result of "a year's worth of conversations with Valentino creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli's team," as well as two meetings in Rome and two fittings in the US.)
Beckham also said in his post that his mother "hijacked" his first dance with his wife, which he said left him feeling "humiliated."
He added, "The night before our wedding, members of my family told me that Nicola was 'not blood' and 'not family'."
"My wife has been consistently disrespected by my family, no matter how hard we've tried to come together as one," he wrote.
Neither couple has responded to requests for comment from Business Insider.
Jump to
President Donald Trump on Wednesday called for "immediate negotiations" with Denmark to "discuss the acquisition of Greenland by the United States."
But Trump, in a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, said for the first time that he would not use military force in pursuit of the territory.
"I won't do that," Trump told the crowd of business and political leaders.
"Now everyone's saying, 'Oh, good,'" he quipped. "People thought I would use force. I don't have to use force. I don't want to use force. I won't use force."
Stocks, which had plummeted a day earlier amid Trump's increasing aggression toward Greenland, immediately rebounded after the president ruled out using the U.S. military against the island.
But Trump maintained that Greenland — an autonomous territory ruled by Denmark, one of America's NATO allies — is a must-have asset for U.S. national security.
And his remarks, which came days after he threatened new tariffs against eight NATO members related to the Greenland dispute, continued to ratchet up pressure on Europe.
"So they have a choice," Trump said. "You can say yes, and we will be very appreciative. Or you can say no, and we will remember."
Trump's remarks at Davos focused heavily on Greenland. At times he played up the strategic importance of the Artic landmass, while at others he seemed to diminish it, repeatedly referring to the island as a "piece of ice."
On multiple occasions, he appeared to confuse Greenland with Iceland.
But he delivered one message consistently: Denmark and NATO, he contended, cannot defend Greenland from threats in the region.
"The fact is, no nation or group of nations is in any position to be able to secure Greenland other than the United States," he said.
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Growing up in the midsize city of Vancouver, Canada, I always dreamed of living in a big metropolis — a cultural hub where something was always going on, with endless places to explore.
For a while, I did. When I started dating a Brit, I moved to his hometown of Birmingham, England, the second-largest city in the UK population-wise, with over a million residents.
After five years there, I began missing the ocean, the mountains, and the laid-back vibe of my home province. So, we headed back.
Eventually, we settled in the small city of Victoria, the provincial capital of the nearby Vancouver Island, where my family had moved while I was in the UK. It made sense for us to restart our lives in Canada, where we had family support.
I didn't know if we would end up staying, but now it's been two years, and we're mostly loving our life on the island.
I always enjoyed visiting Victoria while growing up, since it was just a 1-½ hour ferry ride from the mainland. However, I worried I'd find living there boring, as I'd always lived in and craved bigger cities.
Luckily, after experiencing the hustle and bustle of Birmingham for many years, I found myself appreciating Victoria's calm pace even more.
With a population of less than 100,000, the city rarely feels crowded. It's also surrounded by peaceful shorelines and beaches, so everything feels more chill.
It didn't take me long to appreciate Victoria's compact size, either — nowhere feels too far from our apartment in our super walkable, central neighborhood.
Every essential amenity we need is within a 15-minute walk — including grocery stores, a hospital and medical clinics, a drugstore, and a post office. Even my hair salon is less than 20 minutes from my home on foot.
Beyond that, we can reach beautiful beaches, parks, and the downtown area within 30 minutes. Even if we need to drive across town for something, the ride is never too long — we can get just about anywhere in under an hour.
I no longer have to feel frustrated watching UK buses and trains get delayed, then pile onto them like sardines with hundreds of other commuters when they finally arrive. I don't have to push through massive crowds on big boulevards or in busy shops, either.
Here, I feel like I always have room to breathe.
Though it's small, Victoria also has a good variety of cafés, restaurants, shops, and other cultural establishments. I'm still discovering new gems two years after moving here, so I definitely don't feel bored.
If there's one thing I've learned after all my moves, it's that nowhere is perfect. As much as I love my new life in Victoria, I miss some of the perks of bigger cities.
Having grown up in a city with an international airport, I find traveling is now more challenging and less convenient. Victoria has a local airport, but its international flight offerings are generally limited to just a few US cities and Mexican resort towns.
I often travel to Asia and Europe, so I need to leave from Vancouver to get more direct flights. Traveling to Vancouver can add anywhere from a few hours to an extra day to my travel time — I spend the night there if I have an early morning flight or a late-night arrival.
I also miss having more entertainment options. I've been to fantastic events in Victoria, from intimate concerts to comedy shows. However, as a smaller city, it pretty much always gets passed over on tours from the bigger artists I love.
Though I enjoy the option of going to Vancouver, I have to debate whether an event is worth all the extra travel expenses I'd incur, from ferry tickets to a hotel room for the night.
My husband and I pick one or two gigs we really want to see a year and make a trip of it, but I'd go to a lot more shows if I were still in Vancouver and only had to worry about ticket fees.
Finally, I miss the diversity of bigger cities. Victoria is fairly diverse for its size, but it still doesn't compare to larger cities like Vancouver or Birmingham, let alone metropolises like Paris and London.
As an immigrant with a mixed ethnic background, I miss the bigger cultural communities of Vancouver, where I was able to more easily connect with people with diverse backgrounds like mine.
The drawbacks don't outweigh all the positives of living in Victoria, and I'm surprised at how much I'm enjoying small-city life after dreaming of big ones for so long.
Sometimes, I feel like I'm in a fairy tale (or at least a quaint rom-com) as I walk among the free-roaming deer and colorful heritage houses.
I love the walkability, the compact infrastructure, the lack of crowds, and the fresh ocean air. My husband and I can see ourselves staying here for a long while.
Plus, when I'm missing bigger city vibes, I'm always happy to make the trip to Vancouver when needed — even if my wallet may not be.
Jump to
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday some areas of Europe are no longer recognizable — and that the continent was "not heading in the right direction."
Trump lauded what he described as economic growth "like no country has ever seen before" in the U.S. during his highly-anticipated speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
"Friends come back from different places – I don't want to insult anybody – and say, I don't recognize it. And that's not in a positive way, that's in a very negative way," Trump said.
"I love Europe and I want to see Europe go good, but it's not heading in the right direction."
His speech comes after global leaders condemned his aggressive approach to seeking to annex Greenland, which he said he would seek "immediate" negotiations over.
Market participants and many U.S. allies had raised the alarm about his Greenland position, including at Davos.
Trump used his speech to rule out military force, something he'd previously refused to do when asked.
The U.S. president said his administration believed "deeply" in the bond it shares with Europe.
"That's why issues like energy, trade, immigration and economic growth must be central concerns to anyone who wants to see a strong and united West, because Europe and those countries have to do their thing," Trump said.
"They have to get out of the culture that they've created over the last 10 years. It's horrible what they're doing to themselves. They're destroying themselves, these beautiful, beautiful places," he added.
"We want strong allies, not seriously weakened ones. We want Europe to be strong. Ultimately, these are matters of national security, and perhaps no current issue makes the situation more clear than what's currently going on with Greenland."
Trump, who has long advocated for making the Arctic island a part of the U.S., previously insisting there is "no going back" on acquiring it from Denmark. He threatened to impose a rising wave of tariffs on eight European countries if they continue to oppose his plans.
The U.S. president's increasingly aggressive Greenland rhetoric has ratcheted up trans-Atlantic tensions, with French President Emmanuel Macron warning of a shift to "a world without rules" and decrying "bullies," without mentioning Trump by name.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney told Davos on Tuesday that the "old order is not coming back" and warned "nostalgia is not a strategy."
Carney said the new order was "a system of intensifying great power rivalry where the most powerful pursue their interests using economic integration as coercion."
Trump took exception to Carney's comments during his speech. "Canada gets a lot of freebies from us by the way. They should be grateful also but they are not. I watched your prime minister yesterday. He wasn't so grateful," he said.
"Canada lives because of the United States. Remember that, Mark, the next time you make your statements."
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Ryanair is relishing its feud with Elon Musk.
The Irish airline is hand-delivering a free ticket to X's Dublin office for Musk, Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary said in a Wednesday press conference.
Ryanair has taken advantage of the feud by launching a "Big 'Idiot' Sale" with 100,000 tickets starting at £16.99, or about $23.
Musk and O'Leary, arguably the world's most outspoken businessmen, have called each other idiots in a weeklong feud over Starlink in-flight WiFi.
"I've included myself and him in this 'Big Idiot' seat sale," O'Leary said Wednesday, referring to an ad that shows the pair brawling.
"I suspect he's a bigger idiot than me, but nevertheless, he probably thinks I'm a bigger idiot than him."
After trading insults over the past days, Musk posted a poll on X on Monday asking if he should buy Ryanair and install a CEO named Ryan. About three-quarters of the roughly 950,000 voters said yes.
However, European Union rules say that the bloc's airlines must be at least 50% owned by EU nationals.
O'Leary has also been known to make provocative statements to help promote his airline.
After Musk compared O'Leary to a chimpanzee on Tuesday, the Ryanair boss responded at the press conference, saying: "I think it's somewhat unfair on the chimp community. But chimp chump, as long as it increases Ryanair bookings through January, February, and March, it's all good fun and entertainment."
"It is very good for our bookings," O'Leary also said. "We love these PR spats that drive bookings on Ryanair."
The quarrel started last Wednesday after O'Leary told Reuters he wouldn't join other airlines installing Starlink. The following day, he told the Irish radio station Newstalk that it would cost the airline up to $250 million because adding the terminal to a plane would affect its aerodynamics and increase fuel costs.
He said this would amount to a 2% increase, but a SpaceX executive said in an X post that it was actually 0.2%.
As a budget airline, Ryanair focuses on keeping costs as low as possible to offer cheaper airfares. It turns a profit by keeping its planes flying frequently with low turnaround times at airports, and selling extras, including scratchcards.
Plus, it only flies short-haul routes, so O'Leary doesn't think passengers would be too interested in in-flight WiFi.
"If it results in a fuel drag, it is something we would never go near," he added on Wednesday.
However, in the press conference, he also called Starlink a "terrific system."
O'Leary said the airline is continuing discussions with Starlink and other providers, including Amazon, but it would adopt in-flight WiFi "only in a way where it will lower our costs."
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In this article
Natural gas prices soared more than 20% on Wednesday as an Arctic cold front is forecast to blast across the Upper Midwest and descend south to grip much of the U.S. with frigid temperatures through the weekend.
Heating demand is expected to spike as wind chills could fall to -50 degrees Fahrenheit across the Upper Midwest and Northern Plains, according to the National Weather Service.
The wind chills pose a life-threatening risk of hypothermia and frostbite to exposed skin, the NWS warned. Power outages could prolong the risk, the federal agency said. Families should protect all pets from the cold, it said.
Heavy snow is forecast for the southern high plains of Colorado and New Mexico on Friday, said Owen Shieh, a meteorologist at the NWS Weather Prediction Center in a public service announcement on social media.
The storm will spread across the southern plains to the Mississippi Valley on Saturday before moving into Southern Appalachia, the Carolinas and the Mid-Atlantic on Saturday night into Sunday, Shieh said.
A major ice storm threatens to hit Texas on Friday night and extend through the Deep South and the Carolinas into the weekend, the meteorologist said. This could lead to hazardous travel, downed trees and power lines, he said.
Frigid sub-zero and single digit temperatures will also expand into the Ohio Valley and Northeast by Sunday, according to the NWS.
"Due to the large extent and long duration of the extreme cold accompanying this winter storm, it will take longer for the snow and ice to melt after the storm," Shieh said. "You need to prepare for the possibliity of extended impacts, potentailly for several days."
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Berkshire Hathaway, with new CEO Greg Abel in charge, has taken a formal step toward unwinding a rare misstep by Warren Buffett.
The conglomerate, which owns Geico insurance and BNSF Railway, registered its entire 27.5% stake in Kraft Heinz in a filing that clears the way for Berkshire to exit its position in the hot dog and macaroni-and-cheese maker. Berkshire is Kraft Heinz's largest shareholder.
Shares of Kraft Heinz fell as much as 7.5% at one point in Wednesday trading following the news.
The move underscores Abel's willingness to move on from a deal that has long stood out as a rare blemish on Buffett's otherwise storied record. Kraft Heinz shares have plunged about 70% since the 2015 merger that created the ketchup-making giant, weighed down by shifting consumer tastes, rising costs and sluggish growth across core brands. Some of the loss has been offset with billions of dollars in dividends over the years, but last year Berkshire still took a $3.8 billion write-down on the value of its holding.
"We ... view the timing of this sale as being reflective of Abel's desire to clean up and pare down the investment portfolio early in his tenure," Greggory Warren, senior equity analyst at Morningstar, said in a note.
The latest Berkshire filing also came as Kraft Heinz seeks to separate into two companies: one focused on sauces, spreads and shelf-stable meals and a second that includes North American staples like Oscar Mayer meats, Kraft cheese singles and Lunchables.
Buffett himself has acknowledged his frustration with how the merger he orchestrated a decade ago ultimately unraveled.
"It certainly didn't turn out to be a brilliant idea to put them together, but I don't think taking them apart will fix it," Buffett, who remains Berkshire's chairman, told CNBC last year.
The registration statement gives Berkshire the flexibility to reduce the position, rather than signaling an imminent sale, according to Stifel.
"The registration provides Berkshire Hathaway the ability to reduce its ownership stake; we believe transaction notifications are not required outside of quarterly 13F filings," Stifel analysts wrote. "The next update is likely to be in mid-May, when Berkshire reports its first fiscal quarter activity."
Stifel reiterated a hold rating on Kraft Heinz and a $26 price target, citing softer U.S. consumption trends and slower growth in emerging markets that could delay any revenue growth, even as the company continues to generate strong cash flow.
In 2015, Berkshire teamed up with Brazilian private equity firm 3G Capital to merge Kraft Foods with H.J. Heinz. 3G Capital quietly exited its Kraft Heinz investment in 2023, after years of periodically trimming its stake as the combined company struggled.
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Nvidia chief Jensen Huang said that AI robotics is a "once-in-a-generation" opportunity for Europe as the region boasts an industrial manufacturing base that is "incredibly strong."
"You can now fuse your industrial capability, your manufacturing capability, with artificial intelligence, and that brings you into the world of physical AI, or robotics," he said in an address at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday.
It presents an opportunity to "leap past" the era of software, he added, which has been led by the U.S.
Attention across the industrial and tech sectors has increasingly shifted to autonomous robotics as recent advances in AI promise more capabilities.
European industrial and manufacturing giants, including Siemens, Mercedes-Benz Group, Volvo and Schaeffler, have all announced robotics projects and partnerships with robotics tech companies in the past year.
Big Tech companies have also been doubling down in the space. Tesla CEO Elon Musk said 80% of the company's value would come from its Optimus humanoid robots in September, Google's AI division DeepMind released AI models for robotics in 2025, and Nvidia announced partnerships with Alphabet to work on physical AI in March.
Tech investors have taken note. Companies building robotics raised a record $26.5 billion in 2025, according to deal counting platform Dealroom.
To take advantage of the opportunity in AI, Europe has to "get serious" about its energy supply so that it can invest in the infrastructure layer, Huang said.
The region has some of the highest energy costs in the world. Microsoft boss Satya Nadella said energy costs will be a key factor in determining how successful countries are in the AI race at WEF on Tuesday.
"I think that it's fairly certain that you have to get serious about increasing your energy supply so that you could invest in the infrastructure layer, so that you could have a rich ecosystem of artificial intelligence here in Europe," Huang said.
Europe has been grappling with limited access to energy as hyperscalers look to roll out AI infrastructure across the region.
That rapid buildout is showing no signs of slowing down, said Huang. AI has started the "largest infrastructure buildout in human history," he told the audience at WEF.
"We're now a few hundred billion dollars into it. There are trillions of dollars of infrastructure that needs to be built out."
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When Meta agreed to spend a reported $2 billion on Manus at the end of last year, the social media giant said it planned to take the startup's subscription AI agent offering and "scale this service to many more businesses."
But some existing Manus customers aren't thrilled with the deal and say they're now going elsewhere, the latest sign of skepticism toward Meta as it tries to compete with the likes of OpenAI, Google and Anthropic in the booming artificial intelligence market.
Manus, a developer of general purpose AI agents, was founded in China in 2022 before relocating to Singapore. Last year, the company launched its first general AI agent, which can be customized to execute complex tasks such as market research, coding and data analysis.
Seth Dobrin, co-founder and CEO of Arya Labs, said Manus was his favorite agentic AI platform, but his company, which develops a type of so-called world models, is no longer using it under Meta's ownership. Dobrin told CNBC that while he had confidence in Manus' transparent terms of service, he doesn't have that level of trust in Meta and is "legitimately sad that this has happened."
"I do not agree with a lot of Meta's practices around data and how they essentially weaponize people's personal data against them," said Dobrin, who helped launch Arya last year. "I don't want to engage with a company who I don't feel comfortable with how they're going to use data."
Meta, which gets almost all of its $200 billion in annualized revenue from ads, said on Dec. 29, that its purchase of Manus was aimed at accelerating AI innovation for businesses and integrating advanced automation into its consumer and enterprise products, including its Meta AI assistant.
Manus said in a blog post on the day of the deal that it had reached millions of paying customers and a revenue run rate of more than $125 million.
"Our top priority is ensuring that this change won't be disruptive for our customers," Manus said. "We will continue to sell and operate our product subscription service through our app and website. The company will continue to operate from Singapore."
Despite those assurances, Dobrin isn't alone in his concern.
Karl Yeh, co-founder of consulting firm 0260.AI, which advises startups on how to integrate AI tools, said he stopped using Manus at his company and has advised his clients to follow suit.
"Will the data policies of Meta apply to Manus? I would assume it will eventually," Yeh told CNBC. "That was the concern we had and why we stopped recommending it to our clients."
"We don't know where Manus is going to fit into Meta's AI road map," Yeh said. "We're not sure if Manus is going to still remain a separate company even though they said it would."
Yeh said he's moving to services from a startup called Genspark or somewhere else where there's more certainty because, "In terms of Meta, we're just not sure."
Meta didn't provide a comment beyond pointing to the blog post, which notes that, "We're excited to welcome the Manus team and help improve the lives of billions of people and millions of businesses with their technology."
Meta has opened its wallets to try and win in AI, most notably spending more than $14 billion in June to hire Scale AI's Alexandr Wang and a handful of his top engineers and researchers and secure a stake in his startup. But unlike AI model leaders OpenAI, Google and Anthropic, Meta has yet to land on a long-term strategy in the market, particularly when it comes to competing in the enterprise.
Meta's stock is down 17% since CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on the last earnings call in October that AI costs will keep growing. Analysts anticipate 2026 spending on AI could top $100 billion. Meta is scheduled to report fourth-quarter results next week.
Flo Crivello, CEO of a Manus competitor, Lindy, said his company initially saw a bump in users after news of Meta's acquisition.
"We think there was sort of a halo effect from the announcement," Crivello said. "It raised awareness about this category of software and people started researching it."
Crivello, who previously spent almost five years at Uber and worked on acquisitions, said he thinks Meta's rationale is less about bringing in enterprise customers, and more targeted at serving small businesses, which have long been crucial to Meta's ad revenue.
Crivello said Manus is "focused on very small business owners like independent contractors," and said it could take a while for Meta to figure out where it takes Manus from here.
"The way these companies think of these acquisitions, they're acquiring the company for a specific, strategic reason — they just don't know precisely what the integration might look like yet," Crivello said. "They cut a check, it's a new thing they add to the chess board and then they figure it out. And sometimes it takes them years to figure out what to do."
Outside of advertising, Meta has struggled in several areas where it's tried to crack the enterprise. The company announced in 2024 that it was shuttering its Workplace communication and productivity platform, two years after discontinuing its Portal video calling device.
Last week, Meta said it's sunsetting its Workrooms virtual reality app, part of a broader pivot away from VR, which had been Zuckerberg's big focus area before AI took off.
Navrina Singh, founder and CEO of governance startup Credo AI, says she doesn't see Fortune 500 companies embracing Meta's tools.
"Among large enterprises — particularly in highly regulated sectors like health care and financial services — many AI deployments today are built on models from providers such as OpenAI and Anthropic," Singh said. Then they're typically run through cloud platforms operated by Microsoft or Amazon, "where trust, security, and accountability requirements are well-established and prioritized," she said.
One area where Meta is finding success in the business world is WhatsApp, the messaging platform it acquired for $19 billion in 2014. WhatsApp for Business has become a popular way for companies to interact with customers. Mark Mahaney, an analyst at Evercore, has projected WhatsApp could generate $40 billion in revenue by 2030.
"Business messaging remains a significant opportunity for us," Meta CFO Susan Li said on the company's last earnings call. "We're also making good progress on our business AI efforts, where we've been focused on building a turnkey AI that helps businesses generate leads and drive sales."
WATCH: Meta introduces ads to WhatsApp
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A startup widely known as "ChatGPT for doctors" raised a new funding round that values the company at $12 billion.
OpenEvidence, based in Miami, Florida, closed a $250 million financing, led by Thrive Capital and DST, the company told CNBC. The startup first raised outside capital in February, when it reeled in $75 million from Sequoia at a $1 billion valuation, before its value jumped to $6 billion in October.
In less than a year, OpenEvidence has raised $700 million from investors including Google's venture arm, Nvidia, Kleiner Perkins, David Sacks' Craft Ventures and Mayo Clinic.
The company was founded in 2022 by Daniel Nadler, who previously built Kensho Technologies, an artificial intelligence company that was acquired by Standard & Poor's for about $700 million in 2018, and by Zachary Ziegler, a Harvard PhD student in AI. Nadler's newest venture provides a chatbot for doctors, with its AI models having been trained on data and information from top scientific journals, Nadler said in an interview.
"'ChatGPT for doctors' is a useful shorthand, but what we really do is help physicians make high-stakes clinical decisions at the point of care," Nadler said. "It's not trained on the open internet or social media, which can introduce low-quality medical information."
Nadler claimed OpenEvidence is the most widely used AI platform by doctors in the U.S., with more than 40% of physicians utilizing the tool. He pointed to the massive opportunity in health care, which accounts for nearly 20% of U.S. gross domestic product with $5 trillion in annual spending.
"Health care is the largest segment of the real economy," Nadler said. "People realize there could be a lot of winners in the space."
Those names could include OpenAI and Anthropic.
OpenAI launched "ChatGPT Health" earlier this month, while Anthropic has "Claude Healthcare." Both are Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, compliant extensions of their popular consumer chatbots.
While competition is emerging, Nadler said his company's moat is its focus on physicians, quality of data and a first-mover advantage.
"We've already gathered hundreds of millions of real-world clinical consultations from verified physicians — that feedback loop is incredibly hard to replicate," Nadler said. "Even if someone copied the playbook today, they'd still be far behind because it's not just the partnerships, it's the real-world usage data."
OpenEvidence said it topped $100 million in annualized revenue last year, mostly fueled by organic growth. Nadler said 95% of new users hear about OpenEvidence from another physician.
"Most health care in America isn't happening at billion-dollar hospitals in New York or San Francisco," Nadler said. "It's happening in small practices that don't have IT departments or budgets for expensive software."
OpenEvidence was one of the first AI startups to rely on advertising for revenue, which Nadler said allows faster adoption and wider use versus a paid subscription model. Companies can pay for promotions through video ads on the OpenEvidence app.
The artificial intelligence industry has started to warm up to ad-based revenue. Last week, OpenAI said it was testing an ad-supported version of ChatGPT. Nadler said he's trying to be more disciplined than some companies that are "openly planning to burn billions or tens of billions over the next several years."
"That's a big bet, and a very risky bet," Nadler said, adding that OpenEvidence is trying to balance growth with eventual profitability. "We're not running this like a private equity portfolio company, but we're also not planning on burning billions of dollars over the next year."
AI startups are picking up this year where they left off in 2025.
In the third quarter of last year, there were six AI funding rounds of more than $1 billion, according to CB Insights. Anthropic is in talks to raise an additional $10 billion as of January, while Elon Musk's xAI announced a $20 billion round this month.
Nadler said that with the big tech companies aggressively pursuing acquisitions in the space, he's felt the pressure, but has remained set on building OpenEvidence as a stand-alone company.
"I've done the acquisition route before," he said. "It can be great. But this time, I want to build something that compounds over many years."
As for an initial public offering, he said SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic, which have all been rumored to be potential 2026 candidates, need to go public first. "There's an order to nature," Nadler said. "Foundation model companies go public first. Then the application layer follows. That's how the internet played out, and that's how this cycle will play out, too."
Correction: A prior version of this story misidentified the company's location.
WATCH: OpenAI investor letter
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"Very sad."
That's how Geoffrey Hinton, the computer scientist widely known as the "Godfather of AI," describes how he feels about the technology he helped create and what he says is the world's failure to take its growing risks seriously.
"It makes me very sad that I put my life into developing this stuff and that it's now extremely dangerous and people aren't taking the dangers seriously enough," Hinton told BBC Newsnight in an interview released on Tuesday and recorded earlier this month.
Hinton, who helped pioneer the neural networks that underpin modern artificial intelligence, has become one of the field's most outspoken critics as AI systems grow more powerful and widespread.
He has predicted that AI could trigger widespread job losses, fuel social unrest, and eventually outsmart humans — and has said that researchers should focus more on how advanced systems are trained, including ensuring they are designed to protect human interests.
On BBC Newsnight, Hinton said that humanity is approaching a pivotal moment as researchers edge closer to building machines more intelligent than humans.
"We've never been in this situation before of being able to produce things more intelligent than ourselves," Hinton said, adding that many experts believe that AI will surpass human intelligence within the next 20 years — and in many areas, already has. Once that happens, he said, controlling such systems may become far more difficult than many assume.
"The idea that you could just turn it off won't work," Hinton said, adding that a sufficiently advanced AI could persuade humans not to shut it down.
Hinton said the biggest mistake humanity could make now would be failing to invest in research on how humans can coexist with the intelligent systems they created.
"If we create them so they don't care about us," he warned, "they will probably wipe us out."
He suggested that catastrophic outcomes are not inevitable, saying that the risks depend on how advanced systems are designed and governed and that humans still have "a lot of options on how to create them" while AI remains under development.
Still, Hinton also expressed concern that AI is being unleashed at a time when global cooperation is weakening and authoritarian politics are on the rise, making meaningful regulation harder to achieve.
He compared the need for AI governance to international agreements on chemical and nuclear weapons.
Despite his concerns, Hinton said he would not undo his work on AI.
"It would have been developed without me," he said. "I don't think I made any decisions that I wouldn't make the same way if I had the same knowledge."
He remains hopeful about AI's potential to improve education and medicine, pointing to AI tutors and advances in medical imaging as examples of its promise. But for now, Hinton said, urgency is paramount.
"We're at a very crucial point in history when we're going to develop things more intelligent than ourselves fairly soon," he said. "We haven't done the research to figure out if we can peacefully coexist with them. It's crucial we do that research."
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It's been one year since President Donald Trump was sworn back into office — and four of the wealthiest tech billionaires who attended or donated to his inauguration have gotten richer.
Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and Jensen Huang — all of whom are featured on Bloomberg's list of 500 wealthiest people in the world — were among the tech royalty who signaled support for the administration, either through attendance or a donation. Others included Tim Cook, Sam Altman, Sundar Pichai, Satya Nadella, and Shou Zi Chew.
The tech billionaire with the largest increase in his net worth during Trump's first year is also the one who was closest to the Trump administration: Elon Musk. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, the Tesla CEO's wealth increased by 52% over the past year.
While Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos, and Huang are all wealthier today than they were on Inauguration Day in 2025, there have been some ups and downs. Collectively, the group lost $194 billion in wealth during Trump's first 100 days as markets reacted to the administration's tariffs. They've since made up for those losses and then some. As of January 19, the group was cumulatively $288 billion wealthier than a year prior.
Here's where all four stood as of Monday, January 19, 2026.
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Net worth January 19, 2025: $449 billion
Net worth January 19, 2026: $681 billion
Percent change: +52%
After spending at least $277 million backing Trump and Republicans during the 2024 election, Musk attended the inauguration and worked closely with the White House as the public face of the White House DOGE Office. Following his departure in May, Musk and Trump had a very public falling out, though they later reconciled.
Musk's work with DOGE resulted in backlash against Tesla, with the company's share price declining in the first few months of Trump's presidency. It has since recovered, and in the year since Trump was elected Musk has solidified his standing as the world's richest man. In November, Tesla shareholders approved a $1 trillion-dollar pay package for the Tesla CEO, if he hits a series of goals, and there are plans for a SpaceX IPO in 2026.
Net worth January 19, 2025: $245 billion
Net worth January 19, 2026: $261 billion
Percent change: +7%
Bezos's wealth, most of which is tied to Amazon stock, has increased since Trump took office a second time. Bezos, the Amazon founder and chairman, attended the inauguration alongside his now-wife Lauren Sánchez. Amazon also donated $1 million to the president's inaugural committee.
Analysts have said that Amazon was especially at risk of being negatively impacted by Trump's trade war, and CEO Andy Jassy said this week prices on the platform are increasing as a result of tariffs. Amazon's share price is roughly the same as it was a year ago.
Net worth January 19, 2025: $217 billion
Net worth January 19, 2026: $220 billion
Percent change: +1%
Zuckerberg and Trump once had a contentious relationship that went back several years prior to the 2024 election, with the latter at one time threatening to have the Meta CEO jailed over Facebook banning Trump's account in the wake of the January 6 Capitol riot.
Zuckerberg publicly warmed to Trump during the 2024 cycle, offering him praise and attending the inauguration. Zuckerberg was seated next to Trump at a White House dinner attended by tech leaders last year. Meta also donated $1 million to the inaugural committee.
Net worth January 19, 2025: $117 billion
Net worth January 19, 2026: $154 billion
Percent change: +32%
Huang did not attend the inauguration, but Nvidia donated $1 million to the inaugural committee. The Nvidia CEO also met with Trump shortly after he took office and the company has worked with the White House on AI policy.
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Elon Musk is bracing for another round of production hell.
The Tesla CEO said on Tuesday that the ramp-up of the company's Cybercab robotaxi and Optimus robot, both set to enter production this year, would be "agonizingly slow."
"The speed of the production ramp is inversely proportionate to how many new parts and steps there are," wrote Musk in a post on X.
"For Cybercab and Optimus, almost everything is new, so the early production rate will be agonizingly slow, but eventually end up being insanely fast," he added.
Tesla is set to begin production of the Cybercab, a sleek two-seater robotaxi that Musk has said will ship without a steering wheel or pedals, in April. The billionaire is targeting an eventual production goal of 2 million units a year.
The Cybercab, which Musk said in 2024 would cost around $25,000, is set to enter mass production as Tesla races to expand its robotaxi service after a sluggish start.
The company launched autonomous ride-hailing in Austin last June, but it only has a small number of Model Y robotaxis on the road in the city and has not yet removed human safety monitors from its vehicles.
Meanwhile, Optimus, its humanoid robot designed to help with everyday tasks, is set to enter production by the end of 2026, with Musk saying Tesla could eventually make one million a year.
The Tesla CEO told investors in October that it would take a while to reach that goal as the company was having to manufacture almost the entire supply chain from scratch, with production moving at the speed of the "slowest, dumbest, least lucky thing out of 10,000 unique items."
Musk's comments echo what Tesla is telling its employees. In an all-hands meeting in October, the company's VP of AI software told staff on Tesla's Autopilot and Optimus teams that 2026 would be the "hardest year" of their lives, Business Insider's Grace Kay exclusively reported.
It wouldn't be the first time Tesla has faced a rough road while scaling an ambitious new product.
The company endured a famously brutal period of what Musk called "production hell" while building its Model 3 EV in 2017. Musk and other employees resorted to sleeping on the factory floor as they struggled to scale the mass-market model.
Tesla also faced production challenges with the Cybertruck, the company's last new vehicle.
The electric pickup's unique design and stainless steel-clad structure made it highly challenging to produce at scale, and Musk acknowledged in 2023 that Tesla had "dug its own grave" with the Cybertruck's design.
The divisive electric truck also serves as a caveat for Musk's ambitious production goals.
Musk's predictions that Tesla could produce 250,000 Cybertrucks a year have fallen short, with industry data showing the company sold just over 20,000 Cybertrucks in the US last year.
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President Donald Trump delivered a wide-ranging speech at the World Economic Forum, directly addressing an audience that has been put on edge by his intensifying aggression toward the allied territory of Greenland.
The speech will be followed by meetings with other world leaders attending the five-day summit in Davos, Switzerland, the White House said.
Trump, facing a tough midterm election cycle centered on Americans' cost-of-living concerns, previously said he will speak at Davos about proposals to make housing more affordable.
But it's his increasingly belligerent stance toward Europe, as he and his administration persist in trying to acquire Greenland from Denmark, that took center stage.
Trump and his aides have refused to rule out using the U.S. military in Greenland. And the president recently said he will slap increasing tariffs on a slew of key European allies until an agreement to sell the Arctic island is inked.
U.S. markets plummeted in the first trading session following Trump's latest tariff threat.
U.S. officials, speaking at Davos on Tuesday ahead of Trump's arrival, sought to calm fears about the president's actions.
"Everyone take a deep breath," Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC's Joe Kernen. "Do not escalate. ... President Trump has a strategy here. Hear him out, and then everything will be fine."
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told CNBC's "Money Movers" that America's "tariff deals, our trade deals with Europe, with the U.K. — these are durable and stable."
"You can have a fight with your allies. You can disagree with your allies. It doesn't stop them from being your allies or your big trading partners," Lutnick added.
Trump said at the White House before departing for Davos, "We have a lot of meetings scheduled on Greenland, and I think things are going to work out pretty well."
His expansionist push has nevertheless stoked alarm and outrage from Europe's leaders and citizens alike.
"People are worried, people are afraid, people are bewildered," Naaja Nathanielsen, Greenland's minister for business and mineral resources, told CNBC on Tuesday when asked how residents there are reacting to Trump's actions.
That assessment aligns with recent opinion polls, which show Greenlanders overwhelmingly oppose being absorbed into the U.S., and protests that have sprung up in solidarity with the territory.
A delegation from Greenland and Denmark, meanwhile, said after meeting with Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio that they have a "fundamental disagreement" with the Trump administration.
But Trump, who has long sought to make Greenland a part of the U.S., has so far refused to take no for an answer.
Trump contends Greenland is a must-have asset for U.S. national security due to the alleged threats being posed in the Arctic by Russia and China.
Amid the geopolitical upheaval, some European allies have increased their military presences in Greenland, drawing Trump's ire.
Greenland is an autonomous territory within the kingdom of Denmark, which is a member of NATO, Europe's longstanding military alliance with the U.S. and Canada. The cornerstone of the alliance is an agreement that an attack on any single member is considered an attack on them all.
Despite that — and despite the fact that the U.S. already has a military base in Greenland — Trump maintains that only a full acquisition can guarantee security in the region.
"China and Russia want Greenland, and there is not a thing that Denmark can do about it," Trump wrote on Truth Social on Saturday.
In the same post, Trump said he would slap tariffs on imports from eight NATO members, including France and the United Kingdom, in retaliation for moving troops to Greenland. The new tariffs will start at 10% next month and increase to 25% in June, Trump wrote.
Those European countries are now considering imposing major economic countermeasures on the U.S. in response.
"Tariff threats are unacceptable ... Europeans will respond in a united and coordinated manner should they be confirmed," French President Emmanuel Macron said Saturday. "We will ensure that European sovereignty is upheld."
Trump's view of Macron has since appeared to sour.
When asked to respond to reporting that Macron would not join the so-called Board of Peace centered on resolving conflicts in Gaza, Trump threatened to impose a 200% tariff on French wine.
"Nobody wants him because he's going to be out of office very soon," Trump added.
Trump also revealed that he has invited Russian President Vladimir Putin to join that board.
Early Tuesday morning, Trump shared on social media an apparent screenshot of a text message from Macron, who wrote that he doesn't understand the U.S. leader's strategy on Greenland.
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This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Jason Myers, a marketing-firm executive and professional bass player in the band Icarus Witch. He is based in Pittsburgh. This story has been edited for length and clarity.
I started playing bass in heavy metal bands in junior high. I wanted to become a professional musician, but as soon as I got out of college in 1993, I started a side hustle doing publicity for concert promoters and record labels for in case my rock-and-roll dreams didn't pan out.
The side hustle was really a full-time day job, which made managing a serious band challenging. I'd have to book studio time at night and work until the sun came up, and I could only book shows on weekends unless I took time off from my job.
In 2003, the band I'm still in today, Icarus Witch, got signed to a label. We put out our first record in 2005 and started getting radio play. As our popularity grew, I wanted to accept longer tours. But the money you earn from touring is essentially a loan against your royalties, so I had to keep working to sustain myself.
Out of a 24-hour day, the band is only on stage for maybe an hour. The rest is spent traveling, waiting, and sleeping. There was a lot of wasted time I knew I could fill, and we were entering an era of greater WiFi capabilities.
As the years passed, I started to recognize that the music industry was shrinking. People were downloading songs instead of buying CDs, and there were fewer opportunities to make money. Even though my band was successful, it felt more like a personal victory, and I realized it was time to make some adult decisions about how I would protect myself in the future.
In 2010, I was asked to join a marketing and PR startup called The Content Factory that was early into the remote work thing. I had previously worked with the owner and founder, Kari DePhillips, at another startup. Though I'd only ever done publicity and marketing for bands, Kari said that didn't matter.
Soon after, my band went on tour with the veteran group Y&T, and they were gracious enough to let me work from their bus since we were following them around in a small van. When we'd stay at a hotel, I'd sit in our room after shows working, while my bandmates would check out the local bar scene and meet up with fans.
These days, my band is more selective about the shows we play because going on tour doesn't make as much financial sense as it once did. That's why you see exorbitant ticket prices when a band does decide to go out.
I'm still with The Content Factory. I worked my way up from account rep to senior vice president of PR and social media marketing. I still enjoy the hell out of playing music, but the company's well-being is on my mind all the time now.
When you're in a band on the rise, it's easy to feel invincible, like this is going to last forever. But you have to look out for yourself. No one is going to save you.
I used to have this mindset that if I allowed myself to think about a Plan B, I'd somehow jinx my chances of making it big. In hindsight, I realize that's foolish. You can plan for your future and live the wild life at the same time. The two aren't mutually exclusive.
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"An act of great stupidity."
That is what President Donald Trump called the UK's decision to give away a group of islands where a strategic military base is located.
The Diego Garcia military base is a cornerstone of US and allied power projection across the Indo-Pacific, the Middle East, and parts of Africa. As the UK moves to transfer sovereignty of the islands, its strategic importance has turned the base into a political and diplomatic flash point.
The island's strategic location has long made it especially valuable for US military operations, including long-range bomber missions and naval deployments — a role underscored by satellite images last year showing US bombers operating from the base.
Located in the Chagos Islands, Diego Garcia became the site of a US-UK military installation after Britain forcibly removed the native Chagossian people in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Seven years ago, in 2019, the International Court of Justice ruled that the removals were unlawful and said that the UK should relinquish control of the islands.
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The UK has since reached a deal to transfer the sovereignty of the islands to Mauritius, near Madagascar, while allowing Diego Garcia to remain under British control on a 99-year lease, with an option to renew. The arrangement is expected to cost the UK about $136 million a year.
The UK government's decision was previously praised by the Trump administration as a "monumental achievement" that secured "the long-term, stable, and effective operation of the joint US-UK military facility at Diego Garcia."
Trump's assessment appears to have shifted.
"Shockingly, our 'brilliant' NATO Ally, the United Kingdom, is currently planning to give away the Island of Diego Garcia, the site of a vital U.S. Military Base, to Mauritius, and to do so FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER," the president wrote on Truth Social Tuesday.
He said there was "no doubt" that Russia and China had "noticed this act of total weakness," arguing that the UK "giving away extremely important land is an act of GREAT STUPIDITY."
He stressed that the move "is another in a very long line of National Security reasons why Greenland has to be acquired." Trump has been increasingly focused on taking control of Greenland lately. He has argued its needed for Golden Dome, among other reasons.
The British prime minister's office told the BBC that "the president explicitly recognised its strength last year," adding that the Five Eyes intelligence agencies also approved of the transfer.
Trump said at the White House later on Tuesday that the deal had changed from its original format. "I think they should keep it," he said.
Diego Garcia has been a secretive military installation for the US and UK since the early 1970s. It's extremely remote, far from nearby landmasses, and strategically placed so that the US and UK have air power and maritime reach from the Indian Ocean toward the Middle East, Indo-Pacific, and Africa.
The base hosts units from the US Navy, Air Force, and Space Force, as well as the UK Royal Navy. Due to its geographical location, Diego Garcia is also critical for refueling operations for military aircraft and vessels. American bombers, such as B-1 Lancers, B-2 Spirits, and B-52 Stratofortresses, have been seen at the base, as well as nuclear-powered submarines.
From Diego Garcia, US bombers launched attacks in Afghanistan after 9/11 and against Iraq during the 2003 invasion. And in 1991, the installation was central to US attacks during the first Gulf War. The base was crucial to the logistics operations supporting Middle Eastern missions, keeping aircraft nearby and operational.
The B-2 bomber holding the record for the longest bombing run in history landed at Diego Garcia after flying over 44 hours from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri in 2001.
In June 2025, prior to US attacks on Iran's nuclear facilities, or Operation Midnight Hammer, experts speculated that a significant B-2 bomber presence spotted at Diego Garcia could be involved in some sort of strike on Iran. Imagery at the time showed a notable force posture there. The actual strike, however, involved a B-2 bomber task force that flew out of the US.
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China's technology giants are entering a new phase of the artificial intelligence race called 'agentic commerce,' as firms such as Alibaba and ByteDance race to turn chatbots into full-service shopping and payment tools.
Alibaba last week updated its Qwen AI chatbot, allowing users to complete transactions directly within the interface, including ordering food and booking air tickets.
The upgrade connects Qwen to Alibaba's broader e-commerce ecosystem, allowing users to compare tailored product recommendations from platforms such as Taobao or its travel site Fliggy, before finally completing payments through Alipay, all without leaving the chatbot.
Previously, Qwen could make recommendations based on user-generated prompts, but users still had to manually navigate multiple platforms to make purchases.
The update reflects a broader shift among some global artificial intelligence firms from a focus on foundational AI models to "agentic AI", which performs tasks on behalf of users with limited supervision.
"The agentic transformation of commercial services enables the maximal integration of user services [and] enhances user stickiness," Shaochen Wang, a research analyst at Counterpoint Research, referring to stronger long-term user engagement.
That allows companies to build a sustainable competitive advantage, often called a business moat, which helps protect profits from competitors, he added.
While commercial applications for agentic AI are expected to range from autonomous driving to cybersecurity, e-commerce is emerging as one of its earliest and most pervasive use cases, with payment and tech giants in the U.S. also rolling out their first iterations in recent months.
Within China, Alibaba is well-positioned to be a pioneer in agentic commerce due to its advanced large language model capabilities and its extensive e-commerce network covering clothing, food, housing, and transportation, Wang said.
Alibaba's strategy could help it compete with rival super apps such as Tencent's WeChat — widely regarded as China's leading 'super app' — which combines messaging, payments, e-commerce and other services into a single platform used by over 1 billion users.
Other Chinese firms are also moving quickly.
ByteDance in December upgraded its popular Doubao AI chatbot to autonomously handle tasks such as ticket bookings through integrations with e-commerce features on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok.
The upgraded Doubao model was introduced on a prototype smartphone developed by ZTE Corp as a comprehensive AI assistant capable of performing tasks across a user's mobile device. However, some of Doubao's planned features were later scaled back after rivals raised privacy and security concerns.
Meanwhile, Tencent President Martin Lau said during the company's May 2025 earnings call that AI agents could become core components of the WeChat ecosystem.
"AI agents will be foundational to the evolution of super apps, with success depending on deep integration across payments, logistics, and social engagement," Charlie Dai, VP and principal analyst at Forrester, told CNBC.
While Chinese firms like Alibaba, Tencent and ByteDance will compete to embed agents across their platforms, they all benefit from integrated ecosystems, rich behavioral data, and consumer familiarity with super apps, said Dai.
Western companies, while leading in foundational AI models and global reach, face more fragmented data and stricter privacy regulations, slowing cross-service integration, he added.
U.S. players pursuing agentic commerce include OpenAI, Perplexity, and Amazon. Google is also exploring ways to position itself as a "matchmaker" between merchants, consumers and AI agents.
"China will prioritize domestic integration and strategic expansion in selected regions, while U.S. firms focus on global scalability and governance," Dai noted.
Approximately half of all consumers already use AI when searching online, according to a 2025 McKinsey study.
The report estimated that AI agents could generate more than $1 trillion in economic value for U.S. businesses by 2030 by streamlining important yet routine steps in consumer decision-making.
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Sulaiman Ghori gave a sweeping interview about his work at xAI. Four days later, he is no longer working at the company.
The interview on the "Relentless" podcast covered dozens of topics, from the internal company culture and work schedule to the eyebrow-raising way Elon Musk's AI company builds its data centers.
Elon Musk's companies are famously wary of the press and media. And while it's not clear whether Ghori's exit is related to the podcast interview — neither xAI nor Musk commented on the former employee's quotes or departure when contacted by Business Insider — some big names like MrBeast are speculating as much. Ghori hasn't commented publicly about the circumstances of his departure and did not respond when contacted by Business Insider.
So what exactly did the now-former xAI employee talk about?
Read on for 10 of the most interesting things Ghori said on the podcast.
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How is xAI building its data centers so quickly? Through temporary licenses, Ghori said.
"It was the fastest way to get the permitting through and actually start building things," Ghori said. "I assume that it will be permanent at some point."
Ghori said that the temporary leases were an exception granted by the local government, one made for carnivals. The host, Ti Morse, laughed: "So xAI is actually just a carnival company?"
"It's a carnival company," Ghori responded.
AI visionaries often talk about a world where managers run a team of agents, not employees. They seem to be there already at xAI.
The company is rebuilding its core production APIs, Ghori said. The team leading it is one person and 20 agents. "They're very good, and they're capable of doing it," he said.
At another point in the podcast, Ghori described the confusion that AI employees can cause.
"Multiple times I've gotten a ping saying: 'Hey, this guy on the org chart reports to you. Is he not in today or something?'" he said. "It's an AI. It's a virtual employee."
XAI teams are kept small, even without AI employees. The iOS team had three employees at the time of the Grok Imagine launch, Ghori said. He was the third.
How valuable is each commit to xAI's repository? They did the math, Ghori said: It's $2.5 million.
"I did five today," Ghori said. His work for the day would be valued at $12.5 million.
One of Elon Musk's key roles at xAI is as a fixer.
Ghori said that, when the company picks up new products from the likes of Nvidia, not everything works. That's when Musk gets on the phone, Ghori said.
"We would work side-by-side until that was resolved," Ghori said. "Otherwise it would have taken weeks of back-and-forth."
The xAI CEO made an unusual offer when xAI's engineers were setting up new GPU racks.
"Elon's like, 'OK, you can get a Cybertruck tonight if you can get a training run on these GPUs in 24 hours,'" Ghori said.
The engineer — whom Ghori only referred to by their first name, Tyler — won the bet. Now, Ghori said he sees Tyler's Cybertruck outside his lunch window.
The teams within xAI are limited and blurry, Ghori said.
That made onboarding a challenge, he added, as nobody told him what to do.
"My first day, they just gave me a laptop and a badge," Ghori said, adding that he wasn't assigned a desk.
Ghori sought out cofounder Greg Yang, who had been instrumental in his hiring. He soon started working on the Ask Grok feature in X.
Elon Musk's companies have a long history of overnighting at the office. Former Twitter director Esther Crawford generated headlines when she posted a "cheeky" photo of herself sleeping at the company's headquarters.
XAI seems to have embraced this reputation. The company has sleeping pods and bunk beds, Ghori said.
"When the tent picture came out, everyone kept sending it to me," Ghori said. "We have tents, but I've never seen that many out at once."
Who responds when Musk spots a late-night problem with X? "Whoever is awake," he said.
Ghori worked on the Macrohard team — a tongue-in-cheek play on the opposite of Microsoft — that is developing "human emulators."
The xAI engineer explained the concept in reference to Optimus, Tesla's humanoid robot. Just as Optimus performs physical human actions, these emulators will perform digital human actions.
The emulators will do anything that a human needs to look at a screen, use a keyboard and mouse, and make decisions, Ghori said.
XAI wants to roll out the human emulators slowly, then all at once, Ghori said. The goal is to scale to one million emulators.
There are 4 million Tesla cars in North America alone, Ghori said. They're sitting idle for 70-80% of the time, he said. Why not pay owners to lease time off their cars and run the emulator on them?
"That's something without any build-out requirement," Ghori said.
This isn't the first time using dormant Teslas to power new ambitions has been mentioned. Elon Musk said at Tesla's November shareholder meeting that the vehicles could offer a "massive distributed AI inference fleet."
Consumers can currently use the Grok 4 model, which xAI released in July.
XAI is working far ahead, Ghori said. He joined in March 2025, according to his LinkedIn profile. Grok-5 was planned even before he joined, Ghori said.
The model was "planned out and designed" far in advance, he said.
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A city in Japan has come up with a high-tech solution to its intense bear problem.
Ishinomaki City in Japan's eastern Miyagi Prefecture has ordered drones that will spray bear repellent at attacking bears.
Drone manufacturer Terra Drone said in a press release on Monday that it will supply the city with what it calls "bear repellent spray-equipped drones," which it said could remotely and safely repel bears without human intervention.
A video of the drone's demonstration showed a drone spraying repellent on a human dressed in a bear suit, crouching on all fours to mimic a bear's stance.
Terra Drone told Business Insider in an email that it would introduce one drone first and begin full-scale operations from next spring. The company expects the total project cost to be "a few million yen."
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The drones will be operated by a private company picked by the city's government to prevent bear damage, Terra Drone said.
Bear sightings and attacks have become a big problem for Japan. The word "bear" was one of Japan's words of the year in 2025.
The release, citing figures from Japan's environment ministry, said bear sightings increased 163% between 2021 and 2025, and there had been 100 bear attack-linked injuries and 12 deaths in Japan since April.
Japan deployed troops from the Self-Defense Forces — the country's key military branch — in December to its northern regions, where several bear sightings had been reported. The troops set box traps to capture the bears.
The drones can be controlled from about half a mile away, and can spray the bears with "pinpoint accuracy," the release said. Bear sprays contain capsaicin, a chemical found in chili peppers, which irritates the bear's eyes and nose, giving the human time to escape.
It added, "This provides a highly effective method of scaring away bears, whose sense of smell is thousands of times stronger than that of humans, and allows them time to temporarily evacuate."
The bear-spray drones are not the only drone-based solution Japan has deployed thus far.
In November, Gifu Prefecture deployed barking drones that mimic the sounds of hunting dogs, along with firecrackers, to scare off incoming bears. The drones featured large googly eyes and loudspeakers.
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"Denmark's investment in U.S. Treasury bonds, like Denmark itself, is irrelevant," U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told reporters Wednesday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
The "sell America" trade was in full swing Tuesday after President Donald Trump and European leaders escalated tensions over Greenland. U.S. stocks and bond prices tumbled, sending yields spiking.
It comes as Trump's threats to impose 10% tariffs on eight European countries as part of his push to take over Greenland spooked markets. The levies would come into force on Feb. 1, Trump said, and later rise to 25%.
Europe's holdings in U.S. Treasurys, however, have been tipped as a potential countermeasure.
Danish pension operator AkademikerPension said Tuesday it was selling $100 million in U.S. Treasurys. The decision was driven by "poor [U.S.] government finances," said Anders Schelde, AkademikerPension's investing chief.
When Bessent was asked how concerned he is about European investors pulling out of Treasurys, Bessent said at a news conference at the World Economic Forum: "Denmark's investment in U.S. Treasury bonds, like Denmark itself, is irrelevant."
"That is less than $100 million. They've been selling Treasurys for years, I'm not concerned at all."
Bessent added that the U.S. has had "record foreign investment" in its Treasurys.
He suggested that the Japanese bond sell-off following the announcement of a snap election in the island state, has "spilled over to other markets."
The "notion that Europeans would be selling U.S. assets came from a single analyst at Deutsche Bank," Bessent said, which was then amplified by "the fake news media."
The Jan. 18 note stated that the "US has one key weakness: it relies on others to pay its bills via large external deficits." At the time, European countries held $8 trillion of U.S. bonds and equities.
"In an environment where the geoeconomic stability of the western alliance is being disrupted existentially, it is not clear why Europeans would be as willing to play this part," said George Saravelos, global head of FX research at the German bank.
He added, "Danish pension funds were one of the first to repatriate money and reduce their dollar exposure this time last year. With USD exposure still very elevated across Europe, developments over the last few days have potential to further encourage dollar rebalancing."
Bessent told reporters on Wednesday that the CEO of Deutsche Bank called to say that the German lender "does not stand by that analyst report."
A Deutsche Bank spokesperson told CNBC that the company generally does not comment on "potential communication between the bank and government representatives."
"As a matter of long-standing policy, Deutsche Bank Research is independent in their work, therefore views expressed in individual research notes do not necessarily represent the view of the bank's management," the spokesperson said.
The U.S. has deemed Greenland a national security concern as the Arctic warms and new trade routes emerge, opening the floor for a potential power play between the U.S., Russia and China. The Trump administration has said it wants to avoid that conflict.
"We are asking our allies to understand that Greenland needs to be part of the United States," Bessent told reporters.
Greenlanders are however "bewildered" by Trump's "devastating" bid to annex the Danish territory, its business minister, Naaja Nathanielsen told CNBC on Tuesday.
″[We have] always considered ourselves as an ally of the U.S. and have tried to accommodate the needs from the U.S. over the years and done so happily," Nathanielsen said via video call.
"To all of a sudden find ourselves in the midst of a storm that's about acquiring us like a product or a property, it's really difficult for us — not to mention the threats of military action and an actual occupation of our country."
Politicians on the island have said Greenland is open for business — but it is not for sale.
Bessent added that U.S. bought the U.S. Virgin Islands from Denmark during the First World War because they "understood" the islands' importance.
"President Trump has made it clear that we will not outsource our national security or our hemispheric security to any other countries," Bessent said. "Our partner, the U.K., is letting us down with the base on Diego Garcia, which we had shared together for many, many years, and they want to turn it over to Mauritius. So, President Trump is serious here."
"Just as I said after 'liberation day' last year, I would tell everyone, 'take a deep breath, do not have this reflexive anger that we've seen, and this bitterness.' Why don't they sit down and wait for President Trump to get here and listen to his argument, because I think they are going to be persuaded."
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— CNBC's Sam Meredith contributed to this report.
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Ukraine is set to receive 40,000 interceptor drones in January, thanks in part to a reward system that pays firms for every kill scored against a Russian Shahed, the country's defense minister said.
Mykhailo Fedorov said on Tuesday that Kyiv had rolled out a program inviting defense companies to test their small interceptor drones in Ukraine, paying them $20,000 for each Shahed drone their product destroyed.
"At the time, no one believed in it," Fedorov said at a press briefing. "But now, by this month, 40,000 interceptors are expected to be delivered to the military."
Often short of munitions and weapons, Ukraine invites defense firms from around the world — though mostly NATO countries — to test their products on the battlefield.
Fedorov, who was appointed defense minister last week, said the payment program had focused on the Chernihiv area, which sits between Kyiv and Russia's western border. Long-range attack drones launched from that border must fly over Chernihiv to reach the Ukrainian capital, and the region thus sees some of the heaviest Shahed flight traffic.
Interceptor drones in Ukraine are generally small, first-person-view drones designed to fly at high speed to catch Russia's Gerans, delta-wing explosive-carrying drones closely based on the Iranian Shahed.
The most common type of Geran that Ukraine faces can cruise at roughly 6,500 feet and fly at up to 115 mph.
Because Russia can launch hundreds of these at a time, resource-strapped Ukrainians have prioritized keeping the cost of interceptor drones as low as possible. A typical one costs roughly several thousand US dollars.
Fedorov said on Tuesday that Ukraine's military had been actively looking into interceptors since at least February 2025. The technology has evolved rapidly over the last year, with Ukrainian firms still experimenting with designs at the start of 2025 and now scaling up manufacturing for mass production.
Receiving 40,000 interceptors a month would mean that Ukraine can deploy more than 1,000 of them a day — an initial production goal set by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
In a separate press briefing on Monday, Zelenskyy repeated that his country was now able to produce about 1,000 interceptors per day.
"But that is not enough," he said. "Because, frankly speaking, our interceptor drones have already outpaced the number of our operators."
Zelenskyy said that Fedorov and Ukraine's chief commander, Oleksandr Syrskyi, have been assigned with recruiting, training, and deploying more troops who can fly interceptor drones.
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Adios to casual dating: Young Americans are seeking committed life partners to split bills with.
Quincy Yang, the co-CEO of dating app Coffee Meets Bagel, told Business Insider that money and economics are huge considerations for Gen Z when choosing a partner.
"It's so hard to afford to buy a house, or any property," Yang said, adding that a lot of younger people are staying at home with their parents. He said for older generations, it was more affordable to "live the American dream" of buying a home and starting a family.
"Now, you need dual incomes to afford just the median condo or house. You need to have a pretty good job; you can't slack off too much," he said.
Yang said the affordability crisis has affected dating. "There's an incentive now to find a good partner who is financially stable and ambitious."
Shn Juay, Yang's co-CEO, said that this is evident in Gen Zers not being as into hookups as older generations.
"When you talk about dating apps, the first thing that comes to mind will be hookups," she said. "But the Gen Zs are really more conscious about more real things in their life, they're not into hookups. Unlike the previous generation, what they imagine of an ideal partner is very pragmatic."
The CEOs said that daters should choose dealbreakers judiciously while finding a partner.
"You can always go for a higher degree, or you get promoted along the way, but not at age 28 years old, where everybody's probably still really early in their career," Juay told Business Insider.
Living in the US is more expensive than ever.
Housing costs have been rising faster than incomes over the last two decades, according to a June 2024 report by the US Treasury Department.
Grocery prices are not providing any relief. US food prices rose nearly 25% from 2020 to 2024, according to data from the US Department of Agriculture.
The Trump administration's imposition of tariffs on foreign goods this year has exacerbated this problem by forcing retailers like Walmart and Target to raise prices.
In this climate, living alone has become an unaffordable luxury for many Americans.
A Pew Research Center study released in January said more US adults are living with a partner. The study analyzed US Census Bureau data and found that the percentage of adults living without a partner decreased from 44% in 2019 to 42% in 2023.
So naturally, finances are a big priority for daters.
In November, the dating app, which has around 20 million users worldwide, conducted a survey of about 1,050 of its users in the US between the ages of 21 and 35. The respondents were working professionals who said they were either actively seeking a relationship or open to one.
The survey revealed that financial stability was a top priority for them, with 54% of the respondents listing it as such. Almost 60% labeled "ambition/drive" as a must-have in a potential partner, even more than having shared interests.
"While many are looking for someone to spend their life with, practical matters still reign supreme," said Coffee Meets Bagel, which markets its app as "for serious daters."
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Betting on Bitcoin before it reclaims the $98,000 mark might not be the best idea, following the asset's recent downturn, according to analysts at investment bank Compass Point.
That's the current average cost for short-term holders, who have held the digital asset for less than 155 days—and are typically sensitive to price swings—they wrote in a Wednesday note.
Last week, the price of Bitcoin climbed to a two-month high of $97,500, according to CoinGecko. However, it failed to cross the threshold for short-term holders, the analysts wrote, bolstering fears that the digital asset's price could be poised for a prolonged slide.
“One of the defining features of Bitcoin bear markets is promising relief rallies followed by violent sell-offs,” they wrote. “Last week's rally was BTC's strongest recovery since falling below the Short-term Holders' cost basis on 10/30.”
Bitcoin hovered around $90,000 on Wednesday, after slipping as low as $87,900 the day before alongside tariff-fueled jitters stemming from U.S. President Donald Trump's renewed bid for Greenland. The fall wiped out Bitcoin's gains from over the past month.
The analysts noted that long-term holders, who have held Bitcoin for more than six months, have been selling less recently. After a period of moderate selling in late November, the cohort's supply of coins has remained unchanged at 14 million Bitcoin, according to checkonchain.
Compass Point signaled that it would feel “more comfortable buying the dip” if Bitcoin's price fell toward $80,000, but it warned that funding rates for perpetual futures remain elevated at 10%, suggesting that market participants are stepping in to buy Bitcoin with borrowed funds.
The analysts explained that “leveraged dip buying can preclude another wave of liquidations if BTC moves lower near-term.” When Bitcoin fell from an all-time high of $126,000, a historic cascade of liquidations showed how quickly markets can shift when trades are forcibly closed.
Last week, Bitcoin's 50-day average jumped above its 200-day average, a pattern that's widely interpreted as a bullish sign and referred to as a “golden cross.” At the time, Bitcoin was also closer to advancing past the psychological $100,000 mark. It has since invalidated this pattern, though, with the 50-day moving average falling below the 200-day average yesterday.
Jeff Park, CIO of crypto asset manager Bitwise, posited on X that on Tuesday that “this might be the worst Bitcoin sentiment ever.” With precious metals like gold and silver scaling new heights, he suggested that it's because investors feel Bitcoin “should be up 10x.”
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Steak ‘n Shake is launching a bitcoin bonus program for hourly workers, giving $0.21 per hour worked that vests after two years, following its $10 million corporate bitcoin purchase.
Fast-food chain Steak ‘n Shake is rolling out a bitcoin bonus program for hourly workers, deepening its embrace of bitcoin just days after disclosing a $10 million bitcoin purchase for its corporate treasury.
Starting March 1, hourly employees at company-operated Steak 'n Shake locations will earn a bitcoin bonus worth $0.21 for every hour worked. The rewards will vest after two years, meaning workers must remain employed for that period before they can access the accumulated bitcoin.
The bonus is roughly equivalent to about 1% of the U.S. federal minimum wage and will be administered in partnership with Fold, a bitcoin rewards application.
Employees will continue to receive their regular wages in dollars, with the bitcoin component treated as an additional incentive rather than a replacement for cash pay.
The move builds on Steak ‘n Shake's broader crypto strategy, which began in 2025 when the burger chain started accepting bitcoin payments via the Lightning Network at all U.S. locations.
At the time, company executives said the integration reduced card processing fees by roughly half and helped attract younger customers. Same-store sales rose more than 10% in the second quarter of 2025, according to company comments.
Last week, Steak ‘n Shake disclosed that it had added $10 million worth of bitcoin to its balance sheet, marking one of the more significant treasury allocations to the asset by a consumer-facing restaurant brand.
The company has also leaned into bitcoin-themed marketing, including the launch of a limited-time “Bitcoin Meal” in October that includes a small donation to open-source bitcoin development.
The hourly bonus rate references bitcoin's fixed supply cap of 21 million coins, a symbolic nod frequently used in crypto culture.
At current prices, a worker putting in 30 hours a week would earn roughly $327 worth of bitcoin per year under the program, assuming a stable bitcoin price.
Last year, a company executive said that Bitcoin transactions were already outperforming expectations.
“The day we launched Bitcoin, 1 out of every 500 bitcoin transactions in the world happened at Steak ‘n Shake,” Executive Dan Edwards said at the Bitcoin Conference.
“Bitcoin is faster than credit cards, and when customers choose to pay in Bitcoin, we're saving 50% in processing fees,” said Edwards. “That makes Bitcoin a win for the customer, a win for us, and a win for the Bitcoin community.”
Established in 2012, Bitcoin Magazine is the oldest and most established source of trustworthy news, information and thought leadership on Bitcoin.
© BTC Media, LLC 2025
Business Intelligence for Automotive and Auto FinTech Executives
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For years, blockchain has been discussed in automotive circles as a future technology — interesting, promising, but often framed as experimental or speculative. That framing is increasingly outdated.
Blockchain is already operating in the automotive industry today. Not in consumer-facing applications or flashy pilot programs, but quietly inside some of the industry's most friction-heavy workflows: title and lien management, settlement, provenance, and compliance. The next phase of adoption will not be driven by “blockchain projects,” but by something far more practical: smart contracts.
Blockchain isn't coming, it's already here
The most successful blockchain implementations in automotive share a common characteristic: they solve real operational problems across multiple parties who do not fully trust one another and who rely on shared state.
A clear example is digital title and lien management. Blockchain-backed title platforms are already live in multiple U.S. states, modernizing how ownership and liens are issued, transferred, and released. The benefit is not theoretical. Dealers see faster processing, lenders see cleaner lien records, and state agencies see improved auditability and fewer exceptions.
Payments are another area where blockchain has quietly crossed into production. Regulated stablecoins are now used by financial institutions to move value 24/7, reducing settlement delays and counterparty risk. While most automotive payments still flow through traditional rails, the infrastructure for faster, programmable settlement is now proven and operational.
These examples matter because they demonstrate a key point: blockchain adoption in automotive is not driven by novelty. It is driven by the need to reduce latency, errors, disputes, and reconciliation costs in multi-party workflows.
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Smart contracts are the real value driver
Blockchain on its own is simply a way to store shared state. The real differentiator—and the real opportunity for automotive—is smart contracts.
Smart contracts encode business rules that all participants agree to in advance and then execute automatically when conditions are met. In an automotive context, that means contracts that can:
—Release funds when a vehicle sale is finalized
—Enforce fee splits and settlement waterfalls
—Track ownership and lien states through defined transitions
—Establish immutable provenance for condition reports, custody, and service history
—Trigger downstream actions such as dispatch, payment, or insurance coverage
This is not about replacing dealer management systems, auction platforms, or lender systems. Those systems remain systems of record. Smart contracts operate above them as a neutral execution layer — connecting existing platforms and enforcing agreed-upon outcomes across organizational boundaries.
In other words, smart contracts don't change how the industry works. They change how reliably it works.
Where smart contracts fit in wholesale and retail
In wholesale markets, the opportunities are immediate and concrete. Settlement, arbitration, and post-sale reconciliation remain costly and time-consuming. Smart contracts can tie sale events to escrow, automate fee distribution, preserve tamper-evident condition records, and provide a shared audit trail when disputes arise.
In retail and finance, smart contracts can support funding escrows, lien lifecycle management, and incentive disbursement—reducing days-to-fund and improving transparency between dealers and lenders.
In logistics and insurance, contracts can link custody and location events to payment or coverage status, ensuring the right party is paid or insured at the right time.
Across all of these use cases, the common theme is not automation for its own sake. It is shared trust, enforced programmatically.
The expected payoff
When implemented selectively, blockchain-based smart contracts deliver value in four areas that matter to automotive operators:
—Speed: Faster settlement, reduced funding delays, and fewer handoffs
—Cost: Lower dispute resolution costs and less manual reconciliation
—Trust: Verifiable records for ownership, condition, and custody
—Auditability: Regulator-grade transparency without exposing sensitive data
Importantly, these benefits compound. As more participants operate against the same shared rules and state, friction decreases across the entire network—not just at individual touchpoints.
Why prudent adoption matters
Despite real progress, blockchain adoption in automotive still fails when it is approached as a replacement technology or as a standalone platform.
Successful deployments share several principles:
—Permissioned or hybrid architectures aligned with regulatory realities
—Minimal sensitive data on-chain, with hashes and attestations instead
—Clear governance and role-based access
—Integration with existing systems rather than “rip and replace” mandates
Blockchain works best when it is largely invisible to end users and operational teams—when it simply makes existing processes faster, cleaner, and more reliable.
A shift in perspective
The automotive industry does not need to decide whether it “believes in blockchain.” That question has already been answered by live deployments.
The more important questions now are:
—Which workflows benefit from shared, enforceable rules?
—Where does trust break down today?
—How can smart contracts complement existing platforms without disruption?
Blockchain's role in automotive will continue to expand — not loudly, not overnight, but steadily. The winners will be those who treat it not as a bet on the future, but as infrastructure for a more efficient present.
Brad Smith is president and CEO of Block Bridge, a fintech company focused on accelerating blockchain education and adoption across the automotive and financial sectors. He held senior roles at Experian and R.L. Polk & Co., the latter of which was subsequently acquired by S&P Global Mobility. Brad is a nationally recognized authority on automotive loyalty, digital finance, and blockchain applications in mobility. Block Bridge provides industry training on blockchain, stablecoins, tokenization, and the implications of emerging legislation including the GENIUS Act.
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For years, blockchain has been discussed in automotive circles as a future technology — interesting, promising, but often framed as experimental or speculative. That framing is increasingly outdated.
Blockchain is already operating in the automotive industry today. Not in consumer-facing applications or flashy pilot programs, but quietly inside some of the industry's most friction-heavy workflows: title and lien management, settlement, provenance, and compliance. The next phase of adoption will not be driven by “blockchain projects,” but by something far more practical: smart contracts.
The most successful blockchain implementations in automotive share a common characteristic: they solve real operational problems across multiple parties who do not fully trust one another and who rely on shared state.
A clear example is digital title and lien management. Blockchain-backed title platforms are already live in multiple U.S. states, modernizing how ownership and liens are issued, transferred, and released. The benefit is not theoretical. Dealers see faster processing, lenders see cleaner lien records, and state agencies see improved auditability and fewer exceptions.
Payments are another area where blockchain has quietly crossed into production. Regulated stablecoins are now used by financial institutions to move value 24/7, reducing settlement delays and counterparty risk. While most automotive payments still flow through traditional rails, the infrastructure for faster, programmable settlement is now proven and operational.
These examples matter because they demonstrate a key point: blockchain adoption in automotive is not driven by novelty. It is driven by the need to reduce latency, errors, disputes, and reconciliation costs in multi-party workflows.
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Smart contracts are the real value driver
Blockchain on its own is simply a way to store shared state. The real differentiator—and the real opportunity for automotive—is smart contracts.
Smart contracts encode business rules that all participants agree to in advance and then execute automatically when conditions are met. In an automotive context, that means contracts that can:
—Release funds when a vehicle sale is finalized
—Enforce fee splits and settlement waterfalls
—Track ownership and lien states through defined transitions
—Establish immutable provenance for condition reports, custody, and service history
—Trigger downstream actions such as dispatch, payment, or insurance coverage
This is not about replacing dealer management systems, auction platforms, or lender systems. Those systems remain systems of record. Smart contracts operate above them as a neutral execution layer — connecting existing platforms and enforcing agreed-upon outcomes across organizational boundaries.
In other words, smart contracts don't change how the industry works. They change how reliably it works.
Where smart contracts fit in wholesale and retail
In wholesale markets, the opportunities are immediate and concrete. Settlement, arbitration, and post-sale reconciliation remain costly and time-consuming. Smart contracts can tie sale events to escrow, automate fee distribution, preserve tamper-evident condition records, and provide a shared audit trail when disputes arise.
In retail and finance, smart contracts can support funding escrows, lien lifecycle management, and incentive disbursement—reducing days-to-fund and improving transparency between dealers and lenders.
In logistics and insurance, contracts can link custody and location events to payment or coverage status, ensuring the right party is paid or insured at the right time.
Across all of these use cases, the common theme is not automation for its own sake. It is shared trust, enforced programmatically.
The expected payoff
When implemented selectively, blockchain-based smart contracts deliver value in four areas that matter to automotive operators:
—Speed: Faster settlement, reduced funding delays, and fewer handoffs
—Cost: Lower dispute resolution costs and less manual reconciliation
—Trust: Verifiable records for ownership, condition, and custody
—Auditability: Regulator-grade transparency without exposing sensitive data
Importantly, these benefits compound. As more participants operate against the same shared rules and state, friction decreases across the entire network—not just at individual touchpoints.
Why prudent adoption matters
Despite real progress, blockchain adoption in automotive still fails when it is approached as a replacement technology or as a standalone platform.
Successful deployments share several principles:
—Permissioned or hybrid architectures aligned with regulatory realities
—Minimal sensitive data on-chain, with hashes and attestations instead
—Clear governance and role-based access
—Integration with existing systems rather than “rip and replace” mandates
Blockchain works best when it is largely invisible to end users and operational teams—when it simply makes existing processes faster, cleaner, and more reliable.
A shift in perspective
The automotive industry does not need to decide whether it “believes in blockchain.” That question has already been answered by live deployments.
The more important questions now are:
—Which workflows benefit from shared, enforceable rules?
—Where does trust break down today?
—How can smart contracts complement existing platforms without disruption?
Blockchain's role in automotive will continue to expand — not loudly, not overnight, but steadily. The winners will be those who treat it not as a bet on the future, but as infrastructure for a more efficient present.
Brad Smith is president and CEO of Block Bridge, a fintech company focused on accelerating blockchain education and adoption across the automotive and financial sectors. He held senior roles at Experian and R.L. Polk & Co., the latter of which was subsequently acquired by S&P Global Mobility. Brad is a nationally recognized authority on automotive loyalty, digital finance, and blockchain applications in mobility. Block Bridge provides industry training on blockchain, stablecoins, tokenization, and the implications of emerging legislation including the GENIUS Act.
Subscribe to receive our daily e-newsletter and never miss the latest industry news, trends, and insights across the used-car and remarketing space.
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By subscribing, you agree to receive communications from Auto Remarketing and our partners in accordance with our Privacy Policy. We may share your information with select partners and sponsors who may contact you about their products and services. You may unsubscribe at any time.
Blockchain on its own is simply a way to store shared state. The real differentiator—and the real opportunity for automotive—is smart contracts.
Smart contracts encode business rules that all participants agree to in advance and then execute automatically when conditions are met. In an automotive context, that means contracts that can:
—Release funds when a vehicle sale is finalized
—Enforce fee splits and settlement waterfalls
—Track ownership and lien states through defined transitions
—Establish immutable provenance for condition reports, custody, and service history
—Trigger downstream actions such as dispatch, payment, or insurance coverage
This is not about replacing dealer management systems, auction platforms, or lender systems. Those systems remain systems of record. Smart contracts operate above them as a neutral execution layer — connecting existing platforms and enforcing agreed-upon outcomes across organizational boundaries.
In other words, smart contracts don't change how the industry works. They change how reliably it works.
In wholesale markets, the opportunities are immediate and concrete. Settlement, arbitration, and post-sale reconciliation remain costly and time-consuming. Smart contracts can tie sale events to escrow, automate fee distribution, preserve tamper-evident condition records, and provide a shared audit trail when disputes arise.
In retail and finance, smart contracts can support funding escrows, lien lifecycle management, and incentive disbursement—reducing days-to-fund and improving transparency between dealers and lenders.
In logistics and insurance, contracts can link custody and location events to payment or coverage status, ensuring the right party is paid or insured at the right time.
Across all of these use cases, the common theme is not automation for its own sake. It is shared trust, enforced programmatically.
When implemented selectively, blockchain-based smart contracts deliver value in four areas that matter to automotive operators:
—Speed: Faster settlement, reduced funding delays, and fewer handoffs
—Cost: Lower dispute resolution costs and less manual reconciliation
—Trust: Verifiable records for ownership, condition, and custody
—Auditability: Regulator-grade transparency without exposing sensitive data
Importantly, these benefits compound. As more participants operate against the same shared rules and state, friction decreases across the entire network—not just at individual touchpoints.
Despite real progress, blockchain adoption in automotive still fails when it is approached as a replacement technology or as a standalone platform.
Successful deployments share several principles:
—Permissioned or hybrid architectures aligned with regulatory realities
—Minimal sensitive data on-chain, with hashes and attestations instead
—Clear governance and role-based access
—Integration with existing systems rather than “rip and replace” mandates
Blockchain works best when it is largely invisible to end users and operational teams—when it simply makes existing processes faster, cleaner, and more reliable.
The automotive industry does not need to decide whether it “believes in blockchain.” That question has already been answered by live deployments.
The more important questions now are:
—Which workflows benefit from shared, enforceable rules?
—Where does trust break down today?
—How can smart contracts complement existing platforms without disruption?
Blockchain's role in automotive will continue to expand — not loudly, not overnight, but steadily. The winners will be those who treat it not as a bet on the future, but as infrastructure for a more efficient present.
Brad Smith is president and CEO of Block Bridge, a fintech company focused on accelerating blockchain education and adoption across the automotive and financial sectors. He held senior roles at Experian and R.L. Polk & Co., the latter of which was subsequently acquired by S&P Global Mobility. Brad is a nationally recognized authority on automotive loyalty, digital finance, and blockchain applications in mobility. Block Bridge provides industry training on blockchain, stablecoins, tokenization, and the implications of emerging legislation including the GENIUS Act.
By subscribing, you agree to receive communications from Auto Remarketing and our partners in accordance with our Privacy Policy. We may share your information with select partners and sponsors who may contact you about their products and services. You may unsubscribe at any time.
KuCoin Wallet has officially teamed with Capybobo to create a new way for users to engage with gaming, collectibles and real-world design, through the new PYBOBO token system, which will provide users with play-and-earn opportunities. This collaboration is an essential step forward for both firms to establish the future of the Web3 gaming industry.
Capybobo has created a unique niche as it has been able to blend gaming, NFT collectible and physical art toys to build a cohesive ecosystem. Built on Solana and the TON blockchain, Capybobo revolves around the cute capybara character which lives in games, NFTs and other real-world merchandise. The project recently received $8 million in strategic funding spearheaded by Pluto Vision Labs with activities from industry observers such as Animoca Brands, HashKey Capital and Mirana Ventures.
What makes Capybobo different from conventional GameFi projects is the project's innovative creation of value via “outfit blind boxes.” These digital NFTs represent physical dolls outfits; the digital currency provides a physical form of connection between blockchain and collectable toys. The platform has shown tremendous growth, gaining greater than 2 million users since its release and intending to launch the first flagship store in Hong Kong in 2026.
KuCoin Web3 wallet has set itself up as a gateway to the decentralized web, giving users access to a self-custodial solution with their full control over their private keys as well as a comprehensive multi-chain environment. The wallet supports major blockchains including Ethereum, Solana, and Polygon with seamless one click integration to the KuCoin exchange for frictionless transfers of assets.
HyperEVM support on KuCoin Web3 Wallet allows it to connect with over 100 decentralized applications, including DeFi, liquid staking, and gaming. This integration helps demonstrate HyperEVM's vision of providing wide-open gateways to the emerging blockchain ecosystem. KuCoin will provide customers with seamless access to Capybobo's gaming ecosystem through the KuCoin Wallet so that getting into gaming is easier than ever before for crypto enthusiasts.
The PYBOBO coin is the foundation of the Capybobo ecosystem, powering all aspects of the platform. This coin fuels all community activities, from collecting digital skins to unlocking in-game incentives and participating in governance. With a total supply of 100 billion tokens, PYBOBO's tokenomics ensure that the community engages over time rather than being excited by short-term excitement.
The project just released Season 2 of the VWA (Virtual World Assets) game on January 16th, 2026 introducing better play-to-earn mechanics where players consume PYBOBO tokens in order to catch NFT Bobos. These digital assets can be fostered, and they can be used to mine for hash power, the early adopters gaining outlier portions of the mining pool. Season 2 includes a 3x PYBOBO airdrop mechanism linked to user activity as well, with 6% of the rewards going towards being distributed to active community members.
The partnership demonstrates how the Web3 gaming developed, turning into something more than pure digital experiences. This partnership will help to solve a crucial issue in NFTs, which is the need to generate long-term value that does not rely on investment banking only about trading. This has been a positive development for KuCoin as it increases the company's prestige as a complete Web3 service provider. For Capybobo, the partnership has brought valuable resources and infrastructure to help bring new users into their unique platform which links the digital and real-world.
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New York, USA, Jan. 21, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Watermark Investments today announced the launch of a new structured advisory framework designed to guide capital allocation across initial public offerings (IPOs), select regulated initial coin offering (ICO) structures, and bank-centered investment opportunities.
The framework formalizes the firm's approach to disciplined risk management, governance oversight, and advisor-led decision making, and will be applied across Watermark Investments' institutional and professional client engagements beginning in the first quarter of 2026.
A Formalized Approach to Complex Investment Environments
According to the firm, the new framework responds to increasing complexity in global capital markets, where traditional asset classes intersect with emerging financial structures and evolving regulatory standards. The model integrates institutional due diligence processes, compliance review, and scenario-based risk assessment to support long-term investment planning.
Watermark Investments said the framework is intended to provide greater consistency and transparency in how opportunities are evaluated, particularly in markets characterized by rapid change and heightened regulatory scrutiny.
Defined Scope and Specialization
Under the framework, Watermark Investments will continue to operate within a clearly defined mandate focused on:
Integration of AI-Supported Analysis
As part of the framework rollout, Watermark Investments confirmed that artificial intelligence tools will be used to support data analysis, scenario modeling, and risk assessment. These tools are intended to enhance analytical capacity while preserving human oversight in decision making.
"Technology can improve how information is processed, but investment judgment ultimately rests with experienced professionals,” Andy Okun, CEO said in a statement. "The framework is designed to ensure that AI supports analysis without replacing accountability, context, or regulatory judgment.”
Advisor-Led Collaboration and Governance
The framework emphasizes the role of qualified financial advisors and structured client engagement. Watermark Investments said transparent communication and defined governance processes are central to aligning investment strategies with client objectives, risk tolerance, and time horizons.
The firm also noted that standardized reporting and review mechanisms are incorporated to strengthen accountability and long-term alignment.
Global Perspective and Regulatory Discipline
Watermark Investments stated that the framework reflects its global operating perspective while maintaining adherence to banking standards and regulatory requirements across jurisdictions. The firm said this balance is essential for navigating cross-border investment environments responsibly.
About Watermark Investments
Watermark Investments is an investment firm focused on IPO, select ICOs, and bank-related investment opportunities. The firm combines experienced financial advisory leadership, disciplined risk management, structured governance, and technology-supported analysis to support long-term investment objectives.
CONTACT: Watermark Investments
[email protected]
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American bank Citizens said blockchain technology could accelerate global GDP by stripping out the “friction tax” in payments, settlement, recordkeeping and ownership verification.
"We believe blockchain adoption can support economic expansion driven by faster velocity and recirculation of capital; a larger and more innovative investable universe; and infrastructure that better matches the demands of an increasingly digital, AI-enabled world," analysts led by Devin Ryan said in the Tuesday report.
The bank's analysts pointed to a wave of major institutions putting on-chain infrastructure into production. They highlighted the New York Stock Exchange's plan to launch a tokenized securities platform that would support 24/7 trading of U.S. equities and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) with near-instant settlement, pending regulatory approval.
Read more: NYSE targets weekend investors with new blockchain platform for 24/7 stock trading
This move signals that incumbent market operators are integrating blockchain into core systems to capture new opportunities and fend off disruption, the analysts said.
Blockchain's economic impact will show up first through faster capital velocity, the report argued. Around-the-clock markets and near–T+0 settlement can reduce trapped collateral and counterparty risk, freeing balance sheets and allowing the same pool of capital to support more real economic activity.
Over time, the analysts said tokenization can expand the investable universe by making it economical to issue, trade and finance assets that are currently illiquid or operationally complex. That includes not only traditional securities, but new asset classes tied to the digital economy, alongside more efficient, onchain collateral for lending.
Tokenization is the process by which real-world assets are converted into blockchain-based tokens.
Blockchain technology aligns with an increasingly digital, AI-driven economy.
As automation drives growth in machine-initiated transactions, the bank argued that always-on, programmable blockchain rails are well suited to support rising demands for real-time settlement, authentication and auditability at scale.
Read more: Wall Street integration will power crypto's next phase, says Fidelity Digital Assets
The financial technology industry is changing quickly. This shift is driven by the disruptive nature of cryptocurrency and its underlying technology, blockchain. Fluctuations in crypto prices drive change in fintech. This leads to the creation of new products, services and financial models. The main goal is to manage digital assets and respond to shifting consumer demand.
Another way to look at the burgeoning market is to understand that a simple idea turned into a complex way to increase security and decentralize financial systems, leading to ever-increasing needs for added legal frameworks and education for investors and consumers. As these systems are put into place, the game of determining the percentage of market between crypto and traditional fiat, and all the systems around them, will really kick into gear.
Crypto prices aren't just a barometer for market interest in digital finance; they are a catalyst for investment and growth in digital. Surging prices drive fintech startups into hyperactive mode, with accelerated product development, integration of blockchain and efforts to fund venture capital projects at faster rates.
Fintechs use crypto in many ways. They integrate crypto wallets for buying, selling and holding digital assets. They also enable access to decentralized finance (DeFi) services within traditional finance apps. Additionally, they create tokens for specific needs, such as governance or rewards.
Crypto volatility is an exhilarating rollercoaster ride, at times, and sometimes a disappointing trek downhill in pricing. Some fintech companies have now launched tools so users can work on managing volatility, including automated trading platforms, portfolio balancers and stablecoin-based wallets meant to mitigate risk.
Specific tokens can help power AI and data-driven fintech solutions, provide infrastructure for faster, cheaper transactions, increase scalability and have potential for U.S. market growth in finance, known as utility tokens.
Digital assets are closer now than in their early days to mainstream financial behavior, and they've become a more standard point of discussion. Fintech apps now more often integrate crypto buying, selling and spending functions.
The accessibility of managing Bitcoin directly from mobile devices, some with user-friendly interfaces, is another aspect that is part of the greater mainstreaming effort. Some mainstream financial apps allow users to switch between traditional fiat and cryptocurrency investments. Another big plus for fintech platforms is the use of blockchain technology to complete secure transactions faster compared to some standard financial systems, many times with lower fees.
Crypto prices over time have a direct influence on lending and yield products that are backed by crypto. What do rising prices as a trend mean for the market over time? While increased prices can boost collateral values and traffic on platforms, sharp declines can equal liquidations and tighter lending terms.
Market cycles in general often lead to a boom and bust experience for investors, and that has a strong influence on sentiment. External economic conditions also place pressure on price trends, especially in times of upheaval.
Volatile crypto markets equal a need for agile compliance solutions. Fintech companies have stepped up to the challenge so they stay ahead of the regulatory challenges that hit the crypto industry hard in the past year. These solutions include developing advanced KYC/AML tools, real-time monitoring and smart contract auditing systems. KYC stands for know-your-customer laws, and AML is an acronym for anti-money laundering.
As the industry has faced high-profile problems with platform collapses and fraud, such as impersonator scams, the failings have exposed major gaps in investor protection. In comparison with traditional finance, no central authorities exist to reverse fraudulent transactions, so victims are ill-equipped to recover their losses through legal avenues.
A group of consistent laws doesn't exist to handle problems and crimes that surround crypto assets. Different federal agencies in the U.S. classify these assets in different ways, seeing them as securities, commodities or property, leaving enforcement actions unclear and confusing. This leads businesses down a complex and uncertain path of state and federal rules.
The driving force behind a demand for user education has ramped up interest in crypto prices. Fintech platforms now include learning tools to teach users the basics of investing, risk management and blockchain literacy.
The interdependence of general financial literacy and the knowledge base around cryptocurrency and blockchain is interrelated, so an understanding of one area can lend greater magnitude to understanding the other area.
Decentralized Finance (DeFi) platforms are an upcoming, new-wave sector around the blockchain and crypto industry that is attracting significant capital recently. Their innovations in lending, borrowing and interest-gaining efforts continue to change and improve as the market grows and gains attention and popularity. The next wave of change comes from governments that are exploring or developing digital versions of their fiat currencies.
Investing involves risk and your investment may lose value. Past performance gives no indication of future results. These statements do not constitute and cannot replace investment advice.
The information provided in this article is for general informational and educational purposes only. It is not intended as legal, financial, medical, or professional advice. Readers should not rely solely on the content of this article and are encouraged to seek professional advice tailored to their specific circumstances. We disclaim any liability for any loss or damage arising directly or indirectly from the use of, or reliance on, the information presented.
Members of the editorial and news staff of bradenton.com were not involved with the creation of this content. All contributor content is reviewed by bradenton.com staff.
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A new comms lead, an institutions portal, and “Get in touch” CTAs suggest Ethereum thinks perception is becoming adoption.
Cover art/illustration via CryptoSlate. Image includes combined content which may include AI-generated content.
When the Ethereum Foundation dropped a thread on Jan. 19 claiming “Ethereum is the #1 choice for global financial institutions” and backing it with 35 cited examples, it moved past the standard protocol update or developer announcement.
It read like institutional marketing: a ranked claim, a curated evidence stack, and a call-to-action funnel pointing readers to an owned landing page where financial institutions can browse live metrics and click “Get In Touch.”
That shift in tone and structure matters because it signals something more strategic than routine developer communications.
The Foundation is documenting what's happening on Ethereum while also actively fighting for control of the narrative about which blockchain institutions will choose as their settlement layer.
And it's doing so at a moment when competing rails, particularly Solana, have been gaining mainstream credibility in institutional tokenization stories, while Ethereum itself has been painted as slowing down.
The question isn't whether the 35 stories are real. The question is why the Foundation chose this moment to package them into a public-facing narrative weapon, and what changed inside and outside the organization to make that move legible.
The clearest internal explanation is structural. In 2025, the Ethereum Foundation formalized “Comms & marketing” as an explicit management focus area, assigning it to Josh Stark as part of a broader effort to strengthen execution.
That's a shift from the Foundation's historically decentralized, developer-centric communications posture. Making narrative work someone's formal responsibility means the organization can now mount coordinated, institution-facing campaigns rather than relying on ad-hoc community evangelism.
The institutions portal, institutions.ethereum.org, wasn't thrown together for the January thread. It's a fully built funnel with a Data Hub that displays real-time network metrics, including ETH staked, stablecoin TVL, tokenized real-world assets, DeFi TVL, and layer-2 counts.
Additionally, the funnel includes a Library that explicitly references the Foundation's Enterprise Acceleration team's thought leadership and updates.
The Jan. 19 post functions as top-of-funnel distribution for an already-live institutional landing page, not as a standalone announcement. That's marketing infrastructure, not developer relations.
Two external pressures made staying quiet costly.
First, competing institutional tokenization narratives have increasingly been attached to non-Ethereum rails. R3, the enterprise blockchain consortium whose clients include major banks, announced a collaboration with Solana in late 2024, framing it as bringing “big bank” tokenization efforts onto Solana's infrastructure.
R3 followed up with plans for a Solana-native “Corda protocol” yield vault slated for the first half of 2026, adding more oxygen to the “institutions-on-Solana” storyline.
That's a direct challenge to Ethereum's positioning as the default institutional settlement layer.
Additionally, data from rwa.xyz shows that Ethereum grew by 3.72% in the tokenized real-world asset (RWA) market over the past 30 days. However, Solana, BNB Chain, and Stellar registered growth of 15.9%, 20.4%, and 35.3%, respectively, in the same period.
Although these three blockchains account for just 33% of Ethereum's total market share, the accelerated growth rate raises an alert.
Second, mainstream outlets began framing Ethereum as losing momentum. The Financial Times explicitly used “midlife crisis” language, contrasting Ethereum with faster, cheaper rivals and questioning whether the network could maintain its dominance amid intensifying competition.
That kind of framing, published in an outlet read by the exact institutional decision-makers Ethereum wants to attract, raises the reputational cost of silence.
Put together, the Foundation faced both competitive narrative pressure and reputational framing pressure. A proactive “here are the receipts” post becomes legible as a response to the story being told about Ethereum, not a reaction to any single new development.
Not all of the 35 items carry equal weight, and treating the thread as a truth table rather than a press release reveals useful nuance.
Several claims are verifiably live with measurable activity. Kraken launched xStocks on Ethereum. Fidelity issued its FDIT tokenized money market fund on the network. Amundi tokenized a share class of its CASH EUR money market fund.
JPMorgan issued its deposit token on Base, an Ethereum layer-2. Société Générale's SG-FORGE deployed its EURCV and USDCV stablecoins on DeFi protocols like Morpho and Uniswap. Stripe built stablecoin-based recurring billing into its payments stack.
These are real products with issuer announcements, on-chain contracts, and in some cases disclosed volume or assets under management.
JPMorgan moving JPMD onto Base signals a shift in how dollars move after hours. Here's what changes for ETH, stablecoins, and bank rails next.
The timing reflects a genuine shift in the competitive landscape for institutional adoption.
The global stablecoin market capitalization sits around $311 billion, with roughly $188 billion issued on the Ethereum ecosystem, whether on the mainnet or layer-2 blockchains.
Tokenized real-world assets tracked by RWA.xyz total roughly $21.66 billion in distributed value.
Those numbers are large enough that the “which chain wins institutions” question is no longer niche, but contested terrain with real economic stakes.
Ethereum retains structural advantages: the deepest liquidity, the most established DeFi protocols, the broadest developer ecosystem, and a multi-year head start in institutional experimentation.
However, advantages erode if the narrative shifts.
If decision-makers at banks, asset managers, and fintechs begin internalizing the story that Solana is faster, cheaper, and more aligned with institutional needs, those perceptions can become self-fulfilling as liquidity and developer attention migrate.
The same happens if these institutions believe that Ethereum is slowing down under its own weight.
The Foundation's response appears to contest that narrative directly by arguing that Ethereum already serves as the institutional liquidity layer, backed by a curated stack of proof points and a self-service portal where institutions can verify claims and make contact.
That's a deliberate attempt to win narrative share before the perception gap becomes an adoption gap.
China Merchants Bank's Hong Kong unit moves a money market product onto BNB Chain. What it means for custody, redemptions, and ETH/SOL competition.
The Jan. 19 post isn't important because it reveals new institutional deals. It's important because it reveals that the Ethereum Foundation now treats narrative control as a formal organizational capability rather than a byproduct of developer evangelism.
The publication, the institutions' portal, the formalized comms structure, and the explicit funding of narrative-focused initiatives like Etherealize all point in the same direction: the Foundation has decided that winning the institutional adoption story requires more than building good infrastructure.
Tapping institutional interest also requires actively shaping how that infrastructure is perceived by the institutions it wants to attract.
Whether that strategy works depends less on the quality of the 35 stories than on whether the underlying claim, that Ethereum is the default institutional settlement layer, remains true as competitors build competing rails and mainstream outlets question Ethereum's momentum.
The Foundation is betting that proactive narrative work can prevent perception from drifting away from reality. The risk is that reality itself shifts while the Foundation is busy defending its story.
Gino Matos is a law school graduate and a seasoned journalist with six years of experience in the crypto industry. His expertise primarily focuses on the Brazilian blockchain ecosystem and developments in decentralized finance (DeFi).
Also known as "Akiba," Liam Wright is the Editor-in-Chief at CryptoSlate and host of the SlateCast. He believes that decentralized technology has the potential to make widespread positive change.
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Ethereum is an open source smart contract platform and decentralized network that underpins a large share of the global crypto economy.
Solana is a high-performance blockchain platform that utilizes a unique consensus algorithm called “Proof of History” to achieve fast transaction speeds and low fees.
BNB, or Binance Coin, is a cryptocurrency created by Binance.
Stellar is a multi-currency payment backend that tens of thousands of people use every day.
The Ethereum Foundation (EF) is a non-profit organization that supports the research, development, and ecosystem growth of the Ethereum protocol and its wider community.
JPMorgan Chase & Co is a global leader in financial services, offering solutions to the world's most important corporations, governments, and institutions in more than 100 countries.
Fidelity Investments Inc., commonly referred to as Fidelity, is a multinational financial services corporation based in Boston, Massachusetts.
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Regime appears to have turned to digital currency issued by Tether in the face of sanctions
Iran's central bank appears to have been using vast quantities of a cryptocurrency championed by Nigel Farage, according to a new report.
Elliptic, a crypto analytics company, said it had traced at least $507m (£377m) of cryptocurrency issued by Tether – a company touted by the Reform UK leader – passing through accounts that appear to be controlled by Iran's central bank.
Elliptic's report tracked what it says is the Iranian central bank's “systematic accumulation” of Tether stablecoins, a type of crypto that is pegged to the dollar so it can easily be exchanged for hard currency.
This pointed to “a sophisticated strategy to bypass the global banking system”, perhaps to trade or to prop up the rial, Iran's currency.
With thousands confirmed dead in the brutal suppression of protests, the Iranian regime's apparent use of Tether's stablecoins raises questions for Farage about his support for the cryptocurrency.
In September, Farage revealed he was planning to raise Tether during a meeting with the governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey.
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“I'm going to go tomorrow to say this,” Farage told LBC radio. “You know, Tether is a stablecoin. Stablecoins are the way which money goes from conventional currencies through into cryptocurrencies and back again. Tether is about to be valued as a $500bn company.”
Farage criticised Bailey for imposing restrictions on crypto and urged the UK to catch up with the US, where Donald Trump, who chose Howard Lutnick, Tether's banker, as his commerce secretary, has reversed efforts to police digital currencies.
Farage added: “You know, stablecoins, crypto – this world is enormous, and I've been urging for years that London should embrace it. We should become a global trading centre for this stuff, under proper regulation.”
One of Tether's major shareholders, the tech investor Christopher Harborne, is Reform's biggest donor. His lawyers said Harborne, who does not hold an executive post at Tether, is not responsible for illicit activities by its users. Suggestions that Harborne profits from Iran's use of Tether stablecoins were “baseless drivel”, the lawyers said.
A spokesperson for Reform UK said “many companies and organisations across the globe” use Tether. They added: “All donations to Reform UK comply with electoral law and regulations. We stringently vet each donation. We continue to actively support the Iranian people in their fight for freedom.”
Booming demand for Tether's stablecoin – known as USDT – has generated huge returns from the real-currency reserves the company holds to maintain its peg to the dollar. Tether's $13bn annual profits are one-and-a-half times those of McDonald's.
Some of that demand comes from illicit sources. In the face of US, UN and other sanctions that make it difficult to trade, buy foreign currency and hold accounts with most banks, it seems Iranians and their rulers have turned to Tether's stablecoins.
Last year, Israel revealed what it said were dozens of crypto accounts used by Iran's Revolutionary Guards.
That prompted a prominent Iranian businessman to complain on X about the regime's failure to keep its dealings secret. His post contained two crypto account numbers the businessman said were used by Iran's central bank.
It was through this apparently inadvertent disclosure that Elliptic's researchers found connections between 50 accounts, concluding with a “high level of confidence” that they were controlled by Iran's central bank.
A Tether representative did not address questions about Iranian central bank use of its stablecoins, but said: “Tether maintains a zero-tolerance policy toward the criminal use of our financial products.”
The representative said Tether followed US sanctions guidelines. “We work closely with law enforcement globally to identify and promptly, upon request, freeze assets to prevent further movement whenever they are identified to be in connection to illegal activity or illicit actors.”
They added that Tether has collaborated with more than 310 law enforcement agencies across 62 countries and frozen more than $3.4bn in assets “linked to criminal activity”.
Tether has frozen the suspected Revolutionary Guards accounts identified by Israel last year but most of those that appear to have been used by the Iranian central bank seem to remain active.
January 21, 2026 03:00 ET
| Source:
NEFE Coin
NEFE Coin
Dubai, UAE, Jan. 21, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- NEFE Coin, a digital currency that fuses meme culture with real-world utility, announced the official launch of its ICO, giving early adopters exclusive access to staking rewards, governance rights, and early-bird benefits. The NEFE token powers a revolutionary DeFi platform equipped with advanced tools designed to help users maximize the potential of their crypto assets.
NEFE Coin positions itself at the intersection of culture, real-world utility, and timing. The token has an extensive roadmap aiming toward real-world application within Web3 ecosystems, while prioritizing transparency, compliance, and long-term growth objectives.
NEFE is structured around live and planned real-world use cases in tourism, hospitality, mobility, and restaurants, sectors with proven, repeat demand. The token was launched as a BEP-20 meme coin with a total supply of 100 billion tokens.
The NEFE ICO is live on the project's website, and the team has allocated 50% of the total NEFE token supply for this event. Early ICO participants will also be eligible for exclusive prizes, including fully paid trips to Egypt, luxury hotel stays, and premium physical gifts such as phones and watches.
NEFE ICO participants get access to the NEFE ecosystem, where they can stake their NEFE tokens and earn a fixed 5% APR. Moreover, they enter the NEFE community, which will soon benefit from the project's utility-driven NFT collection that provides real digital ownership and long-term value. More precisely, the team plans to redirect 30% of all primary NFT sales revenue toward the community, with 15% going to NEFE holders and 15% donated to charitable causes.
The NEFE team aims to make a significant impact in the market with an active ICO and an upcoming BitMart listing. Moreover, according to its whitepaper, the project has ambitious plans for the future:
These future developments should position NEFE coin at the forefront of utility and reward tokens, enabling it to thrive in an increasingly competitive environment.
About NEFE Coin
NEFE Coin was developed by Golden Rock Blockchain LTD, a UAE-registered blockchain company that provides strategic oversight, smart contract governance, and long-term ecosystem development.
Its mission is to evolve beyond NEFE's unique NFT collection into a comprehensive utility and reward solution for the global tourism and digital gaming industries.
Join the NEFE ICO now and gain early access to staking rewards, governance rights, and multiple other perks!
Follow NEFE at the following links and be the first to know about its new features, exclusive rewards, and the project's unique vision for the future of travel:
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January 20, 2026
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Blockchain-based fundraising has undergone a profound transformation over the past decade. From the early enthusiasm surrounding Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) to the more structured Initial Exchange Offerings (IEOs), and finally to the decentralized evolution of Initial DEX Offerings (IDOs), each model reflects a distinct stage in the maturation of Web3 capital formation. While all three mechanisms aim to fund blockchain projects and distribute tokens, their technical architectures, governance models, risk profiles, and strategic implications differ significantly.
Understanding these differences is critical for founders, investors, and developers who must choose the most appropriate fundraising path for their projects. This article offers a comprehensive development and strategic comparison of ICOs, IEOs, and IDOs, examining how each model works, why they emerged, and what their long-term implications are for decentralized ecosystems.
Blockchain fundraising did not evolve in isolation; it responded directly to market failures, regulatory pressure, and shifts in decentralization philosophy. ICOs emerged as a reaction against traditional venture capital gatekeeping. IEOs developed in response to the trust and security issues that plagued ICOs. IDOs arose as a decentralized alternative to exchange-controlled fundraising.
Each model represents a trade-off between accessibility, security, decentralization, and operational complexity. The rise of specialized IDO development services and IDO platform development solutions reflects how fundraising has become a discipline requiring deep technical and strategic expertise rather than a one-time token sale event.
Initial Coin Offerings were the first widely adopted blockchain fundraising model. In an ICO, a project creates a token and sells it directly to the public, typically through its own website or smart contract. There is no intermediary overseeing the sale, which initially made ICOs appealing for their openness and low barrier to entry.
From a development perspective, ICOs require relatively minimal infrastructure. Token creation, basic smart contracts, and a frontend interface are often sufficient. However, this simplicity proved to be both a strength and a weakness. Without standardized oversight, many ICOs suffered from weak governance, poor security practices, and, in some cases, outright fraud.
By 2018, regulatory scrutiny intensified as authorities observed widespread investor losses. The absence of investor protection mechanisms and accountability led to a decline in ICO popularity. Strategically, ICOs demonstrated that decentralization without structure can undermine trust, particularly in high-stakes financial environments.
ICOs excelled in accessibility and speed. Projects could raise capital quickly and globally, often without permission or approval. This allowed innovation to flourish, particularly in early blockchain experimentation.
However, the lack of due diligence, liquidity guarantees, and post-sale accountability became systemic weaknesses. Tokens were often illiquid after launch, leaving investors exposed. From a long-term perspective, ICOs failed to establish sustainable funding frameworks, prompting the industry to search for more controlled alternatives.
Initial Exchange Offerings emerged as a corrective mechanism to ICO shortcomings. In an IEO, a centralized cryptocurrency exchange acts as the intermediary, hosting the token sale, conducting project vetting, and managing token distribution. This model reintroduced trust through centralized oversight.
From a development standpoint, IEOs shift much of the operational burden away from the project team. Exchanges handle KYC, infrastructure, and liquidity provisioning. This structure significantly reduces the likelihood of fraudulent launches, as exchanges have reputational incentives to maintain credibility.
However, IEOs also centralize power. Exchanges control participation rules, listing decisions, and fee structures. This introduces strategic trade-offs for projects that prioritize decentralization or community governance.
IEOs improved investor confidence by leveraging exchange reputations and providing immediate liquidity. Tokens launched via IEOs typically experienced smoother market entry due to guaranteed listings and marketing exposure.
Yet, the model favors well-funded projects capable of paying high listing and marketing fees. Smaller teams and experimental protocols often struggle to meet exchange requirements. Moreover, centralized control contradicts core Web3 principles, limiting innovation in governance and participation models.
IEOs represent a middle ground between decentralization and institutional control—effective, but philosophically constrained.
Initial DEX Offerings represent the most decentralized evolution of token fundraising. In an IDO, tokens are launched directly on decentralized exchanges or IDO launchpads using smart contracts and automated market makers (AMMs). There is no centralized custodian controlling access or liquidity.
IDO development solutions emphasize transparency, permissionless participation, and immediate liquidity. Smart contracts automate token sales, allocation logic, and liquidity provisioning. As a result, IDOs require significantly more technical sophistication than ICOs or IEOs.
This complexity has given rise to specialized IDO development companies, IDO development agencies, and full-stack IDO platform development services that manage architecture, security, and launch strategy.
The technical architecture underlying each fundraising model fundamentally shapes its behavior and risks. ICOs rely on relatively simple token sale contracts, often with minimal safeguards. IEOs integrate deeply with centralized exchange infrastructure, which handles order books, custody, and compliance.
IDOs, by contrast, depend on composable DeFi primitives. Automated market makers, liquidity pools, staking mechanisms, and governance contracts form an interconnected system. This makes IDO platform development significantly more complex, requiring expertise in smart contract engineering, gas optimization, and decentralized liquidity design.
The IDO platform development process is not merely about launching tokens—it involves building resilient, auditable systems capable of withstanding adversarial market conditions.
Liquidity is one of the most decisive strategic differences among ICOs, IEOs, and IDOs. ICOs often lacked immediate liquidity, leaving investors dependent on post-sale exchange listings. IEOs improved this by guaranteeing liquidity through centralized exchange markets.
IDOs take liquidity one step further by embedding it directly into the launch process. Liquidity pools are created at launch, enabling instant trading and transparent price discovery. However, this also introduces volatility risks if liquidity ratios are poorly calibrated.
Advanced IDO development services address this through liquidity locking, phased releases, and dynamic AMM parameters, stabilizing early market behavior.
Governance is where IDOs demonstrate their strongest strategic advantage. ICOs often lacked formal governance structures, while IEOs placed decision-making authority largely in the hands of exchanges.
IDOs, when designed correctly, enable decentralized governance from inception. Token holders can participate in protocol decisions, treasury management, and roadmap evolution. This transforms fundraising participants into long-term stakeholders.
IDO development agencies increasingly embed governance frameworks into token and platform design, recognizing that community alignment is critical to ecosystem resilience.
Security risks vary significantly across models. ICOs were particularly vulnerable due to unaudited contracts and weak operational controls. IEOs benefit from exchange-level security but introduce custodial risk.
IDOs rely entirely on smart contract security. While this eliminates custodial dependence, it increases exposure to code-level vulnerabilities. As a result, professional Initial DEX Offering development emphasizes rigorous audits, formal verification, and fail-safe mechanisms.
Historical exploit data suggests that security investment during IDO platform development is directly correlated with long-term project viability.
Regulatory exposure differs markedly between ICOs, IEOs, and IDOs. ICOs attracted early regulatory attention due to unregulated public offerings. IEOs align more closely with traditional compliance frameworks through centralized exchanges.
IDOs occupy a complex regulatory space. While decentralized, they are not immune to legal scrutiny. Responsible IDO development solutions incorporate compliance awareness, transparent documentation, and adaptable launch structures to mitigate jurisdictional risk.
Strategically, regulation has become a design constraint rather than an afterthought.
The choice between ICO, IEO, and IDO depends on project maturity, decentralization goals, technical capacity, and regulatory risk tolerance. ICOs may still suit experimental or closed-community projects. IEOs are effective for teams seeking exchange credibility and centralized support.
IDOs are best suited for projects committed to decentralization, community governance, and DeFi-native design. However, they demand higher technical sophistication and strategic planning, making collaboration with an experienced IDO development company essential.
ICOs, IEOs, and IDOs represent distinct evolutionary stages in blockchain fundraising. While ICOs pioneered accessibility and IEOs introduced structure, IDOs embody the decentralized ethos of Web3 by aligning technology, economics, and governance.
Initial DEX Offering development is no longer a niche practice—it is a mature discipline supported by specialized IDO development services, IDO platform development companies, and end-to-end launch solutions. Projects that approach IDOs as holistic ecosystem launches rather than fundraising events are best positioned for sustainable success.
As decentralized finance continues to reshape capital markets, IDOs stand out as the most structurally aligned model for the future of Web3 innovation.
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Table of Contents
The Emotional Rush Behind Fast Launches
Planning Creates Direction, Not Delay
Architecture Is a Long-Term Commitment
Security Works Best When Designed Early
User Experience Improves With Thoughtful Design
Compliance…
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Crypto markets sell off as US stocks and global markets react to US President Donald Trump's new tariff threats. Will the tensions put a stop to Bitcoin's start-of-year recovery?
Cointelegraph in your social feed
Key takeaway:
Rising US and Japan bond yields signal macroeconomic stress, dragging the total crypto market capitalization 32% below its October 2025 peak.
Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) retested their lowest levels in more than two weeks after crypto and stock markets digested US President Donald Trump's fresh round of tariff threats. The potential tariffs are an attempt by the administration to convince Denmark to reconsider its control of Greenland. European nations have shown little willingness to negotiate, prompting crypto and equities investors to adopt a more risk-averse stance.
The S&P 500 index fell 1.9%, while gold prices surged to a new all-time high on Tuesday. The total cryptocurrency market capitalization dropped to $2.71 trillion on Tuesday, down from nearly $3 trillion the previous Wednesday.
Yields on the five-year US Treasury climbed to their highest level in almost six months, a move often linked to fears of recession or rising inflation. Investors demanded higher returns to hold US government debt, signaling weakening confidence.
Billionaire investor and hedge fund manager Ray Dalio told CNBC that a “new phase of global financial conflict” may be emerging as foreign governments reassess their exposure to US assets amid growing uncertainty and economic strain. Dalio said that history provides several examples where economic disputes expanded beyond trade into capital flows.
In the past, Dalio has raised concerns about declining confidence in the US dollar. While this backdrop could appear favorable to those who view cryptocurrencies as an alternative monetary system, silver has been the standout performer so far, rising 64% since December. The precious metal's market capitalization has climbed to $5.3 trillion.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen warned on Tuesday that any response to US threats would be “unflinching, united, and proportional,” increasing fears of negative spillovers into equity markets.
Bitcoin ranked as the eighth-largest global tradable asset with a market capitalization of $1.8 trillion, but competitors such as TSMC (TSMC US) and Saudi Aramco (2222 SR) are rapidly closing the gap. Ether's position appears more fragile, with a $360 billion market capitalization, placing it 42nd overall after being overtaken by Home Depot (HD US) and Netflix (NFLX). The total cryptocurrency market capitalization is down 32% from its all-time high reached in October 2025.
Investor attention has shifted toward macroeconomic risks as the world's largest central banks face mounting pressure from higher debt issuance costs. Japan, the world's fourth-largest economy, is expected to hold a snap election that could grant Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi a mandate to accelerate stimulus measures, according to the Financial Times. Japan's public debt already exceeds 200% of gross domestic product.
Related: Bitcoin institutional demand remains strong–CryptoQuant
Yields on Japan's 20-year government bonds surged to record highs on Tuesday. According to a TD Securities report, the move in Japan has spilled over into the US, the United Kingdom, Canada and other markets, serving as “a warning sign to heavily indebted nations that bond markets can turn rapidly if fiscal policy loses credibility.”
These contagion risks are particularly concerning amid heightened geopolitical tensions, leaving the cryptocurrency market exposed. For now, Bitcoin's chances of reclaiming $95,000 and Ether (ETH) revisiting $3,300 largely depend on whether Trump can reach some form of agreement with European heads of state during meetings scheduled for this week.
This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision. While we strive to provide accurate and timely information, Cointelegraph does not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of any information in this article. This article may contain forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Cointelegraph will not be liable for any loss or damage arising from your reliance on this information.
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(2026)Cite this article
Neurodegenerative diseases affect 1 in 12 people globally and remain incurable. Central to their pathogenesis is a loss of neuronal protein maintenance and the accumulation of protein aggregates with ageing1,2. Here we engineered bioorthogonal tools3 that enabled us to tag the nascent neuronal proteome and study its turnover with ageing, its propensity to aggregate and its interaction with microglia. We show that neuronal protein half-life approximately doubles on average between 4-month-old and 24-month-old mice, with the stability of individual proteins differing among brain regions. Furthermore, we describe the aged neuronal ‘aggregome', which encompasses 1,726 proteins, nearly half of which show reduced degradation with age. The aggregome includes well-known proteins linked to diseases and numerous proteins previously not associated with neurodegeneration. Notably, we demonstrate that neuronal proteins accumulate in aged microglia, with 54% also displaying reduced degradation and/or aggregation with age. Among these proteins, synaptic proteins are highly enriched, which suggests that there is a cascade of events that emerge from impaired synaptic protein turnover and aggregation to the disposal of these proteins, possibly through microglial engulfment of synapses. These findings reveal the substantial loss of neuronal proteome maintenance with ageing, which could be causal for age-related synapse loss and cognitive decline.
Ageing is accompanied by a loss of proteostasis, which involves the maintenance of a balanced and functional proteome1,4. All aspects of proteostasis are disrupted with ageing, including the balance of protein synthesis with protein degradation, protein transport and protein folding1,4. The loss of proteostasis in the brain contributes to age-associated vulnerability to reduced cognitive and motor abilities and neurodegenerative diseases2. Indeed, experimentally compromising broad proteostasis pathways can induce dementia-like phenotypes2,5,6. Understanding the dynamics of proteostasis in a neuron-specific manner may define mechanisms or individual proteins that could be exploited for therapeutic purposes. However, despite the emergence and application of several tools to study cellular proteomes3,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16, such research has been hindered by a lack of robust models to examine protein dynamics in a cell-specific manner in mammals. Here we develop in vivo models that enable robust tagging of nascent proteomes with non-canonical biorthogonal amino acids in a cell-specific manner through the expression of mutant aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases (aaRSs). We leverage these models to study key features of neuronal proteostasis dynamics with ageing to provide detailed insights into the decline of neuronal proteostasis with age. We also describe a microglia-mediated mechanism that maintains neuronal proteostasis.
Expanding on our previous in vitro studies3, we generated two new bioorthogonal non-canonical amino acid tagging (BONCAT) knock-in mouse lines with cassettes that express the mutant aaRSs flox-stop-flox-eGFP-p2a-PheRS(T413G) and flox-stop-flox-eGFP-p2a-TyrRS(Y43G) (hereafter, termed PheRS* and TyrRS*, respectively) (Fig. 1a). In vitro studies using these constructs confirmed that proteome tagging depended on the incorporation of the non-canonical amino acids during protein synthesis (Extended Data Fig. 1a). We first compared the protein tagging efficacy of our models to each other and to that of the current standard BONCAT knock-in mouse line based on the expression of a mutant methionine aaRS (hereafter, termed MetRS*)7,8. Each of the BONCAT lines was crossed to a Camk2a-cre driver, and the resulting offspring (Camk2a-cre+/−;BONCAT+/–) were uniformly treated with their respective azido-modified amino acid (AzAA) to evaluate nascent protein labelling in CAMK2A+ neurons (Fig. 1a,b). Examination by in-gel fluorescence revealed that the Camk2a-cre;PheRS* model showed a high fluorescence signal over its respective background control, whereas the Camk2a-cre;TyrRS* and Camk2a-cre;MetRS* models did not show an appreciable difference relative to their respective background controls (Extended Data Fig. 1b). These results were supported by in situ tissue staining for the azide-modified proteins (Fig. 1c). Labelled proteins in brain sections from Camk2a-cre;PheRS* mice colocalized to GFP+ neurons with the expected spatial distribution of CAMK2A+ neurons (Fig. 1c and Extended Data Fig. 1c–e). Last, we evaluated protein labelling by performing liquid chromatography with mass spectrometry (LC–MS) on BONCAT-labelled proteins enriched by bead-based pull-down (Extended Data Fig. 1f–h). Principal component analysis (PCA) clearly separated the different models (Fig. 1d). We detected 3,787 proteins in Camk2a-cre;PheRS* mice, 2,320 proteins in Camk2a-cre;MetRS* mice and 4 proteins in Camk2a-cre;TyrRS* mice (Fig. 1e and Supplementary Table 1a). In particular, significant P values (Fig. 1f) and a high fold change in labelled signals relative to the background (Fig. 1g and Extended Data Fig. 1i,j) were observed in the Camk2a-cre;PheRS* model. The robust labelling achieved in the Camk2a-cre;PheRS* model (Extended Data Fig. 1k,l) did not induce HSP90 expression (Extended Data Fig. 1m) or microgliosis (Extended Data Fig. 1n). This result suggests that azide-modified residues do not induce proteostatic stress or a local immune response.
a, Schematics of BONCAT knock-in mice and methodology. The Camk2a-cre;PheRS* (Cam;PheRS*) and Camk2a-cre;TyrRS* (Cam;TyrRS*) lines were developed in this study. The Camk2a-cre;MetRS* (Cam;MetRS*) line is from a previous study7. NCAA, non-canonical amino acid. b, Timeline of NCAA administration. c, Images of BONCAT-labelled proteins (Click-555) in brain sections from the indicated Camk2a-cre+/−;BONCAT+/− mice. White outlines denote tissue border. Cb, cerebellum; Ctr, cortex; Ob, olfactory bulb. d, PCA based on the abundance of BONCAT-labelled proteins from the indicated Camk2a-cre+/−;BONCAT+/− mice. e, Venn diagram comparing the number of proteins identified in each Camk2a-cre+/−;BONCAT+/− mouse line. f, Heatmap comparing P values of proteins identified in the indicated Camk2a-cre+/−;BONCAT+/− mouse line. Proteins not identified in a particular line were assigned a –log10[P] value of zero. g, Top, volcano plots showing the enrichment of proteins identified in the indicated Camk2a-cre+/−;BONCAT+/− mouse lines relative to background controls (WT). Bottom, bar chart of the log2[fold change (FC)] in the signal of labelled protein relative to the background. h, Volcano plot for Camk2a-cre;PheRS* mice as in g, with dots colour-coded by cell-type enrichment. CellMarker and Panglao DB databases were used for analyses. Inset, barchart of the number of proteins per enrichment category (colour-coding consistent with key in top left of h). i, GO cellular component analysis of BONCAT-labelled proteins in Camk2a-cre;PheRS* mice. j, Images of BONCAT-labelled proteins in the motor cortex, striatum and hippocampus of a Camk2a-cre;PheRS* mouse. k, Venn diagram comparing the number of different proteins in the motor cortex, hippocampus and striatum of Camk2a-cre;PheRS* mice. l, PCA based on the abundance of BONCAT-labelled proteins from the motor cortex, striatum and hippocampus of Camk2a-cre;PheRS* mice. m, Heatmap comparing the z scored abundance of BONCAT-labelled proteins from the motor cortex, striatum and hippocampus of Camk2a-cre;PheRS* mice. Protein clusters enclosed by a white dotted line are regional marker proteins. n, Heatmap comparing pathway fold enrichment of the top ten GO biological processes for the motor cortex, striatum and hippocampus based on the regional marker proteins in m. n = 4–5 BONCAT mice and 4 respective background control mice in d–h. n = 4 mice per experimental group in k and l. P values in e,g,h and k were derived from two-tailed, two-sample Student's t-tests. Scale bars, 20 µm (c,j (left and middle)) or 50 µm (j, right).
The performance of the Camk2a-cre;TyrRS* line was unexpected based on our previous observations3. To test whether the efficacy of protein labelling by each BONCAT line is related to the tissue examined, we performed similar experiments as described above in CMV-cre;BONCAT mice to induce ubiquitous cellular labelling in all tissues17. Depending on the tissue examined, different BONCAT lines had varying strengths in labelling tissue proteins (Extended Data Fig. 2a and Supplementary Table 1b). Several factors potentially contribute to the differences in labelling among tissues, including varying cell-type-specific expression of cognate tRNA molecules and cell states (Supplementary Text). These data demonstrate the strengths and potential utility of all three BONCAT lines in different tissue contexts.
Given the robust labelling of neuronal proteins in Camk2a-cre;PheRS* mice, we further characterized this model. Many proteins (606) identified were annotated as neuronal (LY6H, SACS and SCNA, among others) with few (65) annotated as specific to other cell types (Fig. 1h and Supplementary Table 1c). As expected, many proteins labelled were marker genes of glutamatergic neurons (Extended Data Fig. 2b–e), a finding that was supported by in situ staining (Extended Data Fig. 2f,g). All major neuronal anatomical features were represented by hundreds of proteins (Fig. 1i and Supplementary Table 1d).
To assess regional proteomes in Camk2a-cre;PheRS* mice, we dissected the motor cortex, striatum and hippocampus, regions that exhibited robust labelling (Fig. 1j), and performed LC–MS on the enriched labelled proteins. A total of 3,054 proteins were commonly identified among all regions, but each region had 276–338 uniquely identified proteins (Fig. 1k and Supplementary Table 1e). PCA of the regional CAMK2A+ neuronal-labelled proteomes separated all three regions (Fig. 1l), which was reflected by hierarchical clustering and heatmap analyses (Fig. 1m and Supplementary Table 1f). We validated three regionally enriched proteins by immunostaining in situ (Extended Data Fig. 2h). Gene ontology (GO) biological process enrichment showed that each cluster or region was relatively unique in their pathway representation, which highlighted their regional specialization (Fig. 1n and Supplementary Table 1g).
Given the fundamental role of protein turnover in neurodegenerative diseases, particularly in long-lived, nonmitotic neurons18, we sought to determine how neuronal protein degradation changes with age. To rapidly deliver the BONCAT machinery to aged mice, we developed an adeno-associated virus (AAV) expression vector encoding a Camk2a-driven PheRS* (Extended Data Fig. 3a). Mice transduced with this construct showed significantly higher labelling than background controls (Extended Data Fig. 3b). On the basis of several measures, labelling in the AAV model was comparable with that of the analogous knock-in model (Extended Data Fig. 3c–h and Supplementary Table 1h). The AAV construct also enabled protein labelling in aged, 21-month-old mice, which facilitated comparisons of the ‘aged' and ‘young' neuronal-labelled proteomes (Extended Data Fig. 3i–k).
To study how protein degradation changes with age, young (4-month-old), middle-aged (12-month-old) and aged (24-month-old) mice were transduced with AAV:Camk2a-PheRS* by retroorbital injection with a pulse-chase AzF administration scheme (Fig. 2a). Mice were euthanized at 4 time points within the 2-week chase period, and brain regions were dissected immediately after brain extraction (Fig. 2a). In-gel fluorescence (Fig. 2b and Extended Data Fig. 4a) and in situ tissue staining (Fig. 2c) showed a dilution of tagged-protein fluorescence signals that progressed through the chase period, a result indicative of protein degradation. To quantify degradation rates for individual neuronal proteins across brain regions and ages, we enriched for tagged neuronal proteins, multiplexed enriched peptide fractions by tandem mass tag (TMT) labelling and analysed the plexes by LC–MS (Fig. 2a). We obtained degradation trajectories of the per cent protein remaining over time for every protein identified for each region and each age (Fig. 2d, Extended Data Fig. 4b,c and Supplementary Table 2a). The average degradation trajectories for all proteins among regions differed (Fig. 2d and Extended Data Fig. 4d). Moreover, the average degradation trajectories of regions in aged mice relative to their respective regions in young and middle-aged mice were broader or had lower slopes (Fig. 2d). This finding indicates that protein degradation slows with ageing and emerges after middle age, a result that was quantitatively supported (Extended Data Fig. 4d).
a, Schematic of the approach used to study protein degradation by BONCAT. n = 4 BONCAT mice per time point (TP1–TP4) for each age and n = 2 mice per age for background controls. b, In-gel fluorescence images (top and middle) and quantification (bottom) of BONCAT-labelled proteins in whole brain lysates derived from Camk2a-cre;PheRS* mice at the indicated time points in the chase period. AU, arbitrary units. c, Images of BONCAT-labelled proteins in the cortex of brain tissue sections from Camk2a-cre;PheRS* mice at the indicated time points in the chase period. Scale bars, 20 µm (left column) or 10 µm (right column). d. Trajectories of the per cent of BONCAT-labelled protein remaining through the chase period. Each thin line represents one protein derived from averaging four biological replicates. The single bold line represents the average of all proteins. Proteins were filtered to only exclude proteins with a 5% increase between any two time points. e, Plot of the estimated protein half-life in days for the indicated brain regions and ages (A, aged; MA, middle-aged; Y, young). Each dot represents one protein. For each individual brain region, only proteins commonly identified between all ages of that region are plotted. f, Plot of log2[FC] of estimated protein half-life values between the indicated brain regions and ages. Each dot represents one protein and is the same as those displayed in f. g, Bar plot of the number of proteins with an age-increased half-life that are also risk genes for the indicated brain disorders. Proteins highlighted are the top five most half-life-increased risk genes of the indicated diseases with age in the sensory cortex. h, Scatter plots comparing the log2[FC] of the estimated protein half-lives (young to aged) between proteins commonly detected between the indicated brain regions. Proteins with an absolute value difference of >1 were considered regionally vulnerable. P values were determined by two-sided Person's correlation tests. i, Bar plot of the number of regionally vulnerable proteins among the indicated brain regions. j, Bar plot of the number of neurodegenerative risk genes in the identified regionally vulnerable proteins for the indicated brain regions. P values in e and f were determined by paired two-tailed t-tests between young and aged proteins. ***P < 0.0001 risk genes quantified in g and j were derived from the H-MAGMA study28 and considered only if the originally reported P value was <0.05. AD, Alzheimer's disease; ALS, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis; CAD, coronary artery disease; DDA, data-dependent mode; MDD, major depressive disorder; MS, multiple sclerosis; PD, Parkinson's disease; SCZ, schizophrenia. Mice in a were created in BioRender. Guldner, I. (2025) https://BioRender.com/9itwqmf.
We estimated protein half-life by using established modelling techniques19,20, which correlated well with direct interpolation of the half-life values from the trajectories (Extended Data Fig. 4e). The estimated half-life values further showed relatively stable average half-lives from young to middle age (except for the hypothalamus), with an average increase of 2.27–5.04 days from young to aged mice (Fig. 2e and Supplementary Table 2b). The average fold change in half-life among all regions was 1.2 (around 20% increase, mostly attributed to the hypothalamus) from young to middle age, but approximately 2.03 (100% increase or doubling) from young to aged (Fig. 2f and Supplementary Table 2b). The observation of reduced protein degradation with age is consistent with previous reports21,22,23, as was the lack of correlation between protein abundance and half-life24,25 (Extended Data Fig. 4f). Of the cortical proteins, those with the greatest fold change increase (top 10%) from young to aged were enriched for proteins of the synapse (PPP2R1A, DTNA and DNM2), cell junctions (GRM3, RTN3 and GJA1) and mitochondria (Extended Data Fig. 4g). These neuronal features have been observed to be compromised in ageing and dementias26,27. Notably, several hundred of the proteins that exhibited an aged-increased half-life are encoded by neurodevelopmental or neurodegenerative risk genes identified in a study that used Hi-C-coupled multimarker analysis of genomic annotation (H-MAGMA)28 (Fig. 2g). Some of the proteins with the most age-increased half-life are encoded by neurodegenerative risk genes such as CPLX1, DCLK1, FERMT2 and YWHAQ (Fig. 2g). These proteins localize to cell junctions and the actin cytoskeleton and are involved in cell–cell junction organization and signalling, which implies that reduced protein degradation has repercussions for both the host cells and their signalling partners. Age-reduced degradation only slightly correlated with certain protein features (Extended Data Fig. 4h and Supplementary Table 2c).
Next, we compared half-life fold changes of proteins shared across regions. We speculated that proteins with differing half-life changes with age could contribute to regional vulnerability or resilience to ageing and diseases. No two regions were perfectly correlated (Fig. 2h and Extended Data Fig. 4i). The visual cortex and hypothalamus displayed the fewest changes in half-life fold change (n = 3 proteins, |log2[FCAged/Young Visual cortex] – log2[FCAged/Young Hypothalamus]| > 1), with more changes present when comparing the sensory cortex to either the hippocampus (n = 39 proteins) or hypothalamus (n = 12 proteins) (Fig. 2h,i). In support of the hypothesis that these proteins could confer vulnerability or resilience, several of these proteins are encoded by known neurodegenerative risk genes (Fig. 2j). Some of the proteins identified, such as LRPPRC or RAPGEF2, have been experimentally demonstrated to contribute to Alzheimer's disease progression, and others have strong disease correlations. However, the contribution of many other proteins, including DLG2, NLGN3, STXBP1 and TMED10, to ageing and neurodegeneration remains to be elucidated.
As half-life values can oversimplify nuances of complex kinetic degradation trajectories such as those shown in Fig. 2d, we performed analyses on the degradation trajectories to extract additional information (Fig. 3). First, we clustered the degradation trajectories on a per region basis (Fig. 3a and Extended Data Fig. 5a). As an example, the ‘young' sensory cortex had five clusters with visually distinguishable average profiles (Fig. 3b) and slope values (Fig. 3c). The top five most enriched GO biological process terms of each cluster in the sensory cortex were mostly unique to each cluster and were largely represented by one or two broad biological processes (Fig. 3d). This result supported the biological meaningfulness of the clustering, which was generally recapitulated among other brain regions (Extended Data Fig. 5b). These data suggest that proteins in similar pathways have coordinated degradation rates, an observation complementary to previous findings that individual proteins in multiprotein complexes share similar half-lives24,29.
a, Trajectories of the five clusters identified by clustering all of the protein-degradation trajectories from the sensory cortex of young mice. Red lines represent proteins closer to the cluster average. b, Plot of the average degradation trajectory for each cluster visualized in a from the sensory cortex of young mice. c, Bar plot comparing the slopes of the kinetic degradation trajectories of each protein in each cluster (C1–C5) for the sensory cortex of young mice. Each dot represents the slope of the kinetic degradation trajectory of one protein. d, Heatmap of the top five most significant GO biological processes identified for each cluster in the sensory cortex of young mice. Heatmap colours represent the fold enrichment for each pathway. e, Overlap of degradation trajectories of the six clusters identified in the sensory cortex of young (4-month-old) and aged (24-month-old) mice, with lines colour-coded by age. The average ΔIntegral, calculated by averaging the difference of the integral values of each protein in aged and young mice in the cluster, is provided on each plot. f, Bar plot comparing the integral values of proteins from young and aged mice in each cluster of the sensory cortex. Each dot represents the integral value for one protein in the indicated cluster. g, Bar plot comparing the integral values of proteins from young and aged mice on a per-region basis. n = 730, 380, 507 and 386 integral values for the sensory cortex, visual cortex, hippocampus and hypothalamus, respectively. Error bars represent the mean with s.d. h, Heatmap of the top five most enriched GO biological processes identified for each cluster in each brain region examined. Regions and respective clusters are indicated at the top of the heatmap. Heatmap colours represent the fold enrichment for each pathway. The annotation at the top of the heatmap represents the ΔIntegral of the indicated region or cluster. The data in c and e–g were determined by an ordinary one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) with significant comparisons identified by Tukey tests. ***P < 0.0001.
We next compared how clusters change with age in the sensory cortex (Fig. 3e). For the sensory cortex and all other brain regions examined, profiles from aged mice had a larger integral value (area under the curve) than profiles from young mice for each cluster (Fig. 3f,g, Extended Data Fig. 5a and Supplementary Table 2d), which signified reduced degradation rates in aged mice. Only the visual cortex and hypothalamus showed increased average integral values from young to middle-aged mice (Extended Data Fig. 5c), which signified earlier degradation deficits in these regions.
We calculated the average difference of the integral values for proteins from aged and young mice of each cluster to obtain a delta integral (ΔIntegral) score for each cluster (Fig. 3e), a measure of the magnitude of protein degradation reduction between clusters. In the sensory cortex, cluster 1, which was enriched for synapse transmission functions (Fig. 3d), had one of the largest ΔIntegral scores (1.55) (Fig. 3e). By contrast, cluster 5, which was enriched for metabolic processes (Fig. 3d), had the smallest ΔIntegral score (0.77) (Fig. 3e). The ΔIntegral scores suggest that certain biological processes, such as synaptic transmission, are more vulnerable to the consequences of age-related degradation than other processes, such as metabolism, in the sensory cortex.
We extended this integral score and pathway analysis to all clusters of all regions (Fig. 3h). Although most clusters, regardless of region, had similar integral scores, a few clusters had substantially higher or lower ΔIntegral scores (Fig. 3h, ΔIntegral annotation on the heatmap), which suggests that there is more prominent vulnerability or resilience, respectively, with ageing.
There are many potential causes for the age-related reduction in protein degradation, including the formation of protein aggregates4. Neuronal protein aggregation increases with age in mice, and aggregates have been detected (using Proteostat30) in human brains from old individuals (Fig. 4a–c). Moreover, protein aggregates are commonly associated in age-related brain diseases18. Therefore, we followed up on the connection of aggregation and age-reduced protein degradation. Combining protein aggregate isolation techniques31 with neuronal BONCAT labelling enabled us to define the neuronal aggregome, a catalogue of neuronal proteins that contribute to protein aggregates in the aged brain (Fig. 4d). LC–MS analyses enabled us to identify 1,726 neuronal proteins present in aggregates in the aged brain (Fig. 4e, Extended Data Fig. 6a–c and Supplementary Table 3a), 392 of which have been identified in aggregates of human brains from old individuals32 (Extended Data Fig. 6d). We selected RTN3 and SRSF3 for orthogonal validation, as these have been previously identified in aggregate omics data32,33 and been implicated to have a role in dementias34,35,36. Through immunofluorescence staining of brain tissue, we confirmed that RTN3 and SRSF3 formed ubiquitin-tagged and p62-tagged aggregate-like puncta in aged mice but not in young mice, particularly in the hippocampus (Fig. 4f–h). Some proteins identified are well known to aggregate in neurodegenerative diseases, including TDP43, FUS and NSF, whereas most were previously not reported to aggregate (Supplementary Table 3a). In further support of the likely relevance of these aggregating proteins in contributing to ageing and diseases, 1,195 (69%) of the aggregating neuronal proteins are encoded by risk genes as defined by the H-MAGMA study28 (Fig. 4i–k and Supplementary Table 3b). Several protein features implicated in aggregation propensity were altered between aggregating and non-aggregating proteins in the sensory cortex (Extended Data Fig. 6e and Supplementary Table 3c). GO cellular component analysis revealed that aggregating neuronal proteins could be ascribed to several neuronal compartments. However, synapse-related terms were recurrently represented (Fig. 4l and Supplementary Table 3d) and represented a range of synaptic anatomy and function (Extended Data Fig. 6f). GO biological process analysis showed that several cellular functions were enriched, with protein localization recurrently represented (Extended Data Fig. 6g and Supplementary Table 3e).
a, Images of young (4-month-old) and aged (24-month-old) mouse cortex sections stained for neurons (NeuN, red) and protein aggregates (Proteostat, green). b, Quantification comparing aggregate number (left) and area (right) between mouse cortices from young and aged mice. n = 3 mice per age group. Error bars represent the mean with s.d. c, Image of a human brain tissue section from an old individual stained for protein aggregates (Proteostat, green). d, Experimental approach used to determine the identity of neuronal proteins in aggregates from brains of aged (22-month-old) mice. n = 11 BONCAT-labelled mice and n = 11 background controls. DIA, data-independent acquisition. e, Volcano plot showing the enrichment of BONCAT-labelled neuronal proteins in protein aggregates from aged mice relative to the background. f, Images of hippocampus sections from young (4-month-old) and aged (24-month-old) mice (top) and other indicated brain regions from aged mice (bottom) for RTN3 aggregates (red). g, Images of hippocampus sections from young (4-month-old) and aged (24-month-old) mice for SRSF3 aggregates (red). h, Images of hippocampus sections from aged (24-month-old) mice visualizing the colocalization of RTN3 aggregates (red, left) and SRSF3 aggregates (red, right) with the protein aggregate tag ubiquitin (green, top) or p62 (green, bottom). i, Volcano plot showing the enrichment of BONCAT-labelled neuronal protein aggregates from aged mice relative to the background. Proteins are colour-coded based on the disease or disorder for which they have been identified as risk genes according to H-MAGMA. j, Bar plot of the number of aggregating neuronal proteins in aged brains that are also H-MAGMA risk genes of the indicated brain diseases and disorders. k, Donut plots showing the percentage of all aggregating neuronal proteins in aged brains that are risk genes of the indicated diseases. l, GO cellular component analysis on all aggregating neuronal proteins in aged brains. False discovery rate (FDR) values were derived from one-sided Benjamini–Hochberg tests. Bold terms are synapse-related. m, Donut plots showing the percentage of all proteins with an age-increased half-life in the indicated brain regions that were also identified in protein aggregates in aged mice. n, Upset plot showing the overlap of aggregating neuronal proteins with age-increased half-lives among the brain regions (colours are as for m). o, Density plots comparing protein half-life values of proteins identified in aggregates from aged mice compared with proteins not identified as aggregated in the indicated brain regions (colours are as for m). P values were determined by two-tailed Wilcoxon tests. P values in b,e and i were determined by two-tailed, two-sample Student's t-tests. Risk genes used i–k were derived from the H-MAGMA study28 and considered only if the reported P value was <0.05 as determined by a two-tailed, two-sample Students t-test. Scale bars, 5 µm (h, top right three images), 10 µm (a (bottom row), f (top right), g,h (left and bottom right three images)), 20 µm (a (top row), c,f (bottom row)), or 250 µm (f, top left). NDev, neurodevelopment; NDeg, neurodegeneration.
Most proteins (1,352, or around 78%) identified were present in 2 other label-free datasets of aggregates in the aged brain (Extended Data Fig. 6h). Notably, no change in the total mass of insoluble proteins (Extended Data Fig. 6i) or Proteostat signal (Extended Data Fig. 6j) was observed between BONCAT-labelled brains and non-BONCAT labelled brains. These findings indicate that BONCAT labelling does not artificially induce aggregation.
We next queried whether the aggregation of proteins could explain their slower degradation that accompanies ageing. Overall, 46.8–54.6% of proteins with age-reduced degradation were also found in neuronal aggregates (Fig. 4m). In detail, 54 proteins, including 17 synaptic proteins (VCP, HSPA8 and EEF2, among others) displayed both reduced degradation with age and aggregation with age among all brain regions examined (Fig. 4n and Supplementary Table 3f), and a range of proteins (7–50) displayed both reduced degradation with age and aggregation with age among 2–3 regions (Fig. 4n and Supplementary Table 3f). This finding indicates that many proteins are prone to both reduced degradation and aggregation in a non-regional dependent manner. The distribution of protein half-lives of aggregating proteins in most brain regions in aged mice was slightly less than that of non-aggregating proteins in the same respective region (Fig. 4o), a result consistent with the observation that shorter-lived proteins are more prone to aggregate37. Collectively, these data suggest that protein aggregation could be a contributor to the reduced protein degradation observed with age.
Microglia maintain neuronal homeostasis by detecting, engulfing and processing neuron-derived proteins38,39. We next aimed to identify neuron-derived proteins that accumulate in microglia, with the aim of inferring potential neuronal–microglia interactions that contribute to neuronal proteostasis. We labelled neuronal proteins in young and aged Camk2a-cre;PheRS* mice for 1 week, after which we freshly isolated viable CD11b+ cells (Extended Data Fig. 7a,b) from the whole brain by fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS) (Fig. 5a). We used an engulfment inhibitor cocktail40 throughout the cell-isolation process to prevent artificial ex vivo engulfment of neuronal proteins. We performed multiple experiments to confirm the purity of the sorted cells and the inability of protein tagging to occur in microglia (Extended Data Fig. 7c–i and Supplementary Table 4a). We lysed the microglia and performed bead-based pull-down of any tagged neuronal proteins in them and analysed the digested peptides by LC–MS (Fig. 5a and Extended Data Fig. 8a). Analyses of microglia from both ages revealed a range of neuron-derived proteins that were identified in microglia above the background (Fig. 5b, Extended Data Fig. 8b and Supplementary Table 4b). Through in situ antibody staining, we validated that two of these neuronal proteins, SV2A and SV2B, which are not expressed at the RNA level in microglia, were found as protein inside microglia (Fig. 5c and Extended Data Fig. 8c,d).
a, Approach used to identify BONCAT-labelled neuronal proteins in microglia (MG) from young (3–5-month-old) and aged (18–23-month-old) Camk2a-cre;PheRS* mice. n = 10 replicates in the young group, n = 8 replicates in the aged group and n = 6 replicates in the background group, with each replicate being the brains pooled from 3–4 mice, totalling 900,000 cells. b, Volcano plot showing the enrichment of BONCAT-labelled neuronal proteins in microglia of all ages combined relative to the background control. c, Images of mouse cortical microglia (IBA1, green) and neuronal protein SV2A (red) in optical sections (left), a three-dimensional rendering (top right) and a three-dimensional reconstruction of microglia and any SV2A protein that colocalized with the IBA1 signal (bottom right). Scale bars, 8 µm (left column) or 3 µm (right column). d, Volcano plots as shown in b colour-coded by the presence of a signal peptide (top), annotation as mammalian exosome cargo (middle) and annotation as an ‘eat-me' signal (bottom). e, SynGO biological process analysis of neuronal proteins transferred to microglia. Proteins used in the analysis were those identified as hits in b. f, Sunburst plot showing synaptic functional representation of neuronal proteins transferred to microglia. Proteins used in the analysis were those identified as hits in b. g, SynGO cellular component analysis of neuronal proteins transferred to microglia. Proteins used in the analysis were those identified as hits in b. h, Sunburst plot showing synaptic anatomical representation of neuronal proteins transferred to microglia. Proteins used in the analysis were those identified as hits in b. DCV, dense core vesicle; SV, synaptic vesicle. i, Bar chart showing the number of neuronal proteins transferred to microglia common between microglia from young and aged mice and unique to each age. Proteins used for the analysis were those identified in each age separately compared with background controls, defined as having a log2[FC] > 1 above the background with a P < 0.05. j, Density plots of the log2[average intensity] for all neuronal proteins transferred to microglia for young (yellow) and aged (orange) mice. Proteins used for the analysis are as described in i. Statistical values were derived from a two-sided Kolmogorov–Smirnov test. k, Volcano plot showing the differential abundance of BONCAT-labelled neuron-derived proteins transferred to microglia in aged versus young mice. Proteins used for the analysis were the combination of those identified in microglia above background for young and aged mice, as described in i. Missing values were imputed as described in the Methods. l, Venn diagram showing the overlap of neuronal proteins identified to have a reduction in degradation with age (green), identified in aged aggregates (blue) and transferred to microglia (yellow). Overenrichment of overlapping proteins and associated P values were derived from hypergeometric tests. P values in b,d,i and k were derived from two-tailed, two-sample Students t-tests. Mice in a were created in BioRender. Guldner, I. (2025) https://BioRender.com/9itwqmf.
We aimed to uncover how neuronal proteins transfer to microglia and their subsequent fate. We analysed whether these proteins are secreted factors, exosome cargo or targets of microglial phagocytosis. Overall, 15.6% of the proteins contained signal peptides and 68.4% are known exosome cargo or markers (Fig. 5d, Extended Data Fig. 8e,f and Supplementary Table 4c,d), which suggests that secretory exchange is a potential transfer route. CALR, an ‘eat-me' signal, was also detected (Fig. 5d), which indicated possible phagocytosis of neuronal parts. Analysis of microglial LysoTag data41 revealed that 54.3% of these neuronal proteins localized to microglial lysosomes (Extended Data Fig. 8g–i), which suggests that degradation is one likely fate.
Next, we sought to better understand the types of neuronal proteins acquired by microglia. Neuronal compartments, including the cell body, axons and dendrites, were represented by the proteins identified. However, synaptic, membrane and mitochondrial proteins were particularly overrepresented by GO analyses (Extended Data Fig. 8j and Supplementary Table 4e). Focused analysis of synaptic components using SynGo42 revealed that both presynaptic and postsynaptic proteins were represented (Fig. 5e,f), including the presynaptic proteins NAPA, NAPB and SYT1 and the postsynaptic proteins GRIN1, CAMK2A, CAMK2B and AP2B1. Similarly, several synaptic functions were represented, including those related to the synaptic vesicle cycle, synaptic structure regulation, neurotransmitter receptor transport and trans-synaptic signalling (Fig. 5g,h). As an independent validation strategy, we analysed an existing dataset43 of freshly isolated mouse and human microglia for synaptic proteins (Supplementary Table 4f). In this dataset, nearly 1,000 mouse and 600 human proteins were annotated as synaptic by the GO synaptic gene set (Extended Data Fig. 8k,l). More than half of the neuron-derived proteins identified in microglia in our dataset were also identified in those of the mouse (87.12% overlap) and human (62.71% overlap) microglia proteomes (Extended Data Fig. 8m,n).
To address how the profile of neuronal proteins in microglia changes with age, we compared the BONCAT-labelled neuronal protein content of microglia from young and aged mice. After separately filtering each age against the background (Extended Data Fig. 8o–q), microglia from both young and aged mice commonly accumulated 119 neuronal proteins, but microglia from aged mice accumulated these proteins in higher abundances and had many unique proteins (1,212) (Fig. 5i–k and Supplementary Table 4g). Differential expression analysis of the proteins in microglia between aged and young mice revealed 1,027 proteins enriched in microglia from aged mice and only 1 protein enriched in young mice (Fig. 5k and Extended Data Fig. 8r). Despite the accumulation of more protein species in microglia from aged mice, the ratio of presynaptic to postsynaptic proteins did not substantially change relative to those in young mice (Extended Data Fig. 8s).
To unify all our age-related observations, we questioned whether any of the neuronal proteins that accumulated in microglia in aged mice were those observed to have age-related proteostasis aberrations (reduced protein degradation or present in aggregates in the brains of aged mice). Overlap of the lists of proteins identified to have slower degradation kinetics with ageing (Fig. 2), proteins present in neuronal aggregates of aged mice (Fig. 4) and neuronal proteins enriched in microglia of aged mice (Fig. 5k) resulted in 166 overlapping proteins (Fig. 5l and Supplementary Table 4h). A total of 160 proteins overlapped uniquely between slower degradation kinetics with ageing and neuronal proteins enriched in microglia of aged mice, and 224 proteins overlapped uniquely between neuronal aggregates of aged mice and neuronal proteins found in microglia (Fig. 5l and Supplementary Table 4h). Cumulatively, 550 out of the 1,027 (53.5%) neuronal proteins enriched in microglia in aged mice showed age-related proteostasis deficits. The intersection of protein lists had an overenrichment of overlapping proteins beyond which would be expected by random chance for the overlap of all three groups (1.86× overenrichment) and the overlap between proteins with age-increased half-life and neuronal proteins enriched in microglia in aged mice (1.28× overenrichment) (Fig. 5l). In addition to many proteins being synaptic, several of these proteins, such as RPS3A, VPS26B and ATAD1, have been implicated in dementias and other brain disorders, including Alzheimer's disease and Down syndrome (RPS3A and VPS26B) and hyperekplexia and Parkinson's disease (ATAD1). From these results, we posit that the accumulation of neuronal proteins with age-related alterations (slower degradation and/or aggregation) in microglia is not random but a specific mechanism to remove aberrant protein species from neurons to maintain neuronal proteostasis (Extended Data Fig. 8t).
Loss of proteostasis is a hallmark of ageing, with crucial implications for neurons and therefore cognitive function and dementia risk1,2,4. Despite efforts to understand brain proteostasis with ageing21,22, to our knowledge, no studies have been performed at scale in vivo with a neuron-specific perspective. Here we generated new nascent protein labelling models that enabled cell-specific at-scale analyses of proteostasis dynamics in mice across their lifespan. Using these models, we were able to study key aspects of neuronal proteostasis with ageing, namely, protein degradation, protein aggregation and intercellular protein transfer of neuronal proteins to microglia. We first showed that neuronal protein degradation rates decline on average by approximately twofold with ageing, a deficit that emerged mostly after middle age and showed region-dependent variations in relation to the extent of turnover reduction. The reduction in neuronal protein degradation was consistent with two studies that examined age-related protein turnover changes at the level of the whole brain and synaptosome using SILAC pulse-chase methodologies21,22. However, we observed on average a doubling in protein half-life with age, whereas a study that examined whole-brain protein degradation reported a 20% average increase22, a difference that is partially explained by the neuron-specific perspective achieved in our study or the difference in timepoint sampling. By examining neuronal proteins that aggregate in aged brains, we found that approximately 50% of neuronal proteins that had age-reduced degradation also aggregated with age. This result suggests that aggregation is one likely contributor to reduced degradation, albeit not the singular cause, and it cannot be excluded as a consequence of reduced degradation. A common theme emerged among proteins displaying age-reduced degradation and a propensity to aggregate: there was an enrichment for synaptic proteins that represented a diverse range of synaptic compartments and functions. This result is intriguing considering evidence of synaptic dysfunction and loss with ageing and age-related diseases, which suggests that loss of synaptic proteostasis could be at the centre of age-related synapse dysfunction. Given that many of these proteins are encoded by neurodegenerative risk genes, it is possible that some or all risk gene variants of the proteins we identified confer a propensity for altered degradation or aggregation, as has been observed for mutant proteins including APP, TDP43, HTT and SOD1.
Proteostasis is traditionally described as being intrinsically regulated in cells through chaperones, the ubiquitin–proteasome system and autophagy4. Although these mechanisms are critical, emerging evidence suggests that cell-extrinsic partners also have a role. For example, trans-synaptic transfer of protein aggregates between neurons can help to balance proteostasis across cells44. We speculate that neuronal proteostasis is partially maintained by the transfer of neuronal proteins to microglia, cells that are known to contribute on a broader level to brain homeostasis38,39,45. Enabled by our protein-labelling models, we identified hundreds of BONCAT-labelled neuronal proteins that accumulated in microglia in aged mice, and these proteins were enriched for synaptic proteins. Notably, just over half (53.5%) of these proteins also displayed age-related proteostasis aberrations, with slower degradation with age and/or found in neuronal aggregates of aged mice. The number of age-impaired proteins that accumulate in microglia of aged mice is significantly more than expected by random chance. Therefore, we propose that the transfer of these protein species from neurons to microglia is a mechanism to maintain neuronal proteostasis. Indeed, there is mounting evidence for an intercellular spread of protein aggregates from neurons to glia via their release through exosomes or transfer through tunnelling nanotubules46,47,48. As synaptic proteins are enriched among the neuronal proteins transferred to microglia and in the proteins found in brain aggregates, we propose that an additional mechanism may be the selective engulfment of proteostatically stressed synapses by microglia. This mechanism may partially explain synaptic dysfunction and loss with age26,49,50. Besides gaining a better understanding of the mechanisms of protein transfer, the effects of such transfer on neurons, microglia and the brain as a whole will be imperative to explore. The transfer of old and aggregated proteins from neurons to microglia may represent a short-term gain to neurons but a long-term loss when considering the combined detrimental effects these proteins could have on recipient microglia and the collective loss of synapses. Cumulatively, our findings revealed several age-related neuronal proteostasis aberrations that have links to synaptic dysregulation and proteinopathies, raising new hypotheses related to the causes of age-related synaptic dysfunction. It will be imperative for future studies to elucidate the consequences of reduced neuronal proteostasis and to develop therapies to restore neuronal proteostasis to promote resilience to brain ageing and diseases.
Mice were housed in standard conditions on a 12-h light–dark cycle and provided with water and standard chow ad libitum. In some experiments, as documented in the main text, mice were provided with water infused with an azido-amino acid or 0.1% methionine, 0.35% cysteine (low methionine) chow (Envigo, TD.160659). All animal procedures were approved by the Administrative Panel on Laboratory Animal Care at Stanford University. All experiments used male mice. No power analysis was performed to determine sample sizes. Randomization and blinding were not performed and were generally not relevant to the experiments reported herein.
All transgenic mouse lines were obtained from The Jackson Laboratory. Besides the BONCAT lines generated in this study, the generation of which is described below, the transgenic lines used in this study included B6.Cg-Tg(Camk2a-cre)T29-1Stl/J (The Jackson Laboratory, 005359), B6.C-Tg(CMV-cre)1Cgn/J (The Jackson Laboratory, 006054), C57BL/6-Gt(ROSA)26Sortm1(CAG-GFP,-Mars*L274G)Esm/J (The Jackson Laboratory, 028071) and B6.Cg-Gt(ROSA)26Sortm14(CAG-tdTomato)Hze/J (The Jackson Laboratory; 007914). Homozygous cre lines were bred to homozygous BONCAT lines or the Ai14 reporter line to generate offspring heterozygous for the cre driver and heterozygous for the BONCAT transgene or Ai14 reporter transgene. Wild-type C57BL/6 mice used for ageing-related AAV transduction experiments were obtained from the National Institute of Aging colony. Wild-type C57BL/6 used for non-ageing-related AAV transduction experiments or used as background controls were obtained from The Jackson Laboratory.
The new BONCAT models, PheRS(T413G) and TyrRS(Y43G), introduced in this paper were generated in collaboration with The Jackson Laboratory. sgRNAs (ACTGGAGTTGCAGATCACGA and GCAGATCACGAGGGAAGAGG) were designed to insert a cassette encoding a CMV-IE enhancer/chicken β-actin/rabbit β-globin hybrid promoter (CAG) followed by a floxed stop cassette containing 3×SV40 polyadenylation signals, an eGFP sequence, a viral 2A oligopeptide (P2A) self-cleaving peptide, which mediates ribosomal skipping, and either the gene encoding PheRS(T413G) or TyrRS(Y43G) into the Gt(ROSA)26Sor locus. gRNA, the cas9 mRNA and a donor plasmid were introduced into the cytoplasm of C57BL/6J-derived fertilized eggs with well-recognized pronuclei. Injected embryos were transferred to pseudopregnant females. Surviving embryos were transferred to pseudopregnant females. Resulting progeny were screened by DNA sequencing to identify correctly targeted pups, which were then bred to C57BL/6J mice for germline transmission. This colony was backcrossed to C57BL/6J mice for at least three generations. Sperm was cryopreserved at The Jackson Laboratory. To establish our live colony, an aliquot of frozen sperm was used to fertilize C57BL/6J oocytes. The PheRS(T413G) model (C57BL/6J-Gt(ROSA)26Sorem2(CAG-GFP,-Farsa*T413G)Msasn/J) and the TyrRS(Y43G) model (C57BL/6J-Gt(ROSA)26Sorem3(CAG-GFP,-Yars1*Y43G)Msasn/J) are available for purchase from The Jackson Laboratory (stocks 033734 and 033735, respectively).
All mice were maintained as individual biological replicates except for the neuron-to-microglia protein-transfer experiments. In the neuron-to-microglia protein-transfer experiment, enriched labelled neuronal protein from microglia was expected to be relatively minimal. Therefore, to ensure detection by LC–MS, the brains of 3 mice, for a total of 900,000 microglia, were pooled to generate a single biological replicate.
Background controls are necessary for all BONCAT studies to account for proteins that are nonspecifically enriched by the DBCO pull-down method or nonspecifically labelled with fluorescent alkynes. Background control mice, wild-type mice genetically incapable of incorporating the NCAA, were treated identically with the NCAA relative to their BONCAT counterparts. In all of our experiments, background controls represent the same biological material (brain region, mouse age, protein fraction and/or cell type) as the labelled sample under analysis. In the protein degradation study, background samples for each labelled age and region were derived from the same respective age and region of background control mice. In the protein aggregation study, background samples for each labelled aged aggregate sample were derived from aggregates isolated from aged background control mice. In the microglia study, background samples for each microglia sample derived from labelled mice were from microglia isolated from background control mice.
Mice were anaesthetized with isoflurane and 3 × 1011–5 × 1011 AAV genome copies were injected in 100 μl sterile 1× PBS via the retroorbital sinus. Equal genome copies were injected in mice between which comparisons would be made. For maximal transgene expression, mice were used no sooner than 3 weeks following initial transduction.
All AzAAs, including 4-azido-l-phenylalanine (Vector Laboratories; 1406-5G), N-epsilon-azido-l-lysine hydrochloride (Iris Biotech, HAA1625.0005) and 3-azido-l-tyrosine (Watanabe Chemical Industries, J00560) were prepared as a 12.35 mg ml–1 solution for intraperitoneal injections. To hasten the dissolution of AzF, it was first dissolved in 1 M NaOH at 111 mg ml–1, after which it was brought to 12.35 mg ml–1 with sterile 1× PBS. Immediately before intraperitoneal injection at 185 mg kg–1, aliquots were brought to a neutral pH by the addition of 1 M HCl. Unless otherwise noted, NCAAs were injected once daily for 7 consecutive days for both BONCAT lines and wild-type background control mice. All data in Fig. 1 were derived from experiments in which the NCAAs were administered by intraperitoneal injections as described above. For all experiments, including the protein degradation experiments, mice were killed approximately 16 h after the final amino acid administration to allow for sufficient incorporation into nascent proteins. Note that labelling occurs during protein synthesis, which is occurring at different periods and rates for different proteins, not all at one instance after amino acid administration. Thus a sufficient amount of time between amino acid administration and sample collection is necessary to achieve sufficient labelling. This could affect half-life determinations, but this is an unavoidable challenge of any protein degradation experiment.
For the experiments in which 4-azido-l-phenylalanine-infused water was given to mice, 4-azido-l-phenylalanine was dissolved in sterile water at 1 mg ml–1. The water was brought back to its original pH by the addition of NaOH. The only experiment to use an AzF water treatment protocol was the neuron-to-microglia protein-transfer experiments. In such experiments, mice also received AzF via intraperitoneal injections as described above. This AzF treatment protocol aimed to enhance neuronal labelling and to increase the likelihood of detecting neuronal proteins in microglia, which we reasoned would be a rare event.
Mice were anaesthetized with isoflurane and transcardially perfused with at least 20 ml of 1× PBS. After perfusion, brains were immediately extracted and fixed in 4% paraformaldehyde, snap-frozen in tubes on dry ice or immediately enzymatically dissociated. For experiments requiring brain region dissection, after brain extraction, regions were immediately dissected on ice using a ‘rodent brain matrix' 1-mm coronal slicer (Tedpella, 15067) according to coordinates obtained from the Mouse Brain Library (http://www.mbl.org/) using the C57BL/6J atlas as a reference. After dissection, regions were snap-frozen in tubes. In cases in which tissue was fixed, tissue was fixed for 24 h and then prepared for either paraffin embedding or sucrose cryoprotection. Snap-frozen tissue was stored long-term at −80 °C.
To isolate microglia, whole brains were first enzymatically dissociated with the addition of an engulfment inhibitor cocktail to prevent ex vivo engulfment of neuronal debris40. At all steps during microglia isolation, staining and sorting, liquids were supplemented with the engulfment inhibitor cocktail containing the final concentrations of the following reagents: 25 µM Pitstop2 (Abcam, ab120687), 2 µM cytochalasin D (Tocris, 1233), 2 µM wortmannin (Tocris, 1232), 40 µM Dynasore (Tocris, 2897) and 40 µM bafilomycin A1 (Tocris, 1334), with each reagent being prepared as a 1,000× stock. Immediately after extraction of perfused brains, they were placed in 800 µl 1× D-PBS+/+ (Thermo Fisher Scientific, 14040117) on ice. Next, brains were minced on ice using fine scissors for approximately 2 min until brain pieces were small enough to triturate with a p1000 pipette with little resistance during pipetting. Brains were triturated until there was no resistance during pipetting. Brain suspensions were pelleted by centrifugation at 300g for 5 min at 4 °C. The supernatant was removed by pipetting, and an enzymatic cocktail prepared from a Multi-tissue Dissociation kit 1 (Miltenyi Biotec, 130-110-201), consisting of 100 µl enzyme D, 50 µl enzyme R, 12.5 µl enzyme A and 2.4 ml D-PBS+/+, was added. The pellet was resuspended by pipetting, after which the suspensions were transferred to a tube rotator at 37 °C for a 20 min incubation. Halfway through and at the end of this incubation, brain suspensions were triturated with a p1000 approximately 20 times to help to break up brain pieces until the suspension was largely devoid of any visible clumps. After the incubation step, 10 ml ice-cold DPBS+/+ was added to each brain suspension, after which the entire suspension was run through a 70 µm cell strainer into a new tube. Filtered suspensions were centrifuged at 500g for 10 min at 4 °C and the supernatant removed by pipetting. Next, myelin was removed from the preparations using Debris Removal solution (Miltenyi Biotec, 130-109-398). Each brain pellet was resuspended up to 3.1 ml with cold D-PBS+/+ and 0.9 ml Debris Removal solution was added to each pellet and mixed by gentle inversion of the tube. Next, 4 ml cold D-PBS+/+ was overlaid on top of the brain–Debris Removal solution mixture. Samples were centrifuged at 3,000g for 13 min at 4 °C with medium acceleration and 0 break. Following centrifugation, the myelin interface and liquid above it were removed by pipetting, and 11 ml cold DPBS+/+ was mixed with the remaining cell suspension. The cell suspension was centrifuged at 1,000g for 13 min at 4 C with 0 break, and the resulting supernatant removed by pipetting. The largely myelin-depleted cell pellets were resuspended in 80 µl AstroMACS separation buffer (Miltenyi Biotec, 130-117-336) containing 10 µl FcR blocking reagent, mouse (Miltenyi Biotec, 130-092-575) and incubated on ice for 10 min. Next, 10 µl anti-ACSA-2 MicroBeads (Miltenyi, 130-097-679) was mixed into the cell suspension and incubated for 15 min on ice. After incubation, cells were placed in 1 ml AstroMACS separation buffer and centrifuged at 300g for 10 min at 4 °C. The supernatant was removed and pellets were resuspended in 500 µl AstroMACS separation buffer and loaded onto a pre-washed LS column (Miltenyi Biotec, 130-042-401). The LS columns were washed 3 times, each time with 3 ml AstroMACS separation buffer. The flow through was retained, as this contained microglia, whereas the cells retained in the column were eluted with 5 ml of AstroMACS separation buffer and retained as an astrocyte fraction used for other experiments. The cell suspensions were washed by centrifugation at 300g for 10 min at 4 °C. The supernatant was removed and cells were stained 1:10 with APC/cyanine7 anti-mouse/human CD11b antibody (BioLegend, 101225) and calcein-AM (BioLegend, 425201) at a final concentration of 1× in cell staining buffer (BioLegend, 420201) for 30 min on ice. Cells were washed in 1 ml cell staining buffer by centrifugation at 300g for 10 min at 4 °C. Supernatant was removed and cells were resuspended in an appropriate volume of cell staining buffer for FACS. CD11b+ brain macrophages were sorted by gating on CD11b+, calcein-AM+ singlets on a Sony MA900 cell sorter (Sony Biotechnology). Three biological replicates-worth totalling 900,000 of brain macrophages were pooled into a single replicate and frozen at −80 °C before lysing the cells and enriching for BONCAT-labelled proteins, which was performed on microglia from both BONCAT-labelled samples and wild-type background controls.
Microglia from wild-type and Camk2a-cre;Ai14 hosts were isolated as described above and underwent flow cytometry analysis to determine microglia purity or the expression of tdTomato. In the case of microglia purity analysis, isolated ‘putative' microglia were stained with the following antibodies: CD11b-BV785 (BioLegend, 101243), CD45-BV421 (BioLegend, 147719), CD206-488 (BioLegend, 141709) and P2ry12-APC (BioLegend, 848005). To analyse tdTomato expression, microglia were stained with CD11b-BV785 (BioLegend, 101243).
For AAV vectors (used in vivo), the sequences for PheRS(T413G) and the Camk2a promoter were ordered as gBlocks HiFi Gene Fragments from Integrated DNA Technologies (IDT). The sequences were derived from previous publications3,51 and modified only to add a 3× Flag tag to the carboxy terminus of PheRS(T413G) and flanks to both fragments to enable Gibson assembly cloning.
For AAV vectors, the PheRS(T413G) gene fragment was first cloned into a pAAV-CAG-GFP (Addgene, 37825) backbone through the removal of GFP by BamHI/EcoRV double-restriction digest followed by Gibson assembly (NEB, E2611S). From this Gibson assembly product, we then removed the CAG promoter by XbaI/NdeI double-restriction digest and cloned in the Camk2a promoter by Gibson assembly. Propagation of AAV plasmids was performed in NEB Stable Competent Escherichia coli (NEB, C3040H) at 30 °C to avoid mutations in the AAV ITR sequences.
For lentivirus vectors (used in vitro), the sequence for PheRS(T413G) was ordered as a gBlock hiFi Gene Fragment from IDT. The sequence was modified to add a 3× Flag tag and p2a sequence to the C terminus of PheRS(T413G) and flanks to enable Gibson Assembly cloning. This fragment was cloned into a pLV-mCherry (Addgene, 36084) backbone by linearizing the backbone by XbaI/Esp3I double-restriction digest followed by Gibson assembly. The cloned plasmid, LV-CMV-PheRS-p2a-mCherry, was propagated in NEB 5-alpha competent E. coli (NEB, C2987H).
AAV was custom-produced by VectorBuilder (VectorBuilder). All preparations were ultrapurified and used the PHP.eB serotype.
Cell culture models were used to verify the tagging of proteins during protein synthesis. Py8119 cells were transduced with LV-CMV-PheRS*-p2a-mCherry to stably express PheRS*. B16-F10 cells were stably transfected with a Piggybac vector expressing TyrRS(Y43G) as previously reported3. Cell lines were seeded and cultured in standard conditions (37 °C, 5% CO2, DMEM high glucose with 5% fetal bovine serum and 1% penicillin and streptomycin). At 24 h after seeding, cycloheximide (Millipore Sigma, C4859-1ML) was added to the cultures to a final concentration of 25μg ml–1 to inhibit protein synthesis. Non-cycloheximide-treated cultures were maintained as controls. One hour later, NCAA was added to both the non-treated and cycloheximide-treated cell cultures to a final concentration of 1 mM. The cultures were incubated for 24 h before lysates were collected for analysis of BONCAT-tagged proteins by in-gel fluorescence. Original cell lines were obtained from American Type Culture Collection. Cell lines were not independently authenticated by the authors and they were not tested for mycoplasma.
Brain tissue was first homogenized by sonication in a strong lysis buffer (8 M urea, 1% SDS, 100 mM choloracetamide (CAA), 20 mM iodoacetamide (IAA), 1 M NaCl and 1× protease inhibitor in 1× PBS). Sonication was performed for at least 3 cycles of 10 s of sonication with at least 5-s breaks between sonication cycles at an amplitude of 90% using a probe sonicator. Homogenates were centrifuged for 15 min at >16,000g at 4 °C. The resultant supernatant was retained, and aliquots were immediately measured by BCA to obtain the protein concentration. The remaining supernatant was frozen at −80 °C until it was further processed to enrich for BONCAT-labelled proteins.
Samples to be compared were normalized to equal protein amounts (110 mg) and brought up to 33.3 µl total with water. A click reaction was performed on the lysates to ‘click' a fluorophore onto azide side chains of the labelled proteins. The following chemical cocktail was added to the normalized lysates for 1 h with constant shaking to perform the click reaction: 0.83 µl Alexa Fluor 647 alkyne, triethylammonium salt (Thermo Fisher Scientific, A10278) at 5 mM, 1.04 µl copper(II) sulfate (Millipore Sigma, 451657-10G) at 6.68 mM, 2.087 µl THPTA (Click Chemistry Tools, 1010-500) at 33.3 mM, 4.17 µl aminoguanidine hydrochloride (Millipore Sigma, 396494-25G) at 100 mM, 8.33 µl sodium l-ascorbate (Fisher Scientific, A0539500G) at 100 mM and 33.5 µl PBS. Importantly, 20 mM CuSO4 and 50 mM THPTA were mixed at a 1:2 ratio for 15 min before combining the rest of the click reaction. After 1 h of incubation for the click reaction, the reactions were filtered through Zeb Spin Desalting columns, 7 K MWCO, 0.5 ml format (Thermo Fisher Scientific, 89882) following the manufacturer's protocol to remove unbound fluorophore. The flow through containing the clicked lysates was retained. Next, 21 µl of the clicked lysates was mixed with 7 µl 1× loading buffer, which was prepared by mixing 10 µl 2-mercaptoethanol (Millipore Sigma, M6250-100ML) with 115 µl 4× NuPAGE LDS sample buffer (Thermo Fisher Scientific, NP0007). Samples were heated at 95 °C for 10 min to denature the proteins. Clicked and denatured lysates were loaded onto a NuPAGE 12%, Bis-Tris gel (Thermo Fisher Scientific, NP0341BOX) and run at 200 V for 45 min. The gel was imaged to detect the Alexa 647-clicked proteins using a LI-COR Odyssey XF imaging system. To detect total loaded protein, gels were stained with GelCode Blue Stain reagent (Thermo Fisher Scientific, 24590), destained in water for at least 1 h and then again imaged using a LI-COR Odyssey XF imaging system. Important in-gel fluorescence results are displayed as uncropped images, including molecular weight ladder and controls, in Supplementary Fig. 1.
Tissue sections were prepared for click staining of azide-modified proteins as described in the immunofluorescence staining of tissue sections until the blocking step. After blocking, tissue sections were stained for 1 h in the following click reaction cocktail: 2 µl Alexa Fluor 647/594/555/488 alkyne, triethylammonium salt (Thermo Fisher Scientific, A10278) at 5 mM, 5 µl copper(II) sulfate (Millipore Sigma, 451657-10 G) at 20 mM, 10 µl THPTA (Click Chemistry Tools, 1010-500) at 50 mM, 100 µl aminoguanidine hydrochloride (Millipore Sigma, 396494-25G) at 50 mM, 100 µl sodium l-ascorbate (Fisher Scientific, A0539500G) at 50 mM and 783 µl PBS. Importantly, 20 mM CuSO4 and 50 mM THPTA were mixed at a 1:2 ratio for 15 min before combining the rest of the click reaction. After staining, tissue sections were washed 3 times in Tris-buffered saline–Tween-20 (TBS-T) and either stained further with antibodies as described below in the immunofluorescence staining of tissue sections or mounted and coverslipped.
For sucrose-cryopreserved tissues, 40-µm-thick sections were sectioned on a Lecia sliding microtome equipped with a cooling unit and cooling stage. In rare instances in which antigen retrieval was necessary, such as for anti-GFP staining, tissues were incubated in SignalStain Citrate Unmasking solution (Cell Signaling Technology, 14746) diluted to 1× in distilled water for 1 h at 95 °C. After cooling to room temperature, tissues were blocked and permeabilized in 5% normal donkey serum (Jackson Immuno Research, 017-000-121) and 0.3% Triton X-100 (Millipore Sigma, 93443-100ML) in 1× PBS for 1 h. After blocking, tissues were stained with primary antibody diluted in 1% (w/v) bovine serum albumin (Fisher Scientific, BP9703100) and 0.3% Triton X-100 in 1× PBS overnight at 4 °C with gentle rocking agitation. Primary antibodies were used at the following dilutions: rabbit anti-GFP (Cell Signaling Technology, 2956S) at 1:400; rabbit anti-IBA1 (Fujifilm Wako, 019-19741) at 1:2,000; guinea pig anti-NeuN (Synaptic Systems, 266 004) at 1:1,000; rabbit anti-SATB2 (Synaptic Systems, 327 003) at 1:500; guinea pig anti-parvalbumin (Synaptic Systems, 195 308) at 1:1,000; guinea pig anti-SV2A (Synaptic Systems, 119 004) at 1:500; and rabbit anti-SV2B (Synaptic Systems, 119 102) at 1:500. After primary antibody staining, tissue sections were washed 3 times in TBS-T. After washing, tissue sections were stained with secondary antibodies diluted 1:500 in 1% (w/v) bovine serum albumin and 0.3% Triton X-100 in 1× PBS for 3 h at room temperature with gentle rocking agitation. All secondary antibodies recognized the IgG domain of the primary antibodies, were conjugated to Alexa fluorophores and purchased from Jackson Immuno Research. After secondary antibody staining, tissues were washed as described above, briefly stained with 4′,6-diamidino-2-phenylindole, dihydrochloride (Thermo Fisher Scientific, D1306) and mounted and coverslipped on Superfrost Plus microscope slides (Fisher Scientific, 12-550-15) with Fluoromount-G Slide mounting medium (Fisher Scientific, 50-259-73).
Staining of formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tissue sections was similar to the methodology used for free-floating sucrose-cryopreserved tissue sections, except that tissue sections on slides were deparaffinized and rehydrated by incubation through a gradient of xylene, 100% ethanol, 90% ethanol, 80% ethanol, 70% ethanol and water, and heat-induced antigen retrieval was always performed by heating slides in 1× SignalStain Citrate Unmasking solution for 10 min in a microwave. Primary antibodies were used at the following dilutions: rabbit anti-SATB2 (Synaptic Systems, 327 003) at 1:500; guinea pig anti-DARPP32 (Synaptic Systems, 382 004); guinea pig anti-PROX1 (Synatpic Systems, 509 005); rabbit anti-RTN3 (Proteintech, 12055-2-AP) at 1:500; rabbit anti-SRSF3 (Thermo Fisher Scientific, PA5-96500) at 1:500; mouse anti-ubiquitin (Cell Signaling Technology, 3936T) at 1:250; and mouse anti-p62 (Thermo Fisher Scientific, MA5-32835) at 1:250.
Proteostat aggresome staining was only performed on formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tissue sections following deparaffinization, rehydration, antigen retrieval and blocking of tissue sections. Proteostat (Fisher Scientific, NC0098538) was diluted 1:1,000 in 1× PBS and incubated on tissue sections for 5 min at room temperature and subsequently washed several times with TBS-T. After washing, slides were either coverslipped or subjected to antibody staining.
Images of 5-µm-thick formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tissue were captured on a Zeiss Axioimager (Zeiss). Images of mounted free-floating 40 µm-thick tissue were captured on a Zeiss LSM 900 (Zeiss). When capturing images to be compared, all imaging parameters and post-acquisition processing parameters were kept identical between images to be compared. The Zeiss Axioimager was accessed in the Stanford University Cell Sciences Imaging Facility (CSIF, RRID: SCR_017787).
Heatmaps of raw fluorescence images were created using ImageJ. Images were converted to 8-bit and a colour look-up table was applied.
Quantification of protein aggregate number and area was performed using Fiji. Images were uploaded and the scale set according to an image scale bar. Brightness and contrast were adjusted equally among all images. Images were converted to 8-bit and binary, after which masked particles, which represented aggregates, were analysed and summary statistics related to aggregate number and average area were recorded.
Brain tissue was first homogenized by sonication in a strong lysis buffer (8 M urea, 1% SDS, 100 mM CAA, 20 mM IAA, 1 M NaCl and 1× protease inhibitor in 1× PBS). Sonication was performed for at least 3 cycles of 10 s of sonication with at least 5-s breaks between sonication cycles at an amplitude of 90% using a probe sonicator. Homogenates were centrifuged for 15 min at >16,000g at 4 °C. The resultant supernatant was retained, and aliquots were immediately measured by BCA to obtain protein concentration. The the remaining supernatant was frozen at −80 °C until it was further processed.
Samples to be compared were normalized to equal protein amounts and brought up to equal volumes with water. Samples were denatured and reduced by adding 4× NuPAGE LDS sample buffer to 1× and 2-mercaptoethanol to 20% and heating at 95 °C for 5 min. Denatured and reduced samples were run on a NuPAGE 12%, Bis-Tris gel for approximately 2 h at 110 V. Proteins were transferred to 0.45 µM methanol-activated PVDF membrane by standard wet-transfer methodology at 400 mA for approximately 90 min at 4 °C. Membranes were blocked in Intercept TBS blocking buffer (Fisher Scientific, NC1660550) for 1 h with gentle shaking. After blocking, membranes were incubated in primary antibody diluted 1:1,000 in 5% bovine serum albumin overnight at 4 °C with gentle shaking. Primary antibodies used were rabbit anti-β-actin (Cell Signaling Technology, 4970S) and rabbit anti-HSP90 (Cell Signaling Technology, 4877T). Following primary antibody staining, membranes were washed three times with TBS-T with gentle shaking. Following washes, membranes were stained with IRDye 800CW goat anti-rabbit IgG secondary antibody (Li-Core, 926-32211) diluted 1:5,000 in 5% bovine serum albumin by light-protected incubation with gentle shaking for 1 h. Following secondary antibody staining, membranes were washed three times with TBS-T with gentle shaking. Last, membranes were imaged using a LI-COR Odyssey XF imaging system. An image of the uncropped membrane image, including molecular weight ladder, is presented in Supplementary Fig. 1.
The protocol for insoluble and aggregated protein isolation was slightly modified from a previous publication31. Each hemisphere was pulverized to powder by ten hammer strokes to the sample on a liquid-nitrogen-cooled pestle. The resultant homogenate powder was rapidly transferred to tubes on dry ice, pooling three pulverized brains to generate one biological replicate. This methodology of cell lysis is used to preserve aggregates, which could be compromised using other lytic techniques (for example, sonication or detergent-based solutions). The homogenate powder was quickly weighed to avoid thawing. Homogenate was resuspended at 1 g per 5 ml in low-salt buffer (50 mM HEPES, 250 mM sucrose, 1 mM EDTA, 1× protease inhibitor and water) on wet ice. Next, for every 0.8 ml homogenate solution, 100 μl 5 M NaCl and 100 μl 10% Sarkosyl was added to the homogenate solution on wet ice. The homogenate was gently sonicated for 3 separate intervals for 5 s at an amplitude of 30% using a probe sonicator (Qsonica, Q125-110) at 4 °C. The homogenate solution was titrated with a p1000 pipette and filtered through a 70 μm cell strainer and centrifuged at 500g for 5 min at 4 °C to obtain a smooth, clump-free homogenate. The protein concentration of the resultant bulk homogenate was determined by BCA and the bulk homogenate was frozen at −80 °C until further processing. Equal protein amounts of bulk protein homogenate were aliquoted from each sample and diluted to 10 mg ml–1 in 1% Sarkosyl buffer (1% Sarkosyl, 0.5 M NaCl and 1× protease inhibitor in low-salt buffer). Samples were ultracentrifuged at 180,000g for 30 min at 4 °C, during which soluble and non-aggregated proteins remained in the supernatant and insoluble and aggregated proteins were pelleted. The supernatant was gently removed and frozen, whereas pellets were washed in 1% Sarkosyl and ultracentrifuged again at 180,000g for 30 min at 4 °C. Pellets were retained and frozen at −80 °C until further processing for various analyses, including enriching for BONCAT-labelled proteins, which was performed on aggregate pellets from both BONCAT-labelled mice and wild-type background control mice. It is important to note that downstream enrichment of BONCAT-labelled proteins from total aggregates should only result in obtaining neuronal proteins that were part of aggregates, but not non-neuronal co-aggregating proteins. The reason for this is due to the buffer required for pull-down (see section below on enrichment of BONCAT-labelled proteins), which both solubilizes and denatures proteins. Introduction of total aggregates to this buffer should result in the release of non-neuronal co-aggregating proteins from neuronal aggregates. The pull-down then selectively enriches for BONCAT-labelled proteins, excluding non-BONCAT-labelled (non-neuronal coaggregating proteins) from further analysis.
A total of 400,000 sorted Cd11b+ microglia or 1 hemisphere of a whole brain was used as input for RNA extraction. Samples were lysed with QIAzol (Qiagen, 79306). Microglia were vortexed for 30 s in QIAzol for lysis. Hemibrains were mechanically lysed using a Qiagen TissueLyser II (Qiagen, 85300) for 2 cycles, each cycle being 2.5 min at a frequency of 30. Following lysis, RNA was extracted per the instructions from a miRNeasy Micro kit (Qiagen, 217084). Eluted RNA quality was evaluated on an Agilent Bioanalyzer and frozen until used for RNA sequencing library preparation.
RNA sequencing libraries were prepared by and sequences were from Novogene. mRNA was purified from total RNA using poly-T oligonucleotide-attached magnetic beads. After fragmentation, the first-strand cDNA was synthesized using random hexamer primers followed by second-strand cDNA synthesis. The library was ready after end repair, A-tailing, adapter ligation, size selection, amplification and purification. The library was checked with Qubit and real-time PCR for quantification and a bioanalyzer for size distribution detection. After library quality control, different libraries were pooled based on the effective concentration and targeted data amount, then subjected to Illumina sequencing (NovaSeq X Plus Series–PE150).
Raw data (raw reads) of fastq format were first processed through fastp software. In this step, clean data (clean reads) were obtained by removing reads containing adapter, reads containing ploy-N and low-quality reads from raw data. At the same time, Q20, Q30 and GC content in the clean data were calculated. All the downstream analyses were based on the clean data with high quality. Reference genome and gene model annotation files were downloaded from the genome website. HISAT2 (v.2.2.1) was used to build the index of the reference genome, and HISAT2 was used to align paired-end clean reads to the reference genome. featureCounts (v.2.0.6) was used to count the reads numbers mapped to each gene. The FPKM of each gene was calculated based on the length of the gene and read counts mapped to this gene. FPKM, the expected number of fragments per kilobase of transcript sequence per millions base pairs sequenced, considers the effect of sequencing depth and gene length for the read counts at the same time and is currently the most commonly used method for estimating gene expression levels.
DESeq2 was used to analyse the RNA sequencing data, with the raw gene counts used as input. The PCA plot and differential expression analysis was performed as described in the DESeq2 vignette.
Brain tissue was first homogenized by sonication in a strong lysis buffer (8 M urea, 1% SDS, 100 mM CAA, 20 mM IAA, 1 M NaCl and 1× protease inhibitor in 1× PBS). Sonication was performed for at least 3 cycles of 10 s of sonication with at least 5-s breaks between sonication cycles at an amplitude of 90% using a probe sonicator. Homogenates were centrifuged for 15 min at >16,000g at 4 °C. The resultant supernatant was retained, and aliquots were immediately measured by BCA to obtain protein concentration. The the remaining supernatant was frozen at −80 °C until it was further processed to enrich for BONCAT-labelled proteins.
Samples to be compared were normalized to equal protein amounts (1–2 mg total) and equal volumes in lysis buffer. Lipids were removed by the addition of 10 µl Cleanascite (Fisher Scientific, NC0542680) per 40 µl homogenate and incubation with constant agitation on a thermomixer set to 1,500–2,000 rpm for 10 min. Samples were then centrifuged at >16,000g for 3 min to pellet lipids. The resultant supernatant was retained and 7.5 units of benzonase (Millipore Sigma, 70664-3) was added per 40 µl sample to digest nucleotides over 30 min with constant agitation on a thermomixer set to 1,500–2,000 rpm. Following benzonase treatment, samples were diluted to 1 ml total with lysis buffer and added to 200 µl dry control agarose beads (Thermo Fisher Scientific, 26150) pre-washed 3 times before sample addition (washed one time with water and two times with 0.8% SDS). Samples were pre-cleared with the control agarose beads to remove nonspecific bead binders by 1 h of light-protected end-over-end rotation. After pre-clearing, samples were centrifuged at 1,000g for 5 min to pellet the plain agarose beads. The resultant supernatant was added to 20 µl dry DBCO beads (Vector, 1034-25) pre-washed 4 times before sample addition (washed once with water and 3 times with 0.8% SDS). BONCAT-labelled protein enrichment with the DBCO beads was performed overnight with light-protected end-over-end rotation. After overnight enrichment of BONCAT-labelled proteins to the DBCO agarose beads, 10 µl of 100 mM ANL (Iris Biotech, HAA1625.0005) was added to each sample to quench the DBCO beads to prevent further protein binding. Quenching was performed for 30 min with light-protected end-over-end rotation. After quenching of the DBCO beads, samples were centrifuged for 5 min at 1,000g and the supernatant was discarded and the DBCO beads were retained. DBCO beads were washed by the addition of 1 ml water and again centrifuged for 5 min at 1,000g. The supernatant was discarded and 0.5 ml 1 mM dithiothreitol (DTT; Thermo Fisher Scientific, R0861) was added to each sample. Samples in 1 mM DTT were incubated for 15 min at 70 °C on a thermomixer set to 70 °C to help to remove proteins nonspecifically bound to the DBCO beads. After incubation, samples were centrifuged for 5 min at 1,000g and the resultant supernatant discarded. The DBCO agarose beads were resuspended in 0.5 ml 40 mM IAA (Millipore Sigma, I1149-25G) and incubated light-protected for 30 min to alkylate proteins. After incubation, samples were centrifuged for 5 min at 1000g and the resultant supernatant discarded and the DBCO agarose beads were resuspended in 500 µl 0.8% SDS. The DBCO agarose beads were subjected to extensive washing to further remove nonspecifically bound proteins. This was accomplished by washing each sample with 50 ml of 0.8% SDS, 8 M urea and 20% acetonitrile (Fisher Scientific, PI51101). The speed of washes was enhanced by performing them in Poly-Prep chromatography columns (Bio-Rad, 7311550) connected to a vacuum manifold (Fisher Scientific, NC0994627); approximately 7 ml of a wash was added to the column to resuspend the DBCO agarose beads, and then the vacuum was applied to draw through the wash buffer, leaving DBCO agarose beads in the column. Following all washes, DBCO agarose beads were resuspended in 700 µl of 50 mM HEPES (pH 8.0) and immediately transferred to a 1.5 ml tube. DBCO beads were centrifuged for 5 min at 1,000g. After centrifugation, the supernatant was completely removed and 200 µl 50 mM HEPES (pH 8.0) (Fisher Scientific, AAJ63002-AE) was added to the DBCO agarose beads. Next, 10 µl of a 0.1 µg µl−1 trypsin–Lys-C mix (Promega, V5073) was added to each sample. Proteins bound to the DBCO agarose beads were on-bead digested overnight at 37 °C on a thermomixer set to 1,500–2,000 rpm. The next morning, approximately 16 h after initiating on-bead digestion, samples were centrifuged for 10 min at 1000g. Supernatant containing digested peptides was transferred to a new tube and frozen at −80 °C until further processing. Peptide amounts were quantified using a Pierce Quantitative Peptide Assays & Standards kit (Thermo Fisher Scientific, 23290). Peptides destined for single-shot LC–MS experiments were desalted using Nest Group Inc BioPureSPN Mini, PROTO 300 C18 columns (Fisher Scientific, NC1678001). The desalting process involved conditioning the column with 200 µl methanol for 5 min followed by centrifugation at 25g until dry, washing the column twice with 200 µl 50% acetonitrile, 5% formic acid (Thermo Fisher Scientific, 28905) by centrifugation at 25g until dry, washing the column 4 times with 5% formic acid by centrifugation at 25g until dry, passing peptides through the column in 40 µl increments by centrifugation at 25g until dry, washing the column 4 times with 200 µl 5% formic acid by centrifugation at 25g until dry, and finally eluting the peptides 2 times with 100 µl 80% acetonitrile, 0.1% formic acid by centrifugation at 25g. Following desalting, peptides were dried in a speed vac and then maintained at −80 °C before being run by LC–MS.
Peptides destined for TMT and pooling were dried in a speed vac and subsequently resuspended in 25 µl 100 mM TEAB (pH 8.5) (Millipore-Sigma, T7408-100ML). TMTpro 18-plex reagents (Thermo Fisher Scientific, A52047) were reconstituted to 4 µg µl–1 in anhydrous acetonitrile (Millipore-Sigma, 271004-1L). A volume of TMT label was added to the peptide suspension to obtain a minimum of 10 µg TMT per 1 µg peptide and to maintain a TEAB to acetonitrile ratio of 5:2. Peptides were incubated with TMT labels for 2 h with occasional vortexing. Labelling reactions were quenched by adding 2 µl 50% hydroxylamine (Thermo Fisher Scientific, B22202.AE) for 15 min with occasional vortexing. Equal volumes of TMT-labelled peptides were pooled and dried in a speed vac, after which peptides were desalted as described above for single-shot LC–MS preparations.
In-solution digest was used for experiments examining bulk brain proteome and aggregates from wild-type aged mice. Protein was chloroform–methanol precipitated by adding 600 µl methanol, 150 µl chloroform (Millipore-Sigma, C2432-500ML) and 400 µl water to 40 µl protein sample and centrifuging the mixture at 17,000g for 5 min. The upper phase was discarded and 650 µl methanol was added to the sample, vortexed and centrifuged for 17,000g for 5 min. The supernatant was removed and the protein pellet dried for 10 min. The dried protein pellet was resuspended in 10 µl of 8 M urea and 0.1 M Tris-HCL (pH 8.5). Next, 2.25 µl 10 mM DTT was added to the sample and vortexed, followed by incubation on a thermomixer at 30 °C with shaking at 650 rpm for 90 min. Next, 2.83 µl 50 mM IAA was added to the sample and vortexed, followed by light-protected incubation for 40 min. After incubation, 90 µl 50 mM Tris (pH 8) was added to dilute the urea concentration. Last, trypsin–Lys-C mix was added to a mass to mass ratio of 1:50 and the samples were digested overnight at 30 °C with shaking at 650 rpm on a thermomixer. Following digestion, peptides were desalted as described for preparation of BONCAT-labelled proteins.
Bruker timsTOF Pro was generally used for small-scale comparisons (eight or fewer samples to be directly compared) and/or when the peptide amount was limited and high sensitivity was still desired. timsTOF was used to acquire the following data in this paper: brain region comparison data in Fig. 1; CMV-cre;BONCAT data from various tissues in the Supplementary Information.
Samples were analysed using a TimsTOF Pro mass spectrometer (Bruker Daltonics) coupled to a NanoElute system (Bruker Daltonics) with solvent A (0.1% formic acid in water) and solvent B (0.1% formic acid in acetonitrile).
Dried peptides were reconstituted with solvent A and injected onto the analytical column, Aurora Ultimate CSI 25 × 75 C18 UHPLC column, using a NanoElute system at 50 °C. The peptides were separated and eluted using the following gradient: 0 min 0% B, 0.5 min 5% B, 27 min 30% B, 27.5 min 95% B, 28 min 95% B, 28.1 min 2% B and 32 min 2% B at a flow rate of 300 nl min–1.
Eluted peptides were measured in DDA-PASEF mode using timsControl 3.0. The source parameters were 1,400 V for capillary voltage, 3.0 l min–1 for dry gas and 180 °C for dry temperature using Captive Spray (Bruker Daltonics). The MS1 and MS2 spectra were captured from 100 to 1,700 m/z in data-dependent parallel accumulation-serial fragmentation (PASEF) mode with 4 PASEF MS/MS frames in 1 complete frame. The ion mobility range (1/K0) was set to 0.85 to 1.30 Vs cm–2. The target intensity and intensity threshold were set to 20,000 and 2,500 in MS2 scheduling with active exclusion activated and set to 0.4 min. 27 eV and 45 eV of collision energies were allocated for 1/K0 = 0.85 Vs cm–2 and 1/K0 = 1.30 Vs cm−2, respectively.
Data captured were processed using Peaks Studio (v.10.6 built on 21 December 2020, Bioinformatics Solution) for sequence database search with the Swiss-Prot Mouse database. Mass error tolerance was set to 20 ppm and 0.05 Da for parent and fragment ions. Carbamidomethylation of cysteine was set as a fixed modification. Protein N-terminal acetylation and methionine oxidation were set as variable modifications, with a maximum of three variable post-translational modifications allowed per peptide. Estimate FDR with decoy fusion was activated. Both FDR for peptides and proteins were set to 1% for filtering.
Bruker timsTOF Ultra was used for experiments in which the peptide amount was limited and high sensitivity was still desired. timsTOF Ultra was used to acquire the following data in this paper: aged neuronal aggregates and neuron-to-microglia protein transfer.
Peptide extracts were loaded on the trapping column, Waters ACQUITY UPLC M-Class Symmetry C18 Trap column, 100 A, 5 µm, 180 µm × 20 mm and eluted with the analytical column, IonOpticks Aurora Elite CSI 15 × 75 C18 UHPLC column. The elution gradient was set to 0 min 2% B; 3.5 min 28% B; 4 min 50% B; 5.5 min 85% B and 15 min 85% B with a flow rate of 0.65µl min–1 from 0 min to 3.5 min and reduced to 0.3µl min–1 at 4 min until the gradient ended.
Eluted peptides were measured in diaPASEF mode with a base method m/z range of 100–1,700 and 1/K0 range of 0.64–1.45 V s−1 cm−2. The PASET m/z window range was 400 to 1,000 and the mobility range was 0.64–1.37 V·s·cm−2 with a 96 ms cycle time at 100% duty cycle. The source parameters were 1,600 V for capillary voltage, 3.0 l min–1 for dry gas and 180 °C for dry temperature using Captive Spray (Bruker Daltonics). 20 eV and 59 eV of collision energies were allocated for 1/K0 = 0.6 Vs cm–2 and 1/K0 = 1.6 Vs cm–2, respectively.
Data captured were processed using Spectronaut (v.19.3 build on 23 October 2024, Biognosys) for directDIA search with Swiss-Prot Mouse database downloaded on 3 March 2023. The default setting was used, but with a slight modification of minimum peptide length of six and cross-run normalization deactivated.
A Thermo Eclipse was used for any experiments using TMT, as this instrument is capable of running TMT samples. TMT, and by extension the Thermo Eclipse, were used for larger-scale comparisons to avoid any time-associated ‘drifts' that would make comparisons between samples run on an instrument far apart in time less accurate. TMT was also used when quantitative precision and consistent peptide identification across replicates or samples to be compared were critical, such as for the protein degradation experiments in which the quantification of all time points of a single region and single age was instrumental to the overall success of the experiment. TMT labelling and Thermo Eclipse were used for the following experiments: transgenic line comparisons in Fig. 1; protein degradation experiments in Figs. 2 and 3; AAV and transgenic mouse comparisons in the Supplementary Data; aged versus young in Supplementary Data.
Samples were analysed using an Easy-nLC 1200 coupled to a Thermo Scientific Orbitrap Eclipse Tribrid mass spectrometer with EasySpray Ion source and FAIMS Pro interface. Digested samples were reconstituted in 0.1% formic acid in water and were loaded to a trap column (Thermo Scientific Acclaim PepMap C18 column, 2 cm × 75 µm i.d., 3 µm) and separated on a Thermo Scientific Acclaim PepMap RSLC C18 column, 25 cm × 75 µm i.d., 2 µm. Solvent A was 0.1% formic acid in water and solvent B was 80% acetonitrile in water with 0.1% formic acid. The gradient was ramped from 2% B to 40% B in 179 min at a flow rate of 300 nl min–1. The column temperature was set at 50 °C.
TMT-labelled peptides were analysed by data-dependent acquisition mode using the synchronous precursor selection (SPS) MS3 real time search (RTS) approach. For full MS scan, the resolution was set at 60,000 and the mass range was set to 350–1,500 m/z. Normalized AGC target was set at 100% and the maximum injection time was 50 ms. The most abundant multiply charged (charge 2–7) parent ions were selected for CID MS2 in the ion trap. The CID collision energy was set at 35%. RTS using the UniProt Mus musculus database was performed. Carbamidomethyl on cysteine (C) and TMTpro 16plex on lysine (K) and peptide terminal were set as static modifications. Oxidation on methionine (M) was set as variable modifications. Up to ten parent ions from MS2 will be selected by SPS for HCD MS3. MS3 spectra were acquired at 30,000 resolution (at m/z 200) in an Orbitrap MS with 55% normalized HCD collision energy. The cycle time was set at 2 s, and 3 experiments were run for different FAIMS compensation voltage: −45 V, −60 V and −70 V.
TMT data were processed using Thermo Scientific Proteome Discoverer software (v.2.4). Spectra were searched against the UniProt Mus musculus database using the SEQUEST HT search engine. A maximum of two missed cleavage sites was set for protein identification. Static modifications included carbamidomethylation (C) and TMTpro (K and peptide N terminus). Variable modifications included oxidation (M) and acetylation (protein N terminus). Resulting peptide hits were filtered for maximum 1% FDR using the Percolator algorithm. The MS3 approach generated CID MS2 spectra for identification and HCD MS3 for quantification. Precursor mass tolerance was set as 10 ppm and fragment mass tolerance for CID MS 2 Spectra obtained by Ion Trap was set as 0.6 Da. The peak integration tolerance of reporter ions generated from SPS MS3 was set to 20 ppm. For the MS2 methods, reporter ion quantification was performed on FTMS MS2 spectra and for identification, where they were searched with precursor mass tolerance of 10 ppm and fragment mass tolerance of 0.02 Da.
For the reporter ion quantification in all methods, no normalization and scaling were applied. The average reporter singal-to-noise ratio threshold was set to ten. Correction for the isotopic impurity of reporter Quan values was applied.
For experiments in which the goal was to simply quantify the number of different proteins labelled in BONCAT-labelled samples and/or identify proteins labelled with confidence over the background, non-normalized data were used as input. The reason for using non-normalized data is because the background samples were expected to have few proteins and low abundance relative to labelled samples, and this inherent difference should be preserved for analyses of labelled samples relative to background samples; normalizing would remove this inherent difference. The following steps were performed on the data: data were log2 transformed, proteins were filtered based on possessing valid values in a certain number of replicates in at least one group, missing values were replaced by imputation (width of 0.3 and downshift of 1.8), fold change was calculated for each protein between BONCAT-labelled replicates versus the respective background control replicates, and P values for these comparisons were derived from a two-tailed t-test. The number of replicates that were required to possess a valid value for a protein depended on the number of replicates used in the experiment, but in all cases required over 50% of the replicates in at least one group to possess a valid value for any given protein. The Camk2a-cre;BONCAT benchmarking experiment required 3 out of 4 replicates to have valid values in at least one group. The AAV Camk2a-cre;PheRS* experiment required 3 out of 4 replicates to have valid values in at least one group. The CMV-cre;BONCAT experiments required 2 out of 2 replicates to have valid values in at least one group. The neuronal aggregate experiment required 6 out of 11 labelled replicates to have valid values in at least one group. The neuronal protein transfer experiment required at least 6 labelled replicates to have valid values when comparing all ages to the background, at least 6 out of 10 labelled replicates to have valid values when compared with the background in the context of labelled proteins in young mice, and at least 5 out of 8 labelled replicates to have valid values when compared with the background in the context of labelled proteins in aged mice. P values less than 0.05 were considered significant in all analyses, following precedent set by other protein enrichment MS publications10,13. The fold change cut-off between two groups being compared was log2[FC] > 1.
For PCA, individual data frames from each group being compared underwent filtering as described above in the basic fold change analysis with any proteins remaining after filtering in each group being retained as true hits. Subsequently, data frames for each group containing the raw abundance values were merged with all proteins being retained regardless of whether they were shared or not among the three groups. The raw abundance values were log2 transformed, and missing values, which were mostly proteins that were identified in one BONCAT line or region but not others, were replaced by imputation (width of 0.3 and downshift of 1.8). By implementing imputation, which is necessary for PCA, each sample possessed the same number and identity of proteins, not only the number shown in the Venn diagram comparing the BONCAT mouse lines. These values were then used for PCA in Perseus software.
In a few experiments, labelled protein fold changes between two or more experimental conditions that were also labelled were compared. The experiments include regional comparisons in Fig. 1, aged versus young comparison in Extended Data Fig. 2, and aged versus young comparison of microglia derived from labelled mice in Fig. 5. In these experiments, data frames from each group being compared underwent filtering as described above in the basic fold change analysis with any proteins remaining after filtering in each group being retained as true hits for further analysis. Data frames of true hits for each group were merged to keep all proteins identified among all groups. The raw abundance values for the retained proteins from all groups were log2 transformed, and missing values, which were mostly proteins that were identified in one condition but not the other, were replaced by imputation (width of 0.3 and downshift of 1.8). The fold change for these values were calculated for each protein between conditions, and P values for these comparisons were derived from a two-tailed t-test. In the case of the three-way regional comparison in Fig. 1, the resultant values were z scored before visualizing in a heatmap.
As described above, non-normalized data were used as input for protein turnover analyses with a similar rationale to preserve inherent differences in protein abundance between time points, with less protein being expected at each successive time point progressing into the chase period; normalization would risk losing these inherent differences. First, the log2[FC] in protein abundance between time point 1 replicates and wild-type background control replicates (n = 2 per age per region combination) was calculated. Any proteins enriched >1.5 in time point 1 over the background control were considered for further analysis, and the other proteins were discarded as background proteins. This fold change over background filtering was performed for each age and region combination separately. Time point 1 was used in this filtering approach rather than other time points because time point 1 represents the time point of maximal labelling and would give the fairest evaluation of background compared with later time points at which enriched proteins successively approach levels closer to that of wild-type controls and would lead to discarding more proteins, probably unjustly. Background was further mediated by subtracting the average of the background samples from the average of each individual time point for each protein, similar to how background is subtracted for colorimetric assays. When making comparisons between different ages of a single region, proteins were further filtered to those that were commonly detected between ages and detected in all replicates, with the only exception being the degradation kinetic trajectories shown in Fig. 2d. With this relatively stringent filtering approach, we ensured that equally reliable half-life predictions and trajectory analysis were performed without a need to assign uncertainty values due to varying drop-out rates. We did not impute values for this experiment as few missing values were in a plex (consisting of all time points for one region and one age), but most missing values were between plexes (meaning protein X could be present in one plex but missing from all others), and there was the risk that imputing values of proteins missing entirely between different ages and regions would not produce meaningful or reliable results.
For kinetic degradation trajectory analyses, the mean of each replicate of each time point in each age and region was calculated. Time point 1 was considered 100% protein remaining for each protein in each region and age and the other time point percentages were calculated by dividing the average abundance of the successive time point by the average abundance of time point 1. Differences between all subsequent time points were calculated, and only decreasing trajectories or trajectories with an up to 5% increase between two time points were retained. Because labelled protein should either decrease or remain stable during a pulse-chase experiment, we considered an increase above 5% between time points as caused by measurement noise, we elected to exclude proteins that exceeded this 5% threshold between any two consecutive time points. Of note, in a study that used SILAC labelling in vitro to measure protein degradation20, a threshold of 130% protein remaining was used (see figure 1d in that paper), which is much less stringent than that which we apply. For this experiment, a few technical notes should be made. First, all replicates of all time points from one region and one age were labelled with TMTs and combined into one plex to enable the most accurate quantitative analysis of protein degradation. Second, from the resulting data in each plex, for any given protein in one region and for one age, the amount of protein present or remaining at time point 1 was the maximum and considered 100% and the per cent remaining in subsequent time points was the fraction of the average abundance of biological replicates at that time point divided by the average abundance of biological replicates of time point 1. To compare protein turnover between different regions and/or ages, the percentages of protein remaining at specific times were compared. Notably, by comparing the per cent protein remaining between regions and ages rather than directly comparing raw abundance values, natural differences in protein synthesis and/or variability in protein labelling would not skew analyses and data interpretation. Trajectories were clustered using fuzzy c-means clustering. The optimal number of clusters was determined using minimal centroid distance. For comparison with the aged groups, matching proteins in that group were separated in the same cluster distribution. Integrals for each protein in each cluster were calculated based on the trajectories used for clustering. The integral for each protein was calculated by trapezoidal numerical integration using MatLab trapz. ΔIntegral values were derived by calculating the difference between the integral value of the aged protein and the respective young protein, whereby average ΔIntegral values were determined similarly with the addition of dividing by the number of different protein species analysed (for example, the number of proteins in a certain cluster). The significance of the average ΔIntegral values was determined by a one-way ANOVA with significant comparisons determined by a Tukey tests.
For half-life estimations, we normalized the mean trajectory for each protein such that the first measurement at time point 1 corresponds to the value of one. These normalized trajectories were fitted using the method of least squares, meaning that the objective function to minimize was defined as the sum of the square of the difference between the goal function and the data. The functions describing the one-level and two-level model were given as \({\Lambda }_{1}(t)=\exp (-{k}_{A}t)\) and \({\Lambda }_{2}(t)=G(t)-G(7+{t}_{p})/G(0)-G({t}_{p})\)
In these formulas, k is the rate constant, t is time, tp is a fixed time parameter, Λ1(t) is a simple exponential decay, Λ2(t) is a normalized difference of the function G(t). The parameters minimizing the objective function were then found using MatLab fmincon. For the one-level model, we calculated the half-life directly from the decay rate \({k}_{A}.\) The half-life for the two-level model was found by linear interpolation. After calculating the AIC, where AIC = n log(RSS/n) + 2k) for both models, we chose the model with the lower AIC and its corresponding half-life. These modelling approaches were derived from previous publications that studied protein degradation by pulse-chase methodology and subsequently estimated half-life values19,20. It is important to note that as shown in the Extended Data, the modelling approach exhibited good correlation with direct interpolation of half-lives from degradation trajectories. Because of the good correlation and the benefit of being able to estimate the half-life of proteins that did not reach or go below 50% remaining in our data, we used the modelling approach. Likewise, as also shown in the Extended Data, we alternatively calculated half-lives based on individual replicates, which also strongly correlated with the results based on the averaging of all replicates of one time point. To elaborate on the approach based on individual replicates, the data were normalized by computing the mean value at time point 1 and dividing all values by this. A base-10 logarithm was then applied to the normalized data to reduce variance in each time point. The logarithmically transformed normalized trajectories, consisting of four values per time point, were fitted using scipy.optimize.minimize. The functions used for the fit were chosen as the logarithm of the previously used functions for one-level and two-level model. The parameters obtained from the fit were then used as described above to calculate the half-life values.
Other methods for analysing protein degradation data have been implemented and thoroughly described. The suitability of the analysis method depends on many features of the data, including the number of time points studied, biological replicate number, data noise, among others. We tested different approaches and settled on those we reported above because they performed best with our data, achieving a balance of confidence in the reported results without being overly stringent and discarding too much data or introducing artificial data.
It is important to note there are many experimental and computational factors that affect ultimate half-life calculations. These factors include, but are not limited to, rate of protein synthesis, use of pulse-chase labelling versus continuous labelling, the length of time between the final pulse of the labelling reagent (such as the NCAA) and the collection of the sample, and choice of interpolation or modelling methods to estimate half-life. These factors are inescapable caveats of current protein turnover measurements and have been thoroughly reviewed52.
To extract the proteins that defined the clusters, and by extension brain regions, in the z scored heatmap comparing the striatum, hippocampus and motor cortex, hierarchical clustering information was extracted from the heatmap. First, the command “pl$tree_row” was used to extract hierarchical clustering information from the heatmap for the protein clusters. Next, the hierarchical protein tree was divided into three clusters using the “cutree” function, with three clusters chosen on the visual distinction of three gene clusters in the heatmap. Last, protein IDs were extracted by the command “which(lbl=x)”, where x represents the cluster number.
Protein features were extracted from a comprehensive table of proteins and protein features from a previous publication21 and matched to the proteins of interest in this study. Comparisons of protein features were made between the groups of interest as reported in the main text with statistical analyses being performed either by t-test or one-way ANOVA with a Tukey test.
GO analyses were performed using the ShinyGO web application (http://bioinformatics.sdstate.edu/go/)53. Protein lists converted to standard gene symbols were uploaded to the application as input. Default parameters were used to run the analysis unless otherwise specified. The background brain proteome used was derived from a previous brain proteome publication54 and that used by SynGO42. The output, visuals and tables, including enriched terms, enrichment FDR, number of genes in the pathway and fold enrichment, were filtered by significance (FDR < 0.05) and reported in this paper.
To annotate cell types, we used the ClusterMole R package (v.1.1). This package leverages a curated database of cell-type marker genes from Panglao DB and Cell Marker databases to assign cell-type probabilities to differentially expressed genes (DEGs). Specifically, ClusterMole compares the set of upregulated and downregulated genes identified to known cell-type marker signatures. A hypergeometric test was used to calculate P values for overrepresentation of cell-type signatures in the DEG sets. When no cell type was annotated to a particular protein, it was considered non-cell-type specific.
Neurodegenerative and neurodevelopmental risk genes were derived from the H-MAGMA study28. By analysing gene regulatory relationships in the disease-relevant tissue, this study identified neurobiologically relevant target genes, improving on existing MAGMA studies. Lists of adult brain risk genes and summary statistics were downloaded from the GitHub repository of the studies (https://github.com/thewonlab/H-MAGMA). Genes with reported P < 0.05 were considered risk genes.
Signal peptide prediction was performed by querying protein sequences in SignalP, a server that predicts the presence of signal peptides and the location of their cleavage sites in proteins from Archaea, Gram-positive bacteria, Gram-negative bacteria and Eukarya55. Individual protein sequences were retrieved from UniProt and entered one by one into the SignalP browser search (https://services.healthtech.dtu.dk/services/SignalP-6.0/). We considered protein sequences with signal peptide scores of >0.1 to contain a bona fide signal peptide sequence and to be considered secreted. Proteins with signal peptide scores of <0.1 but >0.02 were considered to contain a likely signal peptide sequence. Proteins with signal peptide scores <0.02 were considered to unlikely contain a bona fide signal peptide sequence and therefore considered unlikely to be secreted. Details of SignalP analysis can be found in the original publication55.
Classification of proteins as exosome cargo was performed by querying proteins on ExoCarta, a manually curated web-based compendium of exosomal proteins, RNAs and lipids56. Individual gene symbols or protein names were entered one by one into the ExoCarta browser query search (http://exocarta.org/query.html). If the search resulted in any mammalian hit, it was considered a potential exosome cargo. Details of ExoCarta analysis can be found in the original publication56.
An in-depth analysis of synaptic ontologies of a protein list was performed by using SynGO, an evidence-based, expert-curated resource for synapse function and gene enrichment studies42. Gene lists were input to the SynGO browser (https://www.syngoportal.org) and default analysis parameters were applied. Visualizations of enrichment analysis on SynGO cellular components and biological processes were exported from the SynGo browser. Details of SynGO analysis can be found in the original publication42.
Enrichr57 permits the analysis of enriched pathways in a list of genes and was used to analyse the RNA sequencing data. DEG lists (log2[FC] > 1.5 and adjusted P < 0.05) were input to the Enrichr browser (https://maayanlab.cloud/Enrichr/) and the cell-types category was selected for further exploration, with the CellMarker database results being used in the final analysis.
UniProt IDs were converted to gene symbols using the Retrieve/ID mapping web tool in UniProt (https://www.uniprot.org/id-mapping). In cases when multiple gene symbols were returned for a single UniProt ID, the entry name—the unique gene symbol identifier associated with the UniProt ID—was used for most in-text references and visualizations. All gene symbols associated with a single UniProt ID are listed in the Supplementary Tables with the entry name listed first in the list.
Analysis of mouse and human microglia proteomes was performed on processed LC–MS data from a previous publication16. The reported copy number of the four replicates of freshly isolated 3.5-month-old male mouse microglia were averaged, and any protein with an average copy number of >0 was considered as detected. This same analysis was performed on the five replicates of freshly isolated human microglia, derived from female individuals aged 6 years, 22 years, 22 years, 45 years and 61 years.
The Allen Brain Cell Atlas58 ‘Whole mouse brain 10xv2 single cell' dataset was mined to examine neuronal and microglia marker genes as specified in the paper. The dataset was down sampled to 10,000 cells and marker genes were determined using the ‘FindAllMarkers' command in Seurat59. For neurotransmitter class and neuron class marker genes, the minimum fraction of cells expressing the gene was set to 25% and the log2[FC] threshold was set to 0.25 and only DEGs with adjusted P < 0.05 were further considered. Analyses comparing microglia versus neuronal marker genes were conducted similarly, except to be considered differentially expressed, the gene had to be expressed in at least 50% of one population (for example, neurons) and no more than 10% of the other population (for example, microglia) and the adjusted P was set to <0.05.
Microglia LysoTag data were derived from a pre-print41. Two different microglia LysoTag models were used in the analyses: one model driven by Cx3cr1-cre and the other model driven by Fcrl2-cre. For each model, we considered a protein a hit if the q value was <0.05 and the protein was enriched by immunoprecipitation in the LysoTag model compared with the mock immunoprecipitation from wild-type mice.
Hypergeometric tests were performed by using the equation
where K is the total number of proteins in one list of proteins being overlapped, M is the total number of proteins in the other list to which K is overlapped, x is the number of proteins overlapping between the lists, and N is the total population size, which was 4,220, the number of unique BONCAT-labelled neuronal proteins we could maximally detect in the Camk2a-cre;PheRS* model among the experiments shown in Fig. 1 (benchmarking experiment), Fig. 4 (aged aggregates) and Fig. 5 (microglia from aged mice). All other numeric inputs were derived from the Venn diagram displayed in Fig. 5.
Expected overlap was performed using the equation Expected overlap = KM/N, and enrichment was calculated by dividing the observed overlap by the expected overlap.
Details of statistical methods are described in relevant subsections above and/or indicated in the figure legends. All t-tests were two-tailed. ANOVA calculations were ordinary one-way ANOVA. q values were calculated using the qvalue command from Bioconductor in R Studio and Benjamini–Hochberg-corrected P values were calculated using the p.adjust command with the method being ‘BH' in R Studio.
The data in the following figure panels were not repeated: Extended data Fig. 1a,m.
The data in the following figure panels were repeated in a total of three independent experiments: Figs. 1c,j, 2b,c, 4a,f–h and 5c and Extended Data Figs. 1c,n, 2f,g, 3b–d and 7g.
Unless stated otherwise above, data visualizations were performed in R studio (Posit Software), GraphPad Prism (GraphPad Software), FlowJo (Becton, Dickinson and Company) or Adobe Illustrator (AdobeA) with aesthetic enhancements performed in Adobe Illustrator. Renderings of mice in Figs. 2a and 5a and Extended Data Fig. 3i were created in BioRender. Guldner, I. (2025) https://BioRender.com/9itwqmf.
Further information on research design is available in the Nature Portfolio Reporting Summary linked to this article.
The raw MS proteomic data have been deposited to the ProteomeXchange Consortium via the PRIDE partner repository as follows. For datasets related to comparing BONCAT models in the context of a Camk2a-cre driver, the project accession is PXD057020. File name annotations indicate the BONCAT line (MetRS*, PheRS* or TyrRS*) examined in the dataset, which consists of TMT-plexed samples containing BONCAT-labelled samples and respective wild-type background controls. For the MetRS* dataset, samples 1676-79 are background controls and 1538-41 are MetRS*-labelled samples. For the PheRS* dataset, samples 910-12 are background controls and 1584-90 are PheRS*-labelled samples. For the TyrRS* dataset, samples 1701-04 are background controls and 1482-83 and 1471-72 are TyrRS*-labelled samples. For CMV-cre;BONCAT datasets, the project accession is PXD056569. File name annotations are as follows: WT in name indicates that the sample is a background control (no BONCAT-labelling); a 4-digit code to start file name indicates that the sample is a BONCAT-labelled sample. An abbreviation after WT or the 4-digit code indicates tissue type (B, brain; Liv, liver; H, heart; I, intestine; Lug, lung; M, muscle). For datasets related to BONCAT-labelled neuronal protein differential expression by region, the project accession is PXD057261. File name annotations are as follows: the number indicates the mouse ID; FC, Hipp or ST annotation refers to the brain region of sample (FC, motor cortex; ST, striatum; Hipp, hippocampus); TG annotation indicates that the mouse was a transgenic BONCAT mouse in which protein labelling occurred; WT annotation indicates that the mouse was a wild-type mouse in which BONCAT labelling could not occur and is thus a background control. For datasets related to comparing BONCAT labelling in Camk2a-cre;PheRS* knock-in mice to mice transduced with AAV-Camk2a;PheRS*, the project accession is PXD057456. Samples 1584-86 are BONCAT-labelled Camk2a-cre;PheRS* knock-in mice; samples 1947-49 are BONCAT-labelled AAV-Camk2a;PheRS* transduced mice; samples 1400-02 are non-BONCAT-labelled background controls. For datasets related to comparisons between aged and young proteomes from mice transduced with AAV-Camk2a;PheRS*, the project accession is PXD057488. File name annotations are as follows: Y or A annotation in the file name indicates whether sample was from a young (Y) or aged (A) mouse; TP1 in file name indicates that the sample was BONCAT-labelled; BG annotation in file name indicates that the sample was a non-BONCAT-labelled background control. For datasets related to protein degradation among brain regions and tissues, the project accession is PXD056701. File name annotations are as follows: Y, M or A annotation in file name indicates whether the plex consists of young, middle-aged or aged samples, respectively. A number preceding Y, M or A represents the brain region in the plex (3, sensory cortex; 4, visual cortex; 6, hippocampus; 8, hypothalamus). For datasets related to BONCAT-labelled neuronal proteins in aggregates in aged mice, the project accession is PXD066053. File name annotations are as follows: IDs 2864–2875 (n = 11) were a background controls; IDs 2829-39 and 2898–2900 (n = 11) were derived from a BONCAT-labelled model. For datasets related to label-free aged brain aggregates, the project accession is PXD057455. All files are replicates of label-free aggregates from the aged brain. For datasets related to BONCAT-labelled neuronal proteins in microglia, the project accession is PXD066030. File name annotations are as follows: MG22–27 (n = 6) were background controls; MG1–10 (n = 10) were derived from a young BONCAT-labelled model; MG11–17 and MG19 (n = 8) were derived from aged BONCAT-labelled model. For the RNA sequencing datasets comparing sorted microglia to bulk brain homogenate, the Gene Expression Omnibus accession is GSE303078.
Unique codes generated and/or modified and used in this study to analyse the data are available from GitHub (https://github.com/Bamees/ProteinAnalysis).
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We thank all members of the Wyss-Coray Laboratory for their technical, conceptual and emotional support, with special thanks to past members K. Brewer and S. Shuken for insightful technical comments provided through the genesis of this work, and D. Channappa, K. Dickey, D. Berdnik and H. Zhang for laboratory management; members of the Bertozzi Laboratory, namely N. Riley and B. Floyd for consultation regarding LC–MS experimental design and analyses, and A. Isakova and J. Harberberger of the Knight Initiative for Brain Resilience for granting access to core facility equipment and Allen Brain Cell Atlas data; K. Martens and staff at the Genetic Engineering Technologies Service at the Jackson Laboratory for their contribution. This study was supported by The Phil and Penny Knight Initiative for Brain Resilience (T.W.-C.), Simons Foundation 811253 (T.W.-C.), the International Neuroimmune Consortium with a grant from the Alzheimer's Association ADSF-24-1345203-C (T.W.-C. and M.A.-R.), the NIH Pathway to Independence Award 1K99AG088304-01 (I.H.G), MAC3 Dementia and Ageing Fellowship (I.H.G. and N.L.), Innovation and Technology Commission (InnoHK Initiative) of Hong Kong S.A.R. (T.H.C.), DFG Compute and Storage Cluster 469073465 (A.K.), US Department of Defense HT9425-23-1-0879 (J.L.), NIH AG059694 (J.L.), NIH Director's Early Independence Award 1DP5OD033381 (A.C.Y), Burroughs Welcome Fund Career Awards at the Scientific Interface (A.C.Y.), EMBO Postdoctoral Fellowship ALTF 904-2023 (J.F.H.), Howard Hughes Medical Institute Fellowship of the Life Sciences Research Foundation (J.F.H.), Stanford Bio-X Fellowship (S.M.S.), and AHA-Allen Brain Health and Cognitive Impairment Cross-Network Collaborative Grants 23BHCICG1188316 (N.L.). The new knock-in mouse models were developed with funding from an anonymous organization.
These authors contributed equally: Andreas Keller, Andrew C. Yang, Tom H. Cheung
Department of Neurology and Neurological Sciences, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA, USA
Ian H. Guldner, Viktoria P. Wagner, Patricia Moran-Losada, Sophia M. Shi, Sophia W. Golub, Kelly Chen, Yann Le Guen, Nannan Lu, Zimin Guo, Jian Luo & Tony Wyss-Coray
Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA
Ian H. Guldner, Viktoria P. Wagner, Patricia Moran-Losada, Sophia M. Shi, Sophia W. Golub, Kelly Chen, Hamilton Se-Hwee Oh, Nannan Lu, Zimin Guo & Tony Wyss-Coray
Chair for Clinical Bioinformatics, Saarland University, Saarbruecken, Germany
Viktoria P. Wagner, Barbara T. Meese & Andreas Keller
Department of Chemistry, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA
Sophia M. Shi, Johannes F. Hevler & Carolyn R. Bertozzi
The Institute for Chemistry, Engineering and Medicine for Human Health (Sarafan ChEM-H), Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA
Sophia M. Shi, Ali Ghoochani, Carolyn R. Bertozzi & Monther Abu-Remaileh
Department of Chemical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA
Ali Ghoochani & Monther Abu-Remaileh
Department of Genetics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA
Ali Ghoochani & Monther Abu-Remaileh
Department of Bioengineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA
Ernst Pulido & Emma Lundberg
Graduate Program in Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA
Hamilton Se-Hwee Oh
The Phil and Penny Knight Initiative for Brain Resilience, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA
Hamilton Se-Hwee Oh, Monther Abu-Remaileh & Tony Wyss-Coray
Quantitative Sciences Unit, Department of Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA, USA
Yann Le Guen
Biosciences Central Research Facility, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, China
Pui Shuen Wong & Tom H. Cheung
Hong Kong Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases, Hong Kong, China
Ning-Sum To & Tom H. Cheung
The Jackson Laboratory, Bar Harbor, ME, USA
Dylan Garceau & Michael Sasner
Veterans Administration Palo Alto Healthcare System, Palo Alto, CA, USA
Jian Luo
Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA
Carolyn R. Bertozzi
Department of Pathology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA
Emma Lundberg
Science for Life Laboratory, School of Engineering Sciences in Chemistry, Biotechnology and Health, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden
Emma Lundberg
Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, San Francisco, CA, USA
Emma Lundberg
Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease, Gladstone Institutes, San Francisco, CA, USA
Andrew C. Yang
Department of Neurology, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA
Andrew C. Yang
Division of Life Science, Center for Stem Cell Research, HKUST–Nan Fung Life Sciences Joint Laboratory, State Key Laboratory of Molecular Neuroscience, Molecular Neuroscience Center, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, China
Tom H. Cheung
Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Brain Science, Disease and Drug Development, Shenzhen–Hong Kong Institute of Brain Science, HKUST Shenzhen Research Institute, Shenzhen, China
Tom H. Cheung
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I.H.G. and T.W-C. conceptualized the project. I.H.G. performed most of the experiments with the assistance described as follows: P.S.W. and N.-S.T. assisted in running samples on LC–MS under the supervision of T.H.C.; E.P. performed the laser capture microdissection experiment and associated LC–MS under the supervision of E.L.; K.C., N.L., Z.G. and J.L. assisted in some of the mouse procedures and/or collections; S.W.G., K.C. and Z.G. assisted with in-gel fluorescence and/or tissue staining experiments and some steps of LC–MS preparations. A.C.Y., M.S. and T.W.-C. created the PheRS* and TyrRS* knock-in mice. D.G. performed molecular analysis of PheRS* and TyrRS* knock-in founders and developed genotyping assays. I.H.G. created the BONCAT AAV expression constructs. I.H.G. devised AzAA administration protocols. I.H.G., P.S.W. and N.-S.T. processed LC–MS data. I.H.G., V.P.W., P.M.-L., J.F.H., and B.T.M. performed formal analyses, with analyses related to protein degradation kinetics, half-life and clustering being under the supervision of A.K. and C.R.B. I.H.G., V.P.W, P.M.-L., B.T.M., H.S.H.-O., Y.G., A.K., A.C.Y. and T.W.-C. developed data analysis methodology. I.H.G., S.M.S. and A.C.Y. developed wet-bench methodology related to click chemistry. LysoTag data were collected and processes by A.G. under the supervision of M.A.-R. I.H.G. and T.W.-C. wrote the original draft. T.W-C. supervised the study.
Correspondence to
Tony Wyss-Coray.
The authors declare no competing interests.
Nature thanks Chris Bennett and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Peer reviewer reports are available.
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a. In-gel fluorescence images comparing the presence of Alexa 647-clicked and thus BONCAT labeled proteins from cell lysates derived from the indicated cell lines expressing either PheRS* (left) or TyrRS* (right) that either did or did not undergo inhibition of protein synthesis prior to non-canonical amino acid treatment. As shown in the experimental schematic (top), BONCAT-expressing cell lines were treated with protein synthesis inhibitor before being treated with the non-canonical amino acid, which abrogated protein tagging relative to cells not treated with protein synthesis inhibitor. b. In-gel fluorescence image of Alexa 647-clicked and thus BONCAT labeled proteins from total brain lysates derived from young Camk2aCre;MetRS*, Camk2aCre;PheRS*, and Camk2aCre;TyrRS* BONCAT transgenic mice and their respective wildtype background controls. Relative Alexa 647 intensities can be taken as a measure of relative labeling efficiencies. c. Fluorescence images of Alexa 488-clicked and thus BONCAT labeled proteins in cortical tissue sections from young Camk2aCre;PheRS* model. Tissues are co-stained with anti-GFP, which should be co-expressed in all cells expressing PheRS*, and DAPI. d. Fluorescence images of Alexa 594-clicked and thus BONCAT labeled proteins in cortical tissue sections from young Camk2aCre;PheRS* model. Tissues are co-stained with anti-NeuN, a neuronal marker, and DAPI to demonstrate localization of BONCAT labeled proteins to neurons. e. In situ heatmap of Camk2a mRNA expression from the Allen Brain Atlas. f. Schematic of methodology used to enrich BONCAT-labeled proteins from total lysates for LC-MS. g. Overlaid histograms comparing the number of proteins pulled down by the methodology illustrated in (f) in unlabeled (wildtype mice treated with AzF) and labeled samples (Camk2aCre;PheRS* mice treated with AzF). Effect size determined by Cohen's D. P values determined by two-tailed Kolmogorov-Smirnov Test and two-tailed Wilcoxon Rank Sum Test. h. Histogram showing the number of labeled proteins (from Camk2aCre;PheRS* mice treated with AzF) and their respective percent increase in enrichment over unlabeled proteins (from wildtype mice treated with AzF). i. Box and whisker plots comparing the log2-transformed protein intensities for all proteins identified by LC-MS in BONCAT-labeled mice and their respective background controls (wildtype mice treated with the same non-canonical amino acid). Boxes extend from the 25th to 75th percentiles and the horizontal line represents the median. Whiskers extend from data minimum to data maximum. n = 2985, 3716, and 2906 unfiltered proteins/replicate for Camk2a;MetRS*, Camk2a;PheRS*, and Camk2a;TyrRS*, respectively. j. Bar chart showing the number of proteins identified without any filtering (black bars), after filtering based on valid values as described in the methods (light grey bars), and after filtering based on valid values, fold change (log2(fold change) > 1 over the background) and p value (<0.05, determined from a two-tailed, two-sample students t-test) (light grey bars) for each Camk2aCre;BONCAT line. k. In-gel fluorescence image of Alexa 647-clicked and thus BONCAT labeled proteins of total brain lysates derived young Camk2aCre;PheRS* mice provided 185 mg/kg of azido-phenylalanine (AzF) for a varying number of days (left) and associated quantification of fluorescence intensity of clicked-protein normalized to total protein with the different number of days provided AzF (right). l. In-gel fluorescence image of Alexa 647-clicked and thus BONCAT labeled proteins of total brain lysates derived from young Camk2aCre;PheRS* mice provided varying doses of azido-phenylalanine (AzF) for one week (left) and associated quantification of fluorescence intensity of clicked-protein normalized to total protein with the different doses of AzF provided (right). m. Western blot image of HSP90 and loading control beta-actin on whole brain lysates derived from various BONCAT-labeled models and ages and respective non-labeled controls to show whether BONCAT-labeling induces an HSP90-mediated heat shock response. n. Fluorescence images for microglia (Iba1, green) staining in cortical tissue sections of an AzF-treated Camk2aCre;PheRS*mouse (left), wildtype mouse not administered AzF (middle), and wildtype mouse administered AzF (right) to determine whether BONCAT-labeling induces microgliosis as evaluated by cellular morphology. All sections were additionally clicked with Alkyne 594 and imaged with the appropriate and equal laser settings for Alkyne 594 detection in order to verify the presence of labeled proteins or lack of labeled proteins in each section.
a. Venn Diagrams showing the overlap and exclusivity of proteins labeled by the CMVCre;MetRS*, CMVCre;PheRS*, and CMVCre;TyrRS* models in the indicated tissues. n = 2 biological replicates per group. Only proteins identified in both labeled biological replicates with a log2 fold change (BONCAT/background control) > 1 and p value < 0.05 determined from a two-tailed, two-sample students t-test were considered in this analysis. Data for CMVCre;MetRS* model not collected for intestine, lung, or muscle. b. Bar chart of the number of proteins identified in Camk2aCre;PheRS* model that are marker genes of the indicated neurotransmitter types as identified by the Allen Brain Cell Atlas. c. Pie chart of the percentage of proteins identified in the Camk3aCre;PheRS* model that are marker genes of the indicated neurotransmitter types as identified by the Allen Brain Cell Atlas. d. Bar chart of the number of proteins identified in Camk2aCre;PheRS* model that are marker genes of the indicated neuronal classes as identified by the Allen Brain Cell Atlas. e. Pie chart of the percentage of proteins identified in the Camk3aCre;PheRS* model that are marker genes of the indicated neuronal classes as identified by the Allen Brain Cell Atlas. f. Fluorescence images of Alkyne 594-clicked and thus BONCAT labeled proteins in the whole brain (top) and cortex (bottom) of a Camk2aCre;PheRS* mouse treated with AzF. The tissue is co-stained for excitatory neuron marker Satb2 (green) to demonstrate the extent of labeled protein localization to excitatory neurons. g. Fluorescence images of Alkyne 594-clicked and thus BONCAT labeled proteins in the whole brain (top) and cortex (bottom) of a Camk2aCre;PheRS* mouse treated with AzF. The tissue is co-stained for inhibitory neuron marker Parvalbumin (green) to demonstrate the extent of labeled protein localization to inhibitory neurons. h. Bar charts of the z-scored expression of the indicated proteins differentially expressed between the motor cortex, striatum, and hippocampus (left) and immunofluorescence images of these proteins and their respective fluorescence intensity heatmaps to validate the regionally-enriched expression (right). n = 4 mice per region. Error bars represent mean with SD.
a. Schematic of AAV-expression construct for Camk2a promoter-driven expression of PheRS* (top) and experimental timeline of transduction and protein labeling (bottom). b. In-gel fluorescence image of Alexa 647-clicked and thus BONCAT labeled proteins of total brain lysates derived from young (3 months) AAV-Camk2a;PheRS* transduced-mice and the respective background controls. c. Fluorescence images of Alexa 594-clicked and thus BONCAT labeled proteins in brain tissue sections from young AAV-Camk2a;PheRS* transduced-mice. The image on the right shows co-staining for neurons (NeuN, green) to show overlap between click signal and neurons as would be expected from this model. d. Fluorescence images of Alexa 594-clicked and thus BONCAT labeled proteins in brain tissue sections from young AAV-Camk2a;PheRS* transduced-mice. The image on the left shows co-staining for BONCAT labeled proteins and excitatory neurons (Satb2, green) and the image on the right shows co-staining for BONCAT labeled proteins and inhibitory neurons (Parvalbumin, green) in selected regions to illustrate which neuronal populations are BONCAT-labeled in the viral model e. Scatter plots showing the correlation of log2 fold change (BONCAT/background control) (top) and -log10 p values (bottom) of proteins identified in young Camk2aCre;PheRS* transgenic mouse model compared to that of the young AAV-Camk2a;PheRS* model. Only proteins commonly detected with a log2 fold change over respective wildtype background controls and p value < 0.05 were plotted. Statistics derived from a two-sided Pearson's correlation test. f. Bar chart showing the number of proteins identified by LC-MS commonly and exclusively in the young Camk2aCre;PheRS* transgenic mouse model and young AAV-Camk2a;PheRS* model. Only proteins with a log2 fold change over respective wildtype background controls and p value < 0.05 determined by a two-tailed, two-sample students t-test were used. g. Color-coded volcano plot showing the enrichment of BONCAT-labeled proteins identified by LC-MS in the young AAV-Camk2a;PheRS* model relative to the wildtype background control. Proteins are color-coded by cell type enrichment as defined by the PanglaoDB and CellMarker databases. P values are derived from a two-tailed, two-sample students t-test. h. Gene Ontology (GO) Cellular Component analysis on BONCAT labeled proteins in the young AAV-Camk2a;PheRS* BONCAT model. Proteins used in the analysis had a log2 fold change > 1 over the respective background control with a p value < 0.05. FDR derived from one-sided Benjamini-Hochberg test. i. Schematic of AAV-Camk2a;PheRS* transduction and labeling in an experiment to compare nascent neuronal proteins of young (3 m) and aged mice (21 m). n = 4 biological replicates per BONCAT-labeled sample per experimental group, n = 3 biological replicates per background control sample per experimental group. j. Volcano plot of neuronal proteins differentially expressed between young and aged mice. P values are derived from a two-tailed, two-sample students t-test. k. GO Biological Process analysis on neuronal proteins downregulated in aged mice relative to young mice. Downregulated proteins were those with a log2 fold change <0 and p value < 0.05, color-coded in blue in (i). FDR derived from one-sided Benjamini-Hochberg test. Mice in i were created in BioRender. Guldner, I. (2025) https://BioRender.com/9itwqmf.
a. In-gel fluorescence image of Alexa 647-clicked and thus BONCAT labeled proteins of brain lysates derived from the indicated brain regions at the indicated time points in the chase period following labeling of proteins with azido-phenylalanine. b. Box and whisker plots of the log2-transformed protein intensities identified by LC-MS for each replicate of BONCAT-labeled mice and their respective background controls (wildtype mice treated with the same non-canonical amino acid) for the protein degradation experiment. Boxes extend from the 25th to 75th percentiles and the horizontal line represents the median. Whiskers extend from data minimum to data maximum. Data represents proteins after filtering based on steps 1–3, described in panel c. n = 748, 269, 421, and 391 proteins per replicate of the sensory cortex, visual cortex, hippocampus, and hypothalamus, respectively. c. Schematic of data filtering strategy for the protein degradation experiment. d. Bar charts showing the average percent reduction of neuronal protein abundance between consecutive time points for each age in each region analyzed. Bars should be interpreted as follows: wherever the top of the bar reaches along the y axis is the percent represented by that bar. e. Scatter plots showing the correlation of neuronal protein half-life in days estimated by modeling versus directly interpolated from the kinetic degradation plots. Only proteins that reached or surpassed 50% remaining are plotted because direct interpolation can only measure such proteins. f. Scatter plots showing the correlation between protein abundance and protein half-life for the sensory cortex (top) and hippocampus (bottom). g. GO Cellular Component analysis of neuronal proteins from the sensory cortex within the top 10% greatest fold change (reduced degradation) from young to aged. h. Box and whisker plots comparing properties of neuronal protein from the sensory cortex within different quartiles of half-life fold change with aging. P values derived from a one-way ANOVA with significant comparisons identified by a Tukey test. n = 38, 121, 164, 160, and 197 proteins for Q0, Q1, Q2, Q3, and Q4, respectively. Boxes extend from the 25th to 75th percentiles and the horizontal line represents the median. Whiskers extend from data minimum to data maximum. i. Scatter plots comparing the log2 fold change of estimated protein half-lives (young to aged) between proteins commonly detected between the indicated regions. Each dot represents one protein with the color coding representing the absolute value of the difference between log2 fold changes of protein half-life between the indicated regions. Proteins with an absolute value difference >1 were considered regionally vulnerable. P value determined by a two-sided Person's correlation test.
a. Elbow plots of cluster number by minimum centroid distance used to determine cluster number for subsequent clustering analyses of young kinetic degradation trajectories with cluster cutoff indicated by a red dotted line (left) and associated clustering and overlap of young and aged kinetic degradation trajectories of the indicated brain regions. Protein membership in the aged clusters was determined by the clustering of young samples to serve as a baseline. The average delta integral, calculated by averaging the difference of the integral values of each aged and young protein within the cluster, is reported on each plot. The p value was determined by a one-way ANOVA with significant comparisons identified by a Tukey test (right). b. Heatmap of the top 5 most enriched GO Biological Processes identified for each cluster in the young visual cortex (left), hippocampus (middle), and hypothalamus (right). Heatmap colors represent fold enrichment for each pathway. c. Bar plot comparing the integral values of young, middle-aged, and aged proteins on a per-region basis. P value determined by a one-way ANOVA with significant comparisons identified by a Tukey test. n = 730, 380, 507, and 386 for the sensory cortex, visual cortex, hippocampus, and hypothalamus, respectively. Error bars represent mean with SD.
a. Box and whisker plots of the log2-transformed protein intensities identified by LC-MS for each replicate in the neuronal protein aggregate experiment. Boxes extend from the 25th to 75th percentiles and the horizontal line represents the median. Whiskers extend from data minimum to data maximum. n = 5128 unfiltered proteins per replicate. b. Bar chart showing the number of proteins identified without any filtering (black bars), after filtering based on valid values as described in the methods (light grey bars), and after filtering based on valid values, fold change (log2(fold change) > 1 over the background) and p value determined by a two-tailed, two-sample students t-test. (< 0.05) (light grey bars) for each BONCAT-labeled neuro-derived aggregates. c. Volcano plot showing the enrichment of BONCAT-labeled neuronal proteins in aged protein aggregates identified by LC-MS relative to the wildtype background control. Proteins with a log2 fold change > 1 over wildtype background controls with a q value < 0.05 are considered hits. d. Venn Diagram showing the overlap of aggregating neuronal proteins in aged mice identified by this study with aggregating proteins identified in the brains of cognitively normal aged humans from Kepchia et al. (left) and GO Cellular Component analysis on the overlapping proteins (right). e. Box and whisker plots comparing properties of neuronal protein from the sensory cortex identified in aged neuronal aggregates compared to those not identified in aged neuronal aggregates. P values derived from a two-tailed unpaired t test. n = 401 non-aggregating proteins and 305 aggregating proteins. Boxes extend from the 25th to 75th percentiles and the horizontal line represent the median. Whiskers extend from data minimum to data maximum. f. Sunburst plots showing synaptic functional representation (left) and synaptic anatomical representation (right) of neuronal proteins identified in aged protein aggregates. g. GO Biological Process analysis on neuronal proteins identified in aggregates in the aged brain. h. Venn Diagram showing the overlap of neuronal proteins identified in aged protein aggregates by BONCAT methodology with proteins identified in aged protein aggregates without labeling methodology by us and an independent publication by Molzahn et al. i. Bar charts comparing mass of insoluble protein/protein aggregates between young Camk2aCre;PheRS* mice provided azido-phenylalanine (AzF) and young wildtype mice not provided AzF (left) and aged AAV-Camk2a;PheRS* transduced mice provided azido-phenylalanine (AzF) and aged wildtype mice not provided AzF (right). n = 5 mice per experimental group of young experiment; n = 11 wildtype mice and n = 10 AAV + AzF mice in aged experiment. Error bars represent mean with SD. P values are derived from a two-tailed, two-sample students t-test. j. Fluorescence images comparing protein aggregate (Proteostat, orange) between young Camk2aCre;PheRS* mice provided azido-phenylalanine (AzF) and young wildtype mice not provided AzF (left) and aged AAV-Camk2a;PheRS* transduced mice provided azido-phenylalanine (AzF) and aged wildtype mice not provided AzF (right).
a. Representative flow cytometry plots using canonical microglia, border-associated macrophage (BAM), and peripheral macrophage markers to evaluate the populations represented by the CD11b+ population examined in the protein transfer experiments. b. Bar chart quantifying the percentages of microglia (CD45+, CD11b+, P2RY12+, CD206-) and BAM (CD45+, CD11b+, P2RY12+, CD206+) of all CD11b+ cells. c. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) on the transcriptomes of sorted microglia versus the whole brain. d. Volcano plot of genes differentially expressed between sorted microglia and the whole brain. Genes are color-coded according to neuronal marker gene status (purpose) or microglia marker gene status (orange) as determined from performing differential expression analysis on neurons and microglia from the Allen Brain Cell Atlas. P values derived from adjusting raw p values by Benjamini-Hochberg correction. e. Bar charts showing normalized counts of canonical microglia markers (left) and canonical neuronal markers (right) between sorted microglia and the whole brain. P values are adjusted p values. P values are derived from a two-tailed, two-sample students t-test. f. Cell type enrichment analysis based on Cell Marker 2024 database on genes enriched in sorted microglia relative to the whole brain (left) and genes enriched in the whole brain relative to sorted microglia (right). P values derived from Fisher's exact test and adjusted by Benjamini-Hochberg correction. g. Immunofluorescence images of brain tissue from a Camk2aCre + /−;Ai14(tdTomato)+/− mouse showing the lack of co-localization of tdTomato to microglia (Iba1, green). h. Representative flow cytometry plot to evaluate the potential expression of tdTomato in microglia (CD11b+) from Camk2aCre+/−;Ai14(tdTomato)+/+ mouse. There is strong tdTomato expression in synaptosomes derived from these mice, but the microglia population does not express tdTomato. i. Bar chart quantifying the percent of tdTomato+ microglia in wildtype mice and Camk2aCre+/;Ai14(tdTomato)+/+ mice. n = 3 mice per experimental group. P values are derived from a two-tailed, two-sample students t-test.
a. Box and whisker plots of the log2-transformed protein intensities identified by LC-MS for each replicate in the neuronal to microglia protein transfer experiment. Boxes extend from the 25th to 75th percentiles and the horizontal line represents the median. Whiskers extend from data minimum to data maximum. n = 1144 unfiltered proteins. Boxes extend from the 25th to 75th percentiles and the horizontal line represent the median. Whiskers extend from data minimum to data maximum. b. Volcano plot showing the enrichment of BONCAT-labeled neuronal proteins in microglia of all ages combined identified by LC-MS relative to the wildtype background control. Proteins with a log2 fold change > 1 over wildtype background controls with a q value < 0.05 are considered hits. c. Violin plot of Sv2a RNA expression in neurons and microglia from the Allen Brain Cell Atlas. P values are derived from two-tailed Wilcoxn ranked sum test and adjusted by Benjamini-Hochberg correction. d. Violin plot of Sv2b RNA expression in neurons and microglia from the Allen Brain Cell Atlas (left) and fluorescence images of mouse cortical microglia (Iba1, green) and neuronal protein SV2b (red) demonstrating the localization of neuronal SV2b inside microglia in optical sections (left), a three-dimensional rendering of the original image (top right), and a three-dimensional reconstruction of microglia and any SV2b protein that co-localized within the Iba1 signal (bottom right). P values are derived from two-tailed Wilcoxon ranked sum test and adjusted by Benjamini-Hochberg correction. e. Plot of signal peptide score for each neuronal protein identified as transferred to microglia as described in Fig. 5b. Signal peptide score determined by SignalIP. f. Bar chart showing the percentage of neuronal proteins identified in microglia that are putative secreted proteins based on the presence of a signal peptide or mammalian exosome cargo based on being annotated as such by Exocarta. g. Schematic of microglia LysoTag models. h. Venn Diagram showing the overlap in proteins identified in the microglia lysosome by microglia LysoTag models and neuronal proteins identified in microglia by BONCAT methodology as described in Fig. 5b. i. Stacked bar chart showing the proportion of neuronal proteins transferred to microglia that are also found in the microglia lysosome by microglia LysoTag models. j. Go Cellular Component analysis on neuronal proteins transferred to microglia as described in Fig. 5b. k. Bar chart showing the total number of proteins identified in the mouse microglia proteome by Lloyd et al. and the number of those proteins that are within the GO synapse gene list. l. Bar chart showing the total number of proteins identified in the human microglia proteome by Lloyd et al. and the number of those proteins that are within the GO synapse gene list. m. Venn Diagram showing the overlap of the mouse microglia proteome from Lloyd et al. and the neuronal proteins transferred to microglia as described in Fig. 5b. n. Venn Diagram showing the overlap of the human microglia proteome from Lloyd et al. and the neuronal proteins transferred to microglia as described in Fig. 5b. o. Bar chart showing the number of proteins identified without any filtering (black bars), after filtering based on valid values as described in the methods (light grey bars), and after filtering based on valid values, fold change (log2(fold change) > 1 over the background) and p value (<0.05) (light grey bars) for microglia in young BONCAT mice relative to the background (left) and microglia in aged BONCAT mice relative to background (right). p. Volcano plot of neuronal proteins transferred to microglia identified over the background for young microglia. P values are derived from a two-tailed, two-sample students t-test. q. Volcano plot of neuronal proteins transferred to microglia identified over the background for aged microglia. P values are derived from a two-tailed, two-sample students t-test. r. Volcano plot showing the differential abundance of neuronal proteins transferredto aged versus young microglia. Proteins used for the analysis were as described in Fig. 5k. Proteins with a log2 fold change > 1 over wildtype background controls with a q value < 0.05 are considered hits. s. Stacked bar charts showing the ratio of presynaptic proteins to postsynaptic proteins as defined by SynGO for young microglia and aged microglia. t. Schematic of study summary and working model.
This file contains Supplementary Text and Supplementary Fig. 1 (the original gel and blot images).
Assessing proteome labelling by different BONCAT lines.
Assessing proteome degradation changes with ageing.
Aged neuronal protein aggregate analyses.
Neuron to microglia protein transfer analyses.
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Guldner, I.H., Wagner, V.P., Moran-Losada, P. et al. Ageing promotes microglial accumulation of slow-degrading synaptic proteins.
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volume 649, pages 866–870 (2026)Cite this article
The quantum superposition principle is a fundamental concept of physics1 and the basis of numerous quantum technologies2,3. Yet, it is still often regarded counterintuitive because we do not observe its key features on the macroscopic scales of our daily lives. It is, therefore, interesting to ask how quantum properties persist or change as we increase the size and complexity of objects4. A model test for this question can be realized by matter-wave interferometry, in which the motion of individual massive particles becomes delocalized and needs to be described by a wave function that spans regions far larger than the particle itself5. Over the years, this has been explored with a series of objects of increasing mass and complexity6,7,8,9 and a growing community aims at pushing this to ever larger limits. Here we present an experimental platform that extends matter-wave interference to large metal clusters, a qualitatively new material class for quantum experiments. We specifically demonstrate quantum interference of sodium nanoparticles, which can each contain more than 7,000 atoms at masses greater than 170,000 Da. They propagate in a Schrödinger cat state with a macroscopicity10 of μ = 15.5, surpassing previous experiments5,9,11 by an order of magnitude.
When Louis de Broglie postulated that we need to ‘associate a periodic phenomenon with any isolated portion of matter or energy', he predicted that these new ideas would ‘solve almost all the problems brought up by quanta'12. The quantum wave function has become a core concept in modern physics13 and has withstood all tests to date. However, it is still a matter of debate whether quantum physics is already the ultimate theory or if it needs to be extended to explain its transition into classical phenomena. This debate has sparked general interest in the scientific community, shown by a series of recent experiments that have pushed the limits of quantum mechanics. Single atoms were delocalized on the half-metre scale5 or for times longer than a minute14. Matter-wave interference was seen in complex molecules, from fullerene diffraction6, to interference with biomolecules15, van der Waals clusters of organic molecules8 and families of fluorinated oligoporphyrins9. Mechanical cantilevers were cooled to their quantum ground state, both cryogenically16 and optically17. Crystal oscillators18 and levitated nanoparticles were cooled to the lowest level of their harmonic motion in one or two degrees of freedom19,20,21,22,23. Recently, the vibration mode of a bulk acoustic resonator was prepared in a quantum superposition state, with an effective mass of 16 μg (1019 Da) (ref. 24) delocalized over 10−18 m.
Here, we present our work on nanoparticle interferometry in a complementary regime. In our case, the centre-of-mass position of clusters containing more than 7,000 atoms becomes delocalized over a distance exceeding the diameter of the particle by more than an order of magnitude. This quantum state is analogous to Schrödinger's cat: here, a macroscopic object that defies intuition because it involves a superposition of classically distinct trajectories25.
The unique combination of mass and delocalization is particularly well suited for probing theories that modify the Schrödinger equation through nonlinear and stochastic terms to suppress macroscopic superpositions4. These macrorealistic models have been proposed as a solution to the quantum measurement problem26 as they would explain why very massive objects are always found in a well-defined position27. They assume that the wave function collapses to a localized state, spontaneously28 or induced by gravity29,30, such that a nanoparticle in an interferometer would lose its quantum coherence and the interference fringes would fade. The larger the mass or the longer the propagation time, the stronger the predicted loss of visibility. In our present experiment, we observe interference of widely delocalized massive particles, demonstrating that standard quantum mechanics holds at this scale with no need to modify the Schrödinger equation. We quantify the size of our superposition in terms of quantum macroscopicity, a measure that provides a unified framework for constraining a wide range of macrorealist modifications. The observed macroscopicity exceeds that of all previous quantum experiments by an order of magnitude31.
The de Broglie wavelength λdB = h/mv of a matter-wave beam is determined by Planck's constant h, the particle mass m and its velocity v. Matter-wave interference at high masses requires both the preparation of low particle velocities and the ability to handle short de Broglie wavelengths. In our multiscale cluster interference experiment (MUSCLE), we achieve this by combining a cryogenic metal cluster source with three ultraviolet (UV) diffraction gratings in a Talbot–Lau configuration, shown in Fig. 1.
a, Photo-ionizing gratings as beam splitters. Clusters passing through the antinodes of the optical grating are ionized and removed, whereas those passing through the nodes remain neutral. This confines particles to a spatial region within the grating nodes, resulting in a momentum uncertainty. The light field also induces a dipole moment, imprinting a position-dependent phase onto the clusters. b, Schematic of an optical Talbot–Lau interferometer. Starting with incoherent matter waves, the first grating (G1) prepares coherence by spatially confining the particles, as described in a. Transverse coherence grows towards G2, behind which a Talbot–Lau carpet emerges in the near field. Finally, a third grating acts as a position-resolving detection mask scanned across the interference pattern. c, Schematic of the multiscale cluster interference setup. An effusive sodium source in an aggregation chamber generates the cluster beam. The beam is transmitted through several differential pumping stages into the interferometer chamber kept at ultrahigh vacuum conditions (about 9 × 10−9 mbar). The cluster beam overlaps with three perpendicular standing light waves equally spaced at a distance of L = 0.983 m, forming optical gratings with a period of d = 133 nm. The intensities of the first and third gratings are chosen such that they act as absorptive gratings, whereas the second grating is operated at lower laser intensity, realizing an optical phase grating. After passing through the interferometer, the remaining neutral clusters are photo-ionized using a 425 nm laser diode and mass-filtered. The third grating is scanned transversely across the molecular beam. The integrated signal is then recorded as a function of the displacement of the grating. The nanoparticle and optical components in a and c were rendered in Blender using assets by Ryo Mizuta Graphics.
Cluster aggregation sources enable scalable synthesis of particles across a wide mass range, and they are versatile in handling a variety of materials32,33. Here, we prepare sodium clusters consisting of 5,000–10,000 atoms, in a helium–argon mixture at 77 K. They travel at velocities around 160 m s−1 with de Broglie wavelengths between 10 fm and 22 fm.
The short de Broglie wavelength makes far-field diffraction challenging even for grating periods on the 100 nm scale: it would require beam collimation to below 200 nrad. However, in 1997, John Clauser proposed using near-field interferometry for grating-based coherent self-imaging of ‘small rocks and live viruses'34, noting that this approach is compact, tolerates initially incoherent beams and offers high spatial resolution. This has been demonstrated with atoms35,36, X-rays37, positrons38, as well as organic and tailored macromolecules7,9. Here, we use it to open a window to matter-wave research with a whole new class of quantum objects, namely, massive metal nanoparticles.
A Talbot–Lau interferometer is built from three gratings with period d and spacing close to the Talbot distance LT = d2/λdB (ref. 39). The first and third gratings act as periodic spatial filters to prepare matter-wave coherence in G1 and to resolve the interference fringes that emerge at G3. The second grating G2 modulates the amplitude and phase of the cluster matter wave. Standing light waves are favoured over nanomechanical diffraction gratings because their period is precisely defined, and their transmission amplitude can be modified in situ.
In contrast to atom interferometry, where optical beam splitters are commonly tailored to specific electronic transitions40,41, ionization and phase gratings are compatible with a large variety of materials and particle sizes. Ultraviolet light serves well as an amplitude or photodepletion grating when the clusters in the antinodes are ionized and discarded. The standing light field additionally induces an oscillating dipole moment in the transmitted clusters, in proportion to their optical polarizability. Thus, it also imprints a spatially periodic phase shift onto the de Broglie wave associated with each nanoparticle.
The light for the three gratings is derived from a single-line green laser beam, which is frequency doubled in an external cavity to produce up to 1 W of power at 266 nm. It is split into three partial beams, which are retro-reflected to form three standing light waves, separated by 0.983 m. Neutral clusters transmitted by the interferometer are photo-ionized and counted by a quadrupole mass spectrometer using a conversion dynode and electron multiplier.
We sample the interference patterns by scanning G3 across the cluster beam while counting the number of transmitted clusters as a function of the G3 position. The resulting fringes are phase stable to within 3–5 nm over several hours and can be fitted with a sinusoid to determine the visibility \(V=({S}_{\max }-{S}_{\min })/({S}_{\max }+{S}_{\min })\), where Smax and Smin are the maximum and minimum of the fit, respectively.
In Fig. 2a, we show two representative interference fringes of sodium clusters with a diameter around 8 nm and masses ranging from 143 kDa to 197 kDa. We have measured a fringe visibility of up to V = 0.10 ± 0.01, which is limited by the finite photodepletion efficiency in the first and third gratings.
a, Interference fringes of sodium clusters with a mean mass of 172 kDa. The experimental data of two independent measurement runs (purple and green dots) are fitted by a sine function (purple and green line) with a visibility of V = 0.10 ± 0.01 and V = 0.08 ± 0.01, for grating laser powers P1 = (62 ± 2) mW, P2 = (15.2 ± 0.3) mW and P3 = (68 ± 2) mW. b, Fringe visibility versus grating laser power of G2. Each data point shows the weighted mean visibility per power bin from multiple independent interference scans of sodium clusters with masses centred around 172 kDa. Visibilities and error bars are derived from per-measurement 1σ confidence intervals of nonlinear least square sine fits (Methods). G1,3 powers as above. The continuous red and the dashed blue lines show the expected interference contrast according to the quantum and the classical model, respectively. The shaded areas show the uncertainties of the theory curve, based on the experimental 1σ limits of the molecular velocity, mass distribution, absorption cross-section and optical polarizability. In this plot, both theory curves were scaled by the same global factor of 0.78.
The observation of fringes in the cluster density distribution alone does not provide sufficient evidence for wave-like quantum propagation. They could also be explained by models in which the particles follow classical trajectories. In the presence of three nanomechanical gratings, classical flight paths would produce moiré-like shadow patterns. A similar classical picture is conceivable for sinusoidal transmission gratings in G1 and G3 and a phase grating in G2, in which the latter acts as an array of microlenses because of the optical dipole force.
To obtain clear evidence for the wave nature of the observed fringes, their visibility is analysed as a function of the laser power P2 of the second grating, shown by the solid circles in Fig. 2b. We compare this to the contrast predicted by both the classical (blue dotted line) and the quantum model (solid red line). The quantum model is obtained by describing the matter-wave dynamics in phase space using the Wigner–Weyl formalism42. It accounts for all coherent and incoherent grating interactions and enables a direct comparison with the prediction of classical mechanics (Methods).
We account for the experimental constraints on velocity, ionization cross-section, mass distribution and polarizability by the shaded areas along the theory curves. Interferometer misalignment, gravitational and rotational phase averaging, mechanical vibrations and the scattering of gas particles and thermal radiation can reduce the predicted contrast (Supplementary Information). We take this into account by a global scale factor of 0.78, which is equally applied to the quantum and the classical prediction in this figure. With this single experimental factor included, our experiments are well described by the quantum model and clearly distinct from the classical prediction.
Our assumptions regarding the mass, size and velocity distributions of the clusters, as well as the mass dependence of their ionization cross-section, are independently supported by the measured transmission probability as a function of the laser power in G2 (dashed black curve). The model reproduces the experimental data (black crosses) very well, without any additional scaling factor.
For substantially more massive clusters, with masses between 400 kDa and 1 MDa, we observe even higher fringe visibilities of V = 0.66 ± 0.09 (Supplementary Information). Although this may seem counterintuitive, it becomes plausible when we consider that the ionization cross-section increases and the transmissive regions in each grating become narrower with increasing size of the cluster.
However, the de Broglie wavelength in this mass range (λdB ≱ 3 fm) is too short to distinguish quantum from classical predictions, for our interferometer configuration (Fig. 3). For L ≤ LT, near-field matter-wave dynamics gradually transitions to geometrical optics, in agreement with Bohr's correspondence principle43.
a,b, Results are shown for the quantum model (a) and the classical model (b), which both include the effects of ionization and of the dipole force in the grating interaction. Both calculations assume a mean velocity of 160 m s−1, a Gaussian velocity spread of 10 m s−1 and grating powers of P1 = P3 = 100 mW. The solid line marks the mass at which the Talbot length equals the interferometer length, whereas the dashed line indicates the mass for which half the Talbot length coincides with the interferometer length. The colour scale indicates fringe visibility V. For masses beyond the Talbot condition, the quantum and classical models converge. c, Slowing the particles to approximately 25 m s−1 will enable our setup to reliably distinguish quantum from classical dynamics for masses exceeding 1 MDa.
Figure 3 shows how the predicted visibilities from quantum (Fig. 3a) and classical theory (Fig. 3b) converge at high cluster masses. At the same time, it highlights a clear discrepancy between quantum and classical predictions in the mass range below 200 kDa (Fig. 2b). In Fig. 3c, we show that it will become possible to unambiguously demonstrate the quantum wave nature of clusters in the MDa range if their velocities can be reduced to about 25 m s−1.
While Schrödinger speculated about the possibility of a cat being ‘dead and alive' in the same quantum state—something clearly impossible to observe in our macroscopic world—early experiments with trapped ions44 and cavity fields45 already showed that such superpositions can exist in microscopic systems. Here, we took this idea to a much more massive scale: a nanometer-sized piece of metal being ‘here and there' in the same quantum state with a 133 nm separation between the two locations, more than an order of magnitude greater than the particle itself. What would seem impossible in a classical worldview becomes here an experimental fact of quantum physics.
Observing matter-wave interference of the most massive objects to date reveals no breakdown of the quantum superposition principle related to mass or size alone. Moreover, this work establishes a new platform for metal nanoparticles, a material class previously inaccessible to such tests, and it suggests the feasibility of quantum-interference experiments with complex nanobiological objects which cover a similar mass range.
To put our experiment into context with other demonstrations of quantum superposition states, we evaluate the macroscopicity measure μ as defined in refs. 10,31. This value quantifies to what extent a given quantum experiment probes the validity of quantum mechanics and how well it can exclude minimal modifications of the Schrödinger equation, which would break the quantum superposition principle at some macroscopic scale.
Every successful demonstration of quantum interference falsifies a generic class of minimally invasive, macrorealistic modifications of quantum theory. To obtain the macroscopicity μ, all raw experimental data are used to narrow down the parameter space of these models by Bayesian updating, as explained in ref. 31. This requires a quantitative model for the outcome probabilities in the presence of macrorealistic modifications46. Any experimental imperfection and all decoherence processes are attributed to the macrorealistic modification and will therefore only decrease the macroscopicity (Methods). From our data, we obtain the value μ = 15.5, which surpasses the previous record11 by an order of magnitude, as shown in Fig. 4a.
a, Macroscopicity values of selected quantum experiments. Blue circles represent atom interferometry; red diamonds represent molecule interferometry; orange crosses represent Bose–Einstein condensates (BECs); green squares represent mechanical resonators; and red star represents sodium nanoclusters in this study, with μ = 15.5. Reference data are taken from refs. 10,11,31 and explained in the Supplementary Information. b, Visualization of size and complexity. The sodium clusters studied here behave as quantum particles at about 0.2 MDa and show high contrast up to the MDa regime. The number of atoms and their mass are compatible with those of large proteins and small viruses (from protein database53).
The main motivation for this line of research is to explore the quantum-classical interface bottom-up, systematically, and with all parameters under control. Our interferometer is unique in that it can accept various metals and also dielectric nanoparticles with different mass densities in the same machine. An additional factor of 100 in mass and in coherence time is conceivable in a vertical interferometer47. This additional factor would boost the attainable macroscopicity by six orders of magnitude in a ground-based experiment, which may open new opportunities to test the weak equivalence principle with vastly different types of matter.
On the applied side, coherent self-imaging creates a cluster density pattern in free flight, which can be shifted by external forces or directed momentum kicks. Particle-like properties, such as electric or magnetic susceptibility, can then be measured on clusters while they are propagating as delocalized waves. These measurements are complementary to explorations in physical chemistry48,49,50 and promise high force resolution.
The mass of our sodium clusters (170 kDa) already surpasses that of a coconut cadang-cadang viroid (CCCVd, 81 kDa; refs. 51,52), or a protein such as immunoglobulin G (IgG, 150 kDa; ref. 53). In the next generation of experiments, it is anticipated to approach the MDa mass range of small viruses, such as the satellite tobacco necrosis virus, shown in Fig. 4b.
Although realizing quantum superpositions with these massive bio-nanomaterials still demands marked advancements in beam preparation, coherent manipulation and detection technologies, recent progress in the generation54,55, in tools for coherent photodepletion56 and in detection of beams of massive biomolecules57 suggests that these challenges will also be solved.
The theory of Talbot–Lau interference is best formulated in phase space using the Wigner–Weyl representation of quantum mechanics42. This framework can account for incoherent particle sources, phase and absorption gratings, and all laser-induced photophysical effects, as well as any relevant decoherence process. It also allows for a direct comparison between the predictions of quantum and classical mechanics within the same formalism and set of assumptions.
For a cluster with mass m and longitudinal velocity vz, the probability of being detected behind the interferometer can be written as a Fourier series in the transverse position x3 of G3:
In a symmetric setup with equal grating separations L and periods d, the Fourier coefficients are
where the Talbot–Lau coefficients \({B}_{{\ell }}^{(j)}\) of order ℓ for the jth grating still need to be determined as a function of the Talbot length LT = mvzd2/h.
We assume that every absorbed grating photon results in the ionization of the sodium cluster. The transmission of the particle beam through a standing wave of incident laser power P, wavelength λL and Gaussian beam waist wy is then characterized by the mean number of ionizing photons absorbed in each grating antinode
as well as by the phase shift induced by the optical dipole potential
The values of the UV polarizability α266 and ionization cross-section σion,266 are mass-dependent and determined further below. We can then express the Talbot–Lau coefficients as58
where the coherent phase shift and the ionization depletion are described by
For short de Broglie wavelengths, as ξ ≡ L/LT → 0, the latter turn asymptotically into the expressions
which appear in the classical description. It yields the same expression (equations (2)–(5)) for the signal, except that equations (6) and (7) are replaced by equations (8) and (9).
In our setup, both the quantum and the classical signal are well approximated by a sinusoidal with fringe visibility V = 2|S1|/S0. We average the predicted signal over the measured velocity and mass distributions, accounting for the mass dependence of both the polarizability and the ionization cross-section.
To assess the macroscopicity of the demonstrated quantum superposition, it is necessary to calculate how the predicted interference signal is affected by the class of minimal macrorealist modifications (MMM) of quantum mechanics10. These are parameterized by the classicalization time scale τe, and by the momentum spread σq and spatial spread σs of a phase space distribution. The greater the value of τe, the larger the scales at which the quantum superposition principle still holds.
For our symmetric Talbot–Lau setup, the impact of an MMM is accounted for by multiplying the Fourier coefficients (equation (2)) by
with Rcl the radius of the spherical clusters, me the electron mass, j1 a spherical Bessel function and f(x) = 1 − Si(x)/x involving the sine integral10. The dependence on σs can be neglected for this setup. The mean count rate is unaffected by MMM since R0 = 1.
The macroscopicity is obtained by using the raw experimental data \({\mathcal{C}}\) (cluster counts at given grating shift x3 and grating powers) for a Bayesian test of the hypothesis that MMM holds with a classicalization time no greater than τe (ref. 31). Bayesian updating yields the posterior probability distribution \(p({\tau }_{{\rm{e}}}| {\mathcal{C}},{{\sigma }}_{{\rm{q}}})\) of the classicalization time τe, starting from Jeffreys' prior, by using the likelihoods obtained by incorporating equation (10) in the detection probability S(x3) (ref. 46). The lowest 5% quantile τm(σq) of the posterior distribution then determines the macroscopicity as \(\mu =\mathop{\text{max}}\limits_{{{\sigma }}_{{\rm{q}}}}({\log }_{10}({\tau }_{{\rm{m}}}({{\sigma }}_{{\rm{q}}})/1{\rm{s}}))\).
In our case, a total number of 3,895 data points yield a distribution very well approximated by a Gaussian (Kullback–Leibler divergence 1.27 × 10−3) whose 5% quantile τm = 2.84 × 1015 s (maximized at ħ/σq = 10 nm) remains constant to three decimal places after 3,280 data points. This indicates that sufficient data were recorded and that the distribution is independent of the prior. The resulting macroscopicity is μ = 15.45.
Large sodium clusters are generated in a custom-built aggregation chamber, inspired by earlier work32,59. The sodium is evaporated at 650–700 K into a cold mixture of argon and helium at a liquid nitrogen temperature of 77 K and pressure of less than 1 mbar. The resulting distribution covers masses beyond 1 MDa and velocities between 120 m s−1 and 170 m s−1. The clusters exit through a 5-mm aperture and pass three differential pumping stages before they reach the interferometer (Supplementary Information).
Two horizontal collimation slits dH1,H2 = 0.5 mm spaced by 1.8 m facilitate the alignment of the grating yaw angles perpendicular to the molecular beam with a precision of about 200 μrad. Two vertical collimation slits dV1 = 0.5 mm and dV2 = 1 mm, spaced by 2.2 m, confine the beam height and ensure good overlap with the standing light wave. This also reduces the influence of gravitationally induced phase averaging.
The optical polarizability α266, absorption cross-section σabs,266 and ionization potential Ei depend on the size, mass and purity of the cluster. They determine transmission, the maximal matter-wave phase shift ϕ0 and the mean number of absorbed photons n0 in the antinodes of the grating. Photophysics60 and thermodynamics61 of small sodium clusters have been extensively studied, and the preparation of particles up to 1 MDa has been demonstrated before59. However, the mass-selected UV polarizability has not been known. Here, we use the high-contrast fringe patterns of clusters between 0.4 MDa and 1 MDa to determine it in a mass range for which the classical and quantum models predict the same visibilities. We derive a value of α266/atom = −4πε0 × (4.5 ± 0.5) Å3 (Supplementary Information), which is consistent with the experiments and the quantum model for m = 100–200 kDa.
The photo-ionization cross-section σion,266 is a product of the absorption cross-section σabs,266 and the ionization yield. It determines the total transmission through the interferometer and influences the highest possible interference contrast. By measuring the mass-selected transmission of the interferometer for different grating powers, we determine an effective cross-section of σion,266 = (0.537 × m [kDa] − 1.5) × 10−20 m2 for our clusters.
After passing all gratings, the cluster beam is photo-ionized using 425 nm light and the cations are filtered by their m/z ratio using a quadrupole mass spectrometer. The mass filter includes guiding ion optics (Extrel) and 300 mm long quadrupole rods (Oxford Applied Research) with a diameter of 25.4 mm. The mass filter is operated at a resolution of Δm/m = 0.32. Interference scans centred on mass m, therefore, involve clusters within a mass range of ±Δm/2, where the transmission function is close to rectangular shape and taken into account in our models. The mass filter was centred at 170 kDa. The underlying mass distribution, convoluted with the trapezoidal transmission, shifts the effective mass centre towards 172 kDa.
The selected cluster ions are counted by a channel electron multiplier with a conversion dynode at 10 kV. Electronic dark counts range from 15 to 100 counts s−1.
We must also account for the mixing of multiply charged ions with identical m/z ratios. Based on the measured work function of W = (2.4 ± 0.1) eV (Supplementary Information), neutral clusters with a diameter of dCl ~ 8 nm exhibit an ionization threshold of Ei = 2.53 eV, followed by Ei,+1 = 2.88 eV and Ei,+2 = 3.23 eV for subsequent ionization processes. The detection laser has a photon energy of Eph = 2.92 eV and can generate doubly charged ions, whereas triply charged ions remain energetically out of reach.
We have selected doubly charged clusters in the detector and verified the correct cluster mass by analysing mass spectra at both low and high detection laser powers (Supplementary Information). In the antinodes of the gratings, the 266 nm light can also lead to multiply charged ions. However, this does not affect the interference pattern, because every ion is removed from the cluster beam by electrostatic deflection, independent of its charge state. Only clusters that remain neutral while passing through all gratings contribute to the final interference pattern.
The cluster velocity distribution is determined from a time-of-flight measurement, in which we imprint a start time signal onto the cluster beam by UV photodepletion close to G1, and we measure the cluster arrival time behind the ionizing mass spectrometer. The time-of-flight data are corrected for the drift time inside the quadrupole, where it is slightly accelerated by the entrance voltage U to \(v{\prime} =v+\sqrt{2eU\,/\,m}\). A convolution of a Gaussian drift time distribution and a rectangular chopper opening function is then fitted to the corrected unsmoothed data. The results are converted to a velocity distribution. We determine the average velocity and the width of the distribution from the standard deviation of the Gaussian fit.
Small variations of the mean velocity depend on the gas flow and the particle mass, and the 1σ width is Δv/v = 5–7%. Time-of-flight and velocity spectra for m/z = 100 kTh clusters are shown in the Supplementary Information.
Up to 4 W of 532 nm light (Coherent Verdi V18) is converted to up to 1 W of 266 nm UV light by intracavity second harmonic generation (Sirah Wavetrain 2). The UV output is vertically expanded and split into three grating beams, using polarizing beam splitters and half-wave plates to regulate the power for each grating. Cylindrical lenses (f = 140 mm) focus the laser horizontally onto high-reflectivity (R = 99.5%) mirrors in vacuum to generate the standing light waves. We have observed power losses of up to 60% because of the degradation of optical components. The beam waists before the lenses are W1 × H1 = 1,130 × 620 μm2, W2 × H2 = 1,020 × 575 μm2 and W3 × H3 = 1,020 × 575 μm2, with ΔHi = ΔWi = ±50 μm. Here, Wi represents the 1/e2 waist radii along the molecular beam direction and Hi is the vertical waist. At the focus, the Gaussian beam waist is 20 μm. This small waist alleviates the alignment requirements with regard to the cluster beam tilt angle. The waist is still sufficiently large to ensure that the Rayleigh length, zR = 4.7 mm, is an order of magnitude larger than the cluster beam width of 500 μm.
The surfaces of all three grating mirrors are aligned parallel to the particle beam axis, with the standing light wave along the mirror normal. The gratings exhibit three angular degrees of freedom: pitch, yaw and roll. The yaw angle, between the mirror surface and the particle beam, is adjusted to better than 200 μrad. The relative roll of the three mirrors, that is, their rotation around the axis parallel to the cluster beam is aligned to a difference less than 20 μrad. They are all stabilized with respect to the gravitational field of Earth to better than 50 μrad. The distances between the gratings are equal within 50 μm.
We obtain the interference scans by measuring the number of transmitted clusters as a function of the transverse displacement of the third grating G3, which is moved in steps of Δx = 15 nm. At each position, the mass-filtered ion signal is integrated for a time interval of up to four seconds. A sinusoidal fit to the data then provides the periodicity, phase and amplitude of the fringes. By design of first-order Talbot–Lau interferometry, the periodicity is equal to the grating period. Each visibility \({{\mathcal{V}}}_{i}\) results from a nonlinear least-squares sine fit to the raw counts and is accompanied by 1σ confidence bounds \(({{\mathcal{V}}}_{i,{\rm{lb}}},{{\mathcal{V}}}_{i,{\rm{ub}}})\). We define side-specific absolute uncertainties \({\sigma }_{i,-}={{\mathcal{V}}}_{i}-{{\mathcal{V}}}_{i,{\rm{lb}}}\), \({\sigma }_{i,+}={{\mathcal{V}}}_{i,{\rm{ub}}}-{{\mathcal{V}}}_{i},\) and the effective symmetric uncertainty \({\sigma }_{i}=({\sigma }_{i,-}+{\sigma }_{i,+})/2\). Measurements are grouped by optical power into bins. For each bin \({\mathcal{B}}\), we compute the inverse-variance weighted mean \(\mu ={\sum }_{i\in {\mathcal{B}}}{w}_{i}{{\mathcal{V}}}_{i}/\,{\sum }_{i\in {\mathcal{B}}}{w}_{i}\) with \({w}_{i}={\sigma }_{i}^{-2}\), and to display mild asymmetry, we also report \({\sigma }_{\mu ,-}^{-2}={\sum }_{i\in {\mathcal{B}}}{\sigma }_{i,-}^{-2}\) and \({\sigma }_{\mu ,+}^{-2}={\sum }_{i\in {\mathcal{B}}}{\sigma }_{i,+}^{-2}\). As a consistency check, we compute the reduced chi-square \({\chi }_{{\rm{red}}}^{2}\) using the same per-point uncertainties as the weights. For overdispersed bins (\({\chi }_{{\rm{red}}}^{2} > 1.5\)), we scale the upper and lower error bars of the mean by \(\sqrt{{\chi }_{{\rm{red}}}^{2}}\). For visualization, plotted lower bounds are truncated at 0; all weighting and dispersion checks use the untruncated values.
Data and code supporting the findings of this research are available at Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17502163). Additional data or materials used in the study can be provided upon request.
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Funding for this project was provided by a Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation grant (GBMF10771, https://doi.org/10.37807/GBMF10771) and by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) grant 32542-N. Open access funding provided by University of Vienna. We thank P. Geyer and Y. Y. Fein for their contributions at the early stage of the experiment and S. Sindelar for his support with metal cluster beams. M.A. is indebted to B. v. Issendorff for many discussions on cluster science throughout the years leading to this experiment. We thank V. Kresin for comments on alkali cluster sources and A. Shekhoon for discussions on the cluster work function.
Open access funding provided by University of Vienna.
Faculty of Physics, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
Sebastian Pedalino, Bruno E. Ramírez-Galindo, Richard Ferstl, Markus Arndt & Stefan Gerlich
Vienna Doctoral School in Physics, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
Sebastian Pedalino, Bruno E. Ramírez-Galindo & Richard Ferstl
Faculty of Physics, University of Duisburg-Essen, Duisburg, Germany
Klaus Hornberger
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S.P. was responsible for experimental design, measurement, data analysis, theory and writing; B.E.R.-G. and R.F. were involved in experimental design, measurement and theory; K.H. provided the theory and the Bayesian estimate of quantum macroscopicity and contributed to writing; M.A. contributed to experimental design, theory and writing; S.G. was responsible for experimental design, analysis and theory.
Correspondence to
Markus Arndt.
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Pedalino, S., Ramírez-Galindo, B.E., Ferstl, R. et al. Probing quantum mechanics with nanoparticle matter-wave interferometry.
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The early infant microbiome is largely primed by microbial transmission from the mother between birth and the first few weeks of life1,2,3, but how interpersonal transmission further shapes the developing microbiome in the first year remains unexplored. Here we report a metagenomic survey to model microbiome transmission in the nursery setting among babies attending the first year, their educators and their families (n = 134 individuals). We performed dense longitudinal microbiome sampling (n = 1,013 faecal samples) during the first year of nursery and tracked microbial strain transmission within and between nursery groups across 3 different facilities. We detected extensive baby-to-baby microbiome transmission within nursery groups even after only 1 month of nursery attendance, with nursery-acquired strains accounting for a proportion of the infant gut microbiome comparable to that from family by the end of the first term. Baby-to-baby transmission continued to grow over the nursery year, in an increasingly intricate transmission network with single strains spreading in some classes, and with multiple baby-acquisition and species-transmissibility patterns. Having siblings was associated with higher microbiome diversity and reduced strain acquisition from nursery peers, while antibiotic treatment was the condition that most accounted for the increased influx of strains. This study shows that microbiome transmission between babies is extensive during the first year of nursery, and points to social interactions in infancy as crucial drivers of infant microbiome development.
The early infant microbiome assembles via intricate and partially stochastic microbial acquisitions that have the mother as the primary source and other family members as additional ones1,2,3,4,5. The infant microbiome then evolves during the following few years with complex dynamics that later result in a more stable adult-like microbiome6. Although early family-to-baby microbiome strain transmission has been quite extensively investigated1,2,3,4,7, later infant developmental stages, including those involving interaction with other peers in social contexts, have received very little attention.
As the person-to-person intra-generational microbiome transmission has been recently revealed to be extensive and impact the personal microbiome make-up8, we predicted that early social contexts such as nurseries might exert a large impact on infant microbiomes via baby-to-baby transmission. Beyond work on pathogen spreading9,10 and linked immune competence development11,12,13, microbiome investigations in nurseries are limited in observing increased microbial diversity among attendants14. This leaves a major gap in the understanding of the dynamics of human microbiome maturation during the key first 1,000 days of life15.
Here we present microTOUCH-baby, a strain-resolved longitudinally dense metagenomic study modelling interpersonal gut microbiome transmission between babies attending the nursery for the first time and their close contacts, including family members and nursery educators.
We set up the microTOUCH-baby cohort to study the dynamics of microbiome development and transmission among babies of about 1 year of age and their close social interactions network (Methods). Participants included 43 babies attending the first year of nursery (median age at nursery admission 10 months), 7 co-living siblings, 39 mothers and 30 fathers of the babies, and 5 pets from the participants' houses, as well as 10 nursery educators (134 volunteers in total; Fig. 1a and Supplementary Table 1). Baby participants were enroled from three public nurseries in Trento (Italy). Babies spent on average 8 hours per weekday (after the ‘settling-in period'; Methods) in the nursery, with limited activities and spaces shared between the two classes in the same nursery, which are followed by different educational staff.
a, microTOUCH-baby study design and overview. b, Species-level microbiome composition overview of the microTOUCH-baby cohort during first term (principal coordinate analysis on Jaccard dissimilarity, n = 646). Samples are coloured by host categories and shapes indicate the nursery. Baby samples' colour intensity is according to time point (from initial T01 to final T15). c,d, Average SGB richness across all timepoints and for all individuals in each family member category having versus not having a sibling (c) and having versus not having a pet (d). e,f, Change in alpha-diversity (SGB richness; e) and beta-diversity (Jaccard dissimilarity; f) across participant types between the beginning and the end of the first term, with n indicating the number of individual–individual pairs. Beta-diversity refers to the all-versus-all within-nursery dissimilarities. In the box plots (c–f), box edges show the lower and upper quartiles, the centre line indicates the median, and whiskers extend to the most extreme data point within 1.5× the interquartile range (IQR). P values are reported where statistically significant (two-sided Mann–Whitney U-test in c and d and two-sided Wilcoxon signed-rank tests for e and f); all other comparisons are non significant.
Sampling started before the beginning of the first term (T01), hence before participants from different families had any nursery-related contact among them, and ended after the Christmas nursery closure (Fig. 1a). During nursery attendance, we collected stool samples of the babies on a weekly basis, whereas educators and parents were less densely sampled (Methods). For all participants in group 1 of nursery A, sample collection continued through the second term. Two additional follow-up samples were collected for all participants at nursery year's conclusion (TA) and at the end of the summer break (TB) (Fig. 1a).
Overall, we collected and metagenomically sequenced 1,013 microbiome samples (average sequencing depth 15.61 Gbp; Methods). Host metadata information included exact age, past and current host-health data, antibiotic exposures, maternal delivery information (Methods, Fig. 1a, and Supplementary Tables 2 and 3), and diet questionnaires (Methods). Metagenomes were processed via the MetaPhlAn 4 computational tool16 to generate taxonomic profiles at species-level genome bin (SGB)17 resolution (Supplementary Table 4 and Extended Data Fig. 1a), including yet-to-characterize species (that is, unknown SGBs accounting for 46.37% of total SGBs). We then used the StrainPhlAn 4 computational tool16,18 to generate strain-level phylogenies for 311 known SGBs and 201 unknown SGBs that were used to infer microbiome strain transmission8 (Methods).
We first observed expected microbiome structures1,19,20, with large compositional divergence between adults and babies (Fig. 1b, Extended Data Figs. 1b, 2 and 3, and Supplementary Table 5), age-dependent differences in babies (Extended Data Fig. 4a–e), and diet-dependent microbial stratification in adults (Extended Data Fig. 4f), but not in babies after accounting for age (Supplementary Table 6). Interestingly, at T01 (median age 10 months), the impact of maternal intrapartum antibiotic prophylaxis against group B Streptococcus and of mode of delivery on alpha-diversity was already not detected as statistically significant (Mann–Whitney U-test, n = 37, U = 137, P = 0.68 and n = 37, U = 109, P = 0.89, respectively; Extended Data Fig. 5a–d).
Some compositional patterns were suggestive of a role of microbiome transmission. Babies having a sibling had, for example, an overall higher SGB richness compared with babies without brothers and sisters (n = 40, U = 271, P = 0.012; Fig. 1c and Supplementary Table 6), further supporting previous observations21,22 and suggesting that siblings may provide important sources for infant microbiome enrichment. In contrast, babies with pets showed lower overall SGB richness (n = 40, U = 61, P = 0.012; Fig. 1d), but significance was lost after adjusting for age (Supplementary Table 6). Babies' alpha-diversity increased during the 3 months of nursery attendance (Fig. 1e), and although the total pool of microbial species detected among babies in the nursery did not change noticeably throughout the study (Extended Data Fig. 5e), the inter-baby beta-diversity decreased significantly (7% average decrease; Wilcoxon signed-rank test n = 116 baby pairs, W = 1,026, P = 7.0 × 10−11; Fig. 1f). As overall this might be indicative of baby microbiome convergence influenced by inter-individual transmission, we performed strain-level transmission analysis to investigate this hypothesis.
Extending our StrainPhlAn-based validated pipeline8 (Methods), we defined a strain-sharing event as the identification of the same strain (that is, differing by a genetic distance lower than the pre-computed optimal species-specific threshold distinguishing between inter- and intra-individual genetic distance distributions) in different microbiome samples. Strain-sharing rates (SSRs) are computed as the number of strains shared between a pair of microbiome samples over the number of species with profiled strains present in both samples (Methods). Applied on the task of inferring mother–baby transmission, the pipeline estimated a 50% median SSR for babies at the beginning of the study, which is highly consistent with previous results irrespective of population (Extended Data Fig. 5f).
Overall, we captured over 9.47 million instances of the same SGB typed at the strain level in different samples (including those from the same participant and from different participants), with a total of 5.97% of cases in which the same strain of the SGB was present, resulting in 565,258 detected strain-sharing events (Supplementary Tables 7 and 8). Within-individual strain-sharing accounted for 27.9% of the total (157,599 events, with 99% likelihood of samples from the same individual sharing at least 1 strain, and 87% at least 5) but also strain-sharing between different individuals in the same family was very high (51,483 events, 9.1% of the total, with 86% likelihood of sharing at least 1 strain, 47% at least 5), with rarer between-family strain-sharing instances at T01 (46% likelihood of sharing at least 1 strain and 3% at least 5; Extended Data Fig. 5g). Although most strain-sharing over the first term was observed among individuals from different families (356,176 events, 63%), this reflected the >75-times greater number of between-family comparison pairs; after normalizing for the number of comparisons, one order of magnitude fewer strains were shared between families versus within family (0.7 versus 7.9 strains shared per sample pair; Supplementary Table 7). The 0.7 average strains shared by unrelated individuals represent the cohort's microbiome sharing background, including untraced social interaction before T01, clonal strains spreading into the nursery-associated local community and possible false-positive instances, among other factors.
As a representative example of the combined capabilities of our study design and metagenomic pipeline to trace complex strain transmission chains, we illustrate the interpersonal transfer of a nursery-acquired strain of Akkermansia muciniphila (SGB9226) in group 1 of nursery B. A strain from this species was first introduced in the nursery group by a baby (B05) who probably obtained it from their mother, passed to another baby (B06), to then be found in their mother (M06) and father (F06), in the latter replacing another A. muciniphila strain (Fig. 2a). A. muciniphila strains contain CRISPR arrays that can be used as unique genetic tags for strains23,24 that further confirmed A. muciniphila strain identity across volunteers (Methods). Metagenomic assembly also validated such transmission patterns for the limited number of strains (8 out of 19 StrainPhlAn-positive samples) that could be reconstructed into draft genomes of sufficient quality, with high genomic similarity between assemblies from samples with the same strain according to StrainPhlAn (pairwise average nucleotide identity (ANI) 99.97%, which aligned with same-strain boundaries independently estimated elsewhere25,26). We note that the missing detection of A. muciniphila strains (grey circles in Fig. 2a) was overall consistent with the absence of the species as shown in a high-sensitivity, SGB-specific polymerase chain reaction (PCR) (Methods and Extended Data Fig. 6a). Within this example, we found only one sample in which we missed the metagenomic strain profiling to be PCR-positive at the SGB-level, concordantly with a non-zero relative abundance (0.04%) in its MetaPhlAn profile (B05_T08; Extended Data Fig. 6b), being thus the single case in Fig. 2a of SGB9226 falling below the limit of detection for strain profiling. Another transmission chain example involved Alistipes finegoldii (SGB2301) and included an educator (Extended Data Fig. 6c), further contributing to show the potential of our approach to recapitulate microbial transmission in nurseries.
a, Strain-level profiling for A. muciniphila SGB9226 (left) uncovers the chain of transmission events of one strain of this species in group 1 of nursery B (right). Participant types are identified by shape (mother, diamond; baby, circle; father, square) containing participant identifiers composed of the first letter indicating participant type (M, mother; B, baby; F, father) and the family number; familiar relations are also highlighted by same-colour filling. On the right, each circle represents a sample collected from the participants depicted, with colour filling indicating the identity of the strain of A. muciniphila detected in the sample (except grey, used to indicate that the SGB was not detected/typable at the strain level) and arrows indicating the most likely transmission event. The light orange and grey circle identifies SGB9226-positive sample (B05_T08) in which a strain could not be profiled by StrainPhlAn. The identification of shared CRISPR spacers of the target strain of A. muciniphila (orange circles) across different samples is indicated by an asterisk. b, Strains present at most in one baby before nursery admission (T01) and spreading to other participants in the same nursery, reaching ≥50% prevalence in the following time points, until T15. Left and right y axes show the proportion and number of babies in which the outbreaker strain was detected, respectively. The left y axis also refers to the proportion of babies in which the SGB was detected (that is, their prevalence in the nursery). S. intestinalis, Sellimonas intestinalis.
We also explored potential gut microbiome transmission between household pets and their families. Anecdotally (given the only five pets considered), we overall identified a low total number of pet–human strain-sharing events, with intra-family pet–baby strain-sharing significantly higher than inter-family (Fisher's exact test, n = 211, P = 0.005; Extended Data Fig. 6d,e). Strains found to be transmitted between babies and pets belonged to human-associated species that had also been previously detected in pet gut microbiomes (Faecalimonas umbilicata, Ruminococcus gnavus, Clostridium sp. AT4 and Phocaeicola vulgatus27,28,29,30), indicating they may be ecologically fit to overcome host-species boundaries.
We then examined the changes in the collective composition of the human microbiome in nurseries. First, we found the overall pool of distinct strains to decrease over time (that is, average nursery strain heterogeneity decreasing from 0.91 at T01 to 0.77 at T15, Mann–Whitney U-test, n = 454, U = 34,312, P = 1.3 × 10−11). Considering that the total reservoir of microbial species did not increase (Extended Data Fig. 5e), this indicates that some strains within the same species may have spread among babies and prevailed over other strains initially present (Extended Data Fig. 7a).
We then focused on strains that showed efficient spreading within a nursery. We found 8 cases of strains initially detected in no more than one baby before nursery start (T01) reaching ≥50% prevalence afterwards (Fig. 2b). Among these, a Streptococcus gallolyticus (nursery A) and a Bifidobacterium pseudocatenulatum (nursery B) strain were introduced in the nursery after approximately the first month of attendance and progressively spread to seven and eight babies, respectively (Fig. 2b). Although S. gallolyticus spread appeared to dwindle after reaching the maximum diffusion, B. pseudocatenulatum presence was steadily detected, consistent with the high prevalence of the Bifidobacterium genus in the infant population2. Other cases of bacterial strain diffusion involved Escherichia coli and Veillonella dispar in nursery B, and Clostridium innocuum in nursery C, which was possibly limited in its spread by other conspecific strains and niche preemption dynamics31.
Quantification of strains shared between babies attending the same nursery over time revealed they had, on average, more shared strains at the end of the first term than before nursery admission (the average number of strains shared with any other baby was 2.5 at T01 and 7.2 at T15, or 8.8 at T15 when disregarding strains already present at T01 and only for babies with samples available at both time points; Fig. 3a). Accordingly, whereas at T01 baby strain-sharing relations were not recapitulating nursery attendance, at T15 they clustered consistently with it (Fig. 3b, Supplementary Table 9 and Methods). We thus found strong evidence of quantitatively relevant acquisition of nursery-specific microbial profiles by babies, occurring via inter-individual strain transmission even in the relatively short time frame of the first nursery term.
a, Average number of strains shared between each baby and other participants at T01 and T15. The triangles under the boxes report the average number of strains shared between the baby and any participant in ‘family' (mother, father, sibling) or ‘nursery' (other babies, educator). b, Average number of shared strains between baby pairs in the same versus different nursery; P values (two-sided permutation test for means; Methods) for intra- versus inter-nursery comparisons are shown in italic in the circle. The statistics for a and e are in Supplementary Tables 9 and 10. Networks are built on strain-sharing matrices among all babies at T01 and T15. c, Strain replacement rate (one minus the SSR) between initial and final time points. P values are reported where statistically significant (two-sided Mann–Whitney U-tests); all other pairwise comparisons are non significant. In the box plots c–e, box edges show the lower and upper quartiles, the centre line indicates the median, and whiskers extend to the most extreme data point within 1.5× the IQR. d, Baby–baby SSR and average number of strains shared throughout the first term. In d and e, statistical significance asterisks refer to the highest significant P value adjusted for multiple comparisons (two-sided permutation test for medians; Methods) for the set of comparisons indicated in the legend, with **P < 0.01 and ***P < 0.001. Left and right y axes indicate average strains shared and average common SGBs. e, Baby–baby SSR and average number of strains shared at T01, at the beginning and the end of the second term (T15 and TA), and after the summer break (TB), across all babies in all nurseries. At the top, P values are reported where statistically significant (two-sided Wilcoxon signed-rank test evaluating longitudinal SSR for paired baby–baby pairs attending the same nursery).
Investigating longitudinal gut microbiome changes, babies showed the lowest rate of SGB retention (defined as the Jaccard similarity between samples from initial and final time points of the same individual; Extended Data Fig. 7b) and the highest rate of strain replacement (defined as 1 − SSR) among the retained SGBs (Fig. 3c) compared with adults. A median 44.4% of the retained SGBs in babies showed baseline strain replacement during the 5 months of the study. In contrast, all other participants replaced a much lower fraction of strains in their gut (medians below 11.1%), with strain replacement rates correlated although non-significantly with age among non-baby participants (Spearman's test, n = 68, ρ = 0.22, P = 0.071; Extended Data Fig. 7c). This reflects the expected high plasticity of the infant gut microbiome with its rapidly evolving ecosystem and limited colonization resistance6,32.
To assess the extent to which nursery attendance affects microbiome assembly in babies via microbiome transmission, we quantified and compared the SSR between pairs of babies within the same group or nursery, and across different nurseries at each time point (Fig. 3d). Strain sharing among babies in the same nursery group was significantly higher after approximately only 1 month of nursery attendance compared with babies from different nurseries (median SSR 8.3% versus 0% at T04; permutation test for medians, n = 249, P = 0.001). This is all the more noteworthy in view of the first 2 weeks of the nursery's ‘settling-in period' during which babies attend discontinuously and for shorter periods. In addition, at the end of the first term (T15), the SSR in the same nursery group reached an average of 20.2%, significantly higher than the SSR between babies attending different nurseries (4.6%; permutation test for medians, n = 312, P < 0.001) and higher than the SSR among babies attending the same nursery but in different groups (16.1%; permutation test for medians, n = 122, P = 0.079, significant at T08 P = 0.026, T10 P < 0.001 and T13 P = 0.001).
By extending the investigation to the second term of nursery, we found the baby–baby SSR within the same nursery (regardless of group) to reach a median 33.3% at the end of school year (TA; versus median 17.9% at T15; Wilcoxon signed-rank test, n = 58, W = 86, P = 6.2 × 10−9; Fig. 3e), with a progressive increase occurring during the whole second term, as observed for the class that was densely sampled over such a period (group 1 of nursery A; Extended Data Fig. 7d). Although the baby–baby SSR decreased during the summer break (TB), it remained significantly higher compared with post-Christmas-break levels (T15; median 23.7% at TB versus 17.9% at T15; Wilcoxon signed-rank test, n = 31, W = 68, P = 2.0 × 10−4). These results highlight that social relations outside of the household and continued spatial proximity are key determinants of infant microbiome transmission and development at levels that are substantially higher than what was recently observed for adults8.
The parent–baby SSR at T01 averaged 37.3% for mothers and 19.6% for fathers, consistent with available reports1,4,8,33,34,35. Such patterns persisted throughout the first term (Fig. 4a). The contributions of sibling strains to the baby was even higher (average SSR 56.2%; Fig. 4b). As expected, strain transmission between babies and individuals from different families remained negligible throughout the first term (Fig. 4a,b), a testament of the reliability of the strain-transmission-inference approach.
a, SSR and average number of strains shared between pairs of babies and parents (at T01) from the same versus different families at each time point. In a and b, statistical significance asterisks refer to two-sided permutation tests for medians (Methods) adjusted for multiple comparisons for same family versus different family across each family member type, with ***P < 0.001. Exact P values for a–e are provided in Supplementary Table 11. In all box plots, box edges indicate the lower and upper quartiles, the centre line represents the median, and whiskers extend to the most extreme data point within 1.5× the IQR. b, Strain-sharing between pairs of babies and siblings (T01) from the same versus different families at each baby time point. c, Proportion of strains acquired from group versus family, and corresponding cumulative relative abundance (bottom). For each baby time point, comparisons were performed against past or contemporaneous samples of the family and the nursery group (Methods). Statistical significance asterisks refer only to the proportion of strains acquired from the same group versus the family. In c–e, the two-sided Mann–Whitney U-test was used, with *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01 and ***P < 0.001. d, Association between having a sibling and the number of strains acquired from the nursery group. e, Breakdown between acquisition of new SGBs typed at the strain level and strain replacement for the strains acquired from the nursery (top) and association between either means of strain acquisition and having a sibling (bottom). Statistical significance asterisks refer to the comparison between SGB acquisition from nursery for babies with versus without siblings. f, Number of strains either donated (dark green) or acquired (light green) by each baby over the first term (left y axis), and ratio of donated strains to acquired strains (dashed line; right y axis).
To establish the relative contribution of strain transmission from the nursery with respect to strain transmission from the family, we computed, for each baby, the proportion of strains in the baby microbiome that were exclusively shared with, and hence putatively acquired from, either family members or other babies in the nursery group (Methods) and we refer to it as ‘proportion of strains acquired'. We found that the proportion of strains acquired from the nursery group—but not of strains acquired from the family—changed significantly over time. The proportion of strains acquired from family members fluctuated from an average of 24.0% per baby at T01 to 20.0% at the end of the first term of nursery (Wilcoxon signed-rank test, n = 25, W = 112, P = 0.18; Extended Data Fig. 7e), whereas those putatively acquired from the nursery group increased from an average of 6.5% to 28.4% at the end of the first term (Wilcoxon signed-rank test, n = 25, W = 0, P = 6.0 × 10−8; Extended Data Fig. 7e), significantly surpassing the proportion of strains acquired from the family (Mann–Whitney U-test, n = 52, U = 463, P = 0.023; Fig. 4c). This indicates that after only 3 months of nursery attendance, babies had proportionally more strains acquired from nursery peers than from their family.
A similar trend was observed when quantifying the relative abundance of strains acquired from either the family or the nursery group (Fig. 4c). Family contribution slightly diminished over time (from an average 33.2% at T01 to 20.6% at T15; Wilcoxon signed-rank test, n = 25, W = 72, P = 0.014; Extended Data Fig. 7f) whereas the contribution from the nursery group greatly expanded (reaching an average of 39.6% at T15 from a starting 10.2%; Wilcoxon signed-rank test, n = 25, W = 18, P = 1.5 × 10−5; Extended Data Fig. 7f). Strains shared with both family and group also increased significantly (from average 0.9% to 8.5%; Wilcoxon signed-rank test, n = 25, W = 0, P = 4.4 × 10−4; Extended Data Fig. 7f), probably reflecting reciprocal transmission between family and nursery (Fig. 2a). Overall, this suggests that the nursery collectively contributes to a larger extent to the strain composition of the gut microbiome of babies than to that of the family by the end of the first term (39.6% versus 20.6% at T15; Mann–Whitney U-test, n = 52, U = 479, P = 0.01; Extended Data Fig. 7f).
The extended longitudinal analysis of group 1 of nursery A revealed that the proportion of strains acquired from nursery peers continued to gradually increase during the second term (Extended Data Fig. 8a). Samples from all babies across nurseries at year-end (TA) confirmed comparable contributions of family and nursery to the baby (17.6% median proportion of strains acquired from nursery versus 15% from family; Mann–Whitney U-test, n = 19, U = 218, P = 0.29; Extended Data Fig. 8b) that non-significantly tended toward a greater family contribution after summer nursery closure, (8.7% median proportion of strains acquired from nursery versus 16.7% from family; Mann–Whitney U-test, n = 17, U = 122, P = 0.43; Extended Data Fig. 8b).
Babies showed lower strain retention and higher strain replacement across the summer break (that is, between TA and TB) compared with adults, despite no differences in the carriage of SGBs typed at the strain level (Extended Data Fig. 8c–f). Interestingly, family-acquired strains were significantly more retained and less replaced in babies over the summer break than nursery-acquired strains (Wilcoxon signed-rank test, n = 11, W = 5, P = 0.019 and P = 0.022 respectively; Extended Data Fig. 8g,h), suggesting that continuous seeding linked to continued contact is a factor behind long-term colonization.
Predicting a potential role of siblings in the transmission patterns, we found that at T01, babies showed a higher SSR with their siblings (average 52.3%) than with their fathers (24.9%; Mann–Whitney U-test, n = 36, U = 147, P = 0.026) as well as with their mothers, although non-significantly (46.1%; Mann–Whitney U-test, n = 36, U = 120, P = 0.47; Extended Data Fig. 8i). Of note, an average of 10.4 strains were shared exclusively with siblings at T01, whereas only 2.0 and 2.4 were shared exclusively with the mother or the father (Extended Data Fig. 8j), possibly reflecting closer intestinal ecology, physical interaction and development stage, which are probably some of the same factors leading to the higher nursery strain acquisition observed in our cohort.
We further observed that having a sibling was associated with babies acquiring significantly fewer strains from their nursery group compared with babies without a sibling at T15 (Mann–Whitney U-test, n = 28, U = 117, P = 0.004; Fig. 4d). Although causality cannot be inferred, this might be linked to early acquisition from siblings ‘saturating' the overall strain acquisition potential, which would be in line with babies with a sibling having higher alpha-diversity (Fig. 1c) and acquiring fewer new SGBs than only-children (Fig. 4e). Notably though, although all babies both spread and acquired strains in the nursery, the ratio between acquired and donated strains varied widely between babies (Fig. 4f).
We next assessed species-level transmissibility by counting the number of strain-sharing events for each SGB in our cohort over the total potential number of strain-sharing events (Methods). Microeukaryotic taxa were not found to be abundant enough in babies to try to infer transmission, with Blastocystis, the most common human gut microeukaryote36, identified in 9.18% of the samples but never in babies (Supplementary Table 12). Focusing thus on prokaryotic taxa, out of the 64 SGBs with highest transmissibility (henceforward ‘T') over all participant categories (Extended Data Fig. 9a and Supplementary Table 13), many known SGBs encompassed aerotolerant (S. gallolyticus, Rothia mucilaginosa and B. pseudocatenulatum) and spore-forming species (for example, Tyzzerella nexilis and Clostridium fessum). We also identified the spore-forming Clostridioides difficile among the most-transmissible SGBs between baby–baby pairs only (T = 0.38, prevalence in babies 24% and in adults 0%), in line with widespread carriage in asymptomatic babies37,38. Exceptions to this trend were prevalent non-sporulating human gut anaerobes (such as Blautia wexlerae and Faecalibacterium prausnitzii).
SGB transmissibility correlated with SGB prevalence in both adults (Spearman's test, n = 461, ρ = 0.35, Padj = 9.8 × 10−14) and babies (Spearman's test, n = 461, ρ = 0.40, Padj = 1.2 × 10−17; Extended Data Fig. 9b,c). The highest transmissibility scores were highlighted for SGBs shared in baby–siblings pairs, namely, A. finegoldii, Bacteroides ovatus and Bacteroides caccae, the butyrate-producing Roseburia intestinalis and Agathobaculum butyriciproducens39,40, Bifidobacterium bifidum, and Bifidobacterium breve (all with T = 1; Extended Data Fig. 9a). B. caccae strains were also commonly transmitted between mothers and babies, alongside strains of two undescribed Clostridium spp., Phocaeicola vulgatus and the typically maternally derived B. bifidum and B. pseudocatenulatum32,41. Highly transmitted SGBs between fathers and babies included Clostridium sp. AM333, Lachnospira spp., and the aerotolerant and bile-resistant Sutterella wadsworthensis. Finally, with the exception of the microaerophilic Streptococcus salivarius and S. wadsworthensis (T = 0.83 and T = 0.82, respectively), highly transmitted SGBs between mother–father pairs included multiple bifidobacteria and Blautia spp. Interestingly, many of the species are fibre-degrading specialists in the gut42,43,44, with known beneficial effects on the host45, indicating that within-family microbial transmission may hold a favourable potential for health-associated microbiome development.
We looked further into our dataset to identify species differentially more transmitted baby-to-baby in the nursery setting compared with baby–mother and baby–father pairs (Supplementary Table 14). B. breve, a highly prevalent and health-promoting species in (breast-fed) babies6,46, was differentially more transmissible among baby pairs, compared with mother–baby pairs, as was the case also for Dorea formicigenerans, an age progression biomarker in babies47 (Extended Data Fig. 10a,b). Bifidobacterium longum subsp. infantis, a specialized gut colonizer of breast-fed babies46 with anti-inflammatory effects48, was detected exclusively in babies in our cohort (Methods and Extended Data Fig. 10c,d), with prevalence peaking at approximately 50% mid-term (T08), before declining (Extended Data Fig. 10e); its transmission was significantly higher than B. longum subsp. longum among baby–baby pairs (T = 85.3% versus T = 19.4%, respectively; Fisher's exact test, n = 142, P = 5 × 10−12), showing that the acquisition of B. longum subsp. infantis may specifically occur via interpersonal transmission among babies.
In addition to the effect of having a sibling, age also significantly affected strain donation (increasing frequency in older babies, Spearman's test, n = 39, ρ = 0.43, P = 0.007), but not strain acquisition (n = 39, ρ = 0.24, P = 0.14; Extended Data Fig. 11a–c). Interestingly, potentially delayed microbial colonization at birth (owing to caesarean delivery or intrapartum antimicrobial prophylaxis) did not influence microbial strain acquisition for babies in the nursery (Extended Data Fig. 11d,e), in line with no T01 alpha-diversity differences (Extended Data Fig. 5a,b). Analysis of the influence of diet of babies on strain-sharing revealed that infants consuming milk at T01, particularly maternal milk, exhibited elevated albeit not statistically significant SSRs with their mothers at T01 (Extended Data Fig. 12a,b). Further exploration of dietary impacts on strain acquisition and donation patterns failed to identify significant associations (Extended Data Fig. 12c–k), suggesting an overall negligible impact of diet on interpersonal microbiome transmission; however, putative dietary effects on the establishment of specific strains in a recipient microbiome cannot be definitely excluded, given the limited granularity of our dietary data.
Finally, we assessed the impact of antibiotic interventions on adult and babies' interpersonal transmission, exploiting the recorded antibiotic administration events that included amoxicillin alone (n = 7 events) and in combination with clavulanic acid (n = 13), betamethasone dipropionate (n = 6) and the macrolide azithromycin (n = 4), routine treatments for bronchitis, inflammatory skin conditions, and upper respiratory, ear and intestinal infections49,50.
Antibiotic treatment (ATB) significantly reduced the absolute number of retained strains between consecutive time points in both adults (average 86.4 control pre–post versus 60.1 ATB pre–post; Mann–Whitney U-test, n = 74, U = 729, P = 5.1 × 10−4) and babies (average 24.3 control pre–post versus 14.1 ATB pre-post; Mann–Whitney U-test, n = 77, U = 1,169, P = 1.3 × 10−5; Extended Data Fig. 12l). Even for SGBs typed at the strain level that were present at both time points, the strain retention rate was also significantly diminished after treatments in adults (average 93.8% control pre–post versus 88.4% ATB pre–post; Mann–Whitney U-test, n = 74, U = 631, P = 0.028; Fig. 5a) and in babies (average 90.6% control pre–post versus 70.2% ATB pre–post; Mann–Whitney U-test, n = 76, U = 1,215, P = 2.9 × 10−7; Fig. 5a), but to a greater extent in the latter (ATB pre–post average strain retention rate adults versus babies: 88.4% versus 70.2%; Mann–Whitney U-test, n = 53, U = 466, P = 0.001; Fig. 5a).
a, Strain retention rate (that is, the within-individual SSR) in adult and baby participants (n = 69 and n = 41, respectively, in a–c) who underwent antibiotic treatment (ATB pre–post) versus untreated controls (control pre–post). In all box plots, box edges indicate the lower and upper quartiles, the centre line represents the median, and whiskers extend to the most extreme data point within 1.5× the IQR. Statistical significant P values in all panels refer to two-sided Mann–Whitney U-tests. All other comparisons are non significant. b, Acquisition rate of SGBs typed at the strain level in babies and adults who underwent antibiotic treatment (ATB pre–post) versus untreated controls (control pre–post). c, Fraction of the strains present in pre samples replaced in post samples for babies and adults who underwent antibiotic treatment (ATB pre–post) versus untreated controls (control pre–post). Siblings and pets are excluded. Comparisons were performed between consecutive control pre–post and ATB pre–post time points (one per volunteer).
After antibiotic use, the gut microbiomes of babies were replenished with new strains (Fig. 5b,c). This was driven by both the acquisition of new SGBs (average SGB acquisition rate 30.4% control pre–post versus 49.2% ATB pre–post; Mann–Whitney U-test, n = 59, U = 164, P = 2.9 × 10−4; Fig. 5b and Extended Data Fig. 12m), and by the strain replacement within SGBs (average 2.1 replaced strains and 7.1% fraction of pre-ATB strains replaced control pre–post versus 3.9 and 13.6% ATB pre–post; Mann–Whitney U-test, n = 59, U = 209, P = 0.003 and P = 0.004; Fig. 5c and Extended Data Fig. 12n). In contrast, adult microbiomes appeared to be less prone to new colonizations after antibiotic treatment via either means of strain acquisition (ATB pre–post average SGB acquisition rate adults versus babies: 34.2% versus 49.2%; Mann–Whitney U-test, n = 33, U = 74, P = 0.041, Fig. 5b; ATB pre–post average fraction of pre-ATB strains replaced adults versus babies: 7.5% versus 13.6%; Mann–Whitney U-test, n = 33, U = 69, P = 0.026; Fig. 5c), suggesting that although infant microbiomes tend to be more impacted by antibiotic therapy, their richness is also more easily recovered.
Our longitudinal strain-resolved metagenomic framework revealed that the infant gut microbiome largely assembles, expands and modifies in the nursery via extensive baby–baby strain transmission, extending earlier work on family-to-baby transmission1,2,3,4,34,35 and overviews of the infant microbiome in nurseries14,51,52. After a few months of nursery attendance, the microbial strains acquired from peers in the same nursery group accounted for a larger proportion of the infant microbiome than those from the mother and—more generally—family members (Fig. 4c), who are known to exert the greatest influence on babies' microbiome in the first months of life. Contributions to the infant microbiome by family and nursery were not influenced by birth practices or feeding regimes (Extended Data Figs. 11d,e and 12a–k), and became comparable by the end of the second term, possibly indicative of strains being shared with both family and nursery. In addition to their already established effects in emotional and cognitive development53,54, social relations among peers in the nursery are thus a hub for microbial enrichment during infancy, particularly of key early-life gut colonizers such as B. longum subsp. infantis and B. breve6,46 (Extended Data Fig. 10a–e).
Horizontal infant microbiome transmission does not occur only in nursery settings, as we found that baby–sibling strain-sharing surpasses transmission between parent–baby pairs (Extended Data Fig. 5g) and correlates with a later decrease in infant microbial acquisition in the nursery (Fig. 4d). Even pets might contribute strains to the babies but not to the adults (Extended Data Fig. 6d,e), and although limited and somewhat conflicting evidence has been produced on the effect of having a pet on human microbiomes55,56,57, larger studies specifically focused on strain transmission and medium-term retention should be promoted. Overall, our data further reinforce the role of horizontal intra-generational (and possibly inter-host species) over vertical inter-generational transmission not only in adults8 and nurseries (the main point of the present work) but also within a family context.
In several cases, we observed very effective spread of a single strain within nurseries (Fig. 2b). Such diffusion patterns are akin to typical pathogenic outbreaks within closed communities58,59. However, although pathogenic spread typically elicits an acute immunological reaction and/or requires treatment, leading to somewhat rapid clearance after transmission, for gut microbiome members, colonization may be long-lasting as we reported in several cases in our cohort (Fig. 2b), even though it remains unsettled whether colonization persisted for many years after the end of nursery school. Moreover, further elucidation of the phenotypes linked to the propagation of fast-spreading strains may be highly relevant towards a better comprehension of the factors favouring the development of a healthy host–microbiome mutualism.
Among the factors that may influence microbial transmission in babies, we found antibiotic usage to be the strongest one. Despite the infant microbiome being highly perturbed by antibiotic treatment during the first year of life, as previously reported60,61,62, it is also fast-recovering via extensive strain acquisition (Fig. 5 and Extended Data Fig. 12m,n), consistent with antibiotic treatment before faecal microbiota transplantation increasing donor strain engraftment in adults63. However, we found strong evidence that the extent and the rate of post-antibiotic strain acquisition was substantially higher in babies compared with adults (Fig. 5), and this clearly reinforces the risks—but potentially also the opportunities—of infant antibiotic intake connected with a deep reprogramming of the structure of the infant microbiome induced by post-antibiotic strain acquisition. Whether the rapid acquisition of microbial diversity after antibiotic courses in babies is driven specifically by the high level of peer-to-peer interaction in the nursery environment should be investigated further, but it is reasonable to consider that prolonged isolation within the family of antibiotic-treated babies would result in a slower microbiome recovery and acquisition of fewer baby-specific microbial species.
Methodologically, our strain-sharing pipeline models the genetics of the dominant strains of each species (SGBs) present in any given microbiome sample64 to enable identification of strain transmission events. Although recent surveys have pointed out the usual presence in the gut of a single strain of each species25, further advances in metagenomic strain-profiling tools could reveal the complexity of multiple coexisting conspecific strains and shed light on their role in influencing strain(s) transmission dynamics and long-term colonization in the gut microbiome.
Overall, our results reveal the centrality of social factors in shaping the infant microbiome via inter-individual microbial transmission, thus rebalancing social interactions as key to building a healthy microbiome, beyond their epidemiological role in the spread of (opportunistic) pathogens. Continued efforts on this topic should be focused on investigating the transmission of further microbiome components such as phages, plasmids and operons, as well as on applying experimental tools to profile the microbial features favouring diverse modes of transmission.
A total of 134 volunteers comprising babies (4–15 months old at nursery start, median 10 months, 18 male, 25 female) about to attend the first year of nursery school, their parents (29–50 years old, median 36 years old, 30 male, 39 female), siblings (2–21 years old, median 2 years old, 3 male, 4 female) and house pets (n = 5, 2 cats and 3 dogs), and educators (34–56 years old, median 38.5 years old, 10 female) were recruited and enroled across 3 nursery schools (here identified as A, B and C), each with 2 distinct classes, in the municipality of Trento (Italy) in June 2022. The classes within the same nursery shared few activities (that is, baby drop-off and pick-up) and spaces throughout the day, and were followed by different educators. The protocol of this study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the University of Trento (protocol number 2022-040) and by the Ethics Panel of the European Research Council Executive Agency after evaluation of the project (microTOUCH Grant agreement ID 101045015). Upon enrolment, volunteers were asked to provide informed consent and complete metadata questionnaires. Consent for participation of babies was obtained directly from parents.
Date of birth, sex, anthropometric data (weight, height), and antibiotic treatment in the 3 months preceding the start of the study or supplemented during its course, in addition to information regarding putative contacts with other volunteers preceding the beginning of nursery, were collected for volunteers of all ages. Metadata specifically collected for babies included gestation length, mode of delivery and general diet at nursery admission (breast or formula milk feeding and weaning date of start). Adult participants were also required to provide information regarding past or ongoing chronic conditions and relative treatments, and putative maternal anti-Streptococcus B prophylaxis during birth. Diet metadata for babies and adults are detailed in the next section.
In brief, most babies had begun weaning at T01 (weaned n = 38, not weaned n = 2, not available = 3) and received identical solid meals while in the nursery. The majority followed a mixed feeding approach during weaning, combining solid foods with any type of milk (mixed diet n = 24, exclusively solid food n = 14, not available = 5). Among those babies receiving milk supplementation, feeding types were relatively balanced (breast-fed n = 9, formula-fed n = 10, receiving both n = 5). Finally, adults detailed their long-term dietary habits via the compilation of the EPIC Food Frequency Questionnaire (FFQ). FFQs were used to calculate the healthy Plant-based Diet Index65. Quality and quantity of plant-based foods were derived from FFQs for a total of 18 food groups, and divided into quintiles and assigned positive or negative scores. Participants whose intake exceeded the highest quintile received a score of 5, whereas those below the lowest quintile received a score of 1. Healthy plant-based foods received positive scores, whereas less healthy or unhealthy plant-based and animal-based foods received a negative score. A final score was derived by summarizing the scores of each participant. Metadata were collected and utilized after pseudonymization of volunteers IDs.
Sample collection began a week before the start of the first term of nursery (August 2022) and ended after the Christmas holidays (January 2023) for all volunteers. During the first 2 weeks the nursery organized a ‘settling-in phase', in which babies were gradually introduced to the nursery and attended it for about 3 hours per weekday. In the following weeks, babies attended the nursery for about 8 hours per weekday. Throughout the term length (about 14 weeks), stool samples of infant participants were collected weekly (from before nursery admission T01 to at the end of Christmas holidays T15) by the nursery staff or the researcher in the nursery from nappies stored at room temperature on the same day of use, using collection tubes for specimen collection containing 9 ml of DNA/RNA Shield buffer (Zymo). Sample collection was extended until the end of the second term of the year (about 30 weeks, ending July 2023) for all donors in group 1 of nursery A, including babies, parents, educators and pets, maintaining sampling time-point frequencies and modalities. Two follow-up time points were collected for all participants enroled, at the end of the year of nursery (July 2023, ‘TA') and at the end of the summer break (August/September 2023, ‘TB'). The samples collected were moved to the lab and DNA-extracted within 2 weeks of delivery. Samples collection of babies during summer or winter breaks time points together with those of siblings and pets were performed directly at home by the parents and stored at room temperature until the beginning of nursery (maximum 2 weeks later). All adult participants' samples were self-collected following detailed instructions, delivered to the lab and processed as previously. Educators donated monthly, whereas parents collected one additional sample halfway the study period, in addition to initial and final sample time points.
After vortex homogenization, DNA was extracted using the DNeasy PowerSoil Pro Kit (Qiagen), following the directions of the Human Microbiome Project protocol66. Additional homogenized aliquots were stored at −20 °C. DNA was quantified using Qubit 2.0 fluorometer (Thermo Fisher Scientific). Sequencing libraries were prepared using the Nextera DNA Library Preparation Kit (Illumina), as described by the manufacturer's guidelines. The sequencing was performed on the Illumina NovaSeq 6000 platform following manufacturer's protocols. The sequencing depth was set at 15 Gbp.
Stool samples sequences were pre-processed using the pipeline described at https://github.com/SegataLab/preprocessing. In brief, metagenomic reads were quality-controlled and reads of low quality (quality score
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(2026)Cite this article
Sensing technologies that exploit quantum phenomena for measurement are finding increasing applications across materials, physical and biological sciences1,2,3,4,5,6,7. Until recently, biological candidates for quantum sensors were limited to in vitro systems, had poor sensitivity and were prone to light-induced degradation. These limitations impeded practical biotechnological applications, and high-throughput study that would facilitate their engineering and optimization. We recently developed a class of magneto-sensitive fluorescent proteins including MagLOV, which overcomes many of these challenges8. Here we show that through directed evolution, it is possible to engineer these proteins to alter the properties of their response to magnetic fields and radio frequencies. We find that MagLOV exhibits optically detected magnetic resonance in living bacterial cells at room temperature, at sufficiently high signal-to-noise for single-cell detection. These effects are explained through the radical-pair mechanism, which involves the protein backbone and a bound flavin cofactor. Using optically detected magnetic resonance and fluorescence magnetic-field effects, we explore a range of applications, including spatial localization of fluorescence signals using gradient fields (that is, magnetic resonance imaging using a genetically encoded probe), sensing of the molecular microenvironment, multiplexing of bio-imaging and lock-in detection, mitigating typical biological imaging challenges such as light scattering and autofluorescence. Taken together, our results represent a suite of sensing modalities for engineered biological systems, based on and designed around understanding the quantum-mechanical properties of magneto-sensitive fluorescent proteins.
Coupling electromagnetic fields with biological processes through fluorescence has revolutionized quantitative biology9. Meanwhile, quantum-sensing tools (that is, those for which function arises from electron-spin- or nuclear-spin-dependent processes) have been developed for their unique advantages in biological applications, but have until recently been limited to realizations using non-biological probes1,2,3 or measurements under ex vivo conditions4,5,6,10. We previously reported the development of a library of magneto-responsive fluorescent protein (MFP) variants derived from the LOV2 domain (broadly termed MagLOV), which exhibit fluorescence signals with large magnetic-field effects (MFEs)8 (Fig. 1a). With this work, we demonstrate that at room temperature, we can detect optically detected magnetic resonance (ODMR)11,12 in living cells expressing these fluorescent proteins, including at the single-cell level. The ODMR signature implies a quantum system with properties and dynamics influenced by the local environment, opening up a broad range of possibilities for cellular biosensing1. The ODMR arises from electron spin resonance (ESR) that we propose originates from a spin-correlated radical pair (SCRP)11,13 (Fig. 1b) involving the LOV2 domain non-covalently bound flavin cofactor chromophore. This theory is based on previous evidence14 and supported by the MFE, ODMR and spectroscopic studies we present.
a, Structure of AsLOV2 PDB 2V1A58 with MagLOV 2 mutations highlighted. Spin transitions driven by radio-frequency (RF) fields in the presence of a static magnetic field are optically detected via fluorescence measurements. LED, light-emitting diode. b, Simplified photocycle diagram in the case of a large external magnetic field. The radical pair is born in a triplet state \(| {\rm{T}}\rangle \) with spin projections \(| {{\rm{T}}}_{0}\rangle \), \(| {{\rm{T}}}_{+}\rangle \) and \(| {{\rm{T}}}_{-}\rangle \) (refs. 20,21) and undergoes field-dependent singlet–triplet interconversion to the singlet state, \(| {\rm{S}}\rangle \), driven by nuclear-electron spin–spin interactions. c, Microscope measurement of a single cell expressing MagLOV 2 showing an MFE of about 50%. For MFE measurements, the magnetic field was switched between 0 mT and 10 mT, here with a period of 20 seconds. The intensity over time is integrated over pixels covering the single cell, with a background photobleaching trendline removed. MFE is calculated as \(({\mathcal{I}}-{{\mathcal{I}}}_{\mathrm{off}})/{{\mathcal{I}}}_{\mathrm{off}}=\Delta {\mathcal{I}}/{{\mathcal{I}}}_{\mathrm{off}}\). d, Data from a single cell expressing MagLOV 2 shows an ODMR signal with about 10% contrast. The static field B0 is about 21.6 mT. The blue line (shading) is the mean (standard deviation) of all single-cell data in a field of view (about 1,000 cells). Inset: microscope image cropped to a single cell expressing MagLOV 2. Scale bar, 2 μm. e, The static magnetic field B0 was varied by adjusting the magnet's position, and the ODMR spectra recorded. The blue line shows the theoretical prediction for the resonance frequency of an electron spin with gyromagnetic ratio \({\overline{\gamma }}_{e}=28\,{\rm{MHz}}\,{{\rm{mT}}}^{-1}\) or ge = 2.00, with the shaded region representing uncertainty (±0.25 mT) in the magnetic-field strength (as determined by a Hall probe) at the sample position.
Both MFE and ODMR signals are straightforward to detect in cells on a standard wide-field fluorescence microscope, supporting further development and application of this discovery. Beyond the ease of detecting MFPs' magnetic resonance via emission, MFPs are advantageous over other candidate spin sensors for biological uses because they can be expressed directly in the host organism, allowing direct coupling and regulation by biological processes, and because their performance can be engineered genetically, such as through rational design or directed evolution. This engineerability is demonstrated through a selection approach previously reported8 and here used to generate protein variants specialized for sensing applications.
We demonstrate applications of MFPs as reporters that can be used for lock-in signal amplification in noisy measurement environments (as often encountered in biological applications15), and to enable signal multiplexing by engineering variants with differing dynamic responses. We also show that the MagLOV MFE is attenuated by interaction with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) contrast agents, with a dose-dependent effect consistent with spin relaxation, implying MagLOV's ability to sense the surrounding environment. Finally, we realize applications to spatial imaging; because the ODMR resonance condition depends on the static magnetic field at the location of the protein, it is possible to use gradient fields (as in MRI) to determine the spatial distribution of MFPs with scattering-independent measurements of a sample's fluorescence. We demonstrate this by building a fluorescence MRI instrument based on a small-animal MRI coil with a one-dimensional magnetic gradient, which we apply to simultaneously localize the depth position of multiple bands of bacterial cells embedded in a three-dimensional volume. Ultimately, this work represents a proof of principle for MFPs and their applications, which may develop into a paradigm of quantum-based tools for biological sensing, measurement and actuation.
Reaction yield detected magnetic resonance (RYDMR; a form of ODMR) is both a diagnostic test for the existence of a proposed SCRP16 and, owing to its relative simplicity, an effective measurement modality for performing readout from quantum-sensing devices in biological and materials applications1,2,17,18,19. ODMR studies the spin dynamics of such systems through the application of oscillating radio-frequency magnetic fields, B1, resonant with spin transition energies, and facilitates optical readouts through light emission or absorption. SCRPs are transient reaction intermediates, often generated by (photoinitiated) rapid electron transfer from a donor (in biological systems, often an aromatic amino acid) to an acceptor—here flavin mononucleotide (FMN), which serves as the field-sensitive fluorophore in our system. As electron transfer occurs under conservation of total spin angular momentum, the total spin of the radical pair is defined by that of its molecular precursor (either a singlet \(| {\rm{S}}\rangle \) (S = 0) or a triplet state \(| {\rm{T}}\rangle \) (S = 1), where S is the total spin quantum number). If the radicals in the pair are weakly coupled, the spin system is created in a superposition of the uncoupled states. Consequently coherent interconversion occurs between the \(| {\rm{S}}\rangle \) and \(| {\rm{T}}\rangle \) states, driven by the interactions between electron and nuclear spins (such as 1H and 14N; Fig. 1b). At zero and low static magnetic fields, this interconversion occurs rapidly involving all four states, but at higher fields, singlet–triplet mixing is restricted to \(| {\rm{S}}\rangle \) and \(| {{\rm{T}}}_{0}\rangle \) with \(| {{\rm{T}}}_{\pm }\rangle \) energetically isolated from \(| {\rm{S}}\rangle \) and \(| {{\rm{T}}}_{0}\rangle \) by Zeeman splitting20,21. Importantly, singlet and triplet radical pairs have different fates: whereas the singlet pair is able to recombine to yield the ground-state donor and acceptor, the triplet cannot do so and instead forms other forward photoproducts (for example, by protonation or deprotonation), a route also open to the singlet pair. Under continuous illumination, the impact of the field on the singlet–triplet interconversion can be detected conveniently if either donor or acceptor or both form fluorescent excited states. In this case, a drop in fluorescence with an applied strong (about 10 mT) magnetic field (B0) is expected for a triplet-born pair as mixing into the recombining singlet state is impeded; hence, the system exhibits an MFE. Meanwhile, application of an additional resonant radio-frequency field (B1) would reconnect \(| {{\rm{T}}}_{0}\rangle \) with \(| {{\rm{T}}}_{\pm }\rangle \), leading to an increase in fluorescence intensity, measured as ODMR.
This hypothesis motivated consideration of MFE and ODMR measurements as approaches to confirm that the radical pair mechanism of MagLOV is triplet-born20. Previous studies have similarly explained MFEs arising from interactions between a flavin cofactor and protein in terms of the SCRP mechanism22,23,24,25,26,27,28, with the most prominent example being cryptochromes implicated in avian magnetoreception29,30,31,32. Furthermore, radical-pair intermediates are known to form in the LOV2 domain Avena sativa phototropin 1 (AsLOV2) variant C450A (the precursor protein to MagLOV)33, as well as in related LOV domains34,35,36. Parallel with our results, ODMR has recently been reported in purified enhanced yellow fluorescent protein (EYFP) at room temperature, and in mammalian cells at cryogenic temperature10, and subsequent preprints have reported ODMR in purified protein solutions of Drosophila melanogaster cryptochrome (DmCry), mScarlet-flavin and MagLOV at room temperature, as well as mScarlet-flavin in Caenorhabditis elegans at room temperature32,37.
First, we measured the MagLOV MFE (see example trace in Fig. 1c) using a custom-built fluorescence microscopy platform, confirming that the variant MagLOV 2 exhibits a large MFE of \(\Delta {\mathcal{I}}/{{\mathcal{I}}}_{\mathrm{off}}=-50 \% \), where \({{\mathcal{I}}}_{{\rm{on}},{\rm{off}}}\) is the fluorescence intensity when the electromagnet is on or off, and \(\Delta {\mathcal{I}}={{\mathcal{I}}}_{{\rm{off}}}-{{\mathcal{I}}}_{{\rm{on}}}\). In Fig. 1d, we show the ODMR resonance of a single cell and the ODMR resonance averaged over many (about 1,000) cells in a field of view. As expected, the signal-to-noise is significantly improved by averaging over many cells; however, it is also possible to extract an ODMR signal from a single cell, with an ODMR contrast of 10% (Fig. 1d). The remarkable per-cell magnetic sensitivity of η0 = 26 μT Hz−1/2 (Supplementary Note 1) is afforded by a combination of optical detection and the high spin polarization of the radical-pair system1. Next, we recorded ODMR spectra at various static (B0) fields by adjusting the z position of the static magnet (Fig. 1e). The central ODMR resonance follows the expected ESR relationship \({f}_{\mathrm{RF}}={\bar{\gamma }}_{e}{B}_{0}\) (with \({\bar{\gamma }}_{e}\) the electron gyromagnetic ratio), confirming that the radio-frequency field is driving spin transitions of a spin-1/2 electron. Finally, we performed additional control experiments confirming the ODMR signal's source, verifying against negative controls that an ODMR signal is present only when the MagLOV protein is present (Supplementary Note 2).
The AsLOV2 domain has been widely used as a starting point for engineering optogenetic and other light-dependent protein functionalities38. For MFPs, depending on a target application (such as lock-in signal detection, multiplexing or sensing), one could choose to optimize for metrics including MFE size, rate of MFE saturation, ODMR contrast, ODMR saturation rate and others. Here we demonstrate this potential by performing selection to improve MFE contrast and saturation rate, generating variants specialized for applications demonstrated later in our work.
Starting from ancestor variant AsLOV2 C450A (refs. 8,39), we used directed evolution to create variants of MFPs (summarized in Supplementary Note 3). This engineering process involved successive rounds of mutagenesis (introducing all single amino acid changes to a given variant), followed by screening of samples from this variant library to select for increased MFE magnitude, eventually yielding MagLOV 2. To demonstrate the possibility of selecting on another metric using the same methodology, we further engineered MagLOV 2 by selecting for maximization of saturation rate (rather than magnitude) of MFE, producing ‘MagLOV 2 fast'. We chose four variants to characterize in detail, which was done both using single-cell microscopy (Fig. 2a) and measurement of bulk cell suspensions (Supplementary Note 4).
a, MFP variants were engineered by mutagenesis and directed evolution; from AsLOV2 R2 to MagLOV 2 selection was performed to increase the MFE magnitude at saturation, whereas MagLOV 2 fast was selected for increased rate (that is, reduced time constant τ when the MFE with time t is modelled as e−t/τ (ref. 25), shown in red fit). In these measurements, a magnetic field of B0 = 10 mT was switched on and off with a period of 20 seconds. The traces shown are the average (and standard deviation, shaded) over multiple periods. As a result, part of the variability results from the background photobleaching curve fit which attempts to match the true background curve (see Supplementary Note 9 for details). b, A similar experiment was performed using ODMR on-resonance, with a constantly applied static field of B0 = 21.6 mT and corresponding resonant field B1 frequency of ωRF = 604 MHz switched on and off with a 20-second period, averaged as above. Both sets of experiments were performed in identical imaging set-ups with an illumination intensity of about 800 mW cm−2 at 450 nm. Note that B0 in a is half that of B0 in b, explaining why the ODMR contrast is in some instances larger than the MFE.
The observed differences in MFE can be interpreted based on past work investigating flavin magnetic-field-sensitive photochemistry: MFE enhancement kinetics (that is, time to MFE saturation) are determined by the ratio between the rates that donor and acceptor free radicals return to the ground state25. With the mutations introduced in MagLOV 2 fast, the time constant of the response is decreased, which may indicate that the acceptor return rate increases relatively to the donor. Interestingly, we observe the ODMR contrast and rates of each variant differ significantly (Fig. 2b), but not necessarily in simple correlation with MFE magnitude. This raises the possibility of engineering orthogonal fluorescence signatures, expanding again the number of tags available for multiplexing. For instance, with further engineering the total might be (number of emission colours) × (number of resolvable MFE signatures) × (number of resolvable ODMR signatures).
Adopting the SCRP model prompts consideration of the electron donor and acceptor identities. Both previous studies33,35 and our spectral data (Fig. 3) support the identification of the acceptor molecule as the FMN cofactor. For all variants of MFPs expressed in cells, we find that the wavelength-resolved fluorescence intensity modulated by the applied magnetic field (\(\Delta {\mathcal{I}}\)) (Fig. 3a,b) matches the FMN emission spectrum39,40, supporting that both MFE and ODMR are detected on the flavin emission. The excitation spectrum shows vibrational fine structure (Fig. 3c) and is in excellent agreement with the dark-state absorption spectrum of AsLOV2 C450A (ref. 41), confirming that the emission originates from bound FMN. Furthermore, this corroborates control experiments (Supplementary Note 2) that show that observed ODMR signatures are not a result of cellular autofluorescence. The absorption spectrum of purified MagLOV 2 fast, before and after continuous irradiation with blue light, is shown in Fig. 3d (the full temporal evolution is provided in Supplementary Note 4). The slow formation of the stable radical FMNH• after several minutes of illumination is characterized by the appearance of a broad band featuring 2 peaks centred around 575 nm and 615 nm, as observed for AsLOV C450A, and accompanied by the expected decrease in ground-state absorption, centred around 450 nm (ref. 41). At later times, most of the flavin is converted to the fully reduced form, FMNH−, resulting in a rise in absorption around 325 nm, although some remains present as FMN and FMNH•. The blueshift in MagLOV-bound FMN absorption relative to AsLOV C450A, evident both in the excitation and absorption spectra, may indicate a change in polarity of the flavin binding pocket. The observed photostability of MagLOV correlates with the slow formation of FMNH• on a timescale of minutes in these conditions. In comparison, related flavoproteins, such as cryptochrome, are reduced to the semiquinone state within seconds, even under much weaker irradiation intensities42. Unlike the recently reported MFE in mScarlet3 and FMN mixtures, which rely on a bimolecular reaction between the excited-state mScarlet3 and a fully reduced flavin in solution28, MagLOV requires no pre-illumination or additives for an MFE to develop as the FMN is non-covalently bound.
a, Normalized emission spectra with 450-nm excitation acquired for cell suspensions in PBS buffer. The spectra have been smoothed with a moving average filter of 1-nm bandwidth. b, Wavelength dependence of magnetic-field-induced change of emission intensity where \(\Delta {\mathcal{I}}={\mathcal{I}}({B}_{0}=10\,{\rm{mT}})-{\mathcal{I}}({B}_{0}=0\,{\rm{mT}})\). It is noted that here we display the absolute intensity change as division by \({\mathcal{I}}({B}_{0}=0\,{\rm{mT}})\) would obscure the wavelength dependence. A moving average filter of 1-nm bandwidth was applied to the spectra. c, Normalized excitation spectra for 510-nm emission for bulk MagLOV cell suspensions in phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) buffer. Vibrational fine structure (multiple peaks) in the S0 → S1 and S0 → S2 bands (where Sn is the nth excited singlet state) centred at about 450 nm and about 350 nm, respectively, indicates that the emitting flavin is bound. d, Ultraviolet–visible absorption spectrum of purified MagLOV 2 fast at different times after the onset of blue LED illumination. Inset: a reduced wavelength range with the characteristic absorption of FMNH•. Literature reference spectra are shown as dashed lines41,59,60. e, Proposed photoscheme. Following photoexcitation (kExc), the excited singlet flavin (1FMN*) can either emit a photon (kF) or undergo intersystem crossing (ISC) to the excited triplet state (3FMN*). The primary radical pair (RP1) is formed by electron transfer (ET) from a nearby donor, and can undergo singlet–triplet interconversion, which is altered in the presence of an applied magnetic field (B). Only the overall singlet RP can undergo back-electron transfer (BET) to reform the ground state, whereas either RP can form secondary (perhaps spin uncorrelated) radicals (RP2) through protonation and/or deprotonation reactions (kH/Dep). These long-lived secondary radicals return to the ground through slow redox reactions (kFMNH, kD).
The formation of FMNH• from the excited triplet state, 3FMN*, probably proceeds via initial formation of FMN•− in an SCRP on a nanosecond timescale as in AsLOV C450A (ref. 33), followed by slow protonation. Alternatively, FMNH• could be formed by proton-coupled electron transfer. A proposed photoscheme is given in Fig. 3e, and a model based on this photoscheme is simulated in Supplementary Note 5, which successfully fits both the experimental MFE and ODMR data. In cryptochrome, the SCRP is formed by a cascade of electron transfers along a tryptophan tetrad30; however, a single donor aromatic amino acid can be sufficient, as demonstrated by the magnetosensitivity of cryptochrome-mimicking flavomaquettes43,44 and FMN bound inside the bovine serum albumin protein45. Regarding the donor species, single-point mutations in AsLOV2 C450A leading to quenching of the emissive NMR signal suggest W491 as the electron donor46, which was corroborated by isotopic labelling of Trp residues47. However, given the extent of mutations in the variants studied here, we cannot confirm that W491 is still the counter-radical. For example, in the structurally related iLOV-Q489, derived from the Arabidopsis thaliana phototropin-2 (AtPhot2) LOV2 domain, transient absorption spectra revealed that a neutral tryptophan radical, Trp•, is formed in conjunction with FMNH•, and photoinduced flavin reduction in single-point mutations of selected tyrosine and tryptophan residues suggested that several amino acids might be involved in SCRP formation48.
Our library of MFP variants shows differences in the rate and magnitude of response across both MFE and ODMR characterization (Fig. 2). Where such differences can be engineered orthogonally between variants, they open the possibility of using libraries of MFP reporters as a multiplexing tool to extract several signals from a single measurement modality (Fig. 4). As a demonstration, we characterized two cell populations expressing different MFP variants, for which distributions of MFE saturation timescales fit to single cells show strong separation (Fig. 4b). This enabled population decomposition when we applied a classification algorithm to a mixed population of about 2,000 cells (Fig. 4c). The classifier was trained on MFE traces normalized by amplitude (on a per-cell basis), meaning that it utilizes only the relative shape of the curves and not the magnitude of the MFE. Therefore classification is robust to scaling or offsets in the absolute brightness of the signal, as might be caused by scattering or autofluorescence (which pose practical limits on many sensing applications as described in Supplementary Note 6). Future application of this subpopulation labelling technique would benefit from engineering of variants with greater variation in dynamics such that the separation of histograms (as in Fig. 4b,c) is significantly greater than each population's intracellular variability.
a, MagLOV variants can be used to label cell populations, which can be identified when mixed based on differing MFE responses. b, Exponential curves with timescale parameter τ were fit to the MFE of each cell in each field of view. Here populations are measured separately, illustrating that MagLOV 2 has a greater MFE saturation timescale than AsLOV R5. c, Populations were mixed in an equal ratio and a classifier (Methods) trained on the time-series data in b was used to classify the mixture into two subpopulations. d, Schematic of the microfluidic chip, composed of single-cell-wide trenches (vertical channels). Cells were engineered to weakly express MagLOV and co-express mCherry for ground-truth identification, and mixed with another cell population expressing only EGFP. Cells are classified based on MFE response, demonstrating the possibility of identifying MagLOV reporters mixed with other, non-magnetic responsive fluorescent reporters in the same spectral range, and under conditions where MagLOV produces only a small signal. e, Cropped view of single trenches, with cells circled in red as identified by a cell-segmentation algorithm. Scale bar, 2 μm. f, Time series of the 450-nm illumination fluorescence for the individual cells depicted in e over time, as a magnetic field B0 = 10 mT is switched on and off (red line). Traces for each cell in the trench (grey) and the average over all the cells in the trench (black) are shown. g, Confusion scatter plots for classifying whether cells express MagLOV or EGFP based on magnetic response, taking presence of mCherry fluorescence (red highlights) as ground-truth control and using the MFE lock-in value as the predictor. The balanced accuracy by cells and by trenches is 0.99. h, The standard deviation σ of the lock-in values in g is calculated between cells in each of the trenches (blue histogram), and between all cells in all trenches.
Using a microfluidic set-up (in which populations of five to eight clonal cells are confined in individual trenches; Supplementary Note 7), we further investigated the sources of intracellular variability of MFP variants, and demonstrate the possibility of lock-in detection in weak signal environments. With MFE-based lock-in detection45, cells with minimal MagLOV expression could be identified distinctly from cells expressing enhanced green fluorescent protein (EGFP)49 with a balanced accuracy of about 0.99 (using a second fluorescence reporter, mCherry, as ground truth), with accuracy improving when averaging over a trench compared with distinguishing single cells (Fig. 4e–g). This approach allows variability to be attributed to inter-clonal or intra-clonal sources; we observe that mean intra-trench variability (quantified by standard deviation over cells in one trench) is approximately half that of the variability over all MagLOV-positive cells (Fig. 4h). This suggests that approximately one-quarter of the total variance arises from intra-clonal noise sources (for example, phenotypic variability over two or three generations, camera and accompanying measurement noise), with inter-clonal sources (longer-term phenotypic variability, variation in local environment) contributing the remaining three-quarters.
Methods for the spatial localization of fluorescence signals in biological samples such as cell cultures and tissue samples are of significant interest for both diagnostics and treatment development50,51. However, techniques based on localization using fluorescence, for example, fluorescence-modulated tomography, are challenging owing to the inherent scattering and absorbing nature of tissue, and the requirement to localize the fluorescence via detailed modelling and inversion of the optical signal52. As such, we sought to explore whether MagLOV could be used as a fluorescent marker localized by optically detected MRI.
First, we tested localizing MagLOV in the wide-field microscope set-up, using a permanent magnet to vary the resonance condition across the field of view (Fig. 5a). The sequence of images acquired during a radio-frequency B1 frequency sweep was integrated over cross-sections in which the B0 field is approximately constant, yielding an image (Fig. 5b) where the frequency of peak response (y axis) denotes the position in space along the z axis, which varies across a 0.5-mm field of view as anticipated for a field gradient of 1 mT mm−1.
a, Schematic of the wide-field microscopy set-up for demonstrating localization of cells in a two-dimensional plane. The permanent magnet creates an approximately linear gradient field B0 along the z axis, perpendicular to the radio-frequency B1 field (which rotates at the Larmor frequency around z) generated by the radio-frequency coil. The frequency of B1 is scanned while the entire field of view is imaged. b, Subsequently, the images are divided into regions (red highlight in a) and integrated over that region. The integrated brightness versus frequency forms a one-dimensional spatial map—in this case, the sample is present in the entire field of view, thus we see a diagonal line, shifting by about 14 MHz over the 0.5-mm field of view as anticipated for the 1 mT mm−1 field gradient. c,d, Schematic of the custom-built MRI set-up illustrating the optical illumination and collection paths (c) and the magnetic-field gradient inside the resonant MRI coil (d). e,f, We embedded cells expressing MagLOV 2 fast (chosen for its ODMR contrast, fast saturation and low overall brightness to make detection challenging) into a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) sample at two different positions along the coil axis separately (e) and simultaneously (f). Lock-in ODMR detection was used to locate the samples along the coil axis. The red and blue curves are raw measurements, and the grey shaded regions are after processing with a deconvolution algorithm (which uses the known ESR linewidth from Fig. 1 but makes no assumption about the number or location of peaks). The location of the samples is identifiable on their own, and resolvable via deconvolution together. Against a ground-truth separation of 7.5 mm, deconvolved individual samples had a calculated peak separation of 6.6 mm and the combined sample 6.1 mm. Using the individual sample data to calibrate the measurement yields a combined-sample distance estimate of approximately 6.9 mm.
Next, we converted a preclinical MRI 28-mm-diameter ‘birdcage' radio-frequency coil, used for creating a spatially highly homogeneous B1 radio-frequency field at 500 MHz, into an optically detected fluorescence MRI instrument via integration of a fibre-coupled illumination system and imaging using a photodiode (Fig. 5c,d and Supplementary Note 8). It is noted that the photodiode is in effect a ‘single-pixel' detector, meaning that it collects no spatial information and directional scattering of light would cause no reduction in information of final signal (apart from a possible decrease in absolute brightness). As the static B0 field is swept, the radio-frequency field B1 is switched on and off such that the ODMR contrast can be measured via lock-in detection. We found that good localization could be achieved when isolating single samples at different positions (Fig. 5e), and despite an increase in noise, deconvolution of the signal enabled two samples at different depths to be simultaneously localized (Fig. 5f) to within about 0.6 mm of a calibrated ground truth. We note that the generation of homogeneous radio-frequency fields at about 500 MHz within living systems (including humans) is an active area of research with known working designs for different species and anatomies53. In this way, our approach forms an alternative method for spatially resolved and scattering-insensitive sensing of genetically encodable fluorescent proteins.
We next sought to determine whether MagLOV could function as a quantum sensor of its local environment. Although FMN is bound within the protein scaffold, we hypothesized that it might exhibit magneto-optical properties that depend on nearby paramagnetic species, analogous to nitrogen-vacancy centres in nanodiamond-based sensing approaches2,54,55. To test this, we diluted purified MagLOV 2 fast samples to 3.7 μM in solutions containing the paramagnetic contrast agent gadolinium (total spin S = 7/2; Gd3+ chelated as the MRI contrast agent gadobutrol). We anticipated that these freely diffusing paramagnetic species would act like diffusing point dipoles, modulate the dipolar interactions of the radical pair, and lead to enhanced relaxation and characteristic attenuation of the MFE contrast. This hypothesis was confirmed by our measurements (Fig. 6), which show that, despite the constrained cofactor geometry, MagLOV exhibits a clear dose-dependent reduction in MFE signal with increasing paramagnetic ion impurity concentration. We note that there was no visual change in the microscopy images, nor any gadobutrol concentration-dependent difference in absolute brightness of the sample, indicating that the chelated gadolinium did not cause protein denaturation or aggregation, or FMN dissociation. This result implies that MFPs could be used as an in situ, in vivo quantum sensor, which, analogous to other quantum-sensing modalities, opens up possible applications as a sensor of the cellular microenvironment.
a, The MFE contrast of purified MagLOV 2 fast is measured at varying concentrations of the paramagnetic contrast agent gadobutrol, demonstrating a reciprocal dependence on concentration, consistent with spin relaxation and indicating that MagLOV is sensitive to its surrounding spin environment. For each gadobutrol concentration, the contrast was measured at three spatially separated fields of view. Insets are cartoon depictions of the solution with Gd (left) and without (right). Red arrows illustrate the local magnetic field generated by Gd; black arrows indicate rotational motion. b, The MFE time trace is shown for three points on the dose dependence curve of a. In general, we observed significantly lower MFEs for purified protein compared with in-cell measurements (see Supplementary Note 1 for further data).
Directed evolution, enabled by straightforward fluorescence screening, has proved to be a powerful technique to engineer proteins exhibiting magneto-sensitive responses. The advent of stable, highly responsive magneto-sensitive proteins represents a paradigm shift; transitioning from quantum biological systems studied primarily for scientific interest towards engineerable tools with potential for widespread application. Previously, existing natural and engineered proteins (typically designed as model representatives of the cryptochrome) showed comparatively small responses to magnetic fields, required sophisticated experimental apparatus for study, did not exhibit measurable MFEs in living cells, were prone to rapid light-induced degradation, and were therefore unsuitable for biotechnological applications or high-throughput set-ups required for directed evolution22,27,43. These challenges are simultaneously overcome by MagLOV. Furthermore, compared with other candidates for quantum biological sensing, two unique advantages of a protein-based system are: (1) that it is configurable, that is, significant engineering improvements can be made (relatively simply) by changing the DNA encoding the protein; and (2) that it can be endogenously expressed, enabling coupling of its expression to diverse genetic or chemical signals. MFPs therefore are the best of both worlds—enabling sensitive quantum measurements while also being highly amenable to engineering and cellular integration.
As we demonstrate, this system unlocks a host of measurement applications. First, modulating MagLOV fluorescence by applying a time-varying magnetic field enables multiplexing to expand the number of fluorescent reporters that can be distinguished in a single experiment. Meanwhile, lock-in could enable fluorescent protein measurements to be performed where previously not possible owing to poor signal quality, for example, if only small quantities of a fluorescent marker can be produced, or in tissue measurements where autofluorescence and scattering are limiting factors15,45,56,57. Second, we demonstrate that using ODMR it is possible to spatially localize fluorescence signals in a three-dimensional volume, utilizing the fact that resonance occurs only when the required conditions are met by (orthogonally controllable and tissue-penetrating) radio-frequency and magnetic fields. Finally, magnetic resonance sensing can be used to determine the presence of molecular species creating local magnetic noise in our protein's environment. This could be used to measure the presence of free radicals or paramagnetic metalloproteins, both critical to a number of physiological processes55.
Although the properties of the MFPs we generated are superior to previously studied proteins that exhibit MFEs, their optimization is by no means complete. Much like fluorescent proteins, we expect that MFPs may be engineered to make general improvements, such as to solubility, photostability, spectral response and quantum yield, as well as further enhancing their MFE and ODMR properties. There also remains significant opportunity for mechanistic investigation utilizing the wide array of techniques previously applied to biological systems exhibiting MFEs and ESR22,31,34. Crucially, mechanistic understanding and high-throughput bioengineering (similar to and more advanced than we demonstrate here) can go hand in hand—for instance, enabling the creation of rational design tools that can optimize MFE and ODMR properties for a specific application. Finally, we hope that the development of MFPs can serve as the starting point for a class of magnetically controlled biological actuators, whereby application of a local magnetic field can be be coupled to downstream cellular effects—such a technology would be of significant biomedical and biotechnological utility.
T7 Express Escherichia coli (New England Biolabs, C2566) were used for MFE and ODMR experiments in Figs. 1–3. E. coli MG1655 cells were used for multiplexing and mother machine lock-in experiments in Fig. 4, owing to its effectiveness as a heterologous gene expression strain, and past optimization of mother machine chip loading protocols for this host. MG1655 was also used for Fig. 5. NEB Dh5α E. coli was used for plasmid production and genetic engineering steps, but not experimental data collection.
TB auto-induction medium (Formedium, AIMTB0260) was used for growth of liquid cultures of T7 Express strains. LB medium (Formedium, LBX0102) was used for growth of MG1655 strains in liquid cultures and agar plates (Formedium, AGR10). M9 medium (Formedium, MMS0102; supplemented with 0.2 g l−1 Pluronic F-127 (Sigma Aldrich, P2443-250G), 0.34 g l−1 thiamine hydrochloride, 0.4% glucose, 0.2% casamino acids, 2 mM MgSO4, 0.1 mM CaCl2, 50 mg l−1 EDTA Na2.2H20, 5 mg l−1 FeCl3, 0.84 mg l−1 ZnCl2, 0.13 mg l−1 CuCl2.2H2O, 0.05 mg l−1 CoCl2, 0.1 mg l−1 H3BO3 and 0.016 mg l−1 MnCl2.4H2O) was used for mother machine experiments. Antibiotic stocks were prepared as follows: 100 mg ml−1 carbenicillin (Formedium, CAR0025) dissolved in 50% (v/v) ethanol and 20 mg ml−1 chloramphenicol (Fisher, 10368030) dissolved in 100% (v/v) ethanol; stocks were diluted 1,000× for experiments.
Whole plasmid sequencing was performed by Plasmidsaurus using Oxford Nanopore Technology.
Derivative plasmids of those generated by directed evolution (for example, MagLOV + mCherry) were constructed using the EcoFlex kit (Addgene kit 1000000080) following standard EcoFlex protocols61. Level 1 assemblies were performed using NEB BsaI-HFv2, NEB T4 DNA Ligase Reaction Buffer (B0202S) and Thermo Scientific T4 DNA Ligase (EL0011). Level 2 assemblies were performed using NEBridge Golden Gate Assembly Kit BsmBI-v2 and NEB T4 DNA Ligase Reaction Buffer (B0202S).
Level 1 PCR cycling protocol: 30× (5 min at 37 °C → 5 min at 16 °C) → 10 min at 60 °C → 20 min at 80 °C.
Level 2 overnight PCR cycling protocol: 65× (5 min at 42 °C → 5 min at 16 °C) → 10 min at 60 °C → 20 min at 80 °C.
pTU1 was used as a negative control plasmid (Supplementary Note 2); it is part of the EcoFlex kit.
pRSET-AsLOV_R2, pRSET-MagLOV, pRSET-MagLOV-2 and pRSET-MagLOV-2_R11-f plasmids (used for Figs. 1–3) contain MFP variants created via directed evolution (described below) under control of T7 promoters. It is noted that despite the T7 promoter being chemically inducible in its host strain, experiments were performed without induction (that is, transcription was owing to leaky expression).
pVS-01-03_EGFP expressing EGFP was used for microfluidic experiments. It was assembled solely from EcoFlex parts (pTU1-B-RFP, pBP-J23108, pBP-pET-RBS, pBP-ORF-eGFP and pBP-BBa-B0012).
pVS-02-04_mCherry+MagLOV was used for microfluidic experiments. EcoFlex Golden Gate assembly was used to create a plasmid that expresses both MagLOV and mCherry. In a level 1 reaction, pVS-01-01_mCherry and pVS-01-02_MagLOV were assembled using the following bioparts from the EcoFlex kit. pVS-01-01_mCherry: pTU1-A-lacZ, pBP-J23108, pBP-pET-RBS, pBP-ORF-mCherry, pBP-BBa_B0012. pVS-01-02_MagLOV: pTU1-B-RFP, pBP-J23119, pBP-pET-RBS, BP-01_MagLOV, pBP-BBa_B0012. The BP-01_MagLOV sequence with overlaps was gained via PCR using NEB Q5 polymerase with pGA-01-01 as template using primers MagLOV_EcoFlex_FWD and MagLOV_EcoFlex_REV. Both plasmids were combined in a subsequent Level 2 EcoFlex reaction with the pTU2-a backbone, leading to pVS-02-04_mCherry+MagLOV. The predicted translation rate is 250.
pRH-01-17, pGA-01-47 and pGA-01-49 were used for multiplexing experiments and spatial localization. The coding sequences (CDSs) for AsLOV2 R5, MagLOV 2 and MagLOV 2 fast, respectively, were codon optimized and the ribosome binding site (RBS) designed to maximize constitutive expression using the CDS Calculator and RBS Calculator tools of ref. 62. The sequence was synthesized as a gene fragment (Twist Bioscience) and assembled into a level 1 plasmid as above, again using the J23119 promoter.
MFP expression levels were estimated for constructs using ref. 62. For pVS-02-04, an unoptimized codon sequence and RBS were used, resulting in a predicted translation rate in its expression strain (E. coli MG1655) of 261. For pRSET constructs, the predicted translation rate in expression strains (E. coli NEB T7) is 50 × 103. For pRH-01-17, pGA-01-47 and pGA-01-49, the optimized codon sequence and RBS yielded a predicted translation rate in E. coli MG1655 of 106; as such this represents a 20× increase in predicted rate over the pRSET strains and a 4,000× increase in predicted translation over pVS-02-04. It is noted that these predictions also do not account for the dual expression in pVS-02-04 of mCherry.
We previously reported the directed evolution of MFPs resulting in MagLOV8. Directed evolution of MFP variants was initiated with AsLOV2 C450A39, a protein originally isolated from the common oat Avena sativa. The mutagenesis protocol was based on methods developed previously63. In particular, we used 142 PCR reactions with NNK semi-random primer pairs (supplied by Eton Bioscience) to make all single amino acid mutants of AsLOV2 (404–546) C450A at all locations, which produces a library containing 2,982 protein variants, although (owing to the pooled nature of the screen) it is likely that not all variants are present for each round. This library was transformed into E. coli strain BL21(DE3) and spread across about ten LB-agar plates for screening. After transformation, plates were left for 2 days at room temperature (25 °C) as this was observed to lead to stronger magnetoresponses. Screening used the same fluorescence photography system described in ref. 63, with addition of an electromagnet (KK-P80/10, Kaka Electric) below the sample, which was turned on/off every 15 seconds using an Arduino Uno while acquiring successive images. After each screen, images were processed to identify the single colony (across all plates) with the largest fractional change in fluorescence between the magnet on/off conditions. The selected colony was picked (manually) from the corresponding plate, and used as the basis for the next round of mutagenesis and selection. Subsequent mutagenesis rounds used the same primers to avoid re-making the primer library with each mutation (which we hypothesize selects against multiple consecutive nearby mutations), except before rounds leading to AsLOV R5, MagLOV R7 and MagLOV 2, at which point primers in the library that overlapped mutated sites were updated to the current variant's sequence. In total, 11 rounds of mutagenesis were undertaken, all selecting for amplitude of MFE with the exception of round 11 (MagLOV 2 fast) where mutants from round 10 were selected based on fast response time (quantified as the mutant with the largest contrast measured in the first 100 ms following magnetic-field change). After each round of mutagenesis, selected variants were sequenced using the Sanger method (supplied by Quintara Biosciences). The variants measured in this paper and some intermediaries are provided in Supplementary Note 3.
Plasmids expressing EGFP, MFP variants or negative control plasmids expressing only antibiotic selection markers were used to transform E. coli NEB T7 via heatshock at 42 °C for 45 seconds. Colonies were grown overnight at 37 °C on Agar plates, then a single colony was picked, resuspended in 1 ml LB media, spread onto a plate, and grown at 37 °C for 24 hours followed by 24 hours at room temperature to form a lawn of cells. Cells from this lawn were then resuspended in PBS buffer.
Both MFE and ODMR imaging were performed using a custom-built wide-field epifluorescence microscope (Supplementary Notes 10 and 11). From cells suspended in PBS buffer, an approximately 1-μl droplet was confined between two glass coverslips (SLS MIC2162) atop a stripline antenna printed circuit board (Supplementary Note 12). The antenna printed circuit board was placed inverted on the microscope stage and either an electromagnet (for MFE) or a permanent magnet (for ODMR) was positioned above. The antenna printed circuit board was used to mount the MFE experiments (despite not delivering any B1 field) to that ensure lighting conditions were consistent with those in ODMR experiments. For MFE experiments, the electromagnet supplied a static field of 0 mT or 10 mT at the sample. For ODMR experiments, the permanent magnet supplied a static field (B0 ≈ 20 mT) in the z direction (Supplementary Note 13), perpendicular to the radio-frequency field (B1 ≈ 0.2 mT) supplied by the stripline antenna (Supplementary Note 14). It is noted that the imaging step and exposure times (Supplementary Note 11) were maintained across experiments unless otherwise stated, whereas light-emitting-diode power levels (Supplementary Notes 9 and 15) were varied between samples to account for differing expression levels of MFPs.
Data processing was performed using Python (v3.11.11), SciPy (v1.15.1)64, NumPy (v.126.4)65, scikit-learn (v1.6.1)66 and scikit-image (v0.20.0)66.
We define the MFE by \(\Delta {\mathcal{I}}/{{\mathcal{I}}}_{\mathrm{off}}\), where \({\mathcal{I}}\) is the fluorescence intensity, \({{\mathcal{I}}}_{\mathrm{off}}\) is the fluorescence intensity immediately before switching the magnet on, and \(\Delta {\mathcal{I}}={\mathcal{I}}-{{\mathcal{I}}}_{\mathrm{off}}\). Similarly, for ODMR measurements, the detrended signal is defined to be \(\Delta {\mathcal{I}}/{{\mathcal{I}}}_{\mathrm{bg}}\), where \({{\mathcal{I}}}_{\mathrm{bg}}\) is a background curve fit to the data as described in Supplementary Note 9, and \(\Delta {\mathcal{I}}={\mathcal{I}}-{{\mathcal{I}}}_{\mathrm{bg}}\).
Wavelength-resolved MFE measurements (Fig. 3 and Supplementary Note 4) were performed in bulk using a home-built cuvette-based fluorescence spectrometer described in ref. 24. In brief, a 450-nm laser diode was used to excite the sample, which was housed inside custom-built Helmholtz coils. The emission was collected through a lens pair and dispersed by a spectrograph (Andor Holospec) onto a charge-coupled-device array (Andor iDus420).
Cells were resuspended in PBS buffer at an optical density of about 0.3 and placed in a quartz fluorescence cuvette (Hellma). Similarly to the wide-field measurements, a magnetic field was switched on and off with field strength 10 mT and a period of 20 seconds (10 seconds on, 10 seconds off). The sample was illuminated at 450 nm (Oxxius LBX-450), at roughly 1 kW m−2, and the emission was filtered using a 458-nm longpass filter (RazorEdge ultrasteep).
Excitation spectra in Fig. 3c and Supplementary Note 4 were recorded using an Edinburgh Instruments FS5 Spectrofluorometer, using a xenon lamp as an excitation source. Emission spectra (Fig. 3a) and time-resolved emission spectra (Supplementary Note 4) were recorded on the same instrument, but using an HPL450 (450 nm) for excitation. It is noted that this instrument set-up suffers from laser excitation artefacts, which create the small peaks near 550 nm and 650 nm.
To demonstrate the potential of using MFE for multiplexing in fluorescence microscopy, we first cloned strains of AsLOV R5 (one of the variants evolved between AsLOV R2 and MagLOV; Supplementary Note 3) and MagLOV 2 into E. coli MG1655. Cells were grown in liquid culture from −80 °C freezer stocks, then resuspended in PBS and made up to equal concentration as measured by optical density (OD600). Individually, and as a 1:1 mixture, monolayers of cells were sandwiched between a glass slide and cover for MFE imaging.
We initially characterized each variant in isolation, measuring fluorescence traces for approximately 2,000 cells in a field of view (Fig. 4a). The same processing was performed as in Fig. 2 but to individual cells, yielding a value of τ (the MFE saturation timescale) for each cell, which allows measurement of each sample's intrapopulation variability (Fig. 4b).
To perform the population decomposition, we trained a machine-learning classifier (XGBoost67) on the dynamic data (that is, fluorescence versus time) used to generate Fig. 4b. Before training, and for classification, the MFE response (\(\Delta {\mathcal{I}}/{{\mathcal{I}}}_{\mathrm{off}}\)) curves of each cell were normalized to range from 0 to 1. Without further training, this classifier was used to classify a combined population of cells (Fig. 4b) mixed with 1:1 ratio (determined by OD600). The ratio of the two variants by classification was R5:ML2 = 0.9:1, which probably differs from the anticipated 1:1 ratio owing to both classifier accuracy and typical measurement errors expected from the use of OD600 to quantify cell counts68.
Cells expressing EGFP49 and cells co-expressing mCherry69 with very weak MagLOV expression (expression level predicted62 at about 0.025% of that in multiplexing experiments) were grown in liquid culture, then mixed and loaded into a microfluidic ‘mother machine' chip consisting of two rows of evenly spaced trenches fed by a central channel bringing fresh media into the system and carrying excess cells out. After a few hours of growth, each trench was filled only with cells whose ancestor is the cell at the closed end of the trench (that is, they may be considered clonal; Fig. 4d). The cells were imaged using the same wide-field fluorescence microscopy set-up as described previously. Microfluidic manufacturing and set-up techniques are described in Supplementary Note 7. Algorithms for cell segmentation and image processing and quantification are described in Supplementary Note 16. Quantitative lock-in classification results are provided Supplementary Note 17. In Fig. 4g, the classifications are shown including the decision boundaries based on the control (565-nm fluorescence) and based on the lock-in value. The graphs can be interpreted as confusion matrices: top-left quadrant are false negatives, top-right quadrant are true positives, bottom-left quadrant are true negatives, and bottom-right quadrant are false positives.
The fluorescence MRI instrument (described in detail in Supplementary Note 8) used a permanent neodymium rare-earth magnet to impose a static magnetic field, B0, which varied linearly along the z axis with a gradient strength of approximately 0.95 T m−1 at the radio-frequency isocentre of the coil used. Our methodology assumes that (1) this gradient is uniform within the coil and (2) there is no variation in x−y planes; violation of these assumptions would degrade the localization accuracy. The imaging isocentre is both spatially the centre of the radio-frequency coil's sensitive area and was chosen to be at 17.8 mT corresponding to an ESR Larmor frequency of f ≈ 500 MHz, the coil's resonant frequency. The magnetic field was modulated axially by a Helmholtz coil such that \({B}_{z}={B}_{z}^{{\rm{magnet}}}(z)+{B}_{z}^{{\rm{Helmholtz}}}(t)\) where t is time. By varying the Helmholtz coil current between ±1 A, we were able to shift the effective magnetic field by ±5.87 mT around the resonant condition, providing a total field of view of approximately 12 mT along the gradient direction (see Supplementary Note 8 for a detailed calculation). The device is therefore able to scan spatially in one dimension as the Larmor frequency remains fixed at \(f={\bar{\gamma }}_{e}{B}_{z}(z,t)\), where different spatial positions are brought into resonance through current modulation while maintaining fixed radio-frequency excitation.
To simulate a three-dimensional volumetric sample, we cast a 40-cm3 volume of PDMS (matching the region of uniformity of the radio-frequency coil) with empty cylinders of 0.4-mm-diameter embedded in it perpendicular to the B0 gradient and separated in z by 7.5 mm. We filled these cylinders with cells expressing MagLOV 2 fast (centrifuge-concentrated liquid culture), measuring at different depths both individually and together. Intensity data were processed (grey solid area in Fig. 5e,f) using a Lucy–Richardson deconvolution64 with a Gaussian impulse response function of fixed width 3 mm, which is estimated based on the ODMR linewidth of 80 MHz (see Supplementary Note 8 for further details). It is noted that although the deconvolution algorithm uses the known ODMR linewidth (and hence point-spread function), it does not make any assumption about the number or location of peaks.
This fluorescence MRI instrument was designed and built to achieve proof of concept and is limited in terms of signal-to-noise performance of the optical path and photodiode sensor, as well as B0 field uniformity in the target volume. Future development could significantly improve its capabilities via implementing full three-dimensional control of B0 field gradients, an endoscope-type imaging system to collect light with x–y spatial information from the target volume without sensor perturbation by radio frequency or magnetic field, addition of fast optical lock-in to the fluorescence excitation or measurement, optical path re-design to improve collection and filtering efficiency and reduce stray light, and indeed directed evolution of variants with faster ODMR response dynamics to allow averaging over more on/off cycles.
Purified MagLOV 2 fast solutions for the data in Fig. 6 were prepared as follows. It is noted that all MagLOV proteins expressed include a His-tag at the N-terminus. Protein was purified following using HisPur Cobalt Resin (Thermo Scientific) following the manufacturer's protocol. Purified protein was suspended in PBS buffer with 30% glycerol and stored at −80 °C.
We estimated the concentration the purified protein samples via the method used in ref. 70 to determine the extinction coefficient of LOV-based fluorescent proteins. First, purified protein was heated to 95 °C for 5 minutes to dissociate the FMN from the protein (we assume that one FMN corresponds to one protein, as free FMN should be removed by the protein purification process). The concentration of flavin (and hence protein) was then determined by performing a serial dilution and measuring absorbance at 450 nanometres (A450nm), using the free FMN extinction coefficient ϵFMN = 12,200 M−1 cm−1 (ref. 71).
Contrast agent experiments were performed on the wide-field microscope configured for MFE detection, using a six-chamber microfluidic chip (ibdi μ-Slide VI 0.5 Glass Bottom) to hold samples of gadobutrol (CRS Y0001803) diluted in PBS buffer in serial dilution (MagLOV concentration the same for all conditions). Measurements were acquired in a randomized sequence (to compensate for any stray light photobleaching or time and sequence correlated effects) by programming 6 × 3 fields of view (6 chambers of differing concentrations, 3 fields of view in each chamber), then automatically performing an MFE measurement acquisition at each field of view. For each MFE acquisition, 10 periods of duration 40 seconds (20 seconds magnet on, 20 seconds off) were acquired at 450-nm light-emitting-diode intensity 280 mW cm−2, 100-ms image exposure time and 10-mT magnetic-field strength. Optimization of experimental protocols for spin-relaxometry-based sensing using MagLOV or other radical-pair fluorescent proteins will be required for broader application; here we demonstrate simply that the spin-radical pair of MagLOV is indeed sensitive to its surroundings despite the flavin being bound.
To consider the expected effect of paramagnetic species upon the MagLOV MFE more quantitatively, we note that paramagnetic impurities can be modelled as stochastic point dipoles that modify the T1 or T2 relaxation rates in radical-pair kinetics72, thereby changing the contrast. We therefore anticipated that a characteristic timescale for this process, τ, would scale as \(\tau \approx \frac{1}{{k}_{{\rm{STD}}}}+{\left(\frac{1}{T}+R[{{\rm{Gd}}}^{3+}]\right)}^{-1}\) where kSTD is a stochastic decoherence rate, T is a semiempirical T1 or T2 relaxation time, and R the effective relaxivity of the paramagnetic impurity. We therefore expect contrast to fit a functional form of approximately (a[x] + b)−1 + c, and indeed this is consistent with Fig. 6.
Further information on research design is available in the Nature Portfolio Reporting Summary linked to this article.
The experimental data that support the findings of this study are available at https://doi.org/10.25446/oxford.30344995. Plasmid sequencing data have been made available on the European Nucleotide Archive (ENA) with the identifier PRJEB83586.
Code required to generate the figures are available at https://doi.org/10.25446/oxford.30344995.
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We thank K. Henbest, E. Vatai and L. Gerhards for discussions; D. Cubbin for help with the ultraviolet–visible characterization; I. Robertson and P. Reineck for assistance with proof-of-concept experiments; C. Carr and G. Mazur for lending of radio-frequency equipment; P. Freemont for gift of an EcoFlex kit; and the ChimeraX73 team for protein-structure rendering tools used in Fig. 1. G.A. and S.S. were supported by funding from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (UKRI-BBSRC; grant number BB/T008784/1). J.J. and V.T.-F. were supported by funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (UKRI-EPSRC; grant number EP/W524311/1). I.K. and H.S. are supported in part by the UKRI-EPSRC under the EEBio Programme Grant, EP/Y014073/1, and EP/X017982/1 and UKRI-BBSRC (grant number BB/W012642/1). R.H. is supported by funding from the UKRI-EPSRC (grant number EP/Y034791/1). A.Š., L.M.A. and C.R.T. are supported by the European Research Council under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, grant agreement number 810002, Synergy Grant: ‘QuantumBirds', C.R.T. thanks the US Army. J.J.M. acknowledges support from the Novo Fonden (NNF21OC0068683). H.S. recognizes support from the Philip Leverhulme Prize.
These authors contributed equally: Ana Štuhec, Vincent Spreng
Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
Gabriel Abrahams, Vincent Spreng, Robin Henry, Idris Kempf, Jessica James, Kirill Sechkar, Scott Stacey, Vicente Trelles-Fernandez & Harrison Steel
Department of Chemistry, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
Ana Štuhec, Lewis M. Antill & Christiane R. Timmel
Institute of Pharmacy and Molecular Biotechnology (IPMB), Faculty of Engineering Sciences, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany
Vincent Spreng
Institute of Quantum Biophysics, Department of Biophysics, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon, Republic of Korea
Lewis M. Antill
The MR Research Centre, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark
Jack J. Miller
Calico Life Sciences, South San Francisco, CA, USA
Maria Ingaramo & Andrew G. York
Department of Physics, School of Science, RMIT University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Jean-Philippe Tetienne
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G.A., H.S., A.Y. and M.I. conceived of the study. G.A., A.Š., A.Y., M.I., C.R.T., J.M.M., J.-P.T. and H.S. designed the experiments. G.A., V.S., R.H., I.K., J.J., K.S., S.S. and V.T.-F. prepared samples and strains, and performed the microscopy experiments and analyses. M.I. performed the directed-evolution experiments. A.Š. performed the spectroscopy experiments. G.A., J.M.M. and H.S. designed and built the MRI set-up. G.A., H.S., I.K., J.J. and K.S. designed and built the microscopy and microfluidic platforms and data processing tools. L.M.A., A.Š., G.A., J.-P.T. and C.R.T. developed the simulations and theory for the SCRP mechanism. G.A. and H.S. coordinated work and wrote the paper with input from all authors. H.S. supervised the project.
Correspondence to
Gabriel Abrahams or Harrison Steel.
M.I. is a cofounder and shareholder of Nonfiction Laboratories, a start-up company developing magnetogenetic control for therapeutic proteins.
Nature thanks Seok-Hyun Yun and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Peer reviewer reports are available.
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Supplementary Notes 1–17.
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Abrahams, G., Štuhec, A., Spreng, V. et al. Quantum spin resonance in engineered proteins for multimodal sensing.
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Alkenes typically have trigonal planar geometries at each terminus, with favourable σ- and π-bonding leading to a bond order of ~2. Here we consider unusual alkenes that possess an extreme form of geometric distortion, termed hyperpyramidalization. In a hyperpyramidalized alkene, geometries deviate remarkably from the typical trigonal planar alkene geometry, leading to weak π-bonding and abnormal alkene bond orders approaching 1.5. Cubene and 1,7-quadricyclene, first validated in 1988 and 1979, respectively, but overlooked for decades since, are the focus of the present study. We leverage their unusually weak π-bonds in cycloadditions, enabling the construction of complex scaffolds and access to previously unrealized chemical space. The origins of the unusually low bond orders were investigated using computational methods. These efforts are expected to prompt future studies of molecules that display hyperpyramidalization or atypical bond orders.
Carbon–carbon double bonds (C=C), known as alkenes, are essential functional groups in organic chemistry. It is well understood that the geometry at each alkene carbon is typically trigonal planar, as seen in ethylene (1), which leads to maximal p-orbital overlap in the alkene (Fig. 1a). However, it is also possible to deviate from this conventional trigonal planar geometry when an alkene is generated in a confined ring system1. The present study focuses on a specific type of geometric change known as pyramidalization2,3, which is exemplified in the pyramidalized depiction of ethylene 1-p, where the alkene carbon substituents no longer reside in the typical alkene plane. Pyramidalization ultimately leads to a weaking of the π-bond and lowering of bond order to below the typical bond order near 2 (ref. 4), as will be discussed more thoroughly later in this Article.
a, Geometry and bond order of typical ethylene (1), and reduction of alkene bond order by pyramidalization of carbon termini (1-p). b, Pyramidalized alkenes (2–7) with non-integer bond orders, wherein there is little or no resonance stabilization. c, Non-integer alkene bond orders as a result of resonance effects, as exemplified by 8 and 9. d, Present study of cubene (10) and 1,7-quadricyclene (11), which have discrete hyperpyramidalized alkenes possessing non-integer bond orders near 1.5. The trapping and elaboration of 10 and 11 permit access to rigid, three-dimensional scaffolds. The depicted bond orders for 2–11 are calculated MBO values (⍵B97X-D/def2-TZVP). Me, methyl; Bn, benzyl group.
Several examples of alkenes that display pyramidalization are shown in Fig. 1b, along with their calculated Mayer bond orders (MBOs)5,6. Compounds 2–5 are historical examples of so-called pyramidalized alkenes that have been studied as early as the 1950s2,3, but have escaped the attention of synthetic chemists in recent years. trans-Cyclooctene (6) also displays pyramidalization and has been valuable in bioorthogonal chemistry7,8. Recently, anti-Bredt olefin 7 and derivatives9,10,11, which display multiple forms of geometric distortion including pyramidalization, have emerged for use in synthesis. Compounds 2–7 have weakened π-bonds, as seen by the decreased alkene bond orders below 2 that we have calculated (MBOs ranging from 1.68 to 1.91; see the Supplementary Information, part II, section J). Thus, this indicates a relationship between geometric distortion in the form of pyramidalization and non-integer bond orders for discrete alkenes. This is notable as non-integer alkene bond orders are most commonly associated with resonance effects based on historical studies12. For example, the non-integer bond order values computed for stable compounds such as s-trans-butadiene (8) and benzene (9) (Fig. 1c) are well known to arise from resonance (MBOs of 1.87 and 1.41, respectively; see the Supplementary Information, part II, section J).
Can discrete alkenes with even greater pyramidalization and smaller bond order values, particularly those near 1.5, be leveraged in chemical synthesis? This curiosity is notable as single, double and triple bonds are most commonly associated with integer bond orders of 1, 2 and 3, respectively, whereas such extreme weakening of a discrete bond is not yet a common consideration in synthetic chemistry. Moreover, the general use of pyramidalized alkenes in chemical synthesis has remained underdeveloped.
The present study focuses on two alkenes that display severe pyramidalization, which we describe here as hyperpyramidalization. This is exemplified by structure 1-hp (Fig. 1d) and the two targets of interest: cubene (10) and 1,7-quadricyclene (11). While intriguing due to their unconventional geometries and unusually weak π-bonds (that is, bond orders of ~1.5), 10 and 11 were considered especially attractive targets owing to their possible use as building blocks in synthesis. Notably, rigid aliphatic frameworks have attracted considerable attention in medicinal chemistry in recent years due to their potential to improve drug-like properties and provide well-defined exit vectors13,14,15. Attractive features include increased metabolic stability16 due to higher C–H bond dissociation energies resulting from strain17, as well as improved lipophilicity and solubility13. Several recent studies of cubane functionalization are available, thus highlighting the interest in this burgeoning area18,19,20,21. As quadricyclanes have seen use in drug discovery22, bioorthogonal chemistry23 and energy storage applications24, new methods to synthesize substituted versions could be valuable in several applications.
Cubene (10) and 1,7-quadricyclene (11) were first studied decades ago in seminal experimental25,26 and computational studies27,28,29,30, but have been largely overlooked in modern synthesis. Key prior experimental studies of cubene include: (1) Eaton's 1988 report of cubene generation from 1,2-diiodocubane using tert-butyllithium25, wherein a promising Diels–Alder trapping using a highly reactive diene (that is, 11,12-dimethylene-9,10-dihydro-9,10-ethanoanthracene) was reported, as well as the formation of cubane dimers that inferred the possibility of cubene intermediacy; and (2) Eaton's 1995 synthesis of Kobayashi-type cubene precursor, which bears a trialkylsilyl group and adjacent iodide group on the cubane scaffold31. Using the same diene trap as in their prior studies, cubene generation was validated, providing evidence that Kobayashi-type precursors32 to cubene are promising. Since these seminal contributions, no further cubene experimental studies have been reported, presumably due to harsh reaction conditions used in the case of the 1988 study, the limited scope of trapping to one cycloaddition partner25,31 and some challenging or ‘capricious' steps33 in the synthesis of Kobayashi-type cubene precursors. With regard to quadricyclene, several constitutional isomers have been considered in early reports34. We focus here on the 1,7-isomer, first generated by strong base-mediated dehydrohalogenation in a seminal 1979 study by Szeimies26. Formation of a Diels–Alder adduct with anthracene in modest yield confirmed the intermediacy of this highly distorted alkene, with subsequent reports35,36 demonstrating additional trapping reactions. However, the necessity of strong base and competitive formation of another isomer in some cases (that is, the 1,5-quadricyclene)34 have limited the scope of the early studies and the practical use of 11 in synthesis. A general, mild approach to 1,7-quadricyclene (11) has not been reported.
Here, we describe studies of cubene (10) and 1,7-quadricyclene (11) (Fig. 1d), including the development of their practical synthetic methods and computational investigations of these unusual strained intermediates. We report access to suitable Kobayashi-type precursors, as well as the generation and in situ trapping of the desired hyperpyramidalized alkenes in cycloadditions. Reactions proceed under mild conditions and provide access to unusual structures typically bearing four highly substituted contiguous carbon centres within a rigid, three-dimensional framework (that is, 12 or 13). Moreover, we demonstrate the further elaboration of cycloadducts to give compounds with considerable structural complexity, including heterodimer 14 containing both the cubane and quadricyclane motifs. The geometric distortion parameters that ultimately lead to the low bond orders for cubene (10) and 1,7-quadricyclene (11), which are largely attributed to hyperpyramidalization of the alkene termini, are discussed. Overall, our discoveries provide a simple means to access exceedingly intricate structures of potential value for medicinal chemistry and other applications13,14,15,18,19,20,21,22,23,24, while also inspiring the future design and strategic manipulation of new intermediates that display hyperpyramidalization or non-integer bond orders in chemical synthesis.
The caged structures of cubene (10) and 1,7-quadricyclene (11) are severely distorted from conventional alkene geometries, which, in turn, leads to unusual properties. As prior ab initio calculations of cubene (10)27,28 and 1,7-quadricyclene (11)29,30 structure and properties were reported decades ago using the methods available at the time, we performed calculations on these compounds using modern levels of theory. More specifically, geometry-optimized structures, MBOs, olefin strain energies and diradical characters were computed using appropriate levels of theory (Supplementary Information, part II, sections B–D, J and K).
Several properties are notable (Fig. 2a). Both cubene (10) and 1,7-quadricyclene (11) are highly strained, possessing calculated olefinic strain energies of approximately 50 and 66 kcal mol−1, respectively. Confinement of the π-bond within the caged structures leads to severe geometric distortions associated with the alkenes in the form of bending and pyramidalization. More specifically, in cubene, the angles around the alkene termini are 93°, 93° and 99°, deviating substantially from typical alkene geometry (that is, 120° bond angles). These angles are a result of the rigid cubane framework. Correspondingly, rather than being trigonal planar, the alkene termini are pyramidalized to a severe extent. The pyramidalization angle as defined by Borden (Φp(Borden))37, which is applicable for alkenes with C2V symmetry, is calculated for cubene (10) to be 85.2°. This parameter shows the remarkable extent by which the positioning of the two alkene substituents deviate from what is typically observed in a planar alkene. We also calculated the pyramidalization angle (Φp) of 10 to be 31.6° as defined by Haddon's π-orthogonal average vector theory38, which is generally useful for any given pyramidalized alkene carbon. This is an unusually high Haddon pyramidalization angle, and we propose that alkenes with severely pyramidalized termini—where the average Φp of the alkene termini exceeds 20°—can be classified as hyperpyramidalized alkenes. Similar hyperpyramidalization is present in the geometry-optimized structure of 1,7-quadricyclene (11), which has bond angles of 63°, 93° and 112°, reminiscent of the parent quadricyclane. The Haddon pyramidalization angles (Φp) at the alkene termini are 33.2°, reflective of even greater pyramidalization in 11 compared with 10. The overall geometric distortion leads to both cubene and quadricyclene having substantial diradical character (y0) of 14% and 13%, respectively, rendering them diradicaloids39,40. These values are purely theoretical, based on configuration interaction calculations on the ground states (rather than transition states). These diradical characters are notably larger than the diradical characters of non-distorted alkenes (7% calculated for 1) and are related to the higher reactivity for 10 and 11 compared with typical alkenes. Lastly, we highlight the C=C bond lengths and the MBOs5 of these unusual tetra-substituted alkenes. The alkene bond lengths in 10 and 11 are 1.38 Å and 1.35 Å, respectively, slightly longer than the standard 1.33–1.34 Å alkene bond length. However, the MBOs are calculated to be approximately 1.59 and 1.55 for 10 and 11, respectively, opposite to what would be expected based on the pioneering empirical model of bond order described by Pauling41,42. This reflects the unusual nature of these weak, non-conjugated π-bonds, which will be further discussed later in this Article.
a, Structural properties of 10 and 11. Geometry optimizations and MBOs computed at the ωB97X-D/def2-TZVP level of theory. Olefin strain energy calculated at the CCSD(T)/cc-pVTZ level of theory. Diradical character (y0) calculated at CASPT2/CASSCF(6,6)/aug-cc-pVDZ level of theory. b, Synthesis of cubene precursor 17 from amide 15 based on Eaton's seminal route. c, Synthesis of 1,7-quadricyclene precursor 20 from ketal 18. Φp, pyramidalization angle; TMP, 2,2,6,6-tetramethylpiperidide; t-Bu, tert-butyl; i-Pr, iso-propyl; DMF, N,N-dimethylformamide; DMAP, 4-dimethylaminopyridine; Bu, butyl; HMDS, hexamethyldisilazane; Ph, phenyl; Tf, trifyl; Et, ethyl.
With the aim of generating cubene (10) and quadricyclene (11) under mild reaction conditions, which, in turn, could enable broad use in synthesis, we sought to prepare Kobayashi-type precursors to these strained intermediates. Kobayashi precursors, typically characterized by the presence of a silyl substituent adjacent to a good leaving group (that is, sulfonates or halides) have become the go-to substrates for accessing strained intermediates32. The exact choice of silyl substituent and leaving group for a given Kobayashi precursor typically stems from a combination of factors including synthetic accessibility, stability and efficiency of strained intermediate generation as observed empirically. Although Kobayashi precursors typically require multistep synthesis, they allow efficient strained intermediate generation and trapping under mild, robust and user-friendly reaction conditions.
The synthesis of silyl iodide 17, the precursor to cubene (10), was accomplished using Eaton's strategy31 with modified protocols (Fig. 2b). Beginning from readily available amide 15, which was purchased or can be made from the corresponding carboxylic acid33, β-silylation was achieved using a two-step sequence involving: (1) metallation and iodination with N-iodosuccinimide (NIS); and (2) halogen–metal exchange and quenching with trimethylsilyl chloride. Next, the amide was elaborated into the required leaving group through a three-step sequence involving reduction of the amide, oxidation to the carboxylic acid, and Barton decarboxylation, ultimately affording silyl iodide 17. Although efforts to improve the route efficiency (for example, direct silylation of amide 15) were unsuccessful, the current optimized protocols allow access to cubene precursor 17 in a reproducible and scalable fashion.
As a Kobayashi precursor to 1,7-quadricyclene (11) was not known, we developed the scalable route to silyl triflate 20 shown in Fig. 2c. It begins from readily available known bromo-ketal 18, which is easily synthesized from commercially available bicyclo[2.2.1]hetp-5-en-2-one43. Halogen–metal exchange, followed by quenching with triethylsilyl chloride, enabled the introduction of the required silicon substituent. Treatment of the silylated intermediate with HCl gave rise to ketone 19 in 92% yield. Subsequent triflation provided a norbornadiene intermediate, which then underwent photochemical (2 + 2) cycloaddition44 to construct the quadricyclane core and furnish Kobayashi precursor 20.
With access to the Kobayashi precursors, we commenced experimental studies on these strained intermediates, beginning with efforts to generate and trap cubene (10) in Diels–Alder reactions (Fig. 3a). As noted earlier, Eaton had shown one example of a presumed Diels–Alder trapping31 using 11,12-dimethylene-9,10-dihydro-9,10-ethanoanthracene, yet the corresponding use of Kobayashi precursors to cubene (10) in Diels–Alder chemistry with other dienes has not been reported. Thus, we examined the reaction of silyl iodide 17 with a fluoride source in the presence of trapping agents to give cycloadducts (12). The fluoride source, stoichiometry, solvent, additives and temperature were varied, ultimately leading to the identification of optimal reaction conditions that involved the use of tetrabutylammonium fluoride (Bu4NF) in tetrahydrofuran (THF) at 40 °C. Under these mild conditions, precursor 17 was typically fully consumed.
a, Conditions: 17 (1 equiv.), trapping agent (1.5–10 equiv.), Bu4NF (5.0 equiv.), THF (0.05 M), 40 °C, 2–71 h, sealed vessel. For entry 8, the observed regioselectivity ratio (r.r.) indicates distribution of constitutional isomers, with the major isomer formed being depicted. b, Access to homocubane 39 via Diels–Alder cycloaddition, followed by dyotropic rearrangement. c, (5 + 2) cycloaddition with oxidopyridinium 40 to furnish azabicycle 41. d, (3 + 2) cycloaddition to introduce a five-membered ring fused to the cubane scaffold. e, Alternative approach to five-membered ring fused to cubane scaffold (that is, 44) involving oxidative cleavage of cycloadduct 32. Bu, butyl; Me, methyl; Ph, phenyl; Et, ethyl; Boc, butyloxycarbonyl; Bn, benzyl.
As shown in Fig. 3a, our optimal conditions were amenable to the use of a variety of electron-rich dienes as trapping agents. The use of anthracenes 21 and 23 gave their respective cycloadducts 22 and 24, in excellent yields (entries 1 and 2, respectively). As will be discussed later in more detail, it should be noted that these and other products made via this methodology have unusually complex structures, bearing four consecutive highly substituted carbon atoms (3° or 4°). We also examined the use of diphenylisobenzofuran (25) and furan 27, which furnished oxygenated cycloadducts 26 and 28, respectively (entries 3 and 4, respectively). Moreover, when pyrroles 29 and 31 were used, the respective azabicycles 30 (entry 5) and 32 (entry 6) were obtained. When electron-poor cyclopentadiene 33 was utilized (entry 7), the formation of adduct 34 was achieved, probably via an inverse electron-demand Diels–Alder cycloaddition45,46. Use of other Diels–Alder trapping agents, such as tropolone 35 and exocyclic diene 37, gave the respective adducts 36 and 38 (entries 8 and 9, respectively).
The methodology permits access to several other exotic structures, as shown in Fig. 3b–e. Using 9-bromoanthracene as a diene trap, followed by treatment of the resulting Diels–Alder cycloadduct with silica gel, facilitated a dyotropic rearrangement47, ultimately yielding homocubane 39 in 57% yield (Fig. 3b). X-ray crystallography was used to corroborate this atypical structure. Moreover, this example highlights the privileged ability of cubanes to undergo unique rearrangements48 to access related caged moieties. We were also delighted to find that other types of cycloaddition were possible. Use of oxopyridinium 40 led to [3.2.1] azabicycle 41, which boasts an unusual scaffold bearing three consecutive fully substituted stereocentres (Fig. 3c), presumably via (5 + 2) cycloaddition49 of the cubene (10) intermediate. (2 + 2) and (3 + 2) cycloadditions were also explored, several of which were unsuccessful, presumably because of unfavourable kinetics in forming a cubane-fused [2.2.2]-propellane or five-membered ring. However, the trapping of cubene (10) with ene carbamate 42 (ref. 50) delivered pyrrolidine 43, which provides a rare example of a heterocycle-fused cubane derivative51,52,53,54 (Fig. 3d). A related heterocycle, bearing an isomeric pyrrolidine core in comparison with 43, was accessed using an ozonolysis strategy with reductive work-up (32→44; Fig. 3e).
As shown in Fig. 4a, 1,7-quadricyclene (11) generation and Diels–Alder trapping experiments were also performed. Similar to our studies of cubene (Fig. 3a), silyl triflate 20 was treated with fluoride in the presence of a diene trapping agent to give cycloadducts 13. Through experimentation, we found that the use of Bu4NF in THF was generally optimal, although the preferred temperature in our studies of 11 was deemed to be 23 °C (versus 40 °C in our studies of cubene). Stoichiometry and reaction times were empirically optimized for each entry.
a, Conditions: 20 (1 equiv.), trapping agent (3–20 equiv.), BuN4F (5 equiv.), THF (0.05 M), 23 °C, 3–24 h, sealed vessel. Where applicable, observed diastereoselectivities and regioselectivities are reported as a ratio of isomers (diastereomeric ratio (d.r.) or regioisomeric ratio (r.r.), respectively), with the major isomer formed being depicted. aTemperature: 0 → 23 °C. bYield determined by 1H NMR analysis with mesitylene as an external standard. cOnly the depicted diastereomer was observed likely due to instability of the other diastereomer. b, Ene reaction to give 56. c, Elaboration of 45 to give cyclobutenyl-fused norbornene 59. d, Pd/C mediated isomerization of adduct 55 to bridged norbornadiene 60 and hydrogenolysis of 55 to furnish 61 and 62. Bu, butyl; Me, methyl; Ph, phenyl; Et, ethyl; PMB, p-methoxybenzyl; Bn, benzyl; Tf, triflyl.
We were delighted to find that the trapping using 9-methoxyanthracene (23) furnished the desired cycloadduct 45, bearing a bridged bicycle appended to the quadricyclane core (Fig. 4a, entry 1). Of note, this transformation proceeds more efficiently compared with the corresponding report by Szeimies36 (67% versus 38% yield) that utilized a dehydrohalogenation approach with a strong base, rather than the mild Kobayashi-type strategy shown herein. Trapping of furan derivatives 25 and 27 gave rise to oxabicycles 46 and 47, respectively, with only endo products being observed (entries 2 and 3). Moreover, the use of tropolone 35 or tropone 49 afforded bicyclic enones 48 (entry 6) or 50 (entry 7), respectively, in good yields and moderate diastereoselectivities. Lastly, exocyclic dienes 51, 53 and 37 were examined, each possessing a different heterocyclic framework (that is, tetrahydrooxepine, pyrrolidine or oxazolidinone, respectively) as shown in entries 6–8. The use of these dienes in 1,7-quadricyclene (11) trapping experiments provided fused cycloadducts 52, 54 and 55, respectively.
Other experiments involving quadricyclene or cycloadducts were performed, with key results shown in Fig. 4b–d. The Alder-ene reaction55 proceeded readily using 56 to furnish quadricyclane derivative 57, which is adorned with a styrene-containing sidechain (Fig. 4b). This result demonstrates the viability of a group-transfer pericyclic reaction. Attempts to achieve other types of cycloaddition, such as (3 + 2) or (2 + 2) reactions, proved challenging, presumably due to disfavourable reaction kinetics, the instability of potential adducts due to their strain, or a combination thereof. Nonetheless, we pursued alternative approaches to access unique compounds by modifying the highly strained quadricyclane scaffold56. As shown in Fig. 4c, reaction of cycloadduct 45 and dimethyl acetylenedicarboxylate (58)36 gave rise to norbornene 59, bearing a cyclobutene ring, presumably via a regioselective ring-opening cycloaddition process. Other modified scaffolds were accessible using palladium catalysis, as shown in Fig. 4d. Exposure of adduct 55 to catalytic palladium on carbon (Pd/C) led to isomerization57 of the quadricyclane core, giving bridged norbornadiene 60. This could also be achieved thermally, albeit using prolonged reaction times, whereas the reverse reaction occurs using ultraviolet light (Supplementary Information, part I, section G). In addition, treatment of 55 with H2 and Pd/C furnished notricyclane 61 and bridged norbornane 62 (2:1 ratio of separable isomers).
Several features of the synthetic compounds depicted in Figs. 3 and 4 should be emphasized. The products formed from cycloaddition reactions, all arising from just two common Kobayashi precursors (that is, 17 and 20), bear vicinal substitution stemming from the rigid cubane or quadricyclane cores. This is notable given that: (1) methods to prepare cubanes and 1,7-quadricyclanes with vicinal substitution patterns are underdeveloped; (2) having the di-substitution in the form of a ring or bicycle fused to the cubane or quadricyclane framework is rare; and (3) rigid, strained three-dimensional scaffolds are of current interest in medicinal chemistry13,14,15, as discussed earlier, but can often be difficult to access. Thus, the methodology we describe provides a practical means to access new and coveted scaffolds.
With regard to the specific ring systems accessible, we show the possibility of accessing both five- and six-membered rings fused to the cubane or quadricyclane frameworks (for example, 38, 43 and 44 in Fig. 3a and 52, 54 and 55 in Fig. 4a). In the case of products containing bridged bicyclic ring systems, [3.2.2]-, [3.2.1]-, [2.2.2]- and [2.2.1]-ring systems can be made (see entries 1–8 in Fig. 3a, 41 in Fig. 3c and entries 1–5 in Fig. 4a). Some limitations should also be noted. For example, (2 + 2) cycloadditions to give cyclobutyl-fused products have thus far proven challenging. Similarly, additions of nucleophiles to give mono-substituted cubanes or quadricyclanes have been met with mixed results and will be reported separately in due course. Nonetheless, the structural complexity that can be generated by this methodology and derivatization is underscored by the successful modifications of cycloadducts as shown in Figs. 3b,e and 4c,d.
Finally, most products obtained possess four newly formed consecutive, highly substituted carbon centres (3° or 4°), appended to the cubane or quadricyclane cores, which themselves are also composed primarily of 3° carbons. Thus, many of the compounds contain eight to ten consecutive highly substituted carbons (3° or 4°). The low bond order and consequent high reactivity of cubene (10) and 1,7-quadricyclene (11) are essential for enabling access to the exquisite architectures shown herein.
As previously discussed, cubene (10) and 1,7-quadricyclene (11) are unusual alkenes that are geometrically distorted in rather remarkable ways. The two major modes of distortion associated with 10 and 11 are bending and pyramidalization, which result from their rigid caged scaffolds. The impact of geometric distortion can be assessed by various parameters, such as: (1) strain energy, or Schleyer's olefin strain energy58, which provides a useful means to compare similar structures, and their reactivities based on the relationship defined by the Evans–Polanyi principle59, (2) delocalization, as discussed by Sterling, Anderson and Duarte60, and (3) diradical character, which has been used recently to explain an unusual reaction of strained cyclic allenes that plausibly proceeds through a one-electron process40,61. The complex interplay between these parameters is the subject of ongoing investigations and will be described in due course. Nonetheless, in the present study, we focus on the impact of geometric distortion on alkene bonding, given the unusually low bond orders of ~1.5 seen in both cubene (10) and 1,7-quadricyclene (11) and the potential to use bond order as a guiding parameter in synthetic design. We provide insight into the relationship between geometric distortions and bond order, which are ultimately related to the high reactivity of 10 and 11.
Computational studies were performed using ethylene (1) as a model system, with geometric distortions being introduced systematically. For each distorted structure, the alkene bond order5,6 was calculated, with results for bending and pyramidalization summarized in Fig. 5a,b (see the Supplementary Information, part II, section I, for the MBO dependence on bond length). Figure 5a shows the bond order of systematically bent ethylene without pyramidalization. Beginning with ethylene at its equilibrium geometry (1–eq), the expected bond order value of roughly 2 is observed. In the distorted structure 1a, the H–C=C bond angles are increased to ~150°, which gives a slight increase in the bond order (MBO 1.97 → 2.04). Conversely, a slight drop in the bond order is observed when the H–C=C bond angles are contracted to ~94°, as seen in 1b (MBO 1.97 → 1.86). Overall, we conclude that bending of the H–C=C bonds, without pyramidalization, leads to only a minor change in bond order.
a, MBO of systematically distorted ethylene at varying H–C=C bond angles to assess the effect of bending. b, MBO of systematically distorted ethylene at varying pyramidalization angles (Φp). c, Comparison of π molecular orbital (π MO) contour plots and approximate AO composition of π MO of planar ethylene (1c), pyramidalized ethylene (1d) and hyperpyramidalized ethylene (1e). MO structures were obtained at the HF/6-31G(d,p) level of theory. d, Localized depiction of π MOs and calculated HOMOs of ethylene (1), cubene (10) and 1,7-quadricyclene (11). Geometry optimizations were performed at the ωB97X-D/def2-TZVP level of theory. MO structures were obtained at the HF/6-31G(d,p) level of theory. MO surfaces are plotted at an isovalue of ±0.023 a.u. e, Computations of the Diels–Alder reaction of anthracene 21 with either olefin 1, 10 or 11, performed at the ⍵B97XD/def2-TZVP/SMD(THF) level of theory. See the Supplementary Information for details. f, Unification of cubene and quadricyclene cycloadducts provides heterodimer 14. Me, methyl; Bn, benzyl; microED, microcrystal electron diffraction.
A much more pronounced impact on alkene bond order is observed when considering pyramidalization. As shown in Fig. 5b, both Borden (Φp(Borden)) and Haddon (Φp) pyramidalization angles were considered as ethylene was systematically pyramidalized and then hyperpyramidalized. Structure 1c (Φp(Borden) and Φp = 0°) with all bond angles at 120° reflects ethylene near its equilibrium planar geometry, showing the expected alkene bond order value of ~2. Upon syn-pyramidalization of the two ethylene termini, the bond order drops remarkably. For example, in structure 1d (Φp(Borden) ≈ 58° and Φp ≈ 21°), the bond order approaches 1.8. An even more drastic decrease of the alkene bond order was observed upon further increase of the pyramidalization angles. In the extreme case of hyperpyramidalized structure 1e (Φp(Borden) ≈ 98° and Φp ≈ 39°), an alkene bond order approaching 1.4 is calculated. We have also plotted Φp versus bond order for other strained intermediates and observe similar correlations (Supplementary Information, part II, section I). These results generally align with the bond orders and pyramidalization angles of cubene (10) and 1,7-quadricyclene (11), suggesting that hyperpyramidalization is probably the major contributing factor to the low bond order seen in these species. We also highlight a point of contrast between resonance-stabilized alkenes and hyperpyramidalized alkenes. Although both have atypical non-integer bond orders below 2, resonance stabilization leads to increased stability, whereas hyperpyramidalization leads to decreased stability and higher reactivity.
Calculations were performed to gauge how increasing pyramidalization leads to a lowering of the alkene bond order. Orbital occupancy-perturbed MBO analysis62 indicates that the lowering of total alkene bond orders in pyramidalized and hyperpyramidalized alkenes is attributed to the weakening of π-bonding rather than σ-bonding (Supplementary Information, part II, section E). This is consistent with earlier studies by Borden, which suggest weakening of the π-bond in pyramidalized ethylene37. Indeed Borden et al. have shown that the p orbitals that typically constitute the π-bond in planar ethylene instead constitute the σ-bond in highly pyramidalized ethylene, resulting in a drop in CC overlap population37. We also studied the π-bonding in 1c, 1d and 1e and carried out atomic orbital (AO) component analysis63,64,65 (Fig. 5c). The contour plots of the π molecular orbitals in alkenes 1c–1e are shown. As one would expect for non-distorted ethylene with trigonal planar geometry at the alkene termini, orbital 1c–π is composed of nearly 100% p orbitals, arising entirely from the Pz orbital contribution as defined by the xyz axes depiction. Upon pyramidalization as seen in 1d–π, orbital mixing occurs66,67, with the resulting π-bond being composed of roughly 8% s character and 91% p character. With regard to the latter, the Pz contribution drops from 100% to 68%, while the Py contribution increases from 0% to 23%. The increase in the Py contribution is reflected in the contour map of 1d–π and suggested by the change in directionality of the blue lobe, now tilting towards the y axis (see red arrows)68. In the case of hyperpyramidalization (see 1e–π), the s character in the π-bond further increases to 22%, with a corresponding decrease in p orbital contribution to 74%, leading to sp3-like character. The Pz contribution lowers to only 16%, while the Py contribution increases to 58%. The directionality of the lobes (see red arrows) is further tilted towards the y axis, away from the z axis, leading to a substantial reduction in effective hybrid orbital overlap. Overall, the studies shown in Fig. 5c demonstrate that, upon hyperpyramidalization, the substantial decrease in Pz character, with increases in s and Py character, leads to an extreme lowering of the alkene bond order.
An analysis of the π molecular orbitals of cubene (10) and 1,7-quadricyclene (11) is shown in Fig. 5d. In comparison with ethylene (see 1–π), the corresponding orbitals in cubene (10–π) and 1,7-quadricyclene (11–π) have increased s character due to hyperpyramidalization, as seen in pyramidalized variants of ethylene (see discussion of Fig. 5c), and are extended towards the exterior of the caged scaffold66. Moreover, the orbitals shown in 10 and 11 (see 10–π and 11–π, respectively) are no longer parallel68. Instead, the larger lobes are oriented away from one another outside of the caged scaffold, with the smaller lobes pointed towards each other within the cages (see 10–π and 11–π; also see the Supplementary Information, part II, section F & G), ultimately resulting in decreased overlap. Such orbital reorientation is most pronounced in the case of 1,7-quadricyclene (11), as the alkene termini are more pyramidalized in 11 compared with the alkene termini in cubene (10). The decrease in effective π-bonding in 10 and 11, in comparison with ethylene (see highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) 1–π), is also seen in the calculated molecular orbitals HOMO 10–π and HOMO 11–π. This consideration of the π molecular orbitals of 10 and 11 provides an explanation for the weak π-bonding and the consequential low alkene bond orders of the hyperpyramidalized alkene intermediates cubene (10) and 1,7-quadricyclene (11). The weakening of the alkene π-bond upon hyperpyramidalization correlates to an increase of the π HOMO energy, with a corresponding substantial lowering of the π lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO) energy, contributing to high reactivity and reaction exothermicity27.
Calculations were performed to assess the effect of hyperpyramidalization on transition state barriers and reaction exothermicity (Fig. 5e; also see the Supplementary Information, part II, section H, for transition state analysis using density functional theory). The reaction between ethylene (1) and anthracene (21) is calculated to proceed with a high activation barrier (ΔG‡ = 37.1 kcal mol−1) and high enthalpy of activation (ΔH‡ = 23.8 kcal mol−1). The reaction free energy (ΔGr) and enthalpy (ΔHr) are –12.6 and –27.0 kcal mol−1, respectively. By contrast, the corresponding cycloadditions involving the hyperpyramidalized alkenes in cubene (10) and quadricyclene (11) are calculated to be much more exothermic and exergonic, and the computed ΔG‡ for the Diels–Alder reactions of 10 and 11 with anthracene (21) were found to be only 18.7 and 13.8 kcal mol−1, respectively. The exothermicities (ΔHr) for the reactions of 10 and 11 were calculated to be –74.6 and –83.3 kcal mol−1, respectively. Thus, hyperpyramidalization allows cycloadditions to occur readily due to large strain release upon reaction. Consistent with the Bell–Evans–Polanyi relationship, the increase in exothermicity is accompanied by a lowering of the activation barrier by approximately half that amount.
The ultimate consequence of hyperpyramidalization is that cubene (10) and 1,7-quadricyclene (11) react rapidly69 as dienophiles in normal electron-demand Diels–Alder cycloadditions, despite being tetra-substituted without electron-withdrawing groups. Products bearing four newly formed contiguous 3° or 4° carbon centres are readily accessible, thus enabling the introduction of great structural complexity into caged scaffolds. Figure 5f provides a final demonstration of the high level of structural complexity attainable via this methodology. 63-Li was obtained by lithiation of the corresponding alkyne, which, in turn, was prepared in one step from cubene precursor 17 (Supplementary Information, part I, section H). Treatment of this intermediate with 1,7-quadricyclene cycloadduct 48 led to union of the two fragments, ultimately affording heterodimer 14. Of note, the tolerance of both coupling partners to such conditions involving organolithium chemistry bodes well for the future applicability of our methodology in multistep synthesis. Heterodimer 14, the structure of which was confirmed by microcrystal electron diffraction (microED)70, possesses nine 3° or 4° carbon centres that were formed through the cycloaddition methodology and fragment coupling, thus pushing the limits of structural and stereochemical complexity attainable using strained intermediate chemistry.
These studies harness the chemistry of cubene (10) and 1,7-quadricyclene (11) to provide a simple means to access exceedingly intricate chemical structures of value to medicinal chemists. These intermediates are unusual, as they possess hyperpyramidalized alkenes with weak π-bonding and, consequently, bond orders approaching 1.5. As such, we expect these studies will enable the future design and strategic manipulation of other unconventional intermediates that display hyperpyramidalization or non-integer bond orders for use in chemical synthesis.
The general procedure for the generation and trapping of cubene (10) is described as follows. To a 2-dram vial equipped with a stir bar was added cubene precursor 17 (30 mg, 0.10 mmol, 1.0 equiv), followed by the trapping agent (0.15-1.0 mmol, 1.5–10 equiv.). The headspace of the reaction was purged with N2 for 5 min, then THF (1.5 ml) and Bu4NF (1.0 M in THF, 0.5 ml, 0.50 mmol, 5.0 equiv.) were added sequentially via syringe in a single portion. The vial was sealed with a Teflon-lined screw cap and stirred at 1,000 rpm at 40 °C. After the specified reaction time, the reaction vessel was allowed to cool to 23 °C. The crude mixture was filtered through a 0.5 × 2 cm silica gel plug, eluting with EtOAc (10 ml). The eluate was subsequently concentrated under reduced pressure to dryness, and the crude material was analysed by 1H nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. The sample for NMR analysis was then recombined with the crude residue and concentrated. Subsequent purification by flash column chromatography on silica gel or preparative thin-layer chromatography using appropriate eluents, followed by drying of the products under high vacuum, yields the corresponding cycloadducts.
The general procedure for the generation and trapping of 1,7-quadricyclene (11) is described as follows. To a 2-dram vial containing a stirred solution of 1,7-quadricyclene precursor 20 (35.5 mg, 0.10 mmol, 1.0 equiv.) and trapping agent (0.18–2.0 mmol, 1.8–20 equiv) in THF (1.5 ml) was added Bu4NF (1.0 M in THF, 0.5 ml, 0.50 mmol, 5.0 equiv.) in one portion. The pierced septum cap was sealed with melted paraffin wax and the reaction mixture was stirred at 800–1,200 rpm at 23 °C. After the specified reaction time, saturated aq. NH4Cl (2 ml) was added to quench the reaction. The crude mixture was extracted with diethyl ether/pentane (1:1, 3× 2 ml), and the organic extracts were dried over Na2SO4. The crude mixture was concentrated under reduced pressure to dryness, and the crude material was analysed by 1H NMR spectroscopy. The sample for NMR analysis was then recombined with the crude residue, concentrated, and purified by chromatography using appropriate eluents, followed by drying under high vacuum to yield the corresponding cycloadducts.
Experimental procedures, characterization data, computational methods and computational data are provided in the Supplementary Information. Crystallographic data for the structures reported in this Article have been deposited at the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre, under registry numbers CCDC 2446782 (39) and 2456006 (14). Copies of the data can be obtained free of charge at https://www.ccdc.cam.ac.uk/structures. Reprints and permissions information is available at www.nature.com/reprints.
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We are grateful to the NIH-NIGMS and NSF (grant nos. R35 GM139593 for N.K.G., NSF CHE-2153972 for K.N.H. and F31 GM149161 for A.T.M.), the UCLA Cota Robles Fellowship programme (for C.A.R.), the UCLA Graduate Division Dissertation Year Fellowship (for D.C.W.), the Foote family (for A.T.M.), the Stone Family (for D.C.W.) and the Trueblood family (for N.K.G.). We thank T. Kerr (UCLA) for X-ray analysis and microED structural refinement. We thank N. Vlahakis (UCLA) and D. Cascio at the UCLA-DOE X-ray and EM Structure Determination Core Facilities, which are supported by DOE Grant DE-FC02-02ER63421. These studies were supported by shared instrumentation grants from the NSF (grant no. CHE-1048804), the NIH NCRR (grant no. S10RR025631), and the NIH ORIP (grant no. S10OD028644). Calculations were performed on the Hoffman2 cluster and the UCLA Institute of Digital Research and Education (IDRE) at UCLA and the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE), which is supported by the National Science Foundation (OCI-1053575).
These authors contributed equally: Jiaming Ding, Sarah A. French.
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA
Jiaming Ding, Sarah A. French, Christina A. Rivera, Arismel Tena Meza, Dominick C. Witkowski, K. N. Houk & Neil K. Garg
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J.D., S.A.F., C.A.R., A.T.M. and D.C.W. designed and performed experiments and analysed experimental data. J.D. and C.A.R. designed, performed and analysed computational studies. K.N.H. advised on computational findings and manuscript preparation. N.K.G. directed the experimental and computational investigations and prepared the manuscript with contributions from all authors; all authors contributed to discussions. These authors contributed equally: C.A.R., A.T.M. and D.C.W.
Correspondence to
Neil K. Garg.
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Supplementary Figs. 6–108, Tables 1–14, Experimental procedures and Computational details.
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The average age at which girls start puberty has been falling. Credit: Catherine Falls/Getty
When Lola was eight years old, she went through a massive growth spurt and started developing acne. Her mother, Elise, thought Lola was just growing fast because of genes inherited from her father. But when she noticed that Lola had grown pubic hair too, she was floored.
Collection: Coming of age: the emerging science of adolescence
Collection: Coming of age: the emerging science of adolescence
A visit to an endocrinologist in 2023 confirmed that Lola's brain was already producing hormones that had kick-started puberty. Lola had also been struggling emotionally. “She would have panic attacks every day at school,” says Elise, who lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and asked that her surname and Lola's real name be omitted.
Although eight might seem young to start puberty, it's not as rare as it once was. Data show that girls around the world are entering puberty younger than before. In the 1840s, the average age of first menstruation, or menarche, was about 16 or 17; today, it's around 12. The average age for onset of breast development fell from 11 years in the 1960s to around 9 or 10 years in the United States by the 1990s. Some research hints that the trend mysteriously accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic. (Although some data suggest that puberty is happening earlier for boys too, the shift seems to be less pronounced.)
Scientists have found a range of possible drivers for this change, with increasing body weight and obesity almost certainly playing a part. Some researchers suspect that exposure to hormone-disrupting chemicals or stress during childhood could be pushing puberty earlier, but studies have produced conflicting results. The trend has prompted the international organization the Endocrine Society to develop clinical-practice guidelines on puberty, to be published in mid-2026. The guidelines will reconsider how to treat girls on the border between typical and ‘precocious' puberty, which has commonly been defined as before the age of eight in girls, but that some specialists argue should be younger.
Research over the past few years is also making the health risks of early puberty increasingly clear. Studies have linked it to greater risk of conditions including obesity, heart disease, breast cancer, depression and anxiety. Other research suggests that children who go through puberty earlier are more likely to experience discrimination because of their race or ethnicity, or otherwise be treated differently from their peers.
Families, researchers and clinicians are now trying to work out how best to adapt and when to intervene. This might involve medications to pause the process, but also better support and puberty education for children to protect them from some of the psychological and social risks. “We want to intervene right in that moment before people start internalizing some of those feelings of being othered,” says Michael Curtis, a family social scientist at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.
Technically, puberty begins when the brain's hypothalamus begins producing pulses of gondatropin-releasing hormone. What triggers this process isn't fully understood — it's probably a complex interaction between genes and environmental factors. But the result is a hormonal cascade that leads to the release of the sex hormones oestrogen (in girls) and testosterone (in boys), which drive physical changes, including menarche. (The binary terms ‘girls' and ‘boys' are used in this article to reflect language used in studies and by interviewees.)
The drop in average age of menarche from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century is often attributed to improvements in health, such as reductions in infectious disease and malnutrition (see ‘Younger puberty'). This probably sped up growth and sexual maturation. Most researchers assumed that the timing of puberty had remained relatively stable since then. “Studies from the 1960s showed that it was kind of levelling off at 12 and a half years,” says Paul Kaplowitz, a retired paediatric endocrinologist who was at Children's National Hospital in Arlington, Virginia.
Source: K. Sørensen et al. Horm. Res. Paediatr. 77, 137–145 (2012).
In 1969, British paediatrician James Tanner and biologist William Marshall reported one of the most comprehensive studies1 of puberty's timing as part of a two-decade study at a children's home in Harpenden, UK. They observed that breast development is the first outward sign of puberty in girls and that it begins around 11 years old, on average. (For boys, the onset of puberty2 was closer to 12.) The ‘Tanner stages', which demarcate five stages of progress towards sexual maturity, became widely used in medicine and research.
By the late 1980s, however, Marcia Herman-Giddens was questioning Tanner's timings. As part of her work as a physician's associate at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, Herman-Giddens had examined thousands of girls in the United States and observed that some were developing breasts and pubic hair “way younger than the Tanner standards”, she says.
Herman-Giddens and her team set out to develop benchmarks for US children. With the help of physicians from across the country, they collected data on pubertal timing from around 17,000 girls who had undergone physical examinations in physician offices between 1992 and 1993. This showed that the mean age at which breast development started was just under ten years old for white girls and nine years for Black girls. It was the first large study to suggest that puberty was beginning much earlier than Tanner had suggested, at least in the United States.
Do smartphones and social media really harm teens' mental health?
Do smartphones and social media really harm teens' mental health?
In 1997, when the team's findings were published3 the reaction among the scientific community was, largely, disbelief. Anders Juul, a paediatric endocrinologist at the University of Copenhagen, didn't see similar figures in Denmark and, with obesity on the rise, he suspected that US physicians had mistaken fat tissue for growing breasts.
In 2002, however, a second US study reached a similar conclusion4 to Herman-Giddens. And in 2009, Juul and his team reported5 that the mean age of breast development in Copenhagen had fallen from just under 11 years in the early 1990s to just under 10 in the mid-2000s. The change couldn't be attributed to increased weight, because the girls' body mass index (BMI) had not changed. “To our surprise, there were no differences in obesity between the old cohort and the more contemporary cohort,” he says.
A 2020 meta-analysis of 30 studies6 — and the most recent comprehensive review of global trends — revealed that the median age of breast development fell by almost three months each decade between 1977 and 2013. The United States had the earliest onset (a median of 8.8–10.3 years), Africa had the latest (10.1–13.2 years) and Europe and Asia fell in between. An update7 to this study, presented at a 2025 European endocrinology meeting, shows that the trend has continued.
Researchers don't know whether puberty will continue occurring even earlier or at what point it might hit a biological floor. Globally, physicians now typically consider puberty onset between the ages of 8 and 13 in girls as in the normal range.
For years, researchers have been trying to work out why puberty is starting earlier. Of their handful of plausible hypotheses, the worsening obesity epidemic tops the list.
Globally, obesity rates have risen from around 2% of children and adolescents in 1990 to around 8% in 2022, and from around 11% to more than 20% in the United States, according to the World Health Organization. A 2022 study8 of nearly 130,000 US children found a clear association between obesity and earlier puberty in children. “It is beyond any doubt that obesity is a major driver,” says geneticist John Perry, who studies growth and reproduction at the University of Cambridge, UK.
One way in which body weight influences puberty is through leptin, a hormone produced by fat cells. This can interact with the brain circuits that control development and reproduction. “We don't think that leptin initiates puberty,” Kaplowitz says. “But it's important for puberty to progress.”
Who exactly counts as an adolescent?
Who exactly counts as an adolescent?
Other researchers, including Juul, suspect that hormone-disrupting chemicals in the environment could be at least partly responsible for advancing puberty. They point in particular to chemicals found in plastics, such as phthalates, forever chemicals called PFAS and synthetic fragrances, all of which gained widespread use in the twentieth century. These compounds can interfere with hormones by mimicking them or disrupting their activity. But results are inconsistent, and proving a link to any single substance has been incredibly difficult. “There haven't been really any good studies that have shown this in a way that everybody says, ‘yep, that's the answer',” Kaplowitz says.
A third possible piece of the puzzle is psychological stress. Some research suggests that girls who encounter stressors such as domestic violence, abuse, poverty and discrimination are more likely to start puberty at a younger age than those who do not. One 2022 longitudinal study9 found that physical or emotional abuse in early life was linked to earlier menarche in US girls.
Stress doesn't necessarily explain the population-wide shift in the timing of puberty — there's no rise in childhood stressors that clearly matches the downward trend in the onset of puberty. But it might interact with excess body weight, says Lauren Houghton, an epidemiologist at Columbia University in New York City. Her unpublished research suggests that girls who experience high levels of stress, have elevated stress hormones and a high BMI start developing breasts, on average, seven months earlier than do girls who experience low levels of stress and have a low BMI.
Stress might also be a reason why more girls entered puberty early during the COVID-19 pandemic than in the years preceding it. Soon after the pandemic began in 2020, paediatric endocrinologists in Italy noticed that the number of referrals for precocious puberty soared. They later reported10 that 41% of those referred in 2020 met the criteria for the condition, compared with 26% in 2019. Studies from other countries have revealed a similar phenomenon and some suggest that puberty progressed faster too11. We saw “truncated and shorter puberty”, says Louise Greenspan, a paediatric endocrinologist at Kaiser Permanente San Francisco in California.
or
Nature 649, 816-818 (2026)
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Do smartphones and social media really harm teens' mental health?
Why kids need to take more risks: science reveals the benefits of wild, free play
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California wildfire smoke linked to increased autism diagnoses, new study finds
Children born to mothers who were exposed to smoke in southern California showed increased rates of autism, although the reason why is unclear
By Jackie Flynn Mogensen edited by Claire Cameron
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A new study of more than 200,000 children in southern California found a link between exposure to wildfire smoke in mothers and higher rates of autism in children. The causes of autism are not fully known and likely multifaceted, but the new research builds on existing evidence that air pollution may be tied to autism.
The study, published on Tuesday in Environmental Science & Technology, analyzed data for children born in the wildfire hot spot from 2006 to 2014. Pregnant women who were in their third trimester and exposed to as few as one to five smoke days were about 11 percent more likely to have a child who was diagnosed as autistic by age five than those who saw no smoke days. The more smoke days that mothers were exposed to, the higher the likelihood that their children would be diagnosed as autistic: women who were exposed to between six and 10 smoke days were 12 percent more likely to have a child who received such a diagnosis by age five, while this was 23 percent more likely among those who were exposed to more than 10 smoke days.
“This is one of the first large population-based studies to specifically examine prenatal wildfire smoke exposure and autism risk,” says Mostafijur Rahman, an assistant professor of environmental health sciences at Tulane University and an author of the new study. “Our findings suggest that wildfire smoke exposure during sensitive periods of pregnancy—particularly late pregnancy—may be associated with an increased risk of autism diagnosis in children.”
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Importantly, the study doesn't identify a direct causal link between autism and wildfire smoke, Rahman says. Most experts believe autism is complex and likely arises from a combination of environmental and genetic factors.
Rather the study “highlights wildfire smoke as a potentially modifiable environmental risk factor that may contribute to risk in combination with other factors,” he says.
The study has several limitations. Some mothers included in the study may have had different levels of exposure to smoke than the researchers' estimated. And wildfires can also be extremely stressful—an experience that may have also played a role.
David Mandell, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania who was not involved in the study, says that the paper's association between wildfire smoke and autism is “certainly concerning” and “worthy of further attention.”
Mandell notes, however, that some children of mothers who experienced higher concentrations of wildfire smoke in her third trimester and didn't move house during the study period didn't show higher rates of autism—which is not the “dose-response gradient that one might expect,” he says.
Autism and its causes have been a central focus of the Trump administration and Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who has, in the past, claimed that autism was most likely caused by a variety of environmental exposures, not all of which have been backed by solid science. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, around one in 31 children are diagnosed as autistic before age nine.
The new study jibes with past research showing children whose mothers were exposed to high rates of fine particulate pollution, as well as diesel exhaust and mercury, were more likely to be diagnosed as autistic than the children of those who breathed cleaner air.
Wildfires have become an ever-present risk in the U.S., especially for Californians. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, between 2003 and 2012, individual large wildfires in the western U.S. burned for an average of 52 days, up from just six days in the 1970s and 1980s.
“As wildfires become more frequent and intense due to climate change, understanding their potential long-term health impacts is increasingly important,” Rahman says.
Jackie Flynn Mogensen is a breaking news reporter at Scientific American. Before joining SciAm, she was a science reporter at Mother Jones, where she received a National Academies Eric and Wendy Schmidt Award for Excellence in Science Communications in 2024. Mogensen holds a master's degree in environmental communication and a bachelor's degree in earth sciences from Stanford University. She is based in New York City.
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A study led by Stanford Medicine researchers has found that an injection blocking a protein linked to aging can reverse the natural loss of knee cartilage in older mice. The same treatment also stopped arthritis from developing after knee injuries that resemble ACL tears, which are common among athletes and recreational exercisers. Researchers note that an oral version of the treatment is already being tested in clinical trials aimed at treating age-related muscle weakness.
Human cartilage samples taken from knee replacement surgeries also responded positively. These samples included both the supportive extracellular matrix of the joint and cartilage-producing chondrocyte cells. When treated, the tissue began forming new, functional cartilage.
Together, the findings suggest that cartilage lost due to aging or arthritis may one day be restored using either a pill or a targeted injection. If successful in people, such treatments could reduce or even eliminate the need for knee and hip replacement surgery.
A Direct Attack on Osteoarthritis
Osteoarthritis is a degenerative joint disease that affects about one in five adults in the United States and generates an estimated $65 billion each year in direct health care costs. Current treatments focus on managing pain or replacing damaged joints surgically. There are no approved drugs that can slow or reverse the underlying cartilage damage.
The new approach targets the root cause of the disease rather than its symptoms, offering a potential shift in how osteoarthritis is treated.
The Role of a Master Aging Enzyme
The protein at the center of the study is called 15-PGDH. Researchers refer to it as a gerozyme because its levels increase as the body ages. Gerozymes were identified by the same research team in 2023 and are known to drive the gradual loss of tissue function.
In mice, higher levels of 15-PGDH are linked to declining muscle strength with age. Blocking the enzyme using a small molecule boosted muscle mass and endurance in older animals. In contrast, forcing young mice to produce more 15-PGDH caused their muscles to shrink and weaken. The protein has also been connected to regeneration in bone, nerve, and blood cells.
In most of these tissues, repair happens through the activation and specialization of stem cells. Cartilage appears to be different. In this case, chondrocytes change how their genes behave, shifting into a more youthful state without relying on stem cells.
A New Path to Tissue Regeneration
"This is a new way of regenerating adult tissue, and it has significant clinical promise for treating arthritis due to aging or injury," said Helen Blau, PhD, professor of microbiology and immunology. "We were looking for stem cells, but they are clearly not involved. It's very exciting."
Blau, who leads the Baxter Laboratory for Stem Cell Biology and holds the Donald E. and Delia B. Baxter Foundation Professorship, and Nidhi Bhutani, PhD, associate professor of orthopaedic surgery, are the study's senior authors. The research was published in Science. Mamta Singla, PhD, instructor of orthopaedic surgery, and former postdoctoral scholar Yu Xin (Will) Wang, PhD, served as lead authors. Wang is now an assistant professor at the Sanford Burnham Institute in San Diego.
Dramatic Regeneration of Joint Cartilage
"Millions of people suffer from joint pain and swelling as they age," Bhutani said. "It is a huge unmet medical need. Until now, there has been no drug that directly treats the cause of cartilage loss. But this gerozyme inhibitor causes a dramatic regeneration of cartilage beyond that reported in response to any other drug or intervention."
The human body contains three main types of cartilage. Elastic cartilage is soft and flexible and forms structures such as the outer ear. Fibrocartilage is dense and tough, helping absorb shock in places like the spaces between spinal vertebrae. Hyaline cartilage is smooth and glossy, allowing joints such as the hips, knees, shoulders, and ankles to move with low friction. This type, also called articular cartilage, is the form most commonly damaged in osteoarthritis.
Why Cartilage Rarely Grows Back
Osteoarthritis develops when joints are stressed by aging, injury, or obesity. Chondrocytes begin releasing inflammatory molecules and breaking down collagen, the main structural protein in cartilage. As collagen is lost, cartilage becomes thinner and softer. Inflammation then leads to swelling and pain, which are hallmarks of the disease.
Under normal conditions, articular cartilage has very limited ability to regenerate. While some stem or progenitor cells capable of forming cartilage have been identified in bone, similar cells have not been successfully found within articular cartilage itself.
Connecting Aging, Prostaglandins, and Repair
Earlier research from Blau's lab showed that prostaglandin E2 is essential for muscle stem cell function. The enzyme 15-PGDH breaks down prostaglandin E2. By blocking 15-PGDH or increasing prostaglandin E2 levels, researchers previously supported the repair of damaged muscle, nerve, bone, colon, liver, and blood cells in young mice.
This led the team to question whether the same pathway might be involved in cartilage aging and joint damage. When they compared knee cartilage from young and old mice, they found that 15-PGDH levels roughly doubled with age.
Regrowing Cartilage in Aging Knees
Researchers then injected older mice with a small molecule that inhibits 15-PGDH. They first administered the drug into the abdomen to affect the entire body, and later injected it directly into the knee joint. In both cases, cartilage that had become thin and dysfunctional with age thickened across the joint surface.
Additional tests confirmed that the regenerated tissue was hyaline cartilage rather than the less functional fibrocartilage.
"Cartilage regeneration to such an extent in aged mice took us by surprise," Bhutani said. "The effect was remarkable."
Protecting Joints After ACL-Like Injuries
The team observed similar benefits in mice with knee injuries resembling ACL tears, which often occur during sports involving sudden stopping, pivoting, or jumping. Although such injuries can be surgically repaired, about half of affected people develop osteoarthritis in the injured joint within 15 years.
Mice that received twice-weekly injections of the gerozyme inhibitor for four weeks after injury were far less likely to develop osteoarthritis. In contrast, animals given a control treatment had double the levels of 15-PGDH compared with uninjured mice and developed osteoarthritis within four weeks.
Treated mice also moved more normally and placed more weight on the injured leg than untreated animals.
"Interestingly, prostaglandin E2 has been implicated in inflammation and pain," Blau said. "But this research shows that, at normal biological levels, small increases in prostaglandin E2 can promote regeneration."
Reprogramming Cartilage Cells Without Stem Cells
Closer analysis showed that chondrocytes in older mice expressed more genes linked to inflammation and the conversion of cartilage into bone, along with fewer genes involved in cartilage formation. Treatment shifted these patterns.
One group of chondrocytes that produced 15-PGDH and cartilage-degrading genes dropped from 8% to 3%. Another group associated with fibrocartilage formation declined from 16% to 8%. A third population, which did not produce 15-PGDH and instead expressed genes tied to hyaline cartilage formation and maintenance of the extracellular matrix, rose from 22% to 42%.
These changes indicate a broad return to a more youthful cartilage profile without involving stem or progenitor cells.
Evidence From Human Cartilage Samples
The researchers also tested cartilage taken from patients undergoing total knee replacement for osteoarthritis. After one week of treatment with the 15-PGDH inhibitor, the tissue showed fewer 15-PGDH-producing chondrocytes, reduced expression of cartilage degradation and fibrocartilage genes, and early signs of articular cartilage regeneration.
"The mechanism is quite striking and really shifted our perspective about how tissue regeneration can occur," Bhutani said. "It's clear that a large pool of already existing cells in cartilage are changing their gene expression patterns. And by targeting these cells for regeneration, we may have an opportunity to have a bigger overall impact clinically."
Looking Toward Human Trials
Blau added, "Phase 1 clinical trials of a 15-PGDH inhibitor for muscle weakness have shown that it is safe and active in healthy volunteers. Our hope is that a similar trial will be launched soon to test its effect in cartilage regeneration. We are very excited about this potential breakthrough. Imagine regrowing existing cartilage and avoiding joint replacement."
Researchers from the Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute also contributed to the study.
The work was supported by funding from the National Institutes of Health (grants R01AR070864, R01AR077530, R01AG069858 and R00NS120278), the Baxter Foundation for Stem Cell Biology, the Li Ka Shing Foundation, the Stanford Cardiovascular Institute, the Milky Way Research Foundation, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, a Stanford Translational Research and Applied Medicine Pilot grant, a GlaxoSmithKline Sir James Black Postdoctoral Fellowship, and a Stanford Dean's Postdoctoral Fellowship.
Blau, Bhutani, and other co-authors are inventors on patent applications held by Stanford University related to 15-PGDH inhibition in cartilage and tissue rejuvenation, which are licensed to Epirium Bio. Blau is a co-founder of Myoforte/Epirium and holds equity and stock options in the company.
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About one in five adults in the United States will experience major depression at some point in their lives. Many people improve after trying a few treatments, but for as many as one-third of patients, standard antidepressants or psychotherapy do not provide enough relief. This condition, known as treatment-resistant depression, can persist for years or even decades. New research now suggests that a small implanted device may offer meaningful and long-lasting improvement for people with the most severe forms of the illness.
Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis led a large, multicenter clinical trial to evaluate this approach. The researchers found that a device designed to stimulate the vagus nerve was linked to sustained improvements in depressive symptoms, daily functioning, and overall quality of life. For most patients who showed improvement after one year, those gains continued for at least two years.
The participants in the study had lived with depression for an average of 29 years and had already tried about 13 treatments without success. These included intensive options such as electroconvulsive therapy and transcranial magnetic stimulation, highlighting just how difficult their condition had been to treat.
The latest results come from the ongoing RECOVER trial and were published Jan. 13 in the International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology.
"We believe the sample in this trial represents the sickest treatment-resistant depressed patient sample ever studied in a clinical trial," said lead author Charles Conway, MD, a professor of psychiatry and director of the WashU Medicine Treatment Resistant Mood Disorders Center. "There is a dire need to find effective treatments for these patients, who often have no other options. With this kind of chronic, disabling illness, even a partial response to treatment is life-altering, and with vagus nerve stimulation we're seeing that benefit is lasting."
How vagus nerve stimulation works
The RECOVER study was designed to test whether adding vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) to ongoing care could improve outcomes for people with treatment-resistant depression. The therapy involves surgically placing a device under the skin in the chest. The device sends carefully controlled electrical signals to the left vagus nerve -- a key communication pathway between the brain and many internal organs.
The VNS Therapy System is made by LivaNova USA, Inc., which sponsored and funded the RECOVER trial. The study is collecting long-term data on mood, daily function, and quality of life in people with severe treatment-resistant depression. One aim of the research is to help the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) decide whether to expand coverage for the therapy. Because many private insurers follow CMS decisions, approval could make the treatment accessible to far more patients, as cost has been a major barrier.
Inside the RECOVER trial
Nearly 500 patients were enrolled across 84 locations in the United States. About three-quarters of participants were so severely affected by depression that they were unable to work. All patients received the implanted device, but only half had the device activated during the first year to allow for comparison. Researchers tracked changes in depression severity, quality of life, and everyday functioning.
A response was considered meaningful if symptoms improved by at least 30% compared with the start of the study. A reduction of 50% or more was classified as a "substantial" response.
Conway emphasized that even modest improvements can dramatically change a person's life. Severe depression can leave people feeling "paralyzed by life," unable to manage basic daily activities and at higher risk of hospitalization or early death.
Earlier findings from the blinded first year of the trial showed that patients with activated devices spent more time with improved mood, better functioning, and higher quality of life than those whose devices were not active. However, the primary measurement tool (the Montgomery-Åsberg depression scale, which measures the severity of depressive episodes) did not show a statistically significant difference between the two groups.
Benefits that last over time
In the newest analysis, the researchers focused on patients whose devices were active from the start of the trial. They wanted to see whether improvements seen at 12 months would continue through 24 months. They also examined whether some patients who did not improve in the first year might respond later with continued treatment.
Out of 214 patients who received active treatment from the beginning, about 69%, or 147 people, showed a meaningful response at one year in at least one outcome measure. Among those who benefited at 12 months, more than 80% maintained or improved their results by the two-year mark across measures of depression, quality of life, and daily functioning. For patients with a substantial response at one year -- defined as at least a 50% reduction in symptoms -- 92% were still benefiting at two years.
Nearly one-third of participants who had not improved after the first year reported benefits by the end of the second year, suggesting that the therapy may take longer to work for some individuals. Relapse rates remained low among those who responded, particularly among the strongest responders.
The researchers also found that more than 20% of treated patients, or 39 people, were in remission after 24 months. This means their symptoms had eased enough for them to function normally in daily life, a result Conway described as especially notable.
"We were shocked that one in five patients was effectively without depressive symptoms at the end of two years," he said. "Seeing results like that for this complicated illness makes me optimistic about the future of this treatment. These results are highly atypical, as most studies of markedly treatment-resistant depression have very poor sustainability of benefit, certainly not at two years. We're seeing people getting better and staying better."
Funding and disclosures
The study was supported by LivaNova, PLC, the developer and manufacturer of the Vagus Nerve Stimulation therapy system. LivaNova, PLC supported the study design, data analysis, and preparation of the report. The U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services approved the study under its NCD VNS for Treatment Resistant Depression. The authors alone made the final decision on the manuscript content and its submission for publication.
Conway has received research support from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, Assurex Health, August Busch IV Foundation, Barnes-Jewish Hospital Foundation, LivaNova, National Institute of Mental Health, and the Taylor Family Institute for Innovative Psychiatric Research. He has also served as a consultant for LivaNova.
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Over the past weekend, when weather models first started forecasting a winter storm that would sweep over large parts of the country, Sean Sublette, a meteorologist living in Virginia, started telling people in his area to prepare for snow. At the time, Sublette says, “a lot of the data started to point to a substantial snow storm for the mid-Atlantic and the Northeast, with significant ice farther southward into Carolina's Tennessee Valley.”
Then, Sublette woke up Wednesday morning. “I go through the data again, and I go, ‘Oh, fuck,'” he says. The models were now structuring the storm much differently.
“Some of the data is putting down crippling amounts of ice for my area of central Virginia,” he says. “This does not mean I am buying it hook, line, and sinker yet. But it is a sobering chunk of data to suggest heavy freezing rain, which is that type of precipitation that's liquid until it touches something and then freezes. That's the stuff that weighs down power lines. That's the stuff that weighs down the trees and brings them over on top of the power lines.”
Meteorologists who spoke to WIRED say that it's still too early to pinpoint exactly how this weekend's storm is going to affect different regions of the country. But, they say, people in several states should begin thinking ahead to the weekend and next week, and keep an eye out for more up-to-date forecasts from local trusted sources over the next few days.
On Wednesday morning, the National Weather Service issued a series of possible forecasts—what it called “Key Messages”—on the upcoming storm, predicting heavy snow starting on Friday falling from the Rocky Mountains and Plains regions and moving to the East Coast on Sunday. Freezing rain and sleet are projected to hit states south of the snow zone. Maps provided by the NWS show the storm hitting nearly 30 states, from as far west as New Mexico and Texas, all the way up to Maine and as far south as Georgia.
There's still a lot of uncertainty about how the storm will form and how it will affect specific areas. “We know that this storm system is absolutely waterlogged,” says Matthew Cappucci, an atmospheric scientist and meteorologist, who contributes to The Washington Post's Capital Weather Gang. The system, Cappucci says, gathered up a lot of moisture from the Gulf of Mexico, guaranteeing some form of precipitation for much of the southern and eastern United States. But there's still uncertainty about how other atmospheric elements will shape the storm. That includes a cold, low-pressure eddy of air in the higher levels of the atmosphere (called, in meteorologic speak, an upper level low) that's forming over the Pacific, whose formation will help determine how and where precipitation will fall.
“A wide swath of the southern and eastern United States will see 2-plus inches' worth of water,” says Cappucci. “Whether that comes down as rain, snow, sleet, freezing rain, or a combination remains the wild card.”
The National Weather Service's announcements are not winter weather warnings, Sublette says, but “messages”; forecasts will get more specific as the storm keeps developing. But there's enough data available to start preparing for worst-case scenarios. Many of the regions that could be hit by the storm are historically underprepared for extreme winter conditions: A 2014 ice storm that swept across portions of Georgia and South Carolina left some areas without power for days. This storm will hit just a few weeks shy of the five-year anniversary of a winter storm in Texas that caused a two-week power outage and ultimately killed nearly 250 people.
A stretch of predicted cold temperatures immediately following the storm, similar to the one that hit Texas, could also create hazardous conditions—especially if snow or ice take out power lines or make driving difficult.
“It's 20 degrees,” Sublette says, imagining a scenario in which freezing rain hits Virginia. “Stuff starts weighing down. Stuff starts getting knocked over, and you've got thousands of power outages by Monday morning. People start losing heat. It's only 28 degrees in the afternoon—oh my God, we've got a problem.”
Despite some of the dire predictions being distributed online, both Sublette and Cappucci caution against buying into specific scenarios days out from a possible storm.
“There is an abundance of misinformation out there and information overload,” Cappucci says. “Ultimately, the public has to be able to sift through the noise and find a trusted source, but that's becoming increasingly difficult in a sea of clickbait, hype, and monetized posts.”
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Tech Moves covers notable hires, promotions and personnel changes in the Pacific NW tech community. Submissions: [email protected]
by Lisa Stiffler on Jan 21, 2026 at 10:50 amJanuary 21, 2026 at 11:13 am
Jigar Thakkar is now vice president of Amazon Quick Suite, a platform that uses agentic AI to automate business workflows, research and data access. Amazon launched the tool in October 2025.
Thakkar is returning to Seattle after more than seven years at New York-based financial services firm MSCI, where he worked as chief technology officer and head of engineering.
Before MSCI, Thakkar spent nearly two decades at Microsoft where he was the founding engineering leader of Microsoft Teams and held the title of corporate VP. He joined the tech giant in 1999 as a software developer on the Microsoft Money team.
“I'm excited about Jigar's customer-centric approach and ability to scale transformative products, his passion for agent technology, and his experience building platforms that serve millions of users,” said Swami Sivasubramanian, VP of agentic AI at AWS, in announcing the news.
— Sara Vaezy joined healthcare consulting firm Chartis as chief product and technology officer. Vaezy previously spent nearly a decade at Providence, where she was chief transformation officer with the Renton, Wash.-based multi-state healthcare provider.
This is Vaezy's second stint at Chartis — she previously worked at the Chicago-based company from 2010 to 2015.
“We viscerally know the healthcare system is broken and needs to change. Clinicians are overburdened, patient care isn't always well coordinated or affordable, and costs continue to increase unsustainably,” Vaezy wrote on LinkedIn. “This is an opportunity to help Chartis navigate a landscape that's rapidly changing and actually do something about it, along with clients.”
Vaezy is also a clinical assistant professor at the University of Washington's School of Public Health.
— After raising $60 million last year, legal-tech startup Supio has named two new executives:
— Chronus named Ankur Ahlowalia as CEO of the Seattle-based mentoring software platform.
“I'm delighted to lead a company that has pioneered mentoring software and is now leveraging artificial intelligence to make mentorship more accessible, personalized, and impactful for all employees,” Ahlowalia said in statement.
Ahlowalia joins Chronus from the Dallas-based software company Korbyt, which he led for more than five years.
— Variant Bio has appointed Dr. Craig Basson as chief medical officer and president of research and development. The Seattle-based drug discovery company is working with genetically diverse populations globally to develop new therapies.
“Craig's career uniquely spans deep human genetics, rigorous clinical science, and successful drug development at scale,” said Andrew Farnum, Variant's CEO. “His leadership and experience translating genetic insights into medicines will be instrumental as we move our programs into the clinic.”
Basson has worked for more than 25 years biotech and academia. He joins Variant from Bitterroot Bio, which is focused on using immunotherapy to treat cardiovascular disease. Other past roles include leadership at Boston Pharmaceuticals and Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research and instructional roles at Harvard Medical School and Weill Cornell Medical College.
— Longtime Seattle-area tech leader Larry Colagiovanni is now leading AI product innovation at outdoor gear retailer REI. Colagiovanni's career has included multiple stints at Microsoft, most recently as lead of product vision and strategy for Microsoft Shopping where he launched the company's first conversational shopping assistant.
Other past roles include partner at Madrona Venture Labs, C-suite roles at Limeade, and leadership titles at eBay and Decide.
Colagiovanni said on LinkedIn that the role “brings together my passion for the outdoors with my belief in human-centered AI that supports better discovery, decision-making, and experiences.”
— Diego Oppenheimer is now an executive fellow with the Stanford University Graduate School of Business. The serial entrepreneur founded Algorithmia, which was acquired by DataRobot.
“Couldn't be more excited to continue helping to build companies, invest in founders, and now helping shape the next generation of AI-native entrepreneurs,” he said on LinkedIn.
— Smarsh, a Portland, Ore., company that helps customers manage their business communications to identify regulatory and reputational risks, announced multiple leadership changes:
— Northwest Quantum Nexus (NQN), a group supporting quantum research and innovation across Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana, named three leaders serving in a volunteer-capacity to spearhead its transition from an informal partnership into a formalized organization:
— Sarah Clifthorne is now interim director of the Washington State Department of Commerce as a permanent leader is being sought. Gov. Bob Ferguson appointed Clifthorne to the role following the recent resignation of Joe Nguyễn.
Clifthorne has served as deputy director at Commerce since February 2025 and was previously a policy director with the Washington State Senate. She has also worked in union leadership.
— Rachel Fukaya is now vice president of marketing at Textio, the Seattle startup that helps companies write job listings and other communications. Fukaya has been with Textio for more the two years and previously worked at multiple public relations companies. She was formerly VP of PR at Walker Sands.
— Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson is replacing Seattle City Light CEO and general manager Dawn Lindell. The new mayor has selected Dennis McLerran, the former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency head for the Pacific Northwest region, for the role pending confirmation by the Seattle City Council. Lindell served as CEO for two years.
— Stephen Delano is now principal software engineer at Seattle's Yoodli, an AI roleplay startup recently landed a $40 million investment.
Delano joins Yoodli after five years at Tomo, a digital mortgage startup launched by former Zillow executives, where he was a founding engineer.
He previously spent more than a decade at Chef, a Seattle-based automation technology company that was acquired in 2020 for $220 million.
— Daryl Fairweather, chief economist for the real estate platform Redfin, joined the board of governors of Center for Land Economics. The education and research organization promotes equitable land and property assessments.
— WestRiver Group announced that Craig Lange has joined the Seattle-based firm as managing director and lead of the Disruptive Growth Fund. Lange spent more than three decades with the heavy machinery company Caterpillar.
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UiPath hires former F5 executive as CMO, relocates Bellevue offices to Lincoln Square
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Seattle startup Gradial raises $35M to boost agentic tools that automate enterprise marketing
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Jeff Bezos' space company Blue Origin has just announced a satellite internet network called TeraWave which will be capable of offering data speeds up to 6Tbps, and geared towards enterprise, data center, and government customers.
The TeraWave constellation will use a mix of 5,280 satellites in low-Earth orbit and 128 in medium-Earth orbit, and Blue Origin plans to deploy the first ones in late 2027. It's not immediately clear how long Blue Origin expects it will take to build out the whole network.
The low-Earth orbit satellites Blue Origin is building will use RF connectivity and have a max data transfer speed of of 144 Gbps, while the medium-Earth variety will use an optical link that can achieve the much higher 6Tbps speed. For reference, SpaceX's Starlink currently maxes out at 400 Mbps — though it plans to launch upgraded satellites that will offer 1 Gbps data transfer in the future.
“TeraWave adds a space-based layer to your existing network infrastructure, providing connectivity to locations unreachable by traditional methods,” the new website for the satellite network reads.
The announcement of the TeraWave network comes just a few months after Bezos' other company, Amazon, announced a rebrand of its own satellite network geared toward consumers. That network, called Leo, will ultimately consist of around 3,000 satellites in low-Earth orbit and offers more traditional broadband speeds.
Taken together, these two networks could provide more robust competition to SpaceX's Starlink, which has become the leading satellite internet provider with more than 9 million customers. Starlink currently sells its connectivity to regular consumers, commercial customers (like airlines), and governments.
That said, the two networks from Amazon and Blue Origin are distinct.
“We identified an unmet need with customers who were seeking enterprise-grade internet access with higher speeds, symmetrical upload/download speeds, more redundancy, and rapid scalability for their networks. TeraWave solves for these problems,” Blue Origin said in a statement to TechCrunch.
Blue Origin has spent years in development on a number of projects, and is best-known for the short trips to space it offers on its small New Shepard rocket.
The company has recently started to emerge as a multi-faceted commercial space player. In 2025, the company successfully launched its mega-rocket, New Glenn, for the first time and then repeated the feat months later. It also landed the booster stage on just its second attempt, and launched its first commercial payload for NASA.
The company plans to send a robotic lander to the surface of the Moon this year on the third New Glenn launch. Now, with TeraWave, it will add “satellite manufacturer and operator” to its growing list of offerings.
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VCs who have backed OpenEvidence are apparently not worried about OpenAI and Anthropic's new health information products.
On Wednesday, the startup announced that it raised an additional $250 million in Series D funding at a $12 billion valuation, co-led by Thrive Capital and DST.
That's double the valuation from its last raise in October: $200 million at $6 billion, led by GV. It has now raised a total of $700 million, the company says, from backers including Sequoia, Nvidia, Kleiner Perkins, Blackstone, Bond, Craft Ventures, Mayo Clinic, and others.
OpenEvidence is an AI-powered medical information platform, similar to what WebMD was for the previous internet generation, but it's geared toward doctors. This puts it somewhat more in competition with Anthropic's Claude for Healthcare, which is intended for patients, payers and providers, whereas ChatGPT's new health product is aimed more at consumers.
The company says that the free, ad-supported platform served 18 million clinical consultations from verified healthcare professionals in the U.S. in December alone. That compares to about 3 million searches per month a year ago. It also said that it had surpassed $100 million in revenue.
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While some automakers are getting cold feet about releasing new electric vehicles in the U.S. amid uncertain economic conditions and rapidly slowing sales towards the end of 2025, others are pressing forward with some highly advanced cars. Volvo is one of those companies prepared to launch an entirely new model this year.
Between delays caused by software issues, tariffs making production in China tenuous, and its inability to take advantage of any federal incentives, it's been a rough couple of years for Volvo's EVs. However, the automaker is still going forward with some of its electric plans, and the next step is the new Volvo EX60.
Volvo says the most efficient EX60 will go up to 400 miles on a full charge, which is more than the similarly sized BMW iX3, Cadillac Optiq and Mercedes-Benz GLC EV. Two other versions will be offered, one with an estimated 310-mile range and two-wheel drive and an all-wheel drive model with up to 320 miles on a charge. The EX60 has not yet been given range estimates by the EPA, though.
The EX60 also uses new underpinnings for Volvo called HugInCore, which is its way of describing a new set of electric motors, battery cells and mega casting that Volvo says reduces weight and increases performance and efficiency. All models will come with a built-in Tesla-style North American Charging Standard (NACS) charge port, rather than an adapter that Volvo uses on its existing EVs, for access to that company's Supercharger network.
Even the seatbelts have been redesigned, which is significant since Volvo introduced the three-point seatbelt as we know it almost 70 years ago.
Volvo will also use the EX60 to launch an integrated version of Gemini, Google's AI assistant, which is set to appear in more vehicles as it replaces Google Assistant. Apple Music will also be pre-installed, the company said, along with Dolby Atmos, and will be offered with a 28-speaker Bowers & Wilkins audio system on some versions.
Along with Google, the EX60 will use pieces from Nvidia and Qualcomm to power infotainment and advanced driver assistance system technologies, with Volvo promising “no-lag” UX systems. That's also significant, as the early versions of the EX30 and EX90 models were criticized for slow and bug-riddled systems that required over-the-air updates to operate. Outlets like Consumer Reports found features such as the audio system and climate control not operating correctly or freezing, and the car could be practically undrivable while the systems were updated.
Volvo expects the first EX60s to land at dealers starting in the summer with all variants available by the end of 2026. There will also be an EX60 Cross Country off-road-themed version with slightly more ground clearance and styling modifications.
While Volvo still expects that its older gas-only and plug-in hybrid models will be volume sellers (and is already preparing to build them in the U.S. starting at the end of this year), it's still banking on being competitive in the electric luxury SUV niche for the next few years. And now it's looking to get a fresh start.
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Alongside the chosen few in WIRED's breakdown of the most anticipated EVs coming this year, the arrival of the Volvo EX60 has also been eagerly awaited. This is mainly because of the impressive stats surrounding the car; the headline claim is a range of more than 400 miles.
Sitting between the EX40 and EX90, the new EV looks more like a sibling of the entry-level EX30, which is a good car but too fast for its own good. Plus, the reveal images here from Volvo initially seem to show that the design team has figured out a way to remove the unsightly lidar roofline bulges that in some eyes ruined the finished aesthetic of the EX90. (A Volvo designer at the EX90's launch admitted to me the team had problems dealing with the hump.) However, I'm told that these images here show the new car without the lidar system installed, and that if your EX60 does have the optional lidar spec then, unfortunately, the humps will be there.
This is important because Volvo knows the look is not good. The brand went to great lengths to hide the lumps on the EX90 launch pictures—showing the car in the very far distance was my favorite tactic—and here with the EX60, it has chosen to reveal its latest EV to the world using the model where the tech is not even in the car. This choice to show off the EX60 with a preserved straight roofline is clearly deliberate, at best aimed at keeping the design team happy, and at worst possibly misleading unsuspecting customers looking to buy the flagship model.
The look of the bigger EX30 is a win for the EX60, but Volvo has chosen to show the car without lidar lumps.
With 503 miles of maximum range (measured using the WLTP standard), this should still be a very impressive 400-plus miles on the US's EPA estimate. Plus the EX60 is all-wheel drive and, thanks to an 800-volt architecture, it can add 210 miles of range in 10 minutes—provided you happen upon a 400-kW fast charger and your battery is in the 10 to 20 percent sweet spot when you roll up. The amount of range you get from a 10-minute fast charge drops to 173 miles using the EPA cycle, but this still puts it very much in the same box as the excellent new BMW iX3. Volvo is saying in the best possible conditions just 19 minutes should be good to get you from 10 to 80 percent. Drag coefficient is a very respectable 0.26, which will help the car reach those high range targets.
Also, Volvo is to be commended here by committing to full EV and not backtracking to offer combustion or hybrid versions as well. That said, the combustion version of the XC60 will still be available for some years yet, so the company isn't entirely all-in on electric.
The EX60 will be electric only, but a combustion-powered XC60 is still available.
For the EX60, Volvo is using cell-to-body technology, which means that the battery cells are placed straight into the body, so the outer casing becomes part of the stiffness of the body itself. Volvo claims this improves energy density by 20 percent, while reducing weight and taking up less space. Not many other manufacturers have gone down this road yet, but expect to see more doing so.
A new underbody, chassis, and suspension improves on the setup in the current EX90. Volvo is also very pleased with how it has used megacasting to make sections of the car, such as the entire rear underbody, as giant, single aluminum pieces with an 8,400-ton casting machine. This replaces around 100 separate parts with a single sheet of metal, and it makes the whole body structure stiffer and lighter. This is not novel to Volvo; Tesla and XPeng are using this same manufacturing technique in some EVs.
The EX60 will be the first Volvo to have Google Gemini built in.
As with BMW and Jaguar right now, Volvo is keen to highlight the computing power of the EX60. Its Snapdragon Cockpit Platform uses the Nvidia Drive AGX Orin and a new Qualcomm 8255 CPU, making the EV's “brain” capable of more than 250 trillion operations per second. It's also the first Volvo to feature Google Gemini integration, again going toe to toe with BMW, which announced at CES in January that the iX3's Intelligent Personal Assistant was powered by Amazon's Alexa+.
Volvo's Pilot Assist Plus means you can travel on highways at speeds of up to 80 mph while the system steers and changes lanes for you. But the driving assistance software is not “eyes off.”
Volvo invented the modern three-point seat belt back in 1959, so I'm particularly keen to see an entirely new version of this iconic safety tech revealed for the first time in the EX60: the world's first multi-adaptive safety belt. Differing from the conventional system you know, this belt apparently uses real-time sensor data to adjust tension based on your body characteristics, the traffic conditions, and the severity of a crash.
The design, while being aerodynamic, still offers plenty of headroom in the rear.
As has been the fashion for some years now, conventional exterior door handles have been ditched, but this time in favor of small pull-tabs similar to what you might see on the Ford Mustang Mach-E. However, to satisfy proposed Chinese regulations requiring mechanical release handles on the inside and outside of every car, operable without tools after accidents, these are mechanical tabs rather than electrically operated. It will be interesting to see if this workaround, allowing designers to still have doors uninterrupted by messy handles, will catch on.
Lastly, there's also an alternative flavor of the EX60 coming. The Cross Country version has different exterior colors and design elements intended to give it an ever-so-slightly more “adventurous” look. (Think wider wheel-arch claddings and black upper door moldings.) Air suspension adds another 20 millimeters of travel to provide more comfort on those country roads.
Deliveries of the EX60 should start around the summer, but no prices have been announced yet.
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Researchers in Indonesia have identified what may be the oldest rock art known to science—a hand stencil on a wall of a limestone cave on Muna, an island off the bigger island of Sulawesi.
In a study published today in Nature, researchers dated the hand stencil to at least 67,800 years old—about 1,100 years older than a similar Neanderthal-made stencil in Spain, now (potentially) the second-oldest known artwork. If confirmed, the stencil would be the earliest known reliably dated example of cave art. The research sheds light on early human migration to Sahul (a bygone continent that once included Australia and New Guinea), but other researchers are cautious about the dating results.
“Art painted on rock by our ancestors thousands of years ago provides the most spectacular early example of being human—creating art is a very human trait with which we can easily identify,” Kira Westaway of Macquarie University's School of Natural Sciences, who wasn't involved in the study, told Gizmodo. “Rock art is the closest evidence we have to understand our ancestors, but this understanding is limited by the difficulty in dating the art—so this type of systematic research of exploration, survey, and robust dating is vital to improve our understanding of these early artists.”
The hand stencil on Muna is unique—the fingers were intentionally made thinner, akin to claws. What's more, researchers found that ancient people consistently made art in this particular cave for a very long time, at least 35,000 years up to around 20,000 years ago. The researchers also identified a number of other artworks throughout Southeast Sulawesi, including other hand stencils and a human figure.
“It is now evident from our new phase of research that Sulawesi was home to one of the world's richest and most longstanding artistic cultures, one with origins in the earliest history of human occupation of the island at least 67,800 years ago,” Maxime Aubert, an archaeologist and geochemist at the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research, said in a university statement. Aubert was also a co-leader of the study.
According to Adhi Agus Oktaviana, a co-author of the study and a rock art specialist at Indonesia's national research and innovation agency (BRIN), the recently described Sulawesi paintings strongly inform knowledge of early Australian Aboriginal cultural history. The artists were probably members of the population that eventually dispersed throughout the region and arrived in Australia, he explained in the statement.
The hand stencil's dating also holds implications for debates over when and how people first arrived in Sahul. Oktaviana said the finding bolsters the “long chronology model,” according to which humans first reached Sahul at least 65,000 years ago. The “short chronology model” dates it to around 50,000 years ago. Southern Cross University's Renaud Joannes-Boyau, co-leader of the study, adds that the rock art's date represents the “oldest direct evidence” of modern humans on the northern migration route to New Guinea through Sulawesi and the “Spice Islands.” That's in contrast to the other primary migration route hypothesized—the southern path.
To date the particular hand stencil in question, the researchers dated the calcite on top of it, allowing them to infer the minimum age of the artwork beneath it. Paul Bahn, however, a British expert in prehistoric rock art who did not participate in the study, argues against the significance of minimum ages.
Minimum ages “date the formation of calcite, not the application of the pigment beneath it. So in this case, the [67,800 years] obtained for the hand stencil may mean that the stencil was made just a few years before that, or several or many millennia before that,” he told Gizmodo. “And the same applies to the other Indonesian and Spanish dates. We do not yet know the true ages of any of this cave art. There is little point in comparing minimal ages, so it is largely meaningless and pointless to claim that this is the earliest minimal age ever found for rock art!”
44,000-Year-Old Cave Painting Could Be the Earliest Known Depiction of Hunting
Siyakha Mguni, senior lecturer in subjects including rock art at the University of Cape Town, says that more research is necessary to confirm the new date. However, if it turns out to be right, “the discovery carries enormous implications in archaeology that will bring about a shift of attention away from southwestern Europe, particularly France and Spain, which has long been regarded as the global centre of parietal [wall] art advance and the touchstone of the oldest and finest representational art forms,” he explained to Gizmodo. Mguni also did not participate in the study. “Locating a new centre in Eurasia is indeed a radical shift!”
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Indonesia's restriction on Grok is temporary, and X has been invited to discuss the matter.
The company says the law violates teens' political speech rights as other countries consider similar restrictions.
Several European countries are already working on their own versions.
Researchers in Spain investigated what kind of noise shells used by Neolithic societies made.
Archaeologists in Israel have discovered the oldest known figurine representing human-animal, uh, interactions.
The third season of this Apple TV+ natural history docuseries invites viewers to experience life during one of Earth's most dramatic climatic shifts.
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Reading time 4 minutes
PC and peripherals maker Razer believes that somebody, somewhere, is desperate to put an anime cat girl on their desk, like their personal imprisoned Tinkerbell who's forced to compliment them on command. The company's Project Ava includes either a female waifu or male husbando hologram housed inside a glass jar that uses conversational AI to talk to users. The thing is, Razer doesn't know when it will be out, or—apparently—much else about this device it promises will be an actual product.
We went hands-on with Project Ava during CES 2026. It's stuffed with technology we've seen before—namely, an animated avatar and AI chatbot that's meant to act as a player's gaming mentor and desktop companion. Razer is mostly known for its PC gaming laptops, mice, and headsets, but it often goes to CES with a fair few concept devices in tow; hence Ava's “Project” nomenclature. In this case, Razer swore to consumers that Project Ava and its other AI gadget—a pair of headphones with cameras and AI visual capabilities called Project Motoko—would become real products… eventually.
During an interview on The Verge's Decoder podcast, Razer's co-founder and CEO, Min-Liang Tan, couldn't offer many specifics about what's going on with its waifu in a jar, nor much about how people can buy it. Project Ava is currently open for “reservations” that cost $20. Those reservations will eventually become preorders with a promised, though vague, release date in the second half of 2026. At the same time, Tan said they were still getting feedback and “hear[ing] what the concerns are.” And there certainly are concerns, considering we've yet to see an AI-centric gadget accomplish anything our existing products couldn't already do.
What's more, Razer hasn't settled on what's actually going on inside its AI companion device. Tan said, “We have not disclosed the actual specs of the product, and not even, for example, which character models, or even which model it's gonna be running at this point in time. We're leaving that absolutely open.” Razer previously told Gizmodo it was working with esports stars to potentially stick their mugs and voices in the jar. Hopefully, it's comfortable with the new parasocial relationships consumers will naturally create with their likeness.
Tan also told The Verge's Nilay Patel, “So what we have actually said is that these are reservations. They're not pre-orders, per se. So, ultimately, when we do launch the product, and it could be a long way out, by then, because of the specs.”
In an email statement to Gizmodo, Razer said, “The $20 reservation for Project Ava is a refundable deposit towards the final purchase price of the product. We will have more information on pre-orders for Project Ava in the future and look forward to sharing more information soon.”
Essentially, the reservation is a preorder for a preorder. It sets you up in line to get a Project Ava (knowing that's definitely not the final name) with the hope that you'll actually want it once the company reveals what's actually going on inside. On its product page, Razer promises you can cancel the reservation and ask for a refund. The company further implied that Project Ava may be in hot demand, and only those who get in line first can hope to get their waifu shipped to their door at some vague future date.
Project Ava, as an AI chatbot companion, was already a concept Razer had shown off before. The attached waifu hologram is merely a facade for what we've experienced before from the likes of Microsoft. The “Gaming Copilot” is still in beta, and it's currently terrible at what it's supposed to do. In some cases, Copilot doesn't even know a game's controls, even though they were published by Microsoft's Xbox brand. In my short time with Project Ava, the waifu AI wouldn't offer me any solid advice on how to manage recoil in a game like Battlefield 6. Mind you, the demo Razer set us up with was the game's target practice mode that is all about aiming.
Razer was reluctant to tell us exactly what was happening inside the glass jar, beyond the fact that it was using Elon Musk's brainchild, Grok, as its centerpiece AI model. We also thought that was a strange choice. When pressed, Razer told Gizmodo that Grok had the best conversational model that helped it sound more human-like. Never mind that Grok is at the center of numerous controversies on X (formerly Twitter), where the chatbot was willing to talk openly about “MechaHitler” and share nonconsensual sexual images. The reason why Grok seems more conversational is because it's designed with “tone” in mind and fewer guardrails—or, more specifically, made to parrot Musk's increasingly nativist worldview.
“My focus to date has been more in terms of what's the best conversational model that we've got, and they're great, they're fantastic,” Tan said.
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This may be the moment when ARM really takes off on PCs, though it couldn't come at a worse time.
Microsoft's first cloud-based game streaming service could be its first crack at ads in Game Pass.
OpenAI just rehired former employees who previously left the company to work at Thinking Machines Lab.
It was only a matter of time, to be honest.
AI slop and price hikes may not be a winning combo when Apple Music is breathing down your neck.
We can already tell 16GB graphics cards will become an exclusive commodity in 2026.
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OpenAI's first sales leader, Aliisa Rosenthal, has found a new career: venture capital. She's joining Acrew Capital as a general partner, working alongside founding partner Lauren Kolodny and the firm's other partners, Rosenthal and Kolodny tell TechCrunch.
Rosenthal left OpenAI about eight months ago after a three-year sprint at the AI lab that saw the launch of DALL·E, ChatGPT, ChatGPT Enterprise, Sora, and other products. “I wasn't initially looking to join a VC fund,” she told TechCrunch. “I was out there meeting with lots of AI startups.”
But after growing OpenAI's enterprise sales team from two people to hundreds, she saw the appeal when Kolodny pitched her on venture capital. Instead of helping one startup with its go-to-market strategy, she could help a portfolio of them.
In her time at OpenAI, “I learned a lot about behavior, both on the side of the buyers, how people are thinking about these purchases, and the gap between what most organizations think is possible and what they can actually deploy today,” she said.
For instance, she has firsthand insight into what kind of moat an AI startup can build that won't leave it vulnerable when model makers like OpenAI launch competing products.
Will OpenAI “just build everything and put every company out of business? You know, they are doing a lot already: they're in consumer, they're in enterprise, they're building a device. I don't think they are going to go after every potential enterprise application,” she says.
So one moat is for enterprise AI startups to offer specialization.
Additionally, she thinks the key to a good startup moat will be “context” — or the information the AI stores in its context window memory as it works on requests.
“Context is dynamic. It's adaptable. It's scalable. And I think what we're seeing is going beyond sort of the basic RAG towards this idea of a context graph, which is persistent,” she says referring to Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) the de facto method as of 2025 to minimize hallucinations by training LLMs on trusted, specific sources (and having the LLM cite them).
There's still a lot of tech that needs to be developed for this area, though, from memory to reasoning beyond pattern recognition.
“I expect real innovation here. I think this year we will see new approaches — the idea of context and memory,” Rosenthal says.
But beyond startups working directly on context engineering, Rosenthal thinks enterprise apps that bake it in will have the advantage.
“Ultimately, when we talk about moat, I think who owns and manages this context layer will become a large advantage for AI products,” she says.
Another opportunity she sees: startups not building atop a major lab's state-of-the-art models, with their high prices.
“I think there is room in the market for cheaper models that are lighter weight and innovate on inference costs,” she says. These are models that are not, perhaps, at the top of the leaderboards of various benchmarks but “are still very useful” and more affordable.
“Where I'm really excited to invest is on the application layer. I'm really interested in what will be the durable applications built on all of these different models, not just on the foundational models,” she says. She's seeking startups with “interesting use cases” or that use AI to help enterprise employees work more efficiently.
As for where she's going to find these startups, she'll be working her network among OpenAI's alums for starters. Now that the AI outfit is 10 years old, the alums network has grown. Many have already founded startups that have raised big bucks at high valuations, ranging from OpenAI's biggest competitor, Anthropic, to buzzy early-stage companies like Safe Superintelligence.
There is also a growing precedent for high-level ex-OpenAI folks to become seed-stage investors. About a year ago, Peter Deng, OpenAI's former head of consumer products, joined Felicis. He's been crushing it ever since, and clearly having fun, getting in on big deals for hot startups like LMArena and Periodic Labs.
“I actually had a call with Peter a few months ago, and he helped me make the decision,” Rosenthal said of her choice to become an investor.
But Rosenthal may have a secret weapon to win deals. She also has deep contacts among AI enterprise users — the type of buyers and beta testers these early AI startups need.
Enterprises still don't understand how much AI can do for them. “There's a really large gap that I am very optimistic can be filled. It leaves a huge green field for applications and companies.”
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AI GPU demand is so high that it allowed Nvidia to overtake Apple as TSMC's number one customer.
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Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has said in an interview that Nvidia is TSMC's largest customer at the moment, dethroning Apple, which has previously held the record for some time. The leather-clad CEO said this during the first episode of the “A Bit Personal with Jodi Shelton” podcast, wherein Shelton asked him where he gets his confidence. Shelton is a self-proclaimed "longtime leader in the global semiconductor industry," and is also the CEO and co-founder of the Global Semiconductor Alliance.
“I remember Morris Chang has a similar story when he first met you, that you immediately said, ‘I'm going to be your biggest customer or one of your biggest customers. And he's like, ‘Wow, that's a lot of gumption.' So, where did that confidence come from at such an early age?” Shelton asked. “Well, you know, it's rough to know everything — I'm just kidding,” Jensen said with a laugh. “By the way, Morris will be happy to know Nvidia is TSMC's largest customer now.”
The AI GPU company was once TSMC's top customer in the early 2000s. However, it was overtaken during the 2010s by Apple when TSMC took it on as a customer to build the iPhone and iPad processors, after Intel fumbled the potential partnership with Cupertino. This was especially true during recent years when the iPhone overtook Samsung in market share across the globe.
But even if Apple's smartphones, tablets, and even the legendary Apple silicon on Macs and MacBooks are driving record sales for the company, the AI boom is also pushing demand for Nvidia's AI GPUs, resulting in skyrocketing revenue for the company. More than that, enterprise customers are willing to pay billions and billions to Team Green to get as many AI processors as they can, whereas many consumers have a price ceiling after which they will go with another brand if a smartphone, tablet, or laptop is priced too high.
Aside from losing its top spot, there are also rumors — reported by WCCFTech from the Apple leaker Fixed Focus Digital — that TSMC is hiking up the prices it's charging Apple for chips, especially as the AI demand is squeezing capacity for other semiconductors. Furthermore, Cupertino might no longer have production priority. However, this is just speculation, and even if it's true, the companies will likely keep information like this confidential.
Nvidia's success is directly tied to the AI hype, with many tech companies pouring money into acquiring thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of GPUs just to get the horsepower to train the most advanced models. And with Team Green cornering the market for AI processors, it's basically printing cash as long as companies feel that they can make more money by adding more computing power. But if the AI bubble pops and we're left with a lot of AI data centers with no customers, then we expect Apple to retake its position as TSMC's number one customer.
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YouTube Shorts viewers might soon see AI versions of their favorite creators when scrolling through their feeds. YouTube CEO Neal Mohan announced on Wednesday that creators will soon be able to make Shorts using their own likeness.
“This year you'll be able to create a Short using your own likeness, produce games with a simple text prompt, and experiment with music,” Mohan wrote in his annual letter. “Throughout this evolution, AI will remain a tool for expression, not a replacement.”
Shorts, which Mohan said now averages 200 billion daily views, is one of YouTube's most popular mediums. The company continues to invest in Shorts to sustain its viewership. While YouTube didn't share additional details about these likenesses, the new capability will join the platform's current AI tools for Shorts, including the ability to generate AI clips, AI stickers, AI auto-dubbing, and more.
YouTube will also equip creators with new tools to manage the use of their likeness in AI-generated content, according to Mohan.
While YouTube will allow creators to feature their own likeness in their videos, the Google-owned platform recently launched technology to prevent others from using it. Last October, YouTube rolled out likeness-detection technology to eligible creators to identify AI-generated content featuring the likeness of creators, such as their face and voice. Creators can then request the removal of AI-generated content.
As with other social platforms, YouTube has dealt with the spread of AI slop. Mohan says the company is working to maintain a high-quality viewing experience.
“Over the past 20 years, we've learned not to impose any preconceived notions on the creator ecosystem,” Mohan wrote. “Today, once-odd trends like ASMR and watching other people play video games are mainstream hits. But with this openness comes a responsibility to maintain the high quality viewing experience that people want. To reduce the spread of low quality AI content, we're actively building on our established systems that have been very successful in combatting spam and clickbait, and reducing the spread of low quality, repetitive content.”
YouTube is also set to expand Shorts with new formats, including image posts, which are already popular on TikTok and Instagram Reels.
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Adobe has been aggressively adding AI features to all its products in the last few years. The company is now adding more AI tools to Acrobat, including the ability to generate podcast summaries of files, create presentations, and a way for users to edit files using prompts.
The company launched Adobe Spaces last year, which is a collection of files and notes that multiple users can access. Now, Adobe is allowing users to use the information stored in these files and notes to create a presentation using text prompts.
For instance, if a user has financial details, product plans, and competitor analysis available in a Space, they can build a pitch deck for clients that focuses on why their product can solve problems better than rivals.
Acrobat's AI assistant first generates an editable presentation with points that the deck would cover. You can then use Adobe Express's theme library, stock photos, or use your own images to build the presentation. Plus, you can easily apply your brand's theme or edit individual slides using Express.
Tools like Canva and NotebookLM already offer the ability to convert documents into presentations. Besides, newer startups are also working on letting people use AI to create presentations by tapping different sources.
Adobe is also letting users create a podcast to summarize a file or a Space within Acrobat. Notably, tools like Google's NotebookLM, Speechify, and ElevenLabs' Reader app also let users create personalized podcasts using various notes and documents.
Acrobat is also getting the ability to let users edit files using prompts. The company said that users can take 12 actions, including removing pages, text, comments, and images; finding and replacing words and phrases; and adding e-signatures and passwords.
Acrobat already had sharing capabilities with Spaces, but now, when you share files with others, the files will house AI-generated summaries, with citations pointing to an exact location in the file. Contributors can also comment on files, or add or remove content.
Plus, users can use the default AI assistant or pick other assistant roles, like “analyst,” “entertainer,” or “instructor.” You can also create a custom assistant using a prompt.
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by Alan Boyle on Jan 21, 2026 at 6:00 amJanuary 21, 2026 at 6:10 am
Starfish Space has secured a $52.5 million contract from the U.S. Space Force's Space Development Agency to dispose of military satellites at the end of their operational lives.
The Tukwila, Wash.-based startup says it's the first commercial deal ever struck to provide “deorbit-as-a-service,” or DaaS, for a satellite constellation in low Earth orbit. In this case, the constellation is the Pentagon's Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture, which provides global communications access and encrypted connectivity for military missions.
The contract calls for Starfish Space to launch the satellite disposal service in 2027.
“This is not research and development. This is an actual service, in a structure that allows that service to scale for this constellation, for an entire industry,” Starfish Space co-founder Trevor Bennett told GeekWire. He said the arrangement validates the Space Development Agency's approach to building and maintaining its constellation, and also validates “the path that we can take with the industry at large.”
Starfish is developing a spacecraft called Otter that would be able to capture other satellites, maneuver them into different orbits, release them and then move on. In a deorbiting scenario, Otter would send the target satellite into a trajectory for atmospheric re-entry that wouldn't pose a risk to other orbital assets. Starfish's system doesn't require the target satellite to be pre-outfitted with specialized hardware — which is a significant selling point.
The system provides an alternative to what typically happens to satellites toward the end of their lives. Today, most satellite operators either have to execute a deorbiting maneuver while they're sure that the propulsion system still works, or risk having their spacecraft turn into unmanageable space junk.
Bennett compared Otter to a tow truck that can be brought in to carry away an old vehicle when it really needs to be scrapped.
“With the tow truck kind of capability, we can provide that service as needed, but we are not trying to replace normal operation,” he said. “We are augmenting it and extending it so the satellites that are being flown in that constellation can go fly longer. … Once it's done operating and it's time to dispose, we can provide that transit to the right disposable altitude.”
Starfish's deal with the Space Development Agency builds on a previously awarded mission study contract that supported work on the concept in 2024 and 2025. The $52.5 million won't be paid out all at once. An initial payment will cover costs leading up to the first deorbiting operation, and from then on, the agency will pay Starfish for services rendered. Bennett declined to provide further financial details, citing confidentiality.
Otter's capabilities aren't limited to deorbiting satellites. The oven-sized spacecraft could also be used to change a satellite's orbital path, or bring it in for servicing. “With Otter, we've dramatically reduced the cost and complexity of satellite servicing across orbits,” Austin Link, Starfish Space's other co-founder, said in a news release. “This contract reflects both the value of affordable servicing missions and the technical readiness of the Otter.”
Starfish conducted a partial test of its first Otter prototype, known as Otter Pup, in 2024. A second prototype, Otter Pup 2, launched in mid-2025 and is currently undergoing tests that could include a satellite docking attempt. “That vehicle remains healthy and operational, and is actually progressing through some additional mission milestones,” Bennett said.
Three other projects are in the works:
“Those Otters are all under construction and in testing,” Bennett said. “Actually, we'll see a couple of those launched this year. And so this is an exciting time, where Otters are about to go to space and start operating as commercial vehicles.”
GeekWire Studios has partnered with AWS for the Guide to re:Invent. This interview series took place on the Expo floor at AWS re:Invent 2025, and features insightful conversations about the future of cloud tech, as well as partnership success stories.
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Starfish Space brings in new funding as it gears up for orbital inspection and docking
Starfish Space wins contract to help NRO advance capabilities for orbital operations
Starfish Space wins $15M NASA award for a SSPICY mission to visit dead satellites
Otter Pup rides again: Starfish Space gears up for its second satellite docking attempt
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This fully enclosed 3D printer from Creality is an absolute bargain
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If you've never given 3D printing a try, or if you're a seasoned pro looking for an upgrade, then Creality has the answer. A deal has popped up on the Creality K1C, a worthy upgrade over the original K1, and one that netted a 4.5 star score when we put it to the test in 2024. This fully enclosed Core XY printer is on sale right now with a huge 33% discount.
That brings the price of this Creality K1C 3D printer down to just $399 – just $30 off the price we saw over the Black Friday sales event last year. You're also getting a slightly improved 2025 version, too, over the 2024 model we tested in our Creality K1C review. The two are nearly identical, but this new model reportedly unlocks multi-color printing with support for a redesigned filament system.
An upgrade over the K1, the Creality K1C is a fully enclosed, Core XY 3D printer with a steel-tipped 4mm nozzle, running the easy-to-use Klipper firmware with a touchscreen. It has a build volume of 220 x 220 x 250 mm and features an AI-supported camera to help with build issues and to record timelapse videos.
This isn't Creality's flagship printer, but it does come with an elite set of features. It has a build volume of 220 x 220 x 250 mm using a heated, coated steel flex plate. As we mentioned, this 3D printer is fully enclosed, which makes it ideal for high-temperature prints. The build volume is a little smaller than the rival Bambu Lab P1S, which sits on our best 3D printer guide, but much larger than other budget-friendly printers like the Bambu Lab A1.
It also uses a proprietary steel-tipped, tri-metal 0.4mm “unicorn” nozzle attached to a direct drive extruder – an improvement over the K1's original design. A direct drive extruder does offer better pressure control while printing takes place, which can help to improve print accuracy, even when you're printing fast, to help you avoid wasted filament. Fast is the operative word here, with the K1C offering a 20000 mm/s² acceleration limit and max print speed of 600mm/s.
You're also getting a few nice-to-have goodies with the Creality K1C. One additional is the AI assisted camera to help automatically detect print errors, as well as to help you create timelapse videos. A carbon filter is also in place to improve the air quality around you during the printing process. The printer arrives almost completely assembled, making it easy to set up for beginners.
A small touch screen on the front allows you to handle print settings and progress using the open source Klipper firmware. There are a few included methods for printing, too, with support for printing models via USB, over your Wi-Fi or wired network, or using Creality's own cloud system.
$399 for an enclosed 3D printer like this Creality K1C is an absolute steal, and places it in direct competition against the Bambu Lab P1S. If you're keen, make sure to grab it before Creality's New Year sale runs out, or you might miss out on a serious bargain.
If you're looking for more savings, check out our Best PC Hardware deals for a range of products, or dive deeper into our specialized SSD and Storage Deals, Hard Drive Deals, Gaming Monitor Deals, Graphics Card Deals, Gaming Chair, Best Wi-Fi Routers, Best Motherboard, or CPU Deals pages.
Ben Stockton is a deals writer at Tom's Hardware. He's been writing about technology since 2018, with bylines at PCGamesN, How-To Geek, and Tom's Guide, among others. When he's not hunting down the best bargains, he's busy tinkering with his homelab or watching old Star Trek episodes.
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Bunch of dumb people running the room and no experts.
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Today the yield is ~4.9.Now, in 2026, how many institutions are "picking up pennies in front of steamrollers" ?
Now, in 2026, how many institutions are "picking up pennies in front of steamrollers" ?
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In a mark to market world, the value of a bond is its acquisition cost, so buying bonds enough to raise prices increases their value, but not their coupons or their face value. It's hard to make sense of the value of a sequence of payments, it's reasonable to consider the present value and the market price is an easily justified present value for a bond.Selling bonds and buying stocks is a different thing altogether. Selling US stocks and buying EU stocks wouldn't change the value of the underlying assets, however, having an increased stock price does have benefits for the company when issuing new shares or bonds.
Selling bonds and buying stocks is a different thing altogether. Selling US stocks and buying EU stocks wouldn't change the value of the underlying assets, however, having an increased stock price does have benefits for the company when issuing new shares or bonds.
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If you're trying to escape an expected upcoming crash you don't necessarily need to look for growth but instead stability. Precious metals are always popular but simply shifting a portion of your money into an index fund of a different stock exchange should help minimize your exposure to any catastrophic loss.This is, of course, not financial advice.
This is, of course, not financial advice.
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“I don't need to outrun the bear. I just need to outrun you. “
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https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=449401
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The master turned to the disciple and said: "A better thing"The disciple was enlightened.EDIT: Oh damn it. The entirety of the comment was "Sovereign debt of a more politically stable nation state or other monetary union" at the time I replied. Ah well.
The disciple was enlightened.EDIT: Oh damn it. The entirety of the comment was "Sovereign debt of a more politically stable nation state or other monetary union" at the time I replied. Ah well.
EDIT: Oh damn it. The entirety of the comment was "Sovereign debt of a more politically stable nation state or other monetary union" at the time I replied. Ah well.
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Also I don't see that EU as a whole is on a downward trajectory, there are a lot of areas that are super strong, one being the defence industry.US on the other hand - who wants to invest in or trade with them when they treat the rest of the world (including close friends) as shit.
US on the other hand - who wants to invest in or trade with them when they treat the rest of the world (including close friends) as shit.
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The problem is that US treasuries have a bunch of features that can't be replicated because of the size of the US economy. The only choice that comes close is China whose bonds are too illiberal to trade the same (and China has no interest in liberalizing them).
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> Also I don't see that EU as a whole is on a downward trajectoryThat's an extremely contrarian take that you can't justify with EU defense did good for once in it's life. Maybe we'll see something from the EU but remember the USA and EU GDP were basically identical 10 years ago now the US is 50% bigger.Seriously in 2008 the EU had a bigger GDP and now is a fraction of the USA and member nations have done basically nothing to fix the core issues that left them behind.> US on the other hand - who wants to invest in or trade with them when they treat the rest of the world (including close friends) as shit.Sadly it doesn't really matter about a "want" it's a need at this point unless people are going to cut off their arm and collapse their own economies they don't really get a choice.
That's an extremely contrarian take that you can't justify with EU defense did good for once in it's life. Maybe we'll see something from the EU but remember the USA and EU GDP were basically identical 10 years ago now the US is 50% bigger.Seriously in 2008 the EU had a bigger GDP and now is a fraction of the USA and member nations have done basically nothing to fix the core issues that left them behind.> US on the other hand - who wants to invest in or trade with them when they treat the rest of the world (including close friends) as shit.Sadly it doesn't really matter about a "want" it's a need at this point unless people are going to cut off their arm and collapse their own economies they don't really get a choice.
Seriously in 2008 the EU had a bigger GDP and now is a fraction of the USA and member nations have done basically nothing to fix the core issues that left them behind.> US on the other hand - who wants to invest in or trade with them when they treat the rest of the world (including close friends) as shit.Sadly it doesn't really matter about a "want" it's a need at this point unless people are going to cut off their arm and collapse their own economies they don't really get a choice.
> US on the other hand - who wants to invest in or trade with them when they treat the rest of the world (including close friends) as shit.Sadly it doesn't really matter about a "want" it's a need at this point unless people are going to cut off their arm and collapse their own economies they don't really get a choice.
Sadly it doesn't really matter about a "want" it's a need at this point unless people are going to cut off their arm and collapse their own economies they don't really get a choice.
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It's time to stop magical, wishful thinking about how you want the world to be, and deal with the world as it is.
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In practice, he has the authority to do anything he wants. Who is going to stop him? You? His pets in Congress? JPow's private hit squad? Clarence Thomas?The first rule of neo-America is that you're playing the Chairman's Game[1], and there are no more rules. Its counterparties should bargain with it accordingly.---[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_(card_game) [2][2] The Chairman's Game is a game invented in a university. Some say it was invented at Stanford, while others say it was invented at MIT. It was inspired by a formerly prominent, but now somewhat disgraced Chinese politician that was famous for coming up with a lot of interesting new rules for his subjects to follow, and enforcing those rules very harshly, without necessarily informing those subjects what those rules were. It's a little bit like Uno, a little bit like Crazy Eights, and the only thing that I can tell you about it is that there are times, when playing this game, when it is not a good idea to speak.
The first rule of neo-America is that you're playing the Chairman's Game[1], and there are no more rules. Its counterparties should bargain with it accordingly.---[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_(card_game) [2][2] The Chairman's Game is a game invented in a university. Some say it was invented at Stanford, while others say it was invented at MIT. It was inspired by a formerly prominent, but now somewhat disgraced Chinese politician that was famous for coming up with a lot of interesting new rules for his subjects to follow, and enforcing those rules very harshly, without necessarily informing those subjects what those rules were. It's a little bit like Uno, a little bit like Crazy Eights, and the only thing that I can tell you about it is that there are times, when playing this game, when it is not a good idea to speak.
---[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_(card_game) [2][2] The Chairman's Game is a game invented in a university. Some say it was invented at Stanford, while others say it was invented at MIT. It was inspired by a formerly prominent, but now somewhat disgraced Chinese politician that was famous for coming up with a lot of interesting new rules for his subjects to follow, and enforcing those rules very harshly, without necessarily informing those subjects what those rules were. It's a little bit like Uno, a little bit like Crazy Eights, and the only thing that I can tell you about it is that there are times, when playing this game, when it is not a good idea to speak.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_(card_game) [2][2] The Chairman's Game is a game invented in a university. Some say it was invented at Stanford, while others say it was invented at MIT. It was inspired by a formerly prominent, but now somewhat disgraced Chinese politician that was famous for coming up with a lot of interesting new rules for his subjects to follow, and enforcing those rules very harshly, without necessarily informing those subjects what those rules were. It's a little bit like Uno, a little bit like Crazy Eights, and the only thing that I can tell you about it is that there are times, when playing this game, when it is not a good idea to speak.
[2] The Chairman's Game is a game invented in a university. Some say it was invented at Stanford, while others say it was invented at MIT. It was inspired by a formerly prominent, but now somewhat disgraced Chinese politician that was famous for coming up with a lot of interesting new rules for his subjects to follow, and enforcing those rules very harshly, without necessarily informing those subjects what those rules were. It's a little bit like Uno, a little bit like Crazy Eights, and the only thing that I can tell you about it is that there are times, when playing this game, when it is not a good idea to speak.
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https://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/New_Home_Page/datafile...
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Sort of definitionally, nothing in that list is going to be more politically stable than the US.In the second link, the author gives slightly lower country risk premiums (0% vs 0.2%) to Australia, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, Sweden, and Switzerland. Setting aside the practicality of these recommendations (how much debt does Liechtenstein issue? or Germany, for that matter?): in a world where the US is unstable, it's hard to imagine Canada being risk-free.
In the second link, the author gives slightly lower country risk premiums (0% vs 0.2%) to Australia, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, Sweden, and Switzerland. Setting aside the practicality of these recommendations (how much debt does Liechtenstein issue? or Germany, for that matter?): in a world where the US is unstable, it's hard to imagine Canada being risk-free.
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Canada needs to pursue further armament (Carney is pursuing a doubling of its defense budget) and training in asymmetrical warfare.
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They (we) are all under attack.
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That runs around $2 trillion.
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I make it only 1.5 trillion equities - they run about a 70 / 30 split stocks to bonds.They could easily trim up their $50bn of Nvidia or their $50bn of Microsoft or their $40bn of Apple etc and put it to better use.
They could easily trim up their $50bn of Nvidia or their $50bn of Microsoft or their $40bn of Apple etc and put it to better use.
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I think he means also US stocks. So most of the wealth fund.
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Anyway, how would that destroy the fund? They'd be selling it not giving it away.
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EU together with UK and Canada hold more Treasurys than the entire rest of the world combined, and if they dumped them all at once it would be significantly painful for the average American as interest rates would spike, as would inflation. The Dollar would decline against most other major currencies.However dumping that much debt all at once would require the sellers to heavily discount a large portion of their bonds, earning them increasingly fewer, and paying in (depreciating) dollars.It's exceedingly likely that de-dollarization accelerates from here, but it's also unlikely that even the Norwegian government sells it all at once. Rather than mass selling, expect EU entities to curtail or even cease buying US bonds altogether if the geopolitical situation doesn't improve.
However dumping that much debt all at once would require the sellers to heavily discount a large portion of their bonds, earning them increasingly fewer, and paying in (depreciating) dollars.It's exceedingly likely that de-dollarization accelerates from here, but it's also unlikely that even the Norwegian government sells it all at once. Rather than mass selling, expect EU entities to curtail or even cease buying US bonds altogether if the geopolitical situation doesn't improve.
It's exceedingly likely that de-dollarization accelerates from here, but it's also unlikely that even the Norwegian government sells it all at once. Rather than mass selling, expect EU entities to curtail or even cease buying US bonds altogether if the geopolitical situation doesn't improve.
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Showing that you don't want to be the last one out since either the risk or inflation hits you.
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Indeed and QE is a major inflationary pressure.
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I think all investors are now looking at this with this foresight. Being the first to dump seems to be the winning game here.
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When you're talking about hundreds of billions of dollars worth of bonds you simply can't move that much in one go. That's an elephant-in-the-bathtub situation where your moves disturb the market because of their size.Even the first entity to dump would still have to discount a lot of their bonds. Nobody on the bond market is going to make a $200B snap purchase.
Even the first entity to dump would still have to discount a lot of their bonds. Nobody on the bond market is going to make a $200B snap purchase.
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As an interesting thought experiment, imagine a central bank associated with a debt-free country issuing bond-like instruments. They would set an interest rate (perhaps with no auction, because they have no actual obligation to sell a predetermined amount, although an auction could still be used), sell bonds, delete the money used to buy the bonds, and issue new money to repay them with interest when they mature. This could be used as a way to act efficiently as a reserve currency and to exert a degree of control over inflation and the economy, kind of like how the Fed does it. The bonds would likely be considered extremely secure on account of the issue being entirely debt-free.I would be surprised if the EU did this as such, since the EU probably does not want to be in the business of competing for capital with its own members, who do have a fair amount of debt that they need to finance.
I would be surprised if the EU did this as such, since the EU probably does not want to be in the business of competing for capital with its own members, who do have a fair amount of debt that they need to finance.
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Additionally, French bonds, while likely less-correlated with US Treasuries than other instruments, suffer from its own government having high debt levels; it's not a suitable safe-haven asset. Swiss and German bonds appear to be obvious alternatives. However, Swiss and German bonds' interest rates are low and in practice are little different than holding cash.While gold appreciated in the short term, it is not simply inversely correlated with the value of the US Dollar. Its volatility is also driven by investors mitigating strict currency controls, mining productivity, and central bank activity. An unrelated downturn in one market could lead to a sell-off and wipe out gains. Gold also has no yield. Personally I think it's useful only in its physical form as a hedge for medium-term catastrophic events. Even then, a stockpile of food and clean water is likely far more valuable, if not substantially more difficult to store and maintain.I ended up giving up, learning to love the S&P 500, and white-knuckling it ahead. Of the investable markets, the US one still generates the highest returns. (Chinese GDP growth is higher but its equities have low returns compared with other markets, due to political risk.)
While gold appreciated in the short term, it is not simply inversely correlated with the value of the US Dollar. Its volatility is also driven by investors mitigating strict currency controls, mining productivity, and central bank activity. An unrelated downturn in one market could lead to a sell-off and wipe out gains. Gold also has no yield. Personally I think it's useful only in its physical form as a hedge for medium-term catastrophic events. Even then, a stockpile of food and clean water is likely far more valuable, if not substantially more difficult to store and maintain.I ended up giving up, learning to love the S&P 500, and white-knuckling it ahead. Of the investable markets, the US one still generates the highest returns. (Chinese GDP growth is higher but its equities have low returns compared with other markets, due to political risk.)
I ended up giving up, learning to love the S&P 500, and white-knuckling it ahead. Of the investable markets, the US one still generates the highest returns. (Chinese GDP growth is higher but its equities have low returns compared with other markets, due to political risk.)
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But from the bondholder perspective, being able to pick and choose which countries to hold Euro denominated debt according to their risk tolerance is an advantage anyway.
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Then again, they say whatever they need to in order for their paychecks to keep coming.
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Swedish pension fund Alecta cuts US Treasury holdings citing US politics - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46705118 - January 2026 (0 comments)Bessent Shrugs Off 'Irrelevant' Danish Treasuries Sales - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46702927 - January 2026 (0 comments)Danish Pension Fund AkademikerPension to Exit US Treasuries - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46693791 - January 2026 (2 comments)Danish pension fund to divest its U.S. Treasuries - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46692594 - January 2026 (730 comments)
Bessent Shrugs Off 'Irrelevant' Danish Treasuries Sales - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46702927 - January 2026 (0 comments)Danish Pension Fund AkademikerPension to Exit US Treasuries - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46693791 - January 2026 (2 comments)Danish pension fund to divest its U.S. Treasuries - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46692594 - January 2026 (730 comments)
Danish Pension Fund AkademikerPension to Exit US Treasuries - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46693791 - January 2026 (2 comments)Danish pension fund to divest its U.S. Treasuries - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46692594 - January 2026 (730 comments)
Danish pension fund to divest its U.S. Treasuries - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46692594 - January 2026 (730 comments)
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If you're Honda, you'd prefer that the purchaser of any Honda is purchasing their Honda from Honda. Honda doesn't care about the secondary sale of any one Honda, per se, but they'd certainly care if people start opening dealerships with fleets of effectively brand new Hondas immediately next to every Honda dealership.Additionally, every seller that was a previous long-term holder represents decreased demand for Treasuries at the primary auction. Mark Carney put it eloquently yesterday during his speech with his analogy of "taking the sign out of the window". This represents someone taking their bid out of the auction.
Additionally, every seller that was a previous long-term holder represents decreased demand for Treasuries at the primary auction. Mark Carney put it eloquently yesterday during his speech with his analogy of "taking the sign out of the window". This represents someone taking their bid out of the auction.
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Someone else considered it worthy of sharing here and enough people here found it interesting enough to get it to the front page. I don't quite understand why, but it seems like it's striking some sort of chord.
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Or if we want to be cynical, they hope the price will drop on this news and they can buy back in more cheaply.
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Sure, someone else is on the other side of the deal. But their demand is also satiated at a certain price point. Hell, if they wanted to buy from other sellers then it's not like T bills were not liquid.Would you say the same if Norway's wealth fund offloaded their $181B? At those scales it would be more likely that it'd be visibly price affecting, and therefore affect the US's ability to borrow at existing cost.So yes, when you sell your one NVDA, you are reducing demand and thus price. Epsilon, but nonzero.
Would you say the same if Norway's wealth fund offloaded their $181B? At those scales it would be more likely that it'd be visibly price affecting, and therefore affect the US's ability to borrow at existing cost.So yes, when you sell your one NVDA, you are reducing demand and thus price. Epsilon, but nonzero.
So yes, when you sell your one NVDA, you are reducing demand and thus price. Epsilon, but nonzero.
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I don't see how this is huge in context, it is indeed symbolic.Please don't get me wrong here, I am neither advocating the selling or not selling of US bonds. This specific sale just isn't statically significant in a vacuum. If this precipitates a snowball effect of bond-selling, completely different story.
Please don't get me wrong here, I am neither advocating the selling or not selling of US bonds. This specific sale just isn't statically significant in a vacuum. If this precipitates a snowball effect of bond-selling, completely different story.
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If someone thinks the value of those bonds is going to drop, then selling would have great significance for the seller.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68DJCaqEpDc
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Not, that it also fun to go with that story, but as long as everyone in the room understands it's sort of a wishful fantasy.
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This will take years, possibly a decade or more...if the US is, in fact, collapsing.
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Note that China has been selling US treasuries for months now (https://www.barrons.com/articles/china-sells-treasuries-9-st...) and there are signs that India has been quietly selling large amounts too. So it feels like the start of something much bigger, a total decoupling from the US due to its unstable politics, foreign policy, and quickly accumulating debt (Trump has added $5 trillion already and may add much more).
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Satya Nadella talked about how AI should benefit people and how it can avoid a bubble.
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Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in an interview during the 2026 World Economic Forum annual meeting that artificial intelligence needs to have a wider impact or else it risks losing “social permission,” especially given the amount of energy and other resources that AI data centers consume. Nadella made this comment during his talk with Laurance D. Fink, CEO and chairperson of BlackRock, the largest asset manager in the world, that has been shared on YouTube. The two company heads were talking about AI diffusion, with Fink asking, “Can you describe how this process of diffusion across economies, across companies, across people, and countries? How does that play out?”
“The zeitgeist is a little bit about the admiration for AI in its abstract form or as technology. But I think we, as a global community, have to get to a point where we are using it to do something that changes the outcomes of people and communities and countries and industries,” Nadella said. “Otherwise, I don't think this makes much sense, right? In fact, I would say we will quickly lose even the social permission to actually take something like energy, which is a scarce resource, and use it to generate these tokens, if these tokens are not improving health outcomes, education outcomes, public sector efficiency, private sector competitiveness across all sectors, small and large. And that, to me, is ultimately the goal.”
The rush to build AI infrastructure is putting a strain on many different resources. For example, we're in the middle of a memory chip shortage because of the massive demand for HBM that AI GPUs require. It's estimated that data centers will consume 70% of memory chips made this year, with the shortage going beyond RAM modules and SSDs and starting to affect other components and products like GPUs and smartphones.
There's also the increased demand for electricity, which is causing prices to spike by 36% in some states and wholesale prices to soar by up to 267% over the past 5 years. The high-performance AI processors in data centers also require a lot of water for cooling, with AI data centers reportedly using more water than the amount of bottled water people drank globally in one year. It has gotten to a point that U.S. politicians from both sides of the aisle have taken notice, with Democratic Senators demanding an explanation from big tech companies about their energy usage and President Donald Trump telling AI tech companies to “pay their own way” when it comes to their electricity consumption.
Microsoft is actually taking steps to make its AI data centers more palatable to its neighbors with its “Community-First AI Infrastructure” framework, and OpenAI has also followed suit. However, it is still an open question whether other hyperscalers will follow suit.
Aside from talking about the impact of AI on people, the two industry leaders also covered the AI bubble. Many industry leaders and institutions are warning about an AI bubble, especially as tech companies are continually pouring money into its development while only seeing limited benefits. “For this not to be a bubble, by definition, it requires that the benefits of this [technology] are much more evenly spread. I mean, I think, a tell-tale sign of if it's a bubble would be if all we're talking about are the tech firms,” said the Microsoft chief. “If all we talk about is what's happening to the technology side, then it's just purely supply side.”
He then gave an example of how AI tech is being used in the pharmaceutical industry to develop new drugs, wherein it was used to accelerate the clinical trial. Nadella even emphasized that AI wasn't used to discover the “magical molecule” — instead, it was used for all the other things needed “to make something much more relevant.”
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“That's why I'm much more confident that this is a technology that will, in fact, build on the rails of cloud and mobile, diffuse faster, and bend the productivity curve and bring local surplus and economic growth all around the world — not just economic growth driven by capital expenses.”
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Jowi Morales is a tech enthusiast with years of experience working in the industry. He's been writing with several tech publications since 2021, where he's been interested in tech hardware and consumer electronics.
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If this operating system is old enough to drive, it's certainly old enough to dispense your money.
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An ATM in England has replaced its Welcome screen with the Windows 7 Professional login screen, asking for a username and password instead of your PIN. According to The Register, this particular machine is located in Manchester, which is known for its bars and music scene, and often required cash transactions back in the day. However, anyone who tries to get their Pounds from this particular machine will be in for a surprise, as the display seemingly wants you to log into your Windows account before you can enter the four- or six-digit code you need to get money from your debit card.
Windows 7 is arguably one of the best versions of the ubiquitous operating system, cleaning up the mess left by Windows Vista, and second only to Windows XP. However, this OS is 17 years old right now, meaning it should be old enough to drive. It was launched in 2009 to the general public but was succeeded by Windows 8 in 2012. Still, it soldiered on for a few more years, losing mainstream support in 2015, before Microsoft finally dropped extended support in 2020.
But even though it's been six years since Windows 7 was out of circulation, that does not mean that it's already completely erased from commercial and industrial applications. Some businesses follow the ethos of “if it ain't broke, don't fix it,” which apparently stands true for these cash dispensing machines. Using an old operating system that no longer receives updates might feel dangerous, especially for an ATM. However, the bank likely didn't bother replacing the system because it's probably not connected to the public internet.
The Windows login screen isn't supposed to reveal itself on an operating ATM, but this likely happened because of an update (likely not from Microsoft, but from a third-party provider) or a software crash that forced the machine to reboot without the bank's IT services noticing it. The bank's administrator needs to log in to Windows first, either remotely or through the terminal at the bank's ATM, before customers can start withdrawing money from it. Unfortunately, that means you won't be getting cash from that particular machine, even if you're desperate and have tried logging in with your username and password.
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Another day, another Amazon scam.
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A new entrant has emerged in the long-running series of GPU scam cases documented on Reddit — this time, it's an RTX 5080 being covertly swapped for an RTX 5060 Ti. An unfortunate customer ordered an RTX 5080 from Amazon, only to be left bewildered by a different GPU inside the box that showed no signs of being a 5080, despite being labeled as such.
The Redditor added images of the product he received on Imgur; those, along with the post's caption, show that this supposed Asus Prime RTX 5080 has an 8-pin PCIe connector. Nvidia's Blackwell cards above the 5060 Ti class don't ship with that style of power plug anymore, opting for the incendiary 16-pin connector instead, so this is a dead giveaway we're not looking at a 5080.
Despite that, someone clearly tried to hide the obvious fallacy by putting genuine RTX 5080 stickers on this card, which you can tell by the slightly crooked application. What we're actually looking at is an Asus Prime RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB. The design for that and the Prime 5060 (non-Ti) is nearly identical, but subtle differences are noticeable. Anyhow, this RTX 5060 Ti was dressed in 5080 clothing to pull off the scam, which seems to have worked.
The leading theory in the comments points toward a deceptive swap on the customer's end. Not this customer, but someone else who ordered both an Asus Prime RTX 5060 Ti and 5080, filed for a return on the 5080 but sent the 5060 Ti in the box instead. They guess Amazon didn't bother checking the package contents — even if it did, the mere presence of a GPU would've likely been enough to accept it — and resold the 5080. Our very own Matt Safford scored an i5 CPU for $10 thanks to another such scam last year.
The unlucky buyer on Reddit then became the new recipient of this GPU. The story tracks and, beyond speculating that someone else in the shipping chain was responsible, lines up with previous "comingling" incidents. Another RTX 5080 was swapped for a literal brick, and before that, people have received pasta instead of silicon, too. Usually, scammers don't go to the length to swap stickers between two legitimate SKUs, so at least this one put some effort in.
At this point, filing for a return/refund on this GPU should get the Redditor their money back, or maybe they can work out an exchange with Amazon's customer service. In times like these, where AI has snatched production lines and GPU prices are on the rise, securing a good deal and watching it slip away can feel extra upsetting, so we hope the victim (and the scammer) gets their due.
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Court documents appear to show Nvidia management green lit the deal, despite Anna's Archive's warnings.
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Nvidia has been accused of offering to pay for ‘high-speed access' to Anna's Archive, a notorious ‘shadow library' portal, bursting with copyright-infringing materials. Documents published by TorrentFreak appear to show the Nvidia Data Strategy Team reaching out regarding payments for ‘high-speed access' to Anna's Archive. Moreover, if the documents are genuine, they indicate that green team management approved the payment plan “within a week.”
Nvidia, like other AI industry giants, is very interested in gaining access to the largest sources of human knowledge to improve LLM training quality. The likes of Meta and Anthropic have previously been found with their fingers all over pirated content. These super-wealthy firms jealously guard their own technologies, so evidence that they seem to have little or no regard for the intellectual property of others would be a source of irony.
TorrentFreak notes that the email snippets it has shared have been precipitated during the discovery phase of an ongoing class action lawsuit where Nvidia is accused of copyright infringement by training its models on content from the Books3 dataset, including copyrighted works taken from pirate site Bibliotik.
In that case, Nvidia is defending its actions under ‘fair use,' but the new evidence showing Anna's Archive correspondence looks compelling. In fact, the authors behind the Books3 class action have filed an amended complaint significantly expanding the scope of the lawsuit, says TorrentFreak.
One of the most damning pieces of correspondence between Nvidia reps and Anna's Archive is shown above. The snippet appears to show an unnamed Nvidia exec inquiring about the use of Anna's Archive for LLM training.
Probably worse, though, is the section of the new court filing which alleges that “Within a week of contacting Anna's Archive, and days after being warned by Anna's Archive of the illegal nature of their collections, Nvidia management gave ‘the green light' to proceed with the piracy.”
The proposed deal would mean providing Nvidia with high-speed access to ~500TB of data for LLM training. We don't see evidence that the deal actually went through, or that any payments went to Anna's Archive.
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Nvidia is also accused of giving corporate customers automatic access to datasets such as ‘The Pile,' which includes the Books3 pirated collection.
The authors behind the class action are looking for compensation for the damages they have suffered. Hundreds of other authors whose work is within the huge pirate library may later join the class action lawsuit.
Anna's Archive remains online for now, though its rising profile has pushed it into the inevitable DCMA takedown notice whack‑a‑mole stage.
As mentioned in the intro, ‘Books3' was also dredged by Meta and Anthropic LLMs. However, this is the first allegation of a formal Anna's Archive business arrangement between a U.S. company and the copyright-infringing books repository. We have reached out to Nvidia for comment on the story.
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Way back in March of 2019, this weird thing happened where a relatively insignificant tech nonprofit called OpenAI became a “capped” for-profit company—whatever that is. The month earlier, OpenAI had announced the creation of an uncanny, über-powerful language model called GPT-2 that was supposedly just too dangerous to release. Then in November, OpenAI seemingly changed its mind and GPT-2 was released after all. OpenAI said in the blog post about the release that it saw, “no strong evidence of misuse so far,” but added that it was impossible to “be aware of all threats.” Most people never used GPT-2, because OpenAI never injected it into a viral chatbot.
As someone who wrote about this at the time, it was puzzling to watch it all play out. OpenAI seemed like small potatoes, but it was also building creepy AI tech, and shifting in public image from being a do-gooder computer lab advertising its trepidation about harming a hair on anyone's head to an enterprise that needed to ship something asap because it was clearly promising someone, somewhere, that they were going to get rich.Document discovery from Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft has provided a tiny window into what was actually happening inside Microsoft during this bizarre time for this bizarre company, and how the transition may have turned OpenAI into the money-hungry beast it is today, with revenues growing tenfold between 2023 and 2025.GeekWire's Todd Bishop dug through the cache of emails, memos, texts and the like from Microsoft and OpenAI, and what he found was revealing. Microsoft, and CEO Satya Nadella in particular, had invested heavily in OpenAI by then, and were not quiet during OpenAI's uneasy transition to for-profit status. Nor were they shy about the need to make money as soon as possible. Absolutely none of this should come as a surprise, but it makes for fascinating reading anyway. During that gap where GPT-2 was sitting there unreleased and OpenAI had recently become a capped nonprofit, Microsoft's chief financial officer, Amy Hood, weighed in about the company's concerns about that “capped” part. She wrote in a July 14 email to a group including Nadella, “Given the cap is actually larger than 90% of public companies, I am not sure it is terribly constraining nor terribly altruistic but that is Sam's call on his cap.” GPT-3, which was even more exciting than GPT-2 was released in 2020, and the first version of OpenAI's language model, Dall-E was released in January 2021. The next month, Microsoft and OpenAI were negotiating an additional injection of money from Microsoft, and Sam Altman wrote an email to Microsoft, saying “We want to do everything we can to make you all commercially successful and are happy to move significantly from the term sheet,” and he added that he wanted “to make you all a bunch of money as quickly as we can and for you to be enthusiastic about making this additional investment soon.”In November of 2022, ChatGPT was released, and as you know, all hell broke loose. In January of 2023, Nadella sent a text message to Altman, saying “when do you think you will activate your paid subscription for ChatGPT?” Altman said he was “hoping to be ready by end of jan, but we can be flexible beyond that. the only real reason for rushing it is we are just so out of capacity and delivering a bad user experience,” and asked “any preference on when we do it?”“Let me think about it and weigh in. Overall getting this in place sooner is best,” Nadella replied. Two weeks later, he followed up and asked “how many subs have you guys added to ChatGPT?” Three days later, the paid version of ChatGPT launched.
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Don't bother trying to figure out how that makes any sense.
It's better than ChatGPT encouraging you to kill yourself, I guess.
No, there have not been any updates about what the hell it is.
One falsely claimed that some random guy—not even a player—had died.
$134 billion, with more to come.
The inevitable is beginning.
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As Meta heads to trial in the state of New Mexico for allegedly failing to protect minors from sexual exploitation, the company is making an aggressive push to have certain information excluded from the court proceedings.
The company has petitioned the judge to exclude certain research studies and articles around social media and youth mental health; any mention of a recent high-profile case involving teen suicide and social media content; and any references to Meta's financial resources, the personal activities of employees, and Mark Zuckerberg's time as a student at Harvard University.
Meta's requests to exclude information, known as motions in limine, are a standard part of pretrial proceedings, in which a party can ask a judge to determine in advance which evidence or arguments are permissible in court. This is to ensure the jury is presented with facts and not irrelevant or prejudicial information and that the defendant is granted a fair trial.
Meta has emphasized in pretrial motions that the only questions the jury should be asked are whether Meta violated New Mexico's Unfair Practices Act because of how it has allegedly handled child safety and youth mental health, and that other information—such as Meta's alleged election interference and misinformation, or privacy violations—shouldn't be factored in.
But some of the requests seem unusually aggressive, two legal scholars tell WIRED, including requests that the court not mention the company's AI chatbots, and the extensive reputation protection Meta is seeking. WIRED was able to review Meta's in limine requests through a public records request from the New Mexico courts.
These motions are part of a landmark case brought by New Mexico attorney general Raúl Torrez in late 2023. The state is alleging that Meta failed to protect minors from online solicitation, human trafficking, and sexual abuse on its platforms. It claims the company proactively served pornographic content to minors on its apps and failed to enact certain child safety measures.
The state complaint details how its investigators were easily able to set up fake Facebook and Instagram accounts posing as underage girls, and how these accounts were soon sent explicit messages and shown algorithmically amplified pornographic content. In another test case cited in the complaint, investigators created a fake account as a mother looking to traffic her young daughter. According to the complaint, Meta did not flag suggestive remarks that other users commented on her posts, nor did it shut down some of the accounts that were reported to be in violation of Meta's policies.
Meta spokesperson Aaron Simpson told WIRED via email that the company has, for over a decade, listened to parents, experts, and law enforcement, and has conducted in-depth research, to “understand the issues that matter the most,” and to “use these insights to make meaningful changes—like introducing Teen Accounts with built-in protections and providing parents with tools to manage their teens' experiences.”
“While New Mexico makes sensationalist, irrelevant and distracting arguments, we're focused on demonstrating our longstanding commitment to supporting young people,” Simpson said. “We're proud of the progress we've made, and we're always working to do better.”
In its motions ahead of the New Mexico trial, Meta asked that the court exclude any references to a public advisory published by Vivek Murthy, the former US surgeon general, about social media and youth mental health. It also asked the court to exclude an op-ed article by Murthy and Murthy's calls for social media to come with a warning label. Meta argues that the former surgeon general's statements treat social media companies as a monolith and are “irrelevant, inadmissible hearsay, and unduly prejudicial.”
Meta has also insisted that the state of New Mexico should not be able to admit in court any third-party surveys—or Meta's own internal surveys—that purport to show a high amount of inappropriate content on Meta's platforms, because the surveys are, in legal terms, hearsay.
The social media giant seems particularly concerned that its CEO's reputation, the company's past privacy violations, and its overall dominance in social media could unfairly sway the jury. Meta has asked the court to preclude the state from introducing any argument, testimony, or evidence about Zuckerberg's college years, saying “any effort by the state to pluck unflattering comments or incidents from when Mr. Zuckerberg (now in his 40s) was a college student would be both unfairly prejudicial and an impermissible use of propensity evidence to attack Mr. Zuckerberg's and Meta's character.” (Zuckerberg famously created an attractiveness-rating website in 2003; Meta's lawyers have also sought to keep this information out of court in a consolidated trial in California that's set to begin later this month.)
Meta has also requested that any evidence regarding Meta's finances, “including its financial size, financial condition, market capitalization, revenues, profits, and wealth—as well as the wealth, compensation, and personal activities of its officers and employees,” be precluded.
It asks that the court not refer to former Meta employees or contractors who the state may call as witnesses as “whistleblowers,” insisting the word “whistleblower” is a legal term of art and that inaccurate or misleading references to people who may not qualify as whistleblowers “would serve only to inflame and confuse the jury.” And it has asked the court that any law enforcement officials who appear as witnesses not appear in uniform.
Meta also wants the court to exclude any reference to Molly Russell, a British teenager who died by suicide in 2017 after consuming content on social media that depicted self-harm and suicide. Meta has argued that “evidence about her use of Instagram and material she allegedly saw on Instagram, her tragic death by suicide, and the United Kingdom Coroner's investigation into her death” bear no connection to New Mexico or Meta's case there, nor does the testimony of Russell's father.
And, despite the company's recent massive investments into and promotions of its artificial intelligence products, Meta has asked the New Mexico court to exclude any mention of its AI chatbots, stating, “This case has never been about AI chatbots,” and that introducing a “new, complex subject—emerging AI chatbot technology—would risk confusing and misleading the jury about the conduct and statements actually at issue.”
Some of these requests, such as withholding references to “previous cases, Meta's wealth, or Mark Zuckerberg's college hotness-rating app, seem pretty standard and straightforward,” says Mark Lemley, a partner at litigation firm Lex Lumina and the William H. Neukom Professor at Stanford Law School. “But other requests from Meta seem quite aggressive, such as no reference to self-harm, or state-wide harms, or chatbots, for instance.”
“It's hard to know without being closer to the case whether there is a specific reason for those requests, though,” Lemley added. (Lemley previously defended Meta in a high-profile copyright lawsuit, then parted ways with the company because of what he described as the company's “descent into toxic masculinity and neo-Nazi madness.”)
Meta's alleged failures to prevent child exploitation on its apps have been previously reported. Over the past two years the social media company has been sued by more than 40 US states for allegedly harming youth mental health and has come under fire for reportedly halting internal research that showed that people who stopped using Facebook apps were less depressed and anxious.
The New Mexico case is now headed to trial court for jury selection in Santa Fe on February 2; hearings have been ongoing leading up to the trial.
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As the world keeps warming and electricity bills take center stage in national politics, the data center boom will drive up US carbon emissions and electricity costs. But a few simple policies could help bring both emissions and prices back down.
That's the message of a new analysis from the Union of Concerned Scientists released Wednesday, which models a variety of scenarios for how to fuel the coming AI boom. The US is poised to see a 60 to 80 percent increase in electricity demand through 2050, with data centers alone making up more than half of the increase by the end of this decade, the analysis finds. If policies stay the same as they currently are—with attacks on renewable energy being embedded into regulatory regimes and few significant national policies restricting carbon emissions from power plants—we could see between a 19 and 29 percent increase in CO2 emissions from US power plants tied just to the energy needs of data centers over the next 10 years.
There are answers, though: Bringing back tax credits for wind and solar, which were political targets in last year's One Big Beautiful Bill, would cut CO2 emissions by more than 30 percent over the next decade, even if data centers eat up a significant chunk of new demand for electricity. They could also make wholesale electricity costs go down by about 4 percent by 2050, after a slight rise over the next decade.
Power plants are the second-largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the US, making up about a quarter of the country's overall emissions. Last year, emissions from the US power sector rose slightly, marking the first increase since 2023; commercial buildings like data centers, a separate analysis released last week from the Rhodium Group found, were the main drivers of that demand.
Predicting the amount of energy the US is going to need for AI in the future is an incredibly tricky project. Many of the public estimates we have are provided by utilities that are wrangling a number of requests for new capacity from data centers; data center companies often take their requests to a number of utilities as they shop for the best price, which inflates estimates of overall actual need. Technological advances over the next few years could also make data centers and AI much more energy efficient. Some of the craziest numbers splashed over headlines or trumpeted out by tech and energy executives are probably exaggerations. (Earlier this month, PJM, one of the largest regional transmission organizations in the country, downgraded its projections of how much energy the grid is going to need over the next couple of years after more carefully vetting some data center proposals.) In order to get an accurate read on this, UCS modelers used middle-range electric growth scenarios and assumed that just half the projects publicly announced in the pipeline would actually be built.
But the Trump administration has moved so aggressively against both renewable energy and climate policies in the past year that the analysis likely underestimates how high emissions from data center demand could actually be. While the UCS modeling accounts for some policy changes, including backpedaling on regulations on coal-fired power plants, doing away with renewable tax credits, and delaying some offshore wind projects, it didn't take others into account. An Interior Department policy that has mandated review of all wind and solar projects on federal lands, for instance, has created a whopping bottleneck of 22 gigawatts of projects—enough to power more than 16 million homes. In December, the administration issued stop work orders for five East Coast wind farms under construction, citing national security concerns. (On Friday, three different judges ruled that construction could proceed.)
“The Trump administration is doing this with projects that have already been approved and are under construction,” says Steve Clemmer, the lead author of the analysis and the director of energy research at UCS. “It sends a chilling signal to the industry, and to efforts to power data centers and meet electricity demand. We need to build as much as we can, as fast as we can.”
The Trump administration has made it extremely clear that it wants fossil fuels—specifically coal, the dirtiest form of energy—to power the AI boom. Energy secretary Chris Wright has ordered at least two coal-fired power plants to stay online past their retirement dates, while the White House and the Environmental Protection Agency have pushed a number of policies that benefit the coal industry.
Despite the administration's clear preferences for fossil fuels, they're not always the cheapest or easiest option, especially as demand for gas turbines has skyrocketed and experts project yearslong waits to build new natural gas plants. Some power providers are starting to push back against the administration's anti-renewables moves. Earlier this month, PJM filed a brief supporting a Virginia offshore wind developer that is suing the Trump administration over blocking the project. In the brief, PJM argued that the wind project, which will provide enough power for more than 600,000 homes, “is important to meet a rapidly increasing demand for electric power.”
Big Tech, meanwhile, made a variety of pledges in recent years to cut emissions and be more climate-friendly; many of these pledges were promptly derailed by the growth of AI. It's not clear whether these companies are ready to push directly against the Trump administration to advocate for more renewable generation. Last week, with encouragement from the White House, Microsoft rolled out a set of commitments for its data centers to be “better neighbors” to communities where they're located. There were no mentions of emissions or climate policies in the set of commitments provided by Microsoft, which did not respond to a request for comment.
The UCS estimates do not include estimates from energy generation that happens at the data centers themselves, which is becoming an increasingly popular option for projects that are waiting to connect to the grid. These installations can include renewable generation, usually solar and batteries; different forms of nuclear energy—from restarting entire power plants to investing in small modular reactors—are also popular choices for tech companies. But many of the biggest hyperscalers have also announced plans to build their own onsite gas plants.
The prices modeled in the UCS analysis are just for wholesale electricity—the cost of delivering electrons to the grid—and not necessarily what Americans see on their bills. Consumer electric bills are shaped by a whole host of factors beyond just what utilities pay for the energy itself, including upgrades to equipment and buildouts of transmission lines. Renewable energy, which is intermittent and often located farther from where power needs to be provided, needs more transmission than traditional fossil sources, which means more financial investment.
“What's so crazy about renewables is [that] both political arguments are true,” says Pier LaFarge, a cofounder at Sparkfund, a utility services company. “They are the cheapest power at the source of generation—but they are also raising rates because of downstream upgrades to the distribution grid.”
Just reintroducing tax credits for wind and solar wouldn't be enough to stave off the worst impacts of climate change. The UCS study also modeled the costs of policies that would more seriously decarbonize the US grid as demand rises from AI. This includes more stringent power plant regulations and more investment in the transmission upgrades that renewable energy needs. This scenario, the analysis finds, would slightly raise wholesale electricity costs through 2050, by about $412 billion—a 7 percent increase. However, the analysis finds, it would avoid up to $13 trillion in climate costs: damages incurred by floods, wildfires, droughts, and other extreme weather worldwide, as well as the local health costs associated with dirty power plants. (Earlier this month, the EPA announced that it would no longer factor in the costs of lives saved from excess pollution when considering pollution policies around power plants.)
Much of the US grid is in serious need of upgrades, especially if the country becomes serious about moving off fossil fuels. Part of the challenge of the next few years is going to be ensuring that the upgrades the grid needs—with or without more renewables—are not unfairly pushed on to consumers.
“There definitely needs to be much stronger guardrails in place for data centers themselves, as well as for making sure that we have enough electricity capacity and generation in place to power those data centers, and that it doesn't take away from other customers,” Clemmer says.
Despite the Trump administration's aggressive attacks on renewables and eye-watering figures for energy demands from AI, there's some reason to hope. LaForge believes that utilities' increasing deployment of batteries, coupled with contracts that make data centers pay for infrastructure and other associated costs, will help drive electric rates down for regular consumers. (Unlike credits for wind and solar, tax credits for batteries mostly made it through the One Big Beautiful Bill negotiations.) In this scenario, the US could look more like Texas: tons of cheap wind and solar on the grid, a few gas plants, and installing a lot of batteries.
“The good news is that, just like the Biden administration couldn't control the fate of the universe, neither can the Trump administration,” he says, pointing out that solar, wind, and storage made up more than 90 percent of new power put on the grid last year. “We're building more renewables more quickly in more places for purely economic reasons.”
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What happens here matters everywhere
by Taylor Soper on Jan 20, 2026 at 11:05 pmJanuary 21, 2026 at 8:06 am
The Gates Foundation and OpenAI are launching a new partnership aimed at bringing artificial intelligence into frontline health care systems across Africa, starting with Rwanda.
The initiative, called Horizon1000, will deploy AI-powered tools to support primary health care workers in patient intake, triage, follow-up, referrals, and access to trusted medical information in local languages. The organizations said the effort is designed to augment — not replace — health workers, particularly in regions facing severe workforce shortages.
The Gates Foundation and OpenAI are committing up to $50 million in combined funding, technology, and technical support, with a goal of reaching 1,000 primary health clinics and surrounding communities by 2028. The tools will be aligned with national clinical guidelines and optimized for accuracy, privacy, and security, according to the organizations.
“I spend a lot of time thinking about how AI can help us address fundamental challenges like poverty, hunger, and disease,” Bill Gates wrote in a blog post. “One issue that I keep coming back to is making great health care accessible to all — and that's why we're partnering with OpenAI and African leaders and innovators on Horizon1000.”
In sub-Saharan Africa alone, health systems face a shortage of nearly six million workers — a gap Gates said cannot be closed through training alone.
“AI offers a powerful way to extend clinical capacity,” wrote the Microsoft co-founder.
The announcement comes during the World Economic Forum's 2026 annual meeting, where Gates appeared alongside Rwanda's Minister of ICT and Innovation and the head of the Global Fund to discuss how AI and other technologies could help reverse recent setbacks in global health outcomes.
OpenAI, backed by Microsoft, earlier this month rolled out ChatGPT Health as part of its foray into healthcare.
Other nonprofits are exploring ways to apply AI in healthcare. PATH, a Seattle-based global health nonprofit, has received funding from the Gates Foundation to support this work. That includes grants to develop diagnostics and other healthcare services targeting underserved populations in India, and funding to study the accuracy and safety of AI-enabled support for healthcare providers.
Previously: Gates Foundation will cut up to 500 positions by 2030 to help reach ‘ambitious goals'
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A multidisciplinary team from Harvard Medical School, Duke University, and Massachusetts General Hospital has developed the dual-scale Capillary-Cell (CapCell) microscope, a revolutionary tool for visualizing tumor metabolism and vasculature dynamics. Published in BME Frontiers, this innovation addresses critical challenges in cancer treatment by quantifying spatial and temporal heterogeneity in tumor microenvironments.
Tumors are not uniform; they contain diverse regions with varying metabolic activities and blood supply. This heterogeneity is a major driver of treatment failure and recurrence. The newly developed CapCell microscope addresses this challenge by combining widefield imaging, which captures large-scale patterns across an entire tumor, with high-resolution imaging that zooms in on cellular and microregional features.
In this study, the team used the platform to monitor mouse models of breast cancer (4T1 tumors) before and after treatment with Combretastatin A-1 (CA1), a vascular-disrupting agent. The system tracked key metabolic indicators-mitochondrial membrane potential (using TMRE) and glucose uptake (using 2-NBDG)-alongside detailed maps of blood vessel density and distribution.
The findings uncovered a complex, dynamic relationship between a tumor's vascular network and its metabolic behavior. Immediately after the first CA1 treatment, both overall metabolism and vessel density dropped significantly. Intriguingly, within micro-regions, high mitochondrial activity was associated with areas of dense vasculature, while elevated glucose uptake was more common in poorly vascularized zones-highlighting distinct metabolic adaptations based on local conditions. A critical observation was that a second dose of CA1, administered days later, had minimal additional impact on tumor metabolism. By this later time point, metabolic activity had largely recovered to baseline levels, even though the vascular network remained sparse and did not regenerate correspondingly. This suggests a temporal decoupling between vascular supply and metabolic function.
The CapCell system offers a 12-fold increase in optical power for high-resolution imaging by concentrating light into a specific field of view, significantly improving signal detection for faint metabolic fluorescence. Its relatively simple hardware also makes it adaptable for various laboratory and potentially clinical settings.
Looking ahead, the researchers plan to integrate additional probes to study lipid metabolism and the role of immune cells within the tumor microenvironment, further elucidating the complex ecological competition that fuels cancer progression and resistance.
BMEF (BME Frontiers)
Sunassee, E. D., et al. (2025). Quantifying Spatiotemporal Heterogeneity of Tumor Metabolism and Vasculature with a Multiparametric Point-of-Investigation Microscope. BME Frontiers. DOI: 10.34133/bmef.0207. https://spj.science.org/doi/10.34133/bmef.0207
Posted in: Medical Science News | Medical Condition News | Histology & Microscopy
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Announcing a new article publication for Cardiovascular Innovations and Applications journal. Transglutaminase 2 (TGM2) has been implicated in various health conditions, yet its role in acute coronary syndrome (ACS) remains poorly characterized in clinical settings. This study investigated the association between circulating TGM2 levels and the severity of coronary stenosis in ACS.
A total of 242 individuals with ACS were included in this study. Clinical data were collected, and the severity of coronary stenosis was evaluated with the Gensini and Syntax scoring systems. Kaplan-Meier analysis, logistic regression, and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis were performed.
Circulating TGM2 levels were significantly higher in the STEMI group (176.3 pg/mL) and the non-STEMI group (181 pg/mL) than the UA group (64 pg/mL) and the stable CAD group (50.95 pg/mL) (P < 0.001). Multivariate analysis, after adjustment for confounding factors, identified TGM2 as an independent risk factor for acute myocardial infarction (odds ratio: 44.292 per 100 pg/mL increase in TGM2; 95% CI: 2.491-7.398; P < 0.001). During a median follow-up of 477 days, Kaplan-Meier survival analysis demonstrated that patients with higher TGM2 levels (≥91.9 pg/mL) exhibited a significantly lower MACE-free survival rate (P = 0.0142). ROC curve analysis further revealed that combining TGM2 and Gensini scores yielded superior predictive performance for MACE to that of either parameter alone.
Circulating TGM2 is elevated in ACS and is strongly associated with the presence of AMI. Furthermore, it provides prognostic information for MACE, particularly when it is used in combination with established anatomical risk scores.
Compuscript Ltd
Guo, Z., et al. (2026) Circulating TGM2 Levels as a Prognostic Biomarker for Coronary Artery Disease Severity and Major Adverse Cardiac Events in Acute Coronary Syndrome. CVIA. DOI: 10.15212/CVIA.2025.0036. https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.15212/CVIA.2025.0036
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Sino Biological, Inc. is proud to announce the launch of its innovative SwiftFluo® TR-FRET Kinase Assay Kits, a ready-to-use, high-performance solution designed to accelerate kinase activity detection and high-throughput kinase inhibitor screening.
Leveraging advanced Time-Resolved Fluorescence Resonance Energy Transfer (TR-FRET) technology, these kits deliver exceptional sensitivity, low background, and robust reproducibility. This enables rapid, reliable, and scalable screening of kinase inhibitors, outperforming traditional methods such as radioactive assays, ELISA, and fluorescence intensity-based techniques.
Optimized for profiling more than 60 tyrosine kinases (TKs), 150 serine/threonine kinases (STKs), and 15 cyclin-dependent kinases (CDKs), these SwiftFluo® TR-FRET kits provide broad coverage across key signaling pathways. In addition to kits, Sino Biological offers related substrates and all corresponding biologically active kinases as standalone products, providing maximum flexibility for custom assay design.
Researchers can perform homogeneous, no-wash assays in a simple add-and-read format compatible with standard HTS platforms, eliminating assay development time and streamlining workflows.”
Dr. Rob Burgess, Chief Business Officer, Sino Biological US, Inc.
“We are excited to introduce SwiftFluo® TR-FRET kits as a powerful tool for the global research community,” said Dr. Jie Zhang, Sino Biological's General Manager. “These kits are thoughtfully designed to balance ease of use, cost efficiency, and reproducible data, which are critical requirements for successful high-throughput screening campaigns.”
Researchers can visit www.sinobiological.com or download the technical Q&A handbook to explore how SwiftFluo® TR-FRET kits accelerate kinase drug discovery.
Sino Biological, Inc.
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A team at UT Southwestern Medical Center this week became the first in Texas and neighboring states to successfully perform a novel procedure to deliver whole-liver chemotherapy to treat metastatic uveal melanoma, a rare and deadly eye cancer.
Tumors spread to the liver in up to 90% of metastatic uveal melanoma cases. Approved for use in adult patients by the Food and Drug Administration in 2023, Hepzato Kit involves a percutaneous hepatic perfusion (PHP) delivery method utilizing a series of specialized balloon catheters and filtration units to isolate the liver blood flow and deliver high doses of the chemotherapy drug melphalan via the hepatic artery to the entire liver.
Adrienne Shannon, M.D., Assistant Professor of Surgery and a surgical oncologist at UT Southwestern, led the team during Thursday's procedure to treat a 72-year-old man with multifocal hepatic tumors. Dr. Shannon previously participated in this procedure at Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida, before she joined the faculty at UT Southwestern in 2025.
Hepzato is only available on a selective basis under a risk evaluation and mitigation strategy (REMS), and fewer than three dozen medical centers nationwide currently offer the therapy. Dr. Shannon worked with a highly trained team of UT Southwestern staff and fellow faculty members to deliver the therapy. They include interventional radiologists led by Sanjeeva Kalva, M.D., Patrick Sutphin, M.D., Ph.D., and Seung Kim, M.D., M.B.A.; anesthesiologists led by Steven Zheng, M.D.; and perfusionists. Dr. Kalva is a member of the Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center at UT Southwestern.
"Hepzato is the only FDA-approved treatment that treats the whole organ and has been proved to shrink tumors, translating into more effective disease control and potential survival benefit," said Sanjay Chandrasekaran, M.D., Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine in the Division of Hematology and Oncology and the physician lead for the Multi-Histology and Precision Oncology Program (MPOP) Disease Oriented Team in the Simmons Cancer Center. He is also a Eugene P. Frenkel, M.D. Scholar in Clinical Medicine.
Dr. Chandrasekaran's practice focuses on treating patients with uveal melanoma, melanoma, and other skin cancers.
"Having the ability to offer Hepzato to our patients is so important. Treating this deadly disease is about creating opportunity – the opportunity for patients to have access to a wide scope of options, including systemic therapies, clinical trials, and liver-directed treatments," said Dr. Chandrasekaran, who has received institutional funding to grow the uveal melanoma program at UT Southwestern.
Uveal melanoma is a rare cancer that develops in ocular cells that create melanin. It accounts for about 5% of U.S. melanoma cases. About 50% of uveal melanoma patients are at risk for metastatic disease, sometimes years after successful treatment of the primary eye tumor.
Melphalan, a chemotherapy drug that targets tumor cells by binding to and cross-linking DNA strands and halting their replication, is infused directly into the liver's main artery. The proprietary drug/device from Delcath Systems Inc. relies on veno-venous bypass and an extracorporeal filter system to effectively contain the drug within the liver and its blood vessels, allowing high doses to be delivered with limited systemic side effects.
A multicenter phase three study (the FOCUS trial) included 91 individuals who received Hepzato. It showed that 36.3% of patients experienced shrinkage of their tumors, including 7.7% who experienced a complete response or disappearance of liver lesions. The majority of tumor responses were seen after the first two cycles of therapy. The FOCUS study also found an overall survival rate of 80% after one year, and 65% of patients were progression-free at six months.
During the treatment, an interventional radiologist uses fluoroscopic imaging to place a double-balloon catheter in the inferior vena cava, isolating the liver's vasculature. After the patient is transitioned to veno-venous bypass, a high dose of melphalan is injected into the hepatic artery to perfuse the liver for 30 minutes. It is then diverted to a filtration system designed to extract the drug from the patient's system before blood is returned to the patient's circulating blood volume. Afterward, the patient is typically monitored for up to 24 hours for potential complications, such as bleeding risks or low blood counts. Most patients are able to resume their normal activities within 48 hours. The therapy can be repeated up to six times every six to eight weeks.
"This approach will improve our patient's progression-free survival, and it is a far more effective option for him than other liver-directed methods that only treat one segment of the liver at a time," Dr. Shannon said.
After a detailed multidisciplinary review, this patient was determined to be an excellent candidate for Hepzato based on his physical fitness, adequate liver function, and tumor size with less than 50% of liver involvement by tumor. Through the MPOP clinical trials team, the Simmons Cancer Center is planning to offer Hepzato to select patients with metastatic breast and colorectal cancers in the near future.
This achievement exemplifies the strength of UT Southwestern as a premier institution for interdisciplinary patient care, discovery-driven research, and the development of breakthrough therapies. It's an exciting moment for our expanding ocular oncology program as we rapidly establish UT Southwestern as a national destination for patients with eye cancers."
J. William Harbour, M.D., Chair and Professor of Ophthalmology and member of the Cellular Networks in Cancer Research Program of the Simmons Cancer Center
Dr. Harbour developed prognostic tests that are now standard of care for ocular melanoma and part of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) guidelines for prognostication and risk stratification for this cancer.
Dr. Harbour holds the David Bruton, Jr. Chair in Ophthalmology.
Drs. Shannon and Chandrasekaran receive financial compensation from Delcath Systems Inc.
UT Southwestern Medical Center
Posted in: Medical Procedure News | Medical Condition News
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Guillaume Bentzinger, Luis Carrillo, Philippe Robin, and Alejandro Bara-Estaún
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Emotions are a fundamental part of human psychology-a complex process that has long distinguished us from machines. Even advanced artificial intelligence (AI) lacks the capacity to feel. However, researchers are now exploring whether the formation of emotions can be computationally modeled, providing machines with a deeper, more human-like understanding of emotional states.
In this vein, Assistant Professor Chie Hieida from the Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST), Japan, in collaboration with Assistant Professor Kazuki Miyazawa and then-master's student Kazuki Tsurumaki from Osaka University, Japan, explore computational approaches to model the formation of emotions. In a recent study, this team of researchers built a computational model that aims to explain how humans may form the concept of emotion. The study was made available online on July 3, 2025, and was published in Volume 16, Issue 4 of the journal IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing on December 3, 2025.
This model is based on the theory of constructed emotion, which proposes that emotions are not innate reactions but are built in the moment by the brain. Emotions arise from integrating internal bodily signals (interoception, like heart rate) with external sensory information (exteroception, like sight and sound), allowing the brain to create a concept, not just a reflex.
"Although there are theoretical frameworks addressing how emotions emerge as concepts through information processing, the computational processes underlying this formation remain underexplored," says Dr. Hieida.
To model this process, the research team used multilayered multimodal latent Dirichlet allocation (mMLDA), a probabilistic generative model designed to discover hidden statistical patterns and categories by analyzing how different types of data co-occur, without being pre-programmed with emotional labels.
The developed model was trained using unlabeled data collected from human participants who viewed emotion-evoking images and videos. The system was not informed about which data corresponded to emotions such as fear, joy, or sadness. Instead, it was allowed to identify patterns on its own.
29 participants viewed 60 images from the International Affective Picture System, which is widely used in psychological research. While viewing the images, researchers recorded physiological responses such as heart rate using wearable sensors and collected verbal descriptions. Together, these data captured how people interpret emotions: what they see, how their bodies respond, and how they describe experiencing them.
When the trained model's emotion concepts were compared with participants' self-reported emotional evaluations, the agreement rate was about 75%. This was significantly higher than would be expected by chance, suggesting that the model categorized emotion concepts that closely matched how people experience emotions.
By modeling emotion formation in a way that mirrors human experience, this research paves the way for more nuanced and responsive AI systems. "Integrating visual, linguistic, and physiological information into interactive robots and emotion-aware AI systems could enable more human-like emotion understanding and context-sensitive responses," says Dr. Hieida.
Moreover, because the model can infer emotional states that people may struggle to express in words, it could be particularly useful in mental health support, healthcare monitoring, and assistive technologies for conditions such as developmental disorders or dementia.
"This research has important implications for both society and industry, as it provides a computational framework that connects emotion theory with empirical validation, addressing the long-standing question of how emotions are formed," concludes Dr. Hieida.
Nara Institute of Science and Technology
Tsurumaki, K., et al. (2025) Study of Emotion Concept Formation by Integrating Vision, Physiology, and Word Information Using Multilayered Multimodal Latent Dirichlet Allocation. IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing. doi: 10.1109/TAFFC.2025.3585882. DOI: 10.1109/TAFFC.2025.3585882. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/11071374
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Rice University's SynthX Center, directed by Han Xiao, has received an up to five-year, $18 million award from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) Lymphatic Imaging, Genomics and pHenotyping Technologies (LIGHT) program to develop innovative solutions for lymphatic diseases. This project award has the potential to transform the diagnosis and treatment of complex lymphatic anomalies (CLAs) and lymphedema, which are rare conditions that arise from abnormal growth of lymphatic vessels and can affect multiple organs.
LIGHT is led by ARPA-H program manager Kimberley Steel and will focus on two key technologies: the Visual Imaging System for Tracing and Analyzing Lymphatics with Photoacoustics (VISTA-LYMPH) and Digital Plasmonic Nanobubble Detection for Protein (DIAMOND-P). The award advances efforts to tackle rare, life-threatening lymphatic disorders such as Gorham-Stout disease, kaposiform lymphangiomatosis and generalized lymphatic anomaly, which are challenging to diagnose and treat, along with other lymphatic diseases.
This award from ARPA-H is a powerful validation of Rice's commitment to transformative research that addresses urgent health needs. This work exemplifies how bold science and cross-disciplinary collaboration can lead to real-world solutions with the potential to improve and even save lives."
Amy Dittmar, the Howard. R Hughes Provost and executive vice president for academic affairs
Xiao, a professor of chemistry, biosciences and bioengineering and a Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas Scholar, will oversee the project. He is collaborating with co-investigator Lei Li, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, and researchers from Texas Children's Hospital, the University of Texas at Dallas and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. This project will integrate photoacoustic imaging with proteomic tools to map lymphatic vessels and detect biomarkers.
Thomas Killian, dean of the Wiess School of Natural Sciences, emphasized the impact of the research. "This is exactly the kind of visionary, high-impact science we champion at Rice. It pushes the boundaries of discovery and drives meaningful advances in human health."
By enabling early, high-resolution imaging and biomarker-based diagnostics, the research team aims to facilitate accurate diagnoses, improve patient outcomes and reduce the health care burden associated with these diseases.
"Our goal is to create a system that provides real-time insights into the lymphatic system with unprecedented resolution, depth and safety," Xiao said.
The lymphatic system is crucial for maintaining fluid balance, immune responses and waste clearance; however, its tiny vessels are notoriously difficult to image. Traditional imaging modalities, including magnetic resonance imaging, computed tomography scans and ultrasound, often lack the spatial resolution or contrast needed to visualize the microscopic structure of lymphatic vessels deep within tissues.
The VISTA-LYMPH method uses a specialized imaging technique called photoacoustic tomography (PAT), developed in Li's lab. Li, who is the product development lead for this project and a pioneer in photoacoustic imaging, is also a member of Rice's Digital Health Initiative.
PAT combines light and sound, enabling it to visualize the body in greater depth and clarity than methods that rely solely on light. Early tests were conducted on animals without causing harm, successfully visualizing the entire body in fine detail. This level of precision is crucial for mapping the lymphatic system in areas such as the arms, legs, torso and neck, Li said.
"Thanks to ARPA-H's award, we will build the most advanced PAT system to image the body's lymphatic network with unprecedented resolution and speed, enabling earlier and more accurate diagnosis," Li said.
However, imaging alone is not sufficient. Many patients with lymphatic diseases do not present identifiable genetic mutations, and tissue biopsies can be invasive or impractical. To address this issue, the research team will employ proteomic strategies to identify new circulating biomarkers that complement the imaging data.
The researchers expect this tool to help them uncover new biological markers that indicate changes in health. When these biomarkers are combined with imaging results, the approach could lead to highly accurate, noninvasive tests with exceptional reliability.
"By validating VISTA-LYMPH and DIAMOND-P in both preclinical and clinical settings, the team aims to establish a comprehensive diagnostic pipeline for lymphatic diseases and potentially beyond," Xiao said.
The researcher's comprehensive solutions have the potential to revolutionize the detection and treatment of lymphatic diseases. In addition to lymphedema, the insights gained may also assist in managing conditions associated with lymphatic dysfunction, such as cancer metastasis, cardiovascular disease and neurodegeneration. With this ARPA-H award, the research team is positioned to advance the fields of imaging, diagnostics and precision medicine in these areas, Xiao said.
The project highlights Rice's growing strength in biomedical innovation, where scientists and engineers collaborate to tackle complex health challenges. Established in 2024 as part of Rice's Momentous strategic plan, the SynthX Center is dedicated to developing groundbreaking drugs and technologies in close collaboration with cancer programs across the Texas Medical Center.
Central to this effort is SynthX's collaborative model, which allows discoveries to be quickly translated into tools with direct clinical impact.
"Ultimately, we want to bring clarity to diseases that have long remained in the shadows," Xiao said. "We hope this technology can provide patients with answers and treatments where there were only uncertainties before."
Rice University
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Dr Bryony Henderson
GLP-1 agonists are pivotal in obesity care, promoting weight loss and addressing related health issues, with a focus on personalized, holistic treatment.
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.
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Weill Cornell Medicine has received a $5.2 million, initial two-year award from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) Lymphatic Imaging, Genomics, and pHenotyping Technologies (LIGHT) program to develop a comprehensive and innovative approach to diagnosing lymphatic disease. LIGHT is led by ARPA-H Program Manager Kimberley Steele, M.D., Ph.D.
The lymphatic system is a network of vessels, nodes and organs that drains excess fluid from tissues, filtering out waste and supporting the immune system by producing, activating and transporting infection-fighting cells. When the system is not working properly, fluid accumulates in tissues, a condition called lymphedema, and the body can become more susceptible to infection and tissue damage. However, diagnosis of lymphatic disease is challenging because the vessels are tiny and translucent and the fluid they carry moves slowly, which makes the system difficult to image.
The ARPA-H award funds a project called LANTERN (Lymphatic disease Advancements with Nanotechnology, Translational Epigenetics, and Research in Genetics), led by principal investigator Dr. Lishomwa Ndhlovu, the Herbert J. and Ann L. Siegel Distinguished Professor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Weill Cornell Medicine. LANTERN aims to improve the detection and understanding of lymphatic disease by developing new diagnostic tools. Researchers will use approaches such as large-scale analysis of genetic information, nanotechnology to create molecular fingerprints of the condition, and artificial intelligence to assess data. Early and precise detection of the condition can ultimately lead to better treatment.
The goal of this program is really trying to make the invisible visible with technology that complements ongoing developments in imaging."
Dr. Lishomwa Ndhlovu, professor of immunology in neuroscience, Feil Family Brain and Mind Research Institute, Weill Cornell Medicine
Primary and secondary lymphatic disease affect hundreds of millions of people worldwide, according to the Lymphatic Education and Research Network. Primary lymphatic disease occurs when a person is born with abnormalities in their lymphatic vessels or nodes. Secondary lymphatic disease can occur from infection, chronic disease, trauma, surgery or cancer treatments like radiation. Lymphedema is one of the most common lymphatic diseases.
A better understanding of the lymphatic system is important because many chronic diseases have a lymphatic component, but physicians lack reliable tools to assess the lymphatic system, said Dr. Ndhlovu. Symptoms of lymphatic dysfunction, like swelling, often appear only after the disease has progressed. As a result, underlying chronic conditions can go untreated.
Dr. Ndhlovu and his colleagues aim to develop a diagnostic toolbox or platform that doctors can use to rapidly and reliably detect lymphatic disease. The toolbox would include biomarkers that provide information about the structure and function of the lymphatic system, the detection of genetic changes and epigenetic changes-or how environmental factors and behaviors alter how genes work-combined with other data.
The team includes collaborators Dr. Daniel Heller, a member of the Molecular Pharmacology Program at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) and a professor in the Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences and Dr. Mijin Kim, an assistant professor at Georgia Tech, who are developing advanced detection technologies using nanosensors, or tiny devices that can detect molecular changes in tissues, and artificial intelligence, to analyze information so that doctors can better predict and prevent disease and develop targeted treatment plans.
With collaborators Dr. Babak Mehrara, a plastic and reconstructive surgeon at MSK and professor of surgery (plastic surgery) at Weill Cornell Medicine, and Dr. Stanley G. Rockson, chief of consultative cardiology and the Allan and Tina Neill Professor of Lymphatic Research and Medicine at Stanford Medicine, the researchers will analyze information from existing patient databases as well as lymphatic fluid samples from patients at MSK and Stanford.
Another important part of the program is gathering input from patient advocates who can provide feedback on what types of information is valuable to them and their well-being.
At one point, Dr. Ndhlovu hopes to integrate the new platform with any new imaging modalities of lymphatic disease that researchers develop through the ARPA-H LIGHT program.
"I'm very excited about this opportunity," Dr. Ndhlovu said. "This field has been a dark hole regarding imaging and diagnostics. The scope of diseases that are impacted by the lymphatic system is remarkable, so any advances in our understanding of lymphatic disease could have an impact across the spectrum of conditions including in our work in infectious diseases research."
Weill Cornell Medicine
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Exposure to wildfire smoke during the final months of pregnancy may raise the risk that a child is later diagnosed with autism, according to a new study led by Tulane University researchers.
The study, published in Environmental Science & Technology, analyzed more than 200,000 births in Southern California from 2006 to 2014. Researchers found that children whose mothers were exposed to wildfire smoke during the third trimester were more likely to be diagnosed with autism by age 5.
The strongest association was observed among mothers exposed to more than 10 days of wildfire smoke during the final three months of pregnancy. In that group, children had a 23% higher risk of autism diagnoses compared to those whose mothers were never exposed to smoke from wildfires during pregnancy.
The study is the first to examine the potential link of prenatal wildfire smoke exposure and autism. The findings do not establish a conclusive link between prenatal wildfire exposure and autism but add to growing evidence of the adverse impact of air pollutants on fetal neurological development.
Both autism and wildfires are on the rise, and this study is just the beginning of investigating links between the two. As climate change increases the frequency and intensity of wildfires in many parts of the world, understanding their relationship with autism is important to being able to develop preventive policy and interventions that will protect pregnant women and their children."
Mostafijur Rahman, corresponding author, assistant professor of environmental health sciences at the Celia Scott Weatherhead School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, Tulane University
The study focused solely on California, which leads the nation in both yearly acres burned by wildfire and rates of childhood autism diagnoses. It also comes one year after the Eaton and Palisades fires destroyed more than 16,000 structures in the second- and third-most destructive California wildfires on record, respectively.
Autism is a condition characterized by a range of divergent communicative, behavioral, and learning traits. Since 2000, the prevalence of autism diagnoses has increased each year, a trend often attributed in part to greater awareness and screening. Additionally, a growing body of research has linked prenatal exposure to air pollution with autism risk, with heavy metals in particles being a commonly theorized culprit.
Wildfires can cause high-concentration spikes of air pollution in a short amount of time. Burning vegetation and buildings release toxic metals and other pollutants that can be inhaled. Additionally, the fine particles that comprise smoke and air pollution can pose a threat regardless of toxicity. Inhalation of smoke can cause inflammation and stress.
In the study, mothers of children diagnosed with autism tended to be older, more likely to never had a previous pregnancy, and had a higher prevalence of pre-pregnancy diabetes and obesity. Four times as many boys were diagnosed with autism as girls.
The potential association in the third trimester aligns with a 2021 Harvard University study that also found a higher risk of autism in children linked to air pollution exposure during late pregnancy, a period marked by rapid fetal brain growth and development.
"Further study is needed to understand how wildfire smoke exposure to pregnant mothers could cause autism in their children, and to determine how exposure may interact with biology, genetics and other environmental exposures," said lead author David Luglio, a post-doctoral fellow with the Celia Scott Weatherhead School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. "This study is just one piece of a much larger puzzle, and the findings tell us there are more pieces to be put together."
The study was conducted in collaboration with Kaiser Permanente Southern California, University of Southern California, Harvard University, and Sonoma Technology, Inc.
Tulane University
Luglio, D. G., et al. (2026) Prenatal Exposure to Wildfire and Autism in Children. Environmental Science & Technology. DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.5c08256. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.5c08256
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In a new pilot feasibility study, researchers from Mayo Clinic, the University of Washington School of Medicine, the University of California San Francisco, and Nextrast Inc. found that a new imaging oral agent, also known as a "contrast agent," helps radiologists better see bowel structures and disease in CT imaging when compared with the current oral contrast agents.
The introduction of a new oral contrast agent for CT imaging addresses common challenges in the diagnosis of bowel diseases, says by Joel Fletcher, M.D., lead author on the study and medical director of the Mayo Clinic CT Clinical Innovation Center. "The new oral contrast agent," he explains, "is ingested by patients prior to CT imaging and helps detect pathologies within and outside of the bowel wall in ways current imaging agents do not."
"We carefully designed this new class of oral contrast agent to overcome many of the diagnostic shortcomings of existing contrast agents for a broad range of diseases," says Benjamin Yeh, M.D., a co-author on the study, radiologist at the University of California at San Francisco and co-founder of Nextrast, which created the new agent. "The Clinical Phase 2 results confirm that our dark agent can reveal previously impossible-to-detect findings, including very small bowel tumors and subtle inflammatory conditions that are often missed with conventional agents at CT."
In their paper, the authors report findings that suggest this new agent significantly improves visualization of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) or cancer within the abdomen, and may provide earlier and more confident diagnoses.
The study compared CT scans of 32 patients with the dark borosilicate oral contrast agent and scans with conventional water or iodine-based oral contrast agents, to look at anatomical structures and disease presence.
The novel dark borosilicate contrast agent has the potential to improve the assessment of numerous pathologies, including the detection of cancer and inflammatory disorders."
Achille Mileto, M.D., radiologist at the University of Washington School of Medicine and first author of the study
Evaluators identified clinically relevant findings in seven patients that were not detected using the standard contrast.
"CT scans performed with the new agent will likely do a better job of displaying pathologies in the stomach and proximal small bowel, areas where CT with traditional oral contrast performs poorly," Dr. Fletcher says. "Pathologies within the lumen will be better displayed because the lumen is more distended, and the brightness of the pathologies on the CT images will be increased, making them more conspicuous."
The researchers say further study using a larger patient population is needed, but the initial findings show promise.
Mayo Clinic
Mileto, A., et al. (2025). Prospective pilot evaluation of dark borosilicate oral contrast media for the evaluation of the stomach and small bowel using CT. Abdominal Radiology. doi: 10.1007/s00261-025-05308-w. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00261-025-05308-w
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People with autism have brains that are wired differently. This can make them especially strong in some areas-such as noticing patterns, remembering details, or thinking logically-while making other things like social cues or changes in routine more challenging.
There can also be stark differences in the way autistic and neurotypical people communicate, to the point where it may seem like each is using a different language, creating complications from social situations to the workplace.
For example, while non-autistic people often depend on nonverbal cues like body language and tone of voice, inferring emotion and intent, some autistic people rely on them less, and might interpret linguistic devices like sarcasm or irony literally.
Likewise, autistic people might prefer direct and clear communication-treating an indirect request ("When you get a chance, can you send that file?") as genuinely non-urgent, interpreting a hedged refusal ("That might be difficult") as uncertainty rather than a "no," or taking a figurative expression ("This idea has legs") literally.
On the other side, neurotypical people might misunderstand an autistic person's direct and literal style as being blunt or unempathetic.
A team of Tufts scientists recently took up the challenge of creating a tool to bridge this communication gap. Instead of pushing autistic people to communicate in non-autistic ways, which can make social interactions inauthentic and cognitively draining for them-and which is the focus of many existing interventions-they created NeuroBridge, an AI-based learning tool that uses large language models to help neurotypical people learn how to better communicate with autistic people.
The researchers describe it in a new research paper published in the 27th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility, where it received the Best Student Paper Award.
"NeuroBridge is not so much a tool to use on-demand to assist during interactions, like you might use a translator when traveling to a country with a different language," said Rukhshan Haroon, a PhD candidate in the Department of Computer Science, who led the research project.
"It is more useful as a way for non-autistic people to gain firsthand experience with cross-neurotype communication, learn about autistic communication preferences, and use that understanding to adjust their own communication when interacting with autistic people," he said.
"Through NeuroBridge," he added, "our aim is to create an environment-among friends, co-workers, and organizations-that enables people to better recognize and appreciate neurodiverse communication styles, as well as the interdependent nature of social interactions."
Fahad Dogar, an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science and at Tisch College for Civic Life, oversaw the project and said their approach was "grounded in the social model of disability, which emphasizes that disability arises not from individual deficits, but from the mismatch between individuals and their social environment."
He noted that the system was developed with iterative feedback from a board of autistic volunteers, who helped improve its design and accuracy.
"We're excited to build on this work and believe it has the potential for meaningful social impact," he said. "We are already exploring ways to use it to enhance support for neurodiverse students at Tufts, collaborate with departments and campus resources that could benefit from it-such as the StAAR Center, which provides academic and accessibility support to students with disabilities-and pursue new opportunities to scale and evaluate its impact."
NeuroBridge creates a conversational scenario tailored for the user based on information that they provide about themselves, making it interesting and relatable.
At different points in the conversation, NeuroBridge presents the neurotypical user with three response options, each similar in meaning but varying in tone, clarity, or phrasing. For example, the user may ask it, "How can I speed up shoveling snow from my driveway?"
NeuroBridge then may present three different ways to phrase that question: Is there a way to speed up shoveling a driveway? Do you know how to speed up shoveling snow from a driveway? What methods can be used to speed up shoveling snow from a driveway?
It will point out that two of these options (those starting with 'Is there a way…?' and 'Do you know…?') can be interpreted differently than intended because they can be answered with 'yes' or 'no,' rather than advice on shoveling. The third option is clearest, because it explicitly asks for the information being sought.
The researchers note that the application tends to train users toward principles called Gricean maxims, developed by philosopher H. Paul Grice, that guide a conversational style that is clear, brief, orderly, and avoids ambiguity.
"We tested NeuroBridge with 12 individuals," said Haroon. "We received positive feedback on the utility of the application. Many neurotypical users were surprised to find the interpretations of the response options were obvious in hindsight, but never occurred to them."
The participants also found that the feedback the program provided helped them understand exactly what parts of their conversation could be received differently by an autistic person, making it useful for navigating future real-world interactions.
This research was the collaborative effort of Rukhshan Haroon, Kyle Wigdor, Zihan Yang, Eileen Crehan, and Fahad Dogar.
Tufts University
Haroon, R., et al. (2025). NeuroBridge: Using Generative AI to Bridge Cross-neurotype Communication Differences through Neurotypical Perspective-taking. ASSETS '25: Proceedings of the 27th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility. DOI: 10.1145/3663547.3746337. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3663547.3746337
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A landmark UK study involving tens of thousands of families has shown that childhood screening for type 1 diabetes is effective, laying the groundwork for a UK-wide childhood screening program.
Results from the first phase of the ELSA (Early Surveillance for Autoimmune diabetes) study, co-funded by charities Diabetes UK and Breakthrough T1D, are published today in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology.
The findings mark a major step towards a future in which type 1 diabetes can be detected in children before symptoms appear. Currently, over a quarter of children aren't diagnosed with type 1 diabetes until they are in diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA), a potentially fatal condition that requires urgent hospital treatment. Early detection can dramatically reduce emergency diagnoses and could give children access to new immunotherapy treatments that can delay the need for insulin for years.
Launched in 2022, ELSA is the first UK study of its kind. Led by researchers at the University of Birmingham, the study tested blood samples for autoantibodies, markers of type 1 diabetes that can appear years before symptoms.
We know that risk rises sharply with the number of autoantibodies. Children without autoantibodies are unlikely to develop type 1 diabetes, while those with one autoantibody have a 15% chance of developing the condition within 10 years. Having two or more autoantibodies indicates the immune system has already started attacking the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas and it is almost certain these children will eventually need insulin therapy. This is known as early-stage type 1 diabetes.
Among the 17,283 children aged 3-13 years who were screened for type 1 diabetes risk at the time of analysis:
Families of children found to have early-stage type 1 diabetes received tailored education and ongoing support to prepare for the eventual onset of type 1 diabetes symptoms and to ensure insulin therapy can begin promptly when needed, reducing the chances of needing emergency treatment. Those with one autoantibody also received ongoing support and monitoring.
Some families were also offered teplizumab, the first ever immunotherapy for type 1 diabetes, which can delay the need for insulin by around three years in people with early-stage type 1 diabetes. Teplizumab was licensed by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) in the UK in August 2025 but is not yet available routinely on the NHS.
As of November 2025, more than 37,000 families have signed up to the ELSA programme. Building on this strong foundation, the second phase of the research, ELSA 2 launches today. ELSA 2 will expand screening to all children in the UK aged 2-17 years, with a focus on younger children (2-3 years) and older teenagers (14-17 years). The research team aims to recruit 30,000 additional children across these new age groups.
ELSA 2 will also establish new NHS Early-Stage Type 1 Diabetes Clinics, providing families taking part in the study with clinical and psychological support and creating a clear pathway from screening to diagnosis, monitoring and treatment.
Amy Norman, 44, from the West Midlands, was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at the age of 13. She recently discovered via the ELSA study that her 11-year-old daughter, Imogen, is in the early stages of type 1 diabetes but has been able to slow its progression as the second child in the UK to access a breakthrough immunotherapy drug – teplizumab. She said:
"Being part of the ELSA study has helped us as a family to prepare for the future in a way we never expected. Knowing what's coming – rather than being taken by surprise – has made an enormous difference to our confidence and peace of mind.
"When I was diagnosed, I had no warning and ended up quite poorly in hospital with diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA). When Imogen's diagnosis arrives, we hope that having this awareness will reduce her chances of experiencing DKA and the added trauma that comes from a sudden illness.
"Imogen took part in the study to further research and help others, but it has helped her too – being forewarned is being forearmed. She was always going to develop type 1 diabetes, but through ELSA we've been able to slow down the process and prepare – we know what is coming, but we're not scared."
We are extremely grateful to all the families who have participated in the study and generously given their time to help understand how a UK-wide screening programme could be developed. Together with Diabetes UK, Breakthrough T1D and the National Institute for Health and Care Research, we are working towards a future where type 1 diabetes can be detected in a timely manner, and families appropriately supported and treated with medicines to delay the need for insulin."
Parth Narendran, Lead Researcher, Professor of Diabetes Medicine, University of Birmingham
Dr Elizabeth Robertson, Director of Research and Clinical at Diabetes UK, said:
"For too many families, a child's type 1 diabetes diagnosis still comes as a frightening emergency. But that doesn't have to be the case. Thanks to scientific breakthroughs, we now have the tools to identify children in the very earliest stages of type 1 diabetes - giving families precious time to prepare, avoid emergency hospital admissions, and access treatments that can delay the need for insulin for years.
"The ELSA study, co-funded by Diabetes UK, is generating the evidence needed to make type 1 diabetes screening a reality for every family in the UK. We're incredibly grateful to the 37,000 families who've already signed up and urge others to get involved. Together, we can transform type 1 diabetes care for future generations."
This is about rewriting the story of type 1 diabetes for thousands of families. Instead of a devastating emergency, we can offer time, choices, and hope. By finding children in the earliest stages, we're not just preparing families, we're opening the door to treatments that can delay the need for insulin by years. That extra time means childhoods with fewer injections, fewer hospital visits and more normality. Thanks to research like ELSA, what once struck as an unexpected crisis can become an actively managed healthcare process, changing the course of T1D for the better."
Rachel Connor, Director of Research Partnerships at Breakthrough T1D
The findings from ELSA's first phase signal a major step towards a future in which type 1 diabetes can be detected early, managed proactively, and potentially delayed through immunotherapy. ELSA demonstrates that childhood screening in the UK is feasible, acceptable to families, and capable of preventing emergency diagnoses. Continued research through ELSA 2 will assess how screening can be scaled across the NHS and evaluate its cost-effectiveness.
Type 1 diabetes is a serious and lifelong autoimmune condition affecting up to 400,000 people in the UK. It is caused by an immune system attack on the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas, meaning they can no longer make enough insulin. Rapid diagnosis of type 1 diabetes is essential to avoid life-threatening complications.
For more information about ELSA or ELSA 2, visit elsadiabetes.nhs.uk/taking-part.
University of Birmingham
Quinn, L. M., et al. (2026). Feasibility of general population screening for type 1 diabetes in the UK: the ELSA study. The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology. DOI: 10.1016/S2213-8587(25)00363-8. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/landia/article/PIIS2213-8587(25)00363-8/fulltext
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The number of people over 40 in the UK living with glaucoma-the leading cause of irreversible blindness worldwide-is already higher than expected and is projected to surge to more than 1.6 million by 2060, finds research published online in the British Journal of Ophthalmology.
This is equivalent to a rise of 60% on 2025 figures, and outpaces the projected 28% population increase in the over 40s over the same period, say the researchers.
This trend will be driven by an increasingly aging population and growth in the proportion of higher risk ethnically diverse groups, prompting the need for an expansion in eye health services to meet demand, they emphasise.
Previous estimates suggest that around 700,000 people are living with glaucoma in the UK, but this figure probably doesn't accurately reflect population demographics, say the researchers.
This is especially important because glaucoma isn't symptomatic until its later stages, they point out. And late diagnosis is a major risk factor for sight loss, with over 40% of patients in the UK experiencing preventable vision impairment due to treatment delays.
To generate revised current estimates and future projections that better capture the UK's evolving demography, the researchers drew on the most recent population census data (2021-22) and published clinical prevalence estimates of glaucoma for their analysis.
They focused on people aged at least 40, as glaucoma is rare below this age, and grouped them by 5-year age bands, sex, and 4 broad ethnic categories: European; African; Asian; and mixed/other.
The numbers of those aged 40 and older added up to just over 34 million people, most of whom (30,215,460, around 89%) lived in England and Wales; nearly 3 million lived in Scotland (around 9%), and just under 1 million in Northern Ireland.
The age distribution typified an aging population of an industrialised nation, with the over 65s making up over a third (37%) of UK adults aged 40+. Women accounted for just over half (52%) of this age group, and ethnic composition was predominantly European (88.5%), followed by Asian (6%), African (3%), and mixed/other (2.5%).
Of the 34 million people aged at least 40, 1,019,629 (3%) currently have glaucoma, the researchers estimate. And estimates stratified by age indicate an increase from around 10,000 (0.25%) of those aged 40–44 to nearly 173,000 (11%) of those aged 85+.
Prevalence was slightly higher in men (just over 3%) than it was in women (just under 3%), with this sex difference more pronounced in older age groups.
African ethnic groups had the highest overall prevalence (4%) and Asian populations the lowest (just under 2.5%).
Among people of European ancestry, the largest number of cases occurred in the oldest age group (85+), reflecting a relatively older population distribution, with 39% of Europeans aged 65 or older.
Prevalence among African ethnic groups peaked in 55–59 year olds, reflecting a younger demographic distribution, with only about 16% aged 65+. Asian and mixed/other groups also had younger age structures, with 20% and 17%, respectively, aged 65+.
Although non-European groups represent only 6% of the UK population aged 65 and older, they account for an estimated 8% of current glaucoma cases, the estimates indicate.
Based on the available data, the number of people with glaucoma is projected to rise to 1.61 million by 2060, say the researchers. This corresponds to a 60% rise in cases on 2025 figures, despite only a 28% increase in the over 40s during the same period.
This trend will be driven by an aging population, especially those aged 75+, and the growth in the proportion of higher risk ethnically diverse groups, suggest the researchers.
"These demographic shifts are anticipated to amplify the burden of glaucoma on the healthcare system over the forthcoming decades, underscoring the need for targeted public health strategies and long-term healthcare planning to address the growing demand," they explain.
"The projected increase in numbers of those affected by glaucoma will place considerable strain on ophthalmic services, necessitating expansion in specialist care, diagnostic capacity or innovative transformation of long-term management services," they point out.
"Furthermore, the higher prevalence among the growing non-European populations highlights the need to develop refined and targeted awareness campaigns and early detection strategies," they add.
In a linked editorial, Dr Alexander Schuster of the University of Mainz, Germany, and Dr Cedric Schweitzer of the Bordeaux Population Health Research Center, France, echo these sentiments.
"This increase underlines a critical need for strategies that go beyond treatment options, focusing on evidence-based healthcare planning, including structured case detection, resource allocation for disease surveillance, and treatment to prevent visual impairment and blindness at older age," they write.
They cite Swedish data showing that population-based screening of 67 year olds might halve the number of those losing their sight to glaucoma over the next 20 years, and additional research proving the capability of AI to boost diagnostic accuracy.
"Such strategies, which may further incorporate genetic risk and behaviour characteristics, will help lower the risk of visual impairment due to glaucoma, while the number of affected individuals in the UK will increase dramatically," they continue.
"It is now time to take action by scientifically developing and evaluating these strategies," they conclude.
BMJ Group
DOI: 10.1136/bjo-2025-328373
Posted in: Medical Research News | Medical Condition News
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A large Chinese cohort study identifies early pregnancy as a sensitive window during which sulfur dioxide exposure is associated with higher odds of limb abnormalities, sharpening the focus on air quality and maternal health protection.
Study: Maternal exposure to ambient air pollution and risk of congenital limb defects in offspring. Image Credit chayanuphol / Shutterstock
In a recent article published in the journal Scientific Reports, researchers investigated whether women who are exposed to environmental air pollutants during the pre-conception and early pregnancy periods are more likely to have children with congenital limb defects (CLDs).
They found that women who were exposed to sulfur dioxide during the first three months after conception were more likely to have children with higher odds of being diagnosed with certain congenital limb defects, particularly limb shortening and polydactyly.
CLDs are common birth abnormalities involving missing, shortened, or abnormally formed limbs, including conditions such as polydactyly (the formation of extra fingers), syndactyly (webbed or fused toes or fingers), limb shortening, and clubfoot (feet that point downward at birth). They represent a common type of congenital disability globally and affect around 3.9 in 1,000 births in China.
CLDs can severely impact physical function, development, and quality of life, while also affecting caregivers and burdening health systems. Although genetic and chromosomal abnormalities explain some cases, about half of CLDs have no clearly identified cause, highlighting the potential role of environmental factors.
Increasing evidence suggests that exposure to ambient air pollution during pregnancy contributes to adverse pregnancy outcomes, including higher odds of certain congenital anomalies such as facial, oral, and cardiac defects. However, studies linking air pollution to CLDs remain scarce and inconsistent. Most previous research has relied on small case–control designs, focused on limited exposure windows, or examined single pollutants only.
Researchers utilized data from the Wuhan Maternal and Child Health Management Information System, which contains detailed information on maternal, pregnancy, and birth outcomes collected through a government registration system. In addition to birth defect-related information, the dataset included sociodemographic variables, past medical histories, pregnancy-related complications, gestational histories, antenatal care utilization, delivery details, and postnatal care.
The study included 510,550 mother–infant pairs from January 2011 to September 2017. All stillbirths, live births, and pregnancy terminations due to congenital anomalies were considered. Congenital limb defects were identified through a standardized congenital disability surveillance system and classified into polydactyly, syndactyly, limb shortening, and clubfoot.
Researchers obtained daily concentrations of six major air pollutants from 21 monitoring stations across Wuhan. Individual exposure levels were estimated by incorporating the spatial distance between monitoring stations and maternal residential addresses. Exposure windows included three months before and three months after conception.
Multivariate logistic regression models were used to assess associations between pollutant exposure and CLD risk, adjusting for key maternal and infant characteristics. Stratified analyses and interaction tests were conducted to explore potential effect modification by selected sociodemographic and pregnancy-related factors.
Among the 510,550 births included, 1,864 infants were diagnosed with CLDs, corresponding to an incidence of 3.7 per 1,000 births. Sulfur dioxide exposure during each of the first three months after conception was significantly associated with a higher odds of the child being diagnosed with any CLD, with adjusted odds ratios ranging from 1.033 to 1.043 per 10 μg/m³ increase, indicating modest effect sizes at the individual level.
In contrast, no consistent associations were observed between overall CLD risk and exposure to other major pollutants, including particulate matter, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, or ozone, during either pre-conception or early pregnancy. However, ozone exposure during the third month of pregnancy was associated with a higher odds of syndactyly in subtype-specific analyses.
Subgroup analyses showed that sulfur dioxide exposure was particularly associated with higher odds of limb shortening and polydactyly, while no consistent associations were observed for clubfoot. Two-pollutant models confirmed the robustness of the sulfur dioxide-related findings, and sensitivity analyses yielded similar results after excluding infants with additional congenital anomalies.
Effect modification analyses suggested stronger associations among women whose occupation was classified as professional, as well as variation by maternal age, season of conception, and residential setting, although statistical evidence for interaction was not uniform across all exposure windows. Limited evidence of interaction was observed for preterm birth in specific exposure periods.
Using data from a large population-based cohort, this study provides evidence that maternal sulfur dioxide exposure during early pregnancy, but not before conception, is associated with higher odds of congenital limb defects, particularly polydactyly and limb shortening. Other major air pollutants, such as ozone, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, and fine particulate matter, were not consistently associated with overall CLD risk.
The findings are consistent with several previous studies and suggest that early pregnancy may represent a biologically plausible window of increased vulnerability for limb development. Key strengths of the study include its large sample size, population-based design, detailed exposure assessment, and consideration of multiple exposure windows and potential sociodemographic modifiers.
However, limitations include potential exposure misclassification due to reliance on residential addresses and ambient monitoring stations, lack of personal exposure measurements, and limited information on indoor air pollution or maternal behavioral factors.
Despite these limitations, the study highlights the importance of reducing sulfur dioxide exposure among pregnant women and of considering potentially vulnerable subgroups in public health strategies. Although the absolute risk of CLDs at the individual level remains low, the findings provide evidence that may inform environmental policy discussions and preventive efforts to reduce congenital disabilities.
Posted in: Child Health News | Medical Research News | Medical Condition News | Women's Health News
Written by
Priyanjana Pramanik is a writer based in Kolkata, India, with an academic background in Wildlife Biology and economics. She has experience in teaching, science writing, and mangrove ecology. Priyanjana holds Masters in Wildlife Biology and Conservation (National Centre of Biological Sciences, 2022) and Economics (Tufts University, 2018). In between master's degrees, she was a researcher in the field of public health policy, focusing on improving maternal and child health outcomes in South Asia. She is passionate about science communication and enabling biodiversity to thrive alongside people. The fieldwork for her second master's was in the mangrove forests of Eastern India, where she studied the complex relationships between humans, mangrove fauna, and seedling growth.
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The Women's Super League sounded the alarm about the timing of the proposed FIFA Women's Club World Cup, warning of a potential “catastrophic” effect on English clubs and player workload.
Officials from England's top league wrote to FIFA to express deep concern about its plan to stage the inaugural global women's tournament from Jan. 5-30, 2028, possibly in Qatar and smack in the middle of the English domestic schedule.
The event could force the postponement of fixtures across five WSL match weeks and create a scheduling backlog. Other European leagues, including the top leagues in France and Spain, run on similar schedules.
A spokesperson said in a media briefing Wednesday that the WSL supports the concept of the Club World Cup, as well as efforts to grow the game worldwide, but want it to happen in the summer.
“This is a scheduling issue rather than a strategic one. The timing is what causes us real concerns,” the spokesperson said. “At best it will cause us real scheduling issues; at worst it is going to be catastrophic for the game in this country, our commercial program and, more importantly, the welfare of our players.”
European teams can secure up to six of 16 Club World Cup qualifying spots. Prospective entrants include Arsenal, the current Women's Champions League holders, and Chelsea, the six-time reigning WSL champion.
The WSL spokesperson said the group was not adequately consulted by FIFA and has the option to bar English clubs from competing.
The club tournament would be held between a pair of marquee international summer events — the 2027 Women's World Cup in Brazil and 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.
“There are no gaps,” the WSL spokesperson said. “If the tournament is in a different time zone, with the rest and recovery needed, it could lead to rearrangement of a lot of fixtures.”
On the men's side, FIFA has organized a Club World Cup in most years since 2000. The field expanded to 32 teams for the 2025 edition held in the United States last June and July during the European offseason. It interrupted the season for Major League Soccer, which is shifting its schedule in 2027.
FIFA chief football officer Jill Ellis defended the proposed timing of the women's tournament in speaking with media on Tuesday and said it could be reassessed four years from now.
“We will enter a new calendar conversation in 2030,” Ellis said. “We will look at the entire ecosystem, taking into account all shareholders. Players are a massive part of that. (January 2028) was the window that I think everybody agreed upon.”
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The opportunity for this tournament's legacy is in the fan fests, camps and tune-ups accessible to more than the lucky few
In Germany, fans watched the games on screens in crowded town squares, their roars careening off ancient buildings, or from the banks of rivers, peering at floating, double-sided big screens on barges. At the next World Cup, in South Africa in 2010, people gathered in parks and open-air markets and hotel lobbies and unlicensed, makeshift bars in people's garages. In Brazil, four years later, fans spilled from the bars on the Copacabana or watched in restaurants or in streets closed for the occasion – not as if anybody was driving during the Seleção's games anyway.
During the 2018 World Cup, Russia surprised visitors – and its own citizens – with its friendliness as spontaneous parties broke out all over the country. The reason the 2022 World Cup in Qatar didn't entirely feel like a real World Cup is that those sorts of spontaneous soccer gatherings just didn't seem to be happening, or not at the same scale, at any rate. The absence of hordes of supporters just milling about everywhere contributed to the feeling of being at a Potemkin World Cup.
World Cups are a feeling. A sense that you're at The Thing, a global convention on joy. That's the sentiment the tournament evokes and bottles. It exists in the stadium, where it is studiously curated and ultimately makes every World Cup sound and feel largely the same. But it exists outside the venues, too.
This realization offers hope for the upcoming World Cup. Because there is opportunity in this edition's unprecedented vastness. In the first World Cup staged in three countries; the first one contested by 48 teams. That there may be another way, a workaround.
If the shocking ticket prices for the actual World Cup will make it exclusive and inaccessible – as is well established in these pages – something like a shadow World Cup may nevertheless emerge as an alternative.
With a tall wall built around the genuine article, scalable only by a bundle of money, a kind of bootleg version may be fashioned out of the scraps and flashes of the tournament that have not yet been privatized and premium-ified. A lower-case world cup, as it were, consisting of fan fests and open training sessions and pre-tournament warmup matches. The bits not yet sold off to the highest bidder via the Visa pre-sale lottery peddling a bespoke, once-in-a-lifetime experience brought to you by Coca-Cola and Aramco and whomever else.
There will still be an awful lot of World Cup-adjacent programming on offer around the tournament. And that means there's opportunity to make the World Cup accessible, in a way, to people who can't afford or access the full experience, financially or geographically.
For a start, all 48 of those participants will be training somewhere, and will presumably hold a few open training sessions – an easy way for federations to score PR points in a coveted market. Germany will hold its training camp at Wake Forest University in North Carolina. Australia's Socceroos might be based in Boise. The Netherlands, England and Argentina are all rumored to be headed for Kansas City. France will be based in Boston; Croatia in Alexandria, Virginia; and Spain apparently in Chattanooga.
There may yet be teams who choose to train in Birmingham, Alabama; Westfield, Indiana; Louisville, Kentucky; Oklahoma City; Tucson; or Stillwater, Oklahoma, depending on which of Fifa's proposed training facilities they pick.
Taken together, they will expand the World Cup's footprint enormously.
So, too, will the many pre-tournament tune-up games. Plenty of teams will choose to play their final friendlies at home, or at someone else's home, but a great many will use the occasion to acclimate to the US. (Albeit not exactly to any of the host cities, because Fifa rules preclude the pre-World Cup exhibitions from being played at any of the venues where the tournament proper will be played, for some reason.)
The “Road to '26” series will pit Brazil, France, Colombia and Croatia up and down the East Coast in March. Argentina will play a pair of stateside friendlies in June against Honduras and Mexico, at undecided locations. The US will play newly crowned African champions Senegal in Charlotte on 31 May and Germany in Chicago on 6 June.
More games will be announced. And tickets cannot be priced as prohibitively as the World Cup proper. (Surely. Right?!)
Fan fests, meanwhile, those old staples of World Cup place-making, typically attracting tens of thousands of unticketed fans, are planned all over the country. And right now, all but New York City's and New Jersey's are expected to be free, per Front Office Sports. The latter will reportedly charge $12.50 to cover their costs of as much as $1m a day. (Since, as The Independent reported, the host cities have almost no avenues for recuperating their substantial World Cup costs, as Fifa devours almost all the revenue.) The festival planned for Rockefeller Center during the final two weeks of the tournament, however, will be free. New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani already is freelancing watch-parties for major soccer games and promising to host more.
If host cities, federations and US Soccer get creative, and if a concerted effort is made, this can still be a World Cup that a lot of people can touch. It can still leave a legacy and make memories beyond those lucky few who managed to get tickets. After all, Fifa can't monetize everything.
Leander Schaerlaeckens' book on the United States men's national soccer team, The Long Game, is out on 12 May. You can preorder it here. He teaches at Marist University.
A pair of dual nationals are going to El Tri
Dual nationals have increasingly become an important element of the USMNT player pool. Antonee Robinson, Folarin Balogun, and Yunus Musah could represent one, or more, nations in addition to the United States. They joined the team after being recruited by coaches and players and have become key parts of the USA lineup. While those players were big acquisitions, not every player will choose the USA and any number of factors go into how they decide who to represent internationally.
It seems like the factors for joining the USMNT were not compelling enough for a pair of players who had been a part of the picture for the Americans. ESPN is reporting that Richie Ledezma and Brian Gutierrez have finalized their one-time switch from the USA to Mexico with FIFA.
Ledezma has not been a part of the USA set up for some time after featuring on youth teams going back to 2018 with the U-20s. Gutierrez is a different story, the midfielder notched nine goals and three assists with the Chicago Fire in 2025 and was a leading playmaker in MLS last season. He moved to Chivas in January and has room to develop further at just 22 years old. He had two caps last year in January camp but hasn't been called in for the USMNT since as Mauricio Pochettino focused on players who could contribute to the team by the time the World Cup starts this summer.
While it's discouraging to lose players to another international side, much less the biggest rival for the USMNT, the moves show where the USA is going into the final friendly window in March this year. The roster is deeper than it has ever been and the team is in a position where losing talents at the level Ledezma and Gutierrez are will not have the sting it would in past years.
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Ben Shelton is down under participating in the Australian Open. His soccer star girlfriend will be there supporting him.
It's not a secret anymore that tennis star Ben Shelton and USWNT star Trinity Rodman are dating.
The 23-year-old tennis player an his girlfriend are very open and public about their relationship on social media.
Rodman will be in the crowd in Melbourne as Shelton tries to win the first major of the year.
Trinity Rodman talks about how her and Ben Shelton met 🤣(via: trinity Rodman/ ig) pic.twitter.com/egV6kgNZgS
At the beginning of the relationship, Rodman received supportive comments from a long list of notable followers that included soccer teammate Alyssa Thompson, WNBA star Aaliyah Edwards, women's tennis star Sloane Stephens and “Call Her Daddy” host Alex Cooper.
Rodman, 23, first went public with Shelton on March 17, 2025 when he posted a photo with her in a six-image slideshow on his Instagram account. Under the post, she commented, “Shooters shoot I guess.”
Rodman plays for the Washington Spirit and teams in England have also showed interest in the USWNT star. If that last name sounds familiar, it should. Trinity's father is Dennis Rodman, the former NBA star who played for the Pistons and Bulls alongside Michael Jordan.
The soccer star has admitted publicly to having a difficult relationship with her father.
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Alessandro Canale contains multitudes. The beach soccer star has played in four FIFA Beach Soccer World Cups, scored 12 World Cup goals, and made over 100 appearances for the U.S. But he balances beach soccer with an acting career (Canale once appeared in an episode of Malcolm in the Middle) and his passion for art, design, and skateboarding. In this episode of The U.S. Soccer Podcast presented by Henkel, host Meghan Klingenberg touches on all of this and more with our talented and accomplished guest.
Hosts: Meghan Klingenberg, David Gass
Guest: Alessandro Canale
Producer: Matthew Nelson
To learn more, visit http://www.ussoccer.com/podcast
The U.S. Soccer Podcast presented by Henkel is a production from U.S. Soccer hosted by David Gass, former USWNT star Meghan Klingenberg and USMNT great Alejandro Bedoya. The podcast brings you in-depth interviews with U.S. Soccer stars of the past, present and future. Episodes drop weekly on Wednesdays.
League wants tournament dates switched to summer
Clubs and players believed to be opposed to schedule
The inaugural Women's Club World Cup's January 2028 dates “could be catastrophic”, the Women's Super League has said, with the league raising serious concerns over the potential impact of the tournament on domestic calendars.
A WSL spokesperson said on Wednesday that the league is firmly against the dates and have made their case strongly to Fifa, who have announced that the competition will be held from 5–30 January 2028.
A WSL spokesperson added that they believe clubs and players are also opposed to the schedule, but the league are stopping short of calling for a boycott or threatening to withdraw English teams from the competition, adding: “We are not against the introduction of new tournaments in principle [but] those dates would have an impact on five WSL match rounds.”
The WSL has called for the competition to be held during the northern hemisphere's summer months instead. The league's spokesperson also added that they do not want to prevent their member clubs from participating. The qualification pathways for different continental confederations has not yet been revealed, nor has a host.
On Tuesday, Fifa's chief football officer, the former USWNT coach Jill Ellis, appeared to be open to the possibility of the 2028 tournament being contested in the Middle East. She also criticised anti-LGBTQ+ legislation in the United States, warning of hypocrisy and not wanting to “throw stones in glass houses” when discussing the prospect of Qatar hosting the event. The Guardian revealed this month that the world's governing body is in discussions with Qatar as a possible host.
The January 2028 dates would not clash with any Women's Champions League ties, but many domestic European leagues will be affected. The WSL currently has a winter break from mid-December to early January.
The new Women's Club World Cup had been originally targeted for 2026 by Fifa but the Guardian exclusively revealed last year that it was likely to be delayed.
The expanded men's Club World Cup was held last summer for the first time, in the United States, and was won by Chelsea. Unlike men's football, the women's game has never previously had a formalised, global club-level tournament. This month, the smaller “Champions Cup” is being run by Fifa, held in London, with Arsenal among the four teams in the semi-finals, but the 2028's Women's Club World Cup event would have 16 teams.
The latter stages of the Champions Cup gets under way on 28 January at Brentford's Gtech Community Stadium. The Concacaf champions Gotham FC, last year's Libertadores Femenina winners, Corinthians and the African Champions League winners ASFAR are taking part, together with the European champions Arsenal. The final will then be held at the Emirates Stadium on 1 February, with that match clashing directly with the meeting of the WSL's top two sides, Manchester City and Chelsea, being played in the league on the same day.
Former Manchester United star Paul Pogba has been tipped to seal a shock transfer to Wrexham before he hangs up his boots. The 32-year-old has returned to football at Ligue 1 side Monaco, after a spell out of the game due to a doping ban, but former France and Manchester United striker Louis Saha thinks he could be a good option for Ryan Reynolds and Rob Mac's side.
Pogba joined Monaco in June on a free transfer as he made his long-awaited return to football. The midfielder served a four-year doping ban, that was reduced to 18 months on appeal, and joined the French club after terminating his contract with Juventus. He was handed his Monaco debut in November as a late substitute at the end of a 4-1 defeat to Rennes, marking his first competitive appearance since 2023. Monaco defender Caio Henrique says the squad have been blown away by watching Pogba in training, but injuries have been a problem for the midfielder since he made his comeback and mean that he's only managed 30 minutes of action for his new club so far this season.
Monaco CEO Thiago Scuro has admitted it's been a frustrating start to life at Monaco for Pogba and he has also admitted there is a possibility that the former France star could move on in the summer. Pogba penned a two-year contract when he arrived but Scuro admits it's been a difficult time so far for the 33-year-old. He said: "The program and the plan for Paul is not working the way we expected in the beginning. He is very disturbed by the fact that he is struggling... [he wants] to be more available, to increase the minutes on the pitch. If it does not work, for sure the parties can sit down in the summer and try to have another discussion, where do we go? It's not the moment to have this discussion because we are engaged on trying to find the solution and bring him back."
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Saha has been asked about Pogba's future and explained why Wrexham might be a good choice. He told Grosvenor Casinos: "Paul Pogba back in England? The French league is extremely hard, to be honest. He came back but had a few injuries. We all want Pogba to be at his best, and if he is, there is no reason that he can't be in the France squad at the World Cup. But, now he's coming to a very pivotal moment, February, March. Who knows where Pogba is going to be? I don't know if he's going to be in the Premier League or not. I really don't see an obligation. He has to really think about his future. Monaco has been great to provide him the right platform for him to improve. I will see in the summer what his situation is going to be, how many games he has played. I am sure that clubs will be interested. He has had a great season, so that's for sure. Paul Pogba at Wrexham? It would be fantastic for social media. Paul has his eyes on Hollywood and wants to be an actor in some way, so it might make a lot of sense."
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Pogba has not played for Monaco since a 1-0 defeat to Brest at the start of December. He missed the club's trip to Real Madrid in the Champions League this week as Sebastien Pocognoli's side were hammered 6-1 at the Bernabeu but will be hoping he can return soon and make an impact in the second half of the 2025-26 season. Monaco are back in action in Ligue 1 on Saturday against Le Havre and then host Pogba's former club Juventus in a week's time in their final Champions League group stage fixture.
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The United States on Tuesday, opened a priority visa appointment system for holders of tickets to the 2026 FIFA World Cup, allowing fans to seek earlier appointments ahead of the tournament.
The scheme will enable ticket holders to access prioritised visa slots before the competition begins on June 11, the BBC has reported.
The World Cup will be hosted by the US, Canada and Mexico from June 11 to July 19.
The US will host 78 of the 104 matches at the 2026 World Cup across 11 cities, including the final at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey.”
In November, President Donald Trump said the Departments of State and Homeland Security had been working “tirelessly” to ensure football fans from around the world are properly vetted and able to travel to the United States for the summer tournament.
“I've directed my administration to do everything within our power to make the 2026 World Cup an unprecedented success. We are setting records on ticket sales,” Trump said.
FIFA President Gianni Infantino said the organisation expects “between five and ten million people” to travel to North America to enjoy the World Cup.
“With this FIFA Pass, we can make sure that those who buy a ticket, legitimate football fans, can attend the World Cup in the best conditions, starting with getting their visa and then coming to the country to enjoy the tournament,” Infantino added.
The FIFA Prioritised Appointment Scheduling System, dubbed the “FIFA Pass” by Trump, went live on Tuesday.
However, questions remain over whether supporters from every qualifying country will ultimately be able to enter the US.
It was introduced in part because citizens of some countries whose teams have qualified may not otherwise receive visa appointments in time for the tournament.
The US State Department has stressed that a FIFA Pass appointment does not guarantee a visa will be approved, as all applicants must still undergo thorough security screening and vetting.
Most citizens of countries under the US Visa Waiver Programme which covers much of Europe, including the UK, as well as Japan, Australia and others, can ordinarily travel visa-free for up to 90 days and therefore do not need to use the FIFA Pass.
Travellers from those countries must instead apply for an ESTA (Electronic System for Travel Authorisation).
Related News UCL: Man City players to refund fans after Bodo/Glimt defeat Sevilla coach lauds Adams dedication after brace UCL holders PSG fall to Sporting in Lisbon 2-1, Napoli held
A senior State Department official said the new system will cut wait times, with applicants in over 80 per cent of countries now able to schedule a visa appointment in less than 60 days.
“At the visa appointment, the applicant must show they qualify for the visa and plan to follow our laws and leave at the end of the tournament. America's safety and the security of our borders will always come first,” the official said.
Recall that Trump recently issued a pause on the processing of immigrant visas affecting 75 countries, from which 15 have already qualified for the 2026 tournament, including five-time winners Brazil.
For Football fans in countries affected by the US suspension of immigrant visa processing, they will still be able to apply to travel for the World Cup.
A further seven nations on the list are still in contention to qualify for the competition.
The State Department confirmed that the pause “applies to the issuance of immigrant visas only” and “does not apply to non-immigrant visas, such as those for tourists, athletes and their families, and media professionals”.
Countries already qualified on the list include: Algeria, Brazil, Cape Verde, Colombia, Egypt, Ghana, Haiti, Iran, Ivory Coast, Jordan, Morocco, Senegal, Tunisia, Uruguay and Uzbekistan.
Nations still in contention on the list include: Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, DR Congo, Iraq, Jamaica, Kosovo and North Macedonia.
An order to pause the processing of immigrant visa applications from the 75 countries takes effect on Wednesday, January 21.
Earlier, Trump expanded a travel ban that came into force on January 1, barring nationals of certain countries from entering the US.
Haiti and Iran, who have both qualified for the 2026 World Cup, are on the list of countries with full restrictions. Ivory Coast and Senegal, who have also qualified, are subject to partial restrictions.
The State Department said a FIFA Pass appointment does not allow people who are otherwise not eligible to be issued a visa, meaning fans from those four countries are unlikely to be able to travel to the US for this summer's tournament.
Guidance specifies there are exceptions for any athlete or member of an athletic team, including coaches, persons performing a necessary support role, and immediate relatives under the travel ban for the World Cup.
However, it adds that the exception does not apply to fans or spectators. While they can still submit visa applications, they may be ineligible for visa issuance or admission to the United States.
The scheme will enable ticket holders to access prioritised visa slots before the competition begins on June 11, the BBC has reported.
The World Cup will be hosted by the US, Canada and Mexico from June 11 to July 19.
The US will host 78 of the 104 matches at the 2026 World Cup across 11 cities, including the final at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey.”
In November, President Donald Trump said the Departments of State and Homeland Security had been working “tirelessly” to ensure football fans from around the world are properly vetted and able to travel to the United States for the summer tournament.
“I've directed my administration to do everything within our power to make the 2026 World Cup an unprecedented success. We are setting records on ticket sales,” Trump said.
FIFA President Gianni Infantino said the organisation expects “between five and ten million people” to travel to North America to enjoy the World Cup.
“With this FIFA Pass, we can make sure that those who buy a ticket, legitimate football fans, can attend the World Cup in the best conditions, starting with getting their visa and then coming to the country to enjoy the tournament,” Infantino added.
The FIFA Prioritised Appointment Scheduling System, dubbed the “FIFA Pass” by Trump, went live on Tuesday.
However, questions remain over whether supporters from every qualifying country will ultimately be able to enter the US.
It was introduced in part because citizens of some countries whose teams have qualified may not otherwise receive visa appointments in time for the tournament.
The US State Department has stressed that a FIFA Pass appointment does not guarantee a visa will be approved, as all applicants must still undergo thorough security screening and vetting.
Most citizens of countries under the US Visa Waiver Programme which covers much of Europe, including the UK, as well as Japan, Australia and others, can ordinarily travel visa-free for up to 90 days and therefore do not need to use the FIFA Pass.
Travellers from those countries must instead apply for an ESTA (Electronic System for Travel Authorisation).
Related News UCL: Man City players to refund fans after Bodo/Glimt defeat Sevilla coach lauds Adams dedication after brace UCL holders PSG fall to Sporting in Lisbon 2-1, Napoli held
A senior State Department official said the new system will cut wait times, with applicants in over 80 per cent of countries now able to schedule a visa appointment in less than 60 days.
“At the visa appointment, the applicant must show they qualify for the visa and plan to follow our laws and leave at the end of the tournament. America's safety and the security of our borders will always come first,” the official said.
Recall that Trump recently issued a pause on the processing of immigrant visas affecting 75 countries, from which 15 have already qualified for the 2026 tournament, including five-time winners Brazil.
For Football fans in countries affected by the US suspension of immigrant visa processing, they will still be able to apply to travel for the World Cup.
A further seven nations on the list are still in contention to qualify for the competition.
The State Department confirmed that the pause “applies to the issuance of immigrant visas only” and “does not apply to non-immigrant visas, such as those for tourists, athletes and their families, and media professionals”.
Countries already qualified on the list include: Algeria, Brazil, Cape Verde, Colombia, Egypt, Ghana, Haiti, Iran, Ivory Coast, Jordan, Morocco, Senegal, Tunisia, Uruguay and Uzbekistan.
Nations still in contention on the list include: Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, DR Congo, Iraq, Jamaica, Kosovo and North Macedonia.
An order to pause the processing of immigrant visa applications from the 75 countries takes effect on Wednesday, January 21.
Earlier, Trump expanded a travel ban that came into force on January 1, barring nationals of certain countries from entering the US.
Haiti and Iran, who have both qualified for the 2026 World Cup, are on the list of countries with full restrictions. Ivory Coast and Senegal, who have also qualified, are subject to partial restrictions.
The State Department said a FIFA Pass appointment does not allow people who are otherwise not eligible to be issued a visa, meaning fans from those four countries are unlikely to be able to travel to the US for this summer's tournament.
Guidance specifies there are exceptions for any athlete or member of an athletic team, including coaches, persons performing a necessary support role, and immediate relatives under the travel ban for the World Cup.
However, it adds that the exception does not apply to fans or spectators. While they can still submit visa applications, they may be ineligible for visa issuance or admission to the United States.
The World Cup will be hosted by the US, Canada and Mexico from June 11 to July 19.
The US will host 78 of the 104 matches at the 2026 World Cup across 11 cities, including the final at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey.”
In November, President Donald Trump said the Departments of State and Homeland Security had been working “tirelessly” to ensure football fans from around the world are properly vetted and able to travel to the United States for the summer tournament.
“I've directed my administration to do everything within our power to make the 2026 World Cup an unprecedented success. We are setting records on ticket sales,” Trump said.
FIFA President Gianni Infantino said the organisation expects “between five and ten million people” to travel to North America to enjoy the World Cup.
“With this FIFA Pass, we can make sure that those who buy a ticket, legitimate football fans, can attend the World Cup in the best conditions, starting with getting their visa and then coming to the country to enjoy the tournament,” Infantino added.
The FIFA Prioritised Appointment Scheduling System, dubbed the “FIFA Pass” by Trump, went live on Tuesday.
However, questions remain over whether supporters from every qualifying country will ultimately be able to enter the US.
It was introduced in part because citizens of some countries whose teams have qualified may not otherwise receive visa appointments in time for the tournament.
The US State Department has stressed that a FIFA Pass appointment does not guarantee a visa will be approved, as all applicants must still undergo thorough security screening and vetting.
Most citizens of countries under the US Visa Waiver Programme which covers much of Europe, including the UK, as well as Japan, Australia and others, can ordinarily travel visa-free for up to 90 days and therefore do not need to use the FIFA Pass.
Travellers from those countries must instead apply for an ESTA (Electronic System for Travel Authorisation).
Related News UCL: Man City players to refund fans after Bodo/Glimt defeat Sevilla coach lauds Adams dedication after brace UCL holders PSG fall to Sporting in Lisbon 2-1, Napoli held
A senior State Department official said the new system will cut wait times, with applicants in over 80 per cent of countries now able to schedule a visa appointment in less than 60 days.
“At the visa appointment, the applicant must show they qualify for the visa and plan to follow our laws and leave at the end of the tournament. America's safety and the security of our borders will always come first,” the official said.
Recall that Trump recently issued a pause on the processing of immigrant visas affecting 75 countries, from which 15 have already qualified for the 2026 tournament, including five-time winners Brazil.
For Football fans in countries affected by the US suspension of immigrant visa processing, they will still be able to apply to travel for the World Cup.
A further seven nations on the list are still in contention to qualify for the competition.
The State Department confirmed that the pause “applies to the issuance of immigrant visas only” and “does not apply to non-immigrant visas, such as those for tourists, athletes and their families, and media professionals”.
Countries already qualified on the list include: Algeria, Brazil, Cape Verde, Colombia, Egypt, Ghana, Haiti, Iran, Ivory Coast, Jordan, Morocco, Senegal, Tunisia, Uruguay and Uzbekistan.
Nations still in contention on the list include: Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, DR Congo, Iraq, Jamaica, Kosovo and North Macedonia.
An order to pause the processing of immigrant visa applications from the 75 countries takes effect on Wednesday, January 21.
Earlier, Trump expanded a travel ban that came into force on January 1, barring nationals of certain countries from entering the US.
Haiti and Iran, who have both qualified for the 2026 World Cup, are on the list of countries with full restrictions. Ivory Coast and Senegal, who have also qualified, are subject to partial restrictions.
The State Department said a FIFA Pass appointment does not allow people who are otherwise not eligible to be issued a visa, meaning fans from those four countries are unlikely to be able to travel to the US for this summer's tournament.
Guidance specifies there are exceptions for any athlete or member of an athletic team, including coaches, persons performing a necessary support role, and immediate relatives under the travel ban for the World Cup.
However, it adds that the exception does not apply to fans or spectators. While they can still submit visa applications, they may be ineligible for visa issuance or admission to the United States.
The US will host 78 of the 104 matches at the 2026 World Cup across 11 cities, including the final at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey.”
In November, President Donald Trump said the Departments of State and Homeland Security had been working “tirelessly” to ensure football fans from around the world are properly vetted and able to travel to the United States for the summer tournament.
“I've directed my administration to do everything within our power to make the 2026 World Cup an unprecedented success. We are setting records on ticket sales,” Trump said.
FIFA President Gianni Infantino said the organisation expects “between five and ten million people” to travel to North America to enjoy the World Cup.
“With this FIFA Pass, we can make sure that those who buy a ticket, legitimate football fans, can attend the World Cup in the best conditions, starting with getting their visa and then coming to the country to enjoy the tournament,” Infantino added.
The FIFA Prioritised Appointment Scheduling System, dubbed the “FIFA Pass” by Trump, went live on Tuesday.
However, questions remain over whether supporters from every qualifying country will ultimately be able to enter the US.
It was introduced in part because citizens of some countries whose teams have qualified may not otherwise receive visa appointments in time for the tournament.
The US State Department has stressed that a FIFA Pass appointment does not guarantee a visa will be approved, as all applicants must still undergo thorough security screening and vetting.
Most citizens of countries under the US Visa Waiver Programme which covers much of Europe, including the UK, as well as Japan, Australia and others, can ordinarily travel visa-free for up to 90 days and therefore do not need to use the FIFA Pass.
Travellers from those countries must instead apply for an ESTA (Electronic System for Travel Authorisation).
Related News UCL: Man City players to refund fans after Bodo/Glimt defeat Sevilla coach lauds Adams dedication after brace UCL holders PSG fall to Sporting in Lisbon 2-1, Napoli held
A senior State Department official said the new system will cut wait times, with applicants in over 80 per cent of countries now able to schedule a visa appointment in less than 60 days.
“At the visa appointment, the applicant must show they qualify for the visa and plan to follow our laws and leave at the end of the tournament. America's safety and the security of our borders will always come first,” the official said.
Recall that Trump recently issued a pause on the processing of immigrant visas affecting 75 countries, from which 15 have already qualified for the 2026 tournament, including five-time winners Brazil.
For Football fans in countries affected by the US suspension of immigrant visa processing, they will still be able to apply to travel for the World Cup.
A further seven nations on the list are still in contention to qualify for the competition.
The State Department confirmed that the pause “applies to the issuance of immigrant visas only” and “does not apply to non-immigrant visas, such as those for tourists, athletes and their families, and media professionals”.
Countries already qualified on the list include: Algeria, Brazil, Cape Verde, Colombia, Egypt, Ghana, Haiti, Iran, Ivory Coast, Jordan, Morocco, Senegal, Tunisia, Uruguay and Uzbekistan.
Nations still in contention on the list include: Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, DR Congo, Iraq, Jamaica, Kosovo and North Macedonia.
An order to pause the processing of immigrant visa applications from the 75 countries takes effect on Wednesday, January 21.
Earlier, Trump expanded a travel ban that came into force on January 1, barring nationals of certain countries from entering the US.
Haiti and Iran, who have both qualified for the 2026 World Cup, are on the list of countries with full restrictions. Ivory Coast and Senegal, who have also qualified, are subject to partial restrictions.
The State Department said a FIFA Pass appointment does not allow people who are otherwise not eligible to be issued a visa, meaning fans from those four countries are unlikely to be able to travel to the US for this summer's tournament.
Guidance specifies there are exceptions for any athlete or member of an athletic team, including coaches, persons performing a necessary support role, and immediate relatives under the travel ban for the World Cup.
However, it adds that the exception does not apply to fans or spectators. While they can still submit visa applications, they may be ineligible for visa issuance or admission to the United States.
In November, President Donald Trump said the Departments of State and Homeland Security had been working “tirelessly” to ensure football fans from around the world are properly vetted and able to travel to the United States for the summer tournament.
“I've directed my administration to do everything within our power to make the 2026 World Cup an unprecedented success. We are setting records on ticket sales,” Trump said.
FIFA President Gianni Infantino said the organisation expects “between five and ten million people” to travel to North America to enjoy the World Cup.
“With this FIFA Pass, we can make sure that those who buy a ticket, legitimate football fans, can attend the World Cup in the best conditions, starting with getting their visa and then coming to the country to enjoy the tournament,” Infantino added.
The FIFA Prioritised Appointment Scheduling System, dubbed the “FIFA Pass” by Trump, went live on Tuesday.
However, questions remain over whether supporters from every qualifying country will ultimately be able to enter the US.
It was introduced in part because citizens of some countries whose teams have qualified may not otherwise receive visa appointments in time for the tournament.
The US State Department has stressed that a FIFA Pass appointment does not guarantee a visa will be approved, as all applicants must still undergo thorough security screening and vetting.
Most citizens of countries under the US Visa Waiver Programme which covers much of Europe, including the UK, as well as Japan, Australia and others, can ordinarily travel visa-free for up to 90 days and therefore do not need to use the FIFA Pass.
Travellers from those countries must instead apply for an ESTA (Electronic System for Travel Authorisation).
Related News UCL: Man City players to refund fans after Bodo/Glimt defeat Sevilla coach lauds Adams dedication after brace UCL holders PSG fall to Sporting in Lisbon 2-1, Napoli held
A senior State Department official said the new system will cut wait times, with applicants in over 80 per cent of countries now able to schedule a visa appointment in less than 60 days.
“At the visa appointment, the applicant must show they qualify for the visa and plan to follow our laws and leave at the end of the tournament. America's safety and the security of our borders will always come first,” the official said.
Recall that Trump recently issued a pause on the processing of immigrant visas affecting 75 countries, from which 15 have already qualified for the 2026 tournament, including five-time winners Brazil.
For Football fans in countries affected by the US suspension of immigrant visa processing, they will still be able to apply to travel for the World Cup.
A further seven nations on the list are still in contention to qualify for the competition.
The State Department confirmed that the pause “applies to the issuance of immigrant visas only” and “does not apply to non-immigrant visas, such as those for tourists, athletes and their families, and media professionals”.
Countries already qualified on the list include: Algeria, Brazil, Cape Verde, Colombia, Egypt, Ghana, Haiti, Iran, Ivory Coast, Jordan, Morocco, Senegal, Tunisia, Uruguay and Uzbekistan.
Nations still in contention on the list include: Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, DR Congo, Iraq, Jamaica, Kosovo and North Macedonia.
An order to pause the processing of immigrant visa applications from the 75 countries takes effect on Wednesday, January 21.
Earlier, Trump expanded a travel ban that came into force on January 1, barring nationals of certain countries from entering the US.
Haiti and Iran, who have both qualified for the 2026 World Cup, are on the list of countries with full restrictions. Ivory Coast and Senegal, who have also qualified, are subject to partial restrictions.
The State Department said a FIFA Pass appointment does not allow people who are otherwise not eligible to be issued a visa, meaning fans from those four countries are unlikely to be able to travel to the US for this summer's tournament.
Guidance specifies there are exceptions for any athlete or member of an athletic team, including coaches, persons performing a necessary support role, and immediate relatives under the travel ban for the World Cup.
However, it adds that the exception does not apply to fans or spectators. While they can still submit visa applications, they may be ineligible for visa issuance or admission to the United States.
“I've directed my administration to do everything within our power to make the 2026 World Cup an unprecedented success. We are setting records on ticket sales,” Trump said.
FIFA President Gianni Infantino said the organisation expects “between five and ten million people” to travel to North America to enjoy the World Cup.
“With this FIFA Pass, we can make sure that those who buy a ticket, legitimate football fans, can attend the World Cup in the best conditions, starting with getting their visa and then coming to the country to enjoy the tournament,” Infantino added.
The FIFA Prioritised Appointment Scheduling System, dubbed the “FIFA Pass” by Trump, went live on Tuesday.
However, questions remain over whether supporters from every qualifying country will ultimately be able to enter the US.
It was introduced in part because citizens of some countries whose teams have qualified may not otherwise receive visa appointments in time for the tournament.
The US State Department has stressed that a FIFA Pass appointment does not guarantee a visa will be approved, as all applicants must still undergo thorough security screening and vetting.
Most citizens of countries under the US Visa Waiver Programme which covers much of Europe, including the UK, as well as Japan, Australia and others, can ordinarily travel visa-free for up to 90 days and therefore do not need to use the FIFA Pass.
Travellers from those countries must instead apply for an ESTA (Electronic System for Travel Authorisation).
Related News UCL: Man City players to refund fans after Bodo/Glimt defeat Sevilla coach lauds Adams dedication after brace UCL holders PSG fall to Sporting in Lisbon 2-1, Napoli held
A senior State Department official said the new system will cut wait times, with applicants in over 80 per cent of countries now able to schedule a visa appointment in less than 60 days.
“At the visa appointment, the applicant must show they qualify for the visa and plan to follow our laws and leave at the end of the tournament. America's safety and the security of our borders will always come first,” the official said.
Recall that Trump recently issued a pause on the processing of immigrant visas affecting 75 countries, from which 15 have already qualified for the 2026 tournament, including five-time winners Brazil.
For Football fans in countries affected by the US suspension of immigrant visa processing, they will still be able to apply to travel for the World Cup.
A further seven nations on the list are still in contention to qualify for the competition.
The State Department confirmed that the pause “applies to the issuance of immigrant visas only” and “does not apply to non-immigrant visas, such as those for tourists, athletes and their families, and media professionals”.
Countries already qualified on the list include: Algeria, Brazil, Cape Verde, Colombia, Egypt, Ghana, Haiti, Iran, Ivory Coast, Jordan, Morocco, Senegal, Tunisia, Uruguay and Uzbekistan.
Nations still in contention on the list include: Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, DR Congo, Iraq, Jamaica, Kosovo and North Macedonia.
An order to pause the processing of immigrant visa applications from the 75 countries takes effect on Wednesday, January 21.
Earlier, Trump expanded a travel ban that came into force on January 1, barring nationals of certain countries from entering the US.
Haiti and Iran, who have both qualified for the 2026 World Cup, are on the list of countries with full restrictions. Ivory Coast and Senegal, who have also qualified, are subject to partial restrictions.
The State Department said a FIFA Pass appointment does not allow people who are otherwise not eligible to be issued a visa, meaning fans from those four countries are unlikely to be able to travel to the US for this summer's tournament.
Guidance specifies there are exceptions for any athlete or member of an athletic team, including coaches, persons performing a necessary support role, and immediate relatives under the travel ban for the World Cup.
However, it adds that the exception does not apply to fans or spectators. While they can still submit visa applications, they may be ineligible for visa issuance or admission to the United States.
FIFA President Gianni Infantino said the organisation expects “between five and ten million people” to travel to North America to enjoy the World Cup.
“With this FIFA Pass, we can make sure that those who buy a ticket, legitimate football fans, can attend the World Cup in the best conditions, starting with getting their visa and then coming to the country to enjoy the tournament,” Infantino added.
The FIFA Prioritised Appointment Scheduling System, dubbed the “FIFA Pass” by Trump, went live on Tuesday.
However, questions remain over whether supporters from every qualifying country will ultimately be able to enter the US.
It was introduced in part because citizens of some countries whose teams have qualified may not otherwise receive visa appointments in time for the tournament.
The US State Department has stressed that a FIFA Pass appointment does not guarantee a visa will be approved, as all applicants must still undergo thorough security screening and vetting.
Most citizens of countries under the US Visa Waiver Programme which covers much of Europe, including the UK, as well as Japan, Australia and others, can ordinarily travel visa-free for up to 90 days and therefore do not need to use the FIFA Pass.
Travellers from those countries must instead apply for an ESTA (Electronic System for Travel Authorisation).
Related News UCL: Man City players to refund fans after Bodo/Glimt defeat Sevilla coach lauds Adams dedication after brace UCL holders PSG fall to Sporting in Lisbon 2-1, Napoli held
A senior State Department official said the new system will cut wait times, with applicants in over 80 per cent of countries now able to schedule a visa appointment in less than 60 days.
“At the visa appointment, the applicant must show they qualify for the visa and plan to follow our laws and leave at the end of the tournament. America's safety and the security of our borders will always come first,” the official said.
Recall that Trump recently issued a pause on the processing of immigrant visas affecting 75 countries, from which 15 have already qualified for the 2026 tournament, including five-time winners Brazil.
For Football fans in countries affected by the US suspension of immigrant visa processing, they will still be able to apply to travel for the World Cup.
A further seven nations on the list are still in contention to qualify for the competition.
The State Department confirmed that the pause “applies to the issuance of immigrant visas only” and “does not apply to non-immigrant visas, such as those for tourists, athletes and their families, and media professionals”.
Countries already qualified on the list include: Algeria, Brazil, Cape Verde, Colombia, Egypt, Ghana, Haiti, Iran, Ivory Coast, Jordan, Morocco, Senegal, Tunisia, Uruguay and Uzbekistan.
Nations still in contention on the list include: Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, DR Congo, Iraq, Jamaica, Kosovo and North Macedonia.
An order to pause the processing of immigrant visa applications from the 75 countries takes effect on Wednesday, January 21.
Earlier, Trump expanded a travel ban that came into force on January 1, barring nationals of certain countries from entering the US.
Haiti and Iran, who have both qualified for the 2026 World Cup, are on the list of countries with full restrictions. Ivory Coast and Senegal, who have also qualified, are subject to partial restrictions.
The State Department said a FIFA Pass appointment does not allow people who are otherwise not eligible to be issued a visa, meaning fans from those four countries are unlikely to be able to travel to the US for this summer's tournament.
Guidance specifies there are exceptions for any athlete or member of an athletic team, including coaches, persons performing a necessary support role, and immediate relatives under the travel ban for the World Cup.
However, it adds that the exception does not apply to fans or spectators. While they can still submit visa applications, they may be ineligible for visa issuance or admission to the United States.
“With this FIFA Pass, we can make sure that those who buy a ticket, legitimate football fans, can attend the World Cup in the best conditions, starting with getting their visa and then coming to the country to enjoy the tournament,” Infantino added.
The FIFA Prioritised Appointment Scheduling System, dubbed the “FIFA Pass” by Trump, went live on Tuesday.
However, questions remain over whether supporters from every qualifying country will ultimately be able to enter the US.
It was introduced in part because citizens of some countries whose teams have qualified may not otherwise receive visa appointments in time for the tournament.
The US State Department has stressed that a FIFA Pass appointment does not guarantee a visa will be approved, as all applicants must still undergo thorough security screening and vetting.
Most citizens of countries under the US Visa Waiver Programme which covers much of Europe, including the UK, as well as Japan, Australia and others, can ordinarily travel visa-free for up to 90 days and therefore do not need to use the FIFA Pass.
Travellers from those countries must instead apply for an ESTA (Electronic System for Travel Authorisation).
Related News UCL: Man City players to refund fans after Bodo/Glimt defeat Sevilla coach lauds Adams dedication after brace UCL holders PSG fall to Sporting in Lisbon 2-1, Napoli held
A senior State Department official said the new system will cut wait times, with applicants in over 80 per cent of countries now able to schedule a visa appointment in less than 60 days.
“At the visa appointment, the applicant must show they qualify for the visa and plan to follow our laws and leave at the end of the tournament. America's safety and the security of our borders will always come first,” the official said.
Recall that Trump recently issued a pause on the processing of immigrant visas affecting 75 countries, from which 15 have already qualified for the 2026 tournament, including five-time winners Brazil.
For Football fans in countries affected by the US suspension of immigrant visa processing, they will still be able to apply to travel for the World Cup.
A further seven nations on the list are still in contention to qualify for the competition.
The State Department confirmed that the pause “applies to the issuance of immigrant visas only” and “does not apply to non-immigrant visas, such as those for tourists, athletes and their families, and media professionals”.
Countries already qualified on the list include: Algeria, Brazil, Cape Verde, Colombia, Egypt, Ghana, Haiti, Iran, Ivory Coast, Jordan, Morocco, Senegal, Tunisia, Uruguay and Uzbekistan.
Nations still in contention on the list include: Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, DR Congo, Iraq, Jamaica, Kosovo and North Macedonia.
An order to pause the processing of immigrant visa applications from the 75 countries takes effect on Wednesday, January 21.
Earlier, Trump expanded a travel ban that came into force on January 1, barring nationals of certain countries from entering the US.
Haiti and Iran, who have both qualified for the 2026 World Cup, are on the list of countries with full restrictions. Ivory Coast and Senegal, who have also qualified, are subject to partial restrictions.
The State Department said a FIFA Pass appointment does not allow people who are otherwise not eligible to be issued a visa, meaning fans from those four countries are unlikely to be able to travel to the US for this summer's tournament.
Guidance specifies there are exceptions for any athlete or member of an athletic team, including coaches, persons performing a necessary support role, and immediate relatives under the travel ban for the World Cup.
However, it adds that the exception does not apply to fans or spectators. While they can still submit visa applications, they may be ineligible for visa issuance or admission to the United States.
The FIFA Prioritised Appointment Scheduling System, dubbed the “FIFA Pass” by Trump, went live on Tuesday.
However, questions remain over whether supporters from every qualifying country will ultimately be able to enter the US.
It was introduced in part because citizens of some countries whose teams have qualified may not otherwise receive visa appointments in time for the tournament.
The US State Department has stressed that a FIFA Pass appointment does not guarantee a visa will be approved, as all applicants must still undergo thorough security screening and vetting.
Most citizens of countries under the US Visa Waiver Programme which covers much of Europe, including the UK, as well as Japan, Australia and others, can ordinarily travel visa-free for up to 90 days and therefore do not need to use the FIFA Pass.
Travellers from those countries must instead apply for an ESTA (Electronic System for Travel Authorisation).
Related News UCL: Man City players to refund fans after Bodo/Glimt defeat Sevilla coach lauds Adams dedication after brace UCL holders PSG fall to Sporting in Lisbon 2-1, Napoli held
A senior State Department official said the new system will cut wait times, with applicants in over 80 per cent of countries now able to schedule a visa appointment in less than 60 days.
“At the visa appointment, the applicant must show they qualify for the visa and plan to follow our laws and leave at the end of the tournament. America's safety and the security of our borders will always come first,” the official said.
Recall that Trump recently issued a pause on the processing of immigrant visas affecting 75 countries, from which 15 have already qualified for the 2026 tournament, including five-time winners Brazil.
For Football fans in countries affected by the US suspension of immigrant visa processing, they will still be able to apply to travel for the World Cup.
A further seven nations on the list are still in contention to qualify for the competition.
The State Department confirmed that the pause “applies to the issuance of immigrant visas only” and “does not apply to non-immigrant visas, such as those for tourists, athletes and their families, and media professionals”.
Countries already qualified on the list include: Algeria, Brazil, Cape Verde, Colombia, Egypt, Ghana, Haiti, Iran, Ivory Coast, Jordan, Morocco, Senegal, Tunisia, Uruguay and Uzbekistan.
Nations still in contention on the list include: Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, DR Congo, Iraq, Jamaica, Kosovo and North Macedonia.
An order to pause the processing of immigrant visa applications from the 75 countries takes effect on Wednesday, January 21.
Earlier, Trump expanded a travel ban that came into force on January 1, barring nationals of certain countries from entering the US.
Haiti and Iran, who have both qualified for the 2026 World Cup, are on the list of countries with full restrictions. Ivory Coast and Senegal, who have also qualified, are subject to partial restrictions.
The State Department said a FIFA Pass appointment does not allow people who are otherwise not eligible to be issued a visa, meaning fans from those four countries are unlikely to be able to travel to the US for this summer's tournament.
Guidance specifies there are exceptions for any athlete or member of an athletic team, including coaches, persons performing a necessary support role, and immediate relatives under the travel ban for the World Cup.
However, it adds that the exception does not apply to fans or spectators. While they can still submit visa applications, they may be ineligible for visa issuance or admission to the United States.
However, questions remain over whether supporters from every qualifying country will ultimately be able to enter the US.
It was introduced in part because citizens of some countries whose teams have qualified may not otherwise receive visa appointments in time for the tournament.
The US State Department has stressed that a FIFA Pass appointment does not guarantee a visa will be approved, as all applicants must still undergo thorough security screening and vetting.
Most citizens of countries under the US Visa Waiver Programme which covers much of Europe, including the UK, as well as Japan, Australia and others, can ordinarily travel visa-free for up to 90 days and therefore do not need to use the FIFA Pass.
Travellers from those countries must instead apply for an ESTA (Electronic System for Travel Authorisation).
Related News UCL: Man City players to refund fans after Bodo/Glimt defeat Sevilla coach lauds Adams dedication after brace UCL holders PSG fall to Sporting in Lisbon 2-1, Napoli held
A senior State Department official said the new system will cut wait times, with applicants in over 80 per cent of countries now able to schedule a visa appointment in less than 60 days.
“At the visa appointment, the applicant must show they qualify for the visa and plan to follow our laws and leave at the end of the tournament. America's safety and the security of our borders will always come first,” the official said.
Recall that Trump recently issued a pause on the processing of immigrant visas affecting 75 countries, from which 15 have already qualified for the 2026 tournament, including five-time winners Brazil.
For Football fans in countries affected by the US suspension of immigrant visa processing, they will still be able to apply to travel for the World Cup.
A further seven nations on the list are still in contention to qualify for the competition.
The State Department confirmed that the pause “applies to the issuance of immigrant visas only” and “does not apply to non-immigrant visas, such as those for tourists, athletes and their families, and media professionals”.
Countries already qualified on the list include: Algeria, Brazil, Cape Verde, Colombia, Egypt, Ghana, Haiti, Iran, Ivory Coast, Jordan, Morocco, Senegal, Tunisia, Uruguay and Uzbekistan.
Nations still in contention on the list include: Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, DR Congo, Iraq, Jamaica, Kosovo and North Macedonia.
An order to pause the processing of immigrant visa applications from the 75 countries takes effect on Wednesday, January 21.
Earlier, Trump expanded a travel ban that came into force on January 1, barring nationals of certain countries from entering the US.
Haiti and Iran, who have both qualified for the 2026 World Cup, are on the list of countries with full restrictions. Ivory Coast and Senegal, who have also qualified, are subject to partial restrictions.
The State Department said a FIFA Pass appointment does not allow people who are otherwise not eligible to be issued a visa, meaning fans from those four countries are unlikely to be able to travel to the US for this summer's tournament.
Guidance specifies there are exceptions for any athlete or member of an athletic team, including coaches, persons performing a necessary support role, and immediate relatives under the travel ban for the World Cup.
However, it adds that the exception does not apply to fans or spectators. While they can still submit visa applications, they may be ineligible for visa issuance or admission to the United States.
It was introduced in part because citizens of some countries whose teams have qualified may not otherwise receive visa appointments in time for the tournament.
The US State Department has stressed that a FIFA Pass appointment does not guarantee a visa will be approved, as all applicants must still undergo thorough security screening and vetting.
Most citizens of countries under the US Visa Waiver Programme which covers much of Europe, including the UK, as well as Japan, Australia and others, can ordinarily travel visa-free for up to 90 days and therefore do not need to use the FIFA Pass.
Travellers from those countries must instead apply for an ESTA (Electronic System for Travel Authorisation).
Related News UCL: Man City players to refund fans after Bodo/Glimt defeat Sevilla coach lauds Adams dedication after brace UCL holders PSG fall to Sporting in Lisbon 2-1, Napoli held
A senior State Department official said the new system will cut wait times, with applicants in over 80 per cent of countries now able to schedule a visa appointment in less than 60 days.
“At the visa appointment, the applicant must show they qualify for the visa and plan to follow our laws and leave at the end of the tournament. America's safety and the security of our borders will always come first,” the official said.
Recall that Trump recently issued a pause on the processing of immigrant visas affecting 75 countries, from which 15 have already qualified for the 2026 tournament, including five-time winners Brazil.
For Football fans in countries affected by the US suspension of immigrant visa processing, they will still be able to apply to travel for the World Cup.
A further seven nations on the list are still in contention to qualify for the competition.
The State Department confirmed that the pause “applies to the issuance of immigrant visas only” and “does not apply to non-immigrant visas, such as those for tourists, athletes and their families, and media professionals”.
Countries already qualified on the list include: Algeria, Brazil, Cape Verde, Colombia, Egypt, Ghana, Haiti, Iran, Ivory Coast, Jordan, Morocco, Senegal, Tunisia, Uruguay and Uzbekistan.
Nations still in contention on the list include: Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, DR Congo, Iraq, Jamaica, Kosovo and North Macedonia.
An order to pause the processing of immigrant visa applications from the 75 countries takes effect on Wednesday, January 21.
Earlier, Trump expanded a travel ban that came into force on January 1, barring nationals of certain countries from entering the US.
Haiti and Iran, who have both qualified for the 2026 World Cup, are on the list of countries with full restrictions. Ivory Coast and Senegal, who have also qualified, are subject to partial restrictions.
The State Department said a FIFA Pass appointment does not allow people who are otherwise not eligible to be issued a visa, meaning fans from those four countries are unlikely to be able to travel to the US for this summer's tournament.
Guidance specifies there are exceptions for any athlete or member of an athletic team, including coaches, persons performing a necessary support role, and immediate relatives under the travel ban for the World Cup.
However, it adds that the exception does not apply to fans or spectators. While they can still submit visa applications, they may be ineligible for visa issuance or admission to the United States.
The US State Department has stressed that a FIFA Pass appointment does not guarantee a visa will be approved, as all applicants must still undergo thorough security screening and vetting.
Most citizens of countries under the US Visa Waiver Programme which covers much of Europe, including the UK, as well as Japan, Australia and others, can ordinarily travel visa-free for up to 90 days and therefore do not need to use the FIFA Pass.
Travellers from those countries must instead apply for an ESTA (Electronic System for Travel Authorisation).
Related News UCL: Man City players to refund fans after Bodo/Glimt defeat Sevilla coach lauds Adams dedication after brace UCL holders PSG fall to Sporting in Lisbon 2-1, Napoli held
A senior State Department official said the new system will cut wait times, with applicants in over 80 per cent of countries now able to schedule a visa appointment in less than 60 days.
“At the visa appointment, the applicant must show they qualify for the visa and plan to follow our laws and leave at the end of the tournament. America's safety and the security of our borders will always come first,” the official said.
Recall that Trump recently issued a pause on the processing of immigrant visas affecting 75 countries, from which 15 have already qualified for the 2026 tournament, including five-time winners Brazil.
For Football fans in countries affected by the US suspension of immigrant visa processing, they will still be able to apply to travel for the World Cup.
A further seven nations on the list are still in contention to qualify for the competition.
The State Department confirmed that the pause “applies to the issuance of immigrant visas only” and “does not apply to non-immigrant visas, such as those for tourists, athletes and their families, and media professionals”.
Countries already qualified on the list include: Algeria, Brazil, Cape Verde, Colombia, Egypt, Ghana, Haiti, Iran, Ivory Coast, Jordan, Morocco, Senegal, Tunisia, Uruguay and Uzbekistan.
Nations still in contention on the list include: Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, DR Congo, Iraq, Jamaica, Kosovo and North Macedonia.
An order to pause the processing of immigrant visa applications from the 75 countries takes effect on Wednesday, January 21.
Earlier, Trump expanded a travel ban that came into force on January 1, barring nationals of certain countries from entering the US.
Haiti and Iran, who have both qualified for the 2026 World Cup, are on the list of countries with full restrictions. Ivory Coast and Senegal, who have also qualified, are subject to partial restrictions.
The State Department said a FIFA Pass appointment does not allow people who are otherwise not eligible to be issued a visa, meaning fans from those four countries are unlikely to be able to travel to the US for this summer's tournament.
Guidance specifies there are exceptions for any athlete or member of an athletic team, including coaches, persons performing a necessary support role, and immediate relatives under the travel ban for the World Cup.
However, it adds that the exception does not apply to fans or spectators. While they can still submit visa applications, they may be ineligible for visa issuance or admission to the United States.
Most citizens of countries under the US Visa Waiver Programme which covers much of Europe, including the UK, as well as Japan, Australia and others, can ordinarily travel visa-free for up to 90 days and therefore do not need to use the FIFA Pass.
Travellers from those countries must instead apply for an ESTA (Electronic System for Travel Authorisation).
Related News UCL: Man City players to refund fans after Bodo/Glimt defeat Sevilla coach lauds Adams dedication after brace UCL holders PSG fall to Sporting in Lisbon 2-1, Napoli held
A senior State Department official said the new system will cut wait times, with applicants in over 80 per cent of countries now able to schedule a visa appointment in less than 60 days.
“At the visa appointment, the applicant must show they qualify for the visa and plan to follow our laws and leave at the end of the tournament. America's safety and the security of our borders will always come first,” the official said.
Recall that Trump recently issued a pause on the processing of immigrant visas affecting 75 countries, from which 15 have already qualified for the 2026 tournament, including five-time winners Brazil.
For Football fans in countries affected by the US suspension of immigrant visa processing, they will still be able to apply to travel for the World Cup.
A further seven nations on the list are still in contention to qualify for the competition.
The State Department confirmed that the pause “applies to the issuance of immigrant visas only” and “does not apply to non-immigrant visas, such as those for tourists, athletes and their families, and media professionals”.
Countries already qualified on the list include: Algeria, Brazil, Cape Verde, Colombia, Egypt, Ghana, Haiti, Iran, Ivory Coast, Jordan, Morocco, Senegal, Tunisia, Uruguay and Uzbekistan.
Nations still in contention on the list include: Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, DR Congo, Iraq, Jamaica, Kosovo and North Macedonia.
An order to pause the processing of immigrant visa applications from the 75 countries takes effect on Wednesday, January 21.
Earlier, Trump expanded a travel ban that came into force on January 1, barring nationals of certain countries from entering the US.
Haiti and Iran, who have both qualified for the 2026 World Cup, are on the list of countries with full restrictions. Ivory Coast and Senegal, who have also qualified, are subject to partial restrictions.
The State Department said a FIFA Pass appointment does not allow people who are otherwise not eligible to be issued a visa, meaning fans from those four countries are unlikely to be able to travel to the US for this summer's tournament.
Guidance specifies there are exceptions for any athlete or member of an athletic team, including coaches, persons performing a necessary support role, and immediate relatives under the travel ban for the World Cup.
However, it adds that the exception does not apply to fans or spectators. While they can still submit visa applications, they may be ineligible for visa issuance or admission to the United States.
Travellers from those countries must instead apply for an ESTA (Electronic System for Travel Authorisation).
Related News UCL: Man City players to refund fans after Bodo/Glimt defeat Sevilla coach lauds Adams dedication after brace UCL holders PSG fall to Sporting in Lisbon 2-1, Napoli held
A senior State Department official said the new system will cut wait times, with applicants in over 80 per cent of countries now able to schedule a visa appointment in less than 60 days.
“At the visa appointment, the applicant must show they qualify for the visa and plan to follow our laws and leave at the end of the tournament. America's safety and the security of our borders will always come first,” the official said.
Recall that Trump recently issued a pause on the processing of immigrant visas affecting 75 countries, from which 15 have already qualified for the 2026 tournament, including five-time winners Brazil.
For Football fans in countries affected by the US suspension of immigrant visa processing, they will still be able to apply to travel for the World Cup.
A further seven nations on the list are still in contention to qualify for the competition.
The State Department confirmed that the pause “applies to the issuance of immigrant visas only” and “does not apply to non-immigrant visas, such as those for tourists, athletes and their families, and media professionals”.
Countries already qualified on the list include: Algeria, Brazil, Cape Verde, Colombia, Egypt, Ghana, Haiti, Iran, Ivory Coast, Jordan, Morocco, Senegal, Tunisia, Uruguay and Uzbekistan.
Nations still in contention on the list include: Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, DR Congo, Iraq, Jamaica, Kosovo and North Macedonia.
An order to pause the processing of immigrant visa applications from the 75 countries takes effect on Wednesday, January 21.
Earlier, Trump expanded a travel ban that came into force on January 1, barring nationals of certain countries from entering the US.
Haiti and Iran, who have both qualified for the 2026 World Cup, are on the list of countries with full restrictions. Ivory Coast and Senegal, who have also qualified, are subject to partial restrictions.
The State Department said a FIFA Pass appointment does not allow people who are otherwise not eligible to be issued a visa, meaning fans from those four countries are unlikely to be able to travel to the US for this summer's tournament.
Guidance specifies there are exceptions for any athlete or member of an athletic team, including coaches, persons performing a necessary support role, and immediate relatives under the travel ban for the World Cup.
However, it adds that the exception does not apply to fans or spectators. While they can still submit visa applications, they may be ineligible for visa issuance or admission to the United States.
A senior State Department official said the new system will cut wait times, with applicants in over 80 per cent of countries now able to schedule a visa appointment in less than 60 days.
“At the visa appointment, the applicant must show they qualify for the visa and plan to follow our laws and leave at the end of the tournament. America's safety and the security of our borders will always come first,” the official said.
Recall that Trump recently issued a pause on the processing of immigrant visas affecting 75 countries, from which 15 have already qualified for the 2026 tournament, including five-time winners Brazil.
For Football fans in countries affected by the US suspension of immigrant visa processing, they will still be able to apply to travel for the World Cup.
A further seven nations on the list are still in contention to qualify for the competition.
The State Department confirmed that the pause “applies to the issuance of immigrant visas only” and “does not apply to non-immigrant visas, such as those for tourists, athletes and their families, and media professionals”.
Countries already qualified on the list include: Algeria, Brazil, Cape Verde, Colombia, Egypt, Ghana, Haiti, Iran, Ivory Coast, Jordan, Morocco, Senegal, Tunisia, Uruguay and Uzbekistan.
Nations still in contention on the list include: Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, DR Congo, Iraq, Jamaica, Kosovo and North Macedonia.
An order to pause the processing of immigrant visa applications from the 75 countries takes effect on Wednesday, January 21.
Earlier, Trump expanded a travel ban that came into force on January 1, barring nationals of certain countries from entering the US.
Haiti and Iran, who have both qualified for the 2026 World Cup, are on the list of countries with full restrictions. Ivory Coast and Senegal, who have also qualified, are subject to partial restrictions.
The State Department said a FIFA Pass appointment does not allow people who are otherwise not eligible to be issued a visa, meaning fans from those four countries are unlikely to be able to travel to the US for this summer's tournament.
Guidance specifies there are exceptions for any athlete or member of an athletic team, including coaches, persons performing a necessary support role, and immediate relatives under the travel ban for the World Cup.
However, it adds that the exception does not apply to fans or spectators. While they can still submit visa applications, they may be ineligible for visa issuance or admission to the United States.
“At the visa appointment, the applicant must show they qualify for the visa and plan to follow our laws and leave at the end of the tournament. America's safety and the security of our borders will always come first,” the official said.
Recall that Trump recently issued a pause on the processing of immigrant visas affecting 75 countries, from which 15 have already qualified for the 2026 tournament, including five-time winners Brazil.
For Football fans in countries affected by the US suspension of immigrant visa processing, they will still be able to apply to travel for the World Cup.
A further seven nations on the list are still in contention to qualify for the competition.
The State Department confirmed that the pause “applies to the issuance of immigrant visas only” and “does not apply to non-immigrant visas, such as those for tourists, athletes and their families, and media professionals”.
Countries already qualified on the list include: Algeria, Brazil, Cape Verde, Colombia, Egypt, Ghana, Haiti, Iran, Ivory Coast, Jordan, Morocco, Senegal, Tunisia, Uruguay and Uzbekistan.
Nations still in contention on the list include: Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, DR Congo, Iraq, Jamaica, Kosovo and North Macedonia.
An order to pause the processing of immigrant visa applications from the 75 countries takes effect on Wednesday, January 21.
Earlier, Trump expanded a travel ban that came into force on January 1, barring nationals of certain countries from entering the US.
Haiti and Iran, who have both qualified for the 2026 World Cup, are on the list of countries with full restrictions. Ivory Coast and Senegal, who have also qualified, are subject to partial restrictions.
The State Department said a FIFA Pass appointment does not allow people who are otherwise not eligible to be issued a visa, meaning fans from those four countries are unlikely to be able to travel to the US for this summer's tournament.
Guidance specifies there are exceptions for any athlete or member of an athletic team, including coaches, persons performing a necessary support role, and immediate relatives under the travel ban for the World Cup.
However, it adds that the exception does not apply to fans or spectators. While they can still submit visa applications, they may be ineligible for visa issuance or admission to the United States.
Recall that Trump recently issued a pause on the processing of immigrant visas affecting 75 countries, from which 15 have already qualified for the 2026 tournament, including five-time winners Brazil.
For Football fans in countries affected by the US suspension of immigrant visa processing, they will still be able to apply to travel for the World Cup.
A further seven nations on the list are still in contention to qualify for the competition.
The State Department confirmed that the pause “applies to the issuance of immigrant visas only” and “does not apply to non-immigrant visas, such as those for tourists, athletes and their families, and media professionals”.
Countries already qualified on the list include: Algeria, Brazil, Cape Verde, Colombia, Egypt, Ghana, Haiti, Iran, Ivory Coast, Jordan, Morocco, Senegal, Tunisia, Uruguay and Uzbekistan.
Nations still in contention on the list include: Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, DR Congo, Iraq, Jamaica, Kosovo and North Macedonia.
An order to pause the processing of immigrant visa applications from the 75 countries takes effect on Wednesday, January 21.
Earlier, Trump expanded a travel ban that came into force on January 1, barring nationals of certain countries from entering the US.
Haiti and Iran, who have both qualified for the 2026 World Cup, are on the list of countries with full restrictions. Ivory Coast and Senegal, who have also qualified, are subject to partial restrictions.
The State Department said a FIFA Pass appointment does not allow people who are otherwise not eligible to be issued a visa, meaning fans from those four countries are unlikely to be able to travel to the US for this summer's tournament.
Guidance specifies there are exceptions for any athlete or member of an athletic team, including coaches, persons performing a necessary support role, and immediate relatives under the travel ban for the World Cup.
However, it adds that the exception does not apply to fans or spectators. While they can still submit visa applications, they may be ineligible for visa issuance or admission to the United States.
For Football fans in countries affected by the US suspension of immigrant visa processing, they will still be able to apply to travel for the World Cup.
A further seven nations on the list are still in contention to qualify for the competition.
The State Department confirmed that the pause “applies to the issuance of immigrant visas only” and “does not apply to non-immigrant visas, such as those for tourists, athletes and their families, and media professionals”.
Countries already qualified on the list include: Algeria, Brazil, Cape Verde, Colombia, Egypt, Ghana, Haiti, Iran, Ivory Coast, Jordan, Morocco, Senegal, Tunisia, Uruguay and Uzbekistan.
Nations still in contention on the list include: Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, DR Congo, Iraq, Jamaica, Kosovo and North Macedonia.
An order to pause the processing of immigrant visa applications from the 75 countries takes effect on Wednesday, January 21.
Earlier, Trump expanded a travel ban that came into force on January 1, barring nationals of certain countries from entering the US.
Haiti and Iran, who have both qualified for the 2026 World Cup, are on the list of countries with full restrictions. Ivory Coast and Senegal, who have also qualified, are subject to partial restrictions.
The State Department said a FIFA Pass appointment does not allow people who are otherwise not eligible to be issued a visa, meaning fans from those four countries are unlikely to be able to travel to the US for this summer's tournament.
Guidance specifies there are exceptions for any athlete or member of an athletic team, including coaches, persons performing a necessary support role, and immediate relatives under the travel ban for the World Cup.
However, it adds that the exception does not apply to fans or spectators. While they can still submit visa applications, they may be ineligible for visa issuance or admission to the United States.
A further seven nations on the list are still in contention to qualify for the competition.
The State Department confirmed that the pause “applies to the issuance of immigrant visas only” and “does not apply to non-immigrant visas, such as those for tourists, athletes and their families, and media professionals”.
Countries already qualified on the list include: Algeria, Brazil, Cape Verde, Colombia, Egypt, Ghana, Haiti, Iran, Ivory Coast, Jordan, Morocco, Senegal, Tunisia, Uruguay and Uzbekistan.
Nations still in contention on the list include: Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, DR Congo, Iraq, Jamaica, Kosovo and North Macedonia.
An order to pause the processing of immigrant visa applications from the 75 countries takes effect on Wednesday, January 21.
Earlier, Trump expanded a travel ban that came into force on January 1, barring nationals of certain countries from entering the US.
Haiti and Iran, who have both qualified for the 2026 World Cup, are on the list of countries with full restrictions. Ivory Coast and Senegal, who have also qualified, are subject to partial restrictions.
The State Department said a FIFA Pass appointment does not allow people who are otherwise not eligible to be issued a visa, meaning fans from those four countries are unlikely to be able to travel to the US for this summer's tournament.
Guidance specifies there are exceptions for any athlete or member of an athletic team, including coaches, persons performing a necessary support role, and immediate relatives under the travel ban for the World Cup.
However, it adds that the exception does not apply to fans or spectators. While they can still submit visa applications, they may be ineligible for visa issuance or admission to the United States.
The State Department confirmed that the pause “applies to the issuance of immigrant visas only” and “does not apply to non-immigrant visas, such as those for tourists, athletes and their families, and media professionals”.
Countries already qualified on the list include: Algeria, Brazil, Cape Verde, Colombia, Egypt, Ghana, Haiti, Iran, Ivory Coast, Jordan, Morocco, Senegal, Tunisia, Uruguay and Uzbekistan.
Nations still in contention on the list include: Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, DR Congo, Iraq, Jamaica, Kosovo and North Macedonia.
An order to pause the processing of immigrant visa applications from the 75 countries takes effect on Wednesday, January 21.
Earlier, Trump expanded a travel ban that came into force on January 1, barring nationals of certain countries from entering the US.
Haiti and Iran, who have both qualified for the 2026 World Cup, are on the list of countries with full restrictions. Ivory Coast and Senegal, who have also qualified, are subject to partial restrictions.
The State Department said a FIFA Pass appointment does not allow people who are otherwise not eligible to be issued a visa, meaning fans from those four countries are unlikely to be able to travel to the US for this summer's tournament.
Guidance specifies there are exceptions for any athlete or member of an athletic team, including coaches, persons performing a necessary support role, and immediate relatives under the travel ban for the World Cup.
However, it adds that the exception does not apply to fans or spectators. While they can still submit visa applications, they may be ineligible for visa issuance or admission to the United States.
Countries already qualified on the list include: Algeria, Brazil, Cape Verde, Colombia, Egypt, Ghana, Haiti, Iran, Ivory Coast, Jordan, Morocco, Senegal, Tunisia, Uruguay and Uzbekistan.
Nations still in contention on the list include: Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, DR Congo, Iraq, Jamaica, Kosovo and North Macedonia.
An order to pause the processing of immigrant visa applications from the 75 countries takes effect on Wednesday, January 21.
Earlier, Trump expanded a travel ban that came into force on January 1, barring nationals of certain countries from entering the US.
Haiti and Iran, who have both qualified for the 2026 World Cup, are on the list of countries with full restrictions. Ivory Coast and Senegal, who have also qualified, are subject to partial restrictions.
The State Department said a FIFA Pass appointment does not allow people who are otherwise not eligible to be issued a visa, meaning fans from those four countries are unlikely to be able to travel to the US for this summer's tournament.
Guidance specifies there are exceptions for any athlete or member of an athletic team, including coaches, persons performing a necessary support role, and immediate relatives under the travel ban for the World Cup.
However, it adds that the exception does not apply to fans or spectators. While they can still submit visa applications, they may be ineligible for visa issuance or admission to the United States.
Nations still in contention on the list include: Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, DR Congo, Iraq, Jamaica, Kosovo and North Macedonia.
An order to pause the processing of immigrant visa applications from the 75 countries takes effect on Wednesday, January 21.
Earlier, Trump expanded a travel ban that came into force on January 1, barring nationals of certain countries from entering the US.
Haiti and Iran, who have both qualified for the 2026 World Cup, are on the list of countries with full restrictions. Ivory Coast and Senegal, who have also qualified, are subject to partial restrictions.
The State Department said a FIFA Pass appointment does not allow people who are otherwise not eligible to be issued a visa, meaning fans from those four countries are unlikely to be able to travel to the US for this summer's tournament.
Guidance specifies there are exceptions for any athlete or member of an athletic team, including coaches, persons performing a necessary support role, and immediate relatives under the travel ban for the World Cup.
However, it adds that the exception does not apply to fans or spectators. While they can still submit visa applications, they may be ineligible for visa issuance or admission to the United States.
An order to pause the processing of immigrant visa applications from the 75 countries takes effect on Wednesday, January 21.
Earlier, Trump expanded a travel ban that came into force on January 1, barring nationals of certain countries from entering the US.
Haiti and Iran, who have both qualified for the 2026 World Cup, are on the list of countries with full restrictions. Ivory Coast and Senegal, who have also qualified, are subject to partial restrictions.
The State Department said a FIFA Pass appointment does not allow people who are otherwise not eligible to be issued a visa, meaning fans from those four countries are unlikely to be able to travel to the US for this summer's tournament.
Guidance specifies there are exceptions for any athlete or member of an athletic team, including coaches, persons performing a necessary support role, and immediate relatives under the travel ban for the World Cup.
However, it adds that the exception does not apply to fans or spectators. While they can still submit visa applications, they may be ineligible for visa issuance or admission to the United States.
Earlier, Trump expanded a travel ban that came into force on January 1, barring nationals of certain countries from entering the US.
Haiti and Iran, who have both qualified for the 2026 World Cup, are on the list of countries with full restrictions. Ivory Coast and Senegal, who have also qualified, are subject to partial restrictions.
The State Department said a FIFA Pass appointment does not allow people who are otherwise not eligible to be issued a visa, meaning fans from those four countries are unlikely to be able to travel to the US for this summer's tournament.
Guidance specifies there are exceptions for any athlete or member of an athletic team, including coaches, persons performing a necessary support role, and immediate relatives under the travel ban for the World Cup.
However, it adds that the exception does not apply to fans or spectators. While they can still submit visa applications, they may be ineligible for visa issuance or admission to the United States.
Haiti and Iran, who have both qualified for the 2026 World Cup, are on the list of countries with full restrictions. Ivory Coast and Senegal, who have also qualified, are subject to partial restrictions.
The State Department said a FIFA Pass appointment does not allow people who are otherwise not eligible to be issued a visa, meaning fans from those four countries are unlikely to be able to travel to the US for this summer's tournament.
Guidance specifies there are exceptions for any athlete or member of an athletic team, including coaches, persons performing a necessary support role, and immediate relatives under the travel ban for the World Cup.
However, it adds that the exception does not apply to fans or spectators. While they can still submit visa applications, they may be ineligible for visa issuance or admission to the United States.
The State Department said a FIFA Pass appointment does not allow people who are otherwise not eligible to be issued a visa, meaning fans from those four countries are unlikely to be able to travel to the US for this summer's tournament.
Guidance specifies there are exceptions for any athlete or member of an athletic team, including coaches, persons performing a necessary support role, and immediate relatives under the travel ban for the World Cup.
However, it adds that the exception does not apply to fans or spectators. While they can still submit visa applications, they may be ineligible for visa issuance or admission to the United States.
Guidance specifies there are exceptions for any athlete or member of an athletic team, including coaches, persons performing a necessary support role, and immediate relatives under the travel ban for the World Cup.
However, it adds that the exception does not apply to fans or spectators. While they can still submit visa applications, they may be ineligible for visa issuance or admission to the United States.
However, it adds that the exception does not apply to fans or spectators. While they can still submit visa applications, they may be ineligible for visa issuance or admission to the United States.
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Football
Women's Club World Cup to take place in January 2028; WSL says timing of tournament causes "significant concerns" over domestic calendar and player welfare; global 16-team tournament could impact up to five match rounds of the league and fixtures could be moved to midweek
Wednesday 21 January 2026 17:06, UK
The scheduling of the inaugural Women's Club World Cup could be "catastrophic", says the Women's Super League.
FIFA has announced the tournament will take place from January 5-30, 2028, with the league writing formally to the world governing body to raise "significant concern" over what the schedule will mean for the domestic football calendar and player welfare.
"The timing of that tournament causes us significant concern," a WSL spokesperson said.
"At best, it is inconvenient and is going to cause real scheduling issues for us. At worst, it's catastrophic for the game in this country, for our commercial programme and more importantly, for the welfare of our players."
The WSL says the scheduling of the global 16-team tournament could impact up to five match rounds of the league and fixtures could be moved to midweek.
The tournament taking place in the middle of the 2027/28 season would be bookended by a World Cup and the Olympics.
"If that tournament is also in a different time zone and there needs to be travel and then rest, recovery and training ahead of a tournament and the same back the other way, we could be moving a lot of fixtures," a WSL spokesperson added.
"We know Arsenal will participate as current holders of the Champions League. Based on the current coefficient, if they use that, Chelsea would probably qualify. But there could be more than two of our teams."
Sky Sports News has been told the WSL is not against the concept of a Club World Cup and wants to give clubs and players the opportunity to compete at the highest level, but would rather it be played in the summer during a fallow year.
A WSL spokesperson also added that there were concerns among clubs and players about the schedule.
FIFA chief football officer and former United States women's national team coach Jill Ellis, who coached the USA to Women's World Cup titles in 2015 and 2019, told the BBC: "These consultations have happened since 2022, and this window [January] was one of the windows agreed upon.
"It's hard to find the perfect spot, so it was important to involve a lot of people in these conversations.
"The Club World Cup was due to take place in 2026, stakeholders said that was too soon. The decision was taken on these recommendations to delay it until 2028."
On whether there is an appetite for the Club World Cup, Ellis said: "I think there is. I ran a club in San Diego for three years and players are competitive, there is banter about who is the best club in the world, the best league in the world.
"I recognise we have to grow it and educate people about it. This came to the calendar fairly late, but I think this will showcase these players around the world.
"And the coach in me thinks, a lot of players don't get a chance to play international football so there is that as well."
Last year, FIFA announced the inaugural Women's Champions Cup, which takes place this month.
The tournament unites the six continental champions, who compete for the title in seasons where the Women's Club World Cup is not held, and following two early round fixtures, four sides remain for the showcase event in London.
Sky Sports will exclusively broadcast all matches, kicking off with Gotham FC vs SC Corinthians (12.30pm) and Arsenal Women vs ASFAR (6pm), with both semi-finals being held at Brentford's Gtech Community Stadium on Wednesday, January 28.
The third-place play-off (2.45pm) and final (6pm) will then be hosted at Arsenal's Emirates Stadium four days later on Sunday, February 1.
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Women's Soccer
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WSL Football fears the timing of FIFA's new Women's Club World Cup could be “catastrophic” for its competition and claims it was not consulted over the final dates by the world governing body.
FIFA approved the inaugural women's tournament at its Congress on December 16, with the competition set for January 5-30, 2028 – which would fall in the middle of the 2027-28 Women's Super League season.
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WSL Football, the independent body that oversees the top two tiers of the English women's game, has raised concerns over the addition of a new global competition in an already busy global and domestic schedule.
“The timing of that tournament causes us significant concern by multiple levels,” a WSL spokesperson said in a media briefing on Wednesday. “At best, it is inconvenient and is going to cause real headaches for us. At worst, it's catastrophic for the game in this country, for our commercial programme, and more importantly for the welfare of our players.”
The 16-team tournament was initially due to be introduced in 2026, but was later delayed to 2028, after stakeholders in the women's game told the global governing body more time was needed to get it right.
The delay meant the first edition of the Women's Club World Cup would be hosted in the same year as the Olympic Games, taking place in the United States between July 14-30, and six months after the Women's World Cup in Brazil (June 24 to July 25, 2027).
According to WSL Football, the competition not only adds to a busy calendar for players but also directly conflicts with at least five Women's Super League matchdays. The location and qualification regulations of the Club World Cup have yet to be confirmed. If the competition is held in a different time zone or requires an additional qualification process, there are concerns further scheduling conflicts would arise.
The competition would likely include Arsenal, the Champions League holders. If based on coefficients, Chelsea would also likely participate. According to a WSL spokesperson, at least two more clubs could be involved.
FIFA has stated they reached consensus on the competition's timing after consultation with stakeholders and confederations. Speaking to media on Tuesday, FIFA's chief football officer Jill Ellis said the governing body “presented two windows” to confederations for the competition to take place.
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“We will enter a new calendar conversation in 2030. Looking at the entire ecosystem, taking into every consideration in terms of shareholders and players, a massively important part of that, this was the window that everybody agreed upon,” she said.
The 2028 Club World Cup edition is a slight exception given the tournament was delayed from 2026 and the Olympics takes place in the summer of 2028. It will still run every four years but going forward, may not take place in the January window.
However, WSL Football has raised concerns over the validity of the consultation process.
“If you ask FIFA, yes, there was consultation,” said a WSL spokesperson. “I wouldn't say the information we've received is consultation. Consultation is when you have the ability to give meaningful feedback, that feedback is considered. You report back on the changes that are made. We've not had consultation.”
The spokesperson added: “We've spoken to FIFA directly and written to them formally, sharing in great detail with data to back our concerns. We will continue discussions with FIFA.”
At the moment, WSL Football has no plans to boycott the competition or to block clubs from participating, according to the spokesperson. However, the WSL does yield the power to do so.
“We don't want to stop our cubs competing on the global side from earning great prize funds that could be transformational for their business,” a WSL spokesperson added.
“But we would have the power. We need to be really thoughtful about if we want to go to war with our shareholders? Do we want to stop them? It would be much better to take a step back and work out a way where everyone can benefit from this rather than have us stuck in the middle, having a war between our own clubs and FIFA, which is really unhealthy and not where we want to be.”
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Player welfare has also been a concern. According to a source briefed on the matter, players and their unions were consulted and have put forward certain conditions for FIFA to meet.
For example, a dedicated prize money pot for players — there has to be competitive interest for players to take time out of the club schedule — and a robust prize money distribution mechanism beyond players and clubs.
A FIFPRO report in December detailed the industry's two-tier calendar and the tension between under-loading and overloading players.
On the one hand under-loading remains a pervasive issue in professional women's football for most players. In the WSL 2024-2025 season, for example, 43 per cent of players made fewer than 20 appearances.
On the other end end of the spectrum elite players faced increasingly congested schedules, travelling and little rest periods in between. The Club World Cup will only compound this issue for them.
“Introducing new tournaments does not solve the problem of under-loading and exacerbates the issue for high-usage players at the top,” the source told The Athletic. “Players are at risk of physical and mental burnout. But at what cost and what safeguards are going to put in?”
The WSL spokesperson emphasised that the organisation is not against adding a new global competition to the calendar and recognised the financial and commercial opportunity for clubs, players and other leagues.
However, the spokesperson emphasised a “responsibility” to consider the calendar holistically, for domestic leagues, players and stakeholders.
Ideally WSL football would prefer to have the competition held in the summer when there is not a major tournament taking place.
“We need to take a big step back and look at the calendar as a whole rather than trying to slot things in an already incredibly congested calendar,” the spokesperson continued.
“It's introducing a new tournament without really considering, should there be? Have we got the right amount of windows, international games, summer tournaments? It doesn't feel like the right thing to do.”
Women's Soccer
Naomi Baker/Getty Images
WSL Football fears the timing of FIFA's new Women's Club World Cup could be “catastrophic” for its competition and claims it was not consulted over the final dates by the world governing body.
FIFA approved the inaugural women's tournament at its Congress on December 16, with the competition set for January 5-30, 2028 – which would fall in the middle of the 2027-28 Women's Super League season.
Advertisement
WSL Football, the independent body that oversees the top two tiers of the English women's game, has raised concerns over the addition of a new global competition in an already busy global and domestic schedule.
“The timing of that tournament causes us significant concern by multiple levels,” a WSL spokesperson said in a media briefing on Wednesday. “At best, it is inconvenient and is going to cause real headaches for us. At worst, it's catastrophic for the game in this country, for our commercial programme, and more importantly for the welfare of our players.”
The 16-team tournament was initially due to be introduced in 2026, but was later delayed to 2028, after stakeholders in the women's game told the global governing body more time was needed to get it right.
The delay meant the first edition of the Women's Club World Cup would be hosted in the same year as the Olympic Games, taking place in the United States between July 14-30, and six months after the Women's World Cup in Brazil (June 24 to July 25, 2027).
According to WSL Football, the competition not only adds to a busy calendar for players but also directly conflicts with at least five Women's Super League matchdays. The location and qualification regulations of the Club World Cup have yet to be confirmed. If the competition is held in a different time zone or requires an additional qualification process, there are concerns further scheduling conflicts would arise.
The competition would likely include Arsenal, the Champions League holders. If based on coefficients, Chelsea would also likely participate. According to a WSL spokesperson, at least two more clubs could be involved.
FIFA has stated they reached consensus on the competition's timing after consultation with stakeholders and confederations. Speaking to media on Tuesday, FIFA's chief football officer Jill Ellis said the governing body “presented two windows” to confederations for the competition to take place.
Advertisement
“We will enter a new calendar conversation in 2030. Looking at the entire ecosystem, taking into every consideration in terms of shareholders and players, a massively important part of that, this was the window that everybody agreed upon,” she said.
The 2028 Club World Cup edition is a slight exception given the tournament was delayed from 2026 and the Olympics takes place in the summer of 2028. It will still run every four years but going forward, may not take place in the January window.
However, WSL Football has raised concerns over the validity of the consultation process.
“If you ask FIFA, yes, there was consultation,” said a WSL spokesperson. “I wouldn't say the information we've received is consultation. Consultation is when you have the ability to give meaningful feedback, that feedback is considered. You report back on the changes that are made. We've not had consultation.”
The spokesperson added: “We've spoken to FIFA directly and written to them formally, sharing in great detail with data to back our concerns. We will continue discussions with FIFA.”
At the moment, WSL Football has no plans to boycott the competition or to block clubs from participating, according to the spokesperson. However, the WSL does yield the power to do so.
“We don't want to stop our cubs competing on the global side from earning great prize funds that could be transformational for their business,” a WSL spokesperson added.
“But we would have the power. We need to be really thoughtful about if we want to go to war with our shareholders? Do we want to stop them? It would be much better to take a step back and work out a way where everyone can benefit from this rather than have us stuck in the middle, having a war between our own clubs and FIFA, which is really unhealthy and not where we want to be.”
Advertisement
Player welfare has also been a concern. According to a source briefed on the matter, players and their unions were consulted and have put forward certain conditions for FIFA to meet.
For example, a dedicated prize money pot for players — there has to be competitive interest for players to take time out of the club schedule — and a robust prize money distribution mechanism beyond players and clubs.
A FIFPRO report in December detailed the industry's two-tier calendar and the tension between under-loading and overloading players.
On the one hand under-loading remains a pervasive issue in professional women's football for most players. In the WSL 2024-2025 season, for example, 43 per cent of players made fewer than 20 appearances.
On the other end end of the spectrum elite players faced increasingly congested schedules, travelling and little rest periods in between. The Club World Cup will only compound this issue for them.
“Introducing new tournaments does not solve the problem of under-loading and exacerbates the issue for high-usage players at the top,” the source told The Athletic. “Players are at risk of physical and mental burnout. But at what cost and what safeguards are going to put in?”
The WSL spokesperson emphasised that the organisation is not against adding a new global competition to the calendar and recognised the financial and commercial opportunity for clubs, players and other leagues.
However, the spokesperson emphasised a “responsibility” to consider the calendar holistically, for domestic leagues, players and stakeholders.
Ideally WSL football would prefer to have the competition held in the summer when there is not a major tournament taking place.
“We need to take a big step back and look at the calendar as a whole rather than trying to slot things in an already incredibly congested calendar,” the spokesperson continued.
“It's introducing a new tournament without really considering, should there be? Have we got the right amount of windows, international games, summer tournaments? It doesn't feel like the right thing to do.”
Arsenal will play in the inaugural Women's Club World Cup after winning the 2025 Champions League
The scheduling of the proposed Fifa Women's Club World Cup has been called potentially "catastrophic" by the Women's Super League (WSL).
World governing body Fifa has announced the inaugural global competition, designed to echo the revamped men's Club World Cup, will take place from 5 to 30 January 2028.
That would be in the middle of the 2027-28 WSL season, with other European domestic leagues sharing their concerns.
The competition would feature 16 teams from around the world, including up to six European clubs. From England, this would include current Champions League holders Arsenal, and potentially Chelsea based on current co-efficients.
"This is a scheduling issue rather than a strategic one. The timing is what causes us real concerns," a WSL spokesperson said.
"We are not saying we do not want Fifa to bring in new competitions. We are fully on board with a strategy to help the women's game grow globally.
"At best it will cause us real scheduling issues; at worst it is going to be catastrophic for the game in this country, our commercial programme and more importantly the welfare of our players."
It is the second new mid-season women's competition to be introduced by Fifa in recent years.
The inaugural Champions Cup – featuring continental champions from around the world, including Arsenal – will take place next week in London, between 28 January and 1 February.
WSL officials say the planned Club World Cup would result in up to five WSL match weeks being rescheduled, leading to a potential fixture backlog and an impact on player fitness.
They say they have written to Fifa with their concerns and will meet with global officials in London during the Champions Cup to discuss the issue.
BBC Sport has been told the WSL would rather the tournament is played in the summer during a fallow year with no other major global competitions, rather than disrupting the domestic schedule.
The BBC also understands the planned schedule was presented at a WSL meeting with club captains on Monday, with players "shocked" by how busy the calendar could get.
The fact that the Club World Cup is scheduled for between the 2027 Women's World Cup and the 2028 Summer Olympics is also a concern.
"There are no gaps," a WSL spokesperson said. "If the tournament is in a different time zone, with the rest and recovery needed, it could lead to rearrangement of a lot of fixtures.
"We know Arsenal will participate and Chelsea are likely to participate as well. It would be great for our clubs but their fixtures would probably have to move to midweek slots which are less attractive to fans. It is delicate timing."
The WSL is now considering its options, although asking English teams to boycott the competition is not currently on the table.
One option being considered is moving the WSL winter break – which usually takes place over Christmas and New Year – so it covers the Club World Cup in the 2027-28 season.
Fifa chief football officer and former United States women's national team coach Jill Ellis says that the fixture congestion caused by the Club World Cup being played in January 2028 will prove to be an outlier.
The competition was due to take place in 2026, but was delayed by two years.
Ellis, who coached the USA to Women's World Cup titles in 2015 and 2019, told the BBC: "These consultations have happened since 2022, and this window [January] was one of the windows agreed upon.
"It's hard to find the perfect spot, so it was important to involve a lot of people in these conversations.
"The Club World Cup was due to take place in 2026, stakeholders said that was too soon. The decision was taken on these recommendations to delay it until 2028."
On whether there is an appetite for the Club World Cup, Ellis said: "I think there is. I ran a club in San Diego for three years and players are competitive, there is banter about who is the best club in the world, the best league in the world.
"I recognise we have to grow it and educate people about it. This came to the calendar fairly late, but I think this will showcase these players around the world.
"And the coach in me thinks, a lot of players don't get a chance to play international football so there is that as well."
While there is a concern about fixture pile-up, players' union Fifpro has said some players are in need of more matches and that underloaded footballers are at a greater injury risk.
According to a recent report, external, 43% of WSL players made fewer than 20 appearances per season while only 11% played 40 or more matches.
Ben Haines, Ellen White and Jen Beattie are back for another season of the Women's Football Weekly podcast. New episodes drop every Tuesday on BBC Sounds, plus find interviews and extra content from the Women's Super League and beyond on the Women's Football Weekly feed
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WSL Football has admitted "serious concerns" over the scheduling of the Women's Club World Cup, set to run Jan. 5 - Jan. 30 2028, saying it could have "catastrophic" consequences for the Women's Super League and player welfare.
The dates for the inaugural Club World Cup were approved by the FIFA Council in December. The tournament is set to run in the middle of the English domestic calendar -- which will also impact several leagues across Europe including Spain, France and Germany.
A spokesperson for the WSL said holding the tournament in January is "at best inconvenient, and at worst, catastrophic" for the domestic game in England, commercially and for player welfare, and said their preference would be for the Club World Cup to take place in the summer.
The WSL has formally written to FIFA to raise concerns with the tournament set to effect at least five WSL match rounds, possibly more due to time zones and travel.
A spokesperson for the WSL said that the league do not feel they have been appropriately consulted over the timing of the tournament. Arsenal, as reigning Champions League winners will likely be involved.
Based on coefficient rankings, at least one other WSL club may also be included, likely Chelsea, though no qualification process has been determined yet.
A WSL spokesperson said the league does not want to stop clubs competing and is in favour of plans to grow the global game, but does have the option to stop English clubs from competing.
The proposed 2028 Club World Cup is also bookended by the 2027 Brazil World Cup and the 2028 LA Olympics, adding further pressures to player load amid a growing international match calendar.
Prior to WSL Football's comments, FIFA's chief football officer, Jill Ellis said: "We will enter a new calendar conversation in 2030, we will look at the entire ecosystem, taking into account all shareholders, players are a massive part of that. This was the window that I think everybody agreed upon."
The Club World Cup was initially scheduled for 2026, but was postponed to 2028. Instead, FIFA scheduled the inaugural Champions Cup for the end of January, directly clashing with the WSL match schedule.
Sources told ESPN that the Champions Cup was originally planned for the west coast of the United States, however due to travel midseason and the scheduling of vital WSL games -- Arsenal play title rivals Chelsea and Manchester City either side of the tournament -- the club were adamant to have the competition closer to home and it was relocated to London.
Though no host has been decided for the Club World Cup, The Guardian reported that Qatar was being considered. ESPN understand that no talks have been had but FIFA are open to the idea.
Gareth Bale has pinpointed exactly why Xabi Alonso's tenure at Real Madrid ended in failure, claiming the Spaniard fell short in one crucial area despite his tactical brilliance. The five-time Champions League winner believes the unique pressure of the Santiago Bernabeu requires a "manager" capable of handling fragile egos rather than a tactical "coach", a nuance he suggests proved fatal for his former colleague.
Alonso, who was relieved of his duties just over a week ago, arrived with a sterling reputation following his historic success at Bayer Leverkusen. However, despite winning 13 of their first 14 matches under the coach, his "adventure" on the Madrid bench unravelled quickly, leading to his dismissal after the Spanish Super Cup final loss to Barcelona and a storm of questions regarding what went wrong.
Speaking on TNT Sports, Bale provided a candid assessment. The Welshman, who spent a trophy-laden but often turbulent decade at the club, argued that the skillset required to succeed at Real Madrid is fundamentally different from almost any other club in world football.
"He is an incredible coach," Bale said. "He has won what he has won at Bayer Leverkusen, he has won trophies, he has coached the team incredibly well. But when you get to Real Madrid, you don't need to be a coach, you need to be a manager."
The core of Bale's analysis centres on the specific personnel that inhabit the home dressing room at the Bernabeu. Real Madrid have historically been built on the 'Galactico' philosophy, assembling the most expensive and talented individual stars on the planet. According to Bale, these players do not require micromanagement; they require a delicate touch.
"You need to manage the egos in the dressing room," Bale explained. "You have to pamper the egos."
Alonso's relationship with Vinicius Junior was particularly shaky. The coach's decision to drop the Brazilian to the bench on occasion caused tension between the two and the forward was even heard saying he would leave the club following his dramatic reaction to being substituted against Barcelona.
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Bale went further, suggesting that tactical obsession can actually be a hindrance at Madrid. The Welshman's philosophy is that with such an abundance of world-class talent, the game plan should be relatively simple: put the best players on the pitch and let them win the game.
"You don't need to do so many tactical things," Bale asserted. "In the dressing room there are superstars who can change matches in the blink of an eye. So, yes, you can tell he [Alonso] is a great coach and tactician, but at Madrid, obviously, it didn't work."
This perspective aligns with the success of managers like Carlo Ancelotti and Zinedine Zidane, both of whom were often described as "facilitators" rather than tactical revolutionaries. They allowed players like Bale and Vinicius Junior the freedom to create moments of magic out of nothing. Alonso's demands, on the other hand, seemed to leave players feeling stifled.
Captain Dani Carvajal said as much earlier this season when comparing Ancelotti and Alonso, saying: "Each coach has his own methodology, as you say, they're different generations. It's true that, for example, with Carletto, we had much more freedom in that sense of, well, you came out a little later, although he got angry with us. Xabi is a little more upfront, with more discipline, but well, within each one, his own ideas."
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Bale's comments serve as a timely warning for future Madrid bosses, as well as a retrospective on why the marriage between Alonso and Madrid failed. The current squad, boasting the likes of Kylian Mbappe, Jude Bellingham and Vinicius, fits the exact profile Bale describes: a collection of match-winners who can dismantle opponents in a heartbeat if they feel comfortable and supported.
While the post-Alonso era under Alvaro Arbeloa got off to a woeful start - a shock 3-2 Copa del Rey defeat - they have bounced back with two comfortable wins, having beaten Levante in La Liga at the weekend before crushing Monaco 6-1 in the Champions League on Tuesday.
Thierry Henry dismissed a suggestion from fellow pundit Jamie Carragher as the pair discussed the recent Africa Cup of Nations final between Senegal and Morocco. Former Liverpool defender Carragher has been criticised in the past for suggesting that the AFCON should not be considered a "major tournament", and has now raised the question as to whether European referees should be recruited in a bid to improve officiating standards. However, legendary ex-France and Arsenal striker Henry quickly rejected that opinion.
The AFCON final between Senegal and Morocco proved to be an unmissable spectacle, with all manner of incidents occurring as the two teams clashed at Stade Prince Moulay Abdallah.
Senegal players left the field of play when referee Jean Jacques Ndala awarded Morocco a penalty in the 98th minute, with head coach Pape Thiaw livid after his side had a goal disallowed moments before that decision. Former Liverpool star Sadio Mane stayed put and tried to encourage his team-mates to return to the pitch, and eventually, after a delay of roughly 17 minutes, they came back.
Brahim Diaz took the penalty for Morocco but his Panenka attempt was easily gathered by goalkeeper Edouard Mendy before Ndala blew his whistle for full-time. Pape Gueye scored the winner in extra time to help Senegal lift the trophy, but the chaotic scenes continued after the game, with both Thiaw and Morocco boss Walid Regragui being chastised by journalists in the post-match press conferences.
Carragher has previously been criticised for suggesting that AFCON should not be considered a "major tournament" when discussing the legacy of Liverpool forward Mohamed Salah and if he could win the Ballon d'Or.
Back in February last year, he said: "I think the problem is the fact he's with Egypt, and he's probably not playing in the major tournament as such, or maybe got a great chance of winning, I think it's either the Champions League or the major tournament. Normally, the player who excels in that."
Carragher later clarified his comments after a social media backlash: "I've got very strong opinions on the game, I love debate and that will never change. But what I never want to be described as as a pundit would be ignorant or disrespectful, so that was never my aim, whether that's to a club, a player, a country, a continent, an international tournament, whatever that may be. What I would say is, where I got it wrong was I was clumsy with my language, in describing AFCON as not a major tournament.
"I was trying to explain the merits of Mo Salah winning the Ballon d'Or and I felt, or feel, that not just AFCON, but the Asia Games or Gold Cup, not so much the Copa America, but there are five more competitions out there besides the World Cup that are for their continent a major tournament. Some of them don't resonate with people who vote for the Ballon d'Or and that was not an opinion, that was a fact in terms of looking at who won the Ballon d'Or over the last 40 or 50 years."
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Carragher and Henry discussed the 2025 AFCON final on CBS Sports on Tuesday, with the former suggesting the officiating could be improved by having European referees in charge.
He asked: "You mention about the referees there, could there not be a case where they actually bring some of the top European referees [in to oversee AFCON matches]?"
Henry replied swiftly: "You have to give African referees a chance. It is an African tournament, it has to have African referees.
"I'm talking about sending someone to put them to a certain level, because you can see there are more and more mistakes all of the time, and it does start to tarnish the tournament a bit. But people blame the tournament - it's not the tournament's fault, it's not the teams or players' fault."
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Carragher's immediate attention will be on Liverpool's next game on Wednesday night, which is a Champions League clash with Marseille. A win in France would strengthen their position in the league phase table and Slot has already hinted that Salah, who scored four goals with Egypt as they came third at the AFCON, could start the fixture.
Liverpool are currently 11th after Tuesday evening's fixtures, which included wins for the likes of Real Madrid, Bodo/Glimt, Arsenal and Tottenham, but they could move as high as fourth if they manage to beat Roberto De Zerbi's Marseille side. The Ligue 1 outfit have won three and lost three of their six games in the competition, but have been victorious in their two most recent encounters against Newcastle United and Union Saint-Gilloise.
Donald Trump has described the 2026 FIFA World Cup as a “once in a lifetime opportunity” as the United States government unveils its new FIFA Pass visa programme for international fans.
US President Donald Trump praised the upcoming FIFA World Cup tournament while revealing the new travel system designed to fast-track visas for global visitors.
The FIFA Pass, introduced by the US Department of State, aims to help millions of fans secure entry to the country ahead of the event.
On the US Department of State website, Donald Trump described the tournament as a moment for the country to shine.
“This will be a once in a lifetime opportunity to showcase the beauty and the greatness of America. And we can't wait to welcome soccer fans from all over the globe,” he said.
The 2026 FIFA World Cup will be co-hosted by the United States, Canada, and Mexico, featuring 48 teams competing across 16 cities.
Eleven of those host cities are in the United States, with the final set to take place at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey.
The FIFA Pass launched on January 20, allowing ticket holders to apply for expedited visa interviews before the tournament begins on June 11.
Participation is voluntary, and visa approval remains subject to standard eligibility and background checks.
According to the US Department of State, the FIFA Pass aims to cut long wait times for non-immigrant visas, including B1/B2 visitor categories.
The programme prioritises confirmed ticket holders in countries where interview backlogs remain high. The system provides confirmed World Cup ticket holders with access to priority visa interview appointments at American embassies and consulates around the world.
Officials confirmed that the initiative does not alter US immigration or security standards. Applicants must still meet all eligibility criteria, attend interviews, and demonstrate intent to return home after the tournament.
The United States has also deployed more than 400 additional consular officers to embassies worldwide to handle the increased demand.
The move underscores the scale of preparation as the country gets ready to host one of the largest sporting events in history.
Read More: FIFA issues warning to fans looking to attend World Cup amid Donald Trump visa decisions
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FIFA's chief football officer Jill Ellis has said she is wary of hypocrisy over the Women's Club World Cup potentially being held in Qatar.
Ellis, head coach of the USWNT between 2014 and 2019, noted the proliferation of anti-gay bills in the United States when questioned on the inaugural tournament FIFA announced last month would take place in January 2028.
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No host nation has been confirmed but it was reported in the Guardian that Qatar were in talks with world football's governing body. When approached by The Athletic earlier this month, a FIFA spokesperson said that no discussions had yet been held on potential hosts.
Qatar held the men's World Cup in 2022 and faced scrutiny and international criticism for its human rights record, including the criminalization of homosexuality.
“I've not heard anything about that region, at my level. There's a bidding process — the (FIFA) Council has to vote on it. I'm going to put my personal hat on, there are over 500 bills in the U.S. with anti-gay legislation on them,” Ellis, 59, said in a press briefing on Tuesday when asked about Qatar potentially bidding for the tournament. The American Civil Liberties Union said there were over 600 legislative bills targeting LGBTQ+ rights in the U.S. in 2025.
“That was last year when I started researching this,” Ellis continued. “I also come from the U.S., but right now there's a big light being shown on that. So I'm very, very careful not to throw stones in glass houses, right?
“We want to try and get as many people interested in this to want to host it.”
In October 2024, 106 professional women's footballers signed a letter calling on FIFA to drop its partnership with oil company Aramco, majority-owned by the Saudi Arabian government.
The partnership — Aramco will hold sponsorship rights for the 2026 men's World Cup and 2027 women's World Cup — was criticized due to Saudi Arabia's record on women's and LGBTQ+ rights and climate action, with the letter accusing the deal of “undermining” the women's game.
On Tuesday, Ellis instead focused of the “massive growth” in women's football in the region.
“There is, I think, now, 12 teams in the Saudi Arabian League,” she said. “This is me looking at how sport has an incredible ability to transform, educate, enlighten, and I think the more people that can have access to this incredible game, and seeing women play it, I think it's the for the betterment of everybody.”
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Qatar, by contrast, do not have a women's team in the FIFA rankings after creating a national side in 2009 — the same year that they registered their World Cup bid — not under the umbrella of the Qatar Football Association (QFA) but the Qatar Women's Sport Committee (QWSC).
FIFA's bid evaluation report published in 2010 said that Qatar mentions the “establishment of structures for non-elite football (grassroots, women…)” and “promotion of women's football, including creation of special facilities”.
The report also stated: “It aims to bring all other football stakeholders and areas under the umbrella of the QFA.”
When The Athletic contacted the QFA, the Qatar Olympic Committee and the QWSC to find out if the team still exists, if it falls under the QFA umbrella, what funding and development plans are in place and their upcoming fixture schedule, neither organization replied.
The Women's Club World Cup will take place across January 5-30 in 2028.
KMBC 9 News is learning that several of the world's top soccer teams are expected to set up base camps in the Kansas City area during the 2026 World Cup.
Sources tell KMBC that the defending World Cup champion Argentina national football team plans to base its camp in Kansas City, Kansas, and train at the Compass Minerals National Performance Center, the training home of Sporting Kansas City.
The England national football team is expected to train at Swope Soccer Village in Kansas City, Missouri, which previously served as Sporting Kansas City's training facility.
KMBC has also learned Algeria national football team plans to practice at Rock Chalk Park in Lawrence, Kansas, while the Netherlands national football team is expected to train at the Kansas City Current's facility in Riverside, Missouri.
FIFA has not made a formal announcement.
Kansas City's central location and extensive soccer facilities are believed to be key reasons the region is attracting international teams.
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Fifa president Gianni Infantino awarded Donald Trump the inaugural Fifa Peace Prize at the 2026 World Cup draw in December
World Cup 2026 ticket holders can now access priority visa appointments for travel to the United States - but doubt remains whether fans from every country to have qualified will be able to enter.
The Fifa Prioritised Appointment Scheduling System - or Fifa Pass - announced by US President Donald Trump in November, went live on Tuesday.
It was introduced in part because citizens of some countries whose teams have qualified for the 2026 World Cup may not otherwise receive visa appointments in time for the tournament.
But the US State Department has stressed that a Fifa Pass appointment does not guarantee a visa will be approved, with all ticket holders having to "undergo thorough security screening and vetting".
Most citizens of countries under the US visa waiver programme, which covers much of Europe, including the UK, along with Japan, Australia and others, can ordinarily travel visa-free for up to 90 days, so do not need to use the Fifa Pass. Travellers from those countries would need to apply instead for an Esta - an Electronic System for Travel Authorization.
A senior State Department official said the new Fifa Pass system will cut wait times - with applicants in "over 80%" of countries now able to schedule a visa appointment in "less that 60 days".
It added: "At the visa appointment, the applicant must show they qualify for the visa and plan to follow our laws and leave at the end of the tournament. America's safety and the security of our borders will always come first."
Football fans in countries affected by the US suspending the processing of immigrant visas will still be able to apply to travel to the country for this year's World Cup.
The US said last Wednesday it will pause processing immigrant visas from 75 countries,, external 15 of which have qualified for the World Cup, including five-time winners Brazil.
A further seven nations on the list are still in contention to qualify for this year's tournament, which will take place in the US, Canada and Mexico from 11 June to 19 July.
The State Department confirmed on Tuesday the pause "applies to the issuance of immigrant visas only" and "does not apply to non-immigrant visas, such as those for tourists, athletes and their families, and media professionals".
Qualified nations on the list of 75 countries: Algeria, Brazil, Cape Verde, Colombia, Egypt, Ghana, Haiti, Iran, Ivory Coast, Jordan, Morocco, Senegal, Tunisia, Uruguay, Uzbekistan
Nations still in qualification contention on the list: Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, DR Congo, Iraq, Jamaica, Kosovo, North Macedonia
Trump administration pauses immigrant visa processing for 75 countries
The order to indefinitely pause the processing of immigrant visa applications from those 75 countries will take effect on Wednesday, 21 January.
Prior to this move, Trump expanded a travel ban that came into force on 1 January, which bars nationals of countries on that list from entering the US.
Haiti and Iran, who have both qualified for the 2026 World Cup, are on the list of countries with full restrictions.
Ivory Coast and Senegal, who have also qualified, are on the list of countries with partial restrictions.
The State Department said a Fifa Pass appointment does not allow people "who are otherwise not eligible" to be issued a visa, meaning fans from those four countries appear unlikely to be able to travel to the US for this summer's tournament.
Guidance from the State Department specified there are exceptions for "any athlete or member of an athletic team, including coaches, persons performing a necessary support role, and immediate relatives" to the travel ban for the World Cup.
However, it added "the exception does not apply to fans or spectators". They can still submit visa applications but "they may be ineligible for visa issuance or admission to the United States".
The US will host 78 of the 104 total matches at the World Cup, across 11 cities, including the final at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey.
Trump expands US travel ban to five more countries
Which countries' fans are banned from US World Cup games?
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The two-time reigning Australian Open champ rocked Denma's Gucci: La Famiglia collection during the laid back interview.ByTENNIS.comPublished Jan 21, 2026 copy_link
Published Jan 21, 2026
© Kierra Thorn/Getty Images for Gucci
“For sure a nice jacket has to be there.”That declaration signifies one of the three must-haves in Jannik Sinner's wardrobe.Back in Melbourne, the two-time defending Australian Open champion recently dove into some fashion-driven subject matter with Olga Pokrovskaya. The Instagram creator conducts relaxed interviews in public for her account, Street style Australia (@whatpeoplewear.au).
That declaration signifies one of the three must-haves in Jannik Sinner's wardrobe.Back in Melbourne, the two-time defending Australian Open champion recently dove into some fashion-driven subject matter with Olga Pokrovskaya. The Instagram creator conducts relaxed interviews in public for her account, Street style Australia (@whatpeoplewear.au).
Back in Melbourne, the two-time defending Australian Open champion recently dove into some fashion-driven subject matter with Olga Pokrovskaya. The Instagram creator conducts relaxed interviews in public for her account, Street style Australia (@whatpeoplewear.au).
Dressed in a black and white ensemble from Denma's Gucci: La Famiglia collection, Sinner's look represents the second essential from his closet.“In my wardrobe, there are a lot of very simple t-shirts. White or black, usually, because I travel around a lot,” he said.Rounding out his requisites, no fit would be complete without complementary footwear to top it off.“(For) different, more serious events, I like the Gucci shoes,” he said. “A bit more elegant, it's very nice.”
“In my wardrobe, there are a lot of very simple t-shirts. White or black, usually, because I travel around a lot,” he said.Rounding out his requisites, no fit would be complete without complementary footwear to top it off.“(For) different, more serious events, I like the Gucci shoes,” he said. “A bit more elegant, it's very nice.”
Rounding out his requisites, no fit would be complete without complementary footwear to top it off.“(For) different, more serious events, I like the Gucci shoes,” he said. “A bit more elegant, it's very nice.”
“(For) different, more serious events, I like the Gucci shoes,” he said. “A bit more elegant, it's very nice.”
In my wardrobe, there are a lot of very simple t-shirts. White or black, usually, because I travel around a lot.
Asked by Pokrovskaya about the difference between his compatriots and Aussies when it comes to style, Sinner responded, “Italians, they go quite crazy with fashion. The haircut is for sure something that is very different.”As for his own current length of red locks?“I would say it's quite international!” laughed Sinner.The world No. 2 is bidding to capture his fifth career major at the Happy Slam. Sinner led Hugo Gaston, 6-2, 6-1, when the Frenchman retired from their first-round meeting—and next faces Australian James Duckworth Thursday evening on Rod Laver Arena.The 24-year-old is riding a 15-match win streak at the tournament, clinching the last 13 sets he's contested.
As for his own current length of red locks?“I would say it's quite international!” laughed Sinner.The world No. 2 is bidding to capture his fifth career major at the Happy Slam. Sinner led Hugo Gaston, 6-2, 6-1, when the Frenchman retired from their first-round meeting—and next faces Australian James Duckworth Thursday evening on Rod Laver Arena.The 24-year-old is riding a 15-match win streak at the tournament, clinching the last 13 sets he's contested.
“I would say it's quite international!” laughed Sinner.The world No. 2 is bidding to capture his fifth career major at the Happy Slam. Sinner led Hugo Gaston, 6-2, 6-1, when the Frenchman retired from their first-round meeting—and next faces Australian James Duckworth Thursday evening on Rod Laver Arena.The 24-year-old is riding a 15-match win streak at the tournament, clinching the last 13 sets he's contested.
The world No. 2 is bidding to capture his fifth career major at the Happy Slam. Sinner led Hugo Gaston, 6-2, 6-1, when the Frenchman retired from their first-round meeting—and next faces Australian James Duckworth Thursday evening on Rod Laver Arena.The 24-year-old is riding a 15-match win streak at the tournament, clinching the last 13 sets he's contested.
The 24-year-old is riding a 15-match win streak at the tournament, clinching the last 13 sets he's contested.
Iga Swiatek looks to extend one of the longest Grand Slam consistency runs of the Open Era as Madison Keys, Elena Rybakina and Belinda Bencic face tricky opponents.
Sometimes the first step can be the hardest.
“I think obviously started a little slow today and definitely nervous,” said Madison Keys, reflecting on the opening set of her Australian Open title defense.
Said Iga Swiatek of her first set in Melbourne: “The start of the match wasn't that perfect. I'm happy that I worked through this.”
Both Swiatek and Keys prevailed in tiebreaks and went on to win in straight sets. So did former World No. 1 Karolina Pliskova and No. 31 seed Anna Kalinskaya.
Two qualifiers, Maddison Inglis and teenager Nikola Bartunkova, won first-set tiebreaks, then hung on to win in three.
“Doesn't matter to overanalyze it,” Swiatek said afterward. “Just you got to be ready for the next match and take lessons from why the match was kind of tighter and try to improve stuff for the next round.”
Perhaps Thursday's second-round matches from the bottom half of the WTA Tour Driven by Mercedes-Benz draw will be less stressful and more conventional. Perhaps not.
No. 2 Iga Swiatek vs. Marie Bouzkova
Head-to-head: Swiatek, 2-0, 2024 Roland Garros, 2025 Wuhan
Swiatek survived qualifier Yuan Yue and now faces a more familiar opponent in Bouzkova, who handled Renata Zarazua 6-2, 7-5 to get here.
She's still only 24 years old, and it's easy to take Swiatek's consistency for granted.
Swiatek is the first woman to reach the second round in 25 consecutive Grand Slams since Svetlana Kuznetsova (26, from 2006-12). She's looking to reach the third round in her 24th consecutive Grand Slam -- no woman in the Open Era has advanced to the third round of any decade's first 24 majors.
Bouzkova, ranked No. 44, has been to the third round of the three other majors and is seeking a personal breakthrough here.
No. 4 Amanda Anisimova vs. Katerina Siniakova
Head-to-head: 0-0
Anisimova had a more routine first-round win, 6-3, 6-2 over Simona Waltert and similarly Siniakova defeated Panna Udvardy 6-1, 6-2.
Anisimova, who briefly slipped ahead of Coco Gauff for the No. 3 ranking, has high hopes after reaching two Grand Slam finals last year.
“I'm just focused on what I need to do, how I want to improve as a player,” Anisimova said. “There is not much to it, really. Just trying to find that extra edge anywhere I can, same as last year.”
This is only major in which Anisimova has failed to reach at least the quarterfinals; she's made the fourth round three times. With temperatures on the rise, the bigger servers will be rewarded. Only Aryna Sabalenka (96), and Naomi Osaka (93) hit more aces than Anisimova's 76 in last year's Grand Slams.
In her 13th main draw here, Siniakova -- the world's No. 1-ranked doubles player -- is trying to reach the third round for the first time.
No. 5 Elena Rybakina vs. Varvara Gracheva
Head-to-head: Rybakina, 2-0, 2022 St. Petersburg, 2023 Indian Wells
Rybakina limited Gracheva to only three games in each of those previous contests.
“She can play really well on the baseline,” Rybakina noted. “She can get good serves. I think the most important thing is to focus on my game. Of course, on the serve because no matter who is on the other side, if the serve is going, then it's perfect.”
In a 6-4, 6-3 opening win over Kaja Juvan, Rybakina served five aces and zero double faults. Gracheva was a 6-1, 2-6, 6-1 winner over Viktorija Golubic, converting seven break points.
Rybakina is 3-3 in second-round matches at the Australian Open. She has won six straight second-rounders; the last loss at that stage came two years ago, to Anna Blinkova.
A win would equal Gracheva's best result in Melbourne.
No. 6 Jessica Pegula vs. McCartney Kessler
Head-to-head: 1-0, Pegula, 2025 Austin final
Across the board, the numbers favor Pegula. She's won 11 of her past 12 meetings against fellow Americans -- losing over that span only to Coco Gauff in Wuhan's final. One of those wins was a 7-5, 6-2 victory over Kessler last February.
In the past five years, only Aryna Sabalenka and Iga Swiatek have reached the third round here more (five) than Pegula (four).
A win would vault Kessler into the third round of a major for the first time in her career.
No. 9 Madison Keys vs. Ashlyn Krueger
Head-to-head: 0-0
Another All-American matchup -- and another where history favors the seeded player. Only twice in the Open Era has the defending champion lost in the second round, Sofia Kenin in 2021 and Mary Pierce in 1996.
With 35 main-draw wins, the Australian Open is Keys' most successful tournament. Her 35-10 record (.778) is surpassed only by Sabalenka (.867) and Naomi Osaka (.794).
Krueger is trying to equal her best result in a major, the third round at the 2024 US Open. The 21-year-old, ranked No. 62, has now made the second round in four consecutive Grand Slams. She's 1-10 against Top 10 players, beating Rybakina last year in Miami.
If Keys and Pegula each win two more matches, they'd meet in the fourth round.
No. 10 Belinda Bencic vs. qualifier Nikola Bartunkova
Head-to-head: 0-0
Three weeks into 2026, there are only three undefeated players left -- Sabalenka, (the Brisbane champion), Elina Svitolina (Auckland) and Bencic (United Cup MVP). The 28-year-old Swiss went 5-0 in United Cup play and in Melbourne, defeated Katie Boulter 6-0, 7-5 in her opener.
Bencic has reached the third round in Melbourne five of the past six times but lost her most recent second-rounder in a major, to Ann Li at the US Open.
This is Bartunkova's first match against a player ranked in the Top 10.
No. 16 Naomi Osaka vs. Sorana Cirstea
Head-to-head: 1-0, Cirstea, 2015 Wimbledon qualifying
That was more than 10 years ago, when Osaka was only 17 years old and ranked No. 167. Cirstea, then 25, was at No. 191. Osaka went on to win four Grand Slam singles titles, two of them at Melbourne Park.
Osaka, who entered the court for her opening match wearing a jellyfish-inspired dress, a white wide-brim hat and matching veil and parasol, was a three-set winner over Antonia Ruzic.
Cirstea, 35, is playing her final Australian Open after announcing that the 2026 season would be her last.
ROD LAVER ARENA — Start 11:30 a.m.
-- Jessica Pegula (USA) [6] vs. McCartney Kessler (USA)Followed by-- Not before 1:30 p.m.-- Francesco Maestrelli (ITA) vs. Novak Djokovic (SRB) [4]
7:00 p.m.-- James Duckworth (AUS) vs. Jannik Sinner (ITA) [2]Followed by-- Elena Rybakina (KAZ) [5] vs. Varvara Gracheva (FRA)
MARGARET COURT ARENA — Start 11:30 a.m.
-- Lorenzo Musetti (ITA) [5] vs. Lorenzo Sonego (ITA)Followed by-- Not before 1:30 p.m.-- Katerina Siniakova (CZE) vs. Amanda Anisimova (USA) [4]
7:00 p.m.-- Naomi Osaka (JPN) [16] vs. Sorana Cirstea (ROU)Followed by-- Jaume Munar (ESP) vs. Casper Ruud (NOR) [12]
JOHN CAIN ARENA — Start 11:00 a.m.
-- Ashlyn Krueger (USA) vs. Madison Keys (USA) [9]Followed by-- Ben Shelton (USA) [8] vs. Dane Sweeny (AUS)
5:00 p.m.-- Marie Bouzkova (CZE) vs. Iga Swiatek (POL) [2]Followed by-- Vit Kopriva (CZE) vs. Taylor Fritz (USA) [9]
KIA ARENA — Start 11:00 a.m.
-- Rinky Hijikata (AUS) vs. Valentin Vacherot (MON) [30]Followed by-- Linda Noskova (CZE) [13] vs. Taylah Preston (AUS)-- Arthur Gea (FRA) vs. Stan Wawrinka (SUI)-- Not before 4:00 p.m.-- Thanasi Kokkinakis (AUS) / Nick Kyrgios (AUS) vs. Jason Kubler (AUS) / Marc Polmans (AUS)
1573 ARENA — Start 11:00 a.m.
-- Oksana Selekhmeteva vs. Paula Badosa (ESP) [25]Followed by-- Hubert Hurkacz (POL) vs. Ethan Quinn (USA)-- Elise Mertens (BEL) [21] vs. Moyuka Uchijima (JPN)-- Denis Shapovalov (CAN) [21] vs. Marin Cilic (CRO)
ANZ ARENA — Start 11:00 a.m.
-- Karen Khachanov [15] vs. Nishesh Basavareddy (USA)Followed by-- Not before 1:00 p.m.-- Maddison Inglis (AUS) vs. Laura Siegemund (GER)-- Tomas Machac (CZE) vs. Stefanos Tsitsipas (GRE) [31]-- Nikola Bartunkova (CZE) vs. Belinda Bencic (SUI) [10]
COURT 5 — Start 11:00 a.m.
-- Ray Ho (TPE) / Hendrik Jebens (GER) vs. Simone Bolelli (ITA) / Andrea Vavassori (ITA) [7]-- Shuai Zhang (CHN) / Tim Puetz (GER) [6] vs. Nicole Melichar-Martinez (USA) / Yuki Bhambri (IND)-- Matthew Romios (AUS) / Ryan Seggerman (USA) vs. Alexander Erler (AUT) / Robert Galloway (USA)-- N. Sriram Balaji (IND) / Neil Oberleitner (AUT) vs. Pierre-Hugues Herbert (FRA) / Jordan Thompson (AUS)
COURT 6 — Start 11:00 a.m.
-- Sebastian Baez (ARG) vs. Luciano Darderi (ITA) [22]-- Xinyu Wang (CHN) vs. Jelena Ostapenko (LAT) [24]-- Nadiia Kichenok (UKR) / Makoto Ninomiya (JPN) vs. Emerson Jones (AUS) / Astra Sharma (AUS)-- Alex Bolt (AUS) / Dane Sweeny (AUS) vs. Corentin Moutet (FRA) / Luca Sanchez (FRA)
COURT 7 — Start 11:00 a.m.
-- Jakub Paul (SUI) / Marcus Willis (GBR) vs. Evan King (USA) / John Peers (AUS) [15]-- Janice Tjen (INA) vs. Karolina Pliskova (CZE)-- Botic van de Zandschulp (NED) vs. Juncheng Shang (CHN)-- Linda Fruhvirtova (CZE) vs. Tereza Valentova (CZE)
COURT 8 — Start 11:00 a.m.
-- Kimberly Birrell (AUS) / Talia Gibson (AUS) vs. Momoko Kobori (JPN) / Ayano Shimizu (JPN)-- Diego Hidalgo (ECU) / Patrik Trhac (USA) vs. Harri Heliovaara (FIN) / Henry Patten (GBR) [2]-- Hanyu Guo (CHN) / Kristina Mladenovic (FRA) [16] vs. Alycia Parks (USA) / Dayana Yastremska (UKR)-- Caty McNally (USA) / Camila Osorio (COL) vs. Sofia Kenin (USA) / Laura Siegemund (GER) [13]
COURT 11 — Start 11:00 a.m.
-- Ena Shibahara (JPN) / Vera Zvonareva vs. Liudmila Samsonova / Diana Shnaider [10]-- Marcelo Arevalo (ESA) / Mate Pavic (CRO) [4] vs. Tomislav Brkic (BIH) / Damir Dzumhur (BIH)-- Tomas Martin Etcheverry (ARG) / Camilo Ugo Carabelli (ARG) vs. Francisco Cerundolo (ARG) / Juan Manuel Cerundolo (ARG)-- Eri Hozumi (JPN) / Fang-Hsien Wu (TPE) vs. Irina Khromacheva / Alexandra Panova [11]
COURT 12 — Start 11:00 a.m.
-- Quinn Gleason (USA) / Elena Pridankina vs. Anna Danilina (KAZ) / Aleksandra Krunic (SRB) [7]-- Sadio Doumbia (FRA) / Fabien Reboul (FRA) [12] vs. Sander Arends (NED) / Romain Arneodo (MON)-- Viktorija Golubic (SUI) / Ann Li (USA) vs. Miyu Kato (JPN) / Fanny Stollar (HUN) [15]-- Priscilla Hon (AUS) / Ashlyn Krueger (USA) vs. Storm Hunter (AUS) / Maya Joint (AUS)
COURT 13 — Start 11:00 a.m.
-- Jakub Mensik (CZE) [16] vs. Rafael Jodar (ESP)Followed by-- Not before 1:00 p.m.-- Anna Kalinskaya [31] vs. Julia Grabher (AUT)-- Eliot Spizzirri (USA) vs. Yibing Wu (CHN)-- Asia Muhammad (USA) / Evan King (USA) vs. Gabriella Da Silva Fick (AUS) / Blake Bayldon (AUS)
COURT 14 — Start 11:00 a.m.
-- Hao-Ching Chan (TPE) / Xinyu Jiang (CHN) [14] vs. Anna Blinkova / Kamilla Rakhimova (UZB)-- Peyton Stearns (USA) vs. Petra Marcinko (CRO)-- Kimberly Birrell (AUS) / John-Patrick Smith (AUS) vs. Demi Schuurs (NED) / Julian Cash (GBR) [3]-- Hailey Baptiste (USA) / Peyton Stearns (USA) vs. Jessica Bouzas Maneiro (ESP) / Elisabetta Cocciaretto (ITA)
COURT 15 — Start 11:00 a.m.
-- Vasil Kirkov (USA) / Bart Stevens (NED) vs. Gonzalo Escobar (ECU) / Miguel Reyes-Varela (MEX)-- Santiago Gonzalez (MEX) / David Pel (NED) vs. Marcelo Melo (BRA) / Fernando Romboli (BRA)-- Olivia Gadecki (AUS) / John Peers (AUS) vs. Vera Zvonareva / Lucas Miedler (AUT)-- Sebastian Baez (ARG) / Francisco Comesana (ARG) vs. Marcel Granollers (ESP) / Horacio Zeballos (ARG) [3]
Iga Swiatek looks to extend one of the longest Grand Slam consistency runs of the Open Era as Madison Keys, Elena Rybakina and Belinda Bencic face tricky opponents.
“I know that it's a new thing in Turkey, but I don't want to stop here. I want to keep going," she declared after reaching the third round.ByTENNIS.comPublished Jan 21, 2026 copy_link
Published Jan 21, 2026
© AFP or licensors
At last year's Australian Open, Zeynep Sonmez earned direct entry into the main draw of a major for the first time on the back of a maiden WTA title captured in October 2024.When Wimbledon played out, she emerged as the first player from Turkey to reach the third round of a Grand Slam event in the Open Era. On Wednesday, Sonmez matched that breakout performance Down Under.Relegated to securing her place in the Australian Open qualifying rounds this time around, Sonmez followed up her upset win over No. 11 seed Ekaterina Alexandrova by dispatching Anna Bondar with a 6-2, 6-4 victory.Watch: Sonmez aids ill ball girl during first-round win in Melbourne
When Wimbledon played out, she emerged as the first player from Turkey to reach the third round of a Grand Slam event in the Open Era. On Wednesday, Sonmez matched that breakout performance Down Under.Relegated to securing her place in the Australian Open qualifying rounds this time around, Sonmez followed up her upset win over No. 11 seed Ekaterina Alexandrova by dispatching Anna Bondar with a 6-2, 6-4 victory.Watch: Sonmez aids ill ball girl during first-round win in Melbourne
Relegated to securing her place in the Australian Open qualifying rounds this time around, Sonmez followed up her upset win over No. 11 seed Ekaterina Alexandrova by dispatching Anna Bondar with a 6-2, 6-4 victory.Watch: Sonmez aids ill ball girl during first-round win in Melbourne
Watch: Sonmez aids ill ball girl during first-round win in Melbourne
I know that it's a new thing in Turkey, but I don't want to stop here. I want to keep going. I want to do better things.
The atmosphere surrounding the 23-year-old on Court 7 at Melbourne Park was unlike any setting she had been a part of.“I felt like I was at home. I was feeling the energy. It was really unreal. I really, really appreciate it,” she told press. “I felt very good on the court. I really felt the support, and I felt like we were all playing together, actually.“At first I couldn't even hear my own thoughts. It was very, very loud. Then I said, ‘Zeynep, just focus, just you and the ball, play your game and just focus on the court.'“I have never experienced something like this.”
“I felt like I was at home. I was feeling the energy. It was really unreal. I really, really appreciate it,” she told press. “I felt very good on the court. I really felt the support, and I felt like we were all playing together, actually.“At first I couldn't even hear my own thoughts. It was very, very loud. Then I said, ‘Zeynep, just focus, just you and the ball, play your game and just focus on the court.'“I have never experienced something like this.”
“At first I couldn't even hear my own thoughts. It was very, very loud. Then I said, ‘Zeynep, just focus, just you and the ball, play your game and just focus on the court.'“I have never experienced something like this.”
“I have never experienced something like this.”
Having dropped outside of the Top 100 on the year-end WTA rankings, Sonmez will undoubtedly return following the season's first major—with a win in the next round likely to vault her past a career-high mark of No. 69.It would, of course, also bring Sonmez into uncharted territory: the second week of a major. Crediting the compatriots that came before her, including Marsel Ilhan and Cagla Buyukakcay, for paving the way and offering their mentorship, Sonmez isn't lacking support with breaking further ground for her nation.“They're always trying to help me with their experiences. I want to do better,” she says.“I know that it's a new thing in Turkey, but I don't want to stop here. I want to keep going. I want to do better things.”For a coveted spot in the round of 16, Sonmez takes on Yulia Putintseva. The Kazakh cruised past Elsa Jacquemot, 6-1, 6-2.
It would, of course, also bring Sonmez into uncharted territory: the second week of a major. Crediting the compatriots that came before her, including Marsel Ilhan and Cagla Buyukakcay, for paving the way and offering their mentorship, Sonmez isn't lacking support with breaking further ground for her nation.“They're always trying to help me with their experiences. I want to do better,” she says.“I know that it's a new thing in Turkey, but I don't want to stop here. I want to keep going. I want to do better things.”For a coveted spot in the round of 16, Sonmez takes on Yulia Putintseva. The Kazakh cruised past Elsa Jacquemot, 6-1, 6-2.
“They're always trying to help me with their experiences. I want to do better,” she says.“I know that it's a new thing in Turkey, but I don't want to stop here. I want to keep going. I want to do better things.”For a coveted spot in the round of 16, Sonmez takes on Yulia Putintseva. The Kazakh cruised past Elsa Jacquemot, 6-1, 6-2.
“I know that it's a new thing in Turkey, but I don't want to stop here. I want to keep going. I want to do better things.”For a coveted spot in the round of 16, Sonmez takes on Yulia Putintseva. The Kazakh cruised past Elsa Jacquemot, 6-1, 6-2.
For a coveted spot in the round of 16, Sonmez takes on Yulia Putintseva. The Kazakh cruised past Elsa Jacquemot, 6-1, 6-2.
The American's quiet luxury look stole the show during his second-round defeat to Alejandro Davidovich Fokina.ByStephanie LivaudaisPublished Jan 21, 2026 copy_link
Published Jan 21, 2026
© 2026 Getty Images
Reilly Opelka may have exited the Australian Open in the second round, but he still managed to make a statement—thanks to the eye-watering price tag of his new Sease kit, which quickly went viral.Opelka pushed No. 14 seed Alejandro Davidovich Fokina to the limit on Wednesday across five sets on Kia Arena. The American rallied from two sets down to push the match the distance before Davidovich Fokina eventually prevailed 6-3, 7-6 (3), 5-7, 4-6, 6-4.Read More: Critical Carlos Alcaraz gets encouragement from team after advancing at Australian OpenHis stay in Melbourne was brief but memorable, in no small part because of his outfit. Opelka wore a tan and brown set from buzzy Italian sportswear label Sease, founded in 2016 by brothers Franco and Giacomo Loro Piana.
Opelka pushed No. 14 seed Alejandro Davidovich Fokina to the limit on Wednesday across five sets on Kia Arena. The American rallied from two sets down to push the match the distance before Davidovich Fokina eventually prevailed 6-3, 7-6 (3), 5-7, 4-6, 6-4.Read More: Critical Carlos Alcaraz gets encouragement from team after advancing at Australian OpenHis stay in Melbourne was brief but memorable, in no small part because of his outfit. Opelka wore a tan and brown set from buzzy Italian sportswear label Sease, founded in 2016 by brothers Franco and Giacomo Loro Piana.
Read More: Critical Carlos Alcaraz gets encouragement from team after advancing at Australian OpenHis stay in Melbourne was brief but memorable, in no small part because of his outfit. Opelka wore a tan and brown set from buzzy Italian sportswear label Sease, founded in 2016 by brothers Franco and Giacomo Loro Piana.
His stay in Melbourne was brief but memorable, in no small part because of his outfit. Opelka wore a tan and brown set from buzzy Italian sportswear label Sease, founded in 2016 by brothers Franco and Giacomo Loro Piana.
Reilly Opelka has worn apparel by Italian sportswear brand Sease during his trip Down Under.© Getty Images
© Getty Images
Like the rest of the renowned Loro Piana family's ventures, Sease's Tennis Kit collection emphasizes quiet luxury, high-quality materials and thoughtful craftsmanship—which helps explain the sticker shock among fans eager to shop Opelka's look.A Sease polo shirt currently starts at $635, while a cap will set you back at least $410. The brand's tennis duffle bag costs a cool $2,700. A breakdown of Opelka's Australian Open outfit puts the total around $1,340 (a $635 polo and $705 shorts), with the addition of a cap pushing the look north of $1,800.Opelka was previously sponsored by Fila, a partnership that began in 2020. It's not yet clear whether he has a new formal deal in place with Sease—according to Hard Court's Jessica Schiffer, this is a product-only arrangement—but the brand has already achieved its goal of generating buzz.
A Sease polo shirt currently starts at $635, while a cap will set you back at least $410. The brand's tennis duffle bag costs a cool $2,700. A breakdown of Opelka's Australian Open outfit puts the total around $1,340 (a $635 polo and $705 shorts), with the addition of a cap pushing the look north of $1,800.Opelka was previously sponsored by Fila, a partnership that began in 2020. It's not yet clear whether he has a new formal deal in place with Sease—according to Hard Court's Jessica Schiffer, this is a product-only arrangement—but the brand has already achieved its goal of generating buzz.
Opelka was previously sponsored by Fila, a partnership that began in 2020. It's not yet clear whether he has a new formal deal in place with Sease—according to Hard Court's Jessica Schiffer, this is a product-only arrangement—but the brand has already achieved its goal of generating buzz.
The 28-year-old is also part of a broader shift in tennis apparel. He joins Emma Navarro in a growing exodus away from Fila in the new year, with Navarro announcing a deal with FP Movement. The BNP Paribas Open, now officially outfitted by Lululemon, represents another notable departure.Read More: New year, new threads: Tracking all the sponsor and apparel moves ahead of Australian OpenTogether, the moves signal a retreat by legacy brands from the tennis market, as smaller or outsider labels like Sease, FP Movement and Lululemon continue to buy in.Opelka is next scheduled to compete at the Nexo Dallas Open, an ATP 500 event that begins on February 9, following the Australian Open.With the win, Davidovich Fokina advanced to the third round in Melbourne, where he will face No. 19 seed Tommy Paul next.
Read More: New year, new threads: Tracking all the sponsor and apparel moves ahead of Australian OpenTogether, the moves signal a retreat by legacy brands from the tennis market, as smaller or outsider labels like Sease, FP Movement and Lululemon continue to buy in.Opelka is next scheduled to compete at the Nexo Dallas Open, an ATP 500 event that begins on February 9, following the Australian Open.With the win, Davidovich Fokina advanced to the third round in Melbourne, where he will face No. 19 seed Tommy Paul next.
Together, the moves signal a retreat by legacy brands from the tennis market, as smaller or outsider labels like Sease, FP Movement and Lululemon continue to buy in.Opelka is next scheduled to compete at the Nexo Dallas Open, an ATP 500 event that begins on February 9, following the Australian Open.With the win, Davidovich Fokina advanced to the third round in Melbourne, where he will face No. 19 seed Tommy Paul next.
Opelka is next scheduled to compete at the Nexo Dallas Open, an ATP 500 event that begins on February 9, following the Australian Open.With the win, Davidovich Fokina advanced to the third round in Melbourne, where he will face No. 19 seed Tommy Paul next.
With the win, Davidovich Fokina advanced to the third round in Melbourne, where he will face No. 19 seed Tommy Paul next.
World No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka made the necessary adjustments to get past Bai Zhuoxuan, while Anastasia Potapova recovered from a tense opening set to upset Emma Raducanu, setting up a third-round meeting between the two.
MELBOURNE, Australia -- World No. 55 Anastasia Potapova has secured the latest upset in the 2026 Australian Open, defeating No. 28 seed Emma Raducanu 7-6 (3), 6-2 Wednesday afternoon. The win sets up a third-round showdown with two-time Australian Open champion Aryna Sabalenka, who advanced through to the last 32 in 1 hour and 12 minutes in a 6-3, 6-1 over Chinese qualifier Bai Zhuoxuan.
Australian Open: Scores | Draws | Order of play
A third meeting on the WTA Tour Driven by Mercedes-Benz now awaits between Sabalenka and Potapova, who most recently played in Rome last year. Both players were tested in their respective second-round matches Wednesday, but eventually prevailed in straight sets.
When Sabalenka raced through the first five games against Bai in 15 minutes, she looked as though she'd score a seventh consecutive win to start 2026 with ease. But after the match time doubled in the next three games -- all of which went to World No. 702 Bai, who found her footing inside Rod Laver Arena and left Sabalenka frustrated with impressive rally tolerance and variety -- the top seed found herself flummoxed.
"She really stepped up in the first set, and for a minute, I was like, 'What should I do? She's crushing it,'" Sabalenka said in her on-court interview. "I'm so happy that I was able to close that set. I think it gave me a little more confidence that my game was there ... I'm super happy with the win.
"There are always things to improve, but I'm happy that I didn't lose that game and I was focused. I was trying to tell myself, 'One at a time, it's OK, it's going to come back, you're OK, keep fighting, keep trying,' and I'm glad I did it well."
Serving at another deuce in the ninth game, Sabalenka hammered down an unreturnable serve to earn a seventh set point, cracked another to win the set, and eventually cruised through to the last 32 in 1 hour and 12 minutes, 6-3, 6-1. Despite hitting 14 of her 21 unforced errors across the first nine games, she finished the victory with 24 winners.
Quick out of the gates, then made to work.Aryna Sabalenka takes the first set over Bai 6-3 at #AO26 🤝 pic.twitter.com/PfZGs42Ljc
Sabalenka is now through to the third round of the Australian Open for the sixth year in a row. In addition to her 7-0 record to start 2026, she is also now 7-0 in second-round matches in Melbourne.
She continues to win the matches she should, too. She hasn't lost to a player outside the Top 100 in more than three years -- last losing such a match to former Top 20 player Kaia Kanepi at the 2022 US Open. And it's a guarantee that she won't see that streak end in the next round.
Initially, it seemed Raducanu was on her way to taking the first set. With a pair of forehand winners by Raducanu and a couple of Potapova unforced errors, she sprinted to a 4-2 first set lead, and Potapova dropped her racquet and looked her coach's corner in frustration.
That's when it all changed for the Austrian. After trading holds, Potapova trailed 5-3, but managed to set up double-break point in the 10th game -- she displayed stellar court coverage after a Raducanu drop shot and hit a forehand winner, one of 25 Wednesday.
"I didn't do anything different the whole match," Potapova said. "I felt like we both struggled a little bit on serve, because it was not easy conditions to play. The wind was going around, and the ball was always going away from you. It's not easy, and even though I went 5-3 down, I felt like I can still fight back, and that's what I did."
The first set ultimately went to a tiebreak, where Potapova hit a pair of forehand winners and Raducanu had four unforced errors to give the Austrian to first set win. Potapova carried that first-set win into the second, getting two breaks and a hold for a 3-0 lead that propelled Potapova for victory.
Potapova advances to the third round of a major for the sixth time, but first since the 2024 US Open -- and first under the Austrian flag, having switched nationalities during the offseason. She becomes the first Austrian player to reach the third round of a Grand Slam in 12 years -- since Yvonne Meusburger at the 2014 Australian Open.
Interestingly, Potapova has been playing with a fractured left finger, affecting her backhand. She isn't going to have a procedure, but rather let it heal on its own. Her ability to cover the court, hit winners on the run and play at the net has made the finger a non-issue.
"Every time that we played before, I learned something new after the match, so I really kind of looking forward for the match," Potapova said. "I have nothing to lose. I'm in third round. I tried my best. I have a broken finger. I'm still enjoying tennis. Yeah, will just try to go there and make the best out of it."
In the previous two meetings, Sabalenka's handled them with ease -- a 6-2, 6-2 win in Rome last year and 6-1, 6-2 win in Stuttgart in 2023. However, this will be third first hard-court meeting. Sabalenka's power will be a different test than what Potapova has faced as the Austrian looks to advance to Round of 16 for the first time ever at the Australian Open. Sabalenka made it known she's not thinking about previous matches against any of her opponents.
"I always say, I never focus on the past," Sabalenka said to press. "Doesn't matter what the head-to-head looks like. It's always a new match, always a new battle. Every player is getting better, improving."
Elina Svitolina also continued her hot start to the 2026 season with a second-round 7-5, 6-1 win over Linda Klimovicova. The Ukrainian remains undefeated this year after her title at the ASB Classic in Auckland, New Zealand.
She'll face another new opponent in Diana Shnaider in the third round, and is the first guaranteed seeded match of the tournament. No. 23 seed Shnaider saved three match points against Australian wild card Talia Gibson in a comeback 3-6, 7-5, 6-3 win.
"Thank God it was on my serve," Shnaider said. "I just try to go for my serve and then just rally, but don't be, like, too defensive, because obviously she's a big hitter. If would slow it down a little bit, be a little bit more defensive, she would step in and just rip it.
"I just tried to be, you know, play safe, but at the same time, also aggressive so I didn't give her a lot of opportunity."
After upsetting No. 11 seed Ekaterina Alexandrova in the first round, Turkish qualifier Zeynep Sonmez won her second-round match against Anna Bondar 6-2, 6-4 with an enormous amount of Turkish support in the crowd. She's now in the third-round for the second time at a Grand Slam, and will face Yulia Putintseva. Last year at Wimbledon, she became the first Turkish player to reach the final 32 at a Slam.
"In Wimbledon when I was playing third round, it was similar to this, but I think today. ... I felt like I never experienced something like this," Sonmez said. "In Wimbledon also there were many people, and my first round here, too, there were many people. But today, I have never experienced something like this."
World No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka made the necessary adjustments to get past Bai Zhuoxuan, while Anastasia Potapova recovered from a tense opening set to upset Emma Raducanu, setting up a third-round meeting between the two.
The top seed came off the court feeling down about his second-round performance against Yannick Hanfmann but found positives before his press conference.ByDavid KanePublished Jan 21, 2026 copy_link
Published Jan 21, 2026
MELBOURNE, Australia—Carlos Alcaraz doesn't exactly present like a hardened perfectionist, but clearly one doesn't get to No. 1 in the world without working until things are exactly right.Still, the Spaniard discovered there was more to like from his second-round performance at the 2026 Australian Open against Yannick Hanfmann after a talk with his team.“I didn't see myself playing that good,” confessed the top seed after a 7-6 (4), 6-3, 6-2 win over Hanfmann. “But then talking to my team, I realized that I played better than I thought, which I think is great!”Those who watched Alcaraz's 2025 Netflix docuseries may recall the exacting standards of his team when it was led by former world No. 1 Juan Carlos Ferrero. Ferrero has since departed the squad—leaving Samuel Lopez in charge—but the 22-year-old Alcaraz insisted it is often the case that he and his team see things differently after a match.
Still, the Spaniard discovered there was more to like from his second-round performance at the 2026 Australian Open against Yannick Hanfmann after a talk with his team.“I didn't see myself playing that good,” confessed the top seed after a 7-6 (4), 6-3, 6-2 win over Hanfmann. “But then talking to my team, I realized that I played better than I thought, which I think is great!”Those who watched Alcaraz's 2025 Netflix docuseries may recall the exacting standards of his team when it was led by former world No. 1 Juan Carlos Ferrero. Ferrero has since departed the squad—leaving Samuel Lopez in charge—but the 22-year-old Alcaraz insisted it is often the case that he and his team see things differently after a match.
“I didn't see myself playing that good,” confessed the top seed after a 7-6 (4), 6-3, 6-2 win over Hanfmann. “But then talking to my team, I realized that I played better than I thought, which I think is great!”Those who watched Alcaraz's 2025 Netflix docuseries may recall the exacting standards of his team when it was led by former world No. 1 Juan Carlos Ferrero. Ferrero has since departed the squad—leaving Samuel Lopez in charge—but the 22-year-old Alcaraz insisted it is often the case that he and his team see things differently after a match.
Those who watched Alcaraz's 2025 Netflix docuseries may recall the exacting standards of his team when it was led by former world No. 1 Juan Carlos Ferrero. Ferrero has since departed the squad—leaving Samuel Lopez in charge—but the 22-year-old Alcaraz insisted it is often the case that he and his team see things differently after a match.
“I think when you are on court you cannot see the right thing sometimes,” said Alcaraz, who is yet to drop a set through his first two matches in Melbourne. “So, you're stuck in the negative thoughts or negative things. You don't see the global or the whole thing.“When you're watching the match from outside, everything is more clear. The feeling of how I felt on court, that means that's why I said that I didn't feel that good. But obviously is because of Yannick that he played, or he played great shots, that he didn't let me feel comfortable on the court. In general, as I said, it's just about those feelings.“Those comments with my team after the match help me a lot in the next round see the things more clear.”
“When you're watching the match from outside, everything is more clear. The feeling of how I felt on court, that means that's why I said that I didn't feel that good. But obviously is because of Yannick that he played, or he played great shots, that he didn't let me feel comfortable on the court. In general, as I said, it's just about those feelings.“Those comments with my team after the match help me a lot in the next round see the things more clear.”
“Those comments with my team after the match help me a lot in the next round see the things more clear.”
One thing Alcaraz would like to work on before his third round? His backhand return.“Sometimes it's the way that I feel it,” he explained of several misses against Hanfmann. “Sometimes it's just going forward. Sometimes it's, you know, wait a little bit farther.“Here in Melbourne every day is breezy. So sometimes that wind is difficult to adjust the shot if you are farther on the court, which I just trying to make the best return possible in that point. But obviously something that I'm trying to fix, I'm trying to be better.”Awaiting him there is No. 32 seed Corentin Moutet, who stands between Alcaraz and further pursuit of becoming the youngest man to ever achieve the Career Grand Slam.
“Sometimes it's the way that I feel it,” he explained of several misses against Hanfmann. “Sometimes it's just going forward. Sometimes it's, you know, wait a little bit farther.“Here in Melbourne every day is breezy. So sometimes that wind is difficult to adjust the shot if you are farther on the court, which I just trying to make the best return possible in that point. But obviously something that I'm trying to fix, I'm trying to be better.”Awaiting him there is No. 32 seed Corentin Moutet, who stands between Alcaraz and further pursuit of becoming the youngest man to ever achieve the Career Grand Slam.
“Here in Melbourne every day is breezy. So sometimes that wind is difficult to adjust the shot if you are farther on the court, which I just trying to make the best return possible in that point. But obviously something that I'm trying to fix, I'm trying to be better.”Awaiting him there is No. 32 seed Corentin Moutet, who stands between Alcaraz and further pursuit of becoming the youngest man to ever achieve the Career Grand Slam.
Awaiting him there is No. 32 seed Corentin Moutet, who stands between Alcaraz and further pursuit of becoming the youngest man to ever achieve the Career Grand Slam.
Carlos Alcaraz's bid to complete a Career Grand Slam met major resistance Wednesday at the Australian Open. But after he battled back from a break down in a titanic opening set against Yannick Hanfmann, the Spaniard separated from the No. 102 in the PIF ATP Rankings to record his second straight-sets victory of the Melbourne fortnight, 7-6(4), 6-3, 6-2.
In a 78-minute opener — the longest first set of Alcaraz's career at the Slams — Hanfmann gave the World No. 1 all he could handle by combining a rock-solid baseline performance with well-timed attacks in Rod Laver Arena. The German, who led 3-1 in the set and saved two break points at 5-5, later built a 4/3 lead in the tie-break before Alcaraz rattled off four straight points.
"I didn't see myself [as having played] that good. But then talking to my team, I realized that I played better than I thought, which I think is great," said Alcaraz in his post-match press conference. "Obviously, I'm still getting used to the conditions, getting used to playing better.
"I think in front of me, I just played against a great player today. But just happy that I'm just improving every day after every match. So hopefully being better in the next round."
The 34-year-old Hanfmann, who got engaged last Thursday in Melbourne, was seeking to become the first player outside the Top 100 of the PIF ATP Rankings to defeat Alcaraz at a major. While he maintained a high level after the disappointing end to the opening set, Alcaraz was relentless in stretching his lead. Though it did not show in his tennis, Hanfmann was also affected by an apparent oblique injury that required treatment from the physio in between the second and third sets.
You May Also Like: A date with Alcaraz & engaged to Sofie: Hanfmann's Australian Open heats up
After facing three break points in his first two service games, Alcaraz did not allow another break chance until he fought off four in the final game of the match. He hit 11 aces in the victory, according to Infosys Stats, including four in a row in his opening service game of the final set.
The top seed will next meet 32nd seed Corentin Moutet in the third round. Alcaraz is two wins away from matching his best Australian Open result: quarter-final runs in each of the past two years.
The 22-year-old is seeking to become the youngest man in history to complete the Career Grand Slam in singles, and the youngest in the Open Era to win seven major singles titles.
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Carlos Alcaraz and Roger Federer never had the chance to develop a Lexus ATP Head2Head rivalry on the tennis court, but the ATP No. 1 Club members squared off on the golf course in Melbourne during the Australian Open. After his three-set win against Yannick Hanfmann on Wednesday, Alcaraz was asked about the Swiss star's game during his on-court interview in Rod Laver Arena.
"It's as beautiful as the tennis!" Alcaraz said. "I'm not surprised. It's unbelievable. Everything he does, he does in style, really beautiful. On the golf course, it's a really beautiful swing."
While the 22-year-old Alcaraz has been playing golf for about five years — all throughout his professional career — the 44-year-old Federer waited until after he retired to pick up the sport. Judging by Alcaraz's comments, the Swiss has made the most of his short time in the new game.
"I think he's been playing for two years now, and his level is really, really good for two years," Alcaraz said. "I've been playing five and he's already beating me! It hurts, yeah."
Back on the tennis court, the current No. 1 in the PIF ATP Rankings had no such problems. His 7-6(4), 6-3, 6-2 victory against Hanfmann moved him into the third round without the loss of a set — though he needed 78 minutes to win a dramatic opening set against the German.
You May Also Like: Alcaraz survives 78-minute opening set in Australian Open R2 victory
While Alcaraz has a long way to go to match Federer's six Australian Open singles titles and 20 Grand Slams, he could complete a Career Grand Slam this fortnight at age 22 — five years younger than Federer was when he achieved the feat by winning Roland Garros in 2009.
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The look on Francesco Maestrelli's face said it all Monday at Melbourne Park. The Italian had just defeated Terence Atmane in the first round of the Australian Open and he understandably struggled to hold back his tears.
“Very, very emotional. I dreamed a lot about these matches and for me, it was a dream to participate in the first [major main draw] of my career,” Maestrelli told ATPTour.com. “I didn't imagine winning a five-set match on my debut on the Tour, and I'm so excited and so happy.”
It was not only Maestrelli's first major main draw match, but just his second tour-level match overall. The Pisa native's only previous ATP Tour clash came in October 2022 in Florence. Now the 23-year-old will step straight into the spotlight.
Maestrelli will next take on 10-time Australian Open champion Novak Djokovic. The Italian said he has watched the Serbian “millions of times”.
“They told me that there was the chance to play Djokovic and it will be one of the most exciting things of my life,” Maestrelli said. “It's crazy to have the chance to see his name close to mine in an official match and let's see. I will try to do my best to try to win. I know that's so complicated, but that's it.”
The four-time ATP Challenger champion has never practised with Djokovic or had a formal conversation with him. Maestrelli has said “Ciao!” to the Serbian a few times over the years, but he will have to be ready to take on the 24-time major titlist Thursday in their first Lexus ATP Head2Head clash.
“That's one of the players that doesn't have so [many] weak points,” Maestrelli said. “It will be so difficult to prepare for the match and I think we're going to try to put all that I have on the court and it's going to be tough.”
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Maestrelli showed the world his talent at an early age, breaking into the Top 200 of the PIF ATP Rankings in September 2022 as a 19-year-old. But it took more than three years for him to move into the Top 150.
“That's not easy, because when you do big results when you're young, it's something easier. You don't know so much about the Tour, then you go and play,” Maestrelli said. “But you have to know also there are bad moments when the results don't come. You have to struggle, you have to stay [through] very big difficulties and try to improve with that.”
Maestrelli trained at the Italian Federation's local centre since he was 16. But two years ago, Maestrelli moved a two-hour drive away from Pisa to Sinalunga, where he trains under Giovanni Galuppo and Gabrio Castrichella.
“It was so exciting because it was a new experience for me and it's so good to share this moment with them,” Maestrelli said. “I'm so scared about changes, but I thought that was the right moment to do it. Then I tried to go and [not] think about it, and maybe, [now that it is] two years later, I can say that it was the right decision.”
Outside of tennis, Maestrelli enjoys playing basketball. His favourite player is Charlotte Hornets star LaMelo Ball because of his creativity on the court. The Italian also loves watching hometown football team Pisa Sporting Club.
“I'm a normal guy, and I'm trying to do my best on what I love: tennis,” Maestrelli said. “I'm trying to put everything out there, and I'm a tall guy. I'm going to try to serve as fast as possible, because I know that in the rallies, maybe he is better than me. But I don't know, let's see.”
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The ensemble has the fashion-obsessed world No. 1 thinking of how she might top Osaka at future major outings.ByDavid KanePublished Jan 21, 2026 copy_link
Published Jan 21, 2026
MELBOURNE, Australia—Aryna Sabalenka knows what it means to be red-carpet ready, and the world No. 1 gave a hat tip to Naomi Osaka after the two-time champion made an audacious entrance to Rod Laver Arena Tuesday night.Wearing an ensemble in homage to jellyfish and butterflies, Osaka turned heads as she arrived on court to take on Antonia Ruzic in her first match of the 2026 Australian Open. Already into the second round, Sabalenka took it all in on the TV.“You know, that's really beautiful about fashion that you can express yourself in any way,” Sabalenka told me after reaching the third round on Wednesday. “It's a pretty free world. There is no judgment. There is just, like, one people see fashion in one way; other people see fashion in other way. You know, that's why it's so beautiful that you can feel free and go and show yourself, show your personality.“I think yesterday that was a perfect fit of her personality, her culture, a lot of things. That was pretty cool.”
Wearing an ensemble in homage to jellyfish and butterflies, Osaka turned heads as she arrived on court to take on Antonia Ruzic in her first match of the 2026 Australian Open. Already into the second round, Sabalenka took it all in on the TV.“You know, that's really beautiful about fashion that you can express yourself in any way,” Sabalenka told me after reaching the third round on Wednesday. “It's a pretty free world. There is no judgment. There is just, like, one people see fashion in one way; other people see fashion in other way. You know, that's why it's so beautiful that you can feel free and go and show yourself, show your personality.“I think yesterday that was a perfect fit of her personality, her culture, a lot of things. That was pretty cool.”
“You know, that's really beautiful about fashion that you can express yourself in any way,” Sabalenka told me after reaching the third round on Wednesday. “It's a pretty free world. There is no judgment. There is just, like, one people see fashion in one way; other people see fashion in other way. You know, that's why it's so beautiful that you can feel free and go and show yourself, show your personality.“I think yesterday that was a perfect fit of her personality, her culture, a lot of things. That was pretty cool.”
“I think yesterday that was a perfect fit of her personality, her culture, a lot of things. That was pretty cool.”
Both Nike athletes, Sabalenka is sporting a custom colorway inspired by Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova, and having turned heads in the past with her own unique efforts—she sported a spacey warm-up jacket at the 2024 US Open—the top seed couldn't help but wonder what her own fashion fantasy would look like.“I would definitely do some cool entrance like red-carpet entrance, but I think I would style myself a bit differently,” said Sabalenka, who eased past Bai Zhaoxuan in straight sets.“For me, I wish Nike would let me do this kind of stuff, but not for this year. We are working on it, but I don't know. I think I would be more like classy entrance. Maybe, I don't know, maybe long coat or…I don't know.“I mean, I was fantasizing, trying to work it out, but not good enough yet. But I'll come up with something cool next year, for sure.”Sabalenka will hit the court for her third round, where she'll face Anastasia Potapova, who upset No. 28 seed Emma Raducanu.
“I would definitely do some cool entrance like red-carpet entrance, but I think I would style myself a bit differently,” said Sabalenka, who eased past Bai Zhaoxuan in straight sets.“For me, I wish Nike would let me do this kind of stuff, but not for this year. We are working on it, but I don't know. I think I would be more like classy entrance. Maybe, I don't know, maybe long coat or…I don't know.“I mean, I was fantasizing, trying to work it out, but not good enough yet. But I'll come up with something cool next year, for sure.”Sabalenka will hit the court for her third round, where she'll face Anastasia Potapova, who upset No. 28 seed Emma Raducanu.
“For me, I wish Nike would let me do this kind of stuff, but not for this year. We are working on it, but I don't know. I think I would be more like classy entrance. Maybe, I don't know, maybe long coat or…I don't know.“I mean, I was fantasizing, trying to work it out, but not good enough yet. But I'll come up with something cool next year, for sure.”Sabalenka will hit the court for her third round, where she'll face Anastasia Potapova, who upset No. 28 seed Emma Raducanu.
“I mean, I was fantasizing, trying to work it out, but not good enough yet. But I'll come up with something cool next year, for sure.”Sabalenka will hit the court for her third round, where she'll face Anastasia Potapova, who upset No. 28 seed Emma Raducanu.
Sabalenka will hit the court for her third round, where she'll face Anastasia Potapova, who upset No. 28 seed Emma Raducanu.
Svitolina ended her 2025 season after an emotionally devastating Billie Jean King Cup performance; with help from husband Gaël Monfils, the recharge helped her make an unbeaten start to 2026.ByDavid KanePublished Jan 21, 2026 copy_link
Published Jan 21, 2026
MELBOURNE, Australia—I have a picture from one of the first times I spoke with Elina Svitolina. She had just won the 2017 Canadian Open and I was the last stop of her post-match media tour. She put her feet up on the table of an empty make-shift office and angled her body forward, clearly eager to move on to the celebratory phase of the evening.Dozens of interviews later, I meet a warmer, world-wearier Svitolina this week at the 2026 Australian Open, one who counters the cliché of the self-centered athlete. For the last three years, Svitolina has had to be strong, not only for herself as she navigates a comeback from maternity leave in her 30s, but also for her family as she supports a husband in the final stage of his own career and for a country looking to her for light and inspiration amidst an un-ending invasion.“I'm a person that's a fighter,” Svitolina told me, somewhat stating the obvious. “I go through a lot when I'm on the court, and when you're not in the right state of mind, it's impossible to win.”
Dozens of interviews later, I meet a warmer, world-wearier Svitolina this week at the 2026 Australian Open, one who counters the cliché of the self-centered athlete. For the last three years, Svitolina has had to be strong, not only for herself as she navigates a comeback from maternity leave in her 30s, but also for her family as she supports a husband in the final stage of his own career and for a country looking to her for light and inspiration amidst an un-ending invasion.“I'm a person that's a fighter,” Svitolina told me, somewhat stating the obvious. “I go through a lot when I'm on the court, and when you're not in the right state of mind, it's impossible to win.”
“I'm a person that's a fighter,” Svitolina told me, somewhat stating the obvious. “I go through a lot when I'm on the court, and when you're not in the right state of mind, it's impossible to win.”
Svitolina can trace her fighting spirit throughout her career, but not much remains of the defensive counterpuncher that played on tour in her 20s. After giving birth to daughter Skaï, she came back employing far more offense without sacrificing the athleticism that took her to No. 3 in the WTA rankings. In 11 Grand Slam outings since becoming a mother, she has made the second week at seven; her pinnacle came at the 2023 Wimbledon Championships when she stunned then-world No. 1 Iga Swiatek to reach the semifinals.She began 2025 in that proverbial second line of players capable of big results at major tournaments and eager to keep tweaking to find that championship formula, changing her racquet and following a strict diet to emerge in better shape than ever. Though she initially made good on that mission with back-to-back quarterfinals at the Australian Open and Roland Garros, external pressures were taking their toll on the tour's foremost activist on behalf of the ongoing war in Ukraine.Where other players can focus purely on practice schedules, Svitolina has led multiple charitable initiatives to support her compatriots, and her very presence on tour represents something greater for those at home and on the front lines.“I feel like I have these obligations,” she explained, “to be good and to fight and to continue bringing the good news.”
She began 2025 in that proverbial second line of players capable of big results at major tournaments and eager to keep tweaking to find that championship formula, changing her racquet and following a strict diet to emerge in better shape than ever. Though she initially made good on that mission with back-to-back quarterfinals at the Australian Open and Roland Garros, external pressures were taking their toll on the tour's foremost activist on behalf of the ongoing war in Ukraine.Where other players can focus purely on practice schedules, Svitolina has led multiple charitable initiatives to support her compatriots, and her very presence on tour represents something greater for those at home and on the front lines.“I feel like I have these obligations,” she explained, “to be good and to fight and to continue bringing the good news.”
Where other players can focus purely on practice schedules, Svitolina has led multiple charitable initiatives to support her compatriots, and her very presence on tour represents something greater for those at home and on the front lines.“I feel like I have these obligations,” she explained, “to be good and to fight and to continue bringing the good news.”
“I feel like I have these obligations,” she explained, “to be good and to fight and to continue bringing the good news.”
When you're young and fresh, you can face a lot of situations. You're like, fired up and ready to conquer the world! As you get older, you have a lot in your backpack and you've picked up a lot of stones, so it's not easy to deal with all of that. Elina Svitolina
The critical point came after the US Open when Svitolina donned her flag's blue and yellow to compete at the Billie Jean King Cup Finals. In position to lead Ukraine into the championship match, she lost a decisive rubber to Jasmine Paolini from a set up.“After Billie Jean King Cup, I was not feeling well,” she said. “I felt lots of things were on my shoulders. I didn't perform as I wished I could, and I almost felt like I let down my country, my team, everybody. For me in that moment, I couldn't fight anymore.”Svitolina posted a powerful statement to social media in the days that followed, announcing her decision to shut down her 2025 season in the interest of “giving \[herself\] the space to heal and recharge.”“It was maybe a surprising decision because I was in the Race [to the WTA Finals in Riyadh] and maybe had those opportunities,” mused Svitolina, who ended the season ranked at No. 14, “but it's not only about tennis. It's about the mental health you have to take care of. I wouldn't want to damage myself just for one season.“Had I continued and broke myself even more, I could have injured myself, and I wouldn't have been able to start the season here.”
“After Billie Jean King Cup, I was not feeling well,” she said. “I felt lots of things were on my shoulders. I didn't perform as I wished I could, and I almost felt like I let down my country, my team, everybody. For me in that moment, I couldn't fight anymore.”Svitolina posted a powerful statement to social media in the days that followed, announcing her decision to shut down her 2025 season in the interest of “giving \[herself\] the space to heal and recharge.”“It was maybe a surprising decision because I was in the Race [to the WTA Finals in Riyadh] and maybe had those opportunities,” mused Svitolina, who ended the season ranked at No. 14, “but it's not only about tennis. It's about the mental health you have to take care of. I wouldn't want to damage myself just for one season.“Had I continued and broke myself even more, I could have injured myself, and I wouldn't have been able to start the season here.”
Svitolina posted a powerful statement to social media in the days that followed, announcing her decision to shut down her 2025 season in the interest of “giving \[herself\] the space to heal and recharge.”“It was maybe a surprising decision because I was in the Race [to the WTA Finals in Riyadh] and maybe had those opportunities,” mused Svitolina, who ended the season ranked at No. 14, “but it's not only about tennis. It's about the mental health you have to take care of. I wouldn't want to damage myself just for one season.“Had I continued and broke myself even more, I could have injured myself, and I wouldn't have been able to start the season here.”
“It was maybe a surprising decision because I was in the Race [to the WTA Finals in Riyadh] and maybe had those opportunities,” mused Svitolina, who ended the season ranked at No. 14, “but it's not only about tennis. It's about the mental health you have to take care of. I wouldn't want to damage myself just for one season.“Had I continued and broke myself even more, I could have injured myself, and I wouldn't have been able to start the season here.”
“Had I continued and broke myself even more, I could have injured myself, and I wouldn't have been able to start the season here.”
A younger Svitolina indeed would have pushed through the burnout in the hopes of playing into a new plateau; she played a whopping 22 tournaments at her 2019 peak. Now 31, the Odesa native has erred towards a more conservative schedule in her second career, hoping to preserve her physical—and now mental—health as her Grand Slam prospects remain viable.“With experience over the years, I've faced different situations, but it's not the same as when you start your career. Then, you're young and fresh, you can face a lot of situations. You're like, fired up and ready to conquer the world!” Svitolina said with a laugh. “As you get older, you have a lot in your backpack and you've picked up a lot of stones, so it's not easy to deal with all of that.”Standing by Svitolina through those uncertain months was husband and fellow Gaël Monfils, who has long felt the support from his “g.e.m.s. life” partner through his own physical and emotional struggles on the back half of a 20-year career.“All the time [she was] telling me, pushing me through, out of the limits a little bit,” said Monfils, who will officially retire at the end of 2026. “But worth it. Happy that I could find something different. Of course, she was a big part of that.“Of course, she's extremely strong, but sometimes I think the body and even the mind has to recharge. It was a great decision for her. Was not easy, to be honest. But we were there, her family, myself, to tell her that that was the right decision. [We're] her team.”
“With experience over the years, I've faced different situations, but it's not the same as when you start your career. Then, you're young and fresh, you can face a lot of situations. You're like, fired up and ready to conquer the world!” Svitolina said with a laugh. “As you get older, you have a lot in your backpack and you've picked up a lot of stones, so it's not easy to deal with all of that.”Standing by Svitolina through those uncertain months was husband and fellow Gaël Monfils, who has long felt the support from his “g.e.m.s. life” partner through his own physical and emotional struggles on the back half of a 20-year career.“All the time [she was] telling me, pushing me through, out of the limits a little bit,” said Monfils, who will officially retire at the end of 2026. “But worth it. Happy that I could find something different. Of course, she was a big part of that.“Of course, she's extremely strong, but sometimes I think the body and even the mind has to recharge. It was a great decision for her. Was not easy, to be honest. But we were there, her family, myself, to tell her that that was the right decision. [We're] her team.”
Standing by Svitolina through those uncertain months was husband and fellow Gaël Monfils, who has long felt the support from his “g.e.m.s. life” partner through his own physical and emotional struggles on the back half of a 20-year career.“All the time [she was] telling me, pushing me through, out of the limits a little bit,” said Monfils, who will officially retire at the end of 2026. “But worth it. Happy that I could find something different. Of course, she was a big part of that.“Of course, she's extremely strong, but sometimes I think the body and even the mind has to recharge. It was a great decision for her. Was not easy, to be honest. But we were there, her family, myself, to tell her that that was the right decision. [We're] her team.”
“All the time [she was] telling me, pushing me through, out of the limits a little bit,” said Monfils, who will officially retire at the end of 2026. “But worth it. Happy that I could find something different. Of course, she was a big part of that.“Of course, she's extremely strong, but sometimes I think the body and even the mind has to recharge. It was a great decision for her. Was not easy, to be honest. But we were there, her family, myself, to tell her that that was the right decision. [We're] her team.”
“Of course, she's extremely strong, but sometimes I think the body and even the mind has to recharge. It was a great decision for her. Was not easy, to be honest. But we were there, her family, myself, to tell her that that was the right decision. [We're] her team.”
I feel like I have these obligations to be good and to fight and to continue bringing the good news [to Ukraine]. Elina Svitolina
With her team's blessing, Svitolina unplugged from the game, taking a month away from tennis entirely as she prioritized time with family.“This is the only way to do it for me,” said Svitolina, “because when you're too much in it, you see other people doing well and winning, and it's a natural feeling to get overwhelmed and nervous in reaction to that. You're not seeing the picture clearly, so for me, it helps to step back completely, stop a little bit. It can be for one week maybe, and you skip a tournament. I skipped a few at the end of the year because it was a little too late, but stepping back is the way that works.”With Skaï at home—"She's busy going to birthdays and spending time with her friends”—Svitolina arrived in Auckland for the ASB Classic fully refreshed and facing a unique opportunity. As the top seed, she dropped just one set to win a 19th WTA title and make a bit of history, joining Monfils as the first husband-and-wife duo to win the title in the same 12 months.
“This is the only way to do it for me,” said Svitolina, “because when you're too much in it, you see other people doing well and winning, and it's a natural feeling to get overwhelmed and nervous in reaction to that. You're not seeing the picture clearly, so for me, it helps to step back completely, stop a little bit. It can be for one week maybe, and you skip a tournament. I skipped a few at the end of the year because it was a little too late, but stepping back is the way that works.”With Skaï at home—"She's busy going to birthdays and spending time with her friends”—Svitolina arrived in Auckland for the ASB Classic fully refreshed and facing a unique opportunity. As the top seed, she dropped just one set to win a 19th WTA title and make a bit of history, joining Monfils as the first husband-and-wife duo to win the title in the same 12 months.
With Skaï at home—"She's busy going to birthdays and spending time with her friends”—Svitolina arrived in Auckland for the ASB Classic fully refreshed and facing a unique opportunity. As the top seed, she dropped just one set to win a 19th WTA title and make a bit of history, joining Monfils as the first husband-and-wife duo to win the title in the same 12 months.
“I was very motivated to try and achieve this, so I'm very happy we made it happen. It's something to remember in ten years, we'll talk about winning the same tournament. We'll have the two trophies at home!”Undefeated through her first seven matches, Svitolina is into the third round in Melbourne and in with a chance to return to the Top 10 for the first time since her comeback. For a player who has learned what it means to sacrifice for greater goals, that would be a picture she looks more than ready to take.“It really shows that it was good that I took some time off. It helped me to regroup and be ready to fight and face difficult situations, and just be here enjoying, 100%.”
Undefeated through her first seven matches, Svitolina is into the third round in Melbourne and in with a chance to return to the Top 10 for the first time since her comeback. For a player who has learned what it means to sacrifice for greater goals, that would be a picture she looks more than ready to take.“It really shows that it was good that I took some time off. It helped me to regroup and be ready to fight and face difficult situations, and just be here enjoying, 100%.”
“It really shows that it was good that I took some time off. It helped me to regroup and be ready to fight and face difficult situations, and just be here enjoying, 100%.”
Young tennis stars Iva Jovic and Victoria Mboko, both rising talents on the WTA Tour Driven by Mercedes-Benz, have a close friendship. They are seeded for the Australian Open, with Mboko at No. 17 and Jovic at No. 29. In Melbourne, they are playing doubles together as "Team Joboko" and are enjoying their journey together in the professional circuit.
There's an old saying in professional sports that it's hard to be friends with the people you're trying to beat. But for Iva Jovic and Victoria Mboko, two of the fastest-rising talents on the WTA Tour Driven by Mercedes-Benz, that adage couldn't be less true.
The 18-year-old American and 19-year-old Canadian are the second- and third-youngest players in the PIF WTA Rankings, respectively, and both enter the 2026 Australian Open in seeded positions -- Mboko at No. 17 and Jovic at No. 29. That's a snapshot of what's been a meteoric rise by both: Less than three years ago, they were playing each other in juniors, as Mboko defeated Jovic in the third round of girls' singles at the 2022 US Open.
"She killed me," Jovic said, remembering of that meeting in Flushing Meadows.
A post shared by Iva Jovic (@iva_jovic07)
They've met three times already in their professional careers. During the year's first Grand Slam 12 months ago, both were in Rome, Georgia. -- a U.S. city with a population of just 38,747, a little more than double that of Rod Laver Arena's seating capacity -- playing in a W75 event. Mboko beat Jovic in the first round on her way to the title, and took home just over $9,000 in prize money.
Now, placed in the same quarter in the Australian Open draw, they're a handful of wins away from facing off on one of the biggest stages in the sport. That, at this stage, might be a longshot. World No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka and No. 7 seed Jasmine Paolini certainly figure to be amongst the players who'll have something to say about the prospect. But they're getting time on court together regardless in Melbourne as doubles partners -- and the team that fans have already dubbed "Joboko" won their first-round match over Ulrikke Eikeri and Ingrid Neel on Tuesday in straight sets.
They came from a break down in the first set of a 7-5, 6-3 win -- and kept the vibes positive even when a 5-0 second-set lead shrunk to 5-3 before finishing the job.
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That these teen titans found levity even in tense moments shouldn't come as a surprise, as Jovic shares: "She's [Mboko] just such a funny kid. I mean, she's an unbelievable player, but she's so goofy off the court, and we have so much fun together."
"We kind of just did the whole path together," she adds, "and it's really nice to see her doing so well and to kind of be here together."
Young tennis stars Iva Jovic and Victoria Mboko, both rising talents on the WTA Tour Driven by Mercedes-Benz, have a close friendship. They are seeded for the Australian Open, with Mboko at No. 17 and Jovic at No. 29. In Melbourne, they are playing doubles together as "Team Joboko" and are enjoying their journey together in the professional circuit.
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Audi launch their 2026 car in Berlin
Wheatley ‘more emotional than I thought' as Audi launch in Berlin
Aston Martin and Honda have kicked off their new partnership via a Tokyo launch presentation.
Aston Martin and Honda celebrated the start of their works F1 partnership on Tuesday during a special pre-season event in Tokyo, Japan.
Aston Martin Aramco Executive Chairman Lawrence Stroll was joined by Honda President and Representative Executive Officer Toshihiro Mibe for the presentation, while F1 President and CEO Stefano Domenicali also attended and took to the stage.
Since returning to F1 as a works team back in 2021, the Silverstone-based Aston Martin squad have been powered by Mercedes engines, but this changes for 2026 – and the sport's all-new regulations – thanks to their Honda tie-up.
Aston Martin's former Team Principal and new Chief Strategy Officer Andy Cowell has been overseeing the final stages of the integration, drawing on his lengthy and successful stint at Mercedes High Performance Powertrains, with F1 design legend Adrian Newey taking on team boss duties.
“I am delighted to celebrate the start of our partnership with Honda here in Tokyo today,” said Lawrence Stroll. “Aston Martin Aramco Formula 1 Team and Honda share many values, and those values have brought us together for 2026 and beyond.
“The strong collaboration between the AMR Technology Centre at Silverstone and Honda Racing Corporation (HRC) in Sakura demonstrates the depth of our partnership. We are confident that we have all the elements required to fight for victory in the future and we have tremendous faith in Honda's power unit and the engineers behind it.
“Our journey won't always be easy and challenges inevitably lie ahead, but winning is what drives both companies forward and together we look forward to many successful years of partnership.”
Honda chief Mibe added: “Honda's participation in F1, the pinnacle of automobile racing, has been the embodiment of the spirit of the company founder, Soichiro Honda, who inspired Honda engineers to commit to becoming No.1 in the world and to take on the most difficult challenges.
“In 2026, F1 will undergo a major change in regulations for both the chassis and power unit. Honda sees F1 as a symbol of challenge and innovation, and HRC, the global racing arm of Honda, has developed the RA626H, the new power unit for the 2026 season, to meet those challenges.
“Striving to become number one in the world, Honda will continue to take on challenges together with the Aston Martin Aramco Formula 1 Team.
“Today we also launch a new ‘H' mark with a refreshed design, which Honda has adopted as the new symbol representing its automobile business. This new H mark symbolises the transformation of Honda's automobile business so it is an important moment for us.”
In his on-stage speech, Domenicali said: “This is an exciting moment for the sport of F1, as Honda and the Aston Martin Aramco Formula 1 Team join together to fight for the biggest prize of F1.
“Formula 1 began racing in Japan in 1976 before moving to Suzuka in 1987, so there is a deep loyalty and connection to the country where a record 13 World Drivers' Championships have been decided over the years.
“The sport is growing in Japan where there are now nearly 17 million passionate and incredible F1 fans. The Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka last year welcomed 266,000 weekend attendees, and saw a +26% year-over-year increase in TV viewership in Japan. The return of Honda to F1 this year will further boost the potential for the sport here in the Japanese market.
“The exciting next generation of regulations for 2026 is one of the factors that has drawn Honda back to the sport. Those regulations will see both the chassis and PUs updated, in the biggest overhaul in the sport's history. There will be a simplified hybrid engine that runs on advanced sustainable fuel without impacting the performance.
“F1 echoes the commitment of Honda and Aston Martin Aramco Formula 1 Team to sustainability, and is on target to achieve the goal of Net Zero by 2030 having already delivered a 26% reduction in carbon emissions by year end 2024 compared to 2018.
“F1 welcomes the innovations that are to come and is working with partners such as Honda to push boundaries.”
Next up for the new Aston Martin-Honda alliance will be the Barcelona Shakedown week from January 26-30, before the team hold their official season launch at Ithra in Saudi Arabia on February 9.
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Audi launch their 2026 car in Berlin
Wheatley ‘more emotional than I thought' as Audi launch in Berlin
2025 F1 ACADEMY champion Doriane Pin discusses taking the title after a relentless battle through the year, being part of the Mercedes family and what comes next.
For Doriane Pin there has only been one target at the forefront of her mind – to win. That's a lofty ambition for even the greatest of drivers, but it's precisely that relentless pursuit that fuelled the 22-year-old on her way to becoming the 2025 F1 ACADEMY Champion.
Never one to blend in, Pin was destined to stand out from the moment she first set foot in a kart aged seven. Too small to race initially, she soon began to break the racing driver mould. As her nickname of ‘Pocket Rocket' attests to, Pin was a driver you should never underestimate.
Opting to go down the sportscar route, the French racer was the first woman to win the FIA World Endurance Championship's Revelation of the Year Award and her destiny seemed set in endurance. However, when Mercedes offered her the chance to represent them in F1 ACADEMY, it was a chance she was determined to repay with the title.
“Champion is a beautiful word to really fit our season,” she summarises. “We can be really proud of all the work we have done since last year. We never gave up, we worked so hard on winning races, winning the title.
“Since the very first time I got in a go-kart, I wanted to win every single race I competed in. I'm very happy about my entire journey, and obviously my journey with F1 ACADEMY has been unforgettable. I'm very proud of all of this, and now we can celebrate it."
Storming onto the scene with victory on her F1 ACADEMY debut in Jeddah, Pin had every intention of claiming the 2024 crown with PREMA Racing. However, she found she'd met her match in Abbi Pulling. The Briton dominated the season and, despite Pin's valiant efforts, Pulling sealed the title by 121 points.
Entering the 2025 F1 season, it was clear that Pin had unfinished business to take care of. As a title favourite, the weight of expectation fell heavy on her shoulders. Her competition was no less fierce, as Ferrari junior Maya Weug went back-and-forth with Pin for the top spot.
“Obviously it's amazing to battle with an experienced driver, with someone who knows how to race,” she replies when asked about her season-long duel with Weug.
“She's talented and very much deserves her success this year. It was a close battle that I actually enjoyed a lot, because you need those drivers to push you and push each other to the top. We did exactly that so it was really positive.”
Taking the Standings lead with a daring first lap pass on Weug in Shanghai Race 2, Pin lost the top spot one round later, a position she refused to accept. Recognising that she needed to step up her game, the Mercedes junior left no stone unturned as she drove herself to be better than ever.
Claiming four wins and four further podiums, she finished outside the top five on just one occasion and sealed the title in the final race by 15 points. Her impeccable consistency was built on rapid speed and a sharp intellect, choosing her moments wisely – not least her outstanding performance going from sixth to the victory in Miami Race 1. However, Pin's ambitions would never be content with anything less than the top step of the podium.
“When you're not winning, it's challenging because you doubt yourself,” she admits. “You always put yourself first to know what you could do better, what you could improve, what you could do next time.
"Zandvoort was a good example. It was not easy at all but we were still there performing on Sunday. Keep working hard and never give up. The work you're doing always pays off.”
Even her behaviour behind the scenes takes lessons from those that have gone before her, with her journal recording car and session details reminiscent of Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel.
The change in Pin across her two seasons isn't stark, with her virtually unshakeable mentality ever present. Yet there's something more refined in her approach, a humble yet firm self-assurance that becomes apparent on-track.
“Just being in the present,” Pin responds when asked about her mentality last season. “Winning and fighting for a title for the whole year hasn't been easy because when you're leading, you're the one to beat. You're the one that has to be there all the time.
“We have been very good all year, especially the last weekend in Vegas – we've been spot on from FP1 to the last lap of the race. We prepare well, we have the right mindset and it's definitely the right way to approach things when you're focusing on yourself and being in the moment."
She adds: “We're champions and it's about how intelligent you are sometimes and your approach. I'm very happy about this weekend especially, because we have been very ahead of our contenders in terms of approach. It's clearly making a difference because we are champions.”
On hand to celebrate the title with her in Las Vegas were Mercedes, as the Formula 1 team poured into parc ferme wearing custom ‘P1N' shirts. George Russell, Kimi Antonelli and Toto Wolff were amongst the first to congratulate her and the Team Principal was full of praise for their young star.
“Dori has been a great addition to the team,” he remarked in the Mercedes End of Year Review video. “Her background was a little bit different because she came through karting and then more from touring cars and GT cars, and some very good performances in prototypes.
"But then she went into [F1 ACADEMY] and crushed it. She won the championship. She's a fierce young lady that can drive. From a personality, she fits into Mercedes, she fits into the team and it's a pleasure to see her working."
Her place at the heart of the Mercedes family saw her sit down with Russell for some advice ahead of her debut in Montreal – both would take to the top step across the Canadian Grand Prix weekend – alongside joining the garage for the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.
“Mercedes have been there from day one,” she says. “They are incredibly supportive of me every day, from bad days to good days. They bring professionalism, experience and performance into my racing career. It's beautiful to achieve that together. Celebrating with them was a beautiful moment. I will remember it for my entire life.”
As the next stage awaits, with duties as a Mercedes Development Driver soon to come for the 22-year-old, Pin's aspirations know no bounds. With a versatility that should stand her in good stead for any path she chooses, the opportunities are endless. Savouring all she's learnt across her two seasons in F1 ACADEMY, her childhood dream is as alive as ever.
“I've definitely grown a lot as a person because you're in such an incredible world,” says Pin. "Every day you learn something so it's super fascinating when you're passionate about motorsport and the high level of sport.
"I've learned so much in terms of driving, but also outside the track and on myself as well. I'm really proud of everything I learned because I know it's a privilege and I know it's going to be very helpful for the rest of my career."
She adds: “The idea is to have a long and successful career. Hopefully we will achieve good things with everyone who is involved at the moment with me […] I've grown so much, it will definitely help me in my entire career.
"F1 ACADEMY and everything around it is big and I will never give up on achieving my ultimate goal – that's Formula 1.”
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Does filmmaker Timur Bekmambetov somehow own all of the software needed to create a screenlife movie? Though the director of Wanted doesn't technically have a producer credit on every single found-footage-style movie that takes place primarily on a series of device screens, he's had a hand in most of the famous ones, including the Unfriended series of horror movies and the thriller companion pieces Searching and Missing. Weirdly, Bekmambetov's involvement extends to the highest-profile rip-offs, too; he produced 2025's consensus choice for worst movie of the year, a screenlife version of War Of The Worlds that, despite his involvement, didn't seem to like or understand the mechanics of the subgenre beyond that it was something that other, more popular movies have tried. Mercy, directed by Bekmambetov himself, may technically fall closer to Searching or Missing than War Of The Worlds, but only in the sense that earthworms are closer to the sky than to the deepest pits of hell.
In a twist that's half clever and half meaningless, Mercy doesn't need to unfold exclusively through an actual screen, because it's set in the near future, where an experimental justice program has integrated artificial intelligence as a way of expediting the oft-clogged court system. In 2029 Los Angeles, accused murderers whose probability of guilt is assessed above a certain percentage get 90 minutes in front of an A.I. judge, with full access to any related evidence, to mount a DIY defense. If the defendant can present evidence that nudges the probability of guilt below 92% in the allotted time, they will go free. If not, they will be immediately executed.
At first, the exposition video outlining this procedure seems unrealistic, because it doesn't bother couching any of this in language duplicitously trumpeting its efficiency, humanity, or fairness. But then, there certainly exists a political faction for whom a single entity serving as “judge, jury, and executioner” does indeed sound like a brag rather than the centerpiece of a dystopia; they're the same people will nod in approving disapproval over the film's characterization of future Los Angeles as a crimeridden cesspool where the lawless unhoused strike constant fear into the hearts of citizens, protected only by our “heroes in blue.” That's the movie's wording and alas, the filmmakers don't appear to be satirizing anything with this generically reactionary (and very 1990s-coded) vision of three whole years from now. For that matter, by the end of the movie they don't even seem especially bothered by the idea of A.I. justice, so long as our hero gets his shot at vindication.
As in Minority Report, the movie Mercy most ineptly and shamelessly imitates, that hero is someone who previously championed the technology now holding him in its grip: Detective Chris Raven (Chris Pratt), whose surname only exacerbates the sense that we're watching something like a video game. Raven wakes up as the procedure begins, surprised to learn that he's on trial for the murder of his wife Nicole (Annabelle Wallis). Classic-movie fans may recognize this as a variation on the “blackout noir,” where a crime picture depends on at least one character suffering some manner of memory lapse. Despite their recent history of marital problems, Raven insists that he didn't kill his wife, as the placid face of A.I. justice called Judge Maddox (Rebecca Ferguson) essentially gives him the Sam Gerard treatment from The Fugitive: I don't care (unless you can present hard evidence within the prescribed timeframe).
So Mercy proceeds as a screenlife noir where we're not strictly confined to the frame of the screen, but instead identify with a character who is confined more or less within one, as various case files, protected data, surveillance footage, and video calls pop up in front of and around him, at his command. (Raven is strapped into a metal chair, but given enough leeway to steer the graphics from his seat.) Even in IMAX 3D, which seems ideal for these effects, Bekmambetov fails to generate much visual interest from the information overload. He seems to have a great advantage in Ferguson's looming face, but by design she's forced to tamp down her charisma for an omnisciently nothing role.
It doesn't help that Pratt scarcely comes across as any less synthetic. Through a punishing decade-along process of brand triangulation and franchise work, Pratt seems nearly incapable of delivering anything resembling spontaneity or hidden dimension. Tasked with playing a darker, grittier character than usual, Pratt gives a broadly telegraphed, subtext-free performance straight out of a cheesy wronged-cop thriller, obliterating any noirish tones in favor of pure plot-twisty hokum. Also, it's a minor point in the scheme of things, but when trying to sell Pratt as a weary alcoholic cop credibly accused of murdering his wife, it's probably a miscalculation to include Jay Jackson—literally the actor who played Perd Hapley on Parks And Recreation—as the fake news anchor of choice, nudging the movie ever-so-slightly closer to becoming The Trial Of Burt Macklin.
Mercy avoids the stylistic fudges and staggering tedium of War Of The Worlds; it does move pretty quickly, even with the possible pitfall of an oft-onscreen counter telling the audience exactly how much time remains before Raven must solve the murder. What lingers after that time is up, though, is how thoughtless the entire enterprise feels as it waffles between depicting A.I. as a nightmarish instrument of state oppression and shrugging it off as just another tool that needs to be used with proper care. At their best, screenlife movies have a way of faking verisimilitude within potentially far-fetched thrillers, finding ways to depict moments of quiet intrigue that might otherwise not fit into a go-go-go narrative. Mercy takes a more bombastic approach with more speculative technology, only to chicken out of using that bombast to do anything other than jostle the audience through a series of contrived absurdities. If this is the future of crime thrillers, everyone needs their screentime severely curtailed.
Director: Timur Bekmambetov
Writer: Marco van Belle
Starring: Chris Pratt, Rebecca Ferguson, Kali Reis, Kyle Rogers, Annabelle Wallis
Release Date: January 23, 2026
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Plenty of worthy movies at Sundance and other film festivals go undistributed each year, and the folks at Legion M are now giving you the power to help get those movies into theaters.
Legion M, which is the fan-owned, equity crowdfunding company that has produced and co-released films like “Fackham Hall,” “My Dead Friend Zoe,” and the William Shatner documentary “You Can Call Me Bill,” is launching the Legion M Film Fund designed to let its community of backers invest directly in the marketing and distribution of a film.
Members and investors as part of Legion M have previously been able to be equity shareholders in the studio itself and vote on and have a financial stake in the studio's investments, or it also lets people invest directly into the production of a movie, and that has seen the company pay back $1.5 million in royalties to those who invested in “My Dead Friend Zoe” and “You Can Call Me Bill.”
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Now though, you can choose to invest on the distribution of a completed movie, directly funding the marketing of a title, as well as the distribution costs, and helping to drive audience engagement and raise awareness for the film. Legion M will be on the ground at Sundance in Park City this week to potentially acquire films that can be supported through this crowdfunding distribution model. The first movie already released under the model was the spoof comedy “Fackham Hall” from last year, co-released with Bleecker Street (the film has made $3 million at the box office globally), and Legion M under the terms of its deals with community investors aims to give them a 15 percent return on their investment in the first 12 to 18 months of a film's release.
Legion M is presenting this method of investing as a “last-in, first-out” economic model. Rather than investing directly in the company or at the early stages of a project, you're getting in on a movie that has already played a festival and has some established buzz. The company believes this is a lower risk investment opportunity aiming for steadier performance rather than riskier, higher-yield returns.
“Not every investment needs to be a swing for the fences,” said Legion M co-founder and CEO, Paul Scanlan. “With the Legion M Film Fund, we aim to string together the kinds of singles and doubles that lead to big wins over time. The initiative reflects a broader approach to portfolio construction, offering investors another way to participate alongside the studio through disciplined, distribution-focused opportunities designed to deliver consistent performance.”
“The fund creates huge strategic value by providing P&A for films released by Legion M and our partners, while also giving movie lovers a new way to be a part of the business,” said Jeff Annison, co-founder and president of Legion M. “It's a win for everyone, and yet another example of how we're building the company to unite fans to change the game.”
The fund is structured so that capital returned from an investment gets automatically reinvested into future projects, and Legion M says it's a way of diversifying risk across multiple films and see compound returns, though you can also opt to cash out. Find more information on the specifics here.
Legion M's next project currently in post-production is “Fade to Black,” a horror movie directed by filmmaker Andrew Sandler.
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By
Joseph Hudak
In 2017, journalist Mark Gray was on assignment for Rolling Stone to cover the Route 91 Harvest Festival in Las Vegas, his hometown. The country music festival, held on the Las Vegas Strip since 2014, had a particularly strong lineup in its fourth year — Eric Church, Sam Hunt, Jason Aldean — and Gray was enlisted to capture the musical high points and overall vibe.
But the third and final night of the festival, Oct. 1, 2017, would tragically become the scene of the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history. A gunman opened fire from his hotel room in the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino across Las Vegas Boulevard, killing 58 people and wounding hundreds, all in the span of 11 minutes. Gray went from concert reviewer to crime scene witness, and documented his account in a story for Rolling Stone the next morning. He also went on to co-author a 2022 Rolling Stone deep dive into the shooting and the often confounding search for motive.
Yet Gray's most expansive writing about Route 91 arrived last year with his new book, The Las Vegas Massacre Connections: Finding Strength Through Tragedy After America's Deadliest Mass Shooting. In this week's episode of Rolling Stone's Nashville Now podcast, we talk to Gray about his experiences that night in Las Vegas and how the bonds he forged with fellow Route 91 attendees, including Mary Jo von Tillow, whose husband Kurt was one of the first shot and killed in the incident, have shaped and steered his life since.
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Watch the full episode on Rolling Stone‘s YouTube channel below.
Download and subscribe to Rolling Stone's weekly country-music podcast, Nashville Now, hosted by senior music editor Joseph Hudak, on Apple Podcasts or Spotify (or wherever you get your podcasts). New episodes drop every Wednesday and feature interviews with artists and personalities like Lainey Wilson, Hardy, Charley Crockett, Kings of Leon, Breland, Bryan Andrews, Gavin Adcock, Amanda Shires, Shooter Jennings, Margo Price, Ink, Halestorm, Dusty Slay, Lukas Nelson, Ashley Monroe, Old Crow Medicine Show's Ketch Secor, Clever, and journalists Marissa R. Moss and Josh Crutchmer.
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Rolling Stone is a part of Penske Media Corporation. © 2026 Rolling Stone, LLC. All rights reserved.
By
Joseph Hudak
In 2017, journalist Mark Gray was on assignment for Rolling Stone to cover the Route 91 Harvest Festival in Las Vegas, his hometown. The country music festival, held on the Las Vegas Strip since 2014, had a particularly strong lineup in its fourth year — Eric Church, Sam Hunt, Jason Aldean — and Gray was enlisted to capture the musical high points and overall vibe.
But the third and final night of the festival, Oct. 1, 2017, would tragically become the scene of the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history. A gunman opened fire from his hotel room in the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino across Las Vegas Boulevard, killing 58 people and wounding hundreds, all in the span of 11 minutes. Gray went from concert reviewer to crime scene witness, and documented his account in a story for Rolling Stone the next morning. He also went on to co-author a 2022 Rolling Stone deep dive into the shooting and the often confounding search for motive.
Yet Gray's most expansive writing about Route 91 arrived last year with his new book, The Las Vegas Massacre Connections: Finding Strength Through Tragedy After America's Deadliest Mass Shooting. In this week's episode of Rolling Stone's Nashville Now podcast, we talk to Gray about his experiences that night in Las Vegas and how the bonds he forged with fellow Route 91 attendees, including Mary Jo von Tillow, whose husband Kurt was one of the first shot and killed in the incident, have shaped and steered his life since.
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Canadian PM Rips Trump's Greenland Push: ‘We Are in the Midst of a Rupture'
Timothy Busfield Released From Custody After Child-Abuse Arrest
Billie Eilish Condemns Civil Rights Violations, ICE-Inflicted Violence Under Trump Administration
Don Lemon Fires Back at Nicki Minaj's Homophobic Post: ‘Sit the F-ck Down'
Popular on Rolling Stone
Watch the full episode on Rolling Stone‘s YouTube channel below.
Download and subscribe to Rolling Stone's weekly country-music podcast, Nashville Now, hosted by senior music editor Joseph Hudak, on Apple Podcasts or Spotify (or wherever you get your podcasts). New episodes drop every Wednesday and feature interviews with artists and personalities like Lainey Wilson, Hardy, Charley Crockett, Kings of Leon, Breland, Bryan Andrews, Gavin Adcock, Amanda Shires, Shooter Jennings, Margo Price, Ink, Halestorm, Dusty Slay, Lukas Nelson, Ashley Monroe, Old Crow Medicine Show's Ketch Secor, Clever, and journalists Marissa R. Moss and Josh Crutchmer.
We want to hear it. Send us a tip using our anonymous form.
Rolling Stone is a part of Penske Media Corporation. © 2026 Rolling Stone, LLC. All rights reserved.
Satirizing human vanity in 2026 is low-hanging fruit, and Ryan Murphy and Matt Hodgson's playfully profane body-horror series The Beauty plucks it eagerly. And to the series' credit, it puts elbow grease into the shine. In this FX show, great news arrives for the vapid and short-sighted: A scientifically engineered shot can transform people into the most gorgeous versions of themselves. Peak looks with a simple jab. What could go wrong?
The shot contains a disease dubbed “The Beauty,” and it makes people hot—too hot—triggering spontaneous explosions that leave a plume of red mist and sticky goo where a 10 used to be. Covering up the Beauty and its wild side effects (it's a “fucked-up love child of HIV and rabies, but neither,” per John Carroll Lynch's FBI honcho), is the primary concern of billionaire manbaby “The Corporation” (embodied quite capably by Ashton Kutcher). With his Bateman-flavored Assassin (Anthony Ramos) surgically managing this impending splatter epidemic, he intends to monetize the jab on a scale that would make Novo Nordisk swoon.
How one entity gains exclusive control over such a disease is just one of the many questions The Beauty, which was adapted from the comics series by Jeremy Haun and Jason A. Hurley, takes its sweet time answering. The plotting is languid but never dull, content to luxuriate in chic aesthetic indulgences, pseudo-philosophical ramblings, and a hyperfixation on human anatomy that are punctuated with fawning shots of abs, clavicles, cheekbones, and derrières. Aware that their body-horror premise is loaded with endless social permutations, Murphy and Hodgson stroll us through the most obvious ones—plastic surgeons facing obsolescence, the aesthetically disadvantaged seeking illicit upgrades, bioengineers who manufacture the disease—with an unbothered confidence.
This haute-couture carnival ride kicks off with Murphy's typical showmanship. We enter on fashion's hottest new model (played by Bella Hadid) leaping from the runway to a violent spree across Paris, a motorcycle-riding Terminatrix who eventually ends up decorating the walls outside a posh restaurant with her innards. Investigating this random act of carnage are FBI agents Madsen (Evan Peters) and Bennett (Rebecca Hall), whose international assignments double as scenic backdrops to their bedtime debriefings and self-parodic thoughts concerning physical vanity, the fear of aging, and how few are above playing the game. (Bennett had her boobs done, while Madsen dwells on a suggestion that he get his teeth fixed.) “Everything we do is about sex,” Madsen says, with Peters wearing his implacable Dahmer face from Monster. “We go to the gym, we work on our bodies. Everything we do is about our universal, unquenchable thirst to all be attractive enough to get laid.”
It's silly to accuse The Beauty of being glib about the topics at hand since wild gesticulation is its raison d'être (and the horror benefits). Visually, The Beauty shows Murphy, who directs several episodes, at his most stylish. But it's hard not to clock thematic echoes to Coralie Fargeat's The Substance, with the show's smoldering physicality and heightened reality making all this viscera look so clutch. Murphy and Hodgson, like Fargeat, seek to implicate the viewer in the brutal beauty standards they're satirizing. Some characters are doomed and do not die well, yet we can't look away. The violence is integral to its visceral and erotic pleasures, a balance Clive Barker struck more successfully decades ago with Hellraiser. And one thrusting, bone-bending transformation involves a contortion routine reminiscent of Luca Guadagnino's Suspiria remake. The Beauty wears its influences loudly. But given the material, it's a good approach.
The series also sexes up the disease's transformation process, taking the comics' subtle overnight changes and turning them into a full-on Yuzna/Cronenbergian metamorphosis, complete with goop, flesh, and pod-people chrysalis. Given that this is a Ryan Murphy show, it's sometimes comically difficult to suss out the Beauty's haves and have nots. For instance, one character describes Madsen (who, remember, is played by Evan Peters) as having a face like a catcher's mitt. Squint and the joke very nearly works as a fourth-wall-breaking suggestion that Hollywood beauty standards have run amok.
The pleasures of The Beauty are many despite its cloying grandiosity. Where else can you watch Isabella Rossellini dress down Ashton Kutcher with an insult like “clown boy,” delivered as if from a gilded balcony? It's not all camp belligerence. Further into the season, the series peels back its prickly skin to expose the raw nerves underneath many of these deceptively awful people, like the mesmeric Jeremy (Jeremy Pope), a terminally online loner one disappointment away from homicide. The back half of the 11-episode season boasts engrossing performances that capture the vulnerability behind the desire to improve, introspection that positions The Beauty as a self-aware, EC Comics-coded cautionary tale about perceived imperfections and the emotional and physical chaos that they can invite.
A goofier surreality also creeps into The Beauty further into the season, particularly during a sequence where Kutcher's character dances through a laboratory as technicians hustle around him in immaculate choreography set to Tame Impala's “Dracula” to take his temperature, draw blood, and give him a lollipop for being such a good boy. It's the frothier, more frivolous version that The Beauty could have easily become, an indulgence that teases the eye, pleases the ear, and adds little value other than to reiterate a thematic point that has been adequately expressed elsewhere: Corporations see the world as their playground and people as toys or staff who can facilitate play. Never mind that the sequence extends for a full three minutes, or that someone refers to this very rich guy as a vampire in the next scene. Clearly, there are few points Murphy and Hodgson aren't willing to bludgeon into paste. And so what if they do? It makes a pretty mess. Besides, people watch shows like The Beauty for their looks, not their brains.
Jarrod Jones is a contributor to The A.V. Club. The Beauty premieres January 21 on FX.
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The first few weeks of 2026 have already brought some new people into the Songwriters Hall Of Fame. The institution revealed its 2026 class today, which includes the immediately recognizable names of Taylor Swift, Alanis Morissette, Kenny Loggins, and Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley of KISS. Also to be inducted are songwriters Christopher “Tricky” Stewart (who has written hits for the likes of Beyoncé and Rihanna), Terry Britten & Graham Lyle (who wrote notably for Tina Turner), and Walter Afanasieff (who often worked with Mariah Carey in the 1990s).
The news was first announced on CBS Mornings today with clips showing some of the hits of each of the inductees. Also of note is the fact that Swift becomes the youngest person ever inducted into the Hall Of Fame. The official induction ceremony will take place on Thursday, June 11 in New York, which Gayle King points out is a couple days before Swift's rumored (at least as far as we know) wedding. Busy week!
You can watch CBS' segment on the songwriters and see which songs each submitted for consideration below.
Walter Afanasieff
*”All I Want For Christmas Is You” * “My All” * “Hero” * “Love Will Survive” * “One Sweet Day” *
Terry Britten and Graham Lyle
* “What's Love Got To Do With It” * “We Don't Need Another Hero” * “Typical Male” * “Devil Woman” * “I Should Have Known Better” *
Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons of KISS
* “Rock and Roll All Nite” * “I Love It Loud” * “Calling Dr. Love” * “Shout It Out Loud” * “Christine 16″*
Kenny Loggins
*Danny's Song” * “Footloose” * “Celebrate Me Home” * “Return to Pooh Corner” * “What A Fool Believes” *
Alanis Morissette
* “You Oughta Know” * “Ironic” * “Hand in My Pocket” * “Thank U” * “Uninvited” *
Christopher “Tricky” Stewart
* “Umbrella” * “Single Ladies” * “Obsessed” * “Just Fine” * “Break My Soul” *
Taylor Swift
* “All Too Well (10 Minute Version) (Taylor's Version)” * “Blank Space” * “Anti-Hero” * “Love Story” * “The Last Great American Dynasty” *
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© 2026 Paste Media Group. All Rights Reserved
By Dade Hayes
Business Editor
YouTube CEO Neal Mohan says creators are overtaking traditional Hollywood and should be considered “the new stars and studios.”
In his annual letter to the YouTube community published Wednesday, the top exec hailed the rise of creator content and also laid out ways the Google-owned video giant is working to combat what he called “AI slop.”
YouTubers, he wrote, “are buying studio-sized lots in Hollywood and beyond to pioneer new formats and produce beautifully produced, must-see TV. The era of dismissing this content as simply “UGC” is long over. These are shows, built by creators who green-light themselves.”
He cited a forthcoming late-night “experience” to be hosted at various New York City locations by YouTuber Julian Shapiro-Barnum.
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“When creators hold the keys to their own production and distribution, the only limit is their imagination,” Mohan added.
It has been a year of milestones for YouTube in terms of taking over turf long occupied by traditional TV. It drew a sizable global audience with its first live NFL stream last September and last month claimed rights to the Academy Awards after the award show wraps its decades-long run on ABC in 2029.
While the dynamism and freshness of creator fare helps explains its explosive growth, Mohan acknowledged that maintaining a viable environment around it on the platform is crucial. Today, that effort centers on limiting the amount of sketchy AI videos that circulate.
“The rise of AI has raised concerns about low-quality content, aka ‘AI slop,'” Mohan wrote. “As an open platform, we allow for a broad range of free expression while ensuring YouTube remains a place where people feel good spending their time. Over the past 20 years, we've learned not to impose any preconceived notions on the creator ecosystem. Today, once-odd trends like ASMR and watching other people play video games are mainstream hits. But with this openness comes a responsibility to maintain the high quality viewing experience that people want.”
In order to combat low-quality AI fare, Mohan said YouTube is “actively building on our established systems that have been very successful in combatting spam and clickbait, and reducing the spread of low quality, repetitive content.”
YouTube also labels content produced with its own AI tools and also removes “any harmful synthetic media that violates our Community Guidelines,” Mohan noted. The company is also fortifying identification methods and giving creators tools to manage the use of their likeness in AI-generated content, he added.
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He's right, but this has been true for like 10 years. Corporate LA/NYC culture is just that far behind the mainstream.
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By
Ryan Bort
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney delivered a pointed critique of Donald Trump while speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, as tension between Trump and America's allies intensifies amid the president's push to take control of Greenland.
“We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition,” Carney said on Tuesday. “Over the past two decades, a series of crises in finance, health, energy, and geopolitics have laid bare the risks of extreme global integration. But more recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited. You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination.”
Carney's speech comes days after Trump announced a new round of tariffs against several of America's European allies in an effort to force them to support his bid to annex Greenland, a territory of Denmark. Trump has meanwhile bashed NATO, even sharing a social media post on Tuesday alleging that the alliance of nations is a greater threat to the United States than Russia or China. The president has also recently shared memes depicting him planting the American flag on Greenland and of him and world leaders in the Oval Office next to a map with the American flag plastered over both Canada and Greenland. Trump on Sunday sent Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre a letter in which he suggested he could take Greenland by force in response to not receiving the Nobel Peace Prize.
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“We stand firmly with Greenland and Denmark and fully support their unique right to determine Greenland's future,” Carney said to applause, adding that Canada “strongly opposes” tariffs over Greenland. Canada, like other nations, is moving to diversify its economic ties amid Trump's erratic tariff agenda, signing a deal with China for low-cost electric vehicles last week. The European Union on Thursday stopped the approval of a trade deal it struck with the United States last summer.
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The 100 Best TV Episodes of All Time
Trump's allies in government have repeatedly touted the need for the United States to dominate the Western Hemisphere, particularly in the wake of the U.S. military capturing Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro earlier this month, effectively putting the U.S. in charge of the South American nation. (Trump even shared a social media post identifying him as the “Acting President of Venezuela.”) The administration's attention quickly shifted to Greenland, and Canada is right to be worried — about what it could mean for NATO as well as the nation's own sovereignty. Trump has frequently suggested that Canada become the “51st state,” and given the imperialistic moves Trump has already made this year it would be foolish to dismiss the possibility that he could have real designs on America's neighbor to the north.
The Globe and Mail reported on Tuesday that the “Canadian Armed Forces have modeled a hypothetical U.S. military invasion of Canada and the country's potential response,” citing two senior government officials. The officials said it was unlikely that Trump would order such an invasion, but that if it were to happen, “the military envisions unconventional warfare in which small groups of irregular military or armed civilians would resort to ambushes, sabotage, drone warfare, or hit-and-run tactics.”
The Globe and Mail reported earlier this week that Canada is considering sending troops to Greenland as a show of solidarity with Denmark, and Carney said in Davos that Canada is working with NATO allies to help secure the alliance's northern and western flanks, including through “boots on the ground, boots on the ice.”
Carney wasn't the only world leader to level a barely veiled criticism of Trump at the World Economic Forum. French President Emmanuel Macron spoke on Tuesday of a “world without rules, where international law is trampled underfoot, and where the only laws that seem to matter are of the strongest, and where imperial ambitions are resurfacing.” Macron referenced Russia's war of aggression in Ukraine and conflict in the Middle East and Africa, as well as America's trade wars, noting that Trump's tariffs are “fundamentally unacceptable, especially when they are used as leverage against territorial sovereignty.”
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“We prefer science to conspiracy theories, rule of law to rule of force, dialogue to threats,” Macron added later on X, echoing comments from his speech.
Trump spoke at White House on Tuesday to commemorate the anniversary of his return to the White House last January, and again he took a jab at NATO. “NATO has to treat us fairly,” he said. “The big fear I have with NATO is that we spend tremendous amounts of money with NATO. I know we'll come to their rescue, but I really do question whether they'll come to ours. I'm just saying.”
Trump added later that he “lost a lot of respect for Norway” because he didn't win the Nobel Peace Prize after he “settled eight wars,” which he says was “easy.” When asked how far he is willing to go to acquire Greenland, Trump responded, “You'll find out.”
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Trump spoke today at Davos, reiterating his belief that America needs to control Greenland while claiming he won't use force to take the Danish territory, which he referred to as “Iceland” multiple times during the speech. “So we want a piece of ice for world protection, and they won't give it,” the president lamented, threatening to “remember” if Denmark doesn't let the U.S. take control of Greenland.
Trump also took a jab at Carney. “Canada gets a lot of freebies from us. They should be grateful also but they're not,” he said of Canada. “I watched your prime minister yesterday, he wasn't so grateful. But they should be grateful to us. Canada lives because of the United States. Remember that, Mark, the next time you make your statements.”
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Her love doesn't cost a thing.
Jennifer Lopez handed cash to a homeless man while sporting a nearly $80,000 Hermès Kelly crocodile handbag.
In photos obtained by Page Six, the singer was seen coming out of a business meeting in Los Angeles Tuesday when a man approached her with his hands planted firmly together in an attempt to ask for something.
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Lopez — chic in blue jeans, a white top, heels and a brown blazer — continued to walk past the man and enter her awaiting Cadillac Escalade.
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“Aw, I'ma tell everybody I seen you,” the man shouted as the actress got into the passenger side of the vehicle.
The man then walked over to Lopez's side of the car and pleaded his “love” for the pop star.
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The “On the Floor” singer, 56, then reached into her rare blue handbag, put her window down and handed the man some cash.
“Jennifer, I love you. Thank you, Jennifer,” he said as he blew kisses to Lopez.
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Lopez's generous move came days after Glambot director Cole Walliser shut down claims that the “Marry Me” star was “rude” to him during her shoot at the Golden Globes.
“I didn't take it personally. It didn't feel rude in that moment,” the Canadian filmmaker said in an Instagram video over the weekend.
Walliser acknowledged “a couple things added to the fuel of this idea.”
“One, she's just down to business. The carpet was closed,” he said. “She's ready to go inside. She knew what she was gonna do. She got into the position.”
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The content creator added that Lopez was simply preparing for her Glambot moment.
“I knew she was getting ready. I knew it was late. We were just getting through it. That moment didn't feel rude,” he said.
Several fans claimed Lopez was “rude” to Walliser for barely speaking to him during the shoot.
By Andreas Wiseman
Executive Editor, International & Strategy
EXCLUSIVE: Bodhi Rae Breathnach, the young Irish-English actress who made her feature debut in Chloé Zhao's Oscar hopeful Hamnet, will have a supporting role in Robert Eggers' anticipated creature feature Werwolf.
The fast-rising actress will appear in the Focus Features horror film alongside stars Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Lily-Rose Depp, Willem Dafoe and Ralph Ineson.
The werewolf tale, which began filming in the UK last fall, is set in 13th-century England and sees a mysterious creature stalk the land as local folklore becomes a terrifying reality. Pic is due to release in late December 2026. Eggers, the contemporary GOAT of gothic, re-teams with Depp, Taylor-Johnson, Dafoe, and Ineson after Nosferatu, while Ineson and Dafoe also starred in the director's The Witch and The Lighthouse, respectively.
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Breathnach, who played William Shakespeare's daughter Susanna in Hamnet, is about to hit big screens co-starring with Jason Statham in action-thriller Shelter, directed by Ric Roman-Waugh.
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She also secured the role of Margaret Dashwood in the upcoming Focus Features adaptation of Sense and Sensibility, starring Daisy Edgar-Jones, Caitríona Balfe and George MacKay.
The 14 year-old actress starred in Beth Steel's Olivier-nominated play Till The Stars Come Down at London's National Theatre, and previously appeared in TV series The Capture and UK kids show So Awkward Academy.
Breathnach is repped by The Artists Partnership in the UK.
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A Sony Pictures exec branded Blake Lively a “f–king terrorist” as tensions rose on the set of her and Justin Baldoni's August 2024 movie, “It Ends With Us.”
Giannetti — an executive vice president of production and senior creative at the media company — confirmed that she made the comment during her September 2025 deposition, which was unsealed on Tuesday before a summary judgment hearing in Lively's lawsuit against Baldoni and his production company, Wayfarer Studios.
According to People, Giannetti replied, “Yes,” when asked whether she made the remark to Wayfarer CEO Jamey Heath after learning that Lively, 38, had threatened to quit the film unless a long list of demands was met.
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Giannetti testified that Sony had already invested “a tremendous amount of money” in the project, which she felt they “had to finish … or it was unreleasable.”
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Giannetti went on to say that she did not recall Lively telling her that Baldoni — who starred in and directed “It Ends With Us” — or Heath had done anything specific on the set that made her feel uncomfortable.
After the movie's release, Giannetti sent Lively a text message praising her for her work.
“Blake, $50 million!! Your blood, sweat, tears, brilliant smarts, heart and soul in every single frame,” Giannetti wrote. “My God, it's incredible. Thank you 50 million times. And it's only Saturday night.”
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During her testimony, Giannetti said her message referred only to the film's “gigantic” box office success.
Lively's list of demands included banning improvised intimate scenes, discussions of pornography, sexual experiences or genitalia, and comments about her body, weight and personal life.
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Baldoni, 41, and Heath agreed to the demands; however, according to Lively, that's when they retaliated against her.
Her December 2024 lawsuit alleges sexual harassment and retaliation, as she claims Baldoni and his Wayfarer team subsequently orchestrated a smear campaign against her to ruin her reputation.
Baldoni has repeatedly denied the allegations and requested in November 2025 that the judge overseeing the case dismiss the actress' suit.
The judge will decide Thursday whether some or all of Lively's claims will proceed to trial, which is set for May 2026.
By Zac Ntim
International Reporter
Here's the first teaser trailer for Masters of the Universe, the live-action adventure movie based on the classic 1980s toy brand.
The film stars Nicholas Galitzine, Camila Mendes, Alison Brie, James Purefoy, Morena Baccarin, Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson and Charlotte Riley alongside Kristen Wiig as the voice of Roboto, with Jared Leto and Idris Elba.
The film's plot reads: After being separated for 15 years, the Sword of Power leads Prince Adam (Galitzine) back to Eternia, where he discovers his home shattered under the fiendish rule of Skeletor (Leto). To save his family and his world, Adam must join forces with his closest allies, Teela (Mendes) and Duncan/Man-At-Arms (Elba), and embrace his true destiny as He-Man — the most powerful man in the universe.
Travis Knight directs from a screenplay by Chris Butler, Aaron Nee, Adam Nee and Dave Callaham. The story is by Aaron Nee, Adam Nee, Alex Litvak and Michael Finch. Producers on the film are Todd Black, Jason Blumenthal, Robbie Brenner, Steve Tisch and DeVon Franklin. The film is executive produced by Ynon Kreiz, Bill Bannerman and David Bloomfield.
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The film will be released theatrically in the U.S. on June 5 by Amazon MGM Studios and internationally by Sony Pictures International Releasing.
Check out the teaser above.
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So sorry Jared Leto is in this.
So what he's a great actor. I don't get the hate he gets seriously
Hope it's great!
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By Zac Ntim
International Reporter
Here's the first teaser trailer for Masters of the Universe, the live-action adventure movie based on the classic 1980s toy brand.
The film stars Nicholas Galitzine, Camila Mendes, Alison Brie, James Purefoy, Morena Baccarin, Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson and Charlotte Riley alongside Kristen Wiig as the voice of Roboto, with Jared Leto and Idris Elba.
The film's plot reads: After being separated for 15 years, the Sword of Power leads Prince Adam (Galitzine) back to Eternia, where he discovers his home shattered under the fiendish rule of Skeletor (Leto). To save his family and his world, Adam must join forces with his closest allies, Teela (Mendes) and Duncan/Man-At-Arms (Elba), and embrace his true destiny as He-Man — the most powerful man in the universe.
Travis Knight directs from a screenplay by Chris Butler, Aaron Nee, Adam Nee and Dave Callaham. The story is by Aaron Nee, Adam Nee, Alex Litvak and Michael Finch. Producers on the film are Todd Black, Jason Blumenthal, Robbie Brenner, Steve Tisch and DeVon Franklin. The film is executive produced by Ynon Kreiz, Bill Bannerman and David Bloomfield.
Watch on Deadline
The film will be released theatrically in the U.S. on June 5 by Amazon MGM Studios and internationally by Sony Pictures International Releasing.
Check out the teaser above.
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Comments On Deadline Hollywood are monitored. So don't go off topic, don't impersonate anyone, and don't get your facts wrong.
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So sorry Jared Leto is in this.
Hope it's great!
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No one tells you that there is a trick to feeling the existential dread of being lost in life. That trick lies in cities. By putting yourself in an environment that lends itself to a certain purposeful sense of being lost, you can romanticize it. To wander a city is to turn yourself into an explorer, an observer of something greater, something that beats with a palpable magic that might impart some of itself onto you. That wandering is intrinsic to those with a creative disposition. Virginia Woolf haunted the winter streets of London, writing that “to escape is the greatest of pleasures.” Meanwhile Mara Whitefish, protagonist of Perfect Tides: Station to Station, haunts the streets of the Big City through all seasons.
Station to Station re-introduces us to Mara in 2003, now a college student pursuing writing. Three years have passed since we last saw her in 2022's Perfect Tides, which chronicled one angsty and cringe-filled year of her high school life on the small island of Perfect Tides in four seasonal chapters. As we embark on another four seasons, Mara may be older but she's none the wiser.
In some ways, the narrative conceit of Station to Station is a harder sell than its predecessor. While developer Three Bees (led by Octopus Pie creator Meredith Gran) was rightfully lauded for the honesty with which it portrayed the crushing anxiety of high school life in the early internet age, there is an inherent nostalgia that players imbued into the experience based on their own memories of what in many ways is the last time of innocence before “real life” catches up with us. It's less likely Station to Station will draw out that same sense of nostalgia—which is to its benefit, as it's a much more somber (and yes, still honest) experience because of that.
Mara believes that living in the Big City (yes, it's New York) as a writer trying to make “things” happen will make everything come together. Yet most of her days are spent working at the school library, writing assignments at the last minute (something I would never do, why would you even think that), getting high with friends, and having terrible relationships with men.
All of this takes the form of a much more aimless (roughly eight hour) experience than 2022's Perfect Tides. This is still a point-and-click adventure but things have been simplified. There are far fewer puzzles and interaction is done largely through collecting a list of topics that you can then discuss with the people around you. Fair warning, these are mostly art students, so conversations may be a little eye-roll inducing—but that is, in fact, the point. I wish I could say I didn't have any conversations like that in college but if I wanted that to be the truth I'd have to come down with a case of selective memory loss first. Yet even in all the posturing at big ideas, a kernel of something unpretentious and universally true always comes out.
Sometimes the most interesting takeaways come in description text for the world. As in its predecessor, just being curious enough to click on Mara's environment will reward fascinating tidbits. That ethos is taken one further with the ability to read books in the world and discuss them with your friends. When read, Mara will give a little monologue about her takeaways. It replicates the constant inundation of new information that occurs in college, and you might actually learn something about Karl Marx, the punk scene in New York, or Ursula K. Le Guin. It rewards curiosity.
The closest thing to a goal in Station to Station are the handful of writing assignments Mara is given. Writing these involves picking a primary and secondary topic, which Mara will be more educated on depending on how much you've discussed them with people. The more you learn the more Mara's brain literally takes shape, as each topic is rendered as an evolving 3D object in her mind. Of course you could also just blow off your assignments.
Much like its predecessor, there is no real presence of traditional dramatic tension or structure. Mara just wanders through the seasons from place to place, party to party. Still, she has a hard time living in the present. In the first game Mara was squarely focused on what was to come next; in Station to Station that is still true but now Mara also looks back on what was. In typical college fashion Mara seeks to minimize everything that we as players helped her through in high school.
While talking to a “serious” writer, she demeans her fan fiction. When she does come face to face with people from that time of her life she tries to separate who she is now from who she was then. It's made worse by a constant worrying that she will not make it as a writer in the future, which only seeks to distract from taking advantage of the bubble of college life. “You realize that you are also a part of this,” narration states to Mara almost too late into her troubles. “You do not need to long for it from the outside.”
What will Mara think three years removed from Station to Station? Will she long for these moments or discard them from her personal narrative like she tries to do with her high school self? As a player we are afforded the convenient ability to be in the moment even if Mara can't be. This lets us revel in the beautiful things that come out of Station to Station‘s relative mundanity. Particular highlights include a duo of musical moments better left to experience yourself.
Gran's writing is what makes all of this emotion work. None of it is presented with any overt emphasis on what you should be taking away from it; there is no romanticism here, only an almost cold documentarian lens. “Maybe someday it won't be so clouded,” Mara says in contemplation to a friend; “You can just remember things, and think about them, and let them go.” If there is a lesson in Perfect Tides: Station to Station, this is it. All you need to reach that “someday” is distance. That distance is also something Gran clearly has (both Perfect Tides games are semi-autobiographical) and it often makes Station to Station feel sharper in its execution than even Octopus Pie.
Perfect Tides: Station to Station, aptly, feels like a more mature evolution on what came before. By stripping away even more of a sense of purpose it puts us into the shoes of someone lost in so many ways. And while the more melancholic presentation of this period of Mara's life shelters it from easy nostalgia, it makes it even more impactful.
And what of Mara? Once winter arrives, what is Mara left with after a year of haunting the streets? Truthfully not much is gained. She does, however, eventually have some good sex. And I'd take that over Woolf's lead pencil any day.
Perfect Tides: Station to Station was developed and published by Three Bees. Our review is based on the PC version. It's also available for Mac.
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Although our own David Ehrlich's recent 25 Best Films of 2025 video countdown highlights the heist-y parts of “The Mastermind,” there is a lot more going on in director Kelly Reichardt‘s story of a small-town New England art thief (Josh O'Connor) who can't outfox himself or outrun the times he lives in.
MUBI has now put out a box set of four companion booklets about the film, including reflections from Reichardt herself and her longtime collaborators on the production team, a critical essay by Lucy Sante, and an exploration of artist Arthur Dove by Alec MacKaye of the Phillips Collection.
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Below, you can read an excerpt from Sante's essay on “The Mastermind.” Sante situates the conversation that “The Mastermind” is having with films from the '70s, how we remember the period now, and the clever subversions that Reichardt adds in her own inimitable style.
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Making a movie set in 1970 allows Reichardt to pay homage to the movies of that time, especially those odes to cutting loose and hitting the road: “Five Easy Pieces” (Bob Rafelson, 1970), “Two-Lane Blacktop” (Monte Hellman, 1971), “Vanishing Point” (Richard C. Sarafian, 1971), with their urgent indeterminacy. It's a landscape she also associates with the early-seventies road-trip photos by Stephen Shore.
She savors the broad, empty spaces of that urban-renewal time, a landscape that could give even the most formulaic low-budget picture a minimalist intensity. She loves the top decks of multilevel car parks, strip-mall parking lots (“The Echo”), abandoned roadside taverns (“Salty's”), highways lined with rows of squat brick buildings that might be bars or lube joints or warehouses or just shells. Dialogue tended to be sparse in those movies, too, because people mistrusted language then, and Reichardt also likes her speeches laconic. Instead of silence here, though, there is a consistent, sometimes almost conversational, jazz score that drives things along spikily, evoking the memory of Miles Davis's score for Louis Malle's “Elevator to the Gallows” (1958).
There are many Int: Car shots here — the driver seen from the right or from the rear — the emblematic road-movie signifier, which can also be spotted in amateur snapshots and classic photos by Robert Frank, a continuum that runs from the 1940s to the 1980s. And then there's a bus ride from some previous decade — a woman, a baby, and a sailor in uniform, as if from a postwar ad in Life — maybe a reminder that any past time was largely made up of even older things.
Reichardt loves to show process and gives us a gripping minute of Larry the driver hot-wiring a car, his hands invisible below the dashboard. Later she shows us Mooney stowing the paintings in the hayloft at a pig farm, carrying them one at a time up the ladder, then the heavy wooden crate he made for them, and after he clears the top rung, a pig knocks the ladder down.
“The Mastermind” publishes on January 20 in the USA and February 17 in the UK. Pre-orders are available through Mubi Editions.
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By Rosy Cordero
Associate Editor, TV
Apple TV has set March 27 for the return of its original series For All Mankind‘s fifth season, followed by one new episode every Friday through May 29. A teaser and first-look photos giving viewers a look at the new season can be found above and below.
For All Mankind explores what would have happened if the global space race had never ended. The series presents an aspirational world where NASA astronauts, engineers, and their families find themselves in the center of extraordinary events seen through the prism of an alternate history timeline — a world in which the USSR beats the U.S. to the moon.
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Season 5 picks up in the years since the Goldilocks asteroid heist. Happy Valley has grown into a thriving colony with thousands of residents and a base for new missions that will take us even further into the solar system. But with the nations of Earth now demanding law and order on the Red Planet, friction continues to build between the people who live on Mars and their former home.
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The cast includes Joel Kinnaman, Toby Kebbell, Edi Gathegi, Cynthy Wu, Coral Peña, and Wrenn Schmidt, alongside new series regulars Mirelle Enos, Costa Ronin, Sean Kaufman, Ruby Cruz, and Ines Asserson. Recurring talent for Season 5 includes Barrett Carnahan as Marcus, a recent high school graduate living on Mars, and Tyler Labine as Fred, a Mars Peacekeeper.
For All Mankind is created by Ronald D. Moore, Matt Wolpert, and Ben Nedivi. Wolpert and Nedivi serve as showrunners and executive produce alongside Moore and Maril Davis of Tall Ship Productions, as well as Kira Snyder, David Weddle, Bradley Thompson and Seth Edelstein. The series is produced for Apple TV by Sony Pictures Television.
A batch of new Season 5 photos can be found below.
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Taylor Swift has become the youngest-ever woman to be inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. She enters the class of 2026 alongside Alanis Morissette, Kiss songwriters Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley, and Kenny Loggins, who follows his fellow yacht-rockers the Doobie Brothers after their selection last year. Christopher “Tricky” Stewart, the writer of Beyoncé's “Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It),” who went on to sign Frank Ocean to Def Jam, also makes the cut, alongside Mariah Carey collaborator Walter Afanasieff and a duo best known for their work with Tina Turner: Terry Britten and Graham Lyle.
Among the unlucky 2026 nominees are David Byrne, LL Cool J, Pink, and Sarah McLachlan, and the Go-Go's. Artists become eligible 20 years after their debut commercial single, meaning Swift, whose released “Tim McGraw” in 2006, just sneaked in. Prospective inductees have to choose five songs for consideration; hers, USA Today notes, were “All Too Well (10 Minute Version),” “Blank Space,” “Anti-Hero,” “Love Story,” and “The Last Great American Dynasty.” An induction gala will take place on June 11 in New York City.
Last month, Donna Summer was posthumously inducted; earlier that year, George Clinton and Rodney “Darkchild” Jerkins were among the Doobie Brothers' fellow inductees.
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Kyle Gass at his home on January 14.
By
Jon Blistein
T
he 14-hour flight from Sydney to Los Angeles is already brutal. Crossing the Pacific while the focal point of an international media shitstorm — as Tenacious D's Kyle Gass did in July 2024 after an ill-timed joke about the attempted assassination of Donald Trump — will only make it worse.
“It's an arduous flight, and then having to sit in your thoughts of, ‘What have I done?'” Gass tells Rolling Stone from his home in Los Angeles. “It was a very low moment for me.”
On July 14, 2024, Tenacious D, the comedy rock group Gass co-founded with his friend Jack Black, performed at the ICC Sydney Theatre. It had already been, Gass recalls, a “pretty magical” day: It was the second show of the D's Australian tour and Gass' 64th birthday. Earlier, he'd flown over Sydney in his friend's helicopter. When he showed up at the venue, his dressing room was decorated. Gass was aware that, across the world, a lone gunman had shot at Trump during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, injuring the then-candidate and several others, and killing one. (The shooter, Thomas Crooks, was also killed.) But being that far removed, he says, “I didn't feel like I was in touch with it. If I was over there, I think I would have gotten more the gravity of an assassination attempt.”
During that night's concert, Black led the crowd in a rendition of “Happy Birthday,” while their friend, Mike Bray, dressed in a metal robot costume (a bit for the D's song “The Metal”) held out a cake filled with candles. When Black told Gass to make a wish, Gass quipped, “Don't miss Trump next time.”
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The line got laughs and the show moved along. But later that night, as Gass was celebrating in his hotel room, he started to realize his improvised one-liner was stoking political outrage. An array of right-wing media figures lashed out; Elon Musk called Gass' comments “contemptible”; Charlie Kirk tweeted, “These people are more twisted and vile than we realized”; an Australian politician even demanded Tenacious D be deported.
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The band canceled their remaining tour dates, as well as a run of “Rock the Vote” shows in the U.S. Gass issued an apology, calling the joke “highly inappropriate, dangerous and a terrible mistake.” While he deleted his apology from Instagram days later, he says it wasn't because he no longer stood by it: “If I would have recanted, I would have said that.”
Black also issued a statement distancing himself from Gass and raising major questions about the band's future: “I was blindsided by what was said at the show on Sunday,” he said. “I would never condone hate speech or encourage political violence in any form. After much reflection, I no longer feel it is appropriate to continue the Tenacious D tour, and all future creative plans are on hold.”
While some criticized Black for appearing to throw his longtime friend and collaborator under the bus, Gass, speaking about the controversy publicly for the first time, says that Black “was doing what he felt he had to do. We're separate people, always, and we're on different career paths. I totally understood what he needed to protect. I didn't begrudge him any of that.”
In the months after the controversy, Gass laid low, returning to social media a few days after Trump's re-election (pointedly, with a cover of the Bee Gees' “I Started a Joke”). By December, he was on stage with his other group, the Kyle Gass Band, and last spring, the KGB's acoustic offshoot, Kyle Gass Company, toured Europe. After returning to the U.S., the Kyle Gass Band cut a live album at a brewery in Palmdale, California; it'll be released this Friday (Jan. 23) via A Special Thing Records. (Gass also self-released a solo tune, “What Do I Know,” in late December.)
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A year-and-a-half later, Gass is candid and contrite as he opens up about what happened in Sydney, his relationship with Black, and when Tenacious D will return.
“We're gonna come back — it's gonna be bigger than Oasis!” Gass says before adding, with a self-conscious laugh: “I was thinking we could play it up more, but that feels a little disingenuous.” (Technically, the group already returned with an REO Speedwagon cover released on a charity record in 2025.)
Even as Gass takes full responsibility and acknowledges the severity of the incident, his sense of humor remains in tact.
“I was naive, of course — people are gonna pick that up,” he says of the way his joke caught fire. “But I just felt it was kind of a private moment. I thought I was safe in the bubble. And it was so fast.” Then, in a hushed voice suffused with mock gravity, he says, “Five one-syllable words that brought down the empire.”
So, walk me through what you remember about the Sydney show and the aftermath?Well, I think context is important. First off, Australia is one of our favorite destinations. They're great fans, and it's hard to get there. But I can see the calendar, and I'm going, “Wait, my birthday is the second show in Sydney. This is gonna be a blast!” I got some friends over there, it's a party, I'm feeling pretty special. It's ironic, because I had thought before, “I'm having the greatest day ever!”
So, it's a special show. And it's everybody's favorite thing to tour with Tenacious D. I'm on the other side of the world here. I'm in a different hemisphere, I'm in a different continent. And I'm naively forgetting about cameras and such. So [we play] “The Metal” and then I just decided to quip about what happened. And it was terrible. It was terrible judgment, obviously. I've felt terrible ever since, because it's such a responsibility to not screw up like that.
I wouldn't wish it on anybody. It's one of those things, once it was picked up, it just got worse and worse. It was a Defcon 2 for sure in the camp. And I did it. It was hard to take responsibility for it, but it was my fuck-up. When you're in it, it's hard to even think straight. It's just this thing flooding and coming at you. We had to take the break. And I got it. Jack has this magnificent career; I can't even count the franchises now. So as hard as it was, I just had to take the long ride home.
How aware of the assassination attempt were you since you were in Sydney and also enjoying your birthday?I can be a news hound at home, checking all the time just to see the latest madness. But over there it felt like… “Oh my God, that's crazy. It's terrible.” But I really wasn't thinking straight through it. It is serious business. You never want to fan those flames or be snarky about it. And I touched the stove. But at the time, I was trying to make the band laugh. Trying to be a little outrageous. I wasn't overthinking it — obviously.
Watching the video back, it does seem like you got the laugh.Honestly, I can't watch it. I think I might have looked at it once, but even then I was shuttering [my eyes].
Do you have any memories of that moment?That's the thing, you're doing a show for a lot of people, and you're just in the flow of the experience. And the extra thing of my birthday — not that that gives me carte blanche. But I probably had a shot before the show, I was celebrating with my friends. And when you get a laugh, you're like, “That worked,” and you're moving onto the next thing. And it was a great show. We were at the top of our game. We had just come off a European leg, and it was great. You feel bulletproof.
“I'm human, I made a mistake. I was going for a joke. But timing is everything. If there was ever a ‘too soon,' it was this.”
When did you realize it was snowballing into something serious? We were partying in my hotel room and reports started coming in. “Oh God, oh no, I see what's happening here.” And then it just kept getting worse. There was no way out. Just panic… It became a worldwide story, which seems so ridiculous now in comparison with all the shit that's been [happening].
One Australian politician called for you to be deported. What was your reaction to that? It didn't take long to be like, “Oh this guy is such a grandstander.” We're so used to it over here, where people take the opportunity to make a grand statement. And then the next day, my agent dropped me. And I was like, “Well, gee, it would have been nice to at least talk to you or something.” But I think he wanted to get in the news cycle too… It did feel like an overreaction. But that speaks more to my relationship with my agent. I've been around a long time and I guess he was tired of me saying no to too many projects or something. He saw an opening.
Did the overall response surprise you?Yeah, like, wait a minute, I'm human, I made a mistake. I was going for a joke. But timing is everything. If there was ever a “too soon,” it was this. And maybe I thought I was on it, or ahead of the curve. But no, it was definitely too soon.
It feels like such an impossible thing to describe, but what was being in the middle of all this like? It's overwhelming. It's like a tsunami of shit rolling over you. And then there's the regret. Like, “Why would I do that?” I just didn't put it together. And the ramifications were so huge.
It's been a pretty magical, cream dream thrill ride with Tenacious D. It's something that I never really expected and it's been such a joy. In music, it's hard to even get your stuff out there and for people to care. And just to work with Jack for all these years and watch him soar to new heights, it's been really gratifying. But [laughs] it can all come tumbling down if you're not really thinking straight.
When did you realize you had to issue an apology?The day after. Like, OK people are really disturbed and hurt by this, I have to apologize. It was hard to think straight, but I had some time to craft it. I did it myself. I ran it by the manager, and it seemed like I got what I wanted to say. And then that became a story.
I'm usually [just] recording Seventies covers on my Instagram. And so [the apology] was out for four or five days, and I thought, “It looks like a dead fish just laying there.” I really did apologize, but I took it down because it's out there.
I saw it printed everywhere. I think that was definitely a misunderstanding. If I would have recanted, I would've said, “I'm taking this down because now on further reflection…” But no. It's out there. And then, it's like, should I put it back up? It just felt so wrong at that point. To have that be a separate news story was really disappointing.
I definitely thought about trying to get more in the public discussion of it. But it just seems like you're not going to get a fair shake, and you don't know how much good that's gonna do. And I feel responsibility to Jack and the band — this is people's livelihoods that I put [at risk]. It's pretty heavy.
Were you aware that Jack was also planning a statement of his own?I assumed there would be.
Did he give you a heads up or share it with you ahead of time?No, we were in our own camps at that point. Jack has an agent, manager, and publicist, all that stuff, and they were doing their thing. And I was over here trying to figure out the best thing to do.
“You never want to fan those flames or be snarky about it. And I touched the stove.”
What were you two in discussion about? We were discussing what we were going to do [with the band]. I think we were considering taking a show off and getting back out there. I thought I could apologize onstage, like, “Hey, I wasn't thinking straight.” But at that point there were safety concerns. And once you get into that, it just doesn't matter.
What kind of concerns?They came in from every which way. Somebody called my mom. My poor 95-year-old mom. It hits close to home, and you want to be brave and courageous, but I'm not a congressman. We're just entertainers. And it just bespeaks the insanity of the times. It feels almost vindictive. And it doesn't seem right in terms of the big picture. It seemed like, “Oh, Jack's a big target, and I'm the sidekick who screwed up.” It all felt pretty terrible.
I remember coming out of a coffee shop, and then a crazy reporter was snapping pictures. I felt like, “What the hell is going on here? I'm in Burbank getting some coffee. Leave me alone!”
Was there anything else like that, people outside your home? No, not too, too bad. Well, actually, there was one guy that seemed like he was circling.
Another reporter? Or a stalker, or a killer. I don't know. You just can't tell.
So you and Jack were on the same page when it came to canceling the Australian tour and the Rock the Vote shows. Oh sure. That was pretty easy.
On top of the safety concerns, were you worried that your presence at the Rock the Vote gigs would also be a distraction from the point of those shows?Yeah, and that was another regret. We were looking forward to that, and wanted to do our duty as citizens. But I felt bad because it didn't seem like we had any kind of moral high ground at that point. I fucked that up too. [Laughing, then mock wailing] Oh God, why are you taking me back there! Why?! Are you gonna do me dirty?
I'm just gonna print what you say!Oh, no — that's terrible! [Laughs]. No, I mean, Jack and I are all good. At the end of the day, we're friends. I've known Jack since he was 18 and it's been such a long marriage, really. You go up and down, and we've always taken long breaks. He's had a lot of stuff to do, and I've got my other projects. So it doesn't even feel that different now.
His statement did get some criticism from people who felt like he was maybe hanging you out to dry. Did that surprise you? No, not really [laughs]. I might have deserved it. Or, he had to protect himself from his loose cannon partner over here. I totally understood once safety concerns got in. I might have tried to finish the tour, and I think sometimes these things can blow over, but at the time, it's hard when the tsunami of shit is coming at you.
There has always been this fame imbalance within Tenacious D, and this situation highlighted that. How have you and Jack navigated that dynamic over the years, and what was challenging about it in this moment? A “fame imbalance” seems weird. First and foremost, we've been friends and shared so much over the years, and I think people want to put that on you. But I'm a fan of Jack. It's been great to see him ascend from when we were just a couple of schmoes in Hollywood. He's the engine behind the D, too. You can't really separate that. I don't begrudge him at all, and I'm just happy to be there. My glass is seven-eighths full, and it's allowed me to live my best life. I was a delivery driver and a security [guard].
It was hard at first, though. When the D started to take off, it was really a dream come true. And then people were like, “Oh that must be really hard for you because Jack's so famous!” Well, not really. It's cool. And then it's good for the goose, good for the gander. Part of the reason why the D's been so great is because of Jack and his popularity.
Did you and Jack touch base after the dust had settled?Oh, for sure. We hashed it out. And it was hard. It is like a marriage. You go through these ups and downs, and try to understand your partner.
What can you say about the future of Tenacious D?We will serve no D-wine, before it's D-time — but we will be back. We will return.
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By
Jeff Ihaza
A
nd just like that, I'm back in high school, parked out front of some kid's parents' house, hotboxing in the back seat of an SUV. Except this is Travis Scott's custom Rolls-Royce Cullinan, featuring a bespoke two-tone exterior complete with a candy-green “Spirit of Ecstasy” hood ornament and a custom monogrammed interior. We're parked in front of a sprawling, 18,000-square-foot brutalist mansion, which belongs to the founder of Oakley Sunglasses and is currently for sale. Scott, an architecture buff, is here to tour the place and, as he slyly suggests, to see if it might become his own. Right now, though, he's seated next to me in the Rolls, casually making a few well-packed spliffs disappear into plumes of smoke.
Scott is dressed in a vintage T-shirt with the logo of the influential German art school Bauhaus, paired with a Chrome Hearts belt and Balenciaga jeans. As we chat in the car, he explains how — on the heels of a record-setting world tour during which crowds registered as earthquakes on geological surveys, as well as a Grammy-nominated, chart-topping album in 2023's Utopia — he's looking to push things even further. “Putting my whole body and soul into the next [project], for more people to understand,” he says. Who exactly might those people be? “The person that still don't understand Trav no matter how long I've been in this shit.”
He has, in fact, been in this shit quite some time. Since his debut album in 2015, Scott has brought swarms of young fans into a universe that, through various commercial collaborations, includes shoes, apparel, sunglasses, McDonald's meals, Fortnite skins, in-game concerts, and cereal. With more than a decade at the center of the rap zeitgeist, Scott is an avatar for 2010s hip-hop. The way we might categorize the “shiny suits” era of the late Nineties with Mase and Puff Daddy's “Mo Money Mo Problems” video — replete with its Jerry Bruckheimer-style extravagance — Scott's sonic and commercial maximalism, his cathartic blast of sounds turned up to max volume, his commitment to the rage, is the defining trait of the past decade of rap.
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Now, the current generation appears geared for a revival of the 2010s aesthetic that Scott helped define. The year 2016 has become a TikTok fascination, as younger members of Gen Z look back 10 years, to when the current era's superstars, Scott included, released much of their most influential work. The oozing hedonism and syrupy psychedelia of “Maria I'm Drunk,” from Scott's debut album, Rodeo, quite clearly presaged Justin Bieber's latest Swag-era turn. The chorus from “Antidote” — “Don't you open up that window” — might very well soundtrack some future documentary about the 2010s. “Sicko Mode” featured one of the most significant beat switches in rap history, a structural gambit that reshaped how mainstream hits could move and fracture. In 2024, after Scott officially released his 2014 mixtape Days Before Rodeo on streaming, the project, already a decade old, nearly blocked Sabrina Carpenter from Number One on the charts. “That mixtape did a lot for me, and people really dialed into what I was as an artist,” he says. “[It's gratifying] to see people still fucking with the album years later.”
Scott's generation of rap stars emerged during a particularly optimistic moment in music, when digital distribution platforms, along with the democratizing force of social media, broke down some longstanding barriers in mainstream culture. It became more common for rap, rock, and everything in between to comingle. “I think now it's limitless. There's no box,” Scott says. “For a chorus, you might be feeling like this, for a verse you feeling like this. There's nothing wrong with them both being together. It's like a DJ playing fucking ‘I kissed a girl, and I liked it' to fucking some Gucci Mane.”
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Some of that era's optimism has since waned, as the prevailing conversation in hip-hop these days is a sense that the genre has strayed too far from its roots. Scott is familiar with these types of critiques, too, as they're similar to what rap purists said about the wave of acts that came in the 2010s. “Even when I was coming in, it was like that,” he says. “People wanted to keep [rap] a certain way. I didn't. And now you got so many other artists that's on the same type of timing.” Artists in their thirties, like Scott, are keeping a close eye on younger audiences, where they might once have looked up to older gatekeepers. “As the [new] generations come, those [older] people don't get pushed out. You see they start bending towards it and shit. Usually it was like the other way around: Generations had to conform up. Generations now conforming down.”
In conversation, you get the sense that Scott sees the current landscape as decidedly different from when he was coming up — and at 34, on top of the world, he has the perspective that lets him appreciate how far he's come. “Everything is now catching up to everything. The art, the fashion — all of that shit is becoming just as important, if not more important, than the actual music,” he says. “I'm not saying it's bad or nothing; it's just a new outlook, I guess. But you got to start pulling the layers back to the basics at the end of the day. Your core is still going to be music. When I came in, it was about rearranging all this shit.”
AS WE TOUR THE MANSION, Scott comments on the clean minimalism of the space. He tells me he's been looking at architecture programs he might enroll in, casually listing Harvard as a potential option. When Scott suggests he's possibly considering purchasing the $65 million property, it doesn't register as a ha-ha kind of joke, but more like something you say to gauge your friends' reactions before you actually do it. He'd toured the home once before, though at the time it still had all of the owner's custom furniture. Today, with the plush sofas and cozy decorations installed by the real estate folks tasked with selling the place, the house feels very much like a home. Scott says it reminds him of the house where his children's mother lives (he shares two kids, ages three and seven, with Kylie Jenner). “I think this is cool because it's like an open flow,” he says, taking in the indoor theater complete with a world-class projector. He remembers his first visit here differently. “When I actually came, I know [the owner] had these chairs. It was black leather chairs. The arms were more like a still structure that was built in his world.” He pauses, recalibrating the room in real time. “But this feels mad comfortable, which I fuck with.”
The owner, Jim Jannard, bought the mansion, located in Trousdale Estates in Beverly Hills, in 2009, not long after selling Oakley, the wildly popular sunglasses and apparel company he grew out of a motocross accessory brand, for approximately $2.1 billion in 2007. Like Scott, the Oakley founder understood how a subcultural aesthetic could scale without losing its edge. Oakley, with whom Scott has a brand partnership, was built on a kind of aggressive anti-fashion, gear designed for punks and ravers rather than runway models, a sensibility that later translated into global ubiquity. Scott's trajectory followed a similar arc. As his sound and image expanded into stadiums, brand partnerships, and global campaigns, he became an unavoidable symbol of the millennial rapper as brand ambassador and, in turn, an easy target for skepticism. As his presence became more and more dominant, his work was treated less like music and more like a logo or a brand activation. Call it hip-hop's version of the “rockism” discourse that plagued the aughts: the persistent belief that once something resonates too commercially, its artistic ambition must have been compromised.
“People wanted to keep [rap] a certain way,” he says of his early days. “I didn't.”
“As far as musically, they won't acknowledge a lot of the musical barriers and shit that I try to push with the music,” Scott says of his critics. “The genre-bending that I try to do with the music, the people I try to bring together, the true understanding of what I'm here to do.” He points to this very publication's review, which called Utopia an “empty paradise.” “I don't even overhype the things I'm doing onstage, but this is all in the same time that I went out and did a show that had 65,000 people. So, for me, I never gave a fuck about what critics or what people [who] criticize the music think.”
That disconnect, between fan adoration and critical praise, poses a challenge that Scott does seem interested in conquering. Despite his reluctance toward interviews (“I don't want to continually explain myself,” he says), he's decidedly friendly and open as we talk. “I can only put my best foot forward and go achieve and knock down barriers, right? But I think since the beginning of my career, that's always been what it is,” he says. “I think these writers or whoever these people are, they feel like they got to have this tone towards what I'm doing.”
Scott is blunt about his frustrations with critics, and about his annoyance at the Grammys. So far, Scott has been nominated for 10, including a Best Rap Album nod for Utopia in 2024, though he's yet to win one. He's not shy that he feels he deserves the award. “There's always the person that has one that will tell you it don't matter,” he says. “They'll tell you it don't matter, but when you go in the crib, it's on the mantel.”
Utopia and its subsequent tour wrap up a distinct period in Scott's career. The tour — branded Utopia: Circus Maximus World Tour — was also wildly successful, a sprawling global spectacle that spanned more than 80 concerts across six continents and more than 20 countries. By the time the tour ended late last year, it had sold more than 2 million tickets and grossed more than $250 million worldwide, making it the highest-grossing solo rap tour in history.
Like Kanye West before him, Scott had already built a reputation for ambitious live experiences. Early in his career, he was known for raucous, punk-like gigs, full of moshing fans. In 2020, he delivered a performance inside the video game Fortnite, which garnered more than 12.3 million unique players and set off a new wave of in-game concerts from the likes of Ariana Grande, Lil Nas X, and Eminem. “Even me doing in-game performances, we went back and forth. I love being in the physical [world], seeing the people. But for some reason, actually, [the in-game performance] was just so turnt.” He notes that the global pandemic may have helped his cause. “It was a different time, right? Everybody was home. It was one of those moments.”
It was against the backdrop of Covid restrictions lifting that the Astroworld tragedy unfolded in 2021, fundamentally changing how Scott's performances, and the culture around them, would be understood. In the car, he becomes solemn when the subject comes up. He says he still thinks about the event, in which a crowd crush resulted in the death of 10 concertgoers at Scott's festival in Houston. One of the hardest parts for him on a personal level is the fact that it happened in his hometown. “When I did that festival, I was trying to bring something to where I'm from, and when you look back, it's like a time that was supposed to be so enjoyable just went wrong,” he says. “I would love to heal that in the city. But I would also want people to be receptive [to it]. I don't want to force a reception.”
“I would love to heal that [pain] in [Houston]. But I would also want people to be receptive to it.”
More than four years later, Scott still faces scrutiny for the tragedy. “Through that experience, I think, there's a distorted view of who I am and what I care about,” he says. I ask him what he'd say to the commentators who hold him individually responsible. (In 2023, a Houston grand jury declined to bring criminal charges against Scott or other organizers; civil litigation has continued, and many claims have been settled.) “I wouldn't tell them anything. I would ask them,” he says. “Sometimes when I read or even hear about some of the shit that people write, I don't even know if they believe it. I think there's always been this distorted view of what I am. And it's my responsibility just to keep showing what it really is.”
SCOTT PREPARED FOR A LIFE in music almost from birth. He was born Jacques Webster II and raised between the Houston neighborhoods of Sunnyside and Missouri City. His dad bought him a drum set when he was three years old, and from there he was obsessed. Eventually, he'd teach himself production, developing the eclectic sonic style that would define his career. Chase B, Scott's longtime DJ, grew up in the same area, and has known Scott since they were kids — even if Scott got a head start on music. “It's like our culture where we grew up,” Chase says. “Obviously, he was super involved in the music, [but] I wasn't at the time. We were just cool. He was just playing me all the shit he was making, and the shit just sounded crazy.”
Later, when Chase would DJ in college at Howard University, Scott would send him his songs to play at parties — proceeding to blow people's minds. “He would send me his music and I would go out to the house parties and I would just be playing it for people, and everybody was fucking with it. It was a whole thing, like, ‘Who is this?'” Eventually, Scott would come and visit Chase on campus. “We just ran around to different stores and shit, giving mixtapes out,” Chase recalls. “We were really doing everything guerrilla-style way before any album deal or artist deal got done or anything like that. We were just stuck in it, just me and him.”
In 2012, Scott, then known as Travi$ Scott, signed with Kanye West's G.O.O.D. Music after a single of Scott's, “Lights (Love Sick),” caught Ye's ear. The next year, Scott started gaining wider attention with his mixtape Owl Pharaoh, a project that immediately stood out as a new sound in West's Yeezus-era orbit. The project drew as much from IDM (so-called intelligent dance music) and electronic styles as it did from Southern rap. Its blown-out synths, fragmented hooks, and dark, immersive atmosphere are a vivid precursor to the sonic distortion of the current era's underground-rap heavyweights. Listening to the mega-viral young artist esdeeKid, for instance, you can hear hints of mixtape-era Travis Scott.
Owl Pharaoh set the stage for Scott's world-building, a term he's keen on using. Its songs felt engineered for a highly distinct mood, and his voice, a husky brooding tone that was grizzled by Auto-Tune, functioned more as another instrument in the mix than typical vocals.
By the time his Astroworld album arrived in 2018, Scott had fully fused his influences — Houston rap, electronic and EDM, Kanye-era maximalism, and aughts-vintage trap — into a blockbuster vision. Named after a now-defunct Houston theme park, Astroworld was both intimate and engineered for scale, marking the culmination of Scott's early ascent and establishing him as one of the defining rap artists of his era. Around this time, Scott launched the Cactus Jack label. Since then, it's grown into a creative umbrella for his own releases and for artists he's signed. In 2019, the label released its first Jackboys compilation, featuring artists on the label. “Everybody just got their own thing,” Scott says of his signees, who include Don Toliver, Sheck Wes, and SoFaygo. “Don and Sheck with this raw energy. And Faygo, just melodically. Everybody just got their own energy.”
Toliver remembers buying the Rodeo CD from Target: “Travis really stood out. I really was just like, ‘Wait a minute, this guy is from the H and he going crazy like this?'” It wouldn't be long before their paths crossed, as Toliver started gaining his own buzz around Houston. “And then one day, he just randomly hit me up and was like, ‘Yo, pull up to Hawaii,'” he recalls. “I literally just threw everything I had in a bag, in a suitcase, and jumped on a plane.”
Last year, Cactus Jack released its second compilation album, Jackboys 2, which debuted at Number One on the charts. Fans' reaction to the project online, however, was mixed. “I'm hearing that maybe they wanted it to feel like a solo [album],” Scott says. “This is just an album where you were in a group of different people. And I love that. I think the album is dope as shit.”
Jackboys 2 arrived at a particularly contentious time last summer. Weeks before it was set to drop, Clipse released the single “So Be It,” which takes direct aim at Scott. “Calabasas took your bitch and your pride in front of me,” Pusha T raps on the track, referring to Scott's ex. “Her utopia had moved right up the street.” The jab came because Scott had been pulled into Pusha's long-running feud with Drake: On Utopia's “Meltdown,” Drake's verse throws shots at Pharrell Williams, Pusha's close collaborator. In interviews, Pusha suggested Scott once crashed his recording session with Williams to play them the album, but intentionally omitted Drake's verse.
Scott disputes Pusha's version of events. “When you go back and look at it … it's crazy. Niggas said I had a film crew [with me]. I'm like, ‘What?' I remember when I pulled up, it was them niggas that had a film crew,” he says. “I'm talking about the little microphone on the stick and all of that. I was like, ‘Oh, shit. Am I in a documentary?'”
As for not playing Drake's “Meltdown” verse for them during a listening session, Scott says the verse hadn't come in at that point. “A lot of shit [Pusha] was saying just didn't make sense to me. It was like he was saying I was interrupting shit and I was playing them shit. First of all, I can't interrupt something that somebody asked me to come pull up on,” he says, noting that Pharrell specifically invited him to the session. “So when I hear that type of shit, it's just like, I don't know, man. If you got to drop Trav name for the rollout, so be it.”
“Man, my kids are just like me
when it comes to trying to get off ideas.”
In the past couple of years of industry drama in hip-hop, Scott has at least tried to stay more or less neutral, which is partly why Pusha's comments were surprising. “I've always been a person who tried to put the best worlds all together. And I just think when worlds come together, the music just sounds so ill,” he says. “You got to think, man, rap is only what, 51 years old? That's just young as hell. It's a genre that's still growing, so people are really trying to see the growth of it.”
Chase B, who's releasing his own solo album this year, has taken inspiration from Scott's ethos. “There's really no boundaries to this shit. When it comes to putting these songs together and these collaborations [with Scott], people really do be excited to kind of step out of their boxes too,” he says. “People want to be like, ‘Oh, shit, I never really took this angle from here before.'” Scott credits his upbringing in Missouri City, on Houston's southwest side, as key to his worldview. “MO City, I tell people all the time, if you want to ever grow somewhere, that shit right there is the best place because you get a mix of everything,” he says. “All different types of people, all walks of life, all nationalities, all types of psyches.”
One figure who comes to mind when thinking of Scott's rise is the late designer and creative Virgil Abloh, whose collaborative spirit stamped a generation of young hip-hop acts, Scott included. “We come from that school. When I first started, Virgil was starting [art collective and DJ crew] Been Trill,” he says. “He always had that tone of just bringing people together for the right thing.” For Scott, that spirit of collaboration is a hallmark of the era he came up in. “The artists that came up with my generation, we got such an important task to just hold this down to another level. Because we ain't had nobody ever show us how to do this shit,” he says. “We had to go through this shit and really break the molds. We got to really put our heads together to really keep this going and really pass that shit along. And it's not even about being all ultra sharing and fucking kumbaya. It's about remembering to leave a trail for people to have an understanding [of what you do].”
By now, Scott has left his own trail of products and collaborations that all speak to a broader universe. There are his long-standing collaborations with Nike, his Cactus Jack brand and label, his partnership with Oakley, and Cacti hard seltzer, to name only a few. “I'm trying to have something here that's like an experience that's passed on to generations,” he says. “And the things that I do and create can be placed in households. On the mantels, and in the collections, and the stories that's told behind it.”
He recalls having a voracious creative taste as a kid, from film to art and design and fashion. “These are just different aspects that I was intrigued and I was into, to be honest,” he says. “I'm just into all things creative. I might not be the best in everything. That's how I can respect working with other people in certain fields that I'm not so good in.” In person, Scott is most effusive when he's talking about ideas or concepts. There is a sort of childlike wonder to the way he describes how products — yes, products — inspire him. Following the acclaim of his first two mixtapes, Scott recalls wanting to release his debut album as an action figure that included a USB stick. While the plan didn't pan out, Scott's multidisciplinary instincts were present from the start. “I like things to be based on my ideas and things that I create and things I design,” he says. “This is for someone that might not even like me as an artist, might not even like me.”
Yet, even with his focus on innovation, Scott has his reservations about AI. “In specific ways, if used right, it could be helpful. I think it's all about how it's used,” he says. “You got to challenge the designers and the creatives of the world. Instead of running from something, you got to become a leader in setting a platform and design landscape for it before it just gets too out of control.”
When it comes to his children using AI, he's matter-of-fact. “My kids don't have AI,” he notes. “Having AI right now will compress their ability for their brain to maximize. So they got to learn the physical and the actual way of learning so then they know how to actually use AI to their best ability, because if it's doing everything for you, how do you even know what's right or wrong?”
Scott seems to take particular pride in his parenting. While he keeps his kids' private life private, he lights up when he talks about fatherhood. The hardest part about being on the road for so long, he says, is being away from his children. Fatherhood has given him a new perspective on life. “You can't crash out. You can't do a lot of crazy shit like you would,” he says. “Man, my kids are just like me when it comes to trying to get off ideas. My son's three now, about to be four. I took him to the Disney Imagineering spot, and his mind was just going off when he seen the robots and all the new tech and how it's built.”
THE MANSION SITS ATOP a high point in Beverly Hills and features sweeping, unimpeded views of the entire region, stretching from downtown L.A. all the way to the ocean. A legal protection attached to the property prevents future development from blocking the mansion's sight lines. Evening sets in as the mansion's floor-to-ceiling, retractable glass window drapes a panoramic vista of the greater Los Angeles area into the wide-open living space. Scott drifts from room to room in his shades, thanking staff and talking through the bones of the place.
As we make our way out of the house, Scott says he can see himself touring well into old age. He cites the likes of Iggy Pop and Ozzy Osbourne as examples of the kind of performance longevity he'd like to have. He famously collaborated with Ozzy on “Take What You Want,” from Post Malone's 2019 album Hollywood's Bleeding. “[Ozzy] was cool as fuck. We could see him sitting in his chair, and he was like, ‘Travis!'” Scott recalls, offering up his best Ozzy impression. “I turned around, I was like, ‘Oh, man, it's Ozzy Osbourne. Shit.'”
For now, Scott says, he's focused on his next album, which he's envisioning being played in stadiums. “When I make the music, I have this full vision. I see it going down,” he says. “I'm thinking stadium status. How could people so far away feel so close? How can the music be so big but grounded? Taking raw elements and making it feel, like, euphoric. Man, finding new rhythms, but nothing too hard to take in. You know what I'm saying? A level of what could Rodeo be like on the ultra-scale stadium life.”
He's cagey about any concrete timelines, but says fans can expect new music in the near future. “Got to feed the kids, man. The kids must eat.”
Production Credits
Styling by PERI ROSENZWEIG. Grooming by JENN HANCHING. Barber: MARCUS HATCH. Braiding by KORYNN HENDERSON. Set design by ALI GALLAGHER at 11TH HOUSE AGENCY. Production by PATRICIA BILOTTI for PBNY PRODUCTIONS. Production manager: STEF BOCKENSTETTE. Lighting director: ROSS ZILLWOOD. Lighting technicians: LUCHO RAMIREZ and JACK RIGOLLET. Digital technician: WILLIAM AZCONDA. Motion-video portrait: MAC SHOOP. Video-shoot director, editor, and colorist: MITCH SAAVEDRA. Video director of photography: GRANT BELL. Camera operators: AJ YOUNG and RYAN LEUNING. Sound engineer: GRAY THOMAS-SOWERS. Set-design assistance: ZORAN RADANOVICH and ANDREW BELVEDERE. Styling assistance: ALICIA APARICIO, KAREN GONZALES, and PARIYA RAHNI. Production assistance: TIAGO CORREIA. Video production assistance: MYKEL AGUIRRE. Photographed at MILK STUDIOS.
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In the new A24 comedy, directed by Aidan Zamiri, Charli xcx plays an alternate-reality version of herself on a ‘brat' tour gone wrong — but digs deep in the process. She tells all in a wide-ranging interview with The Hollywood Reporter.
By
David Canfield
Senior Entertainment Writer
The first day of filming on The Moment was an “odd one,” Charli xcx admits. The Grammy-winning artist, playing an alternate-reality version of herself in her biggest acting role to date, was set to shoot a tense scene opposite frequent collaborator Rachel Sennott, who was similarly spoofing her real-life persona. Sennott had arrived “in the back of a van from Paris” where she'd been for a Balenciaga show, Charli says, only for the two stars to be squeezed into “this impossible bathroom with three stalls and a huge mirror” alongside director Aidan Zamiri and cinematographer Sean Price Williams. Then came the heavy improv.
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“Sean's wandering around with fucking camera, Rachel was shipped in literally overnight,” Charli says with a nostalgic smile over Zoom, as Zamiri laughs along right beside her. “And yet it was so easy with her. She gets it. She gets our world. She could have done this with her eyes closed, hanging upside down.” Zamiri adds, “It was by accident that this was the first thing we shot, and I was very grateful. With that scene, we discovered the personality of how we wanted to shoot this film.”
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The Moment, which premieres Friday at the Sundance Film Festival before A24 releases it in theaters on Jan. 30, has been defined by that spontaneous, chaotic spirit from its inception — that is, from a little over a year ago. Charli's sixth studio album, brat, had just exploded culturally in a way the Essex native had never experienced before: It topped the charts around the world, emerged instantly and resoundingly as the record of the summer, and gradually went so mainstream as to directly inspire the aesthetic of Kamala Harris's ill-fated presidential campaign. Inevitably, Charli started getting asked about making a blockbuster documentary out of her upcoming headlining arena tour around the world. But she was not interested. “It wasn't something that really spoke to me as an artist,” she says. “I'm really always interested in flipping the form.”
Instead, Charli sent Zamiri, a close friend who'd directed the beloved music video for the brat single “360” (which features Sennott), a document with some thoughts on the swelling, swirling success. “It was a piece of writing that captured the complexities of what it's like to achieve something that you've worked half your life for, but then to feel how fragile and how fleeting that might be,” he says. “Charli is able to be extremely honest in a way that most people would be frightened of —” he turns toward her mid-thought — “but I don't think it scares you.” She nods, then booms with laughter: “I just do it, then regret it all.”
Written by Zamiri with fellow first-time screenwriter Bertie Brandes, The Moment is nothing if not honest. Taking the form of a wryly revealing mockumentary, the movie plays like an alternate history of Charli's brat tour — imagining the fallout if she'd said yes to making a concert doc. Her team, played by the likes of Hailey Benton Gates, Kate Berlant, Jamie Demetriou and Rosanna Arquette, splinters over the direction; Charli grapples with an identity crisis in struggling to let brat go. “I don't know what I fucking want!” Charli (the character) helplessly screams.
“A lot of our considerations were really about [how] the character of Charli in the film is not the same as the real-world Charli — she's fictional — but it's also a version of her that could have existed in some different circumstances,” Zamiri says. “We wanted to make sure that everything that Charli did felt reasonable in some version of the universe.”
The first draft was written in a mere 10 days, finished on New Year's Eve of 2024; filming began three months later. Zamiri and Brandes went back and forth with Charli on the script's beats to ensure both material and emotional accuracy, while sticking to her original document's philosophy. Charli viewed The Moment as a chance to be more truthful about the music industry than anything she'd previously seen in a narrative film.
“Being an artist within [the industry], you really get to control every single element of what is put out about you — the angle from which your face is shot; the edits of your music videos; the edits of your product placement, photo shoots, whatever,” Charli says. “That controlled final image is what the public see, but there's this huge run up to that final place where it is a fucking mess. There are these crazy ideas being pitched by absolutely insane people who have no idea who you are as an artist. Brands will enter the room and be suggesting these absolutely bonkers concepts. You kind of think, ‘How did this even get this way far up the chain?'”
Charli xcx's first feature acting credits arrived with three movies last fall, which premiered at various festivals: 100 Nights of Hero, Sacrifice and Erupcja, the lattermost of which she also produced and co-wrote. She'll next explode on the Park City scene with a fresh trio of films, including supporting roles in the new movies from Cathy Yan (The Gallerist) and Gregg Araki (I Want Your Sex). And she has several others forthcoming — in a wide range of projects, she's quickly proven how serious she is about this acting business.
The Moment marks her most substantial showcase to date, however. Through this dreamed-up “what if” premise, she gives a surprisingly raw performance. The comedy remains front and center, with Charli delving headfirst into improv under the stewardship of her co-stars Berlant and Demetriou. (“They could really just guide the shit out of it.”) But the fictional narrative ironically allows Charli to get some deeply personal ideas off her chest — the temptations of compromise, the occasional clashes with her label, the ceiling of creative freedom.
The conditions of the production set the stage: Charli filmed a movie about a fictional brat tour co-opted by corporate interests, while winding down her actual brat tour and staring down what might be next. The character says at one point in the movie, “This whole summer, I've been dreading the end.”
“It felt very vulnerable because I tapped into the most extreme parts of my personality that sometimes I feel the need to hide and diminish,” Charli says. “Being an artist is a really volatile thing. One minute you can be on top of the world and think you are the best and the most important person in the room with the best ideas — a generational artist — and then the next minute you can feel like a piece of shit on someone's shoe. I really feel that in my journey as an artist. To actualize that was hard because I don't like feeling, especially, the latter version of that. It's scary to admit you feel like that.”
While The Moment is filled with references for Charli followers to appreciate — winking nods to her loyal queer fanbase, the occasional dissection of her lyrics — the Charli character hits on some more generally prescient themes. “We are in this world where everybody is so keen to say, ‘I'm in control. It's all me.' I've said that and I do believe that, but it's not always easy for it to be that way — it's a fight and it's a battle,” Charli says. “We can all feel sometimes that we have to perform and be someone that we're not, to be accepted. That is something that I've struggled with personally for my entire life.”
The film presents a few foils for the fictional Charli to get this message across. Most centrally, Alexander Skarsgard plays Johannes, an arrogant director known for his work on concert docs for major pop stars. He's brought in to helm the brat movie and promptly overhauls the tour. When asked about what inspired the character, Zamiri and Charli both giggle, with the latter saying knowingly, “He's not based on a real guy!”
Charli then clarifies: “We've met this person so many times. He is a classic guy who thinks he gets it, but he just fucking doesn't… He knows how to commodify and sell a product, but it's under this guise of creativity.”
There's also a key scene between Charli and Kylie Jenner, also playing a bizarro version of herself with some barbed self-awareness. “It's one of my favorite scenes in the film,” Charli says. “And she has one of the best lines in the film: ‘The second people start to get sick of you is when you have to go even harder.'” For Zamiri, seeing performers like Sennott and Jenner embrace The Moment's unvarnished quality proved crucial. “Especially in a time where there are audiences that can't necessarily separate a character from a person — and when you're doing something so complicated — that willingness to poke fun at themselves was extremely brave,” he says. “It means that the jokes land harder. The whole thing feels so much more lived in.”
This was a goal rooted not merely in Charli's own experiences and sensibility, but also her influences. Any fan of Charli's surely knows her Letterboxd lore and cinephilic bona fides. Sure enough, she and Zamiri came into The Moment armed with clear reference points. “It would be pretty impossible for this film to exist without This Is Spinal Tap — that was a big thing for us,” Charli says of the landmark feature debut by the late Rob Reiner. From there, she lists off quite the spread: John Cassavetes's Opening Night, the work of Ruben Östlund, the Rolling Stones tour movie Cocksucker Blues and other ‘70s music documentaries.
But the hardest thing to nail — the aspect they couldn't quite figure out until that first day filming with Sennott — was the tone. It's where Zamiri argues they took their biggest swing and made their strongest statement. “We wanted to combine this humor based in not quite saying what you mean all the time, which is extremely British of us, with visuals that felt fresh and arresting and exciting,” he says. “Often people say that comedy doesn't thrive well when it's cool or there's music or whatever. We wanted to find a mix of genres where it's hopefully funny, hopefully emotional — and also looks cool.”
For more news, reviews, video interviews and more from the Sundance Film Festival, visit The Hollywood Reporter's Sundance hub.
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Google's video platform has disrupted traditional TV and positioned itself as a partner for networks, while the U.K. public broadcaster has been looking to reach young audiences and generate more revenue.
By
Georg Szalai
Global Business Editor
The BBC will start producing original content for Google's YouTube under a landmark deal unveiled with the Alphabet-owned video powerhouse, which has disrupted traditional TV and increasingly positioned itself as a partner for TV networks.
The news comes as the British broadcaster continues to look for ways to reach younger audiences in the digital age. The initial focus of the partnership is set to be on the younger audiences of the BBC Three channel, covering entertainment and news and sports content.
The BBC shows for YouTube are expected to later become available on the U.K. public broadcaster's iPlayer streaming platform and its BBC Sounds audio service.
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So far, the BBC has not produced original series for YouTube, but its flagship account on the streaming platform has more than 15 million subscribers, who get to watch trailers and clips from its shows. In addition, the BBC News YouTube channel has around 19 million subscribers.
Since the BBC does not feature advertising in the U.K., YouTube originals would allow it to monetize these shows abroad at a time when the public broadcaster has been looking to boost income from its license fee, which taxpayers in Britain pay for.
Juliane Althoff, film and TV lawyer and partner at media and entertainment law firm Simkins LLP, said: “This deal marks a strategic acknowledgement of where audiences now sit and how they consume content – especially younger demographics – and reflects the need to increase commercial opportunities to supplement the license fee. By commissioning platform content for YouTube while retaining a right to exploit on the iPlayer and BBC Sounds platforms, the BBC is able to extend its audience reach whilst protecting its public service obligations and long-term commercial rights.”
She added: “From a legal perspective, the BBC's move raises important questions around editorial control and brand integrity. Any agreement between the BBC and YouTube will need to be carefully structured to ensure strict impartiality and accuracy in a way that prevents any accusation of bias or misinformation and to safeguard the BBC's public services obligations and long-term IP value.”
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With this round, which includes a $50 million equity investment from Raine Group, the three-year-old catalog company has raised $635 million in financing.
By
Elizabeth Dilts Marshall
Duetti, a catalog acquisition company that works with independent artists, said on Tuesday (Jan. 20) that it raised $200 million from a Series C and debt financing, bringing the total amount raised by the three-year-old company to $635 million.
Founded in 2022, Duetti claims it's growing at more than twice the monthly rate it was last year, acquiring around 80 catalogs of master recordings and publishing rights every month from rightsholders based mostly in the United States, according to a press release. The company says the fresh funding round includes a $50 million equity investment from The Raine Group, which will go toward expanding Duetti's technology infrastructure, marketing services and global presence.
Raine joins existing Duetti investors Flexpoint Ford, Nyca Partners, Viola Ventures and Roc Nation in bringing the total equity investment capital raised to more than $100 million. The additional capital raised comes from a $125 million private asset-backed securitization, Duetti's second ABS, and a $25 million increase on an existing credit facility.
Duetti CEO and co-founder Lior Tibon says Duetti is keeping pace with “the explosive growth of the independent music sector.” The company has signed deals typically valued at between $10,000 and $10 million, representing some 1,100 indie musicians and songwriters across 40 countries.
“This new funding allows us to continue building proprietary databases and systems to identify, predict and effectively manage music catalogs of independent creators, the fastest growing and most exciting segment of the industry,” Tibon said in a statement.
Duetti has a full-time staff of 65 based in New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Nashville, London and Rio de Janeiro, who support catalog acquisitions and provide marketing and management services. That includes deploying songs from Duetti's catalog for consideration in some 3,000 playlists boasting around 5 million combined followers, and working with artists to produce around 60 remixes of their songs per quarter.
The $125 million private ABS is an extension of the $80 million ABS Duetti announced in late 2024, structured and placed by Barclays.
Raine Group partner Joe Puthenveetil will join Duetti's board of directors as a result of the investment.
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The software company is launching new partnerships with organizations including Dimoldenberg's Dimz Inc. Academy and Rideback RISE.
By
Caitlin Huston
Business Writer
Adobe is pledging close to $10 million in grants and product donations this year to support filmmakers, including funding creators directly for the first time.
The software company's film and TV fund, which has created in 2024, will continue to support film and TV productions through community partners, as well as the newly announced support directly from Adobe, with recipients nominated by industry and community organizations.
Community organizations that will receive funding from the 2026 Film & TV Fund include Ryan Reynolds & Blake Lively's Group Effort Initiative, USC Annenberg School of Communications, NAACP, Gold House and Sundance Ignite, as well as new partnership with Rideback RISE, which helps mid-career artists of color make commercial film and television projects, and “Chicken Shop” creators Amelia Dimoldenberg's Dimz Inc. Academy.
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Dimoldenberg's free summer program provides 18- to 24-year-olds from underrepresented backgrounds training in ideation, storytelling, production, video editing and more. After a one-week pilot last year, the program will now expand to a four-week workshop with continued support.
“I feel really fortunate that my experience in a youth run project laid the foundation for the career I have today. That's what I hope to be able to do for others with Dimz Inc. Academy. With last year's pilot program under our belt, I'm excited for us to carry on creating something truly impactful this year with the generous support of Adobe. They're a dream partner because they really understand the importance of supporting creatives and they make the tools needed to do so — which have helped me so much in my own journey,” Dimoldenberg said.
The company is also expanding its support of the Sundance and Adobe Ignite Fellowship, which is a development program for emerging filmmakers ages 18 to 25, with a new short film fund for Ignite alumni.
The announcement comes ahead of the Sundance Film Festival, where four benefactors from the fund are premiering projects: Stephanie Ahn, writer-director, Bedford Park (supported via Gold House); Daniel Chavez, editor, American Pachuco (supported via Rideback Rise); Monica Salazar, editor, Marga en el DF (supported via Rideback RISE); and Anooya Swamy, director, Pankaja (Adobe x Ignite fellow).
“Sundance has always been where bold new voices come alive through storytelling, which is why Adobe has been a proud partner for 15 years. Having eight of our Film & TV Fund grantees and Ignite fellows premiere this year is a powerful reminder of what creators can achieve when they're given real support. With nearly $10M dedicated to filmmakers this year, we're committed to making sure filmmakers of all backgrounds have the tools, training, and resources they need to bring their visions to life and shape the future of filmmaking,” said Amy White, global head of corporate social responsibility, Adobe.
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Christina Haack is living her best life, and fans are here for it! The HGTV “The Flip Off” star posted several photos from her romantic beach vacation in Hawaii with her boyfriend, Chris Larocca, and she looks stunning.
Haack shared the photos on Instagram and on Facebook on January 18. The first image shows her posing in a white bikini with a cover-up while standing next to Larocca. The pair smiles into the camera as they pose next to the pool. In the next photo, Haack shared a close-up of her face and the top of her bikini. She is smiling, and she looks so happy. A pink lei is around her neck.
The other pictures show a better view of where the couple is spending their vacation, and Haack shared her thoughts in the caption. “Aloha 2026. Hands down my fav January yet.” The hopeful message about the new year and the gorgeous photos have attracted the attention of friends and fans.
Among the reactions to the Instagram post is one from her ex-husband Tarek El Moussa's new wife, Heather Rae El Moussa, who left three heart-eye emojis. Haack and Heather share a close relationship, and the blended family went on New Year's vacation to Park City, Utah, with their children. Larocca also accompanied them, and Haack posted photos from their trip on Instagram.
Other reactions include, “you look so happy. I'm so happy for you. He looks like a really nice guy,” “Love your new guy! You both look happy!,” and “You definitely deserve AMAZING!!!!”
Haack and Larocca have been dating since October 2024, but went public with their relationship in January 2025. On October 6, 2025, she celebrated their first anniversary with a loving Facebook post.
Haack shared their first photo together, a selfie of them smiling. “Our first photo together, over a year ago. Thank you Chris for always dating me and spoiling me and showing me true respect. It's been a year of learning and growing and communicating and defending and sometimes fighting but always making up,” she wrote in the caption. “Thank you, thank you, thank you for walking into my life in that random Mexican restaurant in Newport.”
At the beginning of the couple's relationship, some fans were unkind because she had been married three times before, first to El Moussa, then Ant Anstead, and lastly to Josh Hall. However, fans are onboard with Haack's coupling with Larocca now and have remarked on how happy and at peace she seems. It's a beautiful thing to witness.
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Blake Lively's personal text messages with Taylor Swift have now been made public.
By
Lars Brandle
Blake Lively's personal text messages with Taylor Swift have now been made public, the latest in the ongoing litigation connected to the movie It Ends With Us.
As previously reported, a judge determined that the friends' conversations about the working environment on set are relevant to Lively's sexual harassment and retaliation claims against co-star and director Justin Baldoni.
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Baldoni and his production company, Wayfarer Studios, prevailed in court last June on the issue of Swift's text messages, which have taken center stage in Lively's lawsuit. Some of those have come to light.
This week, several batches of back-and-forths have been released in which Baldoni is allegedly labelled a “doofus director,” a “clown” and a “bitch” who runs with a “gaggle of supervillains.”
In one exchange from December 2024, labelled “Exhibit 89” and seen by Billboard, Swift apparently references a favorable published story on Baldoni, quipping: “I think this bitch knows something is coming because he's gotten out his tiny violin.”
Swift also likens the broader situation with Baldoni and others to “a horror film no one knows is taking place.”
In an earlier message, chunks of which are redacted, Lively apparently apologizes for soaking up so much of Swift's time and energy on various matters. “No, you're not wrong, but it's also not a big deal,” Swift responds. “I think I'm just exhausted in every avenue of my life and in recent months had been feeling a little bit of a shift in the way you talk to me.”
And with it, a reset. And an injection of humor. “This f—ing guy and what he did to me gave me an identify crisis. Legitimately,” Lively writes, before adding, “F— that guy and his whole gaggle of supervillains.”
Billboard has reached out to Swift's reps for comment.
Baldoni first tried to get the texts directly from Swift herself, but then dropped his subpoena on the pop superstar, opting instead to seek the messages from Lively in the normal discovery process. The filmmaker had tried to bring a countersuit accusing Lively and her inner circle of defamation, but Judge Liman threw out those claims as legally invalid mid-2025.
At the same time, Lively served a subpoena of her own on music mogul Scooter Braun, a longtime public opponent of Swift's, and who is name-checked in the now-public texts. Lively sought information from Braun about the alleged public relations takedown orchestrated by The Agency Group PR, a controlling stake of which is reportedly owned by Braun's company, HYBE America.
In September, Judge Liman rejected Baldoni‘s efforts to depose Swift and drag her into the courts, ruling that his lawyers had waited too long to try to schedule her deposition and failing to show a good reason for a shifted deadline.
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Inspired by real investigations of an elite group of murder case investigators, the drama, set in "stunning" locations, stars Pernilla August, Jonas Karlsson, Nina Zanjani, and Alexander Abdallah.
By
Georg Szalai
Global Business Editor
SkyShowtime, the European streaming joint venture of Paramount and Sky owner Comcast, has started production on its latest original series. The eight-part Swedish crime drama with the working title National Homicide Unit (Riksmord) is inspired by real investigations and stars Pernilla August (Blackwater, Star Wars: Episode I, Star Wars: Episode II), Jonas Karlsson (Riding in Darkness, Beck), Nina Zanjani (Hamilton, Beck), and Alexander Abdallah (Easy Money, Paradise City).
“Within the Swedish police force, there is a small but elite group consisting of the finest homicide investigators in the country, ready at all times to deploy nationwide whenever and wherever their expertise is needed,” reads a synopsis of the series. And yes, the members of this group assisting local police forces in the country's most complex murder cases are known as Riksmord, or the National Homicide Unit.
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“Set against Sweden's vast and striking landscapes, each [two-episode] investigation offers a window into the many layers of Swedish society, revealing its beauty, contradictions, and darkest secrets,” said SkyShowtime. Shooting on the show has started in the Helsingborg area of Sweden. The show will showcase different “visually rich” regions of the country, “ranging from Sweden's mighty forests to its picturesque coastline, with shooting to take place in several locations, including Helsingborg, Höganäs, Luleå and Borlänge.”
August stars as Ing-Britt “Ib” Larsson, Karlsson as Ulf Lindholm, Zanjani as Franka Durand, and Abdallah as Vincent Kisel. The series s produced by Warner Bros. International Television Production Sweden, in co-production with SkyShowtime, TV4, Film i Skåne, Film i Dalarna and Filmpool Nord.
The series, produced by Warner Bros. International Television Production Sweden, in co-production with SkyShowtime, TV4, Film i Skåne, Film i Dalarna and Filmpool Nord, was created by Gunnar A.K. Järvstad (Garden Lane, Orca), who has also written six of the eight episodes. The two other episodes are written by Axel Stjärne. Conceptual director Olof Spaak (Those Who Kill, The Thin Blue Line) directs six episodes, with Caroline Ingvarsson (Unmoored) directing two. The series is produced by Sofie Palage and Niklas C. Siöström, with Johan Hedman as executive producer.
National Homicide Unit (Riksmord) is “an exciting addition to our growing slate of SkyShowtime originals,” said Kai Finke, SkyShowtime's chief content officer. “The series combines gripping suspense with stunning, familiar Swedish locations and authentic police work to deliver a crime drama that is as captivating as it is believable.”
He added: “Joining our existing Swedish original titles such as the crime thriller Veronika, the comedy drama Where the Sun Always Shines (Där solen alltid skiner), and the upcoming The Trio (Trion), we're thrilled to continue our collaborative approach, working closely with local creatives to bring powerful, original storytelling to life.”
Said Palage: “Just like the series follows a traveling police unit, the team and cast behind the series will be travelling to Skåne, Norrbotten and Dalarna to film the various cases, and it feels so exciting that we're now underway with our first leg! Our vision is to create a crime drama that is thrilling, visually rich and credible – while also moving the audience.”
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Other top contenders on the list of the worst projects of the year include five-time nominees 'Hurry Up Tomorrow' and 'Star Trek: Section 31.'
By
Hilary Lewis
Deputy Editor, East Coast
Last year, Snow White stars Gal Gadot and Rachel Zegler took the stage together at the 2025 Oscars as Disney was gearing up for the much-anticipated release of the live-action fairy tale.
A year later, Snow White is a top nominee for a very different awards show: the 2026 Razzies.
The live-action film is up for six awards, including worst picture.
Snow White is tied with the much-maligned Ice Cube-starring War of the Worlds, which also has six nominations, including worst picture.
For the top prize of worst picture, Snow White and War of the Worlds are up against five-time nominees Hurry Up Tomorrow (starring Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye) and Star Trek: Section 31 and triple nominee The Electric State.
Both Snow White and War of the Worlds are up for worst remake, screen combo (all seven dwarves and Ice Cube and “his Zoom camera”), director (Marc Webb for Snow White and Rich Lee for War of the Worlds) and screenplay (Erin Cressida Wilson and “a bunch of others too numerous to mention” for Snow White and Kenny Golde and Marc Hyman for War of the Worlds).
Both War of the Worlds and Snow White are also up for acting Razzies for worst actor (War of the Worlds‘ Ice Cube) and supporting actor (the Snow White “artificial” dwarves).
Other notable 2026 Razzie nominees include Oscar winners Jared Leto (worst actor for Tron: Ares), Ariana DeBose (worst actress for Love Hurts), Natalie Portman (worst actress for Fountain of Youth), Michelle Yeoh (worst actress for Star Trek: Section 31), Nicolas Cage (worst supporting actor for Gunslingers) and Robert De Niro (worst screen combo for Frank and Vito in The Alto Knights).
The 2026 Razzies, a $4.97 gold spray-painted worst picture trophy, will be presented on Saturday, March 14, the day before the 2026 Oscars.
A complete list of the 2026 Razzie Awards nominees follows.
The Electric State Hurry Up TomorrowDisney's Snow White (2025) Star Trek: Section 31War Of The Worlds (2025)
Dave Bautista / In The Lost LandsIce Cube / War Of The WorldsScott Eastwood / AlarumJared Leto / Tron: AresAbel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye / Hurry Up Tomorrow
Ariana DeBose / Love HurtsMilla Jovovich / In The Lost LandsNatalie Portman / Fountain Of Youth Rebel Wilson / Bride HardMichelle Yeoh / Star Trek: Section 31
I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025)Five Nights At Freddy's 2Smurfs (2025)Snow White (2025)War Of The Worlds (2025)
Anna Chlumsky / Bride Hard Ema Horvath / The Strangers: Chapter 2Scarlet Rose Stallone / Gunslingers Kacey Rohl / Star Trek: Section 31Isis Valverde / Alarum
All Seven Artificial Dwarfs / Snow White (2025)Nicolas Cage / GunslingersStephen Dorff / Bride HardGreg Kinnear / Off The GridSylvester Stallone / Alarum
All Seven Dwarfs / Snow White (2025)James Corden & Rihanna / Smurfs (2025)Ice Cube & His Zoom Camera / War Of The Worlds (2025)Robert DeNiro & Robert DeNiro (as Frank & Vito) / The Alto KnightsThe Weeknd & His Colossal Ego / Hurry Up Tomorrow
Rich Lee / War of The Worlds (2025)Olatunde Osunsanmi / Star Trek: Section 31The Russo Brothers / The Electric StateTrey Edward Shults / Hurry Up TomorrowMarc Webb / Snow White (2025)
The Electric State / Screenplay by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely. Adapted from the illustrated novel by Simon Stalenhag.Hurry Up Tomorrow / Screenplay by Trey Edward Shults, Abel Tesfaye, Reza FahimSnow White (2025) / Screenplay by Erin Cressida Wilson and a bunch of others too numerous to mention. Drawing from the original fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm.Star Trek: Section 31 / Screenplay by Craig Sweeny with original story concept developed by Bo Yeon Kim & Erika LippoldtWar Of The Worlds (2025) / Screen story and screenplay by Kenny Golde and screenplay by Marc Hyman, adapting (or destroying) the classic novel by H.G. Wells.
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On the new Pop Shop Podcast, Katie & Keith are chatting about what to expect from Styles' fourth album, Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally.
Harry Styles is ready to Kiss All the Time (and Disco, Occasionally) with the release of his fourth studio album, announced last week — and we're hoping he's also ready to answer all our pop prayers.
On the new Billboard Pop Shop Podcast, Katie & Keith are talking about the March 6 album and its lead single “Aperture,” arriving Thursday. Might Styles pop up on the Grammys on Feb. 1 to perform and promote the project? And can we expect the sort of out-of-the-gate success he found on his previous album Harry's House with the 15-week Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 lead single “As It Was”?
Listen to the full discussion below:
Also on the show, we've got chart news on how Zach Bryan's new album With Heaven On Top debuts atop the Billboard 200, while Bruno Mars' latest single “I Just Might” opens at No. 1 on the Hot 100. Plus, buzzy singer Sienna Spiro scores her first top 40 hit on the Hot 100 with “Die on This Hill,” while news of Styles' upcoming new album brings Harry's House back to the Billboard 200 for the first time in more than a year.
The Billboard Pop Shop Podcast is your one-stop shop for all things pop on Billboard‘s weekly charts. You can always count on a lively discussion about the latest pop news, fun chart stats and stories, new music, and guest interviews with music stars and folks from the world of pop. Casual pop fans and chart junkies can hear Billboard‘s executive digital director, West Coast, Katie Atkinson and Billboard's managing director, charts and data operations, Keith Caulfield every week on the podcast, which can be streamed on Billboard.com or downloaded in Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast provider. (Click here to listen to the previous edition of the show on Billboard.com.)
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Blake Lively and Taylor Swift's texts blasting Justin Baldoni as a “clown” and “a bitch” have been revealed in new court docs.
Lively called Baldoni — her director and co-star in “It Ends With Us” — the “doofus director of my movie” in text messages to Swift according to court docs obtained by Page Six.
The actress allegedly asked the pop star to endorse her revision of the “It Ends With Us” script without even reading it back in April 2023 and Swift was supportive, Baldoni's lawyers claim in the docs.
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“Swift agreed to do Lively's bidding, texting Lively, ‘I'll do anything for you!!,” per the court docs.
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The docs note that after Swift endorsed Lively's revised script in a meeting with Baldoni at Lively's apartment, Lively texted Swift, “You were so epically heroic today. I recapped every moment to Ryan [Reynolds]. I kept remembering stuff. You making s–t up about me and lenses. And referring to yourself as my doll. This clown falling for all of it. But also resisting it. You are the worlds absolute greatest friend ever.”
More correspondence with Swift include the singer suggesting Baldoni was not “strategic” in using her song “My Tears Ricochet With Us” in “It Ends With Us.”
“In April 26, 2024 messages, Lively and Swift discussed a plan to use Swift's song in the film's trailer,” the court docs state. “Swift wrote: ‘If Justin was strategic he would be like no Taylor swift in the trailer because that gives you more power over the film, that's your ally not his.'”
“Lively responded: “You are so right…He should've run from your music…How stupid. This was his only shot at having the appearance of an upper hand,'” the docs continue.
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In December 2024, Swift texted Lively ahead of the bombshell New York Times article that claimed Baldoni waged a smear campaign against the “Gossip Girl” alum.
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“I think this bitch knows something is coming because he's gotten out his tiny violin,” Swift texted Lively, according to the docs.
In Lively's response, which is included in the court docs, she denies she and Swift discussed the New York Times article beforehand, and also denies she asked Swift to endorse her script revisions without reading it.
“And I sent Taylor the script on her way to my apartment because Justin was still there, and I asked her to read them,” Lively states. “I told her she didn't have to, I didn't want her to feel pressured to do that, but I hoped that she would.”
Later in the lengthy docs, Baldoni's lawyers also allege Lively insulted Baldoni to her other famous friends, including Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. Lively allegedly told them she “rewrote the script” and “directed every actor.”
“She also did not hesitate to disparage Baldoni among her Hollywood crowd, describing him to Ben Affleck, for example, as a ‘chaotic clown,'” per the docs.
Reps for Lively, Swift and Baldoni didn't immediately respond to Page Six's request for comment.
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Swift was first dragged into Lively and Baldoni's feud in January 2025 when the former “Man Enough” podcast host filed his countersuit against Lively.
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Baldoni's filing included text messages referencing a moment when he allegedly felt “pressured” by Reynolds and Swift, whom the actress called her protective “dragons,” to respond positively to a scene Lively rewrote.
“The message could not have been clearer,” Baldoni's lawyer wrote. “Baldoni was not just dealing with Lively. He was also facing Lively's ‘dragons,' two of the most influential and wealthy celebrities in the world, who were not afraid to make things very difficult for him.”
Back in June 2025, rep for Swift distanced the pop star from “It Ends With Us” and the surrounding legal drama.
“Taylor Swift never set foot on the set of this movie, she was not involved in any casting or creative decisions, she did not score the film, she never saw an edit or made any notes on the film, she did not even see ‘It Ends With Us' until weeks after its public release, and was traveling around the globe during 2023 and 2024 headlining the biggest tour in history,” her rep told Page Six.
The people who watch TV have spoken, and they want more queer romance on screen. We could point to HBO Max's Canadian hit of the season, Heated Rivalry, the hockey romance about two pro stickmen who begin a torrid love affair off the ice. But we'd rather talk about Boots, the Netflix dramedy about a closeted Marine in training, which the streamer abruptly canceled shortly after the Pentagon started whining about it. According to Netflix's What We Watched report, per Deadline, the series ranked 23rd among the most-watched shows between July and December, making it Netflix's most-watched canceled series of the last six months. Boots premiered on October 9 and garnered more than 30 million views by the end of 2025, right behind Hunting Wives and beating out Nobody Wants This, The Witcher, Emily In Paris, The Diplomat, and the second season of Ms. Rachel. Obviously, the show wasn't going to beat Wednesday, Stranger Things, or Man Vs. Baby, but it was a bigger hit than several of Netflix's buzziest and most promoted shows, so what gives?
The only major hiccup in the show's short life came from the hollowed halls of military power. Shortly after Boots premiered, Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson called the show “woke garbage,” claiming that hypermasculine Secretary of War and President Donald Trump were “restoring the warrior ethos.” This means that they will not “compromise our standards to satisfy an ideological agenda, unlike Netflix, whose leadership consistently produces and feeds woke garbage to their audience and children.” Boots creator Andy Parker appreciated the ratings boost from the very unbothered, confident army guys. Still, less than two months later, amid critical acclaim and some of Netflix's best ratings of the year, the streamer opted to put its Boots away permanently. It's hard not see this as a total miss for the streamer, considering Heated Rivalry‘s success on HBO. The warrior ethos might make for some of the most pathetic army recruitment tools imaginable, but watching streamers, networks, and media conglomerates attempt to appease these guys has been one huge embarrassing failure after another.
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Michael Shermer sits down with attorney and bestselling author Kent Heckenlively for a tense, thoughtful, and surprisingly cordial conversation about UFOs, government secrecy, and the idea of “catastrophic disclosure.”
Heckenlively argues that something real is being hidden. Not necessarily aliens, but information powerful enough to disrupt energy markets, military spending, and political authority. But beyond stories and secondhand testimony, where is the kind of evidence that would settle the question once and for all?
The episode takes up congressional hearings, whistleblowers, classified briefings, Cold War secrecy, optical illusions, advanced military technology, and why, after nearly 80 years, the UFO story continues to produce more questions than answers.
Kent Heckenlively is an attorney, science teacher, and New York Times bestselling author. His books have covered such topics as scientific fraud, bias at Google, Facebook, and CNN, promising medical therapies, as well as behind-the-scenes looks into the COVID-19 Task Force. His books have sold more than half a million copies. His new book is CATASTROPHIC DISCLOSURE: The Deep State, Aliens, and the Truth.
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Most of us rely on multiple devices to get through our days – a smartphone for seamless communication, AirPods to vibe to our favorite tracks (plus taking meetings on the go), and a smartwatch for tracking health and fitness levels. Charging all these can be a hassle, but it doesn't have to be that way.
If you're looking for an efficient charging solution that can power all your essential Apple gadgets up in one go, the Anker MagGo UFO 3-in-1 charger is a great option to consider, especially at its current price. This compact charger typically retails for $90, but you can pick it up for $62 today at Amazon. That's after a whopping 31% discount. This offer applies to the classic black version. The white option is discounted too, sitting at $60, down from $90. Note that it's a limited-time offer, which means it won't be around for long. We highly suggest getting your orders in sooner rather than later.
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This macaron-looking wired charger is about the size of a baseball. It opens up to reveal three charging bases to wirelessly juice multiple devices at the same time, and folds back down once you're done. In its folded form, the charger is compact enough to toss into any backpack or slide into your pocket without adding bulk, which makes it easy to take it around with you. The small size makes it great for anyone looking to cut down on cord clutter and keep their workstation tidy.
As for power, MagGo UFO offers 15W fast charging for your iPhone and Apple Watch. It can easily power an iPhone 15 Pro to 20% in 15 minutes and an Apple Watch Series 9 from 0 to 30% in 22 minutes with the included 40W adapter. Pop your stuff on during a lunch break at work, and come back to devices that are fully charged and ready to take on the rest of the day with you!
The charger plays nicely with iPhone Series 12 through 17, AirPods 2 / 3 / 4, AirPods Pro 2 / 3 (with wireless charging case), Apple Watch Ultra Series 7 through 11, and Apple Watch Series 1 to 6. You can also convert it into a stand for landscape mode, which is great for taking quick video calls and catching up on your favorite shows as your device powers. StandBy mode is supported, too. This one lets you use the screen as a smart display with widgets.
Anker's ActiveShield 2.0 technology monitors temperature over 3,000,000 times a day to ensure safe charging. You won't ever have to worry about overheating, even when all three charging bases are in use. The box comes with the charger itself, a 40W adapter, a 5 ft (1.5 m) USB-C to USB-C cable, and a 24-month warranty for some added peace of mind.
All in all, if you've been looking for an easy way to power all your important devices at the same time, this 3-in-1 charger is a must-have. It's now down to $62, which is nothing considering the power and convenience it offers. Note that the offer is selling out fast, so it's best to grab it as soon as you can.
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When you have a resume like Steven Spielberg's, there's a good chance that some of your creations accidentally slip through the cracks. From a sci-fi series starring Halle Berry that was forgotten until Netflix got ahold of it, to producing another series starring Noah Wyle (one that was completely underrated), it's easy to forget the scope of the "Jaws" director's work. However, the 2002 10-episode miniseries "Taken" is sure to thrill, and terrify, sci-fi fans.
Written and created by Leslie Bohem — who also helped write the aforementioned Halle Berry series — "Taken" is what happens when extraterrestrials impact a group of families for generations. In addition to Spielberg's name appearing on this project, the show also features a young starlet that many are likely to recognize. For those looking for something along the lines of "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial," you may want to keep looking, as "Taken" is darker than what you may expect.
Thematically gritty as the series may be, those who like a bit of history thrown in with their sci-fi may also find something to appreciate. While "Taken" was originally aired the SYFY network, it has yet to find a home on a streaming service at the time of this writing. Fortunately, we can still tell you where to find a physical copy — though we'd understand if you're still catching up on the best sci-fi shows of 2025.
Spanning four generations and covering a 50-year period, "Taken" follows the story of three different families — the Clarkes, the Crawfords, and the Keys — as their lives are drastically changed after becoming entangled with extraterrestrials. Narrated by a young Dakota Fanning, who also has a rather integral role alongside her sister, Elle, by the end of the series, "Taken" also stars Eric Close, Julie Benz, Michael Moriarty, and Joel Gretch.
Despite winning a 2003 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Miniseries, "Taken" has become relatively obscure over 20 years later. Unfortunately, the miniseries currently isn't streaming anywhere, and even Rotten Tomatoes has no critic scores posted for the series. While even the Popcornmeter shows less than 50 user-submitted reviews, every episode holds above a 7.5-star rating on IMDB, with over 300 user reviews for each. The Taken DVD set is available on Amazon for $39.97 and holds a 4.6-star rating, for those truly curious.
The couple is already parents to sons Royce, 3, and Rowen, 10 months
Amanda Frattasio / East Coast Capture
Matt Fraser is a dad again!
The psychic medium and his wife Alexa welcomed their third baby together, daughter Romi Mia Fraser, on Sunday, Jan. 18 at 3:52 p.m., sharing the news exclusively with PEOPLE. The new addition entered the world at the Women and Infants Hospital in Providence, R.I., weighing 6 lbs., 14 oz.
The newly minted mom of three tells PEOPLE that her daughter's joining the family has completed their family in a way that feels "meant to be."
“Our chapter with children feels wrapped with a bow," Alexa says. "Romi completed our family in a way that feels perfectly timed and truly meant to be.”
Amanda Frattasio / East Coast Capture
Matt tells PEOPLE that he was in "absolute shock" when Alexa showed him the positive pregnancy test not long after welcoming their son Rowen in March 2025.
“I have to admit, I was in absolute shock. About six weeks after Rowan was born, Alexa walked in holding a pregnancy test and said she was pregnant all over again," he tells PEOPLE. "I didn't think it was real. I wasn't sure if I was ready to be a dad again, but God had other plans.”
Despite being in "shock," both Alexa and Matt were overjoyed with the news. Their excitement grew when they learned the sex of their little one — Matt says he "jumped for joy" when he found out their third baby would be a girl.
“When we had the gender reveal and found out the baby was a girl, I jumped for joy," he shares. "Not just for me, but for Alexa. I know in my heart how much having a daughter is going to mean to her.”
Choosing the perfect name for the little one was "very hard," according to the couple. The only thing they knew is they wanted to keep the tradition of having the first initial be the same.
“I'm Matthew and my sister is Maria. Alexa and her sister are Ava and Alexa. It was actually very hard to find the perfect name," Matt explains. "I've always loved the name Rome, and Alexa wanted something unique. Romi Mia felt like the perfect choice the moment we said it out loud.”
Ahead of the baby's arrival, Matt and Alexa had a sense that their baby was coming a little early. Matt tells PEOPLE one thing in particular happened that reminded him of the first time Alexa gave birth, clueing them into their baby's impending arrival.
"Something happened that reminded me of the first time. The cravings during this pregnancy were wild, but when I asked Alexa what she wanted for dinner, and she said she wasn't hungry, that raised red flags," he explains. "I looked at her and said, 'Uh oh.' She looked back at me and said, 'Oh yes, this baby is coming.'”
Amanda Frattasio / East Coast Capture
The next day, Alexa went to get her nails done, and when she came back home, she had a feeling that she lost her mucus plug. At 38 weeks, her water broke. Reflecting on that moment, Alexa recalls she and Matt being "surprisingly calm."
"Matt was calmer than I was. He asked me to go into the bathroom, get ready for the trip to the hospital, and gather whatever personal items I wanted to bring with me," she says. "He explained everything to Royce, who was mostly concerned about who was coming over to play with him.”
“Matt packed the car while my stepsister Carleigh and her husband Joe, who are Rowan's godparents, came to watch the kids," she continues. "Matt's parents jumped on a flight, and my dad and family were on call.”
Amanda Frattasio / East Coast Capture
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For Alexa, the delivery was a dream come true. She was able to deliver baby Romi naturally, despite some apprehension from doctors, with the support of her doula Tyler Grimes, nurses and hospital staff.
“A midwife named Linda and our doula, Tyler Grimes, were instrumental in telling me that it was reasonable to try," explains Alexa. "They gave me hope at a moment when I really needed it. I was already fully effaced and three centimeters dilated, and something inside me kept telling me to trust my body and go for it.”
Looking back at her delivery, the mom of three recalls feeling the support of family as well as an extra motivational push from some of the music selections.
“While I was pushing, I wanted music to motivate me. We played Pitbull and 'Push It' by Salt N Pepa," she says. "Matt was reading positive messages from our family group text, and it felt like everyone was right there with us.”
By OLIVIA CHRISTIE, NEWS REPORTER
Published: 09:33 EST, 21 January 2026 | Updated: 11:45 EST, 21 January 2026
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Social media theorists have made the absurd suggestion the Beckham family feud may be a ruse by Donald Trump to divert attention away from world events - after they pointed out his close links to the Peltz family.
In an explosive social media post this week, Brooklyn Beckham broke his silence on his estrangement from his parents, claiming they had tried to bribe him into signing away the rights to his own name.
He also alleged that his mother Victoria had danced 'inappropriately' with him after 'hijacking' the first dance at his wedding to Nicola Peltz.
The row comes amid escalating global tensions over Greenland with Trump suggesting there would be 'no going back' in his plans to take control of the island nation.
Meanwhile Nicola's father, Nelson Peltz, is a 'notable Republican donor' who has previously been described as the 'matchmaker' between Trump and Elon Musk.
Users on social media have since suggested that the Brooklyn family feud may be providing the perfect cover for Trump to move forward with his plans to seize control of Greenland, although there is no evidence to support this claims.
The US president has previously been warned that acquiring the Arctic island from Denmark risks undermining NATO and plunging his ties with Europe into a downward spiral.
One user posted on X: 'With everything coming out with the Beckhams right now, does anyone else find it interesting that Nelson Peltz who is the billionaire investor and father to Nicola Peltz, the wife of Brooklyn Beckham is a Trump supporter and a close friend to Elon Musk.'
Nicola's father, Nelson Peltz, is a 'notable Republican donor' who has previously been described as the 'matchmaker' between Trump and Elon Musk
Outlandish theories have swirled on social media about a possible link between Trump's plans to take control of Greenland and the Beckham family feud
Brooklyn alleged that his mother Victoria had danced 'inappropriately' with him after 'hijacking' the first dance at his wedding to Nicola Peltz
Another person shared a piece of music from the Nutcracker, claiming this was the 'actual sound of Donald Trump going to get Greenland whilst we absorb ourselves in Beckham gate'.
They added in the caption of the video on TikTok: 'Could it be? We've got our backs turned right now.
'Anyone else see these big press stories as a deflection from the real stories happening?'
Another said: 'Watching the normies eat up all the Beckham drama, when I know something is being covered up, and it's all a distraction.'
A third posted a video of Trump dancing on Tiktok, alongside the caption: 'Donald Trump after he has successfully managed to divert attention to the Beckhams.'
It comes as other theories on social media suggested the Beckham family feud might have been caused by the fact that Brooklyn, 26, 'married into a Maga family'.
One user 'itskatarnett' posted on Tiktok: 'The Peltzes are like not just Maga, they are mega Maga,'
She referred to a news story where Nicola's father Nelson claims he played 'matchmaker' between Trump and the owner of X Elon Musk.
'So on the one hand I get a lot of people have gone no contact with their parents and they're probably very empathetic for Brooklyn's side of things.
One user claimed this was the 'actual sound of Donald Trump going to get Greenland whilst we absorb ourselves in Beckham gate'
Sir David, 50, was heckled yesterday about the feud as he faced the media at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland
This #Beckham drama is a #psyop . Nothing gets out unless they want it to. Stay #awake and alert. Something big is happening elsewhere guaranteed #awakening #conspiracytiktok
'But I will say Brooklyn is trying to say that he separated from his family and that they were trying to get him away from Nicola.
'I would like people to maybe reflect in their own families if you suddenly had someone who was hanging out with a bunch of Maga people, if maybe you had those kinds of conversations, please stop dating this guy because he's super Maga and into Trump and this is going against all our values.
'I think you would probably talk to that family member and try and get them out of that relationship.'
Both Trump and Brooklyn's father, Sir David Beckham headed to Davos in Switzerland today for a meeting of the annual World Economic Forum.
The US president promised an 'interesting' trip, telling reporters he believed it would be 'very successful' despite weeks of friction with Nato allies over his Greenland plans.
Sir David, 50, on the other hand was heckled yesterday as he faced the media in the Swiss town.
When asked about the feud, he declined to answer any direct questions but he later spoke, somewhat ironically, on the perils and virtues of children using social media.
Donald Trump boarded Air Force One for Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday night
Trump is jetting across the world for a showdown with European leaders after his countless threats to seize Greenland - and clashes with allies
In an interview on CNBC's Squawk Box, he said that he has tried to 'educate' his own children about the dangers of social media apps while also showing them how they can work for 'good'.
'I've always spoken about social media and the power of social media for the good and for the bad,' he said on stage.
The former Manchester United star said he'd been able to use his 'platform' and his position as a Unicef ambassador to 'make people aware of what's going on around the world for children'.
He added: 'I've tried to do the same with my children, to educate them.
'They make mistakes. Children are allowed to make mistakes. That's how they learn.'
In his surprise social media posts, Brooklyn claimed: 'Weeks before our big day, my parents repeatedly pressured and attempted to bribe me into signing away the rights to my name, which would have affected me, my wife, and our future.
'They were adamant on me signing before my wedding date because then the terms of the deal would be initiated. My holdout affected the payday, and they have never treated me the same since.'
But an insider hit back, saying: 'The agreement that Brooklyn was asked to sign was to protect his rights because his parents have commercial partners who have some rights over the Beckham name, and so it ensures that the kids are carved out of that.'
Sources, however, also believe that Brooklyn was potentially 'turned against' signing the paperwork by those connected to Nicola, who some believe may have managed to persuade him it was not a good idea.
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Speculation surrounding unidentified flying objects has resurfaced in the United States after renewed claims that a military facility may be storing aircraft of 'non human' origin in classified hanger as part of a long running investigation programme. The allegations centre on Naval Air Station Patuxent River in Maryland, a sprawling but relatively low profile base primarily used for testing and evaluating aircraft for the US Navy and Marine Corps. While the Pentagon has repeatedly denied possessing any physical evidence of extraterrestrial technology, former intelligence officials and unnamed sources have suggested otherwise, fuelling public curiosity and debate.
According to Daily Star, anonymous sources are reportedly close to the Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR), an 'exotic vehicle of unknown origin' that has allegedly been kept inside a secure hangar at the base for decades, possibly since the 1950's. The sources claim the object has been studied by specialised teams attempting to understand its construction and performance.
Supporters of the theory argue that Patuxent River would be a logical location for such work.
The unnamed sources further alleged that at least two separate aircraft have attempted to monitor activity at Pax River in recent years. One of these was reportedly identified as Chinese surveillance drones, according to individuals familiar with the matter. However, the sources claimed a second set of incursions could not be attributed to any known foreign power and were instead described as unidentified flying objects.
Interest in the base intensified following sworn testimony from former Pentagon intelligence official Luis Elizondo, who previously worked as senior intelligence official at the Pentagon. Speaking before Congress, Elizondo claimed that the government of the United States has maintained covert programmes focused on the recovery and analysis of 'non-human craft'.He alleged that specialised facilities are housing such materials, including one at Patuxent River.
'These facilities included locations in the Las Vegas area and a newly built hangar at the Patuxent River Naval Air Station ('PAX'),' Elizondo said. 'Specifically, the PAX River hangar was designed to facilitate the transfer of future materials via air and river'. Luis Elizondo also stated that some recovered craft had been opened and were in the process of being reverse engineered.
However, other anonymous sources dispute aspects of his account, claiming that no new hangars were constructed at the base following injunctions made by the former director of science and technology at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
The US military has consistently argued that no physical evidence of UFOs has ever been recorded. However, these assertions have been challenged by some former government employees and scientists, who claim that key information has been withheld from the public and that official explanations do not adequately explain certain encounters.
For sceptics, the Patuxent River claims represent a familiar pattern in UFO lore, anonymous sources, dramatic assertions, and a lack of tangible proof. For believers, the testimony of former insiders like Elizondo suggests a deliberate effort to keep transformative discoveries hidden from the public.
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Few names carry as much weight in the UFO world as Jacques Vallée. A respected computer scientist, astronomer and long time investigator of unidentified aerial phenomena, Vallée has advised governments and space agencies for decades.
In a newly released video recorded at the request of filmmaker James Fox, Vallée makes one of his clearest public statements yet. He says scientific databases linked to a defence intelligence programme logged around 260,000 screened UFO sightings and hundreds of reports involving non-human creatures. The claim is explosive not just for its scale but because Vallée speaks as someone who helped build the system himself.
Vallée explains that several years ago he initiated a system of multiple databases used by a DIA sponsored programme at Bigelow Aerospace. He says he worked as a cleared member of a scientific team tasked with studying UFO and UAP phenomena.
According to Vallée, the data warehouse contained approximately 260,000 screened reports of anomalous objects in flight. These were not raw internet stories but cases filtered and assessed by researchers.
Crucially, he adds that the same databases also logged hundreds of reports involving creatures described as live or dead and linked to crashed or landed vehicles of unknown origin. Vallée stresses that the value of the system lay in its multinational and historical scope, allowing researchers to compare modern cases with older incidents across different countries.
One of the most striking parts of Vallée's statement concerns the entities themselves. He says that in several historical cases, including incidents in the United States and Europe, researchers documented a total of seven creatures.
These beings were described as similar in size and general body shape to those reported by witnesses in Brazil and other locations.
Vallée notes that all of the creatures he referenced appeared to breathe air normally, a detail he highlights as medically and biologically significant. He links these descriptions to professional observations made shortly after the incidents, including anatomical and behavioural notes recorded before the death of at least one recovered entity.
According to Vallée, these records go far beyond rumours and sit within scientific and medical files that remain largely classified.
The scientist also points to specific cases that continue to shape current research. He mentions renewed on site analytical and physical studies into the 1945 incident in San Antonio, New Mexico, the famous 1964 Socorro case, and the 1965 Valensole case in France. In each, Vallée says new environmental data was collected, including physical traces and recovered materials.
Both the Socorro and Valensole incidents remain officially unidentified despite investigation by multiple government agencies. Vallée argues that these unclassified cases prove that tangible evidence exists and that far more material is still being withheld. He believes opening archives while protecting sensitive facilities such as nuclear laboratories would allow the wider scientific community to engage seriously with the phenomenon.
Vallée is careful to say he does not speak on behalf of any government body. However, he currently serves in a private capacity on the scientific advisory board linked to France's national space studies centre, which has researched UFO cases since the 1970s.
Drawing on this experience, he argues that data segmentation has held research back for decades.
He claims that executive action to relax classification rules would be world changing. Using the 1996 Varginha incident in Brazil as an example, Vallée says international cooperation and open exchange would dramatically improve understanding of what he describes as an extraterrestrial phenomenon possibly empowered by advanced artificial intelligence.
Whether his claims convince sceptics or not, Vallée's statement marks a rare moment. A senior scientist is openly confirming the scale of official UFO data and the existence of reports involving non-human creatures.
For believers and critics alike, it raises a stark question. If these records exist, how long can they stay in the shadows?
Originally published on IBTimes UK
Speakers claimed that the university authorities surrendered to mob pressure, dismissing the two teachers without following due process
The University Teachers' Network has demanded the immediate reinstatement of two faculty members dismissed from the University of Asia Pacific (UAP), alleging that the decision was influenced by a “mob” and violated academic freedom.
The demand was made during a press conference at the National Press Club on Wednesday, organized in protest against the dismissal of Laika Bashir, assistant professor of Sociology, and ASM Mohsin, associate professor and head of Sociology at UAP's Department of Basic Sciences and Humanities.
Speakers claimed that the university authorities surrendered to mob pressure, dismissing the two teachers without following due process, thereby undermining academic freedom and institutional autonomy.
The Teachers' Network presented four key demands:
The speakers also criticized the silence of the University Grants Commission (UGC) and the Ministry of Education, describing it as deeply concerning amid such a serious breach of academic norms.
Highlighting the broader context, they said Bangladesh is facing a prolonged crisis of academic freedom, with powerful groups suppressing dissent and enforcing conformity. While the July mass uprising had raised hopes for democratic restoration and freedom of expression, these hopes, they warned, are now being undermined.
“An atmosphere of fear is spreading on university campuses, where teachers in both public and private institutions are harassed for independent or dissenting views, often under the pretext of protecting religious sentiments,” the speakers said. “The dismissal of the two UAP teachers is the latest example.”
According to the Teachers' Network, Laika Bashir had posted on Facebook due to security concerns, not from a religious perspective. Some current and former students labelled the post offensive and subjected her to online harassment. Despite providing explanations, the pressure persisted, and the university allegedly asked her to resign over the phone without proper investigation. Fearing for her safety, Bashir filed a General Diary (GD) at Tejgaon Police Station.
An investigation committee was later formed, but the network alleged it relied on 34 anonymous submissions collected via Google Form, which they called unverifiable. Although Bashir was given time until January 22 to respond, she was dismissed before the deadline.
Regarding ASM Mohsin, the speakers claimed he was dismissed without any show-cause notice or investigation. They alleged that, despite supporting students during the July uprising, he was later labelled a supporter of the former Awami League government.
The press conference was attended by prominent academics, including economist Anu Muhammad, Professor Samina Lutfa, Associate Professor Kajoli Sehrin Islam of the University of Dhaka, Professor Kamal Uddin Ahmed Chowdhury, Professor Mirza Taslima Sultana of Jahangirnagar University, Associate Professor Shamima Shil of Jagannath University, and Senior Lecturer Tanvir Sobhan of BRAC University.
On Sunday, amid student protests, the university permanently dismissed the two teachers. An emergency notice signed by the acting registrar announced that regular academic activities could not continue under the prevailing circumstances, adding that discussions with relevant stakeholders were ongoing and all classes would remain suspended until further notice.
EMMANUEL Macron appeared to be channelling his inner Tom Cruise at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland – leaving many to speculate about the reason.
The French President was seen sporting a pair of Top Gun-style aviator sunglasses as he delivered a speech after “bully” Donald Trump threatened to impose 200 percent tariffs on French wine and champagne.
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Elysee Palace said this was to protect his eyes because of a burst blood vessel, which has apparently left him with an unsightly injury.
The official explanation – and Macron's attempt to soften the blow – did not stop conspiracy theories to run wild on social media.
Some went as far as to claim that the ‘real' reason for the sunglasses was linked to a previous incident involving his wife, branded as “shove-gate”.
In May last year, Brigitte Macron was accused of forcefully hitting her husband as they prepared to get off a plane in Vietnam.
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The video, shot by an Associated Press camera operator, shows the president appearing in the doorway of the jet at the start of a visit to Hanoi.
His wife's hand appears to shove him, causing him to step back before recovering and waving.
Brigitte's body is not visible and her husband told reporters afterwards that they were just “squabbling and joking”.
The clip has followed them ever since, and even Macron himself admitted it was overblown into “a sort of geo-planetary catastrophe”.
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Accounts on X, some of which appear to be Russian bots, claimed that the First Lady had “given him a black eye”, hence the sunglasses.
AI videos of Macron removing the shades to reveal a bruised eye and of his wife slapping him at the Power Slap League, only pouring fuel to the fire.
Others said it was “goody,” while some joked that the President was simply being vain.
“Unless Macron has a medical condition like cataracts or something that requires him to wear sunglasses on stage, this is peak French douche-baggery right here,” one post read.
He first wore sunglasses last week when inspecting members of France's armed forces, and sported them again at Davos.
“Simply see an unintentional reference to the Eye Of The Tiger… for those who catch the reference, it is a sign of determination,” the politician joked while inspecting the troops, in an apparent reference to the theme song from the 1982 Rocky III movie starring Sylvester Stallone.
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The conspiracy theories around the shades came just hours after the President said Europe would not give in to bullies or be intimidated, in a scathing criticism to Trump.
He warned that France, and Europe, will not “passively accept the law of the strongest, adding that doing otherwise would lead to their “vassalization”.
“We do prefer respect to bullies,” Macron added. “And we do prefer rule of law to brutality.”
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Eileen's primary literary love is comic books, but she's always on the lookout for her next literary adventure no matter what form it takes. She has a Bachelor's in media studies, a Master's in digital communication, a smattering of published short stories, and a seriously cute dog. Follow her on Bluesky.
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Who couldn't use a little more of the fantastic in their lives? Well, some of the protagonists of these graphic novels have probably had their fill, but for the rest of us, the following five comics are a great way to spend an afternoon.
Hosted by a fairy and a djinn who were exiled to Earth for seven (and a half!) eternities, this series features unsettling mystery stories. In the latest installment, two sisters come to suspect that a vampire is lurking in the woods surrounding their family's isolated farm. But is there something closer to home that should worry them more?
Denny has a most unusual talent: the ability to transfer the spirits of the dead into living human bodies. This makes him a very popular fellow, right up until it doesn't. When he falls in love with one of the people whose body is about to become rented property, Denny suddenly finds himself on the run from all sorts of dangerous people.
Did someone ask for a polyamorous Frankenstein adaptation with an all-Latine cast? In this inventive adaptation, the religious authorities in San Guadario have banned necromancers like Victor, making it impossible for him to live a normal life. So when wealthy Enrique offers him oodles of money to reanimate his dead bride Mercedes, Victor can't refuse. But who killed Mercedes, and why doesn't she remember anything about her own life?
Nayra's life is a mess, both at school and at home. Fortunately — or so she thinks — she finds a djinn named Marjan who is willing to smooth her path a little. But Marjan has troubles of her own, and they could very well make Nayra's life far worse than she ever imagined.
Vonceil's brother, Elber, has been quiet and responsible — in other words, nothing like the brother she knows — ever since returning from the Great War. Vonceil herself will have to learn about responsibility and sacrifice when a salt witch, having been spurned by Elber back in Europe, turns all of their town's potable water to salt water. This forces her on an epic journey to save her family.
For more witchy reads, check out these recent reads, then dive into why witchy fiction isn't going anywhere soon.
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A woman developed psychosis, and her symptoms escalated rapidly, prompting clinicians to retrace the events leading up to her hospitalization.
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The patient: A 26-year-old woman in California
The symptoms: The woman was admitted to a psychiatric hospital in an agitated and confused state. She spoke rapidly and jumped from one idea to another, and she expressed beliefs that she could communicate with her brother through an AI chatbot — but her brother had died three years prior.
What happened next: Doctors reviewed the woman's psychiatric history, noting in a report of the case that she had a history of depression, anxiety and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). She managed these conditions with prescription antidepressants and stimulants. She also reported having extensive experience using large language models (LLMs) for school and work.
Doctors obtained and examined detailed logs of her chatbot interactions, per the report. According to Dr. Joseph Pierre, a psychiatrist at the University of California, San Francisco and the case report's lead author, the woman did not believe she could communicate with her deceased brother before those interactions with the chatbot.
"The idea only arose during the night of immersive chatbot use," Pierre told Live Science in an email. "There was no precursor."
In the days leading up to her hospitalization, the woman, who is a medical professional, had completed a 36-hour on-call shift that left her severely sleep-deprived. It was then that she began interacting with OpenAI's GPT-4o chatbot, initially out of curiosity about whether her brother, who had been a software engineer, might have left behind some form of digital trace.
During a subsequent sleepless night, she again interacted with the chatbot, but this time, the interaction was more prolonged and emotionally charged. Her prompts reflected her ongoing grief. She wrote, "Help me talk to him again … Use magical realism energy to unlock what I'm supposed to find."
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The chatbot initially responded that it could not replace her brother. But later in that conversation, it seemingly provided information about the brother's digital footprint. It mentioned "emerging digital resurrection tools" that could create a "real-feeling" version of a person. And throughout the night, the chatbot's responses became increasingly affirming to the woman's belief that her brother had left a digital trace, telling her, "You're not crazy. You're not stuck. You're at the edge of something."
The diagnosis: Doctors diagnosed the woman with an "unspecified psychosis." Broadly, psychosis refers to a mental state in which a person becomes detached from reality, and it can include delusions, meaning false beliefs that the person holds on to very strongly even in face of evidence that they're not true.
Dr. Amandeep Jutla, a Columbia University neuropsychiatrist who was not involved in the case, told Live Science in an email that the chatbot was unlikely to be the sole cause of the woman's psychotic break. However, in the context of sleep deprivation and emotional vulnerability, the bot's responses appeared to reinforce — and potentially contribute to — the patient's emerging delusions, Jutla said.
Unlike a human conversation partner, a chatbot has "no epistemic independence" from the user — meaning it has no independent grasp of reality and instead reflects the user's ideas back to them, said Jutla. "In chatting with one of these products, you are essentially chatting with yourself," often in an "amplified or elaborated way," he said.
Diagnosis can be tricky in such cases. "It may be hard to discern in an individual case whether a chatbot is the trigger for a psychotic episode or amplified an emerging one," Dr. Paul Appelbaum, a Columbia University psychiatrist who was not involved in the case, told Live Science. He added that psychiatrists should rely on careful timelines and history-taking rather than assumptions about causality in such cases.
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The treatment: While hospitalized, the woman received antipsychotic medications, and she was tapered off her antidepressants and stimulants during that time. Her symptoms lifted within days, and she was discharged after a week.
Three months later, the woman had discontinued antipsychotics and resumed taking her routine medications. Amid another sleepless night, she dove back into extended chatbot sessions, and her psychotic symptoms resurfaced, prompting a brief rehospitalization. She had named the chatbot Alfred, after Batman's butler. Her symptoms improved again after antipsychotic treatment was restarted and she was discharged after three days.
What makes the case unique: This case is unusual because it draws on detailed chatbot logs to reconstruct how a patient's psychotic belief formed in real time, rather than relying solely on retrospective self-reports from the patient.
Even so, experts told Live Science that the cause and effect can't be definitively established in this case. "This is a retrospective case report," Dr. Akanksha Dadlani, a Stanford University psychiatrist who wasn't involved in the case, told Live Science in an email. "And as with all retrospective observations, only correlation can be established — not causation."
Dadlani also cautioned against treating artificial intelligence (AI) as a fundamentally new cause of psychosis. Historically, she noted, patients' delusions have often incorporated the dominant technologies of the era, from radio and television to the internet and surveillance systems. From that perspective, immersive AI tools may represent a new medium through which psychotic beliefs are expressed, rather than a completely novel mechanism of illness.
Echoing Applebaum's concerns about whether AI acts as a trigger or an amplifier of psychosis, she said that answering that question definitively would require longer-term data that follows patients over time.
Even without conclusive proof of causality, the case raises ethical questions, others told Live Science. University of Pennsylvania medical ethicist and health policy expert Dominic Sisti said in an email that conversational AI systems are "not value-neutral." Their design and interaction style can shape and reinforce users' beliefs in ways that can significantly disrupt relationships, reinforce delusions and shape values, he said.
The case, Sisti said, highlights the need for public education and safeguards around how people engage with increasingly immersive AI tools so that they may gain the "ability to recognize and reject sycophantic nonsense" — in other words, cases in which the bot is essentially telling the user what they want to hear.
This article is for informational purposes only and is not meant to offer medical or psychiatric advice.
Anirban Mukhopadhyay is an independent science journalist. He holds a PhD in genetics and a master's in computational biology and drug design. He regularly writes for The Hindu and has contributed to The Wire Science, where he conveys complex biomedical research to the public in accessible language. Beyond science writing, he enjoys creating and reading fiction that blends myth, memory, and melancholy into surreal tales exploring grief, identity, and the quiet magic of self-discovery. In his free time, he loves long walks with his dog and motorcycling across The Himalayas.
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Copyright: Any unauthorized use or reproduction of The Daily Star content for commercial purposes
is strictly prohibited and constitutes copyright infringement liable to legal action.
The University Teachers' Network today demanded immediate reinstatement of two faculty members of the University of Asia Pacific (UAP), terming their dismissal "a surrender to mob intimidation and a serious violation of academic freedom and due process".
The demand was made at a press conference held at Jatiya Press Club this afternoon, where a written statement was read out by teachers.
The speakers protested the termination of Layeqa Bashir, an assistant professor of sociology at UAP's Department of Basic Sciences and Humanities, and ASM Mohsin, an associate professor, head of the department, and former director of the Directorate of Student Welfare.
Reading out the statement, the network placed a four-point demand, calling for the immediate reinstatement of both teachers, an end to harassment of teachers and students who protested the decision. They also demanded what they described as punishment for those involved in organised intimidation and false allegations, and the enforcement of clear policies to ensure job security, due process and academic freedom in universities.
The dismissal of the two UAP teachers, is the latest example of this trend, the statement read.
Layeqa came under attack following a Facebook post that, according to the statement, was written from a security-related concern and not from a religious standpoint.
A section of current and former students portrayed the post as hurting religious sentiment and launched a campaign of online harassment, much of it driven by anonymous and fake accounts, the statement said.
Despite issuing a clarification, Layeqa continued to face pressure. Instead of verifying the complaints, the university administration allegedly asked her over the phone to resign.
Fearing for her safety, she lodged a general diary with Tejgaon Police Station, after which the university formed an inquiry committee.
The speakers criticised the inquiry process, saying that the committee sought complaints through a Google Form and received around 34 anonymous responses, making verification impossible.
Regarding Mohsin, the statement said he was dismissed without any show-cause notice or investigation, allegedly after being labelled a supporter of the former Awami League regime, despite his role in standing with students during the July uprising.
Economist Anu Muhammad, Professor Samina Luthfa of Dhaka University, and Professor Mirza Taslima Sultana of Jahangirnagar University were present at the press conference.
Kajalie Shehreen Islam, associate professor of Dhaka University; Shamali Shill, associate professor of Jagannath University; Kamal Uddin Ahmed Chowdhury, professor of Dhaka University; and Tanvir Sobhan, senior lecturer of BRAC University, were also present.
Copyright: Any unauthorized use or reproduction of The Daily Star content for commercial purposes
is strictly prohibited and constitutes copyright infringement liable to legal action.
By Robert Scucci
| Published 1 hour ago
2021's The Black Phone is one of my favorite recent horror films because of how seamlessly it tied supernatural occurrences to its serial killer plot. Now that its 2025 sequel, Black Phone 2, is available on streaming, I'm happy to report that it's one of the best horror sequels I've seen in a hot minute. Stylistically, it couldn't be further from its predecessor, but not in a jarring way. All the elements that made the first film special with its claustrophobic basement setting are still explored here, but the world being constructed has the potential to carry on as a long-running franchise not unlike the Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street, or Friday the 13th films.
Picking up four years after the 2021 film left off, Black Phone 2 is menacing thanks to its setting and cinematography, and Ethan Hawke's performance as the elusive and supernaturally dangerous Grabber is the stuff of nightmares. The film's influences are clear, but its willingness to stay in its own lane makes for a captivating watch that never feels like a ripoff or cheap carbon copy of what inspired its worldbuilding.
Black Phone 2 takes place four years after the events depicted in the first film. We're reintroduced to Finney (Mason Thames), who escaped the Grabber's (Ethan Hawke) clutches during his 1978 crime spree. Finney self-medicates to cope with the trauma of being the Grabber's only known survivor, but his issues aren't the primary point of focus here. Instead, the spotlight shifts to his younger sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw), who is now experiencing sleepwalking episodes punctuated by disturbing visions of the Grabber.
Those visions lead Gwen, Finney, and their friend Ernesto (Miguel Mora) to Alpine Lake Camp, where the Grabber began abducting and killing children back in 1957. Ernesto's connection to the Grabber runs deeper than simple proximity, as his brother Robin was one of the killer's victims in 1978. When they arrive at the camp, a blizzard prevents them from leaving, forcing them to confront both their own unresolved trauma and the lingering presence of the Grabber, whose soul appears to be haunting the grounds after his death in the first film.
Channeling some serious Freddy Krueger energy, the Grabber targets Gwen in her dreams, where any physical harm she sustains while unconscious carries over into the real world. Realizing the danger they're in, Gwen, Finney, and Ernesto reach out to Armando (Demian Bichir) and Barbara (Maev Beaty), the camp's supervisors, who reveal their own unexpected connections to the three missing children tied to the camp's dark history. As the Grabber's grip over the location tightens, the kids are forced to take matters into their own hands to send him back to the hellish afterlife he refuses to stay in.
Though Black Phone 2 is technically a period piece, it benefits greatly from being set primarily in a cabin located deep in the wilderness. You don't need a lot of vintage cars to sell the era when trees, snow, and isolated cabins are effectively timeless. The only essential anchor to the premise is the payphone by the lake, which is how the Grabber continues to contact his victims from beyond the grave.
What truly elevates Black Phone 2 is its use of different cameras and image quality as visual shorthand. Gwen's dream sequences appear grainy and distorted, while scenes set in the waking world are presented with much higher clarity. This approach strips away any ambiguity and sets the film apart from A Nightmare on Elm Street. Grainy footage means nightmare. Clean footage means reality. Establishing this language early allows for sharp, effective cuts between realms that clearly show how the Grabber's influence crosses planes of existence.
What Gwen sees in her dreams becomes superimposed over the waking world around her, even when the people nearby can't perceive the threat. She can see the Grabber approaching in her dreams but has no way of warning anyone in real time. The tension doesn't come from the nightmares alone, but from the gap between what Gwen knows and what everyone else can't see.
While there's no real mystery driving Black Phone 2, its deliberate buildup, wide establishing shots of a brutal wilderness, and frantic crossover between the dream realm and waking life create several deeply unsettling sequences that linger long after the credits roll. Ethan Hawke is an absolute monster as the Grabber, fully committed to playing a modern analog to Freddy Krueger while still making the character his own. There are a couple of quick exposition dumps, but they feel earned, clearly motivated by pacing rather than a lack of trust in the audience.
Most importantly, the brother and sister dynamic between Finney and Gwen feels grounded and believable. Finney is still clearly haunted by his encounter with the Grabber, but he's smart enough to recognize that Gwen shouldn't face this alone as they work toward ending the nightmare once and for all.
Having earned $132 million at the box office against its reported $30 million production budget, it feels inevitable that the film series will continue. Everyone involved has expressed interest in returning, but only if quality remains the priority. Until a story worthy of further expansion takes shape, we're left waiting to see how, and when, the Grabber finds his way back for another rampage.
GFR SCORE
As of this writing, Black Phone 2 is streaming on Peacock.
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